Albacore leaned his head against the cool glass of the train window, watching the city loom closer and closer. He missed home already, but... there wasn't anything there for him. Davey was inheriting Dad's boat, the Wave Over Wave, as they'd always known he would someday - though they'd never thought it would be this soon!- and there wasn't really any place for Albacore on her. Not any more. Not when Davey preferred working with his own picked crew - his best friend Matt Cohen, and his recently acquired brother-in-law Bill Door.

Frankly, Davey had seemed relieved when Albacore announced his intentions of heading to the city to try his luck there. With the loss of much of the coastal fisheries in recent decades, there were more fishermen then there were jobs - had Albacore remained in Mousehill, he'd have either been stuck doing scut work on the Wave, or gone without work much of the time.

Davey had even bankrolled Albacore's trip, paying for the train ticket - one way - so Albacore could keep back his own earnings to support himself until he found a job. That was the plan, anyway...

Albacore sighed and looked southwards, down the sloping hills to the nearby sea. At least the city was on the water - hence its name of Bayshore - though he doubted the bay would be good fishing - or that any fish caught would be safe eating, either. Too many years of polluted runoff from the city, from the usual effluents associated with any human community, to the horribly noxious by-products of industrial processes.

Still, swimable and fishable waters were only a few hours journey away, and being on the ocean was better then being inland, miles from the wide open waters he'd grown up beside and on.

The train rumbled into the city, passing through the outskirts quickly and plunging onwards into the heavily built up heart of the city, finally halting with a squeal of brakes at a small, distinctly run-down looking station (0001). Train travel was long past its glory days, and this tiny station, not much more then a shack, was the lone survivor of the several that had once served the city.

Albacore rose to his feet, plucked his suitcase off of the rack over his head, and stepped out onto the platform. The train pulled out again after the briefest of pauses. Albacore looked around, getting his first up close look at the city that would be his home (0002).

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Yup, it's me again! Albacore Fisher (aka the sim formerly known as Zuppa Soup - he's the baby on the left) is the founder of my new story, which blends the Just Me Challenge with Alphabet Lite - which means we'll be seeing this story solely from Albacore's viewpoint, and I'll need to attempt to have 25 descendants of his born before he eventually passes on.

Yay! A challenge where my sims can actually breed to their (and my!) heart's desire without it being counter-productive and slowing down the story!

And as the more astute among you have undoubtedly already guessed, I'm going with themed names again - fish, this time.

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Yay finally ! Can't wait to read more of this

Albacore is really handsome btw

Wonderful! And I'm so happy I get to read this one from the beginning, makes it easier to keep up.

Originally Posted by Meome

Albacore is really handsome btw

Yes, he is - of course, he's got a great genetic background to draw on!

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Albacore wasn't sure what to do at first. He carried his suitcase over to a nearby bench, and sat down, looking around apprehensively (0003). Intellectually he'd known that the city would be very different from small, sedate Mousehill, but knowing and seeing were two very different things. It was so flat... and so large! Why, there were buildings in sight that could not only house the entire population of Mousehill, but had room above and beyond that - enough to store the fishing fleet, and still have room left over. And the city, he knew, stretched well beyond the limits of his vision.

Trying to picture the sheer number of people involved left him feeling more then slightly boggled, and longing for the simplicity of home. If an eastbound train had pulled into the station just then... but there wouldn't be one until tomorrow at the earliest. He realized his hands were shaking and sweaty, and that he felt like he was going to be sick - incipient panic - and forced himself to stand and walk into the building, in search of a washroom.

There was one, the tile walls stained and dingy from long years of use, but the only smell was of cleansers; it was the stains of age, not of neglected filth. Still, he had to grit his teeth to force himself to make use of the facilities (0004). He felt better afterwards, enough so that when he went back out of the washroom, the scents from the tiny diner that occupied most of the space made him realize just how long it had been since he'd eaten a real meal. Dry sandwiches, stcky sweet pastries, and small cups of lukewarm juice were all the snack cart on the train had stocked; dining cars had vanished from the tracks years ago. Cargo was more profitable to ship then people, and the source of less hassles; the train companies had been happily cutting back on amenities since before Albacore was born, making no attempt to hold onto the steadily decreasing passenger traffic.

