I really owe you guys big time for not updating for so long last chapter. You guys can settle for a Christmas present that is over one and a half months late, right?

Disclaimer: I don't own Ice Age.

Sid froze. "Diego?"

Reeks of an entire wasteland of dead animals waiting to get eaten by vultures, were the first words to run across Diego's mind as he was tackled by the smelly sloth.

"You're okay! You're okay! Uh, not really, but you're sorta okay!" Sid was crying now. He let go of Diego, and punched him in the arm.

"Ah!"

Sid ignored Diego's obvious displeasure. "I could kiss you!" He kissed the top of Diego's head multiple times, but paused soon after. "Yuck! Zombie hairball!"

"I apologize for him," Manny deadpanned.

Diego wiped the top of his head and said through gritted teeth, "Nah... It's cool. He's just a happy sloth. A happy, idiotic sloth, but still a happy sloth."

"Wait, wait, wait... You know them?!" Howie questioned Diego, shocked.

"You know him?!" Ellie stared at Manny.

"I should be asking you that!" was her mate's immediate reply.

"Am I the only one who doesn't know any of you except for Diego and Howie?!" Tanner exclaimed, frustrated.

"I'm lost!" Sid cried out. "What's going on?!"

"SHUT UP!"

All eyes were on a very annoyed Shira. "Thank you," was all she simply said. She motioned to an equally exasperated Diego.

"Look, I'll explain everything later, okay? Don't we have something else to worry about?" the male tiger grouched wearily.

As if on cue, a soft groan was heard from Louis's direction. All heads snapped in his direction, and Peaches looked down at her best friend, tears still brimming in her eyes. Louis blinked open his eyelids, revealing the red irises that used to be brown. "What...happened?"

Peaches started crying again, though this time out of pure relief and joy that Louis wasn't completely gone. "You got killed by that nasty saber!"

Louis's eyes widened as it came rushing back to him, and weaseled himself out of Peaches's trunk. "I remember..." he choked out. "He just...pounced on me and...and..." He started hyperventilating, having a panic attack.

"I didn't know zombies could hyperventilate," Tanner remarked.

Louis's eyes just about bugged out of his head once he heard that, and started hyperventilating even faster and harder. "Z...Zombie?! I'm a..."

"Zombie," Diego finished for him grimly. "Maybe we should wait till you're completely recovered from the shock before I launch into some detailed explanation on what is going on here."

"What's going on here?" Louis was almost too scared to ask, but did nevertheless.

"Me and Manny used to know Diego, this mammoth named Howie, who was guiding us through this wasteland, is Manny's undead son, and everyone here knows each other minus the wolf," Sid piped up cheerfully.

That was the final blow. Louis fainted, landing unceremoniously on his back.

"Sid!" Manny exclaimed, greatly annoyed.

"Sloth, I said wait until he recovered!" Diego shouted, equally irritated as the mammoth.

"I didn't know zombies could faint either," Tanner added offhandedly.

A beat of silence ensued, and then...

"Long-lost son?!" Everyone shouted except for Manny, Sid, Diego, and Howie.


Louis woke up approximately ten minutes later, and the newly reunited herd decided that more than enough had happened, and they resolved to continue their journey the next day. Also, Diego had a super long explanation he owed to the herd minus Shira, but before that, Manny explained about Ginny. He started off with his, Manny, and Sid's adventures with Pinky the human baby (with Manny and Sid frequently adding stuff to help the story flow), and then he had to explain to the mammoth and sloth how he ran into Shira, Louis, and Granny, and how they eventually met up with Ellie, Peaches, and the possums. In short, by the time everything was cleared up, everyone was gaping except for Shira (again).

"Okay, so let us get this straight..." Crash began.

"You used to be an evil, crabby saber, and then you turned less crabby, and then you died, and then we met you," Eddie finished.

"I'm not crabby," Diego snapped.

"Uh, buddy, you're awesome and all, but I kind of have to agree with the possums. You're the only one I know who treats Sid worse than I do," Manny said, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh yeah?" Diego scoffed. "Name once."

"You threatened to eat me like a million times, you yelled at me for slamming a watermelon—even though that was completely justified—you hated me because I pretended to be you by putting twigs in my mouth," Sid listed all of the occasions off his fingers. "Oh yeah, and you told me—AH!"

Sid was cut off when Diego suddenly pounced on him, emitting a deafening roar, and started smothering his face in the dirt. "Are you trying to tell me something, sloth?!"

"Mmmmmppppppphhhhhh!"

Manny turned to Ellie. "This is why I wasn't completely happy until I met you," he said flatly.

"Sidney, are you in love with Lady?" Granny accused.

