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Post by Juxapose on Jul 10, 2008 16:29:49 GMT -5
Sorry for the long wait. It's time for the long awaited next chapter of this fanfic.
Part 2, Chapter 4
Rock and Witch Princess, New Rivals?
*Forget-Me-Not Valley Spring 15, 2108*
Eric yawns as he wakes up from another dreamless sleep. After his nightmares with his separation from Mary had finally been conquered, he has not been able to dream at all. Wiping away the sleep from his eyes, he takes some of the clothes that Ruby made for him earlier and wears them. A while ago, she went through the trouble of making him 6 new pairs of shirts and jeans. He wanted to pay for them, but she replied:
“I'm always one who helps others in need.”
That statement reminds Eric that he needs to start helping Marty soon. Checking his arm, he waves it up and down. He winces in pain, but it has mostly healed. He can use his tools again, but only for a few hours a day. Doctor Hardy mentioned earlier that overdoing that arm could put him in a cast again. But rather than worrying about it too much, he wears the blue and white checkered button up shirt, and a clean set of jeans. He decides to leave the shirt unbuttoned because it can get a bit too hot in the mines in the afternoon hours. He also grabs a belt and a set of gloves perfect for a day of work.
Just as he is about to leave, he looks around and finds his backpack. He stares at it for a while, knowing that he has not used it for a bit of time. Dust has started to gather on it. He knows that he can use his tools, but he refuses to do so fearing that memories better off forgotten may return. So instead, he goes over to the inn so that he can wash up and brush his teeth. After he is done his morning preparations, he descends the stairs into the main lobby. There, he meets a new face talking to Ruby.
The new guy looks over at him, and says, “What's up dude?”
Ruby looks over at him as well, and says, “Oh Eric! I'm glad you're here. This is my son Rock.” She then looks at her son Rock and tells him. “Rock, this is the new guy in the valley, Eric. He is the stranger who fell from the mountain.”
Eric takes a look at Ruby's son. Blond hair, brown eyes, slightly tanned skin, strange jacket with a golden necklace, and a somewhat laid back attitude being projected at Eric. From the first time he looks at him, he knows deep inside that he is not going to get along with him.
“You look like a hippie.” Eric says bluntly.
This throws Rock and Ruby off a bit. So Rock retorts, “Well, what's with you and that unbuttoned shirt? Trying to be macho or something?”
Being a farmer for a couple of years had given Eric a six-pack abs and muscles only attained through hard work. “No, but it's getting hot in the mines after working for hours.” he replied. He then looks at Ruby and smiled. He knows that he may have upset her by insulting her son, but he tries to show that he doesn't really mean any harm by it. “Thanks Ruby!” he said as he left the inn. He then looks around, and sighs a bit. He nearly forgot that he promised Flora that he would go shopping with her today. So he buttons his shirt up, and heads over to the beach where he meets up with Flora.
Three hours later, they arrive at Mineral Town beach. They walk over to the supermarket quietly. This is a normal occurrence, even though they stay in a tent, they rarely talk to each other. Flora wants to desperately break the ice and find out whats bothering him. But she has a hard time finding the right words. Rather than getting to the point, she starts off with normal chit-chat.
“Thanks for helping me out with the shopping Eric.”
Eric nods and says, “Lets just get this over and done with.”
Flora frowns at him. The first time he arrived at Mineral Town, he felt so excited like if something good was waiting for him. Now Flora gets the feeling that he feels that the whole village is out for his blood or something in that nature. The look that he gives off gives Flora the impression that he just wants to disappear. Fearing that she may upset him, she drops the attempt at a conversation with him.
Inside the supermarket, Flora heads over to the meat section to buy something for dinner. Meanwhile, Marty heads over to the seeds section to check out stuff that Marty can grow. “I wonder if he'll even get into this. . .” he said as he grabs some cucumber seeds and corn seeds for the summer. “That way, he'll only need to plant once. . . Or am I going too easy on him.”