Albacore hesitantly took a seat at one end of the age-stained counter. The waitress wordlessly dropped a menu in front of him as she sailed past on her way to the kitchen. He studied it carefully. She was back again a few minutes later, having served a meal to someone seated further along the counter.

"Ready to order, sweetheart?" she asked.

"Uh, yes," he stammered. "I'd like a burger please."

"Plain, cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger, the works, what?"

"Oh. Plain I guess. Well, with some ketchup and mustard. And a slice of pickle."

"That all?"

"Yes, please, ma'am," he nodded.

She smiled, fine crinkly lines appearing around her eyes as she did so. "Your mama must have raised you well. I don't get many ma'ams in this job. From out east?"

Surprised, he nodded agreement.

She nodded, still smiling. "I see a lot of young men like you," she told him. "I'll go get you that burger," she added, and whisked back off to the kitchen.

The burger was good, almost as good as the ones his Dad had used to make, back home. It was hard to restrain himself from just wolfing it down, but he made it last, knowing it would be more filling if eaten at a decorous pace (0005).

After he'd eaten, and paid, he went back outside, and came to an abrupt half, dismayed. His suitcase was gone! He hurried back into the diner and went over to the waitress.

"Back so soon, sugar?"

"My suitcase..."

"Oh, dear... don't tell me you left it unattended? It's gone now. Anything that's not nailed down around here has a tendency to grow legs and walk off, if you know what I mean. And sometimes they take the nails too. Hells, we have to chain down the sandwich boards outside, and those are just a couple hinges and some plywood! A full suitcase - you just made some petty thief's day, sugar. I hope you didn't have all your valuables in it."

"No," he shook his head, feeling sick over his stupidity. "Nothing of real value."

Thank all gods, he'd kept his money on him, in a wallet in an inside pocket, with just a little spending cash in a zippered outer pocket - advice from his mother, who'd travelled in her youth, before meeting his father and settling down.

"You going to be all right, boy? I can tell you the way to a shelter, if you need one...?"

"No, but thank you. I'll be fine," he said, and walked back out to the platform. He was standing there, undecided what to do next, when he realized the waitress had followed him outside.

"Listen, it might not work out at all, but I hear thieves will usually stop as soon as they can to sort out anything valuable from what they've grabbed, and ditch the rest - safer then hauling around a stolen handbag or suitcase. If you check the alleys and dumpsters around here, you might get at least some of your stuff back. Okay?"

"Okay. Thanks again," he added.

She nodded and hurried back indoors.

Albacore sighed, and walked off in search of an alleyway (0006).

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Albacore really is handsome!
This is really well written! I love it so far! Not to mention the idea of mixing the Alphabet Lite Challenge with the Just Me Challenge is really brilliant! Keep doing what you're doing! (I think I need to look into your other stories too now...)

Great to see you back! My goodness he did turn out real good didn't he?! Loving it already.

Sue

Yay...you are back!!! Love this idea and Albacore is so handsome!!

Big welcome to all my readers, both those of you who are returning ones, and those of you who are new ones. Hope you enjoy the story - I'm already enjoying playing it. Game has been in a very co-operative mood, as you'll see over the next few posts...

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He didn't find any trace of his suitcase; what he did do was get thoroughly lost, a not particularly hard task when wandering at random in a place you don't know at all. Lost enough that he couldn't even find his way back to the train station.

Eventually his feet started to get sore. Spotting some benches in a playground, he went in and sat down tiredly (0007).

