Anytown: Across the Sea

Prewords and Author's Notes:

You'll have your town where you dump all the neighbors you never really liked, and that other town where all the neighbors you did like moved, and the insignificant towns that you played in until your mom called you for dinner and you never touched that particular memory card again.

But you'll always have that special town… the town you had for many years, where you were introduced to the wonderful world of AC, where you created acre among acre of beautiful gardens and orchards, where you met the original animals you wished you'd of paid more attention to before they moved.

But will you always have it?

No. And I learned this the hard way.

…

Dedicated to my beloved "Anytown"

July 2003 – April 2007

…

(I haven't even started writing yet and I still sound so angsty! Ugh…)

Before I was a moron and went and accidentally erased my town (it's a long story, believe me), I had always wanted to write stories about my precious Anytown, the animals that lived in it, or maybe just a twist on what I was actually doing in the game. A romance, or maybe another whacko humor story? Perhaps even a one-shot tragedy…

Now that it's too late to do those things knowing that I would always have Anytown to refer back to, I want to write a story on the history of my town, or as I remember it anyways. Hopefully this won't turn into one of those completely-following-the-game-plot-with-a-cool-name-and-town clichés that I read too much of. Who knows? I could be writing just to add some variety to the AC selection on further adieu, read on. Read on and treasure what is yours while remembering what was mine.

Enjoy.

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Chapter I: At the Crossroads of Life

Big.

My vocabulary wasn't limited to three-letter adjectives, and I certainly had enough schooling at a younger age to know words like gargantuan, humungous and colossal. Yet I found myself outside a structure having a height that could easily double that of a cathedral and the only word that came to mind was big.

It was a building that I had arrived at, made of a durable material that resembled bricks painted periwinkle during overcast days or new-mooned nights but gleamed like bleached sapphire in the brighter days and nights.

The pyramid-like glass structure that served as a marvelous skylight was surrounded on every corner by a tall gable made of the same material as the rest of the building, each sporting a flag that had writing too far away to read since the building was so big.

However, the writing on each of the four sides of the structure right above the three enormous archways was quite legible. "The Crossroad of Life" was what this castle-like place was called.

I soon found the name quite fitting when I stopped admiring the front wall and entered it.

The main atrium was just as grand, if not more, than the exterior. The floor was made of burgundy and beige marble tiles that matched the similarly colored wall. Glassless terrariums that housed exotic plants and a flamboyant fountain placed in the center area of the foyer were added, if I were to guess, to create a serene sense of nature.

Of course, the hundreds of people around me canceled that out as I was swept into the torrent of humans. Everybody was in a pell-mell rush to get to the other side of the building, giving me disapproving looks that I was too awed to care about.

But sooner or later I was going to have to get over to that side too, because that was where the receptionists were.

About fifteen or so women were lined up parallel to the wall behind them, the only one that didn't have an archway in it. The tired looking clerks were separated from the arrivals by a thin sheet of glass and a row of desks beneath those in a bank-like fashion. Sloppy lines were being formed vertical to each woman behind a window.

I was pushed into the one at the far left end, keeping a few inches distance from the more aggressive looking travelers while at the same time holding my sole valise against my chest to defend it (the suitcase, not my chest).

After about ten claustrophobic minutes of being sandwiched between a hot-tempered thug and a woman that made jerky movements every few seconds, I was at the outside of the glass.

The woman there had to look down to see me, staring down at me with a hurry-it-up look.

"Name?" The question came quickly and bluntly, and she had to repeat it before I realized it was a question.

"…S-Scarlett Geralds," I said nervously, borrowing one of my schoolmate's names and wondering if she would eat me alive if I gave the wrong answer.

The lady hastily punched something into a computer. "Age?" she asked without looking up.

"Eleven." A flash of amusement was there on her face for a brief second before it melted back into stony irritation.

"Reason for departing?"

It was the first time she had said more than one word at a time to me, all though I wasn't particularly overjoyed.

Answering that question was going to be difficult. What would I say?

I had come from a moderately sized city not so far away, in a peaceful community. I had been fine with my life up until a year ago, when common things started to irk me more than they usually did. Kids at school poking fun at me were becoming harder to ignore, our city's pollution problems made me angrier than usual with our government, and my parents' impassive mood towards everything made me want to scream. Finally, I got fed up with almost everybody I knew for treating like I didn't even exist, only concerned with their own selfish lives. So, I had done the fairly extreme choice and ran away like other kids did that I saw on the local news to here, "The Crossroad of Life", the nation's biggest station.

