All characters from the Ice Age series are property of 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. All other characters belong to me.

To the Future in High School

Scrat, Manny, Sid, Diego, Eddie, Ellie and Crash woke up on some strange sort of hard, rough, packed-in land. They stared at each other, too stunned to say anything. The only one happy was Scrat down the road of them when he saw his acorn in his hand but his joy vanished when he tried to bite it and felt deep pain in his teeth. The rest of the group that came from the ice age couldn't see him, he was out of their view. They looked at each other in disbelief. Ellie was wearing jeans and a white tee-shirt. She had long eyelashes and orange hair. Crash and Eddie looked about 12 and were wearing 2 shirts with skulls and some writing. They both had black hair and matching naughty grins. Diego was thin and muscular with a yellow tank-top and shorts. He had orangish-brown hair. Manny and Sid were both chubby but Sid was wearing a pink shirt that said "Kick me!" and some blue jeans. He had black hair as well as buck teeth and pasty skin. On the other hand, Manny had a shirt with a mammoth on it and had dark brown hair. All of them were Caucasian except for Diego and Ellie who had slightly darker skin. Nearby, Scrat had characteristics like brown, wavy hair and a goofy face. He wore a shirt with a nut on it and tan trousers. Down the road, after getting good look at each other Ellie, Manny, Diego, Sid, Crash, and Eddie stared at each other again, this time, mouths open in astonishment.

"Wow!" Ellie finally managed. Her voice sounded a lot younger.

"What happened to us?" the brothers asked, hugging each other in shock, their voices changed to match their age.

"Whoa, everybody calm down!" came Diego's teen voice. "Whatever happened to us, there's bound to be a way out.

The brothers screamed as a car passed them, hugging each other tighter.

"What is that?" asked Sid, mouth almost too stiff to speak. Then all at once, what it was and all of the knowledge they should know as humans hit them.

"It's called a car." Manny said softly.

"I just remembered my address." said Sid, almost fainting. Ellie looked at the ground, overwhelmed.

"Ok, now that we're like this we'll either have to live like this or try to get back." came Diego's voice. Remarkably, he seemed to be keeping his cool. "First, where do you all live?"

"I think I live over there." said Manny, pointing to a slightly small blue house across the street. A purple Suzuki was parked in front of it.

"This is my house." said Ellie gesturing to a brown 2-story a few houses down with a good sized yard and several trees. The brothers also pointed.

"I think I live here." said Sid, pointing to a run-down, large house. It had some little kid things in front. Diego was gazing at a high class home with a rugged jeep and the stuffed face of a grizzly bear and lion on the front porch. A man with a western hat was sitting there on a lawn chair, smoking.

"Ok, we'll all need to split up and deal with this the best we can." Diego said. "We need to get to know our families first. Then we can look for a way out."

"What if there is no way out?" said the once possums, clinging to each other.

"There must be." said Ellie. Manny shot her a worried look. Manny looked at the ground, thinking for a moment. Then he spoke. "Ok, everyone do what Diego says. We'll meet here as soon as each of us gets more information." The rest nodded and headed to their homes. Ellie and Manny hugged each other before saying goodbye.

Sid came in the door. Suddenly, a tiny voice greeted him. "Pet Mr. Toady." Sid flinched.

"Are your parents home?"

"No, why did you forget again, I'm babysitting you and Clea." said a heavy toned, muscular, boy said, coming forth.

"And you are?"

"Your big brother, Dave! Get in your room before I sock ya!" Sid ran to his room and slammed the door behind him before his brother could attack him.

Manny got to his home next. He was already alienated by the Suzuki more than other cars as he entered his house. He entered the house and heard a scream. "Aaahhh! I broke a nail!" a girl shouted. Two others, one wearing very fashionable clothes and the other wearing a stained skirt and a blotchy sweater came to help her. He tried to head for his room but accidentally went into what he figured to be one of his sisters' rooms by mistake because posters and pink covered the walls.

"Get out of my room!" a girl slammed the door in his face. He found the right room quickly, feeling very agitated.

When Ellie came in her home, she saw a blond-haired slender woman. "Tell your bothers to come in now! I told you to keep them out of the trees!" she yelled. The brothers were climbing some of the many trees in their yard like they loved to do as possums.

"Ok." She rushed out and got her brothers in. The brothers started to play video games. To Ellie's relief, things weren't too bad and her mom let everyone play. She was even able to join in with them, even though the game they were playing was something about wrestling, something neither her nor her brothers had ever seen humans do. The brothers started making sick jokes about it but Ellie remained calm and laughed with them.

