Chapter Three - "Oops!"

Chapter Three - "Oops"

Of course having to figure out what caused the disappearance of many of the townsfolk of Sunset Valley didn't prevent Haruo and River from having some private time of their own. After all this had been a mystery for at least an year and it would probably take a considerably longer time to figure it out. And of course, Haruo knew just how lucky he was with a wife like RIver.

...after all he had been married to River for the past two years. They had been hit with the fact that all of Sunset Valley had vanished without a trace and his parents and her mother were both gone...for good it seemed. So what better to ease their worries and broken hearts but to make a family of their own. Though of course they didn't know it at the time.

In the morning Phil cut some of the gemstones that Franz had found as well as some of his own that he'd tracked down. These cuts would form the financial base of the ambitious plan that they were going to undertake. Eventually, they hoped that they could rebuild the town and make it just as vibrant as it was in the beginning. Though of course, it proved to be very un-nerving not to see a single soul other than a few tourists wandering the fields that made up what used to be the town. But eventually, they hoped, they would get the town back to what it was.

The weather was spotty at best, rain during some moments, sun coming out the next. but at least the summer weather kept the rain warm.

As Noel was the better negotiator in this case, he was the one who went over to the elixir shop to consign any of the gemstones that were cut. He talked to a young lady by the name of Clarissa Dove. Clarissa was more than happy to take any of the gemstones off Noel's hands and give him a good cut of the proceeds of any sales that would happen between then and five in the afternoon when the sales proceeds would be tabulated.

Noel and Clarissa chatted for a while feeling out each other to see if the two of them could cooperate as business partners. Noel bringing in the cut gems while she found him the buyers. It was an amicable proposition and they would make a good partnership in terms of making sure any gemstones that Franz found were bought by willing buyers in foreign lands.

"I'm sure that we can do business together, Mr. Allan. I think you're going to find this a very profitable proposition."

"Well, I'm sure, Ms. Dove. I'm looking forward to working with you and that we can both have profitable transactions in the future."

Haruo, River and Bebe were busy trying to catch fish. What was astounding to Haruo was that even though he was an angler; he pretty much stank at catching fish. Either they weren't biting or the bait he was using wasn't up to par and the fish were ignoring him. Meanwhile his wife and her friend Bebe were catching fish left and right. That kind of cheesed him off. Wasn't he supposed to be the angler of the family? Oh well, maybe it was her luck that would feed the family. If he couldn't catch fish to save his life, maybe she would. If that was the case, then he'd go and get himself cooking books and learn to cook those fish that his wife caught.

At least then, he could maybe help the family...

Meanwhile Phil was in the garden doing his best to learn gardening and bring in the vegetables and fruits that were growing on the trees and bushes.

Most of this would go into the cooler and wait until they could get a stove and fridge...

...and the rest would go to the grocery store across the street which took as much fresh vegetables and fruits as the group could offer them.

Living off a floating deck was not quite what they'd imagined when they dug out the property and filled it with water. But the way it was, it was more than adequate to keep ne'er-do-wells off the property. If the water didn't stop them, the barbed wire fence surrounding the small little island they made for themselves, connected to the pier, would serve as a deterrent with razor-wire surrounding the tops of the fence. The flat roof kept the rain off and the tents were essentially rooms...in a rather airy structure.

Franz went off to go hunt for gemstones.

Haruo went off to the beach to go fishing for ocean fish.

...and the girls went and fried up some fish to eat taking a break from their angling...

...though of course when the men returned and tried to eat, their cheap firepit decided to repeated blow out their matches. So in lieu of letting the men starve, the Watcher deleted the firepit and generously provided a miracle in a kitchen area.

But not before Haruo got struck by lightning...mostly out of pure boredom by the Watcher. Hail NRAAS full of wrath...Thy shocking revelation is with thee. Gettest thy sim hence to a shower and washeth thyself off before thou gets hittest again with sacred fire and settest thy area alight.

...AMEN

Chapter Two - Security

Sims 3 - Rebuild Sunset Valley
Chapter Two - Security

Two Weeks Later

Since the six didn't know what exactly was going to be roaming around, for security they dug out an entire lake on their property, filling it with water and fish with only a bridge as their ability to be able to get from the main street to their own place. They built a small area to garden to grow their own vegetables and a dock to put their tents and fish off of. They would be able to eat fish for dinner as well as buying things at the grocery store if needed. And they had a Rottweiler who would roam the area and look for gemstones as well as provide security. After all, who was going to mess with someone who had a dog, especially a large aggressive dog.

"I think we did OK digging out the property...and making sure that we have enough space between us and anyone who is planning something." Noel ventured as he looked over at Haruo. "It's gonna be hard for anyone to figure out how to get over to the other side and we've got barbed wire on top so that they can't climb over without getting some pretty nasty cuts in the process."

"It's not so much who's going to try something than what's out there..." Haruo stated gazing out at the darkness. "...and we have a were in our midst that we didn't bargain for either...I mean five of us have gotten bitten...and god knows if we're going to end up turning." He looked over at his wife who looked rather smug. "Sweetie, you're the only one that didn't get bit."

