All fired up Part 2

30 minutes later, we pan outside Pop's house, where we see the pipe-smoking bear resting against a lawn chair, Cub tucked nicely into bed, and able to smoke his pipe in peace. As he puffs on his cherry-flavored tobacco, he suddenly hears a rustling come from the bushes nearby his house. Getting up in alarm, he looks around, but sees nothing but the blowing of the wind against the leaves he'd just finished raking. Shrugging it off, he lays back against the lawn chair, chalking the noise up to his mind still being freaked out by seeing Rhyme buried not but 2 hours ago, his remains almost unrecognizable. But as he starts to take another puff on his pipe, he suddenly feels a tug on the back of his bathrobe. He looks underneath the side of the lawn chair, thinking Cub's just crawled out of bed and gotten under his lawn chair... but what he sees is a shadowy silhoutte and a pair of blood-red irises...

"Huh... May I hel--"

That's all he's able to get out before the figure rams his head forward into Pop's skull, knocking him backwards and off the other side. As he lays on the ground stunned, the figure picks up the pipe, dropped from Pop's mouth, and lights it, revealing the silhoutte to be none other than Rhyme! He takes a deep puff and exhales a cloud of smoke in the shape of a skull.

"Ah... That's the stuff..."

Pop's just staring at Rhyme, scared beyond belief at seeing the figure buried hours ago now standing before him, smoking his pipe.

"How... how?!"

Rhyme doesn't answer, but with the speed of a rocket jams the narrow end of the pipe into each of Pop's eyes, watching as they burst into pools of viscousy fluid and blood streaming down his sockets, leaving him in darkness..

"Don't worry..."

Without wasting a second, Rhyme thrusts the thick end of the pipe right between the holes that once were Pop's eyes and looks at the writhing bear gleefully.

"I'll light your way!"

Rhyme takes a deep breath and blows hard into the pipe, causing all the tobacco in the pipe to ignite at once and making Pop's head explode into a shower of flames and gore. As he watches Pop fall back, lifeless and headless, he takes ahold of Pops arm, uses his inhuman strength to wrench it off, and looks at it hungrily.

"Smoked and crisped, just how I like it..."

Without wasting a moment, Rhyme tears into the clothed arm, devouring the flesh and bone with greedy delight and not leaving even a droplet of marrow or blood to fall onto the crisp evening grass. Before long, the entire arm has been consumed and, much to Rhyme's pleasure, been transformed back into his right arm, giving him the appearance of a one-armed spectre. But as he swallows the last mouthful, he realizes that there's a unique flavor to it... one that reminds him of the taste of the doughnuts and fried chicken he had eaten before he'd gone to work earlier that day. Realizing he's able to even remember the last meal he'd eaten before he'd left the house the day of his demise gets him to thinking... is it possible that with each part of his body he gets back, it gives him back part of his old self too, as if more blood is being put from his new limbs into his brain and reenergizing parts of his cerebellum... As he flexes his reformed arm and wiggles the fingers to make sure they're working good, he realizes there's only one way to find out and, figuring it's only a matter of time before Cub crawls out of his bed for a drink of water from his Pop and discovers the bear's remains, hightails it out of Pop's backyard, leaving the body near the lawn chair and pocketing the remains of the pipe for himself.

Another 30 minutes later, we pan to the local Happy Tree Batting Cages, where we see a familiar pink-slippered yellow rabbit swinging a baseball bat eagerly at the hard baseballs being shot at him from the pitching machine and hitting a fair few of them. As the balls finally stop being pitched, he lowers the bat and pants in satisfaction.

"15... out of 20... a new record!"

It was then that the sound of coins being dropped into the slot activating the pitching machine reaches Cuddles' ears and, as he looks towards the next batting slot over, he sees a shadowy figure holding what appears to be a baseball bat and set in a batting stance. Before long, the machine starts pitching the balls at a breakneck speed, the figure nailing the first 19 in rapid succession!

"How... how is that batter hitting them that quick??"

But what he witnesses next startles him even more... As the machine shoots the 20th baseball at the figure, the speed of the ball exceeding that of 100 mph, the figure CATCHES the ball, bare-handed!

"Whoa..."