He'd have to face it - his stuff was gone - thankfully not much more then a few changes of clothes, and some books and magazines he'd brought along to occupy himself with on the train. The real question was, what to do now. It was late afternoon; he'd need to find somewhere to sleep tonight. Food, too - that burger had only briefly satisfied his hunger.

Well, no sense in sitting here like a lump on a log, he'd best get moving. Albacore rose to his feet, and started walking again.

He'd barely left the park when he had his first bit of luck. Just around the corner from it was a tall, narrow old building of brick and stone, a lighted "Rooms for Rent" sign hanging near the entrance (0008). Albacore hesitated, then turned and walked into the building.

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"Well, we've just got the one unit available for rent right now," Mr Sullivan said. "On the second floor. It's a small one-bedroom apartment. Come on upstairs and I'll show it to you."

Albacore nodded and followed Mr Sullivan up a wooden spiral staircase to the second floor. The building was so small that there only seemed to be one unit on each of its three floors.

There was someone standing in front of the elevator on the second floor, pushing the buttons and tapping his foot impatiently (0009).

"Something wrong, Mr Higgins?" the landlord asked.

Mr Higgins looked up. "Oh, hello Raymond. Yes, the elevator won't open. I think the doors are stuck again.

The landlord nodded, then looked at Albacore. "You go ahead on in and look around, door is unlocked... I'll just be a couple of minutes," he said, then headed over to fix the elevator.

Albacore nodded, then went into the apartment. It was small and old, the wallpaper stained from decades of previous inhabitants. The place was furnished, in dark brown leather and dark woods, in a style older then Albacore was (0010). Albacore peeked into the washroom, pleased to find it was sparkling clean, and tried the taps - good water pressure.

A few minutes later the landlord came in, wiping his hands clean on a bit of rag. "What do you you think?" he said.

"I like it," Albacore said. "I'll take it."

The landlord smiled and tucked the rag in his belt before reaching out to shake Albacore's hand. "Excellent. Rent is due weekly, if you forget to mail it to me I'll be around to collect it in person. You miss your rent, you loose your room. My number is posted in the lobby, give me a call if anything needs repair. I'm around daily to do upkeep on the place. Keep your unit clean, we've never had a problem with vermin yet, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. Welcome to the building, Mr Fisher."

"Thank you, Mr Sullivan."

Mr Sullivan waved a hand. "You're my tenant now, Mr Fisher - you can call me Raymond."

"Thank you, Raymond."

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After doing the paperwork and receiving his keys, Albacore wandered around his apartment for a bit, looking in drawers - empty - and cupboards - also empty - and the fridge - ditto. He'd need to pick up some things. He wanted to sit down and make a list, but there was the problem of there being no pencil and paper to make a list with. He put those at the top of the mental list in his head. What else... food, obviously. Toilet paper; the half roll currently in the bathroom wouldn't last forever. Sheets; the bed came with sheets, but he'd rather have his own. Something to read!

He left his unit, remembering to lock his door behind him, and after eyeing the elevator decided to take the stairs down.

He found two people chatting together in the lobby; the shaggy-haired Mr Higgins that he'd seen earlier, and a lovely young lady (0011).

"Oh, hello!" Mr Higgins exclaimed, catching sight of him. "You must be our new neighbour. I'm upstairs from you - Nelson Higgins." He held out his hand. Albacore shook it.

The woman smiled, giving Albacore an appreciative once-over. "I'm downstairs," she said, holding out her hand in turn. "Alexandra Bennet."

"Albacore Fisher," he introduced himself, looking her over as he shook her hand as well.

She smiled. "Anything we can do to help you settle in, you just say the word." (0012)

"Uh, thanks. Actually, I need to know where I can go to buy some groceries...?"

"Well, the grocery store will be closed by now," Nelson said. "But there's a corner store a few blocks west of here, costs a bit more but they'll have some stuff. They're open all night, too."

