Standard disclaimer: I do not own the Happy Tree Friends; they are the property of Mondo Media. I own only my own characters and this story. Now here's chapter 7:
7 – THE MARAUDERS
There's not all that much to say about the code zero preparations that followed the meeting. During the next 24 hours Virgil, Robot, and Sniffles continued getting all of the equipment ready. Mayor King announced the curfew order, and Flippy and Splendid began planning for their excursion to the Marauder encampment.
The Marauders were the remains of older armies and communities from before the After Times. Back during the ages of the last big wars many a city and nation had been so decimated by fighting as to cease to exist completely. When all the wars finally ended many people gathered together to build new communities and cities. This was how, among other cities, Metramegopolis was born.
However there were plenty of people and A.I.s who rejected building new societies. Perhaps the wars had made them crazy; perhaps they'd lost faith in civilization; perhaps they just liked anarchy. These people became nomadic, wandering in groups and living off of the land. Whenever they came across a village or settlement they would ravage it for sustenance, and rare was the small community that could fight back. For this reason many people began drifting to the cities for self-defense, as cities were a lot harder to successfully attack.
However even amongst the roving Marauders there were those who aspired to greater power. Some such people were able build larger bands of followers, even some big enough to be called armies. With such large numbers at their command these leaders could even attack some of the cities, until, to defend against these new threats the cities began to combine, until a time came when Metramegopolis was the one great city left on earth, with over one hundred million inhabitants living in it. So far it had been able to repel all attacks, however, just as the cities had consolidated, the marauder armies had been combining too, until, as Splendid had seen, they had gathered together a force larger than any of their other armies from the past. Their supreme leader, about whom we shall shortly learn more, was XL-Jack-3, the marauder leader who had conquered all of the others who aspired to power and had now become the one undisputed marauder ruler.
Oddly enough none of the marauders were animals. The animals were the one group who wholly rejected marauder anarchy, instead founding their own communities (of which the Animal City Toothy had mentioned was the most prominent), or joining the human cities on their own terms. Since a lot of animals are much better able to defend themselves without weapons than most humans are the marauders had never managed to overcome them. Whenever an animal community was attacked by a marauder band the marauders almost always lost, unless they attacked in overwhelming numbers or with weapons that let them attack at long range. Such weaponry was not often available to most marauders so animal communities suffered fewer attacks than human ones, for a while anyway.
But the time was finally close when the biggest marauder army would face the greatest city on earth in a final fight to determine earth's future.
(To Be Continued)