Chapter 2: Mystery of the Missing Housewives!
Disclaimer: Natsume…owns…EVERYTHING.
Jack sauntered down the road, happily thinking of the goodies that awaited him at Flower Bud Bakery (and not sparing a single thought on his broken-hearted wife). On the road to town, he ran into the Gourmet Man.
The man waved at him enthusiastically. "Hello-o-o-o," he belched. "I'm the Gourmet Man. I travel around the world looking for delicious food!"
"I know that." Jack rolled his eyes. "God, talk about needing a job…"
Gourmet Man blinked. "What on earth are you talking about? This is my job!"
Jack's eyes widened in disbelief. "You mean you can get paid for strolling around aimlessly, walking uninvited into people's houses to sample their cooking, and pretty much being an all-around useless tub of lard?"
"…Er, something like that," Gourmet Man replied dubiously, though he frowned a bit over the word choice there.
"Damn! Wish I'd a known that before I became a farmer," Jack lamented.
"Yes, well… Good day to you," the man replied uncomfortably. He shuffled away quickly, and Jack continued on his merry way.
The bakery was mysteriously empty, save for Jeff, the manager. "Hello, Jack," he said politely as the farmer sauntered in. "How are you today?"
"I'm good! And gonna get even better after I have one of your kick-ass confections," he replied amiably. He went over to the cake display, pressing his nose right up against the glass he ogled the fresh-baked sweets. "Mmm, those look so good," Jack sighed. "Sure has been a long time since I've had one of these!"
"Erm, please don't do that," Jeff sweatdropped.
Jack turned around with his face still pressed up against the display, leaving a large and copious smear of facial oil and sweat as he moved his face across the glass. "Do what?" he asked, baffled.
"That!" Jeff yelled, ready to have a nervous breakdown.
"Huh? Oh, this?" Jack pulled away from the glass, embarrassed. "Sorry about that," he apologized. He quickly began to rub his hands across the smear in an attempt to erase it. "Don't worry, my good man! All it needs is a bit of a rub, and that smear'll vanish like a…" He paused mid-simile when he saw that his rubbing was only making the smear much, much worse. "Hmm!" Jack scratched his head in consternation. "Damn bitch of a window just wants to stay dirty, I guess."
Jeff sighed and began rubbing his temples. "Jack, what do you want?"
"A cake!" Jack replied brightly, forgetting all about the window.
Jeff went behind the display, ready to pull out one of the confections. "Whole or a piece?"
"A piece. I'm just having lunch."
"Cake? For lunch? Uh…right; so today your choices are: Strawberry Delight, Chocolate Explosion, Black Forest, Vanilla Craving, and the Elli Special. Which one would you like?"
"Umm…" Jack thought long and hard. "I'll have a slice of the Elli Special."
"Good, because that's the only kind we have left. Only kind we ever have, in fact; I don't know why I just bothered to read you that long list of names."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that too."
"Well, here you are. Be careful taking those back home-" Jack crammed the slice into the pocket of his jeans. "…Never mind."
"Hey, so where's Elli?" Jack wondered after looking around a bit. Come to think of it, why wasn't she standing obstructively in the bakery doorway like she usually was?
"Huh?" The baker blinked at him in confusion, as if he suddenly lost his ability to comprehend the English language.
Jack rolled his eyes. "You know, Elli? Your wife?"
"Eh…uh…" Jeff stared at him with a vague look on his face for a bit, then smiled and announced, "When I'm tired I drink a cup of tea! It warms and refreshes my body and spirits."
Jack shook his head. He could see that Jeff wasn't ever going to spill the beans as to where Elli had gone, for whatever odd reason. "Yeah well, screw you too, you pathetic moron…" he muttered, getting ready to leave.
On his way out, he ran into Ann's husband Cliff, who was just about to enter the bakery. Which really shouldn't have happened, because as anyone who's ever played Harvest Moon 64 knows, Cliff never patronizes the bakery. Probably because cake and pie would give his bird indigestion or something.
"Hey, Cliff!" Jack greeted him cheerily.
Cliff looked up with characteristic gloom. "Hey," he grunted.
"So how's the ranch doing?"
"Great. And your farm?"
"Snazzy, thanks!"
Silence.
"Well, if you've got nothing else to say, I'll just be going in now…" Cliff began to sidle through the doorway, but Jack suddenly grabbed him by the arm.
"Wait a minute," he said suspiciously. "Where's your wife?"
"What kinda question is that?" Cliff demanded.
"A question I want answered, you little punk!"
Before Cliff could oblige (or kick his ass, which he was probably more likely to do), Jack's mind wandered elsewhere. "Hey, Karen told me something funny the other day," he remarked, apropos of absolutely nothing. "Did you know that you and her are cousins?"
"…Uh-huh."
"No, really! You are!"
"…I know."
"Right, just making sure. Hey, so that means we're cousins-in-law or something! We're related! Isn't that cool?"
"Delightful," Cliff replied with all the enthusiasm of a half-dead snail on depressants.