Suddenly, Cuddles sees something that makes him drop his own bat in shock... the figure holds the ball out near their face and, a few moments later, the rabbit watches as the baseball lights on fire! It's then that he sees his biggest shock of the night... the figure is Rhyme!! The same deer he'd witnessed being buried earlier that very night!

"You?? What the he--"

The rabbit's not able to get anything else out before Rhyme pitches the fireball with his solid hand straight through the mesh chainlink fence seperating the two slots and right into Cuddles' face, knocking the rabbit to the ground. Stunned and unable to get up, Cuddles can only watch breathlessly as Rhyme comes out of his slot, revealing his almost vapor-like form to the rabbit and grabs him by his neck, bringing him up to his feet momentarily before throwing him hard against the fence, causing him to get stuck by his face onto two of the sharp ends of the fence. He's so busy struggling to free himself that he doesn't even see Rhyme raising his own bat and rearing it back...

"Batter up!!"

With all his inhuman might, he swings the bat straight towards Cuddles' stuck head as the camera pans to the ground near the rabbit's struggling slippered feet. Suddenly, we hear the bat make contact with a grotesque-sounding thud as blood showers the ground and we see Cuddles' feet stop moving, his hands falling lifelessly by his sides. It's then that the camera goes back to Cuddles' head... or what used to be it anyway... Most of the rabbit's skull and brains are splattered on the ground outside the chainlink fence, having been thrust forcefully through the holes in the fence by the impact of the bat being slammed against it. What little is still on the inside of the batting cage is mostly wrapped around Rhyme's now gore-soaked bat. Without wasting a beat, Rhyme rears up and swings the bat in a high arc right underneath the rabbit's left armpit, shattering the bone and internally severing it from the dead rabbit's body. Now only held by the bare flesh, it takes very little for Rhyme to grab ahold of the arm and rip it from its socket, looking at the arm hungrily and licking his lips. Rhyme doesn't even stop to think before he tears into the arm, consuming the flesh and bone eagerly and devouring it all within moments. As the deer looks on in satisfaction, he watches as the bits of the arm swirl around in his vapor-like forearm before slowly reforming into his own green-furred arm. Whacking the now-solid arm against the fence and giving a soft growl of triumph as he feels the vibration travel through his arm and into his body, he's slowly reminded of the feeling of the flames licking against his skin from back in the coffin. What he was even doing in a coffin escapes the deers tattered mind...

"The only way... to remember...", Rhyme realizes, his mind nearly destroyed, "is to get back... my full body..."

But a sudden shriek interrupts Rhyme's clouded thoughts and as he looks out through the chainlink fence, he sees Handy standing nearby Cuddles' spattered brains, a look of terror on his face at seeing Rhyme back from the dead and the rabbit now in pieces. The beaver turns to run away, but Rhyme is too fast for him and before Handy knows it, the demonic deer's picked up the bat, gotten out of the cage, and leapt upon the poor beaver, pinning him down on the ground. A sharp jab to Handy's gut from the metal bat causes the beaver to scream in agony, Rhyme lapping up the screams like a dog would a bowl of water. But as Rhyme raises the gory bat above his head, ready to bring it down and splatter Handy's skull like a ripe melon, he sees the beaver start to cry, begging him for mercy

"Please... don't hurt me... please..."

Seeing Handy pleading for his life, the first set of tears he's seen all night, he starts to feel a sudden migraine and clutches his head violently, screaming loudly

"Can't kill... CAN'T KILL!!"

With a panicked look on his face, he scrambles off of Handy and looks at him, terrified at the sudden realization of what he's been doing, a shred of his former self starting to emerge...

"Get... get away... NOW!!"

Rhyme starts to feel the hunger for blood reemerging and, tossing the bat towards Handy, nailing him in the stomach, he rushes out of the batting cage park, leaving the carpenter beaver gasping knelt on the ground, vomiting up blood and bile from the blows to his stomach. But as Handy slowly gets up, spitting out the last few red and yellow droplets and watching Rhyme's silhoutte vanishing into the darkness, he realizes he needs to tell Mime about his cousin's "rebirth" and maybe get the silent deer to help him take down his possessed cousin. Groaning from the nausea coarsing through his bruised stomach, he slowly walks out of the batting park, headed for Mime's circus tent...

