This story are my second one. I wanted to do something different so here you go! :)
May 27 Happy tree town
10:05 pm
Toothy sits on a chair in the cafeteria in the old school building that have been shut down several years. The others are here as well, hiding from the madness outdoors. What was once their home does now look like a ghost town or France during the second world war. Tiger soldiers are patrolling the streets. It makes no sense, actually, It all happened so fast. They never thought it would turn out like this.
Toothy's thinking about everything that have happened the last three months.
January 30, the day that he never will forget, it happened. It all started with a town meeting, the mayor was going to have a speech about peace and harmony, it was the anniversary of Happy Tree Town. It had existed in 200 years now. But the mayor never came to the podium. Suddenly sirens started to shout and something was shaking the ground. Everybody hurried to the outside to see what was happening. The sky was blood red and they could see something that looked like mititary air-force planes but not their nation's air-force. They could hear a loudly explosion from the southern part of the town, the citizens could see it rising over the roof of the buildings. No one could understand why someone would attack their town. Everybody screamed and tried to run off.
As armed tiger soldiers were mashing into the town. It was true that rumour about some sort of general was trying to take over the world but no one thought it was for real. Other rumours said that he was looking for something or someone. The citizens tried to hide from these soldiers who would kill and interrogate people if they were on the streets after 05:00 pm. The radio's started to send war propaganda and the general gave speeches about the 'natural picking order'. The general highest and the workers on the bottom.
After that it began. The invaders claimed the town as their own and the General was the dictator and ruler of everything. When another war lord, who will stay unnamed for now, saw this he wanted to take over the town for himself as well. No one tells the reason and now they're having a war against each other not far away from the town. Some of the citizens manage to escape to an old, abandoned school a few kilometres outside of the town.
He stops thinking and looks around and sees Flaky sitting on a chair staring off into the distance with Cub sleeping in her arms. He feels bad for her, she got to see when one of the invaders killed Pop right in front of her. She had grabbed Cub and pulled him to her in an attempt to protect him from the murderous soldier. They would have been killed as well if not Flippy had saved them. She's now waiting for Pop to come back to them but he never seems to come back. It usually takes one day to come back and now it's taken two months, that's way too long.
Toothy's ears drops and he walks out of the cafeteria and out in the hallway where Cuddles are talking to Giggles. When the rabbit notices Toothy she smiles and walks up to his best friend and hugs him brotherly.
"How's it going, dude?" Cuddles asks him.
The beaver looks at his friend with a tired look in his face, he have not slept in two days.
"I'm tired and…frightened…"
Cuddles looks him in his eyes and makes a comforting face.
"It's al right, you're safe here, you know. This place are forgotten since long ago. Nothing gonna harm you." He smiles.
Toothy swallows and rubs his eyes to get the tiredness go away. He then looks at Giggles who now is talking to her best friend Petunia.
"It's not helping though."
"Just try not to think about it. Come, let's go to the sleeping ward."
They both begins to walk down the hallway towards the old gymnasium that they uses as sleeping ward.
All the windows are shut and covered with planks and old curtains. The building is outside of the town and trees and bushes have grown wild here so it's almost impossible to find the place.
The Tiger General doesn't know about it nor does he know about the underground passage to the town. It leads to the Moles barbershop because of the school being build in the middle of the last century, during a war, so people should be able to escape of the town should be attacked by the enemy.
The gym are on the first floor and the tree friends uses it as a sleep and rest ward. When they enters the gymnasium they can see Handy trying to play cards with Mime, it seems to drive him nearly crazy. He's having a hard time holding on to his cards with his nubs and Mime doesn't talk, so it's hard to see what card he asks fore. Disco Bear is styling his hear with a comb while looking on a mirror. Lammy are mumbling something to a pickle while Nutty are sitting next to her and staring her down. Russell is having a discussion with Shifty and Lifty. Toothy is unsure about what but they seems to get along. The Mole are sitting on a wooden box and listening to all the small chatter in the room. Petunia and Giggles walks past the boys and sits down on a blanket.
"Let's sit over there"Cuddles points toward the girls and drags Toothy along with him. When they sit down Giggles asks Toothy "You haven't slept yet?" with a worried voice. Toothy shakes his head. The nights when he get to sleep he's haunted by nightmares. So he much rather stays awake.
