Lightning-Dono: My internet is going crazy right now, so I'm gonna sit my butt down and type in this fanfic! I'm going to try and make this as interesting as I can, okay? Bear with me here - The fanfic will draw to a close sometime close to the 25th chapter or so. Don't be surprised if it's shorter than this. This fanfic WILL live on! =P
Then I'll go back to working on a long-forgotten fanfic: Drowning in a Nightmare. xD
ANSWERS TO REVIEWS (If I don't reply to your review isn't on here, never fear, I'll put it on the next chapter!)
Ann Fan - Drama...? I never thought that chapter was too dramatic, but thank you so much! I'm sure in good time you'll have...someone's updating consistency. Maybe mine? Someone better? I don't know, but I want you to continue your faaannnfffiiiiccc...And you've reviewed so much! 3 You! (You know what I mean)
EM - Rod -is- awful. I think I'm kind of writing out his personality now with what I thought of him before. When I first played FoMT, I thought that he had run away from his family for some reason. And what would you think of a man who ran away from his own family. I think he's trying to act too young, personally. o.o She'll explain herself. =) It's all part of the fun.
A fan of harvest moon - I don't know what you're thinking...What are you thinking? Don't tell me, though! Try to keep the thought in mind (You don't have to) until I reveal what Rick does to save the remaining chickens! I have it all planned out! =)
-----
I gasped. "You do?"
Karen grinned, her dimples making their way onto her face as this grin stretched. "Nah, I was only kidding. Come on, you dork, of course I am!"
"But...Why are you suddenly so nice to me?" My face fell, and so did my high-flying spirits.
Rubbing her chin, she stared at the ceiling. "I couldn't bear to see you that upset again. I went home and my dad knew what was wrong...right when I got in there. He made me think everything over...And I realized I shouldn't have been so hard on you." She sighed, keeping her eyes glued to the. Was there something that interesting up there that she couldn't even look at my face? Even so, my spirits soared once again, and the sadness that fogged my eyes cleared.
Right then, I felt like jumping up and squeezing her really tightly right around the neck. But I had a feeling that if I did that she would change her mind.
"Oh, I love you Karen!" I gushed, bouncing up and down on the bed like a little kid. "Now all we have to do is make arrangements and tell our parents!" I wasn't quite sure that it was proper without the proposal item, but that didn't have to be worried about.
At last, Karen removed her eyes from the ceiling. She inspected me with great interest, as though reconsidering her choices. "Yeah. But let's not rush into it like that."
That hadn't been what I was expecting. I had been expecting a huge hug, a kiss, and some really sappy talk. Instead, it appeared that she had turned into an emotionless robot that was still computing all of this onto a data disk.
"What do you mean? This is what I've been waiting for all my life!" That wasn't exactly the truth. I had always feared that I'd never have a wife, but certainly I had more things to wait for other than marriage. Suddenly, I began getting disturbing images of being scarred and bruised from an argument over who was going to cook dinner. It was the minor formality that the woman should cook dinner, but with Karen, who knows?
"Yes, but I really don't want to have...uh...kids," she confided, avoiding my gaze. I suppose I could understand. "My mom said that when she had me she held onto my father's arm the whole time and screamed out her lungs. It just sounds too...painful."
I was about to make some really corny joke about her mom's lung coming out, but instead I gave a small shrug. "We don't have to have kids." The images in my head changed into that of newspaper ads on abortion.
"Good. Then let's go spread the news!" Karen yelled. If she had yelled 'Rick and I are getting married!' then I'd bet that we didn't need to spread the news at all.
Karen and I proceeded to prancing down the stairs, Karen pretending to toss flower petals into the air.
"Hello, kiddos! What's the big rush?" Asked father, greeting us with his usual smile. I wasn't about to buy this whole friendly act yet. He probably only acted this way when there was a guest around.
"Your father came back?" Karen asked, confused.
"Yup."
"How come you didn't tell me?"
"You were strangling me to death," I joked, giving her a playful push. Luckily, she was still good-natured afterwards.
"We're getting married," Karen said, flushing a deep red out of humility towards my father.
He looked like he was going to drop dead.
"Are you guys for real?" He asked in what, to me, sounded like an overly excited voice. This could only mean trouble.
