"Ha ha! Screw the fact that using a hoe could potentially ruin anything I am lucky enough to find!" Our good ole' hero Jack exclaimed as he pounded away at the floor of the mine. "And who cares if I cause a cave in!" The old potion shop owner glared with his pixilated eyes at the rambunctious youth as he dug around for potanta roots for his medicine.
Suddenly, Jack dug up a strange hole in his intense fury for treasure. The strange, brown text box popped up under his feet with black, blocky text that read, "Didn't I just walk over this spot a hyper second ago? Why didn't I fall through it earlier?" He got down on his stick knees to take a gander at this dark void in the floor.
A ghastly voice arose from its depths and asked Jack a very simple question, "Do you want to go down?" Jack would have blinked twice if the creators of the game had given him the ability to even blink.
Jack waited patiently for the text box to reappear. He chose "Yes" because everyone knows that the first answer is almost always the best in any given situation for some reason. A wave of darkness flooded the room and Jack was mysteriously sucked down into the now vast void. After the traumatic experience, Jack found himself on yet another floor of the mine and somehow one of the carpenter brothers was there too.
"Harvest Sprite! How in the Nintendo 64 did you get down here? I didn't see you being devoured by any strange talking holes!" Jack yelled at this not-so-important character.
"I love the mountains!" The carpenter said with a smile on his face. He continued walking in a pattern: two steps forward, one to the right, one to the left, and back into the middle of the floor.
"If I wasn't paid for helping you out with the hot springs, I swear…" Jack left alone the forever-unnamed guy to continue in his quest for buried treasure. He struck a patch of dirt with his hoe and a strange tune shortly followed. An item appeared in his hands with the message "Found a rare metal!" "Wow, I guess I'm smarter than I think I am if I know what the hell this is." Jack proclaimed proudly. "Better not waste too much time."
Jack placed the rare metal into his orange rucksack and continued his quest for hidden goodies. As if the Harvest Goddess herself blessed him, he found yet two more rare metals. "It must have been that good-for-nothing bracelet Karen gave me for my birthday…" He dug the so-called "lucky bracelet" out of his pocket. It looked like a little pebble with a string tied around it. Jack figured that Karen made it during one of her drunken charades and tried flinging it onto the floor. For some peculiar reason, the necklace would not escape his gloved hand. Jack shrugged and tucked it back away.
"DING-DONG! TIME'S UP!" The other carpenter's voice alone froze time and everything. Jack was stuck with his hoe in mid-air.
"ZOMG SAFARI ZONE???" Which in itself didn't make sense since the Safari Zone was based on the number of steps taken, not time. Jack was then magically transported back to the entrance of the cave (for whatever reason was only accessible through a crappy looking door).
With the whole day spent on harvesting goodies from the mine, Jack then concentrated on what he was to do the whole night. Idea in mind, he sprinted through the snow to the bar, unaffected by the weight of the rucksack full of heavy metals, tools, and useless junk. There he ordered the free water. Harvest Goddess knows where the water was from.
He talked to all who was in there. And it was full that night! First Duke was being all warm and hospitable like every night, completely flat and boring. Jeff, Kai, and Harris were all dreaming of "their girls." The shipper was complaining about being away from his daughter so much. Jack wondered why the shipper went to bar if he could spend that time with his daughter in the first place, but whatever. Gray was brooding about something or other. Cliff was speaking gibberish about trusting people, blah, and blah. Karen's father was thinking about how he can't relate to his daughter since she is a girl. Quite the opposite of not relating, it was more like not trying to relate and ending up screaming at her.
Karen was pretty much the only sane person in the bar, other than the blatant fact that she was drunk. Ever since Popuri had given her the idea of making wine out of a flower, Karen had been trying to create wine out of silly things. Jack was afraid that she would try and make his poor little doggy Koro into wine. Though, he thought, she really has some sort of dog fetish…
Seeing Karen, Kai, and Karen's father all at the bar, Jack left to, of course, do some naughty things.
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Jack dumped the bottle into the wine barrel. It was like stealing candy from a baby. Karen's mother wouldn't be able to catch him since she was sleeping…somewhere. Only Karen seemed to have a room and a bed. Maybe she slept on the couch…
"Thank Goddess for Rick!" He toasted the air with the bottle full of wine. Rick, he was the guy Jack thought was a chick, a very ugly chick, but a chick nonetheless. After sipping it down to the last drop, his face turned a deep red as he swayed back and forth. Then it hit him…
"I'll give Rick these rare metals as my thanks!" Jack had already paid for the bottle, but by this point in time his judgment was a little foggy or else he would have realized that "rare" equals "money."
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The next day, Jack hurried to Rick's Shop after he walked around aimlessly in the woods looking for stuff to sell. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. A little sign on the door read: "Rick's Shop. Closed on Wednesdays and weekends!"
"But it's Tuesday…" Jack mumbled as he glared at the sign that mocked him. He began to pound on this new enemy and stopped when no one answered or cared.
