Chapter Seven - An Inappropriate Question

Chapter Seven: An Inappropriate Question

Haruo was dumbfounded. At least the scan was something that didn't involve an invasive procedure or a needle poke. Scanning just involved standing there like a statue and hopefully the scanning machine would pick up the reading and pop out a DNA sample. If it involved getting down with some hanky-panky, then Haruo's answer would have been a resounding "no..."; he wanted to live to a ripe old age...not be murdered in his sleep by a wife who found out about a DNA sample that he agreed to.

"Has Phil been bothering you, Bebe?" Haruo was inquisitive since it appeared that Bebe was rather jumpy around Phil, who always came off as kind of on a different plane of cognitive function.

Bebe nodded as she pulled out the DNA scanner. She didn't really want to come across as intolerant of Phil's idiosyncracies; he was Haruo's friend, but Phil tended to drape himself over women practically suffocating their personal space. And as such, he needed to learn that women don't like having to suffer the attentions of someone that they're not interested in. And Bebe figured that the best possible way was to make a clone of the one person she did like and raise the clone as if it were her own child. "I mean, I like Phil as a person, but y'know... just not in that way."

Haruo grinned at her, "I understand..."

She lifted the scanner and let the device play over Haruo's torso analyzing every mitochondrial strand and the deoxyribonucleic acid seeing what was in the nucleus of the cell and extracting the nuclear DNA as well as mtDNA to paint a better picture of how the clone would be formed within the science center machine.

Fortunately for Bebe, it was a successful interaction with all the romantic nuances of a lecture on microbiology and the nature of pathogens within the Myrmecophaga tridactyla community.

Despite the lack of amatory gesticulations, Bebe felt that the transfer was successful. And the smile on her face was as wide as could possibly be. "Thank you, Haruo, I appreciate the gesture..." She smiled winsomely at him, while Haruo stammered...

"...uh...no...problem..." and nearly jumped out of his skin...

...when Bebe leaned forward and planted an appreciative kiss on his lips.

Watcher: "Woooooah Nelly."

Thank goodness River wasn't there to see it. And Noel and Clarissa both pretended like they didn't see a single thing. "You didn't see that..." Bebe told Noel and Clarissa.

"Nope...didn't see anything..." Noel said, turning to go into the elevator.

"Nope...not a thing..." Clarissa said as she followed him upstairs.

Haruo was too dumbfounded to speak.

After working with the science machine for quite some time, Bebe had a success and in the specimen tube that came out of the science machine was an infant that looked exactly like what a small Haruo would look like. Bebe smiled to herself. He was going to be fun to raise. Maybe this might help her pangs of loneliness to have someone to nurture and raise, her little family.

After feeding the little infant, changing his diaper and clothing him in comfortable sleep-clothes as it was still the height of summer, she laid him down to rest in the crib and slipped downstairs to read a book.

Blissfully unaware of the fact that her husband had just contributed his own DNA so that her friend could have a child to raise up to assuage her loneliness, River sat with Aaron teaching him how to say rain in Simlish.

Chapter Six - Teaching Aaron to Walk and a Rather Unexpected Question

True to Haruo's word, Phil had to go over daily to the dumpster and stick his head in...to see what new things he could find; a task for which his stomach gave him what-for afterwards. After all being stuck headfirst into a pile of rotting leftovers and other offal would leave him a candidate for a raging infection if not an upset stomach causing him to spew all over the ground.

Meanwhile, the perpetrator of Phil's ever-present misery, Haruo, sat and read a recipe book, which ironically was Chili Con Carne which would make everyone miserable from capsaicin poisoning. Yay for ghost chili peppers. The hotter the better. Haruo was at Level Six so the recipe books that he bought were several levels below but well, if he wanted to learn extra recipes, such catch-up reading would have to be done.

Everyone had things to do. Noel irradiated bugs hoping to turn them into plasma bugs as the return on such insects was astronomical. To take a fifteen simoleon bug and turn it into something that was over three hundred percent more valuable by forcing it to transmogrify into a plasma bug would be quite handy.

Haruo and River were inseparable and the house that they were now living in on the deck over the water allowed them the privacy that they sought to have some time to themselves rather than be constantly on guard against having to watch their personal displays of affection so that it didn't gross the rest of their friends out. After all constant kissing would be enough to make someone want to wretch out the contents of what edibles were still in one's stomach.

Except that this particular time was not within their private confines, it was in the kitchen.

Watcher: "Get a Room if you're going to slurp each other's faces off!"

Teaching Aaron to walk was the job of Haruo while River taught Aaron how to talk. They would debate on who was responsible for the smelly job later.