An hour earlier, Marty decides to head over to Romana's Villa to see Lumina. He knows that Lumina has no feelings for him, but he still feels that there may be a chance that she may develop feelings with him. He knocks on the mansion door, and waits for someone to answer. As he waits, he looks over at a small shack standing on the left side of the mansion. He sees an odd eerie light coming from one of the windows. “Does someone live in there?” he thought to himself before the front door of the mansion opens.
Lumina walks out and asks, “Hello? Who is it?”
Marty snaps back into reality and says, “Oh, hi Lumina. I didn't have anything to do, so I thought I'd drop by. Can I come in and keep you company?”
“Umm. . . Sure.” Lumina answered with a slight smile on her face as she lets him inside. She rarely ventures out of the mansion, so she enjoys any company.
Inside the mansion, Marty nervously pulls out some Toy Drop flowers that he had picked for Lumina. He then presents them to her and says, “Ummmm. . . I got these for you.”
“Thanks, I really like these.” she replies as she accepts his gift, and places them into a vase.
Back in Mineral Town, Eric is still in the supermarket deciding on what seeds to buy Marty. As he stares at the turnip and strawberry seeds, a young girl walks out of the back room and notices him. Since she works at the supermarket, she decides to see if she can help Eric out.
She walks up to him and says, “Hello there, can I help you?”
“Yeah, I need to know what seeds are best for a novice farmer. . .” As he turns to talk to the female stranger, he stops and drop the seeds on the ground. His face becomes overwhelmed with shock as he looks at the girls face. She looks very familiar, almost too familiar. She has the same catlike green eyes, brunette hair, and blond bangs as Karen from 100 years ago. But her choice of clothing is different. Rather than a white tank top and violet sleeveless jacket, she is wearing a green jacket with a hood hidden under her hair and a black T-shirt. Her jean shorts replaced by green carpenter pants. Their faces look so alike, it's almost like looking at an identical twin.
“Is something wrong?” the strange young lady asked.
Eric trembled as he says, “Excuse me. . . But is your name. . . Karen?”
“Close but no prize!” she said with a cheerful chuckle. “My name is Karii, I live and work here in the supermarket.”
“Oh, I see.” said Eric. Thinking about it for a while, he realizes that Karen must have gotten married, and this woman has to be her great-great-granddaughter. “I'm sorry, but you look like someone I knew back in my hometown. Her name was Karen, so I thought you might have the same name.”
“Eric, I have all the groceries. Let's go.” said Flora calling him from the cashier. Eric nods at Flora, then says her goodbyes to Karii, and finally joins up with Flora. Eric offers to carry some of the groceries, but because of his arm he cannot carry too much.
On the way back to the beach, Eric remains quiet as usual. But Flora wishes to try to speak to him once again. She takes a deep breath and says, “Hey Eric, that girl from the supermarket. You know her?”
Eric looks back at Flora and says, “Not really. She just looks like someone I know, that's all.”
“How strange. You said earlier that you used to live here in Mineral Town. You're not an old man, so it couldn't have been too long ago since you lived here. But still, it doesn't look like you know anybody here, but everyone has been living here all their lives. Are you sure you used to live here?”
Eric gulps and starts to feel nervous. He feels like he is trapped in a corner, he is not fully telling the truth, but he's not lying at the same time. The truth is just too complicated, and telling it to anyone would only make him look insane. After all, she is letting a total stranger live with her, the last thing he wants is to upset or scare her.
“It's a complicated story. I don't want to talk about it.” he said dropping the subject.
Flora can see his serious face, and almost feel a slight sadness coming from it. Rather than forcing him to talk, she just drops the subject, and hopes that one day, he can come clean about his past. But still, Flora is an intelligent girl, she knows that there is something unusual about him. Especially the way he was rolling down a mountain in late Winter in the rain.