A little ways away, we see Rhyme duck into a dark alley, panting heavily after the altercation with Handy. By now, his hunger has fully returned and he's wondering why he let Handy escape... when he could've gotten more of his body and brain back from one of the legs of the amputee beaver.

"Now how will I get my body back?? I let my meal get away!!"

But the deer doesn't have long to ponder before he hears the hysterical laughter of a certain sugar-craving squirrel nearby and, sure enough, he soon sees Nutty running by, giggling and clutching a big bag of sweets to his chest. But as he runs past the dark alley, Rhyme sees a big red jawbreaker slip out of the sweets bag, landing on the street unnoticed by the hyperactive squirrel and he starts to get a sick idea in his head. Fetching the big candy and holding it tightly in his palm, he yells out in his best falsetto-voice to where he sounds almost exactly like Cuddles.

"Hey dude! You dropped your jawbreaker in this dark alley!!"

It only takes a few moments for the squirrel to run back to the alley, looking eagerly for his lost candy and it takes an even shorter amount of time for Rhyme to light the jawbreaker on fire, tossing it in the air and catching it while stepping out of the shadows of the alley and giving the squirrel a big shark-like grin

"Hee hee hee... Who can take the candy..."

Nutty can only look in horror at Rhyme coming towards him, petrified at the sight of the deer he'd seen being laid to rest now standing before him

"Sprinkle it with gore..."

Nutty turns to run, but Rhyme quickly leaps upon him, pinning him to the street

"Turn it into something yummy and yet evil more..."

Rhyme quickly thrusts the fiery jawbreaker down Nutty's throat and quickly places his hand against the squirrel's throat, cutting off his air supply and preventing him from being able to swallow the jawbreaker, causing him to gag and gurgle as he struggles to breathe, the flames licking and scorching the back of his windpipe...

"The Fireman can..."

As Rhyme watches, Nutty's gasps for air slowly start to grow weaker and, with a fierce punch, the deer slams his fist down onto the bulge in Nutty's neck, shattering both the jawbreaker and his windpipe, silencing the squirrel. Watching Nutty's head fall back against the street as blood pours from the gaping hole in his throat, he lets out a demonic laugh before he turns around and uses his strength to rip off Nutty's left leg, looking at it hungrily

"The Fireman can causes he mixes it with blood and makes the body taste good..."

With a happy cry, he sinks his teeth into the flesh of Nutty's leg, savoring the sweet taste of the sugar-enriched blood and bone of the squirrel. Before long, the whole of the leg has disappeared down Rhyme's throat and, as the deer watches with delight, the bits of bone and flesh slowly reform into his left leg, leaving only his right leg in the bloody-vapor form made by the petals from the roses and D.B's blood. As he looks down at Nutty's lifeless body, his face frozen in a final unrequited gasp for air, he's slowly reminded of the faces of the bodies he saw as he was putting away the cadavers before he fell asleep in the coffin, although he cannot think of WHY he was putting away dead bodies.

"All I need is my other leg and it all should became crystal clear... and I know who my last meal is gonna be..."

As he walks away, leaving Nutty's dead body lying in the street, he turns his head back towards the squirrel's corpse and sings the last line of the song he'd been whispering while he'd multilated Nutty's body

"And the body tastes good... cause the Fireman thinks it shoooooould!"

A little ways away...

We pan into what appears to be a teakettle heating on a stovetop, steam blasting from its spout. Suddenly we see a green-furred hand reach towards the knob on the stove and turn the heat off. As it takes the teakettle off the stove, it becomes quickly apparent whose hand is holding the whistling pot by the cameo-covered arm... Flippy. Sure enough, as we pan off the stove and onto the nearby table, we see the war veteran calmly pouring the tea from inside the pot into a cup and taking a soft sip, the tranquil taste of the liquid helping him forget the horrible event he'd had to go to a few hours earlier. It had been all he could do to keep his cool after seeing Rhyme's charred "body" lying there in that coffin. But as he sips the warm drink, a knock at the door echoes through the house, startling the bear. Flippy sets the cup of tea down on the table and starts to head for the door, but as he passes his living room, where a warm fire is roaring in his fireplace, he hears a sudden loud crack followed by a soft thud and the bear ducks against the nearby wall, panting heavily. Already a little freaked from earlier, his mind's already placing the sound to being that of one of his buddies in his platoon being decapitated and their head falling onto the mud and before long, he's transformed into his own evil alter-ego. Going to his closet, in the process revealing the sound to have been nothing more than one of the logs in the fire crumbling into the flames, he pulls out a small hand scythe and presses the sharp tip against his finger, drawing blood. After seeing the droplet of blood ooze from his hand and drip onto the floor, he lets out a sinister laugh, readies his scythe to attack, and yanks open the door, swinging the scythe down expecting to bury it into a poor souls head. But instead, he feels something catch his arm in mid-slash and as he looks in the doorway, he soon finds himself staring into Rhyme's cold and cruel glare, the deer having caught Flippy's arm in mid-attack.