Aaron finally mastered walking and Haruo picked him up holding him up in the air as both Aaron and Haruo grinned at each other, "Way to go kiddo..." Haruo stated as River watched them indulgently. She loved the both of them deeply without question and watching her husband teach their son made her love Haruo that much more.

Finding a replacement for Clarissa was quite the task as the elixir shop position was hard to fill with no-one moving into a barren town with nothing but a few businesses in the area. The area was ripe for house-building and Noel had just started on building his and Clarissa's new house. After all, he'd been smitten by the elixir shop attendant. And the Watcher loves a romantic story.

But poor Noel and Clarissa weren't sure what they'd returned home to find.

Haruo had been in the process of making dinner when he was approached by River's friend, Bebe Hart who had this look in her eyes; perhaps one could call it longing. She had spurned Phil's advances towards her because she preferred someone else...but that particular longing was unrequited as the person she was interested in was already in a conjugal relationship.

"Haruo, can I talk to you?" Bebe asked as Haruo stepped away from the cutting board to give her his full undivided attention. "I have a favor to ask..." she continued..

Haruo nodded silently, pondering what sort of favor that could be. "You know how I'm doing science experiments, right?" Bebe continued keeping her eyes steady on Haruo who was now starting to feel like the subject of one of her experiments himself.

It was at the point when Bebe asked Haruo if he would donate a DNA sample to her that Noel and Clarissa had walked in.

Noel's face would have precipitated laughter if anyone else had been paying attention to the looks on Noel's and Clarissa's faces. Noel's was a Do I really want to hear this?expression while Clarissa's was a What the hell nuthouse did I just walk into?.

Frozen in place, the two of them could only watch the drama play out.

Chapter Five - A Birthday for Aaron

It appeared as though Noel was making some significant breakthroughs in his science studies and he was very close to mastering the Science Skill. Of course when he wasn't eating he was working on his science experiments including turning moths into plasma bugs by bombarding them with ionizing radiation. This proved to be extremely traumatic for the bugs...as well as for PETA (or at least would be if they hadn't disappeared as an entity at least around these parts of Sunset Valley).

It was after some serious consultation with the rest of the group that Haruo decided that they needed to build onto the deck their home so that Aaron and River were out of the elements and safe. When all was said and done, they had build a two-storey home on the deck leaving some deck space so that they could fish off the deck. The main floor consisted of a living area; a kitchen and a dining area as well as a washroom. The second floor consisted of the group's bedrooms. None of which would be shared. If they were expanding their families...or at least as River and Haruo had, they would build above that...hoping that their skills at house-building were up to the task of reinforcing the existing foundations to take the weight and not have their entire house sink into the small but deep lake they had constructed.

No-one could tell what it was that Phil was doing. Considering the fact that one of his traits was insane, he got up in the middle of the night, went downstairs and proceeded to try to have a conversation about ethical methods of cooking with the baking oven. The Watcher is not sure if Phil got a response.

River, after playing "horsey" with Haruo that night...guess they were starved of each other's attention, realized that they'd ended up creating "another one" when she got up in the morning and felt like her stomach was is yet another gymnastics competition.

Noel, after cutting gemstones and smelting metal, went over to talk to Clarissa (the consignment store attendant) and consigned the stuff he had just cut an smelted. They had a rather long conversation as Clarissa was keenly interested in Noel. But just hadn't found the right person to take over the reins of the business so that she could become Noel's significant other.

After that Noel came home and nuked a few more bugs.

It was high-time for little Aaron to become a toddler (after all, one night of Aaron's screaming in the crib was enough; now she would contend with a screaming wiggling toddler), so River came downstairs and baked a birthday cake. Then she waited for the others to show up to Aaron's little ad hoc birthday party.

Despite the fact that Bebe was jealous of the fact that River had a great husband and a wonderful little child, she took full part in cheering Aaron on his birthday and subsequent aging up. After all, Bebe was sweet and she didn't hold grudges against people. And she just wanted what her class-mate had managed to get for herself; a loving husband and a child. A career would be the icing on the cake, but that would have to wait until after they resurrected the town back to its original or better condition; this would have to wait until businesses and other things moved in and the town could grow on its own.

Aaron became a cute little green-eyed, red-headed baby with a good mix of features of River and Haruo. He stared up at his mother with a wondering expression...filled with curiosity and admiration for his Mommy and then promptly stuck his finger in his nose...and went digging for gold.

After the parents and their friends celebrated Aaron's birthday by partaking of his cake, River picked him up and promptly put him down in front of the blocks so that he could play. And, of course, just like every toddler including the three that the Watcher raised, proceeded to pick up the block...and stick it into his mouth, gnawing on it with his little immature teeth.

At least the cake was good.