"Yes, we're for real. Let's go." I dragged a disappointed-looking Karen away.
"What was that for?" She demanded when we got outside.
"He's only been trouble since he's come back. Plus, look!" I gestured towards the large machine with building anger.
"What's that?"
"It takes the head off of chickens." If I had the power to levitate through the emotion of anger, I'd probably have gone through the atmosphere by now.
Karen's eyes widened. "That's terrible!" She strained her eyes to see the machine that was near the backside of the house.
"You bet it is. Now let's go and tell your parents! When my mom gets back from the clinic, we can tell her! Or...My dad can tell her," I added with disgust.
"All right!" We leapt down the road and through a crowd of people infront of the Inn admiring the new paint job and decoration.
"WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!" Karen and I screamed as we passed by them. Anna shrieked in delight and ran over. I could almost imagine her in the Town Square, chatting away about how I had proposed so romantically to Karen. Of course, it'd all be her version of the story, in which she didn't even know the other half of.
"Congratulations, you two!" She said, draping her arms over our shoulder.
"Thanks!" Karen replied, grabbing my hand and pulling me away. Everyone else just stood there, gaping at us stupidly, opening and closing their mouths soundlessly.
"Dad, we're getting married!" Karen screeched as we barged into the store, completely out of breath.
"No," he replied flatly, as though he had been expecting this all along.
I felt a sickening, plunging sensation in my stomach. "Why not?" I asked pathetically.
Jeff looked up from the counter. "What? You guys aren't playing...house or something?" We shook our heads. Jeff's hair, which was so carefully slicked back, suddenly became a wild mass of black entangled vines. He was too busy jumping up and down to notice that it was making his hair go crazy.
"Karen and Rick are getting married!" He exclaimed delightfully, hopping out from behind the counter and towards us. "Your mom will love this. She'll probably let you borrow her wedding gown. Oh, she'll be so thrilled!" I flinched as he leaned towards me and said this very loudly into my face. I didn't see the point of leaning towards me, as I wasn't going to be the one wearing the gown.
"I'd hate to see how your mom reacts, then," I muttered towards Karen.
"Heh," she said under her breath. "Well, dad, we'll spread the news around! And do some inviting!"
"Wait!" Karen's dad leapt frantically to the counter, pulled a packet of pink stationary and handed it to us. At the very bottom it had a cartoonish drawing of Karen and I standing under a Sakura tree.
"Uh, thanks?" I forced a very labored smile onto my face as he gave it to me. Jeff waved to us as we left the shop. Karen was staring at the picture in disgust.
"Has he been planning this the whole time?" She wondered. "You know, my eyes are NOT blue. Is he color blind?"
"Maybe he ran out of green paint or whatever he used," I suggested, glancing at the squiggly, thick clusters of hair he had drawn on my head with growing dislike.
"Ran out of it on what?" She snapped. "I don't have blue eyes! And I'm his child, too." Karen's face lit up. "Well, he has his name at the bottom, so they won't think we drew it!"
I let out a small snort of laughter. "Not like I could draw any better."
We went to the beach and sat there on the benches by the unused stores and started on it. Luckily, I always carried around a pen or two, which saved us a lot of trouble.
"Hm, we should invite our parents. But they'd come, anyway." Karen laughed, putting down the ballpoint pen she was holding. I pictured my mom getting an invitation and lecturing me about how she would come anyway and that it was a waste of stationary.
"I suppose we should invite Stu and May..." I was writing down their names when Karen stopped me by pushing my hand off the paper, causing me to make a long, black line across the stationary.
"Wait, Rick...I already planned this. Kind of. It's just something I've been planning over and over in my head. Maybe Stu can be the ring bearer and May can be the flower girl! They're certainly lighten up the mood!"
I paused. Lighten up the mood? I pictured people gliding around the room with ecstasy, unable to sit down.
"There's a thought! But we still invite them - we need to tell them in the letter."
"Okay! I'll write one to May and you can do Stu."
I looked down at the already printed 'M' on my piece of stationary. "I already put the 'M' down for May," I said, slightly irritated that she taking charge of things without much of my consent.
"Fine, then."
"Should we invite Zack?" I inquired, trying to think of lonely people.
"But then Won will tag along," Karen pointed out intelligently brushing sand off of her vest.