Albacore thanked them and headed off. He found the place without any difficulty, an old Victorian-style house on a corner lot, its downstairs converted into a store. He quickly found most of the things he wanted, and paid for them (0013). He started to turn to leave and stopped, staring at a woman who was browsing the nearby magazine rack.

After a moment she turned, and frowned at him. "You're staring at me," she pointed out, sounding annoyed.

"Uh, sorry miss... I've just never seen anyone with blue hair before."

She laughed. "Ahhh, you're new to the city then. From out east?"

"Yes, I am. Albacore Fisher," he said.

She smiled and shook his hand. "Angel Floyd. Been in town long?" (0014)

"Just arrived today, actually."

She nodded. "Well, good luck Mr Fisher."

"Thanks. And sorry again for staring."

"No problem," she said with another smile.

He nodded and headed home (0015).

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See what I meant about the game co-operating? And that wasn't all of it - that red-haired teenaged girl in the store that you can see in the final panel is named Adriana, and one of the women he must have "met" while eating at the diner (she shows up in his phone book, otherwise I'd have missed noticing her) is also an A-named female.

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Welcome back. It's great to have a new Ms B legacy to read, can't wait to see some of the old characters make their appearances (Mr Sullivan?)
Lv Candi
XxX

Yay MsB Welcome Back

Welcome back. Can't wait to see what you have in store.

This is a wonderful story MsB! I love it already and will be reading.

Well, I can already see he has a few ladies lined up!
And by looking at your pictures, can I rightly assume that you have a custom default skintones? If so... where can I find them?

I couldn't believe it when I saw a new story from our beloved Ms Barrows! Had to do a few cartwheels around the room. Can't believe you're luck with the A ladies. Amazing. I'm off to await the next installation!

This is Wonderful! Its the first time that I have the pleasure of being here at the begginning! I'm quite excited!

Yay, a new MsB tale I can read from the beginning! Albacore is SO gorgeous. Can't wait for more!

Yea Loving it, did I spot Kevin Darling?

Originally Posted by VenusMoon

And by looking at your pictures, can I rightly assume that you have a custom default skintones? If so... where can I find them?

That's a set of DR skins based off of the Louis skintones; the particular set I'm currently using is done by nihilin on MTS2; it removes things like the built-in eyebrows and the belly piercing from the original skins.

Originally Posted by fizz bomb

did I spot Kevin Darling?

No

The landlord is an AL NPC, he just happens to have randomly been assigned the same hair Kevin had. Apart from Albacore, no Soup clone based characters have yet appeared anywhere.

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Albacore's first thought after breakfast the next morning was that he needed to find a job. He went out and picked up a newspaper, then sat down and started looking through the employment section (0016). He didn't expect to have much luck, and was startled when his eye fell on a job that he actually had relevant skills and experience for. A job as a fish chummer.

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"I was surprised to find out there was any sort of fishing around here..." Albacore said.

Captain Flanders nodded. "The waters around here are poor," he agreed. "We have to go out pretty far to find anything worth keeping; but there's a good market for things like shark, and that's easy enough to catch."

"Chum," Albacore nodded.

"That's right... brings them flocking like sea gulls to bread," the Captain nodded. "Okay. We sail well before dawn, in order to be out in good fishing waters in the early morning when things are biting. You're likely familiar with those kind of hours already, eh?"

Albacore grinned. "Yes, sir. The Wave always sailed early."

"Good. All right, Albacore - you're hired. Be here at 3:00am tomorrow." (0017, 0018)

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Albacore looks cute in that suit

P.s Yay Louis skins w/o the annoying eyebrows,thanks MsB

I love the rustiness of everything. Can never have too much rust.

Originally Posted by Meome

Albacore looks cute in that suit

Yes he does!
It's also pretty awesome that apartment life came into play in this game! Seems like so much more fun than just being on a plain old lot!
also for pointing me in the direction of the skintones!

Originally Posted by emilydoll

I love the rustiness of everything. Can never have too much rust.

