Grumpy sat at the foot of Cheer's destroyed flower garden, feeling very bad.
"What am I going to tell Cheer Bear?" Grumpy asked himself. He tried to replant one of the uprooted flowers only to have it wilt over on its side. Grumpy just frowned and let out a sigh. "Seeing her happy...it's one of the only things that really makes me feel happy." With that a little black rain cloud started to form above his head and little droplets of rain fell against his face, almost like artificial tears of sadness.
In the distance there was much commotion going on as all the bears hurriedly went about trying to restore order. The Rainbow Rescue Beam was completely demolished and for the time being had been blocked off until they could figure out how to go about restoring it. Tenderheart had announced a Hall of Hearts meeting in a few hours to assess the damages, repair time, and review security measures.
"Who turned out all the lights?!" exclaimed Cheer as she accidentally bumped into a wall.
Funshine suddenly stopped talking and perked up when the lights went out.
"Funshine, what's going on?" asked Julie.
"I don't know, Julie. Let me see if I can shed some light on the situation."
And with that her tummy symbol started to glow and suddenly the whole room lit up in bright light.
"That's better," said Funshine, quite proud of her work.
"WOW, that was really great!" exclaimed Julie as she examined the glowing walls.
"I'm glad you like it," giggled Funshine. "But I wonder what made the lights go out...and it's suddenly really dark and stormy outside.
Cheer came into the room then, rubbing her head where she had bumped into the wall.
"Hey, Funshine, what's going on with the lights?" asked Cheer.
"I don't know, but from the looks of things outside, maybe the power got knocked out."
Outside things were indeed dreadful looking. It had begun to rain and large thunder claps could be heard. Julie shuddered a bit at the loud rumbling and Cheer sat down next to her and put her arm around her for comfort.
"It'll be okay; we'll stay with you until the storm passes."
Julie gave a little smile but still appeared quite shaken up.
"What happened in here?!" exclaimed Beastly.
The castle was a mess. Broken furniture was strewn all about, broken bottles and scattered papers littered the floor, and several walls had large cracks in them. Suddenly Beastly noticed Noheart sprawled out on the floor.
"Noheart!" Beastly gasped as he ran over to his fallen master.
"Uh...b-b-boss...are you okay..." asked Beastly.
Noheart finally started to regain consciousness and slowly got to his feet. After a few moments he asked, "Beastly...Beastly where is it, where did it go?"
"Where did what go, Boss?"
"The bear...t-that stupid little bear..."
Beastly looked all around but didn't see anything.
"No bears here...maybe you, uh...hit yer head a lil too hard."
"No, Beastly, I did not hit my head too hard. I created a new creature to help me get rid of those Care Bears, but it did not work out as I had planned."
"Does it ever?" asked Beastly.
Noheart just glared at him for a moment before regaining his bearings and dusting himself off.
"Hrmmm...my amulet has been damaged and the spare seems to have gone missing. No doubt that...bear took it. I shall have to make a new one, but before I can do that I'll have to get a new crystal. While I'm gone Beastly, you will clean up this mess."
"Uh, sure thing...but don't you wanna know what happened?"
Noheart looked at Beastly questioningly.
"You know, with the uh...the, um...oh never mind.", Beastly said, hoping Noheart's head bump had made him forget about the list of ingredients he was supposed to get.
With that, Noheart left the castle, to get another crystal for his amulet.
"Derrick! Derrick wait for me!" yelled a young brunette girl, who looked to be about in her mid teens.
"Come on, Kristy, we're gonna be late!" a red-headed boy, also in his teens, yelled back.
"Tell me again why we're doing this?" asked the girl.
"Well...because we promised we would...and because it's nice," answered the boy.
The girl looked at him with a questioning smile and said, "You know, sometimes I think we spend more time being nice to others than we do being nice to ourselves."
The boy just let out a little laugh as he put his arm around the girl and gave her a quick kiss.
Suddenly the lights in the house came on with an eerie hum, only they kept getting brighter and brighter. Funshine and Cheer sensed that something wasn't quite right and positioned themselves around Julie in a protective stance. Suddenly the light bulbs exploded and Julie let out a scream and started crying. Meanwhile, sadistic laughter could be heard coming from somewhere downstairs.
"What do you think it is, Funshine?" asked Cheer in a very serious manner.
"I'm not sure, but this doesn't seem like Noheart's work...it's almost like it's playing with us...maybe it's Dr. Fright."
"Should we retreat?" asked Cheer?
Funshine nodded. "Until we know what it is we're better off falling back, especially with Julie here."
"I'm scared, Cheer!" exclaimed Julie.
"It'll be okay, Julie, we won't let anything happen to you," Cheer said comfortingly.
"When will Julie's parents be home, Cheer?" asked Funshine.
"Not for another four or five hours; but with the storm, I don't know, they might come home early."
"Well, we can have Wish keep a lookout and if they do then we can use the Rainbow Rescue Beam to get her back in a hurry if need be. I'm sure Brightheart has got it working by now," said Funshine.
"How does that sound, Julie? Would you like to come and visit Care-A-Lot?!" Cheer asked.
"REALLY?! You're really gonna take me to see Care-A-Lot?!" Julie exclaimed with a great big smile on her face, suddenly forgetting about the current danger they were in.
Cheer just gave her a nod, took her by the hand and headed toward the window while Funshine stood on guard, waiting for the unexpected to happen. With that, Cheer opened the window and her tummy symbol began to glow brightly as small clouds suddenly started forming together. Eventually it took the shape of a cloud car and the two got in.
"We're ready Funshine," exclaimed Cheer. But just then the door blew open and a blast of air knocked Funshine to the ground and caused the cloud car to swerve off and almost lose control.
"WWWWOOOOAAAAHHH!" yelled Cheer as the cloud car went flying sideways, nearly slamming into the house across the street. Julie gave out a little scream just as Cheer was able to regain control at the last second. Then suddenly lightning bolts were flashing around them and Cheer knew that with Julie in danger she had to get out as fast as possible, even if it meant leaving behind Funshine. Barely avoiding lighting strike after lighting strike Cheer managed to fly past the storm with Julie clinging tightly to her and whimpering.
"Wookit, Kwisty, wookit what I dwew!", exclaimed an excited little 3-year-old, holding up a drawing of a big smiley face to Kristy.
"WOW! That's really great! I love it!" Kristy said with a big smile. The little girl, happy with the praise, went back at it, this time adding blue hair. Kristy looked on smiling. Despite her occasional complaints, she actually really enjoyed volunteering down at the local day care center.
Derrick also seemed to enjoy the work, but Kristy knew that for him it was more about his personal struggle to cope with his past. At this point, the past seemed like just a blur to Kristy and she knew that in time she would probably eventually forget about the past events entirely. Whether as an effect of something the Care Bears had done, or something naturally occurring, when one starts to lose their innocence and becomes an adult. In either case, she knew there wasn't much she could do, but still worried about how it might affect her relationship with Derri-no...Darkheart.