"Back from the dead, eh... Allow me to put you back in hell!!", Flippy screams as he punches Rhyme in the gut, causing him to fall to the ground and bringing his scythe back up to slash it through the deer's neck. But as he swipes down towards the deer's throat, a swift uppercut from Rhyme knocks him down and out and causes him to drop his scythe as the screen goes black...

A few minutes later, we focus back in to see Flippy's face, upside-down, slowly regain conciousness. The camera zooms out, quickly revealing the war-veteran strung up in his own Christmas-light snare trap, the same one he used in "Easy for you to Sleigh". Flippy doesn't have to wait long to figure out how he got up there as Rhyme walks up to the hung bear, wielding Flippy's hand scythe, which is now surrounded in flames, and giving an inhuman grin to the bear.

"Hee hee hee... too bad you forgot to take down your lights..."

With a sudden swipe, Rhyme rips the scythe through Flippy's chest, causing a thick stream of blood to fall down onto his face and making the bear sputter and gasp as his ribcage is now the only thing preventing his organs from spilling onto the floor.

"What... what are you doing?!"

Rhyme doesn't answer, but merely lifts up the scythe and holds it gently against Flippy's neck before he whispers to the frightened veteran

"Just cutting a few loose ends..."

With that, he fiercely tears the blade through Flippy's throat, causing dark blood to spray from his jugular onto the deer's face. All Flippy can do is look in horror at Rhyme as his vision starts to turn black from the cold grasp of death clutching him

"No... how... how can it be..." is all he's able to gurgle out before the last of his blood drips out of his torn neck and he succumbs to his blood loss, dying upside-down and suspended from his own trap. Without wasting a second, Rhyme uses the scythe to sever Flippy's leg and grabs the appendage in his hands, eyeing it greedily.

"Nothing like military-grade gore!"

Rhyme tears into the limb, devouring every shred of what once was Flippy's right leg, and watches as the last of his missing limbs slowly reforms. But even with his body whole again, he still doesn't know what killed him...

"How can this be... I got my body back... but I still don't know what happened to me!! Who am I? How did I die... What happened to me!!"

With an insane-sounding cry, he brings the fiery scythe back, and thrusts it forward...

A few feet away, two theiving raccoons are busy sneaking in through the open front door, out for their usual nighttime heists. It's their first stop of the night and, after being witness to Rhyme's burial earlier, it's a much-needed distraction from the fear that filled them when they saw the deers remains.

"Hee hee hee hee hee... This is gonna be a great haul!!", Lifty says holding the bag for their loot

"You know it, my brother! Especially since the whole town's gonna be in mourning over--"

It's then that Shifty walks into the hall where Flippy is and what he sees makes him stop dead in his tracks, everything he'd eaten earlier in the day wanting to come up his throat...

"Oh... my... god...", he whispers in horror

"What?? Why'd you sto--", Lifty starts to say, but his brother can only gag and put shakily ahead of him. It's as Lifty turns to where Shifty's pointing that we see what the raccoon saw... Flippy's guts, his fingers, chunks of his flesh... they're all laying under the veteran's suspended body in a large puddle of blood and more of them keep falling down. Shifty falls to his knees and starts to vomit violently, overwhelmed by the horrible sight.

"Who... who could have done this?!", Lifty wonders as he tries to block out the disgusting sound of his brother barfing onto the floor. But as he watches in shock, a familiar face, now saturated in blood, peers around from Flippy's hung corpse at the sound of Shifty getting sick.

