A/N: SIXTEEN REVIEWS last chapter? Really? Wow. My mind = blown. Anyway, this is an older prompt... I'm not sure about how it turned out...

Prompt from Anonymous: Four times the Once-ler almost stopped biggering

Four Times the Once-ler Almost Stopped

01. The First Choice

Forty trees were chopped that first day, lifted up by those two idiots bumpkins and carried towards the Once-ler's house—like the point of entry of an infection, the trees closest to the RV were the first to go. The Lorax shouted, pulled and kicked at legs but what was he to do? The Once-ler's family didn't fear him—they didn't even respect him as a being.

He knew only one who might, and laid in the bushes till nightfall. Under the cover of night and starlight, that she-thing aunt of the Once-ler's couldn't spot him, and the Lorax slipped unnoticed into the Once-ler's tent.

The kid strummed his guitar, bits and pieces of truffula tufts clinging to his suit and hair, a few finished thneeds cast about the floor beneath him. He froze at the Lorax's appearance—perhaps in part to his unusually graceless fall from the window, fur matted with leaves—before remembering they weren't supposed to be speaking.

"What do you want?" he said, even as he strummed a more erratic tune. "If it's about the trees, there's nothing I can do. I own a business now. Once it gets off the ground I can worry about the little things, but not—"

"This is about the trees, and kid, you're going about this all wrong! What you're doing—it makes about as much sense as the farmer cutting down an orchid to get the apples! Those trees can spare a few tufts—but the bears can't spare their fruit and the swans need their roosts. You're not a bad kid. You can still take this back—"

The guitar squealed out a bad chord. The Once-ler looked down. "I just—"

The Once-ler thought of his family, finally not hating him. He sighed.

"I just… can't."

02. The Second Nudge

The factory was celebrating its first one hundred thousand thneeds produced, a simple celebration consisting of a moment of fanfare and a commemorative plaque—not exactly dicey stuff, not really what caught the eyes of anyone.

All the same, the Once-ler couldn't keep the lazy grin off of his face, sinking into his plush new office chair, sighing and ready to get to work on paperwork. His gloved hand roamed about on the table behind him for his secret stash of marshmallow—closing around one, he popped it in his mouth and nearly choked.

Splitting it out, he found he wasn't looking at some form of gooey delight, but crushed, crunched, and wet styrofoam, little granules still clinging to his lips.

"Disgusting," he said, and the Lorax popped into existence behind him.

"I agree. At least you noticed though. Wonder what happens to animals so hungry they forget to chew, hmm?" the Lorax asked and the Once-ler faltered for a moment as he thought, before shaking his thoughts away like water from a duck.

"Just leave me alone, Lorax. Go bother somebody else with your antics. If it's 'your forest', then it shouldn't be my problem."

"So it's everyone else's?"

03. The Precipice

"Hey… Mom? Does the forest look… different to you these days?"

"Hmm? What do you mean, Oncie? Looks the same to me."

"It just looks… different somehow. I could have sworn that there used to be more trees…"

"Don't be ridiculous, Oncie, there are plenty of trees. Our surveyors just discovered a whole new grove and are sending a team of ax-hackers that way. …Somethin' botherin' you, baby?"

"It's just… No. It's nothing, forget it."

"Get it off your chest, Oncie, you know it does nobody any good if you hold it in."

"Well, I was reading the total numbers report—"

"—you know I told you I'd read those, you shouldn't have troubled your pretty little head—"

"—and the numbers showed that there was only about a hundred thousand or so truffulas left."

"So? That's a hundred thousand thneeds waiting to be made."

"Yeah, but… What do we do after that?"

"Oncie, you've been talkin' to that Lorax-thing again haven't you, Lord have mercy, I swear, that creature's got it out for you. Hundred thousand's just a rough estimate, and they're discoverin' new truffula groves every day. Why, just last week we found twenty truffula forest groves along these hills to the south, just as green and growing as anything. If that Lorax of yours really knew what was up, he'd be takin' his animals there. It's just a few miles south."

"Really?"

"Sweetie, there are people in this world who would swindle you outta our—your hard-earned fortune in a heartbeat. That Lorax-thing? He's lookin' out for himself just as much as anyone else out there."

"Are you sure? That doesn't sound very like him…"

"Honey, who're you gonna believe? Some furry little I-don't-even-know-what that says it crawled out of a tree stump—or family?"

04. Juncture

It was the biggest celebration yet—the countdown to the production of the five millionth thneed. The Once-ler waited in one of the back rooms of the staging areas, idyly watching the numbers crank up while he smoothed a few strands of hair.

He was making his five millionth thneed today, and he needed to sell himself nearly as much as he needed to sell it. His reflection was as immaculate as ever. Suit pressed, hair soft and fluffy as the truffula tufts he remembered. So what if it'd been a while since he'd actually seen one? They were out there… somewhere.

As he was smoothing down the lapels of his coat, though, he noticed a smell, pungent and odorous, and felt his bile rise.

This time, the Lorax couldn't hide his arrival, cut so starkly by the scent that preceded him. His fur was smirched with a black tar, and that once-impressive mustache of his was limp and heavy with gunk. His eyes, the only part of him still even somewhat visible, were sad and hard and disappointed.

The Once-ler coughed at the acrid smell that seemed to fill the room; it burnt his tongue with its taste and he pitied the Lorax for being caught up in it.

"What did you do?" the Once-ler complained. "You smell like—ugh!"

"Your family," the Lorax said slowly, "decided I could use a dip in the river. You remember the river? All pretty and clean, where all of those humming fish used to swim? That place you now dump your chemicals?"

The Once-ler looked discomforted. "I—I'm sorry, okay, I—"

"I'm not here for that, kid. There's still time—you're about to go on air. Tell them you'll change your policies. You can still fix this, kid."

The Once-ler hesitated…

05. What Might Have Been

In one world, the Once-ler remembers a promise made by a riverside. He listens to the logic of a friend instead of a family's avarice, hires a few workers from the nearby town to pick trees and his company grows. He lives to a ripe old age, surrounded by the creatures of the forest and a Lorax that pops up from time to time, not because the trees need a voice—but because they don't.

In another, the Once-ler is left alone to sit and stare at a handful of trash, contemplating hunger and the innocence not to know what food really is food. He pictures Pipsqueak, and images the bear cub out there in the smog and the highways that cut between tree stumps, ax-hackers zooming to match quota and poisoning the air. He creates new regulation for his company, the first do so, and has an edge on other companies when new laws follow. He has wasted no time, and people flock to his company—the only one still able to sale, the only one whose product does everything.

In one world, the Once-ler sees that taking and never giving eventually leads to nothing left to take. He creates sanctuaries out of the pocket groves, and plants their seeds where his ax-hackers have alread tred. The sky still fills with ash, and the Lorax never fully manages to break through his mindset, but it is a start.

In another, the Once-ler hesitates, standing before the millions of viewers, the smell of schlop still clinging like a second skin. He opens his mouth, speaks, and hears his mother shriek from the sidelines when he vows to regulate production more strictly from then on. He sees the Lorax smile, still dripping glop from his whiskers.

What if this had been?

Review? Prompt me? Some of your other prompts are good, but get even better when I can merge a few of them together like that last one... :)