This was the landmark everyone was talking about, the most exciting place in the world. Kids at school made jokes about getting lost on the crossroads of life when late for school. Urban legend said that inside one of the four gables on the roof there was a hidden nuke for government purposes. The Station was the biggest thing in big right now, an innovative place that started off the 21st century quite well.

So far, I had not regretted my decision on escaping my family's apartment in the middle of the night via fire escape, hitchhiking to the closest city with some unknown stranger, and snatching 10,000 bells from a man and making a run for it. How could I possibly give up when so much had been put at risk already?

"Loss of family and home, ma'am," I answered, feigning sudden melancholy. That's how I must've looked then, dirty, hungry and all alone like an orphan.

The clerk looked me over sharply, and I held my breath.

"Take this and go on in," she said, no tone of sympathy evident in her voice as she handed me a small printed slip of paper with my answers to her questions, and pressed a button as a camouflaged door looking to be made of the glass and desk put together opened automatically.

Behind the desk she pointed to a door I hadn't noticed at the back. Opening it with an unconsciously shaking hand, I found my self in a long corridor, not nearly as wide as the previous room. The loud drone of voices was muffled as I closed the door behind me, leaving me in a quiet hallway.

I spun around, dazed for a moment until I saw a sign that read "3 months – 5 years" on a door to my right. Looking further down the hall, more doors were labeled with ages. My eyes came to rest upon the third door down, the sign beside it reading "10 – 20 years old".

I stumbled in, only to be met with the most unexpected sight. It was nothing more than a common beauty parlor, except only one swiveling chair had been placed there in the middle.

"Oh, darling, do come in!" a cheery voice squealed. Looking at the owner, I found it was a plump woman with too much makeup and not enough clothing. She smiled at me and ushered me into the sole chair.

"What's this all about?" I asked as she wrapped a large, pink bib around me.

"Darling, you don't know what this place is all about?" she questioned me. I shook my head. "Well, why not? Didn't your parents tell you when they sent you off here?" I shook my head a second time.

"My parents are dead," I lied in a small voice.

The big woman was aghast. "Oh, Darling, I'm so sorry! Hand me your paper and I'll tell you all about this place!"

I did a fake sniffle and handed her my tiny slip of paper. She quickly put the information into a computer in the corner of the room and came back.

"Well," she started, turning my chair around to face a large mirror on one side of the wall. "This is the place where people go when they want to go off somewhere new and exciting, and forget their past life. You see Darling, people from all over travel here. Sometimes parents will send their kids off here after they finish school, or even before then, so they can start a new life. When they get here, all's they need is 5,000 bells and they're off to a town far, far away."

I was excited and nervous at the same time. That money I had stolen earlier… it would be handy here. And a far, far away town… perhaps people far, far away people wouldn't treat me as another ordinary, foolish person.

"People get this treatment for so little a cost and security because they get shipped to towns over the sea, where… well, beings we don't really associate with live."

"Beings?" I pondered aloud as she began to cut my hair. I didn't really care because I was too entranced with the current explanation.

The lady sighed. "Animals. People say years and years ago the government was working on mutating animals into humans, but the experiment didn't quite work and turned them half-human instead. So, they shipped them across the sea to a large, uninhabited continent. Nowadays people go there to start their lives over, but with animals instead. The government actually encouraged the shipping of crime and such over because once you're over, you don't come back."

I was completely speechless. So speechless in fact, that I didn't even scream when she showed me the haircut she had given me while she was talking. Two long curves swooped from each side of my head while the back and front had been neatly trimmed.

She smiled sympathetically when she saw my horrified face. "Aw, Honey, this is the mandatory hairdo for those who move over there. Be happy, the boys have it even worse!" She chuckled slightly as I wound down, and then up again when she told me my hair had to be dyed.

"Rules are rules, Darling!" was all she said and the next thing I knew my chocolate hair was neon pink. Although the prospect of living with genetically mutated animals was exciting, I began to wonder if it was worth it, especially when she handed me an ugly red shirt with a lacy pattern on it and a matching hat. "There's a dress code too, babe, but you can change that later. This is called the 'folk shirt'. You'll have to get used to wearing stuff like this all of the time."

I nodded slowly as she sent me into another room to change, and when I came back she pointed me down the hall. "There's your last stop, Scarlett! Good luck!"

I had briefly forgotten that I had 'borrowed' my classmate's identity for my name, so I gave a confused goodbye as I walked out the door and down the hall.

