Oh, yeah, in case you're wondering, Alan, JC, and Jason are Bob and Tim's cousins, while Kayla is Bob and Tim's sister. She's supposed to be 19 in this story, while Tim is 13, Bob 27, and the other guys are also in their 20's. Originally, Kayla was supposed to be Lyla's sister (thus the similar names) but that didn't work out for the story.
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The Prank War
Chapter 2: The War Starts
Late that night, right after the bar closed, Joe went to the café and knocked on a side door. A sleepy girl with long, strawberry-blonde curls answered the door.
"Yes?" she mumbled. "What do you want at this hou Oh! Joe! Something wrong?"
"No, Katie I just need some jam for something."
"Jam?" She was puzzled. "What for?"
"Alan. He hates jam. Particularily, really sweet jam."
"Ooh, I just made blueberry jam this morning!" Katie escorted Joe into the café through the kitchen. "I accidentally put too much sugar in it too."
Joe grinned. "Perfect! How much will it cost?"
"Nothing. No one else would take it anyway."
Joe put the jam in a box and Katie wrote a little note saying "To Alan". Since it was in her handwriting, Alan might not know who it was from or something like that.
"Tell me how it goes," Katie told him in parting.
"Heh, I will!" Joe waved to her and left.
Joe went straight to the gym and left it on the doorstep, then ran away.
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"Does this look right?"
"Yeah, now try it."
Thud!
"Oops, not right Try again."
Wham!
"For goodness' sake" JC glared at the machine that Alan was trying to use,
then at Alan. "Be more gentle, man!"
"Sorry." Alan pulled down a bar that lifted a few weights, totaling 140 pounds. The cord that was holding up the weights broke, and they all came crashing down onto the floor.
"Geez, you did a good job of assembling that," JC sarcastically told Alan.
"Well, soh-ree, Mr. Perfect. Guess I'll just go out and see if Bob needs any help!" Alan left his brothers and headed towards the stable.
However, a box on the gym's doorstep caught his eye It was addressed to him!
"Odd," Alan thought aloud, "I never saw the postman come today"
He cautiously opened the box, then took a look at its contents.
"."
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"Well, I'll be, big ol' Alan's afraid of some blueberry jam!" Jason laughed. "Come on, man, it's not gonna kill you."
"It might be poisoned," Alan pointed out.
"Who left it, I wonder? It's from the Sunny Garden Café." JC was looking it over.
"Katie?" Jason suggested. "I dunno."
"Katie maybe. That looks like a woman's handwriting," JC agreed. "But why?"
"Oh man"
"What? Oh, Alan, you didn't play some sort of a"
"I did!" Alan groaned. "I kind of, um, smeared Joe's face with yogurt while he was sleeping"
The other two burst out laughing. "YOGURT?! While he was ASLEEP?! That's great!" JC was doubled over.
"But, but why'd Katie send this?" Jason wondered.
"Dunno. Well," Alan shrugged, "Ever since we came here, I've kinda gotten the idea that she and Joe have something for each other. Maybe he asked her to help him."
"By sending jam? Hey, I guess he knows you hate sweets, huh?"
"That's right, Jason. But wait, I never told him, did tell Katie once, though."
"I'll bet Katie told him what you hate and he sent it to you!" Jason exclaimed. "Wow, Joe's not as dumb as I thought."
"Nor's Katie. Come on, guys, we need to teach them a lesson."
"How?"
"Well I've got an idea"
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Katie woke up at 7 in the morning, like she always did. Normally she'd be off at a boarding school, but she was home on vacation for a few weeks. She loved her all-girls school in Flowerbud City, but there was one major flaw she and most of the girls found in it: it was an all-girl school. No boys! That meant that the girls had to pass their time speaking dreamily about whoever it was that they had a crush on back home. Then once they got back home, they were even more eager than normal to meet with their sweetheart.
Katie, of course, was no exception
The 17-year-old girl knew that Joe had the day off, meaning he'd spend the whole day fishing at Maple Lake unless she intervened. She would usually ask him to help her out at the café, or ask him if he'd like to take a walk through the woods, or something like that. Usually, he'd go with whatever it was that she wanted.
Today she wanted to go for a walk, after working in her garden for awhile. The café was closed, anyway, since her grandfather was a little under the weather.
"I'll be home by 5 o'clock Grandpa, OK?" she called to her grandfather.
"Alright, Katie," came his voice. "Have fun."
Katie opened the side door of the café to go outside there was a box there! Huh?
Katie catiously picked it up. It didn't say who it was from well, not really. There was just a note saying "To Katie: From Someone".
.Huh?
Katie opened it, and screamed.
There was a pile of dead stinkbugs in it!!
Gagging, Katie dropped the foul-smelling package and ran to her garden.
The garden was a mess! Someone had trampled down most of the plants, including the blueberry bush. She frowned and went to find Joe.
Joe had just gotten to the shore of Maple Lake a few minutes ago. He looked at his watch. Well, he thought to himself, Katie ought to be coming by at any moment to ask me to do something
"Joe!" Katie ran up, breathless. "Somebody left me this horrible package last night!"
