All fired up

Starring Rhyme, Mime, and Lumpy

Featuring Pop, Disco Bear, Cuddles, Sniffles, Handy, Flippy, Lifty, Shifty, and Nutty

Note: It's my birthday today! Whee-hoo! To celebrate, I'm putting up not 1, not 2... but THREE new stories, including an all-new, never before seen Rhyme episode! This is it... the third one... an all-new, never before seen Rhyme story... one so big that it had to be split up into 3 different parts!! Here... we... go!!

Second note: You know my deal with squeaknese already.. But because of some of the heavy dialouge in the ep, you may wanna consider there being subtitles at some parts

We start in the Happy Tree Mortuary where we see Mime and Rhyme being given instructions by Lumpy the mortician for their graveyard shift. (Sorry, bad pun). He tells them in squeakenese that their job is to make sure the place is clean by sunrise; cadavers put away, Lumpy's cheese collection organized by size, caskets set up for the crematorium, etc. As Mime and Rhyme give the signal that they're clear with Lumpys instructions and the moose walks out the front doors, locking them behind him, the two fawn look around at the mess the mortuary is and sigh... it's gonna be a LONG night...

7 hours later, we can see that the whole of the mortuary is all spic and span, but the two fawn are exhausted! Rhyme looks at a clock on the wall and discovers that it's no wonder they're so tired... it's 3 in the morning! The two want to go home, but as Mime goes to the front door, he sees the padlock on the outside of the door and realizes the idiot moose locked them in! Miming giving a frustrated groan, Mime turns back to Rhyme with a sad look in his eyes. Rhyme starts to groan himself, just wanting to get into bed, but then remembers the new deluxe caskets they set up for the incinerator and how plush and comfy they looked inside. The two of them walk over to the caskets and, opening the lids, crawl inside the coffins, lay back against the plush satin cushions inside and soon find themselves asleep with the covers to the coffins lifted open.

5 hours later, Lumpy unlocks the front doors and walks into the mortuary, admiring how clean and shiny the place looks. "I must remember to give those boys some of my cheese.", Lumpy thinks as he looks for the deer, but unable to find them. It's then that he sees the coffin laying against the conveyor belt leading into the incinerator with it's door open. "They must've put a body in for me to practice burning! How nice of them!". Walking over to the casket, he closes the lid and, after locking the casket, lifts it onto the beltline and pulls on the switches starting the flames and causing the casket to slowly be pulled into the incinerator...

Hearing the flames start is enough to wake Mime up and, as he slowly gets up from his resting place, he looks around for the source of the noise, only to see in horror that the casket with Rhyme in it is being sent into the furnace! Leaping out of his coffin, he rushes to Lumpy and frantically mimes that his cousin's asleep in the casket he's burning! But Lumpy just laughs at Mime and turns his attention to the coffin going into the flames...

As Rhyme slumbers in his coffin, he feels a small tingling sensation and opens his eyes a little, just thinking that his foot fell asleep. But to his shock, he sees his feet are on fire! He starts to lift his head up, but quickly bumps it against the top of the now-closed and locked coffin and soon realizes that he's been trapped inside! Frantically, he starts pushing and scratching at the top of the coffin, screaming madly for someone to let him out! But his cries are muffled by the sound of the raging furnace slowly starting to consume his casket.

Mime desperately tries to get to the switches controlling the fire, but Lumpy holds him back, saying it's a moose's job to handle the shiny switches! Now seeing the casket more than halfway in the incinerator, Mime actually kicks Lumpy in the leg and rushes towards the switches, pulling down on them so hard they nearly break off and succeeding in stopping the beltline and flames... but when he pulls out the casket and unlocks the coffin to let his cousin out, he sees a horrific sight... Rhyme's body has nearly completely reduced to ashes by the fire with only his head and a small part of his chest even remotely intact. When he looks at the top of the casket, he sees the frantic bloody clawmarks from where his cousin tried to get the top of the coffin open and gags, barely able to swallow down his stomach. But when he looks at Rhyme's intact face, he's overwhelmed and, rushing to the open furnace door, Mime vomits onto the last few flames, putting them out. It's then that we see what revolted Mime... Rhyme's face frozen in a look of utmost terror, his eyes wide with shock and his mouth open in a frozen scream, a dark red ring around his forehead from where his headband has melted into his flesh...

Nighttime has fallen on Happy Tree Land as almost all the characters gather around at the graveyard to mourn Rhyme's tragic death. Mime's beside himself in silent tears, actually wearing a black-and-white striped shirt instead of his usual purple-and-white, in mourning. With tears in everyone's eyes, they all watch as Rhyme is lowered into his eternal resting place, not one of them leaving until the last bit of dirt is shoveled onto the casket. As Priest Toothy reads the last prayers before the casket is covered by 6 feet of earth, we see Giggles gently place a bouquet of roses on Rhyme's grave, the flowers held together by a spare headband Rhyme had given her during one of his performances.

