Saved

Chapter 1: In Which An Idea Is Born

So you want to know what the heck this has to do with Animal Crossing, well, I thought I made it obvious. Anna loves Animal Crossing; it saves them from the storm. Now you will find out more.

Anna had a headache. It thumped and was very sore. As she opened her eyes she saw something entirely different to her previous surroundings.

The sky was annoyingly clear apart from a few perfectly shaped clouds. They brought to mind marshmallows, but now was not the time for poetic descriptions.

Anna sat up and surveyed her surroundings in more detail. The grass was too irritatingly perfect, and for some reason was flat and covered in little triangles instead of blades of grass. There were trees, too, all identical except from the ones which bore fruit, (peaches, apples, oranges, cherries and pears) the cedars, and the palms with their branches weighed down by hefty coconuts.

This was enough to send most people into shock, but it was even worse for Anna for she found she recognised everything, but she couldn't figure out why.

After a few moments of contemplation, Anna had still come up with nothing and resorted to routine to kick-start her brain. She crawled over to the nearby river (infuriatingly beautiful and calm and full of varied fish) to check her hair hadn't got too messed up in what she called The Roller Coaster of Randomness, and when she peered down into the river's glassy surface, she screamed. Her beautiful red hair was gone!

Well, sort of.

Before, Anna's hair had been auburn and shiny and long and luscious and all other graceful words for luxurious hair, but now it was, well dull. It was a flat, orange-y colour and only reached her chin, where as before it had crawled to halfway down her back. Her eyes, while still blue and almond-shaped, did not sparkle or look real. If she was honest, she looked like a character out of-

She screamed again. "Why the hell am I pixelated?"

A low mumbling was heard. "Seamus, will you turn the sound down! I don't want to listen to you playing Halo!"

Alistair, thought Anna with a slight smile on her face. He thinks he's still at home, bless him.

Anna noticed for the first time that people who looked scarily similar to her surrounded her. Well, they were similar in the sense that they all had the same face shape, the same body shape and the same height (Albert would be overjoyed; he hated being smaller than everybody barring Wendy) and this caused her to scream again. The boys wore little shorts and red shoes, the girls wore identical red shoes and blue and white striped tights. Everything was so similar it was scary.

"Alistair!" Anna tried to stay calm, but her voice rose to a crescendo through the stress of it all. "I think – we're in – in – Animal Crossing!"

"What?" Alistair mumbled sleepily. Then, the meaning sunk in properly. "WHAT?"

"I know!" Soon they were both screaming at fever pitch.

"Ssh!" Interjected a calm voice. "We don't like shouting here."

"Tortimer?"

"Oh, you've got to be kidding," Alistair slapped himself on the forehead and started gently bashing his head on a peach tree. The fruit fell on his head. "Blast!"

"Damn, this is all my fault! I should never have pressed the power button!" Anna ranted too.

Tortimer's face broke out into a sly smile. "Oh, so you figured that out, huh? Clever kids these days."

Anna looked alarmed. "So how many other people have you sucked into this little…practical joke?"

Tortimer became suddenly serious. "This is no joke, Anna."

Anna's look of alarm mutated into distress. "H… how did you know my name?"

Tortimer smiled another crafty smile. "To answer your previous question, not many. Most of the time we just send Resetti to give them a sound tongue-lashing next time they play, but we do have measures for…special circumstances…war har HAR!"

Anna rolled her eyes. Obviously, this game wasn't much different when you were actually there.

"You're not going to rope us into working for Tom Nook, are you?" Alistair interjected, looking worried. It was common knowledge that the racoon had irritated him from behind the safe divide of a DS screen, and now he would inevitably see him in person at some point, the annoying fluffiness of his tail would be almost unbearable.

Tortimer looked as though this thought hadn't even come across him. He pondered for a moment, and then said, "No. You've already been through that, albeit from a distance. I think you know how to plant flowers with your hands anyway."

Alistair chuckled.

"Now, what are we going to do about them…" Tortimer was looking at the still-sleeping forms of Albert and Wendy. Alistair and Anna shot devious looks to each other. An idea was born…