Lightning-Dono: This...begins Nami's dramatic return! x) Yes, it does. HAPPY NEW YEARS, the January of 2005!! I'm sorry it took so long to finish this one and I'm sorry that it's so awful. I'm suffering through a terrible bout of Writers Block that just won't go away...x.x If you haven't noticed are something, I spent these past four chapters just trying to give you all a look of how I made their personalities in this one, since Jack is kind of...well, you can customize him, basically.

Answers to the Reviews

Kirjava Deamon – Thank you! ((bow)) I feel so sorry for Murrey, though. ;.;

Fullmetal Flutist – I like your pen name. o.o I play flute, too. I don't think this is soon enough, though. I've been caught up in other events. xD;

BrokenChains – Thank you very much! Wow, that person must be so extremely egotistic. ((shame shame sign)) I don't really think this story is good because I don't have anything planned right now. Writers Block has returned to me, so I can't really produce pure brilliance. ((sigh))

Khdude – Yup! Celia is going to get it now! :D Thank you for your review! (I thank every review, but I really mean it.)

Krazie4Christ – If I put what she would do there then no one would read because I can't just say, "I have no clue what I'm going to do, though." and have swarms of readers stay interested. I mean...There's just no way. The problem is that I don't know what she's going to do.

azn anime addict47 – Thank you! Hmm...I'm not used to elongating my chapters since I just stop whenever it seems like it should end. o.o I'll try on the next chapter, however.

deeper – I feel sorry for Celia because she has to live with a woman-cheating jerk. I'm just kidding. Thank you! (I should come up with a new phrase to replace 'Thanks' and 'Thank you'.) Arigatou!

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Forget-Me-Not Valley couldn't have been less different. Everyone had grown up, obviously, the Inn was in terrible condition (Most unfit for tourist visitation. Paint seemed to have worn off. However, it was evident that as hard as Tim had tried to conceal the ugliness, it didn't work. He had slathered paint onto part of the roof, which didn't look extremely attractive.), and buildings had popped up from out of no where. There was a young woman donning a light blue dress that highly contrasted with her darkening red eyes staring avidly at the well, almost entranced in it's depth.

Then a scene that made my blood boil silently within me popped into my field of vision. Celia and Jack were selling their items at Van's usual spot, hand in hand and welcoming people with flourish by pulling items from their pockets and holding them out to the people. Galen chuckled at the couple and walked on, refusing the Mist Moon Jack was shoving into his face, trying to draw attention to Celia and himself. It disgusted me to the very bottom of my churning stomach. Celia was giggling lightly into her hand, the other one containing a Sugar Ore. What did she have that I did not? Didn't I show my startlingly rare smiles to Jack, just so he could glimpse a part of me outside of the shadows?

I saw a few surprised glances, their eyes sticking onto me like glue as they walked by. No one whispered a, "Hello" or "Welcome back". Instead, they just watched me like I was a living TV. However, Jack noticed me as I walked by, his eyes magnets to my denim vest, watching me in brief horror. Deep inside, I would wish Celia could see his startled face – maybe she'll take the hint and think that he wanted me...not her. But I've never seen such a quietly stubborn person. She saw, she flipped her hair over her shoulder, and looked in the other direction like a statue of stone, intricately carved to look real.

The grass grew valiantly, enduring harsh weather conditions. Yet, I could make out each green tendril, lively and continuing life without disruption. But I was alarmingly annoyed when I noticed the horse footprints that dented the soft dirt, leaving the grass to wither dangerously, surrounded by mourning friends. I slithered by the trees, not making any means of being seen. I didn't need to be – being a nobody always meant that you were constantly surrounded by a shroud of invisibility, never to be revealed to anyone other than people who could see through it. So why did I have to bother trying to hide? It just gave me the thrill of adventure that I rarely had, seeing that my life was so unbearably dull and filled with the angst of tragedy. Tragedy that enjoyed to strike at horribly inconvenient moments, whether meant to be inflicted or not. I was certain Jack hadn't mean to break my heart in such a foul way, I suppose he didn't realize that I frequented by the plantation often.

At the same time, I mused, I couldn't blame Celia for breaking the news. She had no clue that I was romantically clinging to Jack. There was no point in accusing the innocent, because in the end you're risking losing someone that could've been a valuable friend. I stopped at the aluminum planks that surrounded the base of Cody's rambler, drowning in a wave of thought. I couldn't possibly harm Jack, however. What in the world would I gain from doing something so horrendously idiotic? If I did, they'd probably haul me off to court for mauling a successful farmer who was wedded to a lovely young lady. I felt like scraping the lovely young lady across the face with claws made out of iron, just to tear her vision away from my mind.