"No... no more!!", Rhyme screams as he pushes Flippy's body away and runs towards the two raccoons, madness starting to overtake him completely. He tackles the sick Shifty and pins him to the ground,

"What is happening to me?! Tell me!!", the deer screams as he presses the blade against Shifty's pale face. "Tell me now!!".

"I... I don't know!!", is all the terrified raccoon is able to get out.

"Lies!! All lies!!", Rhyme yells as he raises up the scythe, "Tell me what happened!!"

It's then that he feels a tug on his jacket and as he looks behind him, he sees Lifty pulling on Rhyme's jacket, trying to get him off of his brother. But Rhyme's got such a tight grip on Shifty that all Lifty's able to do is pull the jacket off of Rhyme, revealing a sight that makes Lifty start gagging violently... The deer's burnt and stitch-like chest, jagged stitches running all over his body from where his limbs and torso became whole again. Looking down and seeing the scars running up and down his body is more than the deer can handle and he starts choking Shifty violently, screaming at the top of his lungs

"WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!"

"RHYME... STOP!!"

Hearing Shifty's gurgled cry, he can't help but look down at the raccoon and release his grip on his throat a little, perplexed by what he just called him.

"What... what did you call me??"

"Rhyme... you're Rhyme..."

At hearing Shifty saying his name, a small part of his memory starts to reform and he remembers the ringmaster introducing him during his show the day before his death...

"Put your hands together for the first of the stars of Splendid's Circus... Rhyme!!"

At seeing himself stepping onto the circus spotlight, a small sense of relief starts to ebb through Rhyme's body.

"I... I'm Rhyme... I remember..."

He lets go of Shifty's throat and gets off of the prone raccoon. Getting up slowly, Rhyme looks at what's left of Flippy's corpse and can't help but feel a bit of his rage starting to reemerge as he stares at both the corpse and his gore-soaked scythe...

"But... what happened to me?? How'd I go from a star... to THIS?!"

It's then that the TV in the living room, evidently working on a timer, starts up and a commercial rings throughout the house, one that reaches the ears of the three occupants inside still breathing

"BACK IN BUSINESS, HAPPY TREE MORTUARY! YOU STAB 'EM, WE SLAB 'EM!"

At hearing the commercial blaring through the house, another part of Rhyme's tattered memory comes back to him, one that makes his eyes open wide

"The mortuary... I remember being there when I... That's where I died!!"

Dropping the scythe on the ground near the puddle of Shifty's puke, he coldly starts to walk out of the house leaving Flippy's remains dangling by the christmas light trap and the two raccoons staring stunned at him, his hunger for blood almost completely satiated and replaced with a desire for his sanity

"Where... where are you going?", Lifty softly whispers, still in shock at all he's witnessed...the likes of which will probably haunt him forever

"To find out what happened to me... the mortuary will have the last few answers..."

As they watch the possessed deer walk out the door, bloody footprints left behind, they look at each for a split second before Shifty speaks...

"You go get Mime and meet me at the mortuary... I'm gonna check out Rhyme's resting place..."

"You got it!", Lifty replies before he runs out the door. Shifty starts to go out as well, but the kleptomaniac part of him kicks in and he can't help but wonder...

"Did he have any money in his wallet before he died?"

Shifty, knowing the pockets of Flippy's gear are on the front of his chest, walks around to Flippy's front to check his pockets... only to see a sight that makes him instantly nauseous... The war-veteran's body is totally destroyed. All of his fingers are lying now on the floor below him as are his organs, large chunks of his flesh, and even a little bit of his brain. His face is barely even recognizable anymore, one eye burst and the other now rolled back into his head, his nose torn off completely with flecks of brain matter pulled out through the nasal passages as if in the process of mummification, and all the fur from above his eyes torn off and laying hung from his head like a hoodie. His chest is torn open completely, all of the internal viscera gone with the exception of a small part of intestine hanging now at the back of his empty chest. Shifty covers his mouth, gagging violently, and runs out of the house to a nearby bush where he starts throwing up violently to the point where some of it almost comes out of his own nose. After emptying his stomach's contents all over the hedge, he leans up and, wiping his mouth off on the back of his arm, looks back at the open door leading to Flippy's body and, keeping his head turned away, goes to the door and carefully closes it... sealing off the grisly sight of the disemboweled war-veteran as we iris in on the light from the hallway slowly being closed shut..

Moral: Never start what you can't finish!.