Back in Forget-Me-Not Valley, Rock decides to head over to the Mansion. He has always had a crush on Lumina since they met long ago. However, Lumina has no feelings for him as well. But even so, he still decides to drop by to deliver flowers every now and then.
Ignoring the eerie light coming from the shed, Rock knocks on the door. He is sure that Lumina is home because of the faint sound of the grand piano coming from inside. He waits outside holding the small bouquet of flowers in his hands. But instead of Lumina answering the door, Marty answers instead.
Rock and Marty look at one another with a displeasing look in each other's face. They have been rivals for a while, but they usually visit the mansion at different times. It's rare that they would see each other visiting the mansion at the same time. Lumina knows that when this happens, only trouble comes out of it.
“Can I help you?” said Marty in a sarcastic voice.
“Yeah, you can. Mind telling me what are you doing here?” responded Rock in a rude voice.
Marty starts to feel annoyed hearing him answer a question with a question. His tone was not making him feel any better either. But he tries his best to keep his cool, and answer, “I'm just visiting the mansion. And what business do you have with the Mansion?”
“That's none of your business! But if you must know, I came to see Lumina and drop off these flowers as a token of my affection.” answered Rock in a confident haughty voice.
Marty snatches the flowers from his hands and says, “I'll take them to her for you. Besides, I think 1970's called for you. They asked for their style back.”
Marty tries to shut the door in his face, but Rock stops it with his foot. After the insult from Eric earlier, he is not happy to hear one from Marty as well. So he looks at Marty in the eye, and says, “Why don't we step outside, and talk like gentlemen?”
Marty nods, and goes outside where they start to argue and throw insults at each other. Unknowingly, they are starting to aggravate someone else who they both are unaware of. Inside the shack next to the mansion, a young woman commonly known as the Witch Princess is mixing some dangerous chemicals for a potion. Sh she tries to pour one mixture into another, she can hear the arguing coming from outside.
At first she ignores it. She continues to pour the chemicals slowly into one vial to another. If she pours too fast, or if she spills some of one them, the potion could become unstable. But then Marty raises his voice suddenly forcing her to drop one of the chemicals on the floor. The vial then explodes causing a lot of smoke to fill the room as soon as it hits the floor. Neither Marty or Rock could hear the explosion over their arguing. Neither did they notice the Witch Princess open a window to let the smoke out.
As she is clearing the room, she takes a look at the mirror. Her pale skin is now covered in soot. Her dirty blond hair is now even dirtier than before. She screams as she realizes needs to make another trip to the lake to wash her clothes that are made of wolf skin.
As the smoke clears, she coughs loudly and clenches her fist yelling, “Okay, now I'm mad! Who the hell is that yelling in the middle of the afternoon! I was almost done with the discovery of the century!” After the smoke has cleared from her home, she looks outside with her almost glowing red eyes to see who is arguing. She sees both Marty and Rock having a heated discussion by the entrance of the mansion. The Witch Princess sighs and says, “I see, it's those two idiots again. The geek from the Inn, and the loser farmer.”
She then closes her window, and walks around for a bit. “Well, now that they ruined my experiment, I'll have to punish them. The geek I'll just curse him later. I'll start with the farmer! After all, I don't really like farmers anyway. I only left him alone because he's such a poor farmer. But now that he has earned the wrath of the Witch Princess, I'll have to destroy what little farm he has!”
She lets out an evil laugh as she plans for the wicked punishment for Marty. Neither of them could hear her over their argument. Some time later, Lumina runs out to break them up. Since it's Lumina, they both calm down, and return to their homes. Around the same time, Eric also arrives at Forget-Me-Not Valley, and returns to the tent. Oddly, they didn't do any work like he thought they would, so they took it easy.
Flora may not be the best cook, but Eric can tolerate any food given to him. Flora cooked some stew out of the meat and vegetables they bought in Mineral Town. She didn't use the right ingredients, so it didn't taste too good. Flora was a bit nervous about Eric eating her cooking, but he just smiles at her and says it's good.