"Well...I wasn't the one who let my guard down around Sam...there's always something to be said for a good hard as rock Sunday edition of the Sunset Valley Times-Colonist to deal with werewolves."

"Ha ha...very funny, wife..." Haruo muttered.

"I thought it was..." River gave him a smirk.

Phil having been bitten soundly by Sam was still trying to comprehend what just happened and frankly it made his mind short out quite soundly. So he resorted to self-soothing methods to try to get his mind around the fact that he was now infected by a werewolf and would shortly become one. It wasn't going well for him at all.

The town was quieter than it had ever been. But there was some development. A book-store owner had also decided to join the retail crowd across the street and Central Park and the Hospital had been rebuilt. Also scientists were looking into what could have caused the disappearance of the townsfolk. But it was going to be quite a while before things got back to normal.

...and it would be a long way to go for the six to be able to bring the town back to life.

Chapter One - You're Outvoted

"You could say the entire town of Sunset Valley vanished. There's no houses or schools or businesses and we don't know why." River McIrish-Chikamori informed the other three as the four sat around a camp-fire. "We managed to convince an apothecary and a store owner to build their stores right next to our settlement, but this is going to be a long building process and I don't know what's going to come of it. We have a rudimentary sort of governance, but no real City Hall to speak of."

"What do you mean, "Phil Burrows asked, "Set up a rug on the town square and tell everyone to air their grievances?"

River's husband, Haruo Chikamori, raised an eyebrow, "Yeah, Phil...you get the general idea. Right now, there's only six of us and the shop-keeper rarely comes out of his building. It's like Sunset Valley got wiped off the face of the map but by what, we have no idea."

Samantha Grey looked over at Phil, "I guess it's up to us to rebuild this place. At least we have the Elixir shop and the Grocery Store. So how do you figure we go about doing this?"

"I have an idea..." Phil said with a knowing grin.

"Shut up...Phil..." came a chorus of cat-calls from the other three. If it wasn't something utterly irresponsible that would come out of Phil's mouth, it was something borderline suggestive.

"Well, we do need a population boost..." he protested.

Samantha rolled her eyes at that. "Look, we have to shower outdoors, we have to do our business outdoors, Hell, you wanna go farther than that? You're out of your mind, Phil."

"Well, we don't know if there are any survivors of whatever wiped this whole town out." Phil informed her smugly, "And we need manpower to build the town back up to what it needs to be." Couldn't she see the logic of his suggestion?

"I noticed two dumpsters behind the grocery store." River said with a smirk. "I think someone needs to go see if there are things to salvage." She looked over at Haruo with a glance that read a devious suggestion. She gave her husband a wide-eyed look with a smile on her face and slowly and innocently blinked.

"I think so too...sweetheart" Haruo grinned back at her; he read her meaning loud and clear.

"Hey, Phil, you're our dumpster diver.

"Don't I get a vote in this?"

"Three to one; you're out-voted." a slow evil smile crept over Haruo's face as he hiked his thumb towards the new Sunset Valley General Store. "Six AM tomorrow morning; you get to rummage through the dumpster. Better get some sleep tonight."

Lecherous Problem Solved was the look on River McIrish-Chikamori's face.

A job well-done.

Sims 3 (Legacy of Destruction) - Chapter One - "After The Rain"

River’s POV:

We don’t know what caused the deadly rain that took out Sunset Valley. All we know is that only some of us survived. I was two years from graduation and my boyfriend had one year left to go when astrophysicists said that some gravitational anomaly was sending a whole bunch of rocks currently in orbit around Saturn in the direction of our planet. And that was going to make things absolutely horrific for those of us here in the projected impact sites. We had an estimated time of impact as was conveyed to the news stations, but unfortunately, those warnings were unheeded and many who thought they had time perished when “The Rain” came. According to what we heard on the radio from what radio stations survived, that 99.997% of the planet’s population perished.

My mother, my boyfriend’s parents, and many others didn’t make it. Parker’s parents did, so did the Bunch family’s parents. Now we were all living in the ruins of what used to be our town. The Landgraab’s property, was an impact site for the largest chunks of meteor to hit the town. And naturally the Landgraabs were no longer with us.

We: Bebe, Haruo’s cousin Torao, me and my boyfriend Haruo, his best friend Phil and Phil’s on and off again friend of the opposite gender decided that we were going to seek higher ground and live where the Landgraabs used to live. It provided us with ready access to water and fishing resources. Food was scarce and we needed to think about where our resources were going to come from. Lack of food sources spelt early death.

We also hunted for our meals, catching small animals for roasts and steaks to make meat soup and catching fish to cook fish soups. We tried to pack in as much protein as we could. Luckily we managed to salvage quite a few items from the school, including a science station, a workbench for inventing a potion table, an alchemy table, sculpting wheel, and a plumbot station and recharger. We also managed to trap cows and chickens and with bits of wood scavenged from here and there we managed to cobble together somewhat of a shelter for them.

