A/N: On the day I publish this first chapter, I have not been watching Happy Tree Friends for any longer than a week. I'm still not totally sure why I even enjoy it. The sick gore is not funny at all for me. I actually like it because despite the blood, it's the most adorable thing in existence that's aimed at people around my age.
But the reason I'm jumping into a fanfic for it so quickly is that it's the kind of show that absolutely demands fanfiction to be written for it. There are so many questions: Why do these terrible things happen in the first place? How do they keep coming back to life? And the characters are so one-dimensional that there's a lot of room for them to be explored.
My theory is that there is no universe where these things actually happen to adorable little cartoon creatures. But there is a universe – a human universe – where the Happy Tree Friends shorts serve a more serious purpose than just for malicious teenagers to get a sick laugh out of it. That would be the universe in this story. Aside from two OC antagonists and some other OC's for when the story demands them, every character is a humanized version of an HTF character. The HTF videos are in-universe propaganda. If you want more details, you'll have to read it!
Oh, one last thing. I gave all of the characters human names, so it might get confusing. Characters like Petunia, whose names can pass off as human, have been left the same, but for the rest of them, the only nominal evidence of their identities are last names or nicknames that sound reminiscent. At the end of each chapter, I'll give a character list for anyone new who's introduced. Try to figure out who they all are before then!
I hope you enjoy the first chapter. Please R&R!
Billy Cuddles burst out the front door. What a beautiful morning! The grass was so green and the sky was such a wonderful shade of blue. Billy pulled on his favorite pair of shoes – pink bunny slippers, which are all the rage with dudes nowadays, thank you very much – and ran down the street.
Days always seemed beautiful at Happy Tree Estates. It was an expensive and exclusive place in which to live, but one you were there, you'd realize it was worth the effort to get in. It was a friendly neighborhood, and almost everyone was nice. There were a couple of nutcases, but it was a pleasant life despite them.
As he walked along, one of said nutcases crashed into Billy. "Ha-ha! Sorry! Sorry!" the guy laughed. He was Patrick "Nutcase" Santoya, the town drunk. Nutcase was the fun kind of drunkard, always convulsing in alcohol-giddy laughter.
Billy smiled and was about to tell him it was no problem, but Nutcase interrupted him, giving him an amicable (but still a little painful) punch on the arm. "Catch ya later, Bunny Slippers!" he giggled as he stumbled away.
He was crazy and his skin and clothes were always stained with liquor, but Billy considered Nutcase a friend. Actually, Billy was friends with everyone. His best friend, however, was one Ethan Tooley, a gap-toothed, freckled guy with awful luck. The two of them were part of a larger group consisting also of three girls.
The first, who had pink eyes and wore a ton of makeup, was waiting for Billy at the park, and when she saw him walking towards them, she squealed. Leaving her friends to play on a swingset, she ran to him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him wildly. "How's my Billy Bunny today?"
Sue Giggs was Billy's girlfriend. He loved her for several reasons: she was sweet, and she always had a twinkle in her rosy eyes.
"The sun is shining, isn't it?" Billy said. "I'm feeling great and ready for anything."
Sue frowned and took a step back. "Anything, Billy? Anything? Don't do anything stupid. Please?" She was very sweet but she also kept Billy grounded. He tended to have a mischievous streak, and without her, he might have gotten into a lot of trouble.
Billy said, "Okay!" and tickled Sue under her chin. As she giggled, he waved to the rest of the gang. "Hey, guys!"
Sue's best friend, Petunia, answered by laughing, her feet kicking above her head as the swing sent her soaring. Ethan was on the swing next to her, and as she swung forward, he swung back. They were like a pendulum.
"Come on, Nick, there's nothing to be afraid of," Ethan was calling when Billy and Sue reached the playground.
A third girl with short, short hair bit her lip and eyed the third empty swing that Ethan wanted her to go on. "No," she said, holding onto the swingset's metal bars for dear life. As she shook her head, flakes of dandruff rained over her shoulders. "I can't. Just watching you guys is making me nauseous."
