Krazy Kai

Chapter Twelve: PinkFluffyHyperYAYFLOWERS (a.k.a Popuri's Chapter)

Sorry! I promise the next chapter won't be as lousy and filler-y as this one. Also, I've decided to change the genre to Humor/Romance, since Jack does really like Karen, and that's one of the reasons he freaks out about Kai. And, on a fucking shameless note, romance fics usually get more reviews. I'm such a bastard. :P

"NOOOOOO!" Popuri's shriek didn't help the matter at all. A mass of dark brown, shriveled up matter that once looked like flowers was hit by the sound waves, crumbling it and blowing the bits away. The pink haired girl lowered her head in shame. All the work she did in Spring and Summer disintegrated before her eyes…

After sobbing for a few minutes over an annual occurrence, she decided to be cheerful again. The girl zipped away from her family's shop and towards the Green Ranch.

The crowds of people had departed, except for a single young man leaning against the fence, but Popuri didn't see him. Some of the more careless farmers (a good 80 percent of them, to be precise) had left their livestock there. The cows and…other miscellaneous animals were blinking in confusion, tilting their heads to try to find their owners.

The girl left a mirror image of herself as she dashed towards the livestock, barely touching the ground. She landed on a cows back, causing it to groan.

"Wheeeee!" she exclaimed, not noticing the farmer staring at her. "This is like when I was three, except this time I didn't fall on my head and get an owie!"

Don't act so surprised.

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The pink-haired girl did a cartwheel and rolled onto the Green Ranch's pasture. A six-year old Ann blinked in surprise as Popuri splashed mud into the air. The little girl approached her hyperactive friend slowly.

"Um, what are you doing?" she asked Popuri, who was currently being rocketed away on the cow's back.

"COW!" she shouted, since she was only three years old at the time. "Cow is fun!"

Immediately, she was hurtled into the air. An eight-year old Gray peered out the window of his shack, which Popuri promptly slammed into. He later gave her first aid, as he wasn't the chronically depressed jerk we know and love as he is in most of this story.

---

Popuri eventually got bored after an hour. She slid of the cow's back and spun in the air before landing on the ground. Standing nearby was Jack, who was perplexed.

"Why did you just get here at this time?" he asked her. "The festival's been over for a while now."

Overlooked in the previous setting description was the time. The sun was setting in the sky, as the buyer had just left Jack's farm for the city. The sky was red, but not in a way that would trigger Jack's paranoia and lead to inane raving. The way not involving aliens or chemical imbalances.

"Oops," Popuri said apologetically. "I just forgot it was today. Usually people just go to the Green Ranch to buy eggs, so I thought it was nothing important."

"And when they stayed there for five hours?" inquired the farmer.

"Well, by that point I didn't care about anything but the eulogy…"

Jack's eyes widened, despite him being incredibly tired. Someone had died. It was probably one of the elderly people, or… Karen? Did her liver explode from all the alcohol?

"…W…What happ-happened?" he barely managed to say. He slumped against the fence, unable to stand. How could this happen? Everyone in the village was so nice… with the exceptions of Gray, Saibara, and Gotz.

"It was th…the…" Popuri was equally upset. Tears streamed from her eyes. Someone so very close to them all was gone. Someone who was always there…

Carpenter? Potion shop owner? Vineyard manager? Salesman who was probably already dead by now?

At last, the pink haired girl ended the suspense. In a weak voice, she muttered…

"It was the flowers!" she wailed, jumping onto Jack for support.

"WH-WHAT?" A part of Jack was incredibly thankful that no human was dead. The rest of him was flabbergasted by the idiotic mourning coming from the girl.

"They were always there for me…" she moaned, wiping her eyes. "I took care of them all the time, and for what? They're all brown and turning into dust!"

"Oh for the love of…" Jack didn't waste time trying to make this easy. "Popuri, you can plant new flowers. You, however, made it seem like someone of actual importance was dead."

Well, it might not have been anyone important. No one really gave a damn about the potion shop owner or the three carpenters. Now that that's been mentioned, wasn't there four… oh, never mind.

"But what else do I have?" asked Popuri. "Most people think I'm strange because of my red eyes and weird hair."

"No, I think they've been dealing with that for previous generations of your family. I think they believe you're too childish to contribute to society."

"Exactly, and growing plants is the only thing I can do to stop myself from annoying people. You remember how I usually stalk you more in Fall and Winter!"

Jack froze for a moment. It was true. Despite the fact that she followed him many times during the first half of the year, she pursued him non-stop the rest of the time. Crap! If plants never died, he could get her to leave him alone for good!

But did Jack really want that? Despite the…well, stalking that would get arrested in most of the world, Popuri really was quite nice. Jack had never considered how the town treated her. Mayor Thomas, when not incapacitated, would be commonly heard mumbling curses about how Popuri had thrown mud all over his bedroom and planted flowers inside his house. She thought that the Sowing Festival's "let's-plant-flowers-all-over-the-damn-place" message should apply to every day.

Has it been a mystery as to what happens to the horse track for the majority of the year? The mayor used it to keep Popuri from causing chaos by distracting her with horses.

She was quite similar to Jack.

"I…I'm sorry…" he stammered. "I just thought that someone died, that's all." He said it as if nothing strange had happened. "So, you like…cows…?" Damn. It's a mystery how Jack could be so alone.

"Cows make mooing sounds," Popuri responded. Before Jack could smack his head, she continued, "They're always so happy, right?"

"Um…sure…" His cow was plotting something. This paranoia was actually justified by the threatening glares and ramming.

The pink haired girl approached him closely. By that time, Ann had left the house, wondering why she sensed trouble.

"What the hell are you doing here at this hour…oh, I don't care anymore." The redheaded girl grumbled and looked fiercely at Jack. "Don't you have your own farm to take care of?"

Knowing the nature of this story, it was most likely on fire. Jack had neglected his work for a while, and promptly ran away to go back to his farm.

"You know you shouldn't be doing that to the cows, Popuri," Ann insisted. "Do you remember when Stu and Kent used to be quiet kids?"

"DO YOU?" Kent asked. "How do cows make milk? Why's the farm called the Green Ranch?"

Before the author had to resort to using the clichéd question "Where do babies come from?" the two were chased off the fields by an incredibly irritable Gray. He growled and tossed a pitchfork, which never appeared in the game itself but does in every goddamn concept art of Jack ever made.

Popuri's eyes sparkled. She blushed as she watched him possibly injure small children.

What the hell was the logic behind this couple, anyway?