Chapter 3
---------------------------------------------------------While Karen and Sasha were busily evicting a shadowy enigma from the Supermarket, Elli trudged grimly down the main street of Mineral Town.
"Well, now what?" she demanded plaintively of No One In Particular. "Grandma is crazy, Stu is crazy, the doctor is crazy, Duke and Manna are crazy, and Karen is crazy! What I need is someone who hasn't lived here long enough to be caught up in all this small-town hysteria."
As she pondered this issue carefully, Elli found herself wandering through Rose Square – thankfully deserted, as she had yet to work up the necessary courage to face another of her friendly fellow Mineral Townies.
On a whim, she turned off at the beach, possessed of a powerful craving for the warm sand and salt tang of the sea air. Ever since her childhood, sitting at the edge of the dock and watching the ocean had always seemed to clear her head.
Presumably, it would help this time too, providing the ocean hadn't run away with the grass, leaving the sky broken-hearted and ranting like a lunatic.
Thus deciding, she hopped lightly down the bright white cement steps leading down to the beach.
"Hmm…where am I going to find a couple of city folk who haven't been here very long, and haven't succumbed to the gossip and mob mentality of small-town life?"
"Hey, Elli, how's it going?" Kai called as she ambled across the sun-warmed sand, deep in thought.
"Oh, hi, Kai," Elli called back cheerfully. "How was your year in the city, away from all the gossip and mob mentality of small town life?"
"Not bad," he replied easily, stretching and readjusting his position on the bench outside the Seaside Snack Shack. "Had a lot of fun, met a lot of people, made a little money..."
"Sounds good," Elli giggled. Then she grew sober. "I'd really like to chat more, but I'm having a very strange day, and I need to find someone who hasn't been here long enough to go crazy. I'll come back this weekend for a snowcone and catch up, okay?"
"Why, what's going on?" Kai asked with a concerned frown.
"Well, everyone in town went simultaneously insane today," Elli pouted.
Kai laughed.
"Yeah, I know what you mean! I just got into town this morning, and I barely had time to unpack before Karen showed up, ranting and raving about me stealing her boyfriend and her boyfriend's sister."
Elli, who had been listening to this brief tale with bated breath, eyes growing wide and starry with the hope that she might have found her Rational City Folk at last, gathered up her skirts and sprinted across the beach toward the bandana-topped young man.
"Karen told me about that! Kai, do you mean that you don't know what she's talking about, either?"
Kai grinned.
"Oh, I know what she's talking about. Rick's not the type you can love and leave. Something about that porcelain visage, and that elegantly lanky physique makes me yearn." Here, he trailed off, gazing dramatically into the distance, eyes dreamy. Then, apparently recalling that he wasn't alone, he seemed to shake himself off. "And his baby sister! No way any red-blooded male's gonna forget about Popuri. Those pink silken tresses…those big blood-red eyes…that ear-piercing voice…that propensity for wearing corsets outside her clothes…"
"I'd kind of like to forget about this whole conversation," Elli grumbled, shrewish with the fiery wreckage of her hopes for the third time in the past forty-five minutes.
Kai sighed, resting one hand on her shoulder, and completely flattening one of her frills, much to her annoyance.
"Look, Elli, I understand that Karen's your friend and all, and you want to side with her out of sisterhood solidarity or something like that – and hey, I fully encourage you to give her more comfort sex, because that footage is gonna sell for a fortune! – but I have to follow my heart."
Elli rolled her eyes.
"I'm sure it's something in that area you're following."
He glared.
"Hey! Just because you don't understand the pure, untainted love between a man and a woman and her older brother, doesn't give you the right to pass judgment on my lifestyle choices!"
"Right," Elli agreed wearily. "Look, I think I'm just going to go. I've had a really weird day, and—"
"Kai!"
Both looked up abruptly at this cry, and an ecstatic light of joy washed over Kai's face at the mass of brown, green, and wire-rimmed glasses sprinting towards them.
"Rick!"
"Oh, Kai!"
Kai caught the lanky young fellow in his arms and swung him around.
"Oh, Rick!"
"Oh, Kai…"
"Oh, Rick…"
"Oh, not again!" Elli whined as the boys settled into hair-stroking and gentle kisses.
His attention drawn to their small audience by its noises of protest, Rick's eyes widened.
"Elli! What—what are you doing back?!"
"Back?" Kai echoed. "What, did the doctor finally take you on that trip to the city?"
"N-no," Elli admitted hesitantly.
Rick stared wonderingly at – Elli choked slightly over the thought (somehow) – his lover.
"Kai? You really don't know what she did?"
Kai's dark eyes leapt rapidly from Rick to Elli and back again.
"Uh, no, not really."
"Wow, that makes two of us!" Elli chirped with an enthusiastic cheerfulness so forced it sounded vaguely like an elephant being pushed through a knothole.