"Well, I suppose it's safe to invite Mayor Thomas. He only shows up at those seasonal events that are for everyone...He told me he's really lonely." I finished up May's invitation with a newly designed signature that I felt like practicing. It looked a bit girly, but it was pretty altogether.
"Okay then. We should invite...Ellen." Karen started on Ellen's invitation.
"At this rate we should just invite the whole town," I laughed, my handwriting appearing as a bunch of a shaky lines on the stationary. Karen glanced at what I was writing.
"You write like a slob," she observed jokingly. I shrugged it off and continued to write.
An hour or so later, we were finished and stuffing the stationary into light pink envelopes.
"Is your dad's favorite color pink or something?" I asked, thinking about a wedding cake catered by him covered with pink and nothing else. The decoration of the couple at the top would be dressed in pink with pink skin. I shuddered.
"No. He's a complete lovebird, though, if you know what I mean. He says he used to dream about writing romance novels when he grew up. Who knew that he'd be dishing out change to customers instead?" Karen carried some invitations in one hand and handed me some. "We'll meet up by Saibara's shop."
After delivering the invites, I felt a bit guilty. Jack was left out of everything. He never won the cooking contests, he rarely got invited anywhere. I thought about this carefully as I stood by Saibara's window. Gray came out to see what was blocking his view out of the window.
"Eh? What now?" He asked grumpily, throwing the door open.
"I'm waiting for Karen," I said, pushing my hands into my pockets.
"And why do you have to wait for her right by the window?" He sure was a rude fellow.
"For your information, we're getting married and we were doing...stuff. I finished what I was doing and this was our designated meeting place."
"Where's my invitation?" He glowered. How did he know about them?
"We...weren't passing them out just yet," I lied, which added a whole new problem to my list of ones existing.
Gray calmed down. "Well, I'll be expecting one!" He said, winking at me in a friendly way. He shut the door behind him.
"Great," I mused, watching an ant crawl by my shoe.
"You're quite fast," Karen panted as she arrived. "Okay, I'm done handing out the invitations. Let's go get dinner at the Inn!"
I suspected that Gray must've heard her say that.
-----
And before you all start jumping to conclusions, yes, I am a girl, and no, I do not believe that the woman should always be the one cooking. =
Then I'll go back to working on a long-forgotten fanfic: Drowning in a Nightmare. xD
ANSWERS TO REVIEWS (If I don't reply to your review isn't on here, never fear, I'll put it on the next chapter!)
Ann Fan - Drama...? I never thought that chapter was too dramatic, but thank you so much! I'm sure in good time you'll have...someone's updating consistency. Maybe mine? Someone better? I don't know, but I want you to continue your faaannnfffiiiiccc...And you've reviewed so much! 3 You! (You know what I mean)
EM - Rod -is- awful. I think I'm kind of writing out his personality now with what I thought of him before. When I first played FoMT, I thought that he had run away from his family for some reason. And what would you think of a man who ran away from his own family. I think he's trying to act too young, personally. o.o She'll explain herself. =) It's all part of the fun.
A fan of harvest moon - I don't know what you're thinking...What are you thinking? Don't tell me, though! Try to keep the thought in mind (You don't have to) until I reveal what Rick does to save the remaining chickens! I have it all planned out! =)
-----
I gasped. "You do?"
Karen grinned, her dimples making their way onto her face as this grin stretched. "Nah, I was only kidding. Come on, you dork, of course I am!"
"But...Why are you suddenly so nice to me?" My face fell, and so did my high-flying spirits.
Rubbing her chin, she stared at the ceiling. "I couldn't bear to see you that upset again. I went home and my dad knew what was wrong...right when I got in there. He made me think everything over...And I realized I shouldn't have been so hard on you." She sighed, keeping her eyes glued to the. Was there something that interesting up there that she couldn't even look at my face? Even so, my spirits soared once again, and the sadness that fogged my eyes cleared.
Right then, I felt like jumping up and squeezing her really tightly right around the neck. But I had a feeling that if I did that she would change her mind.
"Oh, I love you Karen!" I gushed, bouncing up and down on the bed like a little kid. "Now all we have to do is make arrangements and tell our parents!" I wasn't quite sure that it was proper without the proposal item, but that didn't have to be worried about.