Cuddles, Petunia and Giggles are the only ones who knows about the nightmares and he want to keep it that way. When Disco Bear notices the neat Chipmunk miss next to him he does what he always does when a girl is near, starts to flirt.
"Oh yeah, you looks go baby."
He looks confident and moves closer to her. She doesn't like him.
He's so pushing and Giggles doesn't like to be pushed so she moves closer to her boyfriend.
The rabbit turns his head to her and sees how Disco Bear are flirting with HIS girlfriend.
"What are you doing?" He hisses at the Bear. Disco Bear looks at the rabbit with a look that shows no emotions except maybe a little irritation.
"Go away, petty. can't you see I'm busy with the laaadeeyy here?"
Cuddles looks pissed at the bear who doesn't seem to get the picture. Toothy knows that his friend will attack Disco Bear if no one does anything soon. Not that he likes him of anything, he's a pain in the patootie for most of the people around here. They're being interrupted by Sniffles, Lumpy and Flippy who walks trough the doors to the gymnasium. Sniffles quickly calls everybody together to sit faced to him. When everyone are sitting on the floor like kindergarten kids Sniffles begins to talk with a tired voice.
"Okay, We've got some news from the town." He clears his throat and continues.
"The General is still searching for Flippy and if we want to survive we'll have to keep him away from him as long as possible."
"That's nothing new!" Cuddles says and gives Sniffles an irritated look.
Sniffles ignores Cuddles and proceeds.
"Also, it's much more dangerous to be outside now…" He stops suddenly and hesitates. The others looks at him with curious looks.
"Why?" Handy asks when no one else does.
"Because…The Cursed Idol is missing."
Everybody gasps. Flaky even starts crying.
"Does that mean…?" Petunia gasps.
"If we dies we dies permanently." Sniffles explains to the gasping crowd. Toothy looks at his friends with worry in his eyes.
"How do you know that the idol are gone?" Cuddles asks, pulling his own ears while Giggles tries to comfort Flaky.
"Haven't you wondered why Pop haven't come back yet? I've created a machine some years ago to keep an eye on some stuffs around the town and The 'Cursed Cave' is empty!" Sniffles answers irritated.
"But what about Splendid? Can't he do anything with those powers of his?" Someone in the background asks.
Sniffles adjusts his glasses and explains "If that were an option we would choose that. You see, I've been running some tests and detected small amounts of cryptonut in their weapons and on their armour that will make them able to kill him."
Toothy feels how hopeless everything begins to feel now. He notices that Giggles moves closer to her boyfriend. Cuddles puts his arms around her in a protective and comforting way. When people starts to panic Sniffles gives Flippy a single look. Flippy stands up on a table and yells irritated to the others to be quiet.
"Okay guys, listen up!" They're starting to calm down and looks at him desperately.
"This are no glee club with fun and games any more! This is real and we can't let them kill us, this is war guys!" Flippy looks serious at the others.
"What can we do?" Toothy starts nervously.
"Yar! We ain't lads enough to get rid of those salty sea dogs, mate." Russell fills in.
Flippy looks at them and takes a step down from the table.
"Don't you think I know that, Russell? I know that we're few. But… Isn't it worth a shoot? They want to kill us anyway so do you guys want to fight back and do something that matters or cover in here until they kill us all? We can beat them with our different talents! I believe it's our faith to be here. This is a war and we are soldiers, what if tomorrow the war could be over? Wouldn't that be worth fighting for, isn't that worth dying for?"
Everybody looks at him in silence. Flippy waits for a reaction from them.
"Are you in?" Flippy doubts that they want to do this and he doesn't blame them. If they dies now they're never coming back. He swallows hard and tries to keep the look of confidence. Someone rises.
It's Russell.
"Yar, the lad in green are right, mates!" He walks up and stands next to Flippy.
"Ye only have one bloody life! Why not live it right an' do somethin' that matters, shall we? I'm in mate! I'm goin' to do somethin' before I meet Ol' Davy's locker!" He shakes Flippy's hand and then looks at the others. Flippy have never talked to Russell. He regrets that, he seems nice and like a decent man…even thought he's a pirate.
"I'm in too." Everybody turns to the one who just talked. It's the Mole. The blind mammal chuckle when he realises that they're looking at him.
