Harvest Moon: Doom the Homeland
Chapter Three: Fish from Hell
They were back. Apparently, the trio of gnomes was pissed off about Jack's treatment of them. This time, the immortal beings would not tolerate the farmer contaminating the world anymore.
With ten stab wounds to the back, Jack was on the threshold of death. He dragged his blood-soaked body through the homeland that he was supposed to save (not my finest description, not at all), but none of the villagers were there.
"What the hell do they have to do that's better than saving my life?" he asked, thinking that the inhabitants of this small town would care that he was oozing blood.
By the time he reached the Brownie Farm, he should have been dead. Gwen was brushing the coats of the horses while Bob was spreading fodder in the feed boxes. All the animals were happy. Once Jack staggered into the pasture, they became the horse gang again.
"Gw…Gwen…" he struggled to say, blood dripping from his mouth. "H…h…help…"
"How dare you!" she shouted, oblivious to the fact that the farmer had lost half of the blood in his body. "I thought you were here to help us, but you're just stalling! You haven't even tried to make a decent farm. "I'll never forgive you for this, Jack!"
With that, Jack passed out onto the ground…
"GYAUGH!"
Jack's breathing was heavy. He expected to be in Hell for his lifetime of perverted thoughts and actions, but was instead found in his farmhouse. Immediately, he saw a girl's face hovering over him.
"Hello Jack," she said. She was somewhat younger than Gwen and Gina, and her hair was a bright orange color. Her clothes were completely pink.
He screamed louder than he did when he was being murdered by Harvest Sprites. "Ack! What are you doing here? Who are you? How do you know who I am? What the hell happened?"
"I'm Katie, age sixteen, and I live at the restaurant-slash-bar-slash-illegal gambling casino," she answered at an incredible speed. "Oops; I said too much."
"But what about the Harvest Sprites?"
"You must have had a nightmare. Either that or you were so damn smashed that you were hallucinating."
"And…Dia's laser beams?"
"Oh, those things," she muttered. "Every time we get a new villager, she just has to scare them off with those damn special effects machines."
"And…the horse gang?"
She approached him, then said, "Don't look them in the eyes. They thirst for blood."
Jack let out a small whimper before poking his head out the window to see if his surroundings were safe. The girl chuckled at his fear and mistrust of all equine animals.
"We learned to tolerate it," Katie told him. "Eventually you'll learn to do so too."
"BUT WHY ARE YOU HERE?"
"You drank too much and passed out. We had to drag you to the farm after you ran into the kitchen and vomited. You ingested so much alcohol that you forgot that it happened…"
"Oh…" Jack sighed in relief. "I thought I had done something idiotic for a second."
One day later, Jack woke up without having done something idiotic. This time, he was optimistic about living in the village. He skipped merrily into the fields, where he was immediately stopped by the blue haired girl from before.
"Hello, sir," she greeted him. Her face was bandaged and her dress was slightly torn, but her emotions seemed unaltered.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Oh, I'm fine. Dia ordered me to take several pain medications days earlier, and the affects didn't wear off."
"That's…nice…" said Jack, trying to think of some way to ignore the fact that there was a psycho with millions of dollars and extremely antisocial actions pushing people off cliffs. "So… why are you at my farm?"
"I have a question, sir." She waited kindly for him to say if he would hear it.
"Um…what is it?"
"You're from Flowerbud City, right, sir? Do you remember those dresses worn at the Flower Festival, sir?"
Suddenly, Jack's extremely inappropriate memories (if he had any other kind, that is) came back to him. "Yes…" he drooled.
"Can you describe them for me, if that's okay, sir?" Gina asked, taking a ripped up notebook from her dress and flipping it open.
And for two minutes, the young man explained the wardrobe of people from the city to the blue haired girl. She scribbled the last note on her pad and put it back in her dress.
"Thank you very much, sir! I must go back before Dia finds out that I'm gone!"
Jack watched her run off. He sighed and dragged himself back to the Brownie Farm, where he would once again feed the cows and horses. Just to be safe, he left his wallet in his shack. In case one of the horses attacked.
"Damn…" moaned Jack, staggering home from his job. "Why did I pick a job there when I already own a farm of my own?"
"Hey, Jack," said Gwen as she walked past.
"…Well, that's the best explanation for it," he told himself as he walked home.
Of course, as previous events indicated, the farmer became lost in the forest. Thankfully, Jack managed to get out in a short amount of time and with little if any fire consuming the ecosystem.
The young man groaned as he reached his way out. Nearby, a young man with ridiculously spiky brown hair was chopping lumber with a sharp ax. The buildings there all belonged to the woodcutters. That group consisted of Gwen's grandfather and two unpaid apprentices, one of them being the pointy-haired boy.
After walking a few feet, he saw a boy with a blue bandana wrapped around his head. Had the bandana been of a different color (oh, say… lavender, perhaps?), Jack would have freaked out. The young man was sitting lazily by the river, holding a wooden fishing rod in his right hand.
"Um, aren't you a carpenter?" he asked, causing the other man to tilt his head back. "Should you be…er… practicing carpentry?"
"I'm Joe," he droned, turning back towards the lake. "Fishing is good…"
Jack walked up to him and waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. Joe was hypnotized.
The only way to end this was to steal the fishing pole from his hand. Knowing that it would take brute force, the farmer decided to dive onto his and try to rip it from his grip. Joe jerked his arm to the right, almost throwing Jack into the air.
"Damn!" the farmer spat, struggling to hold on.
He could always take some advice his father would have given had he been there, but that would involve dirtying the sickle in Jack's rucksack. In this case, "dirtying" could easily be replaced with "cover in splattered blood from Joe's forehead".
For some odd reason, homicide wasn't Jack's number one choice, so he decided to continue flailing around until he wrestled the item out of Joe's hold. He didn't have to fight the fisherman for the wooden pole, but felt a bizarre urge to just to talk to someone.
Perhaps it was to see if anyone else noticed how crazy things were in this place.
"Can't…give…up…" he told himself, knowing that the only person around him was too distracted to hear Jack talking to himself.
With a snap, the fishing rod snapped in two. A few splinters poked into the fisherman's hand, and Jack was flung backwards a few inches, but everyone was basically unharmed.
"Wha…?" was all Joe could say as he was violently snapped out of hypnosis. "Is someone there?"
"That's me," Jack said, although his voice was muffled by the fact that his head was buried in the dirt.
"You must be the new farmer," the other man guessed. "I'm Joe, and I love fishing!"
"I…fucking…guessed…" he answered between long, angry breaths. "Shouldn't you be helping the other woodcutters?"
"Not until my conditions are met," Joe snarled, breaking Jack's impression that he was a nice, lazy young man.
"Conditions?"
"I want a hair-cut like Kurt's!" he demanded.
Jack's jaw dropped, dumbfounded. He was so thunderstruck by the sheer stupidity that he felt the lower half of his head fit the floor.
"…What the hell are you talking about?" ((Hey, can you think of better dialogue?))
"You saw that rat over there, working with his spiky hair! He looks like some anime character while I have to wear this blue bandana in shame…"
Jack stared at the man, before a tear fell from his eye. "I understand. I too suffered like you do… Louis might have invented some way to combat your hair problem. Go there…"
"Thanks!" exclaimed the fisherman, his face full of new confidence. "I guess I can give you my fishing rod in gratitude. You're awesome!"
Joe ran into the distance, leaving his beloved fishing rod at Jack's feet. As he saw the man dash away, a single word escaped Jack's mouth:
"Sucker."
Whistling to himself, he strolled towards the spot where Joe was sitting. Assuming that he could stop quicker than the other boy could, Jack cast the line into the water.
Dia grumbled as he hiked towards the river. A titanium barrel with a "Caution: Radioactive" sticker slapped on it was on her back. The burden was making it difficult for the girl to walk.
Since she was an evil millionaire, she should have sent Gina or Martha to throw the waste away, but Gina was too weak to bring the barrel there. After all, if the weight of the barrel crushed and killed the maid, someone would easily find the barrel.
And, less importantly, Gina would die a horrible death.
Martha, the old woman, was useless as well. She would most likely mistake a famous politician for a garbage can and throw the contaminated, glowing, acid-filled container at him. Dia did want to get in trouble for the actions of her servant. It wasn't right.
Well, ordering them off cliffs and laughing manically wasn't right either, but to Dia her own safety mattered more.
"Can I leave these here?" she muttered to herself, dumping the barrel onto the ground. Her back was still throbbing in pain, but it was much better now. "Oh, what the hell…"
She kicked the barrel, staining her shoes with gleaming green contaminants. It rolled into the river, splashing a lot of water into the air and sending a dozen fish towards the surface of the water, floating upside-down. The fish that survived drank the poison, which turned their innards green.
"No one will notice," Dia said with a smirk, ignoring the fact the barrel, as well as the bizarre life-forms it spawned, were plainly visible.
Jack just kept sitting. He used every ounce of determination he had to stay awake. Nothing had happened.
And Joe became obsessed with doing this HOW?
His eyelids were about to fall when, suddenly, something pulled on the line. Immediately, he woke up, only to be sucked into a trance.
FISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISHFISH
Every ounce of Jack's concentration was on the body of water in front of him. He didn't really like about his actions. Instead, every thought in his mind turned into a fish. Saving the farm? Fish. Ideas to impress Gwen? Fish. Mastery of Socratic irony? Fish.
A long drop of drool fell out of Jack's mouth as he stared into the darkness. The rest of his body was still, except for the hand that was struggling to reel the fish in. That hand was spinning at three-thousand times the speed it takes for an author to come up with a crappy metaphor to compare speeds.
Gwen walked out of her house, carefully closing the door behind her. She hummed a song about injuring people in extremely graphic ways as she traveled over to the lake. Sitting near the river was a shady figure that she recognized as Joe.
"Hey, Joe, you lazy bastard!" she shouted, despite the fact that she herself didn't have a job. "Quit slacking off!"
He ignored her. She was astonished. Gwen's eyes narrowed as she marched over to him.
"You're lucky I didn't bring an…"
"…axe?"
Before finishing the threat, Gwen had grabbed the man's shoulder, only to find out that it was Jack. She began to tremble.
"Oh no, Joe's got him obsessed with fishing too!" she exclaimed, shaking Jack's shoulder. "Now he'll slack off all the time and let all his animals die!"
Her voice changed from fearful to angry after that statement. "If you let your animals die, I'll kill you! Damn that Joe!"
Jack didn't respond. Tears formed in her purple eyes. Could it be that she cared about him?
"IF YOU SCREW UP YOUR FARM--"
Nope.
Next time on Harvest Moon: Doom the Homeland
Chapter Four: Fish from Hell Part Two
…It's a direct continuation of THIS chapter. What else do you expect me to say?
Yay, it's time for me to thank my reviewers. 'Course, since I've been doing this for the past few chapters, I shouldn't have to introduce this. Ah, whatever.
Kairi7--The number you seek is only in your head, man. You gotta learn what's in your HEART first, man. Word.
Avalice-- Thanks for the review!
look over there its me!-- looks Accursed internet. I don't where you are... But thanks for reviewing, anyway.
Squiz-- I hope this update was quick enough to keep me alive... I mean... I hope you liked the chapter!