At last, Karen removed her eyes from the ceiling. She inspected me with great interest, as though reconsidering her choices. "Yeah. But let's not rush into it like that."
That hadn't been what I was expecting. I had been expecting a huge hug, a kiss, and some really sappy talk. Instead, it appeared that she had turned into an emotionless robot that was still computing all of this onto a data disk.
"What do you mean? This is what I've been waiting for all my life!" That wasn't exactly the truth. I had always feared that I'd never have a wife, but certainly I had more things to wait for other than marriage. Suddenly, I began getting disturbing images of being scarred and bruised from an argument over who was going to cook dinner. It was the minor formality that the woman should cook dinner, but with Karen, who knows?
"Yes, but I really don't want to have...uh...kids," she confided, avoiding my gaze. I suppose I could understand. "My mom said that when she had me she held onto my father's arm the whole time and screamed out her lungs. It just sounds too...painful."
I was about to make some really corny joke about her mom's lung coming out, but instead I gave a small shrug. "We don't have to have kids." The images in my head changed into that of newspaper ads on abortion.
"Good. Then let's go spread the news!" Karen yelled. If she had yelled 'Rick and I are getting married!' then I'd bet that we didn't need to spread the news at all.
Karen and I proceeded to prancing down the stairs, Karen pretending to toss flower petals into the air.
"Hello, kiddos! What's the big rush?" Asked father, greeting us with his usual smile. I wasn't about to buy this whole friendly act yet. He probably only acted this way when there was a guest around.
"Your father came back?" Karen asked, confused.
"Yup."
"How come you didn't tell me?"
"You were strangling me to death," I joked, giving her a playful push. Luckily, she was still good-natured afterwards.
"We're getting married," Karen said, flushing a deep red out of humility towards my father.
He looked like he was going to drop dead.
"Are you guys for real?" He asked in what, to me, sounded like an overly excited voice. This could only mean trouble.
"Yes, we're for real. Let's go." I dragged a disappointed-looking Karen away.
"What was that for?" She demanded when we got outside.
"He's only been trouble since he's come back. Plus, look!" I gestured towards the large machine with building anger.
"What's that?"
"It takes the head off of chickens." If I had the power to levitate through the emotion of anger, I'd probably have gone through the atmosphere by now.
Karen's eyes widened. "That's terrible!" She strained her eyes to see the machine that was near the backside of the house.
"You bet it is. Now let's go and tell your parents! When my mom gets back from the clinic, we can tell her! Or...My dad can tell her," I added with disgust.
"All right!" We leapt down the road and through a crowd of people infront of the Inn admiring the new paint job and decoration.
"WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!" Karen and I screamed as we passed by them. Anna shrieked in delight and ran over. I could almost imagine her in the Town Square, chatting away about how I had proposed so romantically to Karen. Of course, it'd all be her version of the story, in which she didn't even know the other half of.
"Congratulations, you two!" She said, draping her arms over our shoulder.
"Thanks!" Karen replied, grabbing my hand and pulling me away. Everyone else just stood there, gaping at us stupidly, opening and closing their mouths soundlessly.
"Dad, we're getting married!" Karen screeched as we barged into the store, completely out of breath.
"No," he replied flatly, as though he had been expecting this all along.
I felt a sickening, plunging sensation in my stomach. "Why not?" I asked pathetically.
Jeff looked up from the counter. "What? You guys aren't playing...house or something?" We shook our heads. Jeff's hair, which was so carefully slicked back, suddenly became a wild mass of black entangled vines. He was too busy jumping up and down to notice that it was making his hair go crazy.
"Karen and Rick are getting married!" He exclaimed delightfully, hopping out from behind the counter and towards us. "Your mom will love this. She'll probably let you borrow her wedding gown. Oh, she'll be so thrilled!" I flinched as he leaned towards me and said this very loudly into my face. I didn't see the point of leaning towards me, as I wasn't going to be the one wearing the gown.
"I'd hate to see how your mom reacts, then," I muttered towards Karen.
"Heh," she said under her breath. "Well, dad, we'll spread the news around! And do some inviting!"
