Ta Da! Chapter 9 in hot and ready to serve!

This chapter got a lot longer than I expected, and I actually had to cut it down a bit, save some for the next chapter. Forgive me if it seems slightly pointless (because it is a slightly pointless chapter) but hopefully you'll find it somewhat humorous.

Enjoy. Please Read and Review. For me...

Chapter 9

"Flippy? Flippy, wake up! Flippy!"

Flippy was roughly awoken from his dream under the shaking paws of Flaky, who stood over him and watched in tense worry. "Oh, thank goodness. You're such a heavy sleeper."

"What? What happened? Is everything…" Flippy drifted off. He tasted something on his lips and tongue, something familiar. The porcupine ignored his questions and helped him sit up straight. Then she handed him a glass of water. Flippy reached out his hand to take it and noticed blood on his fingers.

Surprised, the bear looked down at his hands. They were both speckled with tiny dots of blood. Dissatisfaction caused him to emit a low growl from the back of his throat, but that only brought on more coughs.

Flaky rubbed his back, and when the bear began to regain control she placed her hand on the back of his head and gently pulled back. Flippy was too tired to oppose her, and didn't fight when she placed the lip of the cup to his mouth, helping him to drink.

"What time is it?" Flippy groggily asked when Flaky sat down. The porcupine rubbed her eyes and said with a yawn, "Around five in the morning. That's what the clock said."

"Why are you up so early?"

"I couldn't sleep." Flaky did a small stretch pulled the blanket she had about her shoulders closer. "I think I had a bad dream, but I don't remember much… I was walking down the hallway and heard you coughing. You were coughing blood, so I woke you up; I hope you don't mind…"

"No, no, thank you for doing it."

Flaky nodded her head, allowing herself a small smile. Flippy gave her one back.

"So, what's on today's agenda?"

Flaky shrugged her shoulders. "That's up to Sniffles. I just help. By the way, I never asked you how your test was."

"Eh, nothing much." Flippy sat himself up a bit straighter. "The basics. Sniffles took my heart rate and blood rate and all that good stuff – nothing more than he usually does, though he did also take some blood. I don't know if he's going to find anything."

"I think he might," Flaky said. "Sniffles is smart. He's good at what he does."

Flippy nodded in agreement. He never really hung out with Sniffles, but there was no doubt he respected the anteater. He was indeed probably the smartest of them there – if anyone could figure out what this disease was, it was Sniffles.

"Are you hungry?"

Flippy shrugged his shoulders. His thoughts had moved from Sniffles to his dream. It hadn't been the first time he'd had the dream, or the second, or even the fifth. That particular dream (Flippy had quite a few war dreams) had been haunting him for at least two months, fading in and out of detail or memory for each occurrence. It wasn't that Flippy was afraid of the dream. No, what happened this time was strange, because unlike all of the other times, it had ended differently.

Usually, after watching the battle and getting to the mirror, he would still see Evil on the other side. But Evil always did exactly what Flippy did. Often the dream ended with Flippy getting frustrated and punching the glass so that it shattered. Then, the blood from his knuckles would drip and pool onto the 'floor' of the black space, and when he looked down he'd see Evil as his reflection again.

It was an unsettling dream, to be frank. Even though Flippy'd had it multiple times and remembered it quite clearly afterwards, the ending still gave him chills. He supposed that maybe it was his subconscious telling him that he couldn't run away from his past, and that a part of him would always still be 'evil'.

"I was going to make pancakes for everyone," Flaky said quietly, almost unheard by the contemplating bear. "I know that Petunia likes blueberry, and that Lammy and Mime like strawberry and Giggles likes chocolate chips – do you have any requests?"

"Requests?"

"For the pancakes."

"Oh. Hm… I usually just eat mine plain."

"Oh, that's alright. But you should try one of the strawberry ones, they're really good. I might make some with banana or raisons, too."

"You can put bananas in pancakes?"

"Yeah. Don't you ever eat pancakes? I get the feeling you don't…"

"Not usually. Most of the time I just eat cereal or eggs for breakfast."

Flaky nodded, and then clapped her hands. "Oh! I forgot Cuddles brought back a lot of bacon. I can make that, too. Then we can save the leftovers…"

Flippy chuckled. "There's never any leftover bacon, I can tell you that from experience."

Flaky blushed, and then laughed with him. "That's true…"

"Is there enough batter for everyone?"

"Mm hm. I checked yesterday. There're about five boxes of pancake mix in the pantry."

"How much does one box make?"

"It depends on how big you make them. If you make them small, about this small," Flaky made a shape with her hands, "then you could make about twenty, maybe thirty if you tried hard enough."

"Wow, really?"

Flaky giggled at Flippy's amazement. "Yeah. I'll go make them now. You can try some with bananas in them, you might like it. Though, you look more like a blueberry person…"

"Blueberry's sound nice."

"Okay." Flaky stood up and pulled the blanket back around her shoulders. "I'll make you some special. It'll take a little while for me to finish cooking – go ahead back to sleep. You'll need it, and it might make you feel better."

Flippy nodded to her, but didn't try going back to sleep when the porcupine left the room. He was still a bit shaken by the outcome of his dream. Instead he waited for Flaky to return. He was sitting up in bed, observing the time as it passed.

Flippy had personally moved his bed away from the others, just in case of any incidents. His gaze swept across the other sleeping animals around him. Petunia and the Mole were the closest. The Mole was absolutely quiet. The skunk had made sure to tidy up her section of the room the day before, putting an extra bedside table on her right to make it symmetrical. She was even sitting on her back, hands crossed on her chest, as if she'd been laid for burial.