Rick rested one hand tenderly on her shoulder. Elli lamented briefly for the fate of her other frill.
"Elli. You are my dearest childhood friend's dearest childhood friend, and after everything you've done for Karen, you will always have a special place in my heart. But whatever my feelings, you've come too far to go back. After what you did—"
"What did she do?!" Kai and Elli demanded in unison.
Rick pressed one hand dramatically to his heart.
"I can't speak of it here, Kai, even to you. Let's go somewhere more private."
"Can I come, too?" Elli chirped excitedly.
Kai's expression was the picture of disbelief.
"Rick! What happened to you while I was gone? One second, you're talking about the horrible atrocities that your old schoolyard chum committed, and the next, you're trying to drag me off for sex? And you, Elli!" he continued, wheeling to glare at her. "How do you think the doctor would feel if he could hear you, trying to wriggle your way into bed with us?"
"Uh, Kai?" Rick interjected delicately. "I just meant we should go somewhere else to talk."
Kai's face fell.
"Oh." He flashed his boyfriend a hopeful grin. "Well, how about after?"
Rick, blushing prettily, looked down to hide a shy smile, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the sand.
"Well, yeah, of course, after."
Elli watched as the two scampered off, either to discuss or to vigorously after one another's proverbial brains out, and then sighed sadly.
"This would be really hot, if it weren't so creepy."
Then, as the sensation that she was being watched grew overwhelming, she turned slowly, in time with the sinking of her heart.
"Oh...hi, Zack," she greeted with her previous elephant-through-knothole cheerfulness as the towel-wearing man's glare grew deeper and darker, and he prepared to lunge.
"Wretched she-demon!" he bellowed as he sailed majestically towards her.
"Ack!" Elli shrieked miserably, scrambling backwards and promptly tripping over her skirt.
He advanced menacingly on the girl crawling rapidly away.
"Why have you returned to upset the recently restored peace of our peaceful town?! After what you did, I didn't think you'd ever show your face around here again!"
"But I live here!"
"What nerve!" Zack laughed in disbelief. "What gall! What spleen! YOU HAVE NO HOME HERE!"
With this last, decidedly capslocked statement, he lunged once again, dragging her from the sand by the front of her apron and shaking her roughly.
Watching curiously as her life flashed before her eyes, and reflecting sadly that the montage of days at the Clinic and evenings babysitting really didn't amount to much in the way of thrilling and sexy adventures, Elli thought fast.
And then, a little light bulb flashed into being above her head, combining with the wild jostling moment of being shaken to death to provide something resembling a poor man's laser light show.
"Unhand me," she ordered sternly, all the experience of the Strangest Day of Her Life backing her up, "or I'll tell Lillia about the others!"
Zack froze mid-shake.
"You wouldn't!" he hissed.
"Oh, really? Even after I…well, whatever the heck I did?"
His eyes narrowed.
"Fiendish female!" he bellowed, hands tightening at her collar.
A tense moment followed, during which Elli's montage played double-time, shortening into clips of babysitting the doctor just to cut out unnecessary seconds.
Finally, Zack's grip loosened, and she dropped harmlessly to the sand.
"Thank-you," she said coolly, straightening out her dress and smoothing her hair back into place.
"Don't mention it," he growled. "And if I find out you breathed so much as a word to Lillia about Won, Greg, Manna, and Louis—"
"Somehow, it's always worse than I think," Elli noted curiously.
"—I'll find you, and I'll finish the job."
"And I'll burn in Hell, blah-blah-blah, what I did, I know," she sighed, making an unenthusiastic gesture. "Look, I have to go. I was hoping that someone here could tell me what was going on, but Kai killed that hope."
Zack, however, no longer had a thought to spare for Elli or her burning questions, for Won had just emerged from the little hut, grinning sexily, and was now in the process of being thrown to the sand and kissed passionately.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Won protested.
Zack, peering quizzically at him, pulled back.
The smaller man shrugged out of his long yellow coat, revealing an almost absurdly muscular physique, of which there had previously been no hint.
"Okay, go ahead," he invited, scooting back under Zack again. "I just have my apples in there, and I can't let everyone who wants a piece of this action damage the merchandise."
"I'm just anyone now, am I?" Zack growled into the inexplicably rugged jaw line that had appeared once Won's hat and sunglasses had been likewise discarded.
And so, after a quick glance around to be sure that there were no more lingering females with dark pasts to bear witness to their passion, Won grinned again, flipped Zack to the sand, and proceeded to show him, every way that his vast experience knew how, that he was not, in any way, just anyone.
