From the Dark Mirror
Gathering the Goods
It has been two months since the Wonderland Adventure had taken place. For the most part things had been quiet in Care-a-Lot, of course that was a matter of opinion. Proud Heart and Loyal Heart were dealing with late night bottle feedings and diaper changes, which were always heralded by loud cries. During the day it was easy for them to find a babysitter, so they could get a few hours of sleep. The others had fallen into their normal patterns of Caring Missions, stare training, and of course teenage hoodlum.
One of their greatest enemies had been watching them for weeks now, biding his time to put his newest diabolical plan into action. He had waited for those who had gone to Wonderland to come home, allowed for a sense of peace and familiarity to overtake them, and looked for the moment when he new their guard was at the ultimate low. This was that moment.
No Heart, sorcerer of darkness, master of no feelings, conjurer of evil thoughts and menacing monsters, watched Care-A-Lot through his cauldron. "Beastly! Get in here!"
A small brown fur ball wearing a spiked aviator cap with goggles and a red scarf came running into the room, "Yes Lord No Heart? What can I do for you?"
He stood slumped over with his knuckles on the ground a bored look on his face. Picking up a clip board and a bag full of test tubes, No Heart paced in front of him, "I want you to pay a little visit to our dear friends in the Kingdom of Caring. From each of them I require a sample of DNA. Do not let them see you!" He yelled the last part, surprising Beastly and causing him to fall over.
"If they catch on to what you are doing my plan will be ruined. And to make sure you have gotten every piece of DNA I require, I made you this checklist." He tossed the clipboard at Beastly. On it was a list of every member of the Care Bear Family, along with a picture so Beastly wouldn't get them confused.
"Yes Lord No Heart, right away." He started to head out of the room, "Oh Beastly."
"Yeah boss?" Hs eyes glowed as he threw the bag of test tubes at him, "You forgot these fur brain!" The bag slammed into him knocking him out of the door with a yell. No Heart returned to his cauldron to watch, his laughter echoing around his castle in between booms of thunder and cracks of lightening.
"Beastly do this, Beastly do that, Beastly get this. You know it wouldn't kill him to get some fresh air once in awhile." Landing behind the Hall of Hearts he covered his heli-bike with a white fluffy blanket so it would blend in with the clouds.
"Now to find some of those cutsey wootsey Care Bears." Chuckling to him self he moved from cloud bank to cloud bank. Seeing Harmony walking down the path singing along to her iPod and not paying attention he figured she would be his first target. Dropping to his furry belly he grabbed a test tube and tweezers from his bag and snuck up behind the purple bear.
Grabbing some hairs off her leg, he quickly scurried off the path. Harmony didn't even notice and continued on her way, singing along loudly to her song.
"This is going to be like taking candy from a baby." Gong to pick up his bag, he got tangled in the straps and fell.
Getting up and muttering her heard raised voices coming from the direction of the houses. Always a sucker for a good conflict he went to investigate.
The shouting was coming from Grumpy, who was up on a ladder cleaning the gutters of a house decked out in green. Good Luck Bear was keeping the ladder steady yelling up at Grumpy.
"I just don't see why you aren't the one up here. You have the 'good luck.' I'm pretty sure my track record shows I do not." Grumpy shouted down to him.
"You know I don't like heights Grumpy Bear. Plus you owed me a favor from when I took over one of your shifts in the Hall of Hearts so you could take Swift Heart to that concert she wanted to go to." He re-settled his hands on the ladder.
Turning back to the gutters Grumpy continued to clean them out, dropping some of the gunk on the ground, not caring if it hit Good Luck or not.
Beastly chuckled, "Oh boy, oh boy." Using the moment of distraction he ran by Good Luck, grabbing some hair and putting it in a test tube. Feeling the wind and a slight pinch he spun quickly to see what was behind him. His elbow knocked into the ladder, causing him to curse in pain and grab it. The ladder swayed from side to side before falling to the right. Grumpy held on tight to the gutters as it fell to the ground. His bucket of gunk flew in the opposite direction, landing square on Beastly's head.
"Good Luck what the hell happened!"
"Something pinched me and I whacked my elbow!" He yelled going to retrieve the ladder.
Grumpy lost his grip however and with a yell landed on top of Good Luck. Beastly used the moment while they were still dazed and confused to grab some of Grumpy's hair.
Checking them off his list, he removed the bucket from his head, licking the gunk that fell into his mouth. "Yum! Better then mother used to make."
A shadow passed over his head. Looking up her saw Fauna circling in her Pegasus form before she landed on Good Lucks front lawn. Going over to the two fallen bears she nudged them with her nose, "Are you guys okay?"
Grumpy rolled off Good Luck, "Luckily." The green bear laughed at his pun.
Beastly was flipping through his list, but he didn't see Fauna on it anywhere. That gave him an idea. "Oh boy oh boy think how pleased No Heart will be when I bring him some hair from someone he didn't even put on the list!" As he thought about a way to get some of her DNA, one of Fauna's feathers floated down from the sky and landed on his nose. "uhhhhuhhhhhhUHHHHHCHOOO!" The sneeze sent him flying backwards into a cloud bank. Good Luck, Grumpy and Fauna all said "God bless you." Before continuing their discussion.
