Chapter 7
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"Mary!" Ann called cheerfully, trotting over to the table tucked cozily into the corner of the inn's main room farthest from the stairs, and occupied only by one dark-haired bespectacled young lady and a hefty stack of hardcovers. "You're here early."
"Hi, Ann," Mary greeted with a slightly forced smile. "I wanted to get here before Dad – I was hoping I might be able to blend in, so he wouldn't notice me."
"Right," the pretty redhead grinned. "Because nothing's more inconspicuous than a bookworm in a bar with a huge pile of books.
Mary pouted, cheeks flushing pinkly.
"I didn't want them to get lonely if we took longer than usual."
"You're weird," Ann informed her gently as Saibara danced past in a propeller beanie, juggling three rubber chickens. "I think you might be the weirdest person in town."
"Yeah, little Mary's a weird one, alright," Duke agreed from across the room, where he was busily puffing on a pipe, sending shimmering soap bubbles out the top with every puff.
Mary glowered darkly over the top of her stack of books, the intimidation factor of the gesture rather lost amid the inherent cuteness that had been her greatest irritation ever since she had been turned away from a career as a bouncer.
"If it wasn't so blatantly ignoring a lot of things about the current situation, I would say this wasn't funny anymore."
But before Mary could go on and explain – loudly and at great length – to the terrified (or perhaps merely rather amused) patrons of Doug's Place why exactly this wasn't funny anymore, fuelled by the bitterness and annoyance of the past two seasons, the door swung open and a little blonde, clad in a long grey trench coat, a bowler hat, a scarf over her face, and a pair of dark sunglasses ambled toward the counter.
"Hey there, stranger," she greeted Doug in a voice that tried to be sultry but came across as merely sort of goofy. "Let a girl use your phone? I'm prepared to pay, of course."
"Sure, Sakura," Doug laughed. "That'll be ten gold."
"T-ten!" she sputtered indignantly. "What kind of rip-off business are you running here!"
"The kind where you have to pay for your goods and services," Doug snorted.
"Okay, fine," the bad-spy-movie-clad little blonde grumbled, shoving a bundle of money resentfully over the counter at the bartender. "But it's highway robbery."
"Think of it like…a tollbooth," Doug grinned, taking the money and pushing the phone toward her.
Sakura glared, snatching up the receiver and punching in the numbers viciously.
"This phone better get me a direct line to the Harvest Goddess, for this price."
"See that?" Mary was meanwhile whispering to Ann. "What do you think?"
"Hmm," Ann hmmed, peering carefully at the farmer chatting happily away on the phone. "She's sure whiny today."
"Do you think we should get a little closer and try to hear what she's saying?" Mary prompted, patience slipping.
Ann pulled a face.
"I don't know, Mary; is it really right to listen in on her phone calls?"
Mary took a deep, calming breath.
"Of course. How silly of me. Just because we've been following her home, camping outside her window, peeking IN her window while she's changing—"
"Hey, that's just you!" Ann protested.
"—following her back into town in the mornings, and going through her underwear drawer, why would I possibly think that listening in on her phone conversation, which she's having – loudly – in a public place is alright?"
"Well, as long as you know you were out of line," said the eternally cheerful and vaguely suicidal Ann.
"Go!" Mary barked, shoving Ann toward the counter.
"Okay, okay, I'm going," Ann groused, already sauntering across the bar in an exceedingly overdone, badly feigned version of a casual demeanour. "Hey, Dad," she greeted, leaning against the bar, inches from Sakura and her phone call, again trying for casual and failing miserably.
Doug regarded his daughter suspiciously.
"Ann," he began slowly, eyes jumping from her to Mary, who shrank behind her stack of hardcovers, to Sakura, who beamed cheerfully amid the whistle of Doug's suspicion flying completely over her head. "What are you doing?"
Ann crossed her arms, looking outraged.
"I'm visiting with my dear, hard-working father! Isn't a daughter allowed to visit with her father? We don't spend enough time together, anyway!"
"You live here, Ann," Doug reminded her, eyes darting even more furiously between the three girls.
"Aw," Sakura was meanwhile pouting into the phone. "I kind of wanted to meet in Rose Square – that always feels like our special place." A long pause, during which the blonde's expression turned both annoyed and confused. "What do you mean, Goddess Pond is a better backdrop for a plot twist?" She pouted again. "Okay, fine. I'll see you at the pond in an hour." She smiled dopily. "I love you, too, Snuggle-Pumpkin…No, I love you more!" Another pause. "Okay, bye, sweetie."
Hanging up the phone, she gave a long, blissful sigh, sent Ann and Doug a beaming, yet completely absent smile, and then proceeded to waltz out of the room.
"I wonder if Karen would consider this 'something she needs to know about'," Ann pondered aloud, chin in one hand. "Hey! Mary! Sakura was talking to someone named Snuggle-Pumpkin, and they made plans to meet at Harvest Goddess Pond in an hour! Do you think that's important?"
"What!" Mary yelped, springing from her chair and bolting across the room.
"I know," Ann said emphatically. "What kind of name is Snuggle-Pumpkin for a kid?"
"No! Of course it's important!"
"If only because someone should really call Social Services about those parents. Naming a kid something like that has to qualify as child abuse."
"For goodness sakes, Ann! Let's just go find Karen."
"Mary, wait!" Ann protested as she found her arm seized and it and the rest of her dragged towards the door. "What about all your books? Are you just going to leave them?"
Mary whimpered sadly. It hurt to do it, to leave her precious, wonderful books there in that smoky room with all the drunks, where anything could happen to them. But she and Ann were on a mission. For the good of their friends, their love-lives, and their friends' love-lives.
Without the acutely crucial actions that they were about to take, she might very well end up forced to endure seeing that sweet, shy, goofy smile beneath that cryptically-lettered hat directed at another girl; might no longer feel her heart beat faster until she was on the verge of passing out at approximately 1:30 every afternoon when she heard his footsteps just outside the door of the Library; might no longer have the delight of talking over their favourite books together.
Not to mention, if they didn't do anything, they would never make Karen shut up about it already.
That was worth a little sacrifice.
Wasn't it?
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"Alright, is everyone here?" Rick was meanwhile asking, his mustache waving slightly in the breeze as he paced back and forth across Cliff, Gray, and Kai's shared room, rented out for the purpose of A Meeting.
"Well, there are five shmucks sitting around here for another stupid meeting," Gray replied sourly. "And since no more than five people in any one town can possibly be this stupid, I'd say that's everyone."
"Great," Kai said enthusiastically amid the crash of Gray's point sailing over his head, out the window, and knocking over a garbage can. "If we're all here, let's get started. I wanna see what you guys have been up to all year."
"Sitting around the bar like a bunch of conspiracy theorist idiots, making sure that even if every girl in town hasn't turned into a lesbian, they will now," the behatted boy muttered, dropping his head to his hand in despair.
"That isn't true," Rick said sternly. "We're working as a body to identify and neutralize a threat."
"And the threat is…Sakura, right?" Kai said hesitantly.
"Yeah! She's trying to steal our girlfriends!" Cliff interjected, startling the other four young men, and then going immediately back to moping dejectedly at the room's small round table.
"So we believe at this point in time, based on the evidence we have gathered," the doctor added quickly from the chair next to him.
"Which is?" the maybe-haired young man prompted, sitting up from his position reclining on the middle bed.
"Have you noticed how quick she was to befriend all the girls in town?" Rick demanded.
Kai scratched his bandana.
"Well, Popuri seems to like her a lot, but doesn't Karen hate her?"
"Hate her?" Rick echoed. "She's always going on about how amazing and gorgeous and brilliant and talented she is! She accuses me of being in love with Sakura every two seconds! Now, think about it: Sakura's an idiot, but Karen thinks she's a hero. You can only be that totally off base with someone you're in love with."
"And even then," Cliff sighed, shaking his head. "Maybe Sakura has Karen hypnotized or something. I should ask Ann about it; it looks like they spend a lot of time together."
"That's because they're drawn together by a mutual desire to be accepted into Sakura's harem," the bespectacled young man informed him, swiveling about to pace the length of the room again. "And why don't you ask the doctor how much time Sakura's been spending at the Clinic lately?"
"But…couldn't she be there to see you, Doc?" Kai protested. "Don't sell yourself short, man; even if it's only because they're rotten gold-diggers, a lot of girls would love to marry a doctor."
"She's been there everyday," Tim said tersely, his mustache beginning to bristle slightly, "but I've only spoken to her about three or four times."
"Wow," Kai said emphatically. He shook his head and rested a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "You gotta put a stop to this. She's practically making fun of you, not only distracting your employees and wasting time that rightfully belongs to you, but stealing your woman! Using her feminine wiles on a sweet, unsuspecting, innocent girl!"
"With a peep-hole that she uses to watch him undress every night," Rick added with a snicker. "Yup, that's Elli; pure as freshly fallen snow."
"If Sakura even lets her use the peeping hole anymore," Cliff said darkly. "She's already got Karen; I bet Elli's next. After that, who knows?"
"I don't know," Kai said skeptically. "Popuri likes her and all, but I think they're just friends."
"That's how it begins," Tim said, so entirely deadpan that even he wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not. "The best of lovers start as the best of friends. Just look at Karen and Rick."
"Not that Karen and Rick'll be much of anything if we don't do something soon," Rick himself said gloomily. "Who knows? It might already be too late."
"Man, snap out of it!" Kai exclaimed, springing from the bed and shaking a very startled sandy-haired youth firmly by the shoulders. "You were so gung-ho about saving the girls from the clutches of this hoe-happy succubus, and now you're ready to give up? Geez, maybe Karen is better off as Wife #4 or something."
Rick was on the verge of protesting indignantly that he was certainly not giving up, and Karen wasn't going to be anyone's Wife Number Anything if it wasn't his Wife #1 and Only, when a clatter of chair against wall brought his attention immediately off of the guy he had reconciled himself to someday having for a brother-in-law, if only because Sakura had shown him that hey, it could be worse.
Gray, whose rather bizarre gesture of standing up angrily had sent the chair shooting back into the room's prettily papered wall, punctuated it by slamming his hand down on the table.
"Okay, you guys are all off your rockers! Look, Tim, I think you're underestimating Elli, and Rick, you're probably underestimating that girl you like...what's-her-name—"
"Karen," Rick interjected through gritted teeth.
"Right, Karen," Gray agreed absently. "Anyway, if your girlfriends are that fickle, I guess I feel bad for you, but crap, I'm just glad Mary's not like that. That's where your stupid theories fall apart: Mary hasn't even mentioned Sakura."
As though on extremely predictable cue, the door slammed open, and a pretty, dark-haired, bespectacled girl in a blue pleated jumper-dress burst into the room and immediately collapsed beneath the weight of an armload of books.
"Mary!" Gray exclaimed, across the room in an instant to help her. "What happened?"
"Gray," she gasped. "I have to go. Please take care of my books, okay?"
"You're...you're trusting me with your books?" the redheaded boy breathed, awestruck at this great honour.
"Yes, Gray," Mary replied gently, gathering up the stack and pressing the tomes into his hands. "I trust you completely."
"Why don't you just leave them with Sakura, huh?" Cliff interjected in another surprising display of actually, like, talking.
Mary frowned, confused.
"W-well, I don't know Sakura that well, and I don't want to ask a stranger to book-sit. And it's kind of funny that you mention her, because I'm actually on my way to find her." She sent Gray a pleading look. "So you'll take care of them?"
Gray smiled, a little forced.
"Sure, Mary. No problem."
A sweet, beaming smile, and she was gone. Gray stared, disbelieving and heartbroken, at the door for several seconds.
"That's it," Rick said softly. "That's all of them."
"That evil seductress has left no girl un-brainwashed," Kai said venomously.
"One girl isn't enough for her; she has to interfere with everyone's relationships," Tim said helplessly.
"Mary...not you, too," Gray said brokenly.
"She took our jobs!" Cliff said unexpectedly.
Rick, Kai, Tim, and Gray stared.
"Uh...what?" Kai finally ventured.
"Sorry," Cliff said, miserably sheepish, shrinking back into himself. "It seemed to fit."
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"Argh!" Karen noted curiously as she rebounded off the distinctly Ann-shaped blockage in the doorway.
"Ow!" Ann rejoined slightly snippily as she rebounded off the corresponding Karen-shaped blockage approaching from the other direction.
"Ann! Mary! Were you two trying to skip out on the meeting?" Popuri demanded reproachfully, looking up at the two girls from her position crouched on the ground next to Karen, repeatedly poking the sorta-blonde in an attempt to get a response.
"I'm glad we ran into you two," Mary began breathlessly, helping Popuri haul Karen from the ground.
"I'm not," Ann interjected from several feet away, where she was sprawled out on the floor of the inn. "Ow…"
Ignoring Ann, Mary grasped a dazed Karen's wrist and tugged her away from the inn.
"We have to get to Goddess Pond. Quickly!"
Popuri, in the process of dragging Ann to her feet, blinked.
"Um…why?"
"Sakura's meeting her mystery sweetie there in an hour," Ann replied with a weak grin, leaning gratefully into the pink-haired girl's supporting arm.
"What! Why didn't you tell us!" Karen demanded.
Ann looked at Mary. Mary looked at Ann. Moments passed.
"Geez, Karen, I kind of thought that's what we were doing," Ann finally admitted.
"Oh, forget it," Karen grumbled, quickening her pace and dragging Mary after her in an amusing show of role-reversal. "We have to get there, fast!"
"That's what Mary said," Ann grinned as she and Popuri trotted after their friends. "She got so excited, she almost left her books behind, all alone, in a public place!"
Popuri's eyes widened.
"Whoa…she really is in love with Gray!"
"Actually, I ended up leaving them with Gray," Mary explained, puffing slightly as she broke into a run to keep up with Karen's quick, long strides.
"That's good!" Popuri chirped. "I guess you know he's safe; congratulations, Mary!"
Mary frowned thoughtfully, slowing a bit and dragging Karen with her.
"It was kind of strange, you know; it looked like all the boys were upstairs with him. Cliff and Kai were both in, and I'm pretty sure I saw Rick and the doctor. I could be wrong," she added hurriedly. "I dropped one of my books on the way up, and one of the pages got bent, and sometimes when you're under great emotional strain, you begin hallucinating."
"Okay, if all the guys were there, who is Sakura going to meet?" Ann demanded explosively.
"We're going to find that out," Karen reminded her through gritted teeth. "But I have a theory…"
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Elli, meanwhile, was frantic.
The half hour she'd spent in good, solid moping mode when the doctor had hurried out for an early appointment that he'd avoided telling her about, eyes shifting nervously, was catching up with her now, as she found herself with fifteen last-minute things to do before closing the Clinic up for the evening, and five minutes to do it all and still meet Karen and the others at Doug's Place.
Drat it, she was not in the mood for this today.
Logically, she knew that this was exactly the kind of thing that they were trying to prevent and fix, the doctor running off like that and refusing to tell her what for, since he was obviously meeting with Sakura and just trying to spare her feelings.
But when the most appealing thing in the world is the idea of going upstairs and sniffling into a hot bath for a while before crawling exhaustedly into bed, one's fighting spirit tends not to be in top-notch order.
"Maybe everyone else will forget and I can come home early," she sighed with a sort of grim consolation as she locked the door behind her and started to the inn. "And if Karen yells at me for being late, I'll ram the entire bar somewhere extremely uncomfortable."
She moped and pouted some more.
"I hate spending money on drinks every Sunday night, too; why do Mary and I always have to pay, just because we're the only ones who earn a wage? For that matter, why on earth isn't Ann getting paid? Or at least, staff discounts for her and a few select friends to make the matter of idiotically plotting revenge against someone almost as stupid as we're all acting, a little more pleasant?"
Making her mind up firmly to tell her redheaded friend in plain, solid terms that she was being taken and shouldn't accept that treatment from anyone, even her father, Elli hurried around the corner onto the road leading up to the Inn, just as four agitated, noisily chattering young women that may or may not have been her four best friends in the world, scampered around the corner at the other side of the street, leading away from the Inn.
And somewhere, in a dark, damp, forebidding cave, a blood-red crystal beneath which was a rough wooden plaque bearing the name Acme Plot Device,glowed brightly, burning with the fires of a thousand contrivances...
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End Notes: Okay; no promises, but I think the plot might be starting to wind down. Or is that...up? Well, anyway, a lot of stuff is going to happen that I've been trying to fit in for the last seven chapters, and then the plot will meander aimlessly for twelve more chapters, until I finally just tack on a really dumb, awkward ending that makes no sense, and try to pass it off as having some artistic purpose. Go me!