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"Okay," Elli was meanwhile muttering, hurrying down the paths of Mineral Town, shrinking back into herself as this or that citizen would catch sight of her and deliver a vicious glare. "Let's take an inventory of everyone in town. Manna is weepy and possessive, with occasional bouts of hair-pulling; Sasha is a psychotically violent feminist, Karen is...having problems with her love life, the doctor likes bunnies and dramatic poses, Kai and Rick are aftering each other, and everyone else just talks too much." She sighed. "Great."
She gave a terrified little shriek as Saibara shook an axe menacingly at her as she passed the forge.
"There's only one more person I can even hope to count on," she lamented, all but sprinting toward the sign to Starbright Farm. "I just hope Claire's at home."
The little brunette gave a great sigh of relief as she passed the sign, valiantly resisting the urge to claim sanctuary.
Then, as the fields caught her eye, once healthy crops choked out with weeds, cows wandering aimlessly to and fro, their mournful moos imploring a little love and affection from any who would listen, chickens all but crowded out of the coop by days and days of uncollected eggs, she threw her hands up.
"Well, this is just great! My REALLY last hope, and she's nowhere to be found!"
Still, as long as she was here, she might as well check, just to be sure. After all, even though Claire wasn't here to help her make Mineral Town sane again, at least no oneelse was here, either, which definitely made it preferable to anywhere else right now.
And so, Elli set to work. She checked the barn. She checked the henhouse. She checked the stable, the tool shed, and the farmhouse.
Finally, dejected and discouraged (although, grasping protectively a certain favourite book that Claire had borrowed some weeks ago and neglected to return), she wandered back to the neglected fields.
"Okay, Elli, just think," she ordered herself. "It can't be that hard to figure out what you did. After all, there are only so many things youcould do, physically. I'm pretty sure we can discount anything involving throwing buses or trucks at people, and I'm guessing I didn't beat up Gotz. I just hope I didn't kick a puppy, or something like that," she concluded worriedly.
One hand to her forehead in a gesture of deep thought, she began to pace, back and forth, through the waist-high grasses of Claire's fields.
"What I did, what I did, what I did..."
Another track of flattened grass as she changed directions to approach a wandering cow and deliver a gentle, reassuring pat.
"Moo," the cow said plaintively.
"I know, Bessie, I'm having one of those days too," she sighed, nuzzling the animal, and pulling back with a startled yelp when Bessie's hard, flat molars caught her hand. "Darnit, Bessie, you used to like me!" Her indignant expression crumpled into despondence. "Oh, even the animals hate me! What the heck did I do?!"
Suddenly possessed of a wicked inspiration, Elli scrambled around Bessie, and turned an angry, defiant face at the skies.
"Okay, if someone doesn't tell me what I did right now, I'm going to kick this cow!"
No response.
"I will!"
No response.
"Don't think I'm afraid to do it!"
No response.
"I swear, I'll kick it!"
Again, no response.
"And I'm wearing my pointy boots!"
When the hoped-for response still proved not forthcoming, Elli set her jaw determinedly, pulled back, and prepared to release upon poor, unknowing, and thoroughly confused Bessie.
"Elli!"
At this urgent shout from the lane leading into the farmyard, Elli gave another startled yelp, and utterly missed the distinctly massive target that Bessie's backside provided.
"That's just great," she grumbled, hauling herself out of the damp grasses, until two strong hands closed around her upper arms and did the rest of the hauling for her. She blinked. "Um, Duke?"
"What are you doing here, Elli?" he demanded in a low, intense tone, and much to her discomfort, without loosening his grip.
"Um, well, I was just coming to find Claire, and--"
"Elli, please!" he interrupted, pulling briefly away with a wince. "I—I do not want to think the worst of you. But after what you did, to return here? Of all places, Elli, why?"
"W-well, I guess it's because all the animals help me think."
He laughed gently.
"Oh, Elli, you always did have a way with animals."
"Tell that to Bessie," she grumbled, rubbing her sore hand.
Meanwhile, he was cupping her chin tenderly.
"I just want you to know, whatever you've done--"
"I don't suppose you have specifics, do you?"
"--or whatever you plan to do, my feelings will not change."
She squirmed slightly in his arms.
"Um, thanks?"
"Oh, Elli," he murmured softly into her hair, and after a few seconds, when she remained silent, pulled back and watched her expectantly.
"Oh...Duke?" she guessed.
"Oh, Elli," he sighed again, his hold on her tightening and securing in her mind the certainty that she would spend at least a decade in therapy for this.
She nodded thoughtfully.
"Oh." Then, as his hand drifted down to her backside, she shoved angrily away. "Duke!"
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End Notes: Hee! Yup, this one's still alive. I might have to do a bit more research, in the form of hours and hours of mindless television, watched while wearing a bathrobe and ingesting large amounts of ice cream, but those are just the trials you've gotta be willing to go through in the name of creativity! Or...whatever the heck it is I'm doing. XD