Waking up late for once Cozy Heart heard an odd humming noise coming from outside her house. Stretching her flippers above her head and yawning with a trill, she smiled seeing her breath fog in the air. Even though she lived in the Forest of Feelings which was always a warm temperature, she had erected herself a large multi room igloo out of white cinderblocks and made sure the temperature never rose above 40.
Slipping from her cool sheets she waddled to the door to investigate where the strange humming was coming from. Crawling through the short tunnel that led her to the outside, she felt her beak fall open at what lay beyond. The entire surrounding area around her house had been covered in snow drifts. Soft flurries still continued to fall around her as she took it all in, mouth agape. "Oh my goodnessss. It'sssss never sssssnowed in the Foresssst of Feelingssss before." Leaning down she lifted a flipper full of snow, a big grin lighting up her face.
"Glad you loike it Sheila. Been working on it all mornin." Jolly Heart came out from behind the igloo, a scarf around his neck and gloves on his hands. He had traded in his normal beach attire of open Hawaiian shirts and surfer shorts for a warm looking sweatshirt and snow pants.
"You did thissss? For me?"
He laughed, "Bloiyme don soun' so suproised love. Come roun back, OI 'ave a surprise that will explain it." He held out his hand for her to take. Slipping her flipper into his webbed paw she let Jolly pull her around the back of her house. There she saw the snow maker, also the source of the humming, as well as snow letters as tall as she was that spelled out, "Go Out With Me?"
"OI figured OI'd give ye something you love, an in exchange, you'd gimme something OI really want. You Cozy." Her flippers were clapped over her beak as she gazed wide eyed at the message before her.
"Jolly, I don't know what to ssssay. No one'sss ever done anything this nice for me." He gave a little shiver, folding his arms across his chest, "Yes would be noice eh."
Jumping at him with a giggle she flung her arms around his neck, "Of course yessss." He exhaled, instantly warming. "Oy that feels ace."
Before he got a hnce to hug her back, she pulled back slightly, "There'ssss only one thing that would make thissss perfect." She rubbed her beak against his bill before stooping down, grabbing a handful of snow and chucking it at him."
" 'ow did OI know." Laughing he began to form his own snowball. Unfortunately having been raised in Australia he didn't have much experience with the cold white stuff. Cozy Heart continued to pelt him with snowball after snowball as he struggled to form them. Eventually he warmed up enough to strip off his sweatshirt. Beastly who had rolled himself into a snow drift, plucked hair and a feather from Jolly and Cozy as they moved past him.
Shivering and sneezing with little snow-cicles hanging off his fur he quickly fled to a warmer part of the Forest of Feelings.
Defiant Heart Badger took a deep breath as he approached Valiant Heart in the gym. Valiant Heart was using the free weights and didn't notice the badger behind him until Defiant spoke up.
"Hey, Valiant Heart, can I talk to you?" Valiant turned and set the free weights he was using down before speaking.
"Sure, Defiant Heart, what's on your mind?" he asked.
"Remember the day we met, when you came back to the Kingdom of Caring and destroyed all of those snow monsters?" Defiant asked and Valiant nodded. "Well, I felt really useless that day, Swift Heart had to save me from those things and all I could do was run. I mean it feels like everyone in this family has something special about them and most of you can hold your own; even if you don't have spiritual powers a lot of you guys have qualities that will help you out in a battle, like Swift Heart's speed, Lotsa Heart's strength, and stuff like that ya know."
"OK, where are you going with this?" Valiant asked.
"I want you to train me, so that the next time something we can't handle with just our tummy symbols comes along I won't have to just cower and run," Defiant looked pleadingly at Valiant, who was looking thoughtful.
"Well I can't give you spiritual powers, doing that's a bit risky and Loyal and Snowy are just lucky their powers developed naturally rather than causing problems like mine originally did," he smiled at the now rather despondent badger, "but never fear I can train you to fight, I know a fair bit about a number of different weapons and fighting styles. You do come here to work out don't you?"
"Well a bit," Defiant admitted.
"That's not really important, yes working out can make you stronger but strength isn't everything. Love-a-Lot's busy today so let's go back to my house and get you started, choosing how you want to fight and such," Valiant said, turning to leave with Defiant Heart Badger on his tail.
"Thanks," Defiant Heart said, "I really appre-OW!" Defiant Heart felt a small but painful little prick from the back of his arm."
"What, is something wro-YOW!" Valiant had turned around and felt a small prick from his tail. He turned back to see nothing.
"Ugg, must be Playful Heart," he said, scowling, "I'll deal with the prankster later, let's get back to this," he said leading Defiant Heart back to his house.
In the nearby bushes, Beastly dropped the hairs he'd gathered from each of the cousins into their own test tubes before moving off to search for other members of the Care Bear Family.
Beastly checked the final box off on his list as he returned to his heli-bike. "No Heart is going to be so proud of me. I didn't mess up for once." Straddling his bike he peddled quickly for his Masters Castle.