Cody approached me quickly, the sound of clanging reaching his ears. It would've made an excellent security system, if only his living space itself didn't look like it could be pushed over with one finger. It toddled back and forth, like a tremor from beneath the ground's surface was slowly pushing it upward in a shuddering motion. The man himself didn't look any different – he still carried the habit of hugging himself tightly whenever visions of vibrant canvas paintings flashed into his mind. He dreamed of things from another fantasy land that I had never even bothered to envision and longed to build up enough muscular power to haul his many sheets of metal outside to create something big. It would probably, knowing Cody, be a large futuristic building that existed outside the boundaries of the town that had seen nothing more than trees, grass, and wooden houses.

"Nami!" Cody roared, his voice a cross between a lion fighting for a mate and that of an aged male human. "Where have you been?"

I wished he would reach out his massive, bulky arms and wrap me in a hug, never letting go. But in fear that he would be seen to be more than the emotionless dreamer he was, he restrained the urge, binding it in tight ropes and never letting it break free. That's how I was, which was the reason why I knew how he felt so often. If only I wasn't quite so anti-social, I would be able to hug without remorse, cry without humiliation, and make close friends without keeping my distance so often.

"Hi." That word was the bane of my existence. I met people that dared to destroy my soul after I had spoken that word that resembled kindness to them.

Cody was brushing away a fly that had landed on his shining scalp. "Where have you been?" He repeated, not pushing, but just asking again.

I shrugged. "Around. Here and there." More 'there' than 'here', though.

"Why?" Our conversations often grew tiring due to our lack of desire for socializing.

"Jack." What a dreadfully boring name, but it certainly fit the farmer. After I had thought I'd seen the most bizarre and sleep-inducing names, there he came along, clueless as ever with a name that would put even an insomniac such as I asleep.

"Hmm." That was his variation for, "What?" He never liked to overuse words.

"He cheated on me."

"Oh."

"He showed me the Blue Feather to me, I asked for it, he said he needed time to prepare and the next thing I know...He's made arrangements to marry Celia." I breathed deeply, feeling the betrayal flood me over.

Unfortunately, all the story did was make Cody become as mindlessly angry as a rabid dog.

"How could he!?" He fumed, his legs spaced an oddly large distance apart from each other. That was when I noticed the clenched fists and realized that he was in a fighting stance of his very own creation. You could almost see smoke streaming from his nostrils. "No one does that to my friend and gets away with it!" Talk about un-original lines, I thought silently. However, the idea made me imagine him and I marching up to Jack's farm, slamming open the door, and dragging him outside whilst wreaking destruction upon his lovely home.

Actually, it was a fairly reasonable thought. All I needed was Cody's cooperation throughout the entire process without him becoming a wild gorilla.

A few moments later, the idea seemed horribly frivolous. How could a nonentity like me break a man like Jack, who was the self-acclaimed 'Number One Farmer' and was so much more confident than I was? Once, he had even tried to oust Tim and Ruby of the Inn and take over it himself, writing himself a new title of 'Best Cook'. Even as much as he seemed like a talent-filled person, I couldn't help but feel sorry for his reality-deprived mind. If he hadn't bothered trying to make himself look a big super star, the respect would've been his. However, he was just like those big-screen dorkus units (A/N: Borrowed the term from my 6 grade teacher. xD;) dealing with life. They lived, swirling in a confusing vortex of misplaced passion, betrayal, and so many unmentionable sins. Jack was just unknowingly taking place in that.

His first step towards that was when he decided to mess with me by toying with my heart. His last step was once I shoved common sense and whatnot into his empty mind, forcing him to peruse those notes I had once spotted on his shelf and becoming the successful farmer he had wanted to be.

Although he had ruined my life, I wouldn't let him ruin his. No matter what he had done, I suddenly realized that revenge wasn't a reasonable thing to plan. Forget-Me-Not Valley already had a soulless, wandering shell and I believed deep inside that they didn't need another one.

"Cody, I don't think so," I said firmly, taking a pale hand and shoving down his dark one. For a second, our eyes mean and I pulled away. "It's...just not what I want."

The scarcely growing hair on his head looked as though it would droop and spill over his face in misery. "If you say so," he mumbled, disconcerted. "I'll go work on something." Instead of doing what he mentioned, he continued to brood, just standing there and casting a blasé look at the horizon. The sky was steadily fading into a blossom of rosy pink and yellow.