Giving up, Jack went to the bakery to suppress his depression by gorging himself with sweets. 'Hey, Popuri does it all the time. It's okay if I eat a whole cake or two.' With this new philosophy in mind, Jack breezed passed "little Elli" and straight to his main man Jeff.
After listening to Jeff's tea talk, Jack ordered five cakes and threw them into his bag while Jeff warned him about keeping the pastries safe. Jack shrugged off his comment and ran out the side door.
"Oh, Jack. Come here." Elli's grandmother reached out and seized Jack by the arm. "Oh dear, your hands are cold." She ran her old crackled hands over his while Jack cringed.
"I-I'm fine, young lady. You should worry more about yourself. What are you doing out in your rocker in the snow?"
"Just admiring you and remembering your grandfather. I'm so lucky to have met you…" She lead his hand to her face and made it cradle the side of her head. She closed her eyes and sighed softly.
"Ah-ah, if I stay out here much longer there might not be a Jack anymore." He wormed his hand out of her grasp and took off like a bullet.
She…fell asleep. Poor old woman.
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Jack returned to Rick's shop and found it to be one of those rare days that the shop was opened. The shop had been empty for a long time. Jack bought everything of his and Rick seemed to be in one creative slump. Who knew what Rick was doing on his days off other than tinkering with machines doomed to fail?
Rick was just sitting behind the counter. The only customer that he ever had was Jack…and the only people who ever visited him was Jack and his cousin Ann. He stared in shock as Jack poured out his rucksack on the counter. He thrust three rare metals into Rick's spectacles and demanded that Rick takes them.
Rick casually pulled off his glasses and fogged them. He wiped off the precipitation with the top of his blue apron and put them back on. A dramatic shine passed on the lenses and a sinister smile painted his half-hidden face. Jack backed up in terror, but Rick soon turned back to normal.
"Thank Jack. These are very useful. Can I help you with anything?"
Jack scratched his head for a moment, but then remembered something. "Oh, do have that music box fixed up yet?"
Rick turned around and muttered as he dug through a crate to get to one of the millions of music boxes. Science and math couldn't even explain the amount of music boxes that were buried. "Here, like new and all ready to go." He placed the wooden love machine in front of him.
After putting the music box away, Jack asked the inventor, "Why don't you give one of those music boxes to a favorite gal of yours?"
"I would, but I'm not interested in love at the moment. Inventing something is more important to me now."
Jack shrugged at the lonely guy. "Whatever, man. I just hope you're happy with your lifestyle." Sensing that the atmosphere was getting way too damn serious, Jack sprinted away.
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Winter had long passed and spring came into being. The snow was gone and so was the ability to mine, but the air was fresh and full of the chirpings of those annoying-as-hell birds that would sit in front of Jack's house preventing his escape.
Jack burst out of the door of his house only to meet two such birdies. He had to wait for them to fly away because shooing them off would be "animal abuse" as Ann called it.
"Hey Jack! I did something useful!" The carrot-top nerd stood in front of Jack with two strange machines with Japanese characters written on them next to him. "Look here! If you put a vegetable like this tomato here…"
'Tomatoes are fruit. Shouldn't a smarty-pants like him know that?' Jack thought as he watched Rick place a tomato on one of the mystical devices.
"Now I just pull the lever and…" Rick narrated as his noodle arms pushed down. The machine rumbled and growled like an angry dog and electricity sprang up into the tomato. Right before Jack's eyes the tomato disappeared in a flash of white light and reappeared on the other device, except it was frozen solid.
"Oh! This wasn't supposed to happen…It was supposed to get bigger…" Rick sighed in disappointment as he began to collect his things.
Nearby voices yelled out.
"…Jack's place…?"
"Where the hell am I!?"
"Um…where's my tomato?"
"JAPANESE BABBLE!!!"
"MORE JAPANESE BABBLE!!!"
Jack ran towards these figures who were in the pond armed with a hoe and screamed, "STAY OFF MY PROPERTY, YOU!!!" His attack came to an early end when he noticed the grumpy Gray. "Gray? Don't you need to do some cherry picking with Popuri?"
Gray turned a deep shade and tipped his hat forward. "I'm not in the mood for teasing. I want to know why I'm here. And who these people are."
Jack glanced at the other hot men wet from the water of the pond. 'If only there was a special kind of feature in this game…' Jack thought longingly. One had black, curly hair and a tough, kick-your-ass look. Another had spiky brown hair with "teh smex" arms. The youngest looking man (more like boy) had silver hair with traces of blonde who was practically jailbait in his preppy vest and Capri's. The hot bod male had impossible, medium length silver hair and pants that fit him perfectly.
"Do any of you have sprained ankles?" Jack asked, wishing to pick one of them up (other than Sir Grumpy Gray) and carry them away to his "love shack."