Lifty takes a deep breath and stands up on the spot. "I'm in." Shifty says in the same moment. The twins smiles at each other.
Toothy scratches the back of his head trying to decide. "Me too." He says.
Then Handy rises as well.
"What the hell! count me in too, Flippy!" The armless beaver says.
"Me too!" Cuddles shouts out.
"And me!" Giggles says, taking Cuddles hand and holding it tightly.
"Mr. Pickles and I want to help too." The lamb girl rises, holding a pickle.
"How 'bout the rest of ye?" Russell turns to the rest of the group. It's obvious that Flippy is impressed by Russell's unknown talent to be a leader. But then again, he is not called captain Russell for nothing.
"Well? Are ye in, mates?"
The rest of them shouts out in a chorus "AYE!" Russell turns to Flippy with a friendly smile.
"Yar! we're under ya' command, mate."
Flippy thanks the pirate with a friendly nod at him. He turns to the others without saying a word.
Everybody looks at him in silent, waiting for for to say something. He looks at them one by one and sighs with a little regret.
"You know that if you stays to fight I can't promise that you all will make it…?"
Toothy glances quickly over at his friends. 'What if we doesn't make it?' he thinks as a pain starts growing in his chest.
He bites his lip like he always does when he's feeling uncomfortable.
This is really serious, it's war and there's no chance they can come back.
Flippy clears his throat to talk.
"Okay, we're going to need uniforms or something to use as armour. We also needs weapons and more food and water. Anyone willing to help with that?"
Giggles, Petunia and Cuddles decides that they want to get the food. While Handy, Mime, Toothy, Disco Bear and Nutty decides to be volunteers to get armours. And Shifty, Flippy, Russell and Lifty are going to get the weapons that they need.
"To get the stuffs we need we'll take the underground tunnel that leads into town." Flippy explains to the others.
"And we're doing like this: Russell you are leader of team 1, Handy you are the leader of team 2 and I will be the leader of team 3. Does that sound fair?"
Handy looks at his group with an unsure look in his face. "Um…actually…"
Flippy ignores the amputee beaver and cuts him off in the sentence.
"Good, lets go guys, you who's staying here will listen to Sniffles."
Handy makes his usual angry aspect when Flippy ignores him.
Toothy knows that Handy doesn't like Nutty. He thinks the little candy freak is annoying to him and always asks him strange questions.
He understands that he thinks that Disco Bear is annoying, he thinks that he is some kind of romantic Casanova but the truth is simply the opposite. He knows that Giggles has a boyfriend but still he's flirting with her.
Mime is okay though, maybe a little to childish but no one hates him, it's almost impossible. Then there's Toothy. Handy seems to think that Toothy can't take care of himself. Toothy is a little unsure with new things but he's not retarded.
Handy is not perfect either, he's nice but has a temper like Donald Duck and an obsession to do everything by himself until he succeeds. Toothy have heard Sniffles call it "Inferiority complex" sometimes but Handy denies it when Sniffles points it out. Anyway the reason is because the builder misses hands and is very touchy about that.
Toothy looks at the beaver with pity. He's the victim of many cruel hand-jokes ,or Handy-jokes, in the town. 'Poor guy'.
His thoughts are being interrupted by Flippy who starts talking again.
"You can get to the market?" He looks at Russell curiously.
"Yar, in times like this it's hard to get ya paws on some eating, mate."
Flippys ears drops and he sighs disappointed.
"...But I shall not make ya disappointed! ya can take me words, lad!"
Flippy sighs in relief .
The green bear turns to Handy now. "And you?"
Handy lets out a drawn out sigh before he says "There's a second-hand shop across the street from the Moles barbershop, we can take belts and other stuffs from there and we can try to get some bullet-proof vests from the police department nearby."
Everybody's staring at the amputee beaver.
"What is it?" he asks waving his nubs.
"How long have you been planning that?" Shifty asks from the back of the crowd.
"I didn't know that we had a second-hand shop" Nutty says next.
"How comes YOU know that?" Petunia looks at him.
Handy frowns "That's not important! Can we just do this already?"
The others just looks at him curiously, even Flippy.
"Well?" the beaver looks irritated now.
"You're right, we have to concentrate on the missions." Flippy tells the others. "Let's get going then."
What did you think? Good? Bad? Why? Why not? Revew please! :)