Chapter Four - Hello Baby

Well, it's quite certain that Haruo and River weren't expecting a result out of that romp in the hay but River realized that it probably was imminent when her stomach did the equivalent of two backflips; a front somersault with a twist thrown in for good measure and she had to do the equivalent of the 100m dash for the washroom. No, her stomach was not happy with her in the slightest.

So...to assuage her much-abused stomach she decided to go fishing for a while. Maybe the smell...of fish...naw...that probably wasn't a good idea either. At least Bebe joined her for a while and could help her if she felt the need to upchuck off the end of the pier.

She'd geld Haruo for this later...how dare he be so happy and joyful. Why couldn't he give her a hand and puke for her once in a while? Yeah...physically impossible. That's why wives hate their husbands during the early courses of pregnancies...and perhaps the later courses too when they have incessant back-aches, their feet swell and they feel like they're the size of the Goodyear blimp and men don't know when to keep their mouth shut about the fact that their wives still look good to them. As flattering as that may seem, it seems to have the reverse effect in which men are likely to get killed; slowly and painfully.

The non-pregnant and the unable-to-get-pregnant spent their time working on their alchemy skills and science skills respectively. Meanwhile Phil on the other hand was feeling like he was going to upchuck for an entirely different reason.

Rotting vegetables and diapers mixed together will do that for you.

Phil: "Thank you, Captain Obvious!"

Watcher: "Shut up, Phil or I'll make you go binning another ten times."

Franz on the other hand ate his meal (it's been out in the heat for at least a week...you'd think he'd probably get indigestion or food poisoning from it but no. Then he proceeded to build all the special items that he'd been collecting while hunting for gemstones, space-rocks and metals.

Noel had to go take his plasma bugs to the Science Center that had cropped up. He would get at least §30,000 for them. At least he was doing great in bringing in money. When Franz brought in the gemstones, they'd use the Quintessence Co. gem cutter and do-it-yourself metal smelter in order to refine metals and cut gemstones so that they could take it to the elixir shop to consign. And Noel was getting great returns on those cut gemstones.

Tourists were still present in Sunset Valley though, anything that affected the area, had only affected the residents. Tourists remained unaffected by whatever had happened. And despite Noel's enquiries, he was able to get no further into the mystery of where Sunset Valley's residents had gone to.

Haruo spent his time reading his book (Book 3 of the Cooking Skill) so that he could finally master his Cooking Skill and be able to cook for the "family". It also took his mind off the state of River's pregnancy. They had two choices. They could either go with their original plan to build up the town again or put their money into building a home for them so that River would be sheltered from the elements. It was a toss-up. They could do one or the other but not both until they hit over a million simoleons. Right now it would take nearly everything they had to reinforce and extend the deck over the water so that they would have enough room to buld out and make it so that they were able to sleep in a room that wasn't small enough to be considered a cubicle.

Noel was busily irradiating bugs; without their permission - the group wasn't sure if the bugs would have superpowers coming out of the situation or not. But it appeared that this bunch were much hardier than the others as they appeared to resist the radiation bombardment and retain their original forms rather than getting transmuted into plasma bugs of considerable value. C'est la vie.

When Haruo had finally gotten himself off the wet bench and finished reading the Cooking Skill book, thereafter having mastered the Cooking Skill, he went in to create a culinary dish of comparably perfect...

hamburger; a feat worthy of any Michelin five-star chef worth his salt. /sarcasm/ It couldn't have been red-mullet-recipe-squid-pickled-mushrooms?

Then he went on to make Goopy Carbonara.

It was roughly at that point that River happened to go into labour and well let's just say that she was caught by surprise, having nearly dropped the fishing pole in the lake. In fact, Bebe managed to grab the pole before it slipped off the deck. In fact, Bebe told River to get Haruo and head for the hospital. Haruo by this time was thankfully finished cooking as they would rather that their deck not catch fire and end up burning to its stilt foundations.

After a good five hours of labour...(a rather short period of time for the very first child in any case - most usually go 16 hrs - which is an exceedingly long time to be in excruciating pain.) It took at least twice as long for the feeling to return to Haruo's hand.after River nearly dislocated a few bones...in his hand...thankfully.

River gave birth to a bouncing baby boy 8lbs 10 oz. which she promptly named Aaron.

Which was better than Haruo's idea at the last contraction which was "Holy Mother of Christ...THAT HURT!"

Watcher: "Not as much as your wife, Haruo."

...and they returned back to their lot via taxi.

Bebe kept fishing, trying not to think about the fact that she wanted kids herself...and well...Noel was unavailable, emotionally...they didn't connect and there was no way she was having kids with Phil...he was wayyyyy too out there for her to even connect with him. Life would be lonely if she couldn't find a compatible mate for herself.

...and there was also competition in the form of Samantha Gray.

...and oblivious to all of this was little baby Aaron.