Later that night, everyone in the valley locks up and sleeps. The only person who is wide awake is the Witch Princess. She is up with a large cauldron in front of her. In her left hand is a broom which she holds to increase her magical power. And in her right is a spell book. After dropping the ingredients into the boiling water, she stirs the mixture vigorously with the broom stick chanting the ancient words from the book. As she chants, the color of the liquid inside of the cauldron changes from green to glowing red. The black smoke coming from inside grows thick, almost solid. Soon, the smoke begins to howl like a wolf.
Soon enough, the smoke lands on the ground, and takes the form of a large black wolf. The wolf growls with red glowing eyes, and razor sharp teeth and claws. Soon enough, two more wolves form from the dark smoke, equally as terrifying. The Witch Princess smiles as she sees her summoning spell is a success. She walks over to them, and pats their rough charcoal black fur. They continue to growl, but they do not harm her.
“Now, now boys.” said the Witch Princess. “I know you are all hungry, that's why I summoned you all here. I have a favor to ask of you three. I need you to hunt down and eat Marty's only cow. That will be his punishment for making me angry. Now go!”
They all howl, and burst out of the door heading over to Marty's farm. As they run, they howl at the full moon waking up both Marty, Eric and Flora. Marty knows that sometimes, wild dogs would come to pester his cow. But every time he hears them, he would go and chase them out. But this time, it's different. There is no barking, but terrifying howling. He has not been living in the farm for a long time, but he knows that wolves appearing in the valley is very unusual. So he grabs his tools, and runs over to the barn.
Eric knows that there is nothing for him to worry about, but he is still in a panic. Flora rubs her eyes before putting on her glasses, and says, “Eric, is everything okay?”
“I could have sworn I heard some wolves. I heard them very close by.” answered Eric. Flora notices that Eric is trembling, like if something terrible is about to happen.
“Eric, you don't have to worry. Wolves don't attack unless there's a lot of food, and we ate all the meat.” said Flora trying to calm him.
“Yeah, I know.” said Eric with a stern tone. “But that's not what I'm worried about. I know for a fact that wolves don't live anywhere near this part of the world!”
He jumps out of his sleeping bag, and grabs his rucksack. He opens his bag to reveal his blessed tools that he never had a chance to use back in Mineral Town. He grabs his blessed hammer, and runs out in his brown sweat pants and undershirt. Flora on the other hand feels Flora on the other hand feels a little depressed as he runs off. As he slept, she changed into her best night gown hoping that he would at least notice that she was alive.
Marty waits in front of the barn with a sickle in his hand. He ran out in such a hurry, that he didn't even have a chance to change into farming clothes. He doesn't mean to hurt any animals. But if he came unarmed, he may get seriously hurt or killed. So he waits in front of the barn hoping that nothing will happen. But in a few minutes, he could see a pitch black shadow of a four legged creature. The glowing red eyes sends shivers down his spine, but he waves his sickle around trying to send a signal of warning. But then he sees two more sets of eyes in the shadows. Growling of hungry wild animals fills the air, and sharp white teeth can be seen.
Marty is outnumbered three to one, but he cannot lose to the wolves. He stands his ground, and holds his sickle in front of him. But his confidence soon wears away when the wolves step out of the shadows. He could only see their eyes and teeth from a distance, but now they have stepped into the moonlight. Each wolf is as huge as Marty is tall. Even though he has never seen a real wolf up close, but he has seen them on TV. None of the wolves he has seen before were anywhere near as big as the ones he is seeing up close.
The first wolf jumps attempting to take Marty down. As soon as it does, Marty waves the sickle around wildly with is eyes closed. He feels the sickle rush through the wolf, and it whimpers as it jumps away. Feeling that he has won the fight, he takes a look at the wolf who he has injured. But his breath of confidence quickly fades as he sees it get back up like if nothing has happened.