Scrat came to the same house he lived at by mistake. It had a station wagon in front, a small yard, and a few walnut trees in the front and back. He tried to climb up the shortest walnut tree but couldn't. He fell down, palming almost bleeding, and tried to shake the tree, all the time making desperate squeaks in his new human voice.

"Honey, come in, it's dinner time!" called a woman. Delighted, Scrat rushed in. To his horror, all he found on the plate was meat, peas, and broccoli. He screamed.

"Come on, we know you can't like just nuts. What do you say?" she said, pushing him the plate. He turned away, making a stop signal with his hand.

"Emily, you know Scrat can't talk as smart as he is. Why don't you just make him eat his dinner and not ask for a reply." said a man entering the room, Scrat figured out to be his father. His mother pointed to the plate and gave him a stern look. He was able to force himself to eat the peas and broccoli but not the meat.

"Don't forget to do your algebra son." said his father after dinner. He was given some paper with confusing symbols. After staring at them a second, he realized what they meant now that he was a human and got to work, planning on begging for an acorn afterwards.

Diego came in his house last. Things hadn't looked too good when he heard a scream from Manny's house and heard Sid's brother shout at him. He had also seen some idiot try to go up a tree without a clue about climbing but didn't know who it was yet. He went onto the porch. Cowboy music was playing and his father was smoking. He had a western accent and wore boots and a cowboy hat along with other western style clothes. The stuffed predators on the porch reminded him of how humans killed sabers. He didn't like this at all.

"Make sure you tend to them rabbits an' eat your fish an' veggies." the man said. Diego went in without a word. He saw pictures of his father holding dead carnivores he shot, stuffed lions and wolves, and trophies everywhere. Why doesn't he hunt deer? Why can't he just live with predators? he thought Just then he bumped into a sign that said, "Rid the Earth of predators. They're no good to anyone. If you see one, shoot it!" He sighed, thinking and headed further into the house to explore it. He entered the living room and saw a huge enclosure filled with what looked like over 100 rabbits. He saw some barbecued fish and lettuce on the table waiting for him. He ate the fish but gave the lettuce to the rabbits that eagerly nibbled it away. He dropped some food in their enclosure and searched for a computer to research the ice age on.

Manny was in his room. He realized that every species of animal in his herd but the possums were extinct. He sighed and got on a computer in his room. It had some pink graffiti written on it. Besides the stuff on his computer, his room was the only place without some evidence of his sisters. The rest of the house was mostly pink. Posters and magazines were stacked in piles everywhere. Still, not all of it was girlish, there were some brown walls and furniture and normal household items around too. He wondered where his parents were. Then the answer came to him. His mother and father were on a cruise that they would be on for the rest of the week. Thinking harder, he somehow knew that his parents were fairly stern but allowed a lot of girlish stuff around the house because he had 4 sisters. Also, they were gone, so his siblings must be partying. He began a web search and tried to ignore what was his sisters were up to.

That night, Sid gave Ellie a call.

"Hello." Ellie answered the phone.

"I don't know what to do. My brother's gonna kill me for losing his baseball cards and my sister won't stop talking to me about her frog. I tried calling Manny and Diego but every time I call Manny's house a get a girl and when I call Diego I get a crazy man with a weird accent. You gotta help me!"

"Oh, those might be their relatives. Did you get the right numbers?"

"I think, wait, it's not in the phone thingy. The numbers just kinda came to me like everything else."

"Well, I haven't gotten a call from anyone. We can meet each other tomorrow in school."

"School?"

"You know, we're kids now. The place where we learn."

"Oh, right, gotcha." Sid's brother stormed into the room. "Oh my brother's gonna get me! Bye!" Sid hung up the phone fast. Ellie wanted to go over to Manny's or call him to see what was going on but it was already 8 o'clock. Her mother said it was too late to call or visit since it was a school night plus her brothers needed to be watched. She didn't even have a phone in her room.

Meanwhile Manny had researched the ice age and humans. He had found various things about early Native Americans and found some things on time machines but the websites labeled it as impossible to travel through time. Also, having lived 20,000 years ago, there was a complete lack of information, only scientific theories about the time, the earliest records of magic were only human records set thousands of years after his lifetime. He wasn't sure who or what caused this to happen to his herd. He felt like he knew more about ice age animals than the experts on the internet, some of the things they said were even wrong because they had not been there like he had. Diego had done some research as well. He looked up a more scientific explanation on the computer but also came up with no results.

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