A few other people were now entering the corridor and I quickly walked towards the large door at the end of the hall. I didn't like humans in the first place, but now that I would never have to live with one again I felt I had no need to make close contact with them.

I arrived at the door and heaved the giant thing open. The next place was outside, looking like a real train station. Tracks were lined up parallel to each other about twenty feet apart, with a platform at the beginning of each, reminding me of the bank setup back in the atrium. That seemed ages ago from where I was now…

People were coming in from each door, all looking like clones of me except for different hair colors, eyes and clothes. It was amazing to see people that were so different back there turn into my unknown twins!

But anyways, I headed to the platform closest to me, straight ahead. I was caught in another line, but this time the queue went quickly and the people bordering me weren't angry looking or anything else.

I didn't have time to look at others for long because I was soon hustled to the platform. A man there asked for my information and I handed him the slip of paper I had been clutching in my hand.

I thought he was going to read it, but instead he ripped it in half and put it in a wastebasket beside of him. He pointed me into the waiting train on the tracks, a simple three-car piece of transportation.

I went in and sat down in one of the booths inside on the seat facing the station behind me. The interior was nothing special, merely a dimly lit wooden car with green-padded booths lined up on each side. Instead of crowding hundreds of people in though, there was only one human per booth. This baffled me, as there were so many people outside, but I soon realized this train wasn't build to handle more than a fifty people.

Looking outside, I saw it was early morning, with the sun barely separated from the hilltops. Feathery wisps of cloud made the summer sky brighter than it appeared to be. If there were any trees around, I was sure they would be a vibrant green. Instead, I saw the city's grey behind me and the smoke getting thrown up into the air and realized I had been so speechless when I saw the Crossroad of Life because that had been the most untouched piece of beauty I had ever seen.

All my life I had lived in the city, amusing myself by watching people walk by on the streets below from my apartment. In school, I learned about things outside of the city: nature, farming, small towns of the past and the like. The only plants I had ever seen all my life were the weeds growing up from the cracks in the sidewalk. There wasn't even room to put a single tree in my home city.

I realized now what I had done. I was leaving my life as a city girl hid from the rest of the world. People weren't going to move across the sea because they were afraid, afraid of nature and things that they had never seen before. Our continent was totally dominated by humans, with no small towns whatsoever, only huge, ugly cities. No nature reserves or anything were around. I was going to become a different person, a person that saw outside of the box and everything else that blocked me from the beauty of the world.

During my thoughts, the train had been filled to its capacity (one human to each of the ten booths) and whistled loudly. Vibrations could be felt as the old-fashioned steam engine slowly began its journey to across the sea.

'Across the sea?' I thought and switched my seat, facing the way ahead of me instead of the city behind.

The Crossroad of Life had been built in a city next to the sea, one of those port cities that started out as a small fishing village hundreds of years ago. So when I swapped seats, I saw the big blue in front of me in all of its glory.

The train picked up speed and we were now heading steadily over the ocean on a bridge that didn't look like it would be able to support us.

I thought of going back to my previous seat but stopped myself just in time.

There was no point in looking back now. I vowed I wouldn't stop looking ahead until the city I had just left was out of my sight.

////

Almost three hours later consisting of me alternating between fiddling with my luggage, looking out the window and dozing off, a purple cat that had talked to some of the other humans walked over to me and sat down across from me. After one hour I was sure the city was far behind us and had sat back at my original seat.

I was sure that the cat had came out of the caboose car the first fifteen minutes and began talking to the other humans. Of course, my eyes were glued to the feline, as he was the first animal I had ever seen. After a while, though, the shock wore off and I went back to doing nothing.

Anyways, he sat down across from me and introduced himself. "Hey, I'm Rover."

I stared at him for a second before trying to tell him my name. "I'm… erm… well…"

The cat laughed at my nervousness. "You know when that guy on the platform ripped up that piece of paper you had?"

I wondered if he had been watching me on the platform, or if it just happened to everyone. "Y-yeah."

"Well, when he did that, your identity was lost to the entire continent behind you. "

"Eh?" I soaked in the words for a minute for realizing what he said. "But surely a little paper like that didn't…"

"Nope. When they put all that junk into the computer they were deleting your records. So it's like you never existed."

I was suddenly twitched. I had said my schoolmate's name instead… that was bound to cause some problem. Hopefully my parents wouldn't think of me catching a train to across the sea so soon, so maybe I could still live my new life knowing that nobody was going to find me and take me back.

"So, you get to choose your new name!"