He knows that he has hit the wolf with his sickle, he felt it penetrate it's body under it's skin. But the wolf is not injured. It's not even bleeding, and there is no blood on the sickle. At that moment, he realizes that these are no ordinary wolves. These are spirits that came from a place unknown to him. Even though he knows that he lost this fight, he doesn't want to give up.
The three wolves are now upset. At first, they just want to take him down to get to the cow. Now they want to do some serious damage to Marty, or possibly kill him. So they all jump, and go straight for Marty. Marty is too scared to move or do anything. All he does is shut his eyes and hope for the best.
Suddenly, he hears a man grunt, and a loud whacking sound followed by the crying of the wolves. He slowly opens his eyes, and sees Eric in front of him. He has a large glowing hammer in his hands, and he has hit all three wolves in a single blow. “Are you okay?!” yelled Eric as the wolves land in different directions across the farm.
“I'm okay, but why are you here?” asked Marty.
“Never mind that, just protect that barn!” answered Eric. Marty nods and runs closer to the barn door. He knows that his cow is upset inside from all the ruckus, but she's safe.
The wolves return, and circle around Eric. Unlike before, they all seem to have taken some injury. Two of them are limping from the blow from the hammer. The last one is breathing heavily, but able to move normally. Eric looks at each of the wolves with a mean look. He knows that these wolves are not natural. He never used to believe in paranormal anomalies, but after the trip to the future, he'll believe in just about anything.
The first wolf jumps, and Eric swings his hammer like a baseball bat sending it across the field. The second wolf attacks from behind, but he swings his whole body smacking the wolf against a tree. And the last wolf attacks as well, but he hits it against Marty's house.
By now, the battle is over. The wolves stay down, and slowly evaporate into the same smoke it was created out of. The smoke then disappears into the night sky. Marty and the farm is now safe. Eric kneels down on the floor obviously tired from the battle. Grateful for his help, Marty runs over to check if he is okay. Eric is fine, but Marty still wants to know what's going on. “How the hell did you do that? I couldn't even injure them with my tools!” yelled Marty.
Eric tuns around and says, “I don't know. But this tool is special. Looks like these demons don't like tools that were blessed by a pastor.” Eric stands up, and tries to pick up his hammer one more time. But as soon as he does, he feels a sharp pain in his arm which causes him to scream to the top of his lungs.
“Are you sure you're okay?!” Marty screamed.
“I think so. . . But I think I overdid my arm. . . The doctor asked me to take it easy, but. . .”
Marty then takes the hammer and says, “I better take you to the doctor right now. It's late, but I'm sure he'll help you out.” Eric nods, and allows him to be escorted to Doctor Hardy's clinic. As they walk, Marty jokes, "Hey, what's the deal with the wife beater? You could have at least put on a shirt before running to my rescue."
"You're one to talk. Nice boxers, cow pattern suits you just fine." They both laugh, and continues to the clinic.
Deep in the shadows, the Witch Princess hides watching them walk away. She is highly upset as she witnesses her wolf plan failing before her eyes. She bites her thump and says to herself, “Damn him! I thought that I was going to have a nice show watching Marty's cow being torn limb from limb. But that geek from the Inn had to help him out! How annoying!”
She continues to watch, but as soon as Eric hits moonlight, she realizes that she is wrong. It was not Rock who helped Marty, but a stranger she does not know. She moves a little closer, but she cannot figure out who he is. After a few minutes, she says, “Who the hell is that guy. If I am not mistaken, he looks kind of like Marty. Could that be an older brother? I only heard that Marty had a sister, not a brother. . . This is too strange, I better look into this.”
With that, Witch Princess blends into the shadows, and vanishes into the night. Marty and Eric arrives safely into the doctor's office where Doctor Hardy can take a look at his arm. Even though his arm is not too bad, Hardy still recommends that he stay in the clinic for the night so that he can monitor it's condition.
But even though everything is fine for the moment, what other strange things will happen in the future?
To be continued.
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