One of the things Jack hadn't liked about the military is how early he had to wake up. He was not a morning person. His brain was never fully functional until at least 11 in the morning. So when he was woken up the day after his first "incident" at 8am by rapid fire knocks on his door, he was not a happy man in the least.

"I'm up! I'm up!" He shouted at the offending door. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the person on the other side from knocking. Grumbling to himself, Jack got out of his bed and swung open the door. He was greeted by a dumb smile and blonde hair. "What the hell do you want?!" Jack yelled in Rock's face. The young man was utterly unaffected or oblivious to Jack's mood.

"Hey, man. I was hoping I could convince you to let me use your barn for a party next week?" Jack didn't even dignify the loud and obnoxious teen with an answer. He just slammed the door in his face and went back to bed. "Is that a yes?" He still heard Rock ask through his wooden walls.

"Note to self: when I remodel the place, be sure to add soundproofing so I don't have to deal with this ever again." His eyes were closed for about ten seconds before he fell asleep. However, Rock suddenly wasn't the only one outside his door.

"Oh, hey! Takakura! What's up man?"

"Rock? What are you doing here so early?" Takakura's voice joined in.

"I was hoping to get Jack's permission to use his barn for a party next week."

"At 8 o'clock?"

"Thought he'd be up."

"Let me tell you something kid, Jack is not a morning person and he was in the military-"

"Cool! Think he'd tell me any stories of the top secret missions he's been on?"

"My point is that he's a trained killer and you just annoyed him."

"Oh… I think I'll go now."

"Good idea." Soon enough there was knocking at Jack's door yet again.

"Rock! Just go home!" The door opened, and his father's old friend walked in.

"I don't think I'm an annoying blonde kid with too much time on my hands." Jack looked up from his pillow.

"Give me a break, its too early for me to start thinking." Takakura pulled out the chair at his desk and sat down.

"Then I guess it's too early to talk about what happened yesterday?" THAT woke him up.

"Ugh." Jack moaned, sitting up in his bed. "The wind. It sounded so much like something I wish I could forget. Threw me into a flashback. Speaking of which…" Jack reached over to his bottle of pills placed neatly on his desk and popped two in his mouth.

"You been having nightmares again?" Takakura asked. Jack swallowed his meds and nodded.

"If reliving my last mission and everyone who died looks like half their face had rotted away counts as a nightmare." The young man said bitterly. "So what exactly about yesterday did you want to talk about? I'm not talking about what happened to me during the war." Takakura sighed. He'd been trying to get the kid to open up about that ever since he got here.

"You said the wind triggered your flashback, right? It's almost always windy up there, so I'm pretty sure you won't be leaving the valley any time soon. Which means you can't attend any of those meetings with the shipping company in Mineral town."

"Which means you are gonna have to deal with those instead." Jack added in. "At least, until the wind stops triggering flashbacks, which I highly doubt that will ever stop. Or we hire somebody to go to these meetings for me."

"Then I guess we'd better start looking for someone then. I'll let you have the final say since this is technically your farm."

"Oh goody, more work."

"Speaking of work, Mira's not going to take care of herself." Takakura said with a slight smirk. "Neither are those precious tomatos and watermelons of yours."

"Damn you, sarcasm." Jack muttered as he stood up.

"I'll be waiting for you in the barn." Takakura said to him, and walked outside, leaving Jack to get ready for the day.

About the same time, a familiar redhead was sitting on the riverbank with her feet dangling over the water. Behind her, a middle-aged man emerged from the tent he'd been living in since he came to this valley. His name was Carter, the professor in charge of the archeological dig in the valley.

"Oh, hello Nami." Carter said to her.

"Hey carter, find anything interesting at the dig yesterday?" Nami asked Carter.

"No, sadly." Carter said. "I thought Flora had found something that could prove my theories about an ancient civilization this valley, but sadly it turned out to be a goat statue."

"Mind if I have a look at it?" She asked.

"The statue?"

"What else?"

"Sorry, Nami, Its important to my research. It may not have been what I was looking for, but it might give me a clue as to where to look."

"I'm not asking to take it home, I'm asking if I can see it."

"Hmmm, maybe. Why do you want to see it?"

"Secret." She stated matter-of-factly. Carter took a moment to think about it.

"Fine." He shrugged. "Couldn't hurt." He ushered her into his tent, which was full of old artifacts he had recovered from the site, and the sleeping cots for both him and his assistant. "Now, where did I put it?" He moved over to a shelf of objects. Nami took this moment to grab her small notebook and a few pencils from her back pocket.

"Found it!" Carter announced. He took a red clay statue off the shelf and showed it to the young woman. It was worn and broken in some areas, but remarkably intact for something so old. "As said earlier, I originally thought it belonged to the ancient civilization I believe lived in this valley nearly five thousand years ago. Then I noticed this here." He pointed to a wavy pattern along the edges of the statue that was barely noticeable due to erosion. "This pattern was commonly used by the seafaring inhabitants of southern Kyushu, and it made me realize that I was mistaken."

Nami listened silently while sketching the priceless artifact Carter held in his hand. Paying particular detail to the pattern that he had pointed out. It took her a couple minutes, but she had drawn a detailed sketch of the statue. Carter looked at it as she was finishing up.

"Wow, that's really good. You ever think about selling your sketches?" He asked.

