Disclaimer: I do not own Ice Age or anything in the franchise.
So Diego's journey to Half Peak had begun. He would walk more than one hundred miles, carrying a human baby with his mouth. As he traveled north, the baby slept quietly, not knowing that the saber was moving him. Diego's reprieve for the silence ended after a couple hours when the baby woke up and started wailing. Even though the sound hurt his sensitive saber ears, Diego willed through it, doing his best to ignore the high pitched crying. This probably went on for another hour before they arrived at a rocky landscape and not able to take anymore of it, Diego stopped near a large boulder.
Setting the baby down on the boulder, Diego looked at him. "For crying out loud, would you stop?" The saber snarled as the infant cried. "What is it? What will it take for you to stop doing that?" Suddenly remembering his days of surveillance on the humans since the killing of half of the pack and the growing of cubs in the pack, he knew what he had to do. Sniffing the child's lower regions, he made sure they didn't smell. They didn't so it wasn't that. The kid had woken from a nap earlier so it wasn't the need to sleep. Maybe the kid just needed some cheering up from not being with his kind anymore. He nudged the baby. "Hey, want to play a little game?" The baby stopped crying after he was nudged and looked at the saber, not knowing what to expect. Then Diego covered his eyes with his paws. "Where's the baby?" Then Diego pulled his paws away and opened his eyes. "There he is!" The child stared at him blankly. Perhaps one more try. He covered his eyes again. "Where's the baby?" He repeated the same motion as before. "There he is!" The baby was still not getting it and started to wail again. Other than relieving himself and sleeping, there was one other guess.
"You're hungry, aren't you?" Diego asked the baby even though he knew the child couldn't respond. As the human continued to cry, the saber looked around for a source of food. Only one thing around the area seemed edible; the melon. Of course, it was too big for the kid to eat so he would have to cut it up with his claws. "Hey kid, look! Food!" He told the child, who stopped crying and saw the fruit. Just as Diego was about to get the melon, a dodo suddenly poked its head out of the bush next to the melon and snatched it up, running off with the fruit. "Ah great." That was the only thing the kid could eat around here. What now? Looking in the direction that the dodo ran off to and then to the baby, an idea started to form in Diego's head. No way, that was too risky. If anything happened to the kid, he would have to pay for it. But it was considerably safer than the other option.
With a decision finalized in his mind, he picked up the baby and took him over to the bush where he concealed the baby inside it. "Don't move from here. If you get into trouble then so do I." The saber warned the human. Taking chase, he ran off after the dodo.
Not too far away from where he left the baby, Diego found the dodo and the melon. Only one problem stood in his way though; there were dozens of dodos and there were only three melons gathered in the middle of the clearing. "Hey dodos!" He growled to catch their attention. "I need that melon back!"
"What!" A dodo cried. "You can't take our melons. We need them to survive the Ice Age!" The dodo reasoned, perching on top of a melon.
Diego quirked an eyebrow. "The lot of you is going to survive the Ice Age by sharing three melons?" He had heard about these messed up birds but he had no idea that they were this stupid.
The dodos nodded. "Yep." One answered.
"Well then, you're going to need to find another melon because I need to take one of those."
"No way, we claim these melons for dodo kind. Go find a different one." Another warned.
"Well, I'm a predator and what I say goes. I'm taking one of those melons."
"He's going to attack! Dodos, get him!" A dodo yelled. Dodos closed in to attack him. In order to protect the melons, a dodo grabbed one and tossed it to a different dodo, who tossed it to another one, who tossed it over the edge of the nearby cliff.
The dodo that just tossed the melon over the cliff screamed. "The melon!" He jumped over the edge to go after the melon as well as others did.
Taking the distraction of the lost melon, Diego pounced and went after one of the two remaining melons. However, the remaining dodos were quick to knock it away from him and ended up sending it over to the tar pit. Numerous dodos went after it and fell into the pit along with the melon.
"Ouch, I don't want to be one of those guys." A dodo that witnessed the event said to his friend.
With the last melon still available, the orange saber ran for it. "This one's mine!" Bearing no opposable claws, he could only roll it. A clear shot to the path that led back to the baby was in sight. He rolled it forward and saw dodos coming in to attack him and take back the melon. Determined to keep this melon, he drew out his claws and slashed at the dodos. His attacks injured the dodos and as he slashed at some dodos, he kicked others away. This cycle continued until he reached the path and there were no more dodos left standing to face him. "Hah! Take that, idiots! Predator, one, prey, none!" Diego boasted before he rolled the melon away from the site. Recovering dodos got back to their feet only to be dazed and confused enough to fall off the cliff.
A couple minutes later, he returned to the area with the bush. The first thing he did was go over to the bush to check if the baby was still there and he was, much to the saber's relief. After he got the kid out, he sat the child next to him as he cut up the melon to eat. "You know, if we're going to be stuck with each other for a while. I need something to call you. 'Human' just isn't working for me." He said to the baby as the baby eat his melon. Looking at the little human, Diego noticed how pink his cheeks were from the melon juice. With those melon juice covered cheeks, he looked so pink. "That works, for the rest of this trip, you'll be called 'Pinky'. No arguments on this." The infant now named 'Pinky' just smiled at him as he eat the melon.
Once Pinky had finished his meal, Diego went and hunted for some meat to eat for his dinner. By the time he had gotten finished eating, night fell. Camp would have to be made here tonight. Now he was moving some medium-sized boulders around in the shape of a circle. When he was done, he put Pinky in the middle of it. "There we go. Now if you decide to wake up and crawl away in the middle of the night, you can't go anywhere. Even if you could walk now, you still couldn't climb over these." He taunted as Pinky settled down to sleep for the night. Lying down on the ground near the rock circle, he waited and listened for a while before he decided to get some sleep. Just as he was going to go to sleep, he sensed something off about the area. For most of the afternoon and evening, it was just him and Pinky, no dodos had come back to get the melon. For some reason, now there was a problem.
Jumping to his feet, Diego followed his intuition and tackled the intruder. Much to his shock, it was Zeke.
"Zeke! What are you doing here? I could have killed you." Diego snarled at the lower-ranked saber. As he got off Zeke, he noticed that Oscar and Lenny were there as well.
"We came because Soto's getting impatient. He told you to bring the baby or don't come back." Zeke explained. "Judging by the lack of human baby with you, you didn't find it."
Diego growled. "I got the baby. Look for yourself." He led the other sabers over to his camp site.
Lenny nodded in approval. "Good, let's get it back to Soto."
"I'm getting him back to Soto myself." Diego said. "I'm proving my worth as second-in-command and I won't have any of you budging in on it." He countered.
"What do you expect us to do then? We came to tell you Soto's message." Oscar said.
"Then tell him that I'm coming and I'm bringing the kid with me. Tell him I'm luring the baby into false safety so he isn't wailing his head off when I get him to Half Peak. That will make this even better." The sabers didn't move. "Go!" With the final word and order said, the sabers hurried off to follow their superior's orders.
Hopefully he wouldn't be interrupted again in the middle of the night. Placing himself near the rock circle, Diego fell into slumber.