Sid finally managed to free himself from Diego's vice grip. "What?! Granny, what would make you think that?!"

"It ain't my fault that y'all act like an old married couple!"

"Oh yeah, thanks for saying stuff like that out loud while I was being tortured by a carnivore!"

"Are you trying to irk me, herbivore?" Diego asked threateningly.

Sid shut up after that.

Peaches frowned. She was not listening to Diego and Sid's banter at all. Instead, she was focusing her eyes on Howie. He looked strangely similar to the zombie mammoth that had attacked her mother. Howie also didn't seem too comfortable being around the rest of the herd, especially with Ellie, Peaches, and the possums. He must have caught Peaches looking at him suspiciously, because he avoided her eye and scooted slightly farther away. It wasn't obvious that he did this, but Peaches caught him in the act. Oh well, she'll save the interrogation for later.

Meanwhile, the possums had noticed that Shira was the only one not surprised at any part of the revelation about Diego. They both eyed her doubtfully. She eventually noticed. "What?"

"How come you seemed perfectly comfortable finding out about all of Diego's connections?" Crash asked. "Unless..."

"You knew!" Eddie accused, putting two and two together.

Shira blinked, then shrugged. "Oh. Yeah, I did."

"What?! And you never bothered to tell any of us?!"

"Some things are better kept secrets. At least, until word has no choice but to get out." Shira gave Diego a side glance.

"In my defense, you wouldn't stop bugging me about it until I told you," he retorted flatly.

Sid raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Is there something going on between you two that the rest of us should know about?"

"Sid..." Manny's voice held a warning tone in it, but his eyes clearly showed pure mirth, silently teasing the friend he had not seen in so many years.

Diego groaned. "Not you two, too..."

"Heehee!" Sid cackled. "Diego and Shira, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" This little poking fun at the tiger resulted in his face being crammed into the dirt again.

Peaches spoke up suddenly. "You know, Howie looks a lot like that crazy zombie who ambushed us, doesn't he, Mom?"

Howie's eyes seemed to bulge out of his head. "What?!"

Ellie inspected him for a second. "You're right, sweetie, he does." She gave Howie a knowing look, demanding an explanation gently but firmly.

"Right..." Howie started awkwardly. "Okay, it's true. It was me who attacked you."

"What?! You're not anything like that dude!" Eddie exclaimed.

"Yeah, you're a lot more like a pansy and a whole lot less deadly!" Crash added.

Ellie shot her brothers an annoyed look for calling her stepson a pansy, but Howie ignored the insult, if it even classified as one.

Tanner immediately interrupted. "Whoa, Howie, you did what?" His reaction sounded more concerned than shocked. Diego also looked slightly distressed.

"I'm fine, guys, I'm still me," Howie reassured. "It hasn't gone that far yet."

"What are you necrophilic excuses of zombies talkin' about?" Granny asked brashly.

"Excuse me, Granny, but necrophilic means abnormal love of corpses," Louis corrected, speaking his first words since waking up, having been absolutely quiet in the past hour.

"That's what I was sayin'! They're zombie-lovers!"

"I don't think they can be zombie-lovers when they're the zombies themselves," Shira contradicted.

Eddie snickered. "You're right! If anyone's necrophilic, it's you! You and Diego arousing each other and making beautiful babies together—"

Shira grabbed Crash and used him to clonk his brother on the head, rendering them both unconscious.

"I never knew Uncle Eddie was so perverted!" Peaches said, utterly disgusted.

"Oi, all of ya, shaddup! I want zombie elephant over here to answer my question!" Granny snapped irritably.

"What are elephants?" Tanner muttered.

"Zombies don't stay like this forever. We...eventually feed on ourselves." Even Howie himself was surprised at how casually he could speak that vulgar truth. "When zombies first turn to zombies, they still have a few of their human characteristics. But they'll soon feel the urge to devour the brains of living beings. And this place is only be filled with other zombies, so we can't eat anything. They eventually grow hungrier and hungrier until they can't take it anymore, and they turn on themselves, having gone insane from starvation with no control over their actions whatsoever. They tear themselves apart, basically ending their life as a zombie." He turned to his stepsister. "I'm sorry about attacking you and your family, I really am. I just spotted you all alive and well, with good brains to suck on..." He trailed off, seeing the disturbed looks on the herd's faces. "Sorry, I get kind of detailed sometimes. Anyway, I lost control for a minute, and... You know the rest."

"Howie, how long have you been suspecting that you've been starting to starve? I mean, it has to have been going on for a while for you to actually lose control, right?" Diego asked

"I don't know when it started, but I guess I started catching on...maybe two weeks ago? Time isn't definite here, so you can't blame me for not being sure."