"I don't get what you're so scared about. Nothing bad ever happens here," Ethan said.
Suddenly, Petunia screamed.
Nick automatically freaked out. "Oh my God! What's happening?"
"I scuffed my feet on the ground and got dirt on my shoes!" Petunia cried. Sue ran to her and took her to get a change of footwear before the poor OCD-diagnosed girl hyperventilated to death.
But if that was the kind of thing that could make a resident hyperventilate to death, then Ethan was right. Nothing catastrophic had happened at Happy Tree Estates for decades. The atmosphere was obviously so carefree that a group of teenagers didn't feel at all self-conscious about playing on a swingset.
Nick (short for Nicole) Flynn believed that if life was perfect, it meant something devastating was looming on the horizon.
But as Billy sat comfortably on a swing, rocking back and forth, inhaling the scent of that fresh, green grass, he knew that Nick was wrong. They were lucky to live in such a place. Nothing would ever go wrong. They were forever safe.
He yawned and stretched, feeling relaxed. Over his shoulder, he caught sight of a giant television screen. It was attached to the huge tree – the Happy Tree – that served as the town hall, and it had been under construction for weeks. "What do you think the screen is for?" he asked.
"It's going to fall and smash on the ground before it's used for anything. I hope it does, too, because the aliens probably planted it," Nick answered, always prepared with a conspiracy theory.
"What would the aliens need to do with a giant TV screen?" Ethan wondered.
"They'd have to brainwash us so they – AAHH!" Nick jumped back a mile when someone pushed past her suddenly.
"Whoa!" Ethan shouted. He was flying forward to the point where he couldn't stop himself, and his feet collided with the blurry figure running in front of him. He fell off his swing and landed face down in the dirt.
Yeah. At the Happy Tree Estates, they were safe from danger but not safe from morons like the tall, lanky guy who was sitting up groggily, trying to get over having gotten a shoe in the face.
Billy shot the kid a look. "What are you doing, Lombard?"
Irwin Lombard stood up, having trouble meanwhile keeping his balance. He was college kid without a passion or purpose of existence besides being a nuisance. He was in the town more or less illegally, as he lived in the basement of an old recluse who was so blind he didn't even notice. Despite this, his clumsiness, and his lacking common sense, Lombard thought he was better and smarter than everyone.
"Everyone has to come to the Happy Tree!" he blubbered, waving his arms around excitedly.
Ethan groggily lifted his head up. "Why?" he groaned.
Lombard jumped around and sputtered, having difficulty getting the words out. "There's – there's these two guys, and they, they're saying everyone has to come listen to them!"
Billy laughed and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, ri –"
Just then, he was cut off by the sound of a giant television set clicking on. He gasped and looked to see that the TV that had been a minute ago dead now displayed an all-blue screen.
Lombard started running. "Come on!"
"Those men are the aliens, aren't they?" Nick said as she, Billy, and Ethan took off running.
They reached the city square to find a sizable crowd. Already, Billy could see that whatever event this was, it was some sort of spectacular big deal. It was hard to get so much of the town's population gathered in one spot. Billy was actually having trouble seeing who it was that was speaking, and so he was trying to find the optimum toe-standing position for seeing over the head of the old man in front of him when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
There was Sue, sweaty and red-faced. "Billy! Don't . . . run . . . so fast. I've gotta . . . keep up, you know," she panted. Petunia stood next to her, equally as exhausted but not as sweat-soaked, since she carried around a super-absorbent towel in her purse.
"Sorry," Billy whispered, his already rosy cheeks becoming a deeper red. "There's something big and important going on right now and we needed to get here fast. Look, there's these guys speaking –"
"Good morning, residents of Happy Tree Estates," boomed a man's amplified voice, cutting Billy off. "My name is Dr. Zander Grayski, and this is my partner, Dr. Harrison Wexler." A pause. "Dr. Wexler is a mute, so I will be doing all of the talking for our little group."