Hehehe - yeah, I wanted this city to look well-used, not all shiny-new. There will be some locations with newer, less-grotty textures, but in the main I'm going to be using dark, stained, worn, torn, dirty, dilapidated, rusty, corroded, grimy, grubby looks. And even the clean stuff will hopefully be in older-looking/outdated styles. Neon, chrome, and pastels will be in short supply (apart from cyclonesue's great neon and lighted signage, that is!).

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Albacore's life quickly settled into a routine now that he had a job; a rather night-owl-ish routine.

He'd wake up in the evening, have breakfast, then watch TV (0019) or read, or sometimes go out for a while. After midnight he'd have a big meal - TV dinners, more often then not, since they were easy and quiet to prepare (0020). Not a patch on his mother's home cooking, of course. Then it was time to change into his clothes for work, and head downstairs to catch his ride down to the docks.

The boat would set out in absolute darkness, quietly chugging out away from land and the polluted coastal waters. By the time the sun rose they'd be far out, the only land in sight the occasional small island of rock or drifted sand rising above the waves. He'd have been busy since before dawn, roughly chopping up bucketfuls of small fish.

With the rising of sun he'd stop chopping and start chumming, casting handfuls of the chopped fish into the ocean. It wouldn't be long until the first fins would start cutting the waters - sharks, seeking out the source of the food-smell in the water.

After that it got hectic.

Once they'd caught their daily quota of the sharks, they'd move locations, leaving behind the cloud of seabirds now busily snatching chum from the waters, and switch over to long line fishing. The other fishermen would feed out the lines, baiting the hooks as they went, while Albacore chopped more chum for the bait. It wasn't until the last lengthy line was in the water that he'd get a bit of a rest. All of them rested then, sitting and talking, sometimes working on a few shipboard chores, while the boat slowly moved across the sea.

"How are you liking your job, boy?" the Captain asked one day as he leaned against the railing near where Albacore was sitting resting on a gear locker.

Albacore smiled. "It's good. I love it out here on the sea."

Captain Flanders nodded, then frowned out at the horizon and straightened up, swearing fulsomely. Albacore turned to look - a large ship, far to the south of them.

"Damned trawlers," the Captain growled in response to Albacore's questioning look. "Wreck habitat, catch and kill indiscriminately... we've managed to get them out of our waters, but that one down there is coming pretty close to the legal limit. They're smart enough not to cross it, though - they know if any of our fleet sees 'em, we'll have the Coast Guard out after them before they can swing back over the line."

Albacore nodded in understanding, having heard his father's similar opinion of the big commercial trawlers for much of his life.

"Ah, well, time for us to be raising our own lines," the Captain sighed, turning his back on the distant ship, and started issuing orders. Albacore sprang to his feet and hurried back to his own station.

The lines were slowly pulled in by motor, a crewman manning each winch to keep the speed just so. As the lines came in through guided channels, waiting crewmen stripped off the caught fish from the hooks, tossing them into big bins. Other crewmen sorted the fish from the big bin into smaller ones, by species and size; some fish were returned to the sea, where hopefully they'd recover from being hooked and grow up to legal size before being hooked again.

Albacore was kept busy gathering up the small bait fish that would be tomorrow's chum; it was part of his job to make sure he filled the bait locker with enough for the next day's operations. Eventually all the lines would have been recovered, the catch sorted, and the ship would turn back to shore, arriving back at the city docks in early afternoon. The fish would be offloaded, and the crew would head home.

Albacore would check his mail (0021), shower, and fall into bed, sleeping through the afternoon and early evening, before rising to start his day again (0022).

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My apologies for any factual mistakes in how the long-line fishing works; I was basing it off of a couple of not-very-detailed online articles and some vague memories of the description of a long line ship at work from Kipling's "Captain's Courageous", written more then a century ago.

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I'm loving this story soo much!
And it's pretty much convinced me to get apartment life

Why have I just noticed today that it was you writing this?

It's really good so far! I love it!

-Taco