Sniffles and Nutty were running as fast as they could to get away from the roaring wave of snow descending upon them. The blue anteater looked back and tried to figure out the best way to get away. No matter how many times he tried to run the rough calculations through his head though, he kept coming up the same answer. There was no escape. "Nutty!"
"Ahahaha, huh?"
"When the avalanche hits, try to swim. If you start to sink, make a breathing space." He heard screams that grew gradually louder and turned to see Giggles and Lammy trying to stay atop the avalanche that was about to overtake them. "Brace yourself! Don't sink!" Then the snow hit.
Sniffles paddled for his life as the snow quickly swept him forward. Next to him, Nutty was flailing wildly and doing a pretty poor job of staying on top. Sniffles would have shouted at him, except that he needed to save his breath so save himself. Lammy's staggered when her skis hit a rock and fell over, her white coat quickly lost in the snow. Sniffles saw Lifty and Shifty desperately clinging to a tree and barely managed to get out of the way when the tree came crashing down. Despite his frantic attempts, he could feel himself sinking and tried to keep his snout up above the snow, hoping that nothing would come by and shear it off. The snow first covered his ears, blocking out the rumbling and the screaming. Then it covered his eyes, and all was dark.
For a while, Sniffles could only tell that anything was still going on because the snow around him shook. It was almost worse when it stopped. Sniffles could still breathe, luckily, but the rest of his body was pinned down by the weight of the snow, and the only thing he could feel was the cold slowly seeping into his body. He lay there, unsure if minutes or hours were passing by. Eventually, he heard a light tapping above him and felt something start to yank on his snout. He twitched his snout, trying to keep his would-be-savior from ripping it off, and heard a faint gasp.
Two sets of paws, one pink and one blue, quickly burrowed and freed him from the snowy prison that would have been his tomb. He blinked rapidly to try to adjust his eyes to the sudden brightness and found himself staring at the concerned faces of Giggles and Petunia.
"Are you okay?" Petunia asked, brushing the snow off of the anteater and straightening his hat and jacket. "Was there anyone else with you?"
"There was Nutty." He looked around for the crazy green squirrel, but all he saw was a wall of snow surrounding him with trees jutting out and a small cave in the mountainside behind him. "Nutty?" he called out quietly for fear of starting another avalanche. Squinting, he saw a snow covered green arm sticking out near one of the trees. "Nutty!" While the two girls continued their search for survivors, Sniffles hurried over to the buried individual. As he got closer, he could see that the fur on the arm was too dark to be Nutty's. Nevertheless, he diligently dug until he had freed one of the raccoon twins. "Which one are you?"
The dark green raccoon dug around until he had found his fedora. "I'm Shifty. Where's Lifty?" Without waiting for an answer, he started digging around the tree until he had exposed two bags brimming with items stolen from the lodge and the upper half of his twin brother's body. "Lift?'
"Sh-Shift?" The other raccoon grimaced and looked back at the tree. "I think my legs are crushed," he whispered in pain.
The ground shook nearby and everyone froze, afraid that another avalanche was starting. Then they heard a familiar screaming and laughing sound, and everyone sighed with relief. Giggles hurried over with Sniffles to where the sound seemed to be coming from. "Nutty?" they asked.
The sound grew louder as though to confirm their suspicions.
"Listen, you've got to stop screaming. It'll only waste your air supply and probably make things worse once we dig you out." Sniffles said reasoning with the squirrel.
There was an eerie silence and the two dug quickly, freeing a shivering Nutty whose fur was devoid of candy. "Nutty?" The squirrel remained unresponsive, but the two had to turn their attention back to Lifty and the tree.
Sniffles paced around, examining it, and shook his head. "There's no way we're strong enough to lift that off of him, even if it wouldn't disturb the snow."
"You can't leave me here!" Lifty panicked.
"Well…." Sniffles looked somewhat uncomfortable about the next option. "We could always rip off your legs." Upon seeing the raccoon's eyes widen in horror and his brother's narrow in anger, he quickly backtracked. "Or we could give lifting the tree a try!"
The group, now joined by a shivering Lammy and Cub, tried to shift the tree, but it moved very slightly and the snow began to rumble again ominously. "It's no use. Someone will have to try pulling him while the rest of us move the tree." Sniffles glanced at the snow above them. "We'll probably have to move into that cave after this, because the snow isn't going to hold. Here," Sniffles passed a branch to Lifty, "bite this."
Shifty pulled while everyone else tried lifting the tree again. Everyone could hear Lifty's muffled screams, but slowly and surely, Shifty pulled him out from under the tree. As the snow began to shift and tumble again, everyone rushed into the cave, Shifty carrying Lifty and Petunia carrying Cub.
They all barely made it inside before the snow slammed into the cave entrance and sealed it off, blocking out the sunlight. All was silent, save for Cub's whimpering and shivering. "What now?" someone asked.
