Disclaimer: I do not own Ice Age or anything within the franchise.

The cave wasn't as bad as it appeared to be from the outside. It was actually kind of luminescent. Diego quietly padded his way through the place. Thanks to the humans, he couldn't go the path he intended to take and was forced to take a detour. At least his captive was behaving himself.

"This is probably going to take forever. Thanks a lot humans." Diego cursed them.

Meanwhile, Pinky attempted to amuse himself by looking at the walls of the cave. A lot of animals were frozen in suspended animation here and it was actually interesting to see them frozen in place like they were.

Soon they came to an incline in the cave and Diego went up. Once he was at the top, he slipped.

"Woah!" He gasped as his front paws moved away from their intended positions. His front half lowered to the ground and Pinky was released from his clutches. The baby accidentally slid away from him as he got back up. "Stupid ice." Then Diego noticed that he was missing his cargo. After he looked ahead of him, he knew where Pinky was.

"Ooooh, whee!" Pinky cried out happily as he slid forward into what looked like a tunnel slide.

Diego blanched. If he lost the kid he wouldn't be able to show his face to the pack again. "Hey! Get back here!" Without a second thought, he dashed forward and jumped into the tunnel to chase after Pinky.

Pinky zoomed down the tunnel, squealing in happiness of having fun and went down another tunnel. Diego saw which one he went down and made sure he slid the same way. They were hurtled through the air into another tunnel where just as Diego was about to get him, Pinky fell into another tunnel. He had lost sight of the baby completely. Fortunately, the tunnel led into a space where he found him again. The baby slid up a slope but didn't have enough momentum to continue going up it so he was sent sliding back down towards Diego's direction.

As the baby came back towards him, Diego readied his claws and his mouth. If he could just get the kid in his claws then he could latch the baby back onto him. To his relief, the baby slid right back into his paws while Diego still moved forward. He slid up the same slope Pinky did but just so he could return Pinky to his mouth, he clawed into the slope to stop them. His claw halted their sliding around and his other leg held Pinky. Pinky was still having fun with their antics and laughed as they stopped. Before he had a moment to lose, Diego quickly snared his teeth onto Pinky's shirt, which the baby didn't even notice in his amusement of the tunnel. Now if only they could get out of this crazy tunnel.

He heard a crack. Apparently their prolonged stay on the slope was too much for it and it started to crack. "Oh, come on." The saber complained while still firmly holding onto Pinky's shirt. In a matter of seconds, the slope broke off of its post and fell forward. Since Diego's claw was still embedded in it, they went down with it. Perhaps it wasn't a bad thing that they were on that broken slope because up ahead came a field of sharp ice shards. The slope rode over them while shredding to pieces in the process. By the time the saber and his cargo got to the other side, the whole slope was gone from under them.

Then came what looked like the last of the tunnel. The saber and the human fell onto a tube-like lane with very little wiggle room. It wasn't so bad, it was a flat, safe ride. At least it was until Diego had to use his shoulder to protect himself and the kid from getting hurt when they slammed through the thin wall of ice.

With the ride over, Diego was finally able to catch a breath. Pretty sure there was going to be no more sliding around, he set Pinky down so he could fill his lungs with air. While the whole thing was crazy, Diego was more than willing to experience that ride again. Pinky's laugh echoed his agreement.

Once Diego was ready to continue, he snatched up Pinky and walked forward. This went on for a little while and eventually the ice disappeared and was replaced with rock walls. There were drawings on them. The saber didn't recognize them but he had to guess the only ones that were capable of doing this were the humans. Drawings of sabers, gazelles, mammoths, and humans were all over the place. As they passed through, Diego looked at some of them and tried to imagine what they were supposed to be showing. Suddenly, Pinky squeaked and babbled as the infant pointed to a drawing on a wall they were passing. A bit intrigued, Diego looked at what he was pointing at. It was odd, there were three mammoths. One looked like a baby mammoth and one looked like it was a female but the odd part was that the third mammoth looked like Manny, the mammoth that he had fought over the baby. His green eyes wandered and he looked around Pinky's drawing to find more drawings containing the Manny lookalike were on the wall. It was strange, the drawings he saw started to make some sense to him.

There was a mammoth and his mate, they had a child. The two mammoths obviously loved each other dearly and the child was able to play freely. That was until hunters attacked. The male mammoth told his mate and child to flee while he fended them off. Apparently the humans didn't want anything to do with him, they wanted his family. The humans ran past him while some stayed to fight him. The mother and child were cornered by a cliff and the father couldn't get to them with the humans surrounding him. Up on top of the cliff, there was a human with a large boulder. The male mammoth called out to his family. There weren't any drawings that told what happened next but Diego assumed he could figure out what had happened.

A realization occurred to the saber. This story was almost like his pack's scenario with them attacking the humans. They had attacked the men while he had gone after the kid. The mother had interfered and ran off with Pinky while he pursued them. The other sabers had held the men including the kid's father back. When the mother and child were cornered. The kid's father must think he lost both the mother and the child. In the drawing, the mammoth family looked happy together. Before the attack, they were happy just like the humans were before the pack attacked the camp. They were no better than the humans. That ended up being Diego's conclusion. The thought baffled him, he never thought he would come up with that idea.

Pinky's babble returned him to the present. They had to get going. After one last look at the drawing, Diego swung Pinky around, away from the drawing, and went to the cave's exit.