Once Billy's line of sight reached past the old man, he got his first look at the visitors. First of all, they were both wearing lab coats. Dr. Wexler was tiny and cross-eyed. He was visibly nothing more than a right-hand man to Dr. Grayski, a towering, thin man with thin glasses and dark, waxy hair. His eyes peered cruelly over the body of cheerful and curious citizens, and when he spoke, his words were somehow both serious and wry. "We come from an organization branching off from the FBI called the Department of Examinations And Terminations. Our specialization is watching over intense threats to society and extinguishing them in a way that will keep it as discreet from the common population as possible.
"Happy Tree Estates has been a recurring interest of ours for several years now," Grayski continued. "You may consider yourselves lucky to live in a beautiful place like this. Though we will not argue with you that your hometown is lovely, we've had some concerns. Such a bright and happy town, with exceptionally low crime rates despite lenient government attitudes, is grounds for suspicion."
At this point, there wasn't a single murmur going through the crowd. Every single person was listening intently to the powerful voice that filled the town square, even the smallest of children who could not understand. Nobody could fathom what this scientist might be leading up to.
"After intense observation of daily goings-on, Dr. Wexler and I are sorry to report . . . Well, you can all see for yourselves." Grayski was stoic as he pressed a button on a remote and he, along with the rest of the town, turned to watch the giant TV screen.
A title screen popped up, with bright colors, bouncy lettering, and an excited song in gibberish playing in the background. Happy Tree Friends, it read. The screen shifted shortly thereafter to a cartoon forest scene featuring two anthromorphized critters (a yellow rabbit and a pink chipmunk) playing Frisbee.
And it was cute. It was cuter than cute, in fact. It was absolutely adorable. The two characters sported teeny little hearts for noses and spoke with the most precious-sounding nonsense sounds ever. When the chipmunk dropped the Frisbee, she giggled. Half the audience went "Aww!"
Suddenly, a purple beaver noticed them and decided he wanted to join in. He jumped between the rabbit and chipmunk, to their surprise, and leaped in the air, ready to catch the flying Frisbee . . .
And then, Nick emitted a bloodcurdling scream. Grayski shouted, "Young man, please be quiet!" but Nick wasn't even fazed by yet another stranger mistaking her for a male. In fact, what had happened to cause the scream was enough to make several other people panic as well.
Because on that TV screen, in that precious little forest world, a Frisbee had just spun out of control and spliced right through the neck of a purple beaver, splattering animated blood everywhere and sending his head, with eyes pulled from their sockets, rolling towards the feet of the chipmunk.
The chipmunk yelped at the sight, and was soon after squashed herself in a shower of blood by a falling tree that the wayward Frisbee had chopped in half. The rabbit tried to run from the tree, but while he managed to avoid it, he tripped on the string of tissue attached to the dead beaver's loose eyeballs, smashing his head in when he hit the ground. Before the screen switched to an innocuous The End title card, Billy noticed with apprehension that the rabbit was wearing pink bunny slippers not unlike his own.
A terrified roar erupted throughout the crowd. Older girls and women began to hyperventilate, while younger and more fragile children cried. A man shouted, "What the hell is this?"
Suddenly, a huge clap of thunder boomed, effectively shutting everyone up. They looked to see that it had been caused by Dr. Wexler clapping his hands in front of the microphone.
"Thank you, Dr. Wexler!" Grayski said, obviously irritated. "Now, all of you, listen to me! The Department of Examinations and Terminations has found a highly dangerous and inhumane underground crime circle within Happy Tree Estates. It's a problem that needs to be quickly remedied. We've created this series of short videos called Happy Tree Friends to help you help us. Each one of you has been turned into an animal character for this series, in which, as you see, each episode contains a different set of horrific deaths for your character." He smiled grimly, and for the first time, he seemed like a real mad scientist. "They act as a catalog from which you are to choose your method of extermination."
A/N: So, here are the characters so far:
Billy is Cuddles
"Nutcase" is Nutty
Sue is Giggles
Ethan is Toothy
Nick is Flaky
Petunia is Petunia (duh)
Irwin Lombard is Lumpy
The scientists are OC's
I hope you liked Chapter Uno. Please review!