"But the last time I saw you was a few days ago, like the day before these guys decided to show up. You could've told me what was going on, even if you weren't sure."

"Yeah, you should've told me too," Tanner piped up. "I'm your favorite uncle, after all."

That last statement seemed to set Diego off. He glared at the wolf. "When did he ever say that he liked you more than me?"

"Aw, guys, please, not this again..." Howie tried to protest.

Tanner scoffed, acting as if he didn't hear Howie at all. "Well, it's obvious I am. I think he finds me more likable than you."

"Look, I never say anything about me being better than you, even though it's true, so why pick on me with your crap?"

"You know what—" Diego and Tanner began raging at each other with explicit wordings and loud voices, but after about fifteen seconds of that nonsense, Tanner yelled a battle cry and tackled Diego, and they rolled around in the dirt. Howie put his deformed trunk to his forehead and sighed over and over again during the whole time.

"Do they...do this a lot?" Manny asked him.

"At least once every other day," was the reply that he received. "They've been at it for as long as they've known each other."

During their exchange, Diego had easily pinned Tanner down, and was currently sitting on him casually.

"Dude, get off of me!" Tanner shouted.

"Nice way with words, but no," Diego deadpanned.

"Come on! I'm missing a paw, go easy on me!"

"Huh?" Howie seemed to have noticed Tanner's amputation at last. "Uncle Tan-Tan! What happened to your paw?!"

"Uncle Tan-Tan?!" Diego burst out laughing.

"I told you not to call me that when other animals are listening!" Tanner scolded, then glared at Diego. "Now stop laughing, Diego! Or should I say, Uncle Dee-Dee!"

Diego immediately stopped cracking up. "Howie's the only one who has my permission to call me that, you son of a—"

"Both of your nicknames are ridiculous, now I won't have you guys degrade this herd with immaturity," Manny intervened flatly.

"Is he always like this?" Tanner asked Diego.

"You should've seen him back then when he was still a loner," Diego said back.

Completely disregarding the two male carnivores, Manny encouraged his son to continue, "You were saying?"

"That's about all I know about it," Howie concluded. "Also, the reason you haven't seen Mom with me is because..." He trailed off, but the meaning was clear: Ginny was long gone.

"Then you could come with us!" Sid said cheerfully, attempting to lighten up the mood. "Escape back to the living world with us!"

"Sid, he's still gonna break down even if he does get back to our world," Ellie pointed out.

"So? At least he won't go cannibal on himself in this bleak landscape! He'll have a view of our beautiful land above ground! Won't that be better than staying here and dying off for good?"

Nobody, not even Granny, could come up with an argument to contradict the sloth. He was ditzy, but he came up with some pretty clever points when he actually thought straight.

"Yeah!" Crash suddenly sat up.

"And who knows, maybe going back to the living world will bring you guys back to real life that's not undead or anything like that!" Eddie added, also restoring consciousness. He glanced at Louis. "Let's hope in right for once."

"That's about one of the craziest ideas I have ever heard," Diego finally said flatly, but then smirked. "But then again, I've betrayed my own species to sacrifice my life for a pair of saber prey and a human baby who was the son of the man who was responsible for the slaughter of my pack. And that's crazier. You can count me in, I'm coming too."

"Yeah, me too," Tanner agreed. "Only because both of them are going."

Howie gaped, not willing to believe the ginormous decision that was made in only a matter of seconds. "Are you guys sure?"

"Of course," Manny smiled. "You were wrongfully killed. Don't you think that the least you deserve is a second chance at life?"

Howie beamed. "I... Thank you so much. And I'll do my best not to suck on any more living brains, if you get what I'm saying."

"Deal!" Crash grinned, while Eddie thumbed-up with both thumbs.

"This truly is unbelievable," Tanner spoke before turning to the possums. "Now, weren't you two unconscious just a minute ago?"

Uh, yeah, my excuse this time: Rise of the Guardians combined with writer's block.

I'll be honest here, I didn't plan on what I wanted to happen after the big boss fight with Soto, so I kind of just made this a chapter all about catching up with each other.

Rise of the Guardians fanfiction is ADDICTING.

I started this chapter right after I uploaded the next one, and then I left it sitting here in my documents until I decided to finish it for the past couple of days due to plain guilt.

I gave you a pretty long chapter, so SUCK IT, YOU CAN'T CALL ME OUT ON THAT.

Also, I'm changing the chapter titles, 'cause they're frickin' boring.

I have a Facebook page and it's on my profile at the bottom. GO LIKE IT NOW.

Now review if you're not too annoyed/mad at me.