An hour later, we pan into the local Happy Tree Chemical Plant where we see Sniffles and the Mole working in a lab, the former busy pouring a dark reddish liquid into a set of beakers. The anteater's spent the better part of 72 hours working and crafting a potion that will ressurect the dead and he still has a few bugs to work out in it. Sniffles yells for the Mole to turn on the A.C., as the heat required to get some of the chemicals stabilized has reached that of 100 degrees. But as Mole walks blindly over to the A.C., we see him press not the button for the air conditioner, but a big red button marked DO NOT TOUCH!! A strident alarm fills the plant building, one that Sniffles immediately recognizes as the self-destruct alarm and immediately the anteater heads for a nearby window and uses a chair to shatter the window before he jumps through, cutting himself severely on the broken glass, and dives for cover not 5 seconds before the whole of the plant explodes in a ball of flame, instantly incinerating the Mole and destroying nearly all the equipment inside. But as Sniffles slowly looks up, already woozy from the blood loss, and glances back at the wreckage that was the chemical plant, he hears a loud whistling going through the air. When he looks up, he sees to his horror that an intact bottle of a dark purple liquid covered by a stopper, one that he instantly recognizes as one of the first failed attempts at his ressurection potion, has been blown sky high from the explosion and is headed towards the direction of the graveyard and the last thought that runs through his mind before he collapses from the massive amount of blood pouring from his wounds is "Where... will... it...land..."

Sure enough, the bottle comes to land on a grave near a bouquet of roses, the impact enough to project the stopper 10 feet away from the bottle, and topples over, spilling its contents down amidst the dirt and slowly seeping into the occupants grave. But when we pan down, we see that the occupant of the grave is Rhyme, who's having the purple liquid drip down through his coffin and onto his remains, his intact face being splattered with the goo. A few seconds pass before... we see Rhyme's eyes pop open...

We pan outside onto Rhyme's grave and see a HUGE gout of flame rise up and incinerate nearly the entire gravesite, the force of the wave shooting the headband-wrapped roses slamming against another nearby cross-shaped headstone and getting hung up by the headband stuck on the top of the cross. As the fire rages on, we see a shadowy form rise up from the flames and walk out of the flames towards the cross. Suddenly a wind picks up the headband and floats it onto the figure's silhoutted head, loosening the flowers and scattering him on the ground near the cross. It's not until the flames suddenly stop that we see who the figure is... Rhyme! But now we can see Rhyme's been changed... into what appears to be his head and what little of his chest was not burned up in the incinerator floating in mid-air. We zoom into his face and see his eyes, once black and cheerful, are now fiery red and an inhuman grin spread across his face. Suddenly, we see his eyes glow pure red and witness the petals of the roses separate and slowly envelope his missing body until they've created a flowery set of armor. As Rhyme looks at his new body, he knows he needs his real form back and coldly walks away from the smoldering ashes of his resting place and out of the graveyard headed straight for town with only one thing on his mind; bloodlust...

In the outskirts of town, we see a familiar face boogeying down to the tunes of the CD player stuck in the pocket of his flashy yellow outfit. As Disco Bear twirls his way past a few trees, we see Rhyme's cold glare peering out of the shadows and his eyes begin to glow red again. Suddenly we hear the music on Disco Bear's player go up to it's maximum volume, startling DB and making him rip off the big purple headset and toss it on the ground... or at least attempt to. As DB watches in shock, the earphones stop in mid-air and shoot around his neck, wrapping the cord around his jugular. Disco Bear suddenly sees the headset come around the other side and head back around the neck, repeating the process until it's wrapped the cord tightly around his windpipe, choking him. It's then that he feels a massive tug on the cords wrapped around his neck, nearly making his eyes bug out and hears a cold... cold voice..

"Boogie..."

Suddenly DB finds himself being lifted up into the air and being SLAMMED down against the ground. It's not until then that we see Rhyme holding the other end of the headphones with a sadistic smile, his eyes nothing but pure red.

"Woogie..."

He lifts both the cord AND, using superhuman strength, DB's prone body up in the air using only the cord and slams them again hard onto the ground. He lifts up DB into the air one more time, with a demonic grin on his formerly cheerful face.

"Woogie!!"

With an inhuman roar, he slams DB so hard into the ground that the impact causes his body to break apart, splattering his blood all over the ground and Rhyme's face and causing the arms, legs, and head to, in essence, pop off, leaving only the torso. As Rhyme licks the wet blood off his face and swallows it, he feels a strange tingling sensation, making him surprised he CAN feel sensations in his "state". But as he looks down, he sees the flowery armor has turned blood-red, the same color as the liquid pouring out of Disco Bear's broken body and out the now-empty sleeves of his outfit and a curious thought runs through his semi-warped mind. Kneeling down, he tears off a small section of the flesh on DB's chest and, without hesitation, eats it, chewing the tough skin a few times before swallowing it. Sure enough, as he looks down, he sees the same section of skin that he'd just consumed reforming onto his own body... in his own original color!. It's then that he makes the startling realization; every piece he consumes becomes a part of his "body"! Looking down at DB's body, he suddenly feels ravenous and, with a guttural cry, he leans down towards the limbless body and starts tearing into it, devouring the flesh, clothing, and organs like they were pieces of candy! Before long, Rhyme's eaten nearly the entire chest and regained all of his missing torso and upper body, minus his arms and legs, the yellow outfit being melded into his familiar black jacket. Admiring his reformed torso and feeling himself closer to getting back to his former self, he turns to chow down on the rest of D.B... only to find the vultures and wolves have already beaten him to it! Angry at having what could have been his new body taken away from him, Rhyme punches fiercely into what little is left of D.B.. But when he raises his "fists" up, he notices a burnt line against what remains of D.B.'s neck, a line Rhyme quickly recognizes as the remains of the cord, fried as if lit aflame by the candles of hell. Almost out of instinct, he places his "hand" against D.B.'s remains... and witnesses them bursting into flames not but 5 seconds later! Rhyme can't believe it... he's become a living sideshow! And as we iris in... we see him start letting out a cackle... an unearthly cackle like an animal...

Moral: Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end