"I'm not that good." Nami replied. She quickly finished up most of the minor details of the statue sketch and closed her notebook. "Thanks for letting me see it." With that, the redheaded woman walked out of the tent and was on her way to her next destination, wherever that may be.

However, on her way there, she just happened to glance between a patch of trees and saw Jack working in his fields… shirtless. While he wasn't as muscular or bulky as most men in the military, his body was obviously built for endurance. You had to be to carry more than one hundred pounds of armor, weapons, and gear for twenty miles a day through harsh desert as part of training.

Nami was frozen to the spot, unable to take her eyes off him. But it wasn't his muscles or body that she found so fascinating. Just under his left shoulder was a hole-shaped massive scar. On his right arm was a vertical line along his bicep. Just under his belly was another hole scar, not nearly as big as the one under his shoulder, but obviously from a similar injury. Many other scars decorated his body as small pinkish blemishes against his otherwise tanned skin. These were what caught her attention. A thousand questions shot through her mind.

Who was this guy exactly? How did he get those scars? What the hell did he go through? What could have made those scars? To name but a few.

"Hey! My face is up here!" the target of her thoughts called over to her, and snapping her out of her thoughts. She quickly ran out of sight of the new farmer before returning to her thoughts. Maybe this guy was more interesting than she first thought?

"Who was that girl?" Jack wondered after the mysterious redhead ran off. Takakura chuckled and went back to his own work. Until Jack learned the ropes of farm working, He would have to earn most of their money.

"The redhead?" He mused. "Her name's Nami. She's a traveler, rented a room at the inn about two weeks before you got here. Not much of a people person from what I gather, but then again, neither am I."

"Wonder why she was staring at me?" The older mentor laughed.

"You aren't wearing a shirt."

"Well excuse me, it's hot out!"

"It's early spring and the guy who spent a year in the desert is complaining about the heat?"

"Hey, I've been away from that desert for months! My heat tolerance isn't as good as it used to be."

"Whatever, my point is that you are buff, and girls usually do like buff, sweaty guys. She probably liked what she saw and stopped to check you out."

"Really?" The young man sounded annoyed.

"You don't sound too happy about it. You're not…"

"OH HELL NO!" Jack yelled, knowing exactly what the older man was about to suggest. "I like girls, I'm just the odd guy who's more attracted to a girl's personality than their body. Sometimes, I don't even notice if they're hot or not until I get to know them." Takakura looked at his dead friend's son. Maybe now was the time to tell him?

"Hey, since we seem to be on the topic, are there any girls in the village who've caught your eye?" Jack shook his head.

"Not yet at least."

"What about that girl Celia? She was the one who took care of you after what happened yesterday."

"Ugh, don't even remind me about that. I'm pretty sure I scared her off."

"She was actually really concerned about you. When I got back from the meeting around sundown, she came running to find me and let me know you suffered a relapse."

"Well ain't that sweet of her." Jack sighed. "Sadly, I don't think she's someone I can see myself with."

"Oh, why not?" The younger farmer remained silent for a good few minutes.

"I'd rather not say. But I gotta wonder, why bring this up all of a sudden? You were so determined to make me focus on the farm and now you suddenly want me to find a girlfriend?" Now it was Takakura's time to sigh. This wasn't going to end well.

"It was your father's dream to have a family on the farm-"

"So that's it." Jack sneered. "He couldn't live his dream, so you want me to do it for him. Let me tell you this; my old man's dreams died with him. If I do have a family here, it'll be because It's now my dream, not because I inherited it from of my prick of a deadbeat father." Jack's eyes glared with such fury that Takakura had never seen. Yet, the man's voice was chillingly calm. Cold, even. Sure, he knew it before, but this was the moment that Takakura realized that Jack truly was the trained killing machine the military had wanted him to be.

He may be a farmer now, but Jack still possessed that killer's instinct that had been drilled into him so long ago. "If only you could have seen what your leaving has done to your son." Takakura thought. "Or maybe you already knew, and you left him the farm and this chance at a new life as an apology?"

"I'm going to take care of Mira." Jack said, his voice still cold as ice. "Then I'm going to do some exploring around the village. Maybe check out that forest on the edge of myproperty." Putting emphasis on the word "My" to remind the older farmer that this was now Jack's farm, not his father's. Not a word was said by either farmer as Jack set off to accomplish what he just declared he was going to do. Takakura hung his head as he got back to work.

"I messed up." He muttered to himself.

A/N: So, Nami shows up again, and we get to see a bit more of how badly screwed with Jack is.

I actually wasn't planning on updating this quickly, but this story seems to have gotten pretty popular compared to everything else I've written. It's at 101 views last I checked and already has more alerts and reviews than my main story which has been out for even longer and has three times as many views.

Anyway, my biggest problem with writing is coming up with names and random characters. If anybody is interested, I am thinking about accepting submissions for characters in Jack's military past. If you want to, you can PM me a character profile. It's not really necessary, but I'm lazy and I got a summer internship (Paid!) that eats away at my writing and brainstorming time.

Praise the holy log! (Yes I am going to be doing this at the end of every chapter. Blame Third Fang for winning the bet and then read his fic "Yet Again With a Little Extra Help" if you are a Naruto fan. It is hillarious, awesome, and jaw-dropping.)

I don't own any characters from Harvest Moon!