Suddenly Jack got a good look at Cliff's face. "Holy shit in a crackerjack box! You look like crap!" he exclaimed. "What the hell happened to your face?"
Cliff scowled. "You're no beauty queen yourself, asshole," he snapped. Then he explained, "My wife and I had a fight last night. She punched me in the eye."
Jack chuckled in sympathy. "That sucks, man. I'm glad Karen never tries to punch me in the face. She just throws things at me from time to time. But hey, I throw stuff at her too, so it's all good."
Cliff stared. "You…throw things…at your WIFE?" he asked slowly.
"Yeah. You know; rocks and that sorta thing. Don't get me wrong, though- it's all in good fun! So I'm sure she doesn't mind."
Cliff shook his head in disbelief. "You are one screwed-up bastard," he muttered.
"What?" Jack asked blankly.
"…Never mind…" Cliff pushed his way past Jack and shut the door behind him.
Jack frowned. "What's got his goat?" he wondered. "Oh, well. Whoopee! I got cake! Now I need a good book to enjoy it with."
With this decision in mind, Jack trotted off to go pay a visit to Maria at the village library.
To his bafflement, there was no one there at the check-out counter when he arrived. "Huh?" he exclaimed, looking around. "That's funny. Isn't Maria or her mom always somewhere around?"
"H-h-hello," a shy voice stammered out from nowhere. "H-how are you?"
"ARGH!" Jack shot up about fifty feet in the air, or would have if the library ceiling went up that high. As it was, he launched himself up and clung to one of the wooden beams. "OH MY GOD, IT'S TRUE WHAT THOSE SCREWY KIDS SAY! THE LIBRARY IS HAUNTED!"
"Wha…what are you talking about?" the voice asked, sounding worried.
Jack gulped. "Maria? Is that you?"
"Yes it is, Jack. Wh-what's wrong?"
"What's wrong? I can't see you, THAT'S what's wrong!" he bellowed angrily. "Where the hell are you?"
"Jack? I, I'm right down here, at the counter. What do you mean you can't s-s-see me? Why are you acting so strange today…?"
Jack stared. There was no one at the counter! But sure enough, that was where the voice seemed to be coming from. Very slowly, he dropped himself down to the floor and went over for a closer look.
"Ah-hah!" he suddenly exclaimed. "You're hiding under the counter, aren't you?" He dropped down to his knees and poked his head around.
"YEEK!" The empty air beside him let out a scream, which caused Jack to jump back in alarm. "J-J-J-Jack! What are you doing! You, you, you…p-p-pervert!"
Jack blinked. "Wha…?" he said, utterly confused. "Okay, this is too creepy. Forget the book; I'm outta here!" Jack hastily made his exit, before Maria-who-wasn't-there could bitch-slap him or something. Perhaps it was just as well, because it wasn't like he was all that much of a reading person, anyway.
On his way home, he ran into Harris, the postal worker. "Why, hello there, Jack!" Harris greeted him cheerfully. "How are you?"
Jack stopped dead in his tracks and turned to stare at him, "Harris," he said thoughtfully, "did you know that your wife has turned invisible?"
Harris stared back at him, a blank look on his face. "…Letters are wonderful," he finally said stupidly.
"Yeah, figured you'd say something like that," Jack muttered. "Never mind."
Harris shrugged it off with a smile. "…Oh, hey! Wait a sec, Jack!" he called out.
Jack turned around. "What now?"
"Your wife wrote a letter to you." He dug energetically through his mail bag. "It's in here somewhere- Ah, eureka!" Pulling out a small envelope, he handed it to Jack. "It was sent from her parents' house. She there for a visit?"
Jack took the letter from him. "Huh? Oh, sure," he replied in an absent-minded fashion. "I guess. See ya later!"
"Bye!" Harris waddled away happily to continue his postal working.
'Man, I am REALLY hungry now!' Jack thought to himself. He made his way home and tossed the letter dismissively on the table before settling himself down to enjoy his cake. Somehow he managed to scrape most of its remains out of his pockets and onto his plate, and he fell to eating it with much pleasure.
A few minutes later, he suddenly remembered the letter from Karen. Stuffing a final morsel into his mouth, he reached over and picked up the envelope. 'Christ, why's she keep sending me all these letters? She's wasting stamps! I work hard to make money for those stamps!' he thought to himself in irritation. He pulled the letter out. It read,
"Ahem. I SAID, I'm back at my parents' house! You know, as in I'm NOT WITH YOU anymore? How obvious of a god damn hint do I have to give you, you retard?
"-Karen."
"Uh, hello! I noticed she's not here! Jeez, what's with her and having to state the obvious all the time? She wasted good stamps to tell me that?" Jack said to himself in disgust. He threw the letter aside and went back out to go fish for a while.