Elsewhere on the mountain, a small group of rescuers had assembled near an area where Toothy's body had been found. The poor beaver had choked on snow and then been impaled by a tree branch. Handy was searching from above in his helicopter, desperately trying to find Petunia. On the ground, Cuddles sat near the back of an ambulance driven by the Mole, shivering in a rescue blanket. Flaky, currently in hysterics, was on the phone with Flippy who was trying to reassure her and told her that he would be arriving shortly. Pop was angrily advancing on a quickly retreating Lumpy, snarling at him to do his job right this time. Despite his many faults, he would go to any lengths to save Cub.
There was a blue flash in the sky. "Oh no, not this fool," Pop snapped as the hero hummed his theme shortly before sending the helicopter spinning off to the side and waves of snow into the air. The blue flying squirrel stood posed heroically in the center of a small snow crater. "Never fear, citizens, Splendid the super squirrel is here to save the day!"
The anger and frustration radiating from Pop was enough to melt the snow off of him. Much to the relief of Lumpy, he marched furiously towards Splendid. "Listen here, you wanna be hero," Pop said, poking Splendid in the chest for emphasis. "We don't need your 'help.' In fact, we don't want your 'help.' There's no reason for you to 'save the day' here. We. Are. Doing. Fine."
"W-what?" Splendid was flabbergasted. He had been expecting them to thank him for his help, or at the very least, welcome him. What he hadn't been expecting was an angry bear getting in his face. "Are you implying that I should leave?"
"No. I'm telling you that you should leave!"
"You're kidding, right?" He quickly glanced around, eying the ambulance, fallen trees, and mounds of snow as he tried to assess the situation. "I mean, you're looking for avalanche survivors, right?" Seeing as how the bear was still standing there fuming instead of shouting, he assumed he was right. "Well, you've got a pretty tight schedule. I have super hearing and super speed so that you can find the survivors, and I've got lase vision so that you can dig them out." To demonstrate, he used his lasers to melt away a large part of the snow up the mountain.
"You idiot!" Pop shouted, bopping him on the head. "This is why we don't want you!" He pointed at the second avalanche now coming for the rescuers. "You make everything worse!" Bracing himself once more, he prepared to buried, only to hear a reversed version of Splendid's theme and feel a chill wind. He cracked open an eye and saw a flying squirrel using ice breath to freeze the avalanche back in place. I guess he's not so useless after all. Then he noticed Splendid still standing next to him, now shaking with anger.
As the other flying squirrel flew near, people could see there was a huge difference. For one thing, his fur was red and his mask was blue, a reversal of Splendid's colors. For another, he was moving more cautiously than Splendid would, as though to avoid stirring up the snow. "Splendont here," the red flying squirrel said as he landed. "What seems to be the problem?"
Despite how competent the hero seemed so far, Pop was still not convinced. Plus, his son was missing, he was tired, and his patience was already seriously strained by the presence of Splendid. "Look, Splendoe, or whatever your name is," Pop said in a slightly calmer voice. "I just finished explaining to your friend here that we are fine. We don't need Splendid, Splendid look-a-likes, or any kind of flying super squirrel hero whatevers, so you can both just go right back where you came from."
"Oh, I'm not his friend. In fact, I think he's a pretty awful hero too," Splendont said offhandedly, ignoring the hero's offended gasp. "I do still insist on helping though."
Pop struggled to decide what to say, then sighed resignedly. "Whatever. You get one shot. Just one. Kill anyone, and I'll have your tail." With that, he went back to conducting the rescue effort in a more calm, if not weary, manner.
Splendont turned toward his blue counterpart and smirked, a barely detectable glint of animosity in his eyes. "Run back home, little Splendid. They don't need you here," Splendont mocked so softly that only Splendid's super hearing enabled him to hear. "Go back to baking those little lumps of dough you call bread or whatever it is you do now."
That did it. He could insult his pride, he could insult his ability as a hero, but nobody could insult his bread. Fuming, he shot straight at Splendont and slammed the red flying squirrel into the mountainside. He furiously punched and kicked at every inch of red fur he saw, not caring that he couldn't inflict any serious injuries.
"Hey, stop! I SAID STOP!" Pop roared at the two. He ducked and narrowly avoided being sliced by lasers that sheared the ambulance in half. The other Tree Friends quickly led him to safety behind a nearby ridge and they all watched from behind as the two heroes futilely tried to destroy each other with little regard for anything around them.
Flippy arrived in his jeep and, upon seeing the two warring squirrels, quickly ducked for cover behind the same ridge as the other Tree Friends. "So," he asked casually, "what did I miss?"
Author's Note: Dun dun dun! What shall happen to our survivors now?
JaMaL HaDeS: An avalanche was what I put in the original plan, and while I probably could have thought of a different way to start it, I think I made it work.
Feeling better now, and I have a (tentative) plan of updating at least once every 5 days. I... don't really have much else to say I guess, so read and review!