The others also had interesting ways of sleeping. Nutty was sprawled out in bed, arms hanging from the side with his legs and torso wrapped in the sheets like a broken cocoon. Every minute or so the squirrel would suffer from some spazmic twitch and mutter a type of candy or sweet.

Across from Flippy was Lumpy, and the moose was dead as a doorknob, gently snoring with his feet hanging off the end of the bed. Lammy, beside Petunia, was holding a pickle to her chest and mumbling. Every once in a while she would sneer or frown and then gently nibble off some of the pickle. Flippy could only wonder what she was dreaming of.

The last two, Lifty and Shifty, were stationed by the door. And though they both gave off the impression that they hated each other, Flippy could see that it wasn't all true. In the middle of the night, right after the end of a different dream, Flippy had been awoken by the sounds of sniffling. He slowly sat up and turned his head to see Lifty sitting up in his bed, quietly calling to his brother. It took a while for Lifty to get Shifty's drowsy attention, and the younger raccoon eventually had to throw a small plastic cup at his brother for Shifty to actually acknowledge the other's issue.

They spoke in low, practiced tones and Flippy tuned out their conversation, watching but not listening. And much to his surprise, after Lifty gave his brother a soggy look, the older raccoon groaned, climbed out of bed and – as quietly as he possibly could – moved his own bed across the room and settled it beside Lifty's. The younger sibling seemed extremely delighted with his brother's kindness and even attempted to give him a hug, but Shifty pushed him away. Setting his fedora on the bedside table beside Lifty, he grumbled, pulled the covers over his shoulders, and turning away from Lifty fell back to sleep.

Lifty sat for a few more minutes, looking from his brother to the ceiling, thinking, Flippy guessed. Then the raccoon yawned and settled to sleep as well, his own back facing his brother's.

That had happened at least four and a half hours ago, Flippy thought, just after night had fallen and everyone had gone to sleep. The bear looked over again and saw that Shifty was back on his own side of the room, having moved the bed back. Flippy saw Lifty was still in the same position and presumed that Shifty had snuck away after he thought his brother had fallen back asleep. He must have taken great care, since his own brother was a thief and probably a very light sleeper.

As Flippy thought about this, he suddenly felt a bit guilty for seeing such intimate actions between the brothers. It was obviously something that had happened before, something private. Flippy knew it wasn't his own fault, but he felt as if he'd intruded on something special.

Eventually he managed to banish the scene from his mind. It was just interesting to think that Shifty would do that for his own brother when he obviously didn't have to. But as the sun began to show through a crack beneath the door (there were no windows in the room, but light from outside could easily be seen through the door), Flippy felt the need to get out of bed. It was a force of habit. It took him a while to fight with his own body and keep settled in the bed. And while the smell of pancakes cooking also called to him, the bear just forced himself to remember that he'd be getting them soon enough.

And soon enough, they did come. By then everyone else had slowly arisen from sleep, and were all sitting up in their beds, waiting for Flaky to enter with their breakfast (Flippy had told them). Shifty, though, was still fast asleep, and Lifty had the honors of jumping on his brother's hospital bed to wake the raccoon up.

Everyone felt better than they had the night before, and almost instantly they began talking about how they felt about what had happened. Flippy kept to himself most of the time and just listened. But as he was thinking a horrid thought struck him. He looked over to the coat he'd worn the day before, leaned over out of bed and put his paws in the pockets. But no, there was nothing there.

Flippy had neglected to tell anyone about the medication he took every morning, and so neither Cuddles nor Giggles had brought any back with them. He knew that it would be too dangerous for him to go out and fetch it himself, he lived too far away. But there would be even more trouble if he lost control here, with everyone around. None of them knew what dying and rebirthing would do to them with the illness. Would it reset or become something permanent? And then there was the dreaded thought… what if they didn't come back?

Flippy gulped and sighed. He was going to have to just keep himself under control. For the sake of his friends.

XxX

"Mm! Flaky, these pancakes are amazing!"

"Ditto."

"Yeah Flaky. I had no idea you could cook like this."

"Ah, th-thank you Petunia. B-but it's only mix…"

Nutty sat up and nodded, took a huge bite of his own pancake and said something along the lines of, "I brolly mife tesh blrowburry mones."

Flaky only blinked. Then she slowly edged away from the squirrel.

Everyone was enjoying Flaky's pancakes, and the porcupine couldn't help the swell of pride that rose up in her. She never got to help out her friends in such a general way, and it made her feel good knowing that she'd made them all happy. They were all genuinely enjoying the pancakes. She'd spent almost two hours making them all, and once she was finally done everyone had been awake and starving.

Flaky had given some to, Cuddles, Giggles and Giggles's mother first, since they were all already in the kitchen and then proceeded to deliver more to each ward. Though he didn't like it, Sniffles had decided to force himself to sleep in the medium ward with Mime. He said it wasn't so bad. "At least Mime's quiet," he told Flaky when she gave him some raison pancakes. Flaky smiled and went on to the light ward.

She'd made many different kinds of pancakes, so decided to put about five each on a plate (she needed to carry two plates, and then more underneath those for the others, along with napkins and utensils clenched between her fingers). It wasn't easy, but slightly challenging, and Flaky found she welcomed the challenge. She liked a good test of physique now and then.

She had to make two trips with the heavy ward, and everyone kept asking for more pancakes after their previous helