Chapter 9

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"This is terrible!" Popuri wailed, eyes filled with tears. "We forgot Elli! And now she's all alone in the Inn, scared and lonely and getting hit on by creepy old men!"

"What are you saying, exactly?" Mary, whose father was one of the only four men who typically visited the Inn for a drink every night, asked suspiciously.

"She's going to kill me," Karen sighed, shaking her head sadly. "She whined and bitched and complained about having another meeting at all, and the rest of us weren't even there to have it."

"Maybe someone should go check on her," Mary suggested hopefully. "I'll volunteer!"

The blonde considered this.

"Okay, go ahead. We'll look after things here. But when you find her," Karen continued, fixing Mary with a very serious gaze, "make sure you both get back here, fast."

"Sure," Mary chirped happily, all but skipping away from the pond.

"So, did you girls actually need something, or did you only summon me to relate absurd suspicions?" the Harvest Goddess asked snippily.

"Oh, we're done; you can go now," Popuri replied cheerfully.

Karen winced and inched away from her friend, as though expecting a bolt of lightning at any moment.

"Oh! Can I?" the Harvest Goddess gasped sarcastically.

"Well, sure," Ann replied, beamingly missing the point. "We don't need you anymore, so you can go whenever you want. Say hi to the Kappa for us, okay?"

Karen, by this point, was huddling in a terrified little ball under a tree, as she had, right from the first time she had successfully snuck into a bar, been far more interested in beer than books, and had thus never learned much of lightning and its tendencies.

"If she had a farm," the Goddess muttered, glaring at Ann, "I would curse all her cattle but good."

With that, she disappeared in a brilliant flash, leaving behind three very relieved young ladies.

Their relief, however, was to be short-lived.

"Hey, guys! What are you all doing here?" a voice called cheerfully from the edge of the clearing.

Ann and Karen turned. Popuri continued to decorate her hair with flowers.

There, at the edge of the path leading away from the pond, stood Sakura, in all her farmer-ey glory.

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"Tell me why we're doing this again?" Gray requested grumpily as he hurried after the other three boys along the road leading out of town and down into the woods.

"She took our jobs!" Cliff exclaimed unintelligibly.

Rick winced, before glaring at the other long-haired boy.

"Will you quit saying that! No one took your job! You don't even have a job!"

"Well, not any more," Kai snickered. "Sakura took it!"

"Durkr drbs!"

"Cliff, if you don't cut it out, we're gonna ditch you in the mountains," Gray warned.

Cliff grinned.

"Sorry. It just felt right, you know?"

"No," Kai, Rick, and Gray replied flatly as one.

"And by the way," Gray added sulkily, "no one answered my question."

"Are you serious?" Rick demanded, laughing at the sheer absurdity. "As we speak, we each have a one-in-five chance of losing our girlfriends to Sakura! That's twenty percent!"

"Yeah, thanks, man, but I passed third grade math," Kai snickered.

"Actually, it's twenty-five percent," Gray pointed out.

Kai blinked, then frowned.

"No, I'm pretty sure that one out of five is twenty percent."

Gray rolled his eyes beneath his hat.

"Yeah, but there are only four girls vying for Sakura's attention, now that the doctor dragged Elli away like that."

"Oh, geez, he's right!" Kai wailed. "Lucky bastard!"

"Luck had nothing to do with it, Kai," Rick said grimly, clapping the other boy on the shoulder, regardless of how utterly bizarre this simple gesture might have seemed merely a season ago. "The doctor did what the rest of us weren't man enough to do: he reclaimed his woman by force."

"And I guess that's what we're gonna do, huh?" Gray asked sarcastically.

Cliff scratched his head.

"I don't think I have a woman. Or a job."

"Well, I don 't know about you, Gray," Rick called to the behatted boy, both arriving at a mutual agreement to ignore Cliff, "but I'm going to Harvest Goddess Pond so I can tear that farming wench limb from limb for seducing the affections of MY girlfriend away from me. Oh, just wait, Sakura. Your time is coming. Your blood will flow like water, staining the land for generations to come!"

"Was he always like this?" Cliff muttered to Kai as Rick went off into a laugh of gleeful evil.

Kai frowned.

"Not really, you know. He and Karen have always just been pals. Everyone could see that they were crazy about each other, but neither of them would make the first move because I guess they were happy as friends. I guess he's always been nuts about me dating his sister, but I think that's only because I'm dating a lot of other girls too, and he's worried that I'm cheating on her because she never bothered to tell him that we're non-exclusive. And I'm pretty sure brutal dismemberment never entered the picture before, even with me."

Cliff nodded sagely.

"Well, Sakura did take our jobs."

Kai patted Cliff on the back.

"Yeah, that's right, man." Then he grinned. "Hey, wait a second. You know that the girls Sakura doesn't pick are gonna be devastated, right? They're gonna need a shoulder to cry on. And I've got two right here!"

"Kai, will you try to focus, please?" Rick requested tersely. "Brutal violence! Sakura will be vanquished, and none of us will have to fall back on mail-order brides!"

"Hey, man, make love, not war," Kai pleaded, before coming to a halt and posing sexily.

Gray uttered a long, despairing groan.

"It's at times like these that I wish the on-call doctor the night I was born had been really clumsy and dropped me out a window or something..."

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Francis L. Pheberton, more commonly known to the denizens of Mineral Town as simply The Gourmet, a legend among men whose tastes were law in the culinary world and whose favour was a glowing badge of honour to any chef, however prestigious his schooling and position, walked jauntily along the road out of town and south to Super-Happy Amazing Funshiney Rainbow Sparkle Farm.

His very being was filled with joy and sublime gladness of spirit, which was no small feat, as there was a great deal of his being around to be filled. Nevertheless, the thought of that special lady through whose farm he was currently sauntering, his Delicate Pastry of Bliss, his Sakura, accomplished it easily, and as he passed the chicken coop, he began to whistle a happy tune.

Something about toast. Strange, how he'd had all these toast-related songs stuck in his head since he'd first met her.

Speaking of toast, he sure could do with a slice.

But that could wait.

For now, a goddess awaited.

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Unfortunately for the lovely and talented Mr. Pheberton, it was not a goddess, but a brawl that awaited him at Harvest Goddess Pond.

Well, technically, there was a Goddess there as well, hence the Harvest Goddess bit of the title, but she was, at that point, hiding determinedly beneath the surface of the Pond bit.

The rather inaptly named goddess that Mr. Pheberton referred to awaited as well, but was at that moment so engrossed in trying to break up the fight, or at least find out what the heck it was about in the first place so she could more effectively spur it on, that she likely would have paid him little attention.

When Karen, Ann, and Popuri had finally recovered powers of motion and speech from the shock of having their presumed rival show up at the location that they had been expecting her for the past hour and rushed towards her, all brimming with frantic and angry questions, it had been just in time to provide Cliff, Gray, Kai, and Rick with the sight of a group of females flocking around the hated little female that had stolen their girlfriends or, as Cliff continued to declare cryptically, "took our jobs!"

"We're too late," Kai declared, watching in awe as the three young ladies rapidly assaulted the fourth.

"Like Hell we are," Rick snarled, mustache twitching frantically as he lunged at the gaggle of girls.

"Someone's gonna get sued," Gray warned with the air of knowing that he would be ignored – which, of course, he was.

"Karen!" Rick was meanwhile shouting, grabbing his maybe-girlfriend firmly by the shoulder and dragging her back from the blonde. "What are you doing? I'm the only one you yell at like that!"

"Yeah, well, tell that to your new girlfriend," she shot back, shrugging roughly out of his grip and wheeling furiously to face him.

Popuri's expression grew horrified, and she glared daggers at Kai.

"What! You knew that Rick was dating Sakura, and you were still at her all the time! You're as bad as he is, Kai! You just can't leave other people's girlfriends alone!"

Kai crossed his arms defensively.

"Oh, yeah, great. So, you're allowed to flirt with her all the time, but you get mad at me for doing it?" he demanded hotly, conveniently forgetting that neither of them had ever actually done so.

"Do you think any of them care that they all stopped making any sense about two minutes ago?" Cliff muttered to Gray.

Gray snorted.

"Try two seasons ago." Then he frowned. "Hey, where's Mary?"

"She went to find Elli," Ann replied from the other side of Cliff.

Gray stared at her oddly, and she gave a jaunty little wave in reply. Then he gave his head a quick shake to clear it.

"Look, whatever. I'm going to find Mary. You two...try to make sure they don't kill each other too badly."

With that, he was gone, leaving Ann and Cliff to exchange bewildered looks.

"Don't kill each other too badly?" Ann finally repeated. "Did that make sense?"

Cliff shook his head sadly.

"Nothing makes sense anymore," he sighed brokenly.

Ann sent him a huge, faintly blushing smile.

"Wow, the girls were right: you're really kind of cute when you're angsting!"

Cliff grew bright red, looking distinctly like a very small animal staring down an active volcano – or anything else staring down an active volcano, for that matter – and finally managed a goofy little smile.

"Thanks, Ann." He stared shyly down at his fingers for a long moment, fidgeting slightly and bouncing his weight from foot to foot. Finally, he smiled back at her again. "You know, I think any man should be honoured to go on a jealous rampage over you."

"Really?" Ann said with a huge, nervous smile, rubbing the back of her head reflexively. "That's sweet, Cliff. You, too. But, uh, girls. Not guys."

"Nah, I'd be a little scared if a guy was going crazy over me," Cliff laughed, slightly hysterical with nervousness.

Then, as they looked up at what had previously been two bickering couples and one bewildered little agriculturist, now a dust cloud with the occasional limb shooting out of it and profanities of all colourful varieties drifting therefrom, Ann made a face.

"You think we should do something about this?"

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"Mary!" Gray called when he caught sight, through the swiftly falling darkness, of a small, dark-haired shape knocking frantically at the door to the Clinic.

Mary turned and squinted in his direction.

"Gray!" she yelped joyfully, trotting towards him. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he assured her. "Look, Ann and Cliff said you were looking for Elli, and I thought someone should probably tell you that we saw the doctor drag her back to the Clinic earlier today."

Mary looked delighted.

"Really? That's great!"

Gray looked confused.

"Uh…why?"

"Because, Gray, if the doctor is dragging Elli off to secluded places, it means he wasn't Sakura's Number 1! Oh, she must be so relieved! I'm sure, with Elli keeping him company, he'll forget all about his unrequited love for Sakura in no time! I mean, we knew it probably wasn't any of you, because you were all having that We Love Sakura meeting upstairs, and it's hard to have a meeting about her and have a meeting with her at the same time, but you never know."

Gray stared, quite stunned.

"Uh, Mary? Are you sure you're okay? Sakura's rejection didn't, like, drive you insane with grief or something, did it?"

"Why would I care if Sakura rejected the doctor or not?" Mary scoffed. "I'm a lot more concerned with what she thinks of you."

"Me?" Gray echoed, horrified. "I haven't liked her since she came in and started flirting with my grandpa! She offered him favours in return for tool upgrades, and game up the next day with noise-makers and party hats."

Mary shook her head, looking distinctly annoyed.

"She really takes her puns too far sometimes."

"Yeah, no kidding," Grey snorted in agreement, then froze. "Wait a second; weren't you just knocking at the clinic? And no one answered! Oh, my God! The guys were right! Sakura has a plot to make sure every man in town dies alone, and when the doctor tried to take back his woman, she sent minions to stop it from happening! Who knows where they could be right now? We've got to get the others!"

"Gray, calm down!" Mary entreated, catching his arm as he started to bolt down the street. "Look; the lights are on upstairs. That means they're inside."

Gray scratched his hat.

"But… what are they doing in there?"

Mary giggled, cheeks growing beautifully sweet pink.

"Oh, I don't know. But I'm sure they're keeping busy."

"I gotcha," Gray said with a grin.

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"Alright, you sexy, sexy evil fiend," Elli said breathlessly, cheeks brightly pink and hands bound tightly above her head. "You have me bound, naked, and helpless at your mercy. Do with me what you will."

The doctor scratched his head as he peered down at the girl bound by wrists and ankles to his bed.

"Uh, you're not naked," he pointed out after a long moment of consideration.

"Well, we'll just have to fix that, now won't we?" she said through gritted teeth, her breathless expectation thinly disguised by noble self-sacrifice beginning to wilt a bit. Only for a moment, though. "Go ahead and rip it; I have six dresses just like this."

The doctor's grin stretched beyond the boundaries of a normal human face as he leaned over her and took firm hold of the collar of her dress.

"Yes, ma'am."

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"I bet they're working on some ground-breaking new medication in there, concentrating so hard they didn't even hear the bell," Gray continued, shaking his head. "Geez, what a pair of workaholics! Do they ever take a break, or just go at it all the time?"

"R-right," Mary agreed hesitantly, cheeks growing brighter. "Listen, Gray, now that we know the doctor and Elli are okay, do we really have to go back to the pond?"

Gray frowned.

"I guess not, but do you have some other idea?"

"Well, your room at the Inn is completely empty right now…"

"Hey, yeah! You have to come pick up your books anyway."

"It'll be just you, me, and a pile of books. And we can ignore the books," she added with an impish little wink.

Gray took some time processing this, before flashing her the second grin in the nearby vicinity in the past ten minutes to challenge the capabilities of the average human face.

"Cool."

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End Notes: Okay, Plan B: two more chapters. Well, one more chapter after this. This was supposed to be the last chapter, but it got waaaaaaaaaaay too long, so it is now two. Booya. Anyway, this was a sort of meandering, mostly-silly-dialogue chapter...which means it should fit in pretty well with the rest of the story. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Oh, yes; and I don't know what was up with Cliff, either. Let's just say that too much South Park equals a silly (well, sillier) fanfic author.