All Jack received were a few weird looks, but the one with the locks of black curls spoke up. "Jack? Why are you wearing that weird hat and overalls?"
"You know me?" Jack asked. The man (whose shirt Jack noticed was almost completely see through) nodded and a look of anger rushed to his face. "Well, you must have the wrong guy, 'cause I sure don't know you."
Through gritted teeth and a sharp tone the man got out, "I'm Marlin and I-"
Jack burst out into laughter. "You're….named…after…a fish?!" He said through breaths in between his laughs.
"Hey!" Marlin's snake brows slithered down and face tightened with frustration. "Would you rather call me 'Mash?'"
"You mean Mash as in the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital? Or mansion, apartment, shack, or house? Maybe mashed potatoes? Perhaps even hot water mixed with crushed grain-?" Jack listed the humorous possibilities for "Mash."
"Ugh, enough of the Mash jokes, Jack." Rick simply hung his redhead in shame.
"Japanese babble???" The jailbait boy said in his native tongue. His dark blue pools were full of newfound confusion, but his brow remained furrowed.
"Ah, I can help you with that." Rick pulled out some sort of electronic chip from one of the pockets of his navy blue apron.
Before Rick was able to give the boy the chip, the hot bod rancher snatched it from his hands. The Silver Saver held the chip between his black-gloved hands and stared at it past the brim of his matching hat. He attached the little chip to the top of his white bandana that was fashionably tied around his neck. "Hey, I can speak Engrish now…"
"Oh noes! That was the last "Natume instant translator"…Oh, well. Here you go." Rick grabbed another weird chip with the label "Crave Entertainment" from his pocket and handed it over to the boy.
The boy fastened it to the red ribbon around his neck and said with a haughty tone in his voice, "Finally. I deserve better treatment than that." He then delicately smoothed out his silver-toned hair. "By the way, my current name is Gill and I'm rich so you better treat me good until I get out of this place."
At the word "rich," the panther rancher walked over to Gill and shook his hand. "I'm Valts. I hope we do business together in the future."
"Phht," Gill withdrew his hand quickly and stared down Rick. "This is not Rainbow Sash Island! What did you do?"
'Rainbows…Sashes…?' One word screamed in Jack's mind, but he kept it to himself.
Rick, ignoring the boy's "menacing leer," replied while scratching his beardless (or better put, hairless) chin, "I was showing Jack a new invention. I was trying to make a tomato bigger and full of nutrients…What were you guys doing?"
"I was snacking on the finest tomato soup while my father, the mayor by the way, was out showing some newcomer around." Gill answered while adjusting his ribbon-tie.
"I was picking tomatoes for the Harvest Festival with Celia and Vesta." Marlin stuffed his hands into his pockets.
"I was feeding my daughter some baby food." Valts said not looking very pleased or happy at all.
"I was-" Poor Gray was cut off.
"PICKING POPURI'S CHERRY!!!" Jack yelled.
"STHU!" After Gray screamed at Jack, he tilted his hat down to cover his embarrassed face. "I was helping Popuri with the tomatoes in Basil's greenhouse…"
"And I was with a tomato." Kurt murmured.
"Doing what?" Jack asked in curiosity.
"Ne-none of your business." Kurt stuttered quickly.
"Tomatoes seem to be the common denominator…Perhaps when I tried my experiment, it somehow transported all of you here through Jack's pond. Hmm…very interesting." Rick said with a delighted little grin on his face.
"Well, how do I get home?" Marlin asked as he tapped his foot in impatience.
"Hmm…Maybe you should ask the Harvest Goddess about it. She always helps me out if I give her a veggie." Jack informed them about the magical green lady in the water of the spring located deep in the woods.
"I'm already in the right universe so what's the point? I'm going home." Gray trudged home in his wet jumpsuit.
"Do you have any vegetables?" Kurt pleaded. "I was supposed to go on a date with my girlfriend tonight and I want to get home as soon as I can."
"I do, but I want you guys to do something for me first…" Jack said with an evil, dramatic pause.
"Gawd, Jack. Hurry up and tell them. It's already midnight." Rick badgered Jack.
"Alright, alright! I want you to…"
----------------------------------------- AN: "The Silver Saver" is a play on the new Fantastic Four movie "The Silver Surfer." Anyone else notice "Lady in the Water"? I don't own either of these movies. If you don't know who Gill or Valts are, then you should look up "Harvest Moon Kimi Shima/Island that Grows with you" and "Harvest Moon Tree of Peace/Wii." Those are some awesome HM games, I tells 'ya. So what will happen in the next chapter? Will KurtxTomato rise again? Will Jack and Rick fall in love for no apparent reason and become Mary Sue characters? Will Gill and Valts become business associates? That and much more you probably won't find out about in the next exciting chapter of Ta-may-toe, Ta-mah-toe. Also, if anyone cares, Underlying Currents is in no way cancelled, but this idea for a story has been bugging the heck out of me.