We on the other hand lived in tents seeking shelter that we knew was going to be untenable in the near future when winter hit. We could already feel the temperatures drop from the soot being thrown up into the air from all the meteor impacts around the world blocking out the sunlight. We never really got above fifteen Celsius. And temperatures on average were falling. When you see your breath when you exhale in the wee hours of the morning, you know it’s cold. How much longer before we would have to go underground to escape an endless winter; a winter that would bring starvation to many. If we dug underground and heated it with fires, we could possibly warm it up to tolerable, perhaps even enough to allow plants to grow.

In any case there wasn’t a whole lot of time for hope. Stock up to ensure our survival and use cloning on the edibles to make sure that we had plenty of them.

Society was no longer civilized. The strong took from the weak and those who couldn’t manage to find a way to scavenge and persevere did not survive. It was Darwin’s survival of the fittest down to a nutshell. Those who had weapons were at the top of the food chain. Those who didn’t were prey.

Bebe decided to learn elixir-making at the elixir table. There was a tingle in our bodies as if something had fundamentally changed in our physiology enabling us to channel energies through us that we never could quite grasp the know-how to do before. Bebe needed to find a wand to start working with magic. And magic would make an effective weapon against those who meant us ill.

Phil opted to work on something he knew which was inventing. He would use the invention table in order to make useful things for us and in order to sell so we could make money. Of course for the first little while his best efforts yielded little but lighting himself on fire which amused my boyfriend immensely who would laugh hysterically watching Phil flail his hands in the air while frantically running to the shower to hopefully successfully extinguish himself. If anything, it made for an interesting afternoon.

Torao was busy at the Plumbot building station attempting to understand robotics and designing nanites and trait-chips. Occasionally the inputs would go awry and he would trigger a system shut-down alarm. Which meant that whatever he was working on was toast and had to be redone from the very beginning. It looked rather tedious and annoying, but Torao did look like he was having the time of his life making what would in essence be our night security while we slept.

But eventually he managed to produce a plumbot who he named C7Y03 otherwise known as Clyde. Clyde was a typically happy go lucky plumbot who tended to view even the worst of situations with a cheery demeanor that one found quite amusing. And this apres-The Rain was a test for all of us mortals however Clyde took it in stride. Clyde would charge up during the day and stay awake and conjure with the conjuring kettle throughout the night time thus enabling us to get a full night’s rest while keeping up security for the rest of us. Torao was working on trait-chips to install on Clyde so that he could take over some tasks for us like gardening and fishing and other things while Haruo hunted.

That’s what my boyfriend did. He would take the rifle out and go shooting, whether it was deer or raccoons or large birds. Which enabled us to get links, patties, steaks or roasts. Sometimes we would also get eggs and vegetables. It was not an easy existence and most of the time food was scarce. Vegetation was sparse, at least green vegetation so the deer were not as big as they used to be having to range further out to find edible greenery. Raccoons scavenged through garbage so they were still nicely sized and we caught other small creatures that allowed us to eat. Womrats were relatively tasty as were guinea pigs.

My boyfriend would head out in the morning and not return till afternoon. It served to show just how scarce game really was and just how far he had to track just to find what he did catch.

When he came back he was dragging a fresh kill with him. Two snakes and a tasty womrat. We’d be able to have meat soup tonight.

Meanwhile Phil had managed to make a fridge at the inventing table that would be better than our current one, however, he’d invented a lot of things that we currently had no use for and were better off being sold at consignment. Others in the town whether delusional from post-traumatic stress or managing to function well tended to buy things that reminded them of the pre-apocalyptic days.

“The Rain” had traumatized many in our community to the point where they were living their lives in what appeared to be a catatonic stupor. The massive explosions of the meteors had caused craters into which houses were collapsed and our city hall was half-buried under a rubble-heap from the tsunami that had inundated the coast from an impact strike of a quarter-kilometer long asteroid. It was almost like being hit with all-out nuclear war but without the radiation.

Haruo and I took what solace we could from each other. In the past there would be taboos. But he and I were alone, together and we loved each other. I’m sure Bebe and Torao were also of the same opinion - and either a shower together or a romp in the hay (in the tent) served to satiate our overheated hormones which did not subside even though we’d just been through a cataclysmic event that had wiped three-quarters of us off the face of the planet.

The odd one out was Phil who had to deal with the fact that he was alone since Clarissa was in one of her cranky moods and would go off a ways to brood. Clyde was also male (if a plumbot had genders). I’m sure Torao could opt to make Phil a mate (a female plumbot) but well, so far he hasn’t.

Life was going to be stressful. In between building a shelter that is intact and would allow us to survive the apocalyptic winter ahead. It also needed to be a safe refuge for us to inhabit and defensible in case others in the community got the idea to come along and try to take what was ours. This was another reason why we wanted plumbots. They would be like a standing army between us and those who wished us ill.

At the end of the first day with Phil still working on stuff on the workbench, Bebe and Torao took the first tent and Haruo and I stood naked in the shower together taking the opportunity to enjoy at least a semi-private moment together that wasn’t marred by pebbles and rocks jamming into one’s back.

The intimacy at least allowed me to forget that my mom was no longer with us, nor his dad. All I wanted was for him to love me and take some of our shared pain away.