I was so shocked at this news I fell out of my seat and into the aisle. The other humans aboard stared for a few moments before going back to their business. After getting back up and apologizing, I sat down and listened to Rover talk.

"I'm here because I get to give new people their new identity and a village to live in."

"You give people a village?" I asked, incredulous.

He chuckled again. "Nope. I just assign you a place to live."

"Oh…" I said, a little disappointed. It would have been nice to have my very own private village.

"Anyways, let's get down to business. What's your name?"

"But I thought you said I didn't have a name?"

"What's your new name?"

I pondered for a little while. There were a wide variety of names to choose from... Heck, I could call myself "Apple" now! But maybe I didn't want to change my name. That was the one thing I would never change.

"My name is… my name is Amanda," I said.

"Okay, got that. Now, where do you want to move?"

It was another unexpected question. I thought that perhaps I would just get dropped off at a random town, but I got to choose?

"Well… where is there to go?"

He pulled out a clipboard. "Oh, just say whatever you want. Villages over there are named everything."

"Oh, I don't know… any town's fine."

"Okay then, Anytown it is!"

I was caught by surprise again. "There's a place called Anytown?!?"

Rover grinned as he flipped a few pages and wrote something down on the clipboard. "Sure is! It's really tiny; it only got started about a month ago. I'm sure you'll like it there!"

"Have you ever been there?" It was a stupid question on my part. Of course he'd been there, otherwise he wouldn't be telling me all about it. Yet, stupid questions get stupid answers.

"Nope! They only give me the names of the places, and general information. Let's see…" He began to read from his clipboard. "Anytown: founded July 1st, 2003. Ranking: One star."

"Why only one?" I asked.

"It's a tiny place. It was only founded a few weeks ago, and nobody, human or animal, wants to move to a place called 'Anytown'!" He looked up at me. "Except for you, of course."

"Does that mean I'll be the only one living there?"

"Naw, there's always a few animals in every village. They pick them up from all over the place, animals that were rejected or ran away or just weren't happy with themselves."

Great. I would be living in a town filled with nutcases, dropouts and self-haters. But maybe that made me fit in.

"How long will it be 'till we get there?" I asked, gazing outside. It was around noon and we were still traveling on the sea. My stomach had begun to ache for food.

"I dunno. I'll be right back," he said, suddenly standing up and heading towards the car door.

My head swiveled as he walked up the aisle and went into the next car over, the locomotive. I waited for a few minutes, listening to the train's constant beat. Finally, he came back and sat down again.

"Anytown's on the south side of the continent we're going to. It'll be about seven or so more hours."

"Oh… all right." I was really hungry now, and it was going to kill me to wait that long with any food.

After a silence that lasted a few moments, Rover got up again. "Well, maybe we'll meet again!" He held out an indigo paw, which I tentatively shook. "Goodbye…"

I watched as the cat went to the next booth to talk with the next traveler, and turned to look out upon the sea again.

'Anytown…' I mused. 'Anytown… a town of rejects. It must be fate, or a mistake. I could be heading to my new home… or I could just be heading right back into hell.'

////

"Now arriving at Anytown! Eeeek eeek! Anytown!"

I awoke from my sleepless slumber of staring out the window into the vast forests of the animal continent.

"Anytown!"

"Wake up kiddo, you'll miss your stop!" Rover said, shaking me. I shook off my drowsiness and finally complied, standing up and heading towards the front of the car.

The double doors had already automatically opened. "Welcome to Anytown, eeeek! Have a nice day!" screeched a monkey at the train station.

I had still only seen one animal, and that was Rover, so I surveyed the monkey for a moment before he interrupted me. "Miss? Miss, are you okay?"

I snapped out of it. "Y-Yes, I'm fine!" The monkey gave me a strange look before standing up straight and calling "Now leaving Anytown, eeek eeeeek!"

The train chugged off after a shrill whistle sounded, and I was finally in my new home.

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Yep, that's the first chapter to my AC story. Okay, so that really didn't dedicate anything to Anytown at all, but I'm already working on the next chapter (By the way, I'm just writing this fic. No notes, plans or nothing.) Next chapter we do the horribly cliché Nook jobs and the meeting of the animals.

Oh yeah, if you're ever depressed, I have found the solution:

Turn on your Nintendo 64

Pop in some Mario Party (One)

Listen to the main theme over and over again

Go to your kitchen and eat a well-deserved banana

That worked for me, at least. I don't have to go waste my decade-plus old N64 anymore because I downloaded that song onto my iTunes. ;)

And if you don't have a Nintendo 64, shame on you.