A/N: From a review one of my friends gave, I see that it would probably be best if I explained the parodied things in each chapter. No, I'm not going to dissect each and every joke or punch line- I mean, jeez; what a way to kill the humor. But in HM64 there are a lot of glitches and random, whacked-out stuff that you can have Jack do that everyone may not be aware of. And if you are aware of them, it makes some of the oddities in this story a little easier to understand. Or you can just run off and try whatever it is I'm describing for yourself, in the game. Right now I'll explain some of the stuff I didn't get around to last chapter along with this chapter's stuff, because…well, I didn't do it last time! And I should have. So here goes:
Chapter 1:
1. Heart Levels: As most of us know, in Harvest Moon you can marry an "eligible" girl once you work her heart level up to Pink. The color order you have to work up from goes as follows: White, Purple, Green, Yellow, Pink.
2. So you miss the bachelor's life: When you marry, you still have to work to keep your wife's heart level Pink. If you neglect her for a long, long time, her level will drop down to Yellow. If you continue the neglect it will turn Green, which is when she'll start to bitch at you about how you don't pay enough attention to her or whatever (well, Karen will definitely bitch like that…the other wives just sort of whine that they're lonely or tired or whatever). Once her heart level goes all the way down to Purple, the next time you enter your house you'll find a note from her saying that she left; she went back to her parents' house. Of course, if you're really sick of your wife (or if you're just bored and looking for some kicks) you can just take the Jack Harvest approach and give her rocks and weeds. That'll make her hate you a lot faster.
Chapter 2:
1. Disappearing housewives? WTF: This wasn't as random as it probably seemed to be in the story…(sweatdrop). In the game, once your wife leaves, all the other women you could have married vanish off the face of the earth. The game designers probably did this in order to prevent…well, you know; 'when the cat's away the mice will play' and things to that effect. Even if the women have married, they will still disappear. One strange thing is that even if this happens, when you go to the library Maria won't be there- but supposedly, if you talk to where she's supposed to be standing behind the desk, she'll respond like she normally does! So it's like Jack's talking to a ghost or something. (Actually, I haven't tried this out myself because the time I have Jack chase his wife away always falls in the first to the tenth of the month, which is when the library's closed.)
After this chapter, I will just list this section as "Explanations" and put the A/N after it, separated. Just so we keep things all nice and organized-like.
And now it's time for my favorite part: review responses! Before I start, I would like to give a most enormous thank you to the people who reviewed. In the words of a friend of mine, you all rock my many pairs of socks! And I mean that!
Wolf McCloud-123: Why, yes; you are the very first person to review this story! Are you special, or are you special? I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed Chapter 1, and you're very welcome about the Hot Topic thing. And don't you fret, because just now I did review those two chapters of yer fic!
attaasa: Thanks! Glad you liked it. I explained the heart level thing up there for you, so I hope that clears up a bit of the confusion. You really should play a Harvest Moon game or two though, y'know! They have one for Playstation called Back to Nature and it's a lot like the N64 one (they also have one for the PS2, but that's one's not really worth playing…).
I should also point out to those of you who do play HM64 that a lot of last chapter was making fun of Jack and Karen's married life if she's his bride, so if you did have your Jack marry her, you may understand a bit more where the parody thing comes in.
Queen of the Insects: Aww, I love you too!
Cammie Jensen: Wow…thanks! I really appreciated your review. I didn't expect this story to be called intelligent, of all things… XD. But I'm glad you thought it was funny!
Atavaka: Nice to hear that you liked the rock-throwing part. And I liked the way you described Jack as being "completely oblivious". Hah! Maybe I should use that somewhere, sometime- if that's okay with you!
Footleeismysexysensei: WHOA! You live! (throws confetti and soda around). You have no idea how happy I am to finally hear from ya again! Sorry about the notebook thing…ergh, that sucks! And not just for you, but for all of us who enjoy Caelin Anonymous! Did it get lost through the screwy postal system, or is it just really slow in coming? Well anywhose, I hope they get recovered, somehow! Can't wait to read your stuff again! Holy crap, this is starting to sound like a review and not a review response. Oops. Ahem, so anyway- I don't think it's possible to get Jack's wife's heart level lower than white (and that's only possible if they're both outside, and there are a LOT of weeds in the field).
And yes, this fic is a bit more risqué than my first two. And don't worry; I won't be dropping any f-bombs whatsoever. By that point I kind of sis out too; especially since this is ultra-clean Harvest Moon we're talking about here.
As a matter of fact, I've only read one HM fanfic that f-bombs a lot…it's called Harvest Moon: A Horrible Life, by this guy called Zephyrage. It's really funny, however, and it's in my Favorites. So go read it if you're bored!
Well, so that's it for the Responses! This was a long one, I know; but people left long reviews, too! And if you can take the time to make a nice and long review, the least I can do as thanks is make a nice and long response! I would also like to thank the reviewers again, because each and every one of you left interesting and intelligent reviews. And that's REALLY something. You should all feel proud of yourselves for your mAd rEvIeWiNg SkIlLz!
Of course, short or long, well-punctuated or not, and even negative or positive, all reviews make me insanely happy! I'm just a sucker like that. So you know what to do now, right? Start clicking and REVIEW! Yaay!
Next: An Achy-Breaky Heart