"Wait!" Karen's dad leapt frantically to the counter, pulled a packet of pink stationary and handed it to us. At the very bottom it had a cartoonish drawing of Karen and I standing under a Sakura tree.
"Uh, thanks?" I forced a very labored smile onto my face as he gave it to me. Jeff waved to us as we left the shop. Karen was staring at the picture in disgust.
"Has he been planning this the whole time?" She wondered. "You know, my eyes are NOT blue. Is he color blind?"
"Maybe he ran out of green paint or whatever he used," I suggested, glancing at the squiggly, thick clusters of hair he had drawn on my head with growing dislike.
"Ran out of it on what?" She snapped. "I don't have blue eyes! And I'm his child, too." Karen's face lit up. "Well, he has his name at the bottom, so they won't think we drew it!"
I let out a small snort of laughter. "Not like I could draw any better."
We went to the beach and sat there on the benches by the unused stores and started on it. Luckily, I always carried around a pen or two, which saved us a lot of trouble.
"Hm, we should invite our parents. But they'd come, anyway." Karen laughed, putting down the ballpoint pen she was holding. I pictured my mom getting an invitation and lecturing me about how she would come anyway and that it was a waste of stationary.
"I suppose we should invite Stu and May..." I was writing down their names when Karen stopped me by pushing my hand off the paper, causing me to make a long, black line across the stationary.
"Wait, Rick...I already planned this. Kind of. It's just something I've been planning over and over in my head. Maybe Stu can be the ring bearer and May can be the flower girl! They're certainly lighten up the mood!"
I paused. Lighten up the mood? I pictured people gliding around the room with ecstasy, unable to sit down.
"There's a thought! But we still invite them - we need to tell them in the letter."
"Okay! I'll write one to May and you can do Stu."
I looked down at the already printed 'M' on my piece of stationary. "I already put the 'M' down for May," I said, slightly irritated that she taking charge of things without much of my consent.
"Fine, then."
"Should we invite Zack?" I inquired, trying to think of lonely people.
"But then Won will tag along," Karen pointed out intelligently brushing sand off of her vest.
"Well, I suppose it's safe to invite Mayor Thomas. He only shows up at those seasonal events that are for everyone...He told me he's really lonely." I finished up May's invitation with a newly designed signature that I felt like practicing. It looked a bit girly, but it was pretty altogether.
"Okay then. We should invite...Ellen." Karen started on Ellen's invitation.
"At this rate we should just invite the whole town," I laughed, my handwriting appearing as a bunch of a shaky lines on the stationary. Karen glanced at what I was writing.
"You write like a slob," she observed jokingly. I shrugged it off and continued to write.
An hour or so later, we were finished and stuffing the stationary into light pink envelopes.
"Is your dad's favorite color pink or something?" I asked, thinking about a wedding cake catered by him covered with pink and nothing else. The decoration of the couple at the top would be dressed in pink with pink skin. I shuddered.
"No. He's a complete lovebird, though, if you know what I mean. He says he used to dream about writing romance novels when he grew up. Who knew that he'd be dishing out change to customers instead?" Karen carried some invitations in one hand and handed me some. "We'll meet up by Saibara's shop."
After delivering the invites, I felt a bit guilty. Jack was left out of everything. He never won the cooking contests, he rarely got invited anywhere. I thought about this carefully as I stood by Saibara's window. Gray came out to see what was blocking his view out of the window.
"Eh? What now?" He asked grumpily, throwing the door open.
"I'm waiting for Karen," I said, pushing my hands into my pockets.
"And why do you have to wait for her right by the window?" He sure was a rude fellow.
"For your information, we're getting married and we were doing...stuff. I finished what I was doing and this was our designated meeting place."
"Where's my invitation?" He glowered. How did he know about them?
"We...weren't passing them out just yet," I lied, which added a whole new problem to my list of ones existing.
Gray calmed down. "Well, I'll be expecting one!" He said, winking at me in a friendly way. He shut the door behind him.
"Great," I mused, watching an ant crawl by my shoe.
"You're quite fast," Karen panted as she arrived. "Okay, I'm done handing out the invitations. Let's go get dinner at the Inn!"
I suspected that Gray must've heard her say that.
-----
And before you all start jumping to conclusions, yes, I am a girl, and no, I do not believe that the woman should always be the one cooking. =