"Really? Who?"
"I don't know it was dead stinkbugs!"
Joe made a face. "Ew! That's new. I've never heard of anyone doing that."
"There was a note on it saying To Katie: From Someone'. That was all."
"Really descriptive I think I might know who it's from."
" Alan?" Katie guessed.
"Yeah," Joe answered. "I didn't think he'd get us back like that for the jam thing, yeesh"
"What should we do?" Katie asked.
"I, don't know," Joe answered. "I'm gonna fish during the day, so maybe I can think of something. Will you meet me at the Harvest Goddess Lake at 4 pm?"
"Sure!" Katie was actually a little disappointed. She'd been hoping that Joe would spend the day with her.
Katie decided to take a walk up to Clove's Villa, since she had no work today. She normally only went there on Mondays, but she thought it might be good to visit with her friend Gina for a little.
When she got to the villa, she found that the daughter of the villa's owner, snobbish Dia, was already outside, sitting on the stone fence around the house and reading a book. She looked up when she saw Katie coming, but didn't say a word.
"Oh!" Katie gasped. "I-I'm sorry, miss. I didn't know that you were"
"No need to apologize," Dia murmured, turning back to her book. She looked up again after a few moments. "What are you doing here?"
"Taking a walk."
"But I have only observed you coming here on Mondays."
"I have today off."
"Oh." Dia turned back to her book again.
"Miss, have you noticed anything odd going on at the gym lately?"
"No," Dia responded right away. She then hesitated and said, "Well, I did observe Kurt's brother throwing some disgusting thing from the gutter on to one of the young men, but that was all."
"Oh, hee hee, yeah, that's the kind of thing I was asking about!" Katie giggled, wishing she could have seen that.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because Joe and Alan have been playing pranks on one another. I want to help Joe, but I'm not sure what to do now." Katie frowned. "Last night, Alan left me a box full of stinkbugs and destroyed every blueberry in my garden so that I can't make blueberry jam for a long time. There's no way I'm going to let him get away with that!!"
Dia hadn't really been listening, but she perked up at the word "blueberry". "Alan does not like blueberries?"
"He hates them!"
"That's truly a shame. I love blueberries, they are very good."
"I love them too. But, Alan hates anything sweet. Blueberries, veryberries, cake, pie, he hates them all."
"Pie?" Dia was thoughtful. "Would he hate veryberry pie?"
"Oh yeah. He'd hate it a lot!"
"Well Martha baked a veryberry pie this morning. Perhaps you could give one piece to this Alan"
Katie's jaw dropped in surprise. "Wha, really?! Wow! Thank you so much!"
"I shall give you a slice." Dia snapped her book shut and motioned Katie to follow her into the house.
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Katie got the pie piece from Dia and took it with her to the gym. To her delight, JC and Alan were talking outside.
"Man, that equipment's not going to be cheap," Alan groaned.
"So? Bob really wants it, and if he'll help pay for it, we should get it."
"Yeah, but Hey, you need something?" Alan turned to Katie with a raised eyebrow. Surely she was aware of the "present" he'd left at her doorstep last night
"Huh? Oh, nothing." Katie quickly answered, holding the slice of pie behind her back. She didn't move.
"Oh-kay, what are you trying to pull?" Alan was really suspicious now.
"Um nothing well" In a lightning-fast movement, Katie whipped the pie from behind her and threw it full-force at Alan! A gooey orange mess splattered all over his clothes. Katie ran away laughing.
"YOU LITTLE!! You are NOT getting away with this!!" Alan roared as he chased the gleeful Katie off the gym's property. JC was laughing, too.
"Shut up!!" Alan yelled at his brother. "You're not helping."
"Man, gotta admit, that was funny! I wasn't expecting sweet little Katie to do something like that!"
Katie ran past the gym and sought refuge in the flower shop. Laughing, she told Lyla what she'd done. Lyla also laughed.
"It's a good thing it wasn't one of my pies," the florist told Katie. "It probably would have killed him!"
"Your pies aren't that bad," Katie told her older friend. "You're getting a lot better at them."
"Yes, but they either catch on fire, explode, or come out really, really good. Everything I cook is like that."
"Did Louis make your oven and stove?" Katie asked.
"Well, yes before we were married."
"That probably explains why things explode so much," Katie laughed.
Lyla shook her head. "No, it's my own fault The oven and stove itself don't explode. But, it doesn't matter," she added, "because Louis never complains if we have to eat cold cereal for breakfast or sandwiches for dinner."
"Ah, that's what I usually eat, too. Grandpa wakes up long after I do, and is up a lot later." Katie sighed. "It must be so wonderful to be married"
Lyla smiled. "You're still young, Katie. You'll be married someday, I'm sure of it. And, yes, it is very nice to live with someone you truly love. I'm very glad I got married, even if it wasn't to the first person whom I fell in love with."
Katie had to smile at that one. Lyla had been in love twice! Her true love was a man named Parsley who, though he didn't treat Lyla with any special affection, Lyla managed to fall madly in love with him anyway. Lyla even left town to tell her true feelings to him and was rejected. Elaborately rejected. Lyla had come to his hometown and was just in time to witness his wedding ceremony. They treated her nicely, but she was still very shocked and saddened to see him with another woman. Lyla had returned home heartbroken. Louis, who had long had a crush on her, tried his best to comfort her, though he was shy around her at first and tended to make her laugh even when he didn't mean to. It didn't take very long for Lyla to fall in love with him, too, and they'd gotten married a few months afterward. Lyla seemed very happy, though Katie knew she still pined for Parsley.
Katie checked out the window to make sure that Alan wasn't waiting outside for her or anything. She said good-bye to Lyla and went to meet Joe at the lake.
"Oh, gosh, Joe, you'll never guess what happened," Katie giggled, then told Joe about the pie incident.
"Oh, man, that was great! But the mademoiselle at the villa helped you?" he asked, confused.
"Yeah Miss Dia can be nice sometimes."
"Really? Well, I've hardly met her, but I know that Kurt" he cut himself off, realizing he was about to say something he shouldn't. "Er, anyway, Katie, anything in particular you want to talk about?"
"Nah, not really," she answered. "Well, I'm going back to school next week. Back to the same old boring routine"
"Yeah, I understand ya," Joe sighed. "I do the same thing every day, but I like it, really. I'm glad I don't have to move around as much as you do."
"At least I'm graduating this year," Katie said. "Then I can come back home to stay!"
"Hey, that'll be great! I'd really like to look for job opprotunities in the city, but I don't get much practice here, so the boss says I'm not good enough to go out on my own yet. Neither's Kurt." Joe shook his head. "I love this place, but it's a little sleepy, if you know what I mean."
"Peaceful," Katie suggested. "Yeah, Lyla said she's always on the lookout for some excitement, but too much wouldn't be good."
"You quote Lyla a lot," Joe observed.
"Yeah, well, she's my best friend, what do you expect?" Katie got up and looked into the lake. Even though the sun was setting, she could clearly see the rainbow colors of the water. "I never had a mother, you know. My mother died when I was little, and my grandmother before I was even born. Lyla's always been like a mother to me, since she's so much older."
"Yeah, theer's not too many people in this village," Joe muttered. "And the ones who recently moved in have to be such jerks."
Katie laughed. "Just Alan," she corrected him.
"Right. One of them just has to be a jerk."
"Yeah. A lot of people can be jerks You just have to learn how to get along with them."
"Yeah. That can be hard, though."
"I know." Katie sighed. "You don't think I'm annoying, do you?"
Joe shook his head. "Not at all! I" he blushed, "I like you a lot."
"Hee hee." Katie giggled. "I'm glad to hear that, because I like you, too!"
Both of them were silent for a few minutes. Katie suddenly gasped. "Oops! I forgot, I promised Grandpa that I'd be home by 5! I'd better get going. He's gonna let me run the bar tonight for a couple of hours."
"Really? How late will it be open?"
"From 6 to 9."
"Why the bar and not the café?"
"Because," Katie grinned, "Grandpa thinks I'm old enough now, and I had to choose one, and since we have better business at the bar, I chose that."
"Cool! I'll be sure to come!"
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"She must pay," Alan growled after he changed clothes. JC had told Jason and Bob about the pie incident, and all three of them were hysterical with laughter by the time JC was done. They were still laughing while Alan was trying to shut them up when Kayla and Tim came home.
"Bob!!" Tim ran to his brother waving an old piece of paper, "Look what I found!"
"What's so funny, guys?" Kayla asked, confused.
"We'll tell you later," Jason said as he snatched the paper away from Tim. "What's this, little guy?"
"Don't call me that! I'm thirteen you know!" Tim tried to snatch it back, but Jason held it just out of his grasp. "Give that back to me! It's a treasure map!"
"Oh no, not that again," JC groaned. "That's not gonna involve getting yourself stuck in a giant hole in back of the gym again, will it?"
"No! This is different—gimme!" Tim jumped and grabbed the map from Jason. "It's weird. The first step is Enter the Gate to the Sacred Land in Praria Forest'. Where's that?"
"I told him to ask the carpenters," Kayla told the guys. "They built the villa in Praria Forest, and Woody knows a lot about this area, so they might know."
"Sacred Land? Great, so this place supposedly has a goddess, a fish from the heavens, and some sacred piece of land around a rich person's house?" JC shook his head. "This place is weird."
"That's why they didn't tear it down to build a theme park," Kayla told him. "And no one's ever seen the Harvest Goddess or the Silver Fish, that I know of, anyway."
"Joe claims he saw the Silver Fish!" Tim piped in.
"Joe was probably drunk," Alan pointed out. "Like he is almost every night. Hey, Tim, Kayla, you wouldn't happen to know of anything that Katie really hates, do you?"
"Meh, ask Lyla. Or Gwen," Kayla told her cousin. "I'm not that great of friends with Katie. I'll ask Gwen tomorrow when I go and pick up some firewood. Why?"
"Personal business," Alan mumbled.
"Katie threw a pie at him," JC laughed.
Kayla laughed. "Oh, so that's why you guys were laughing, eh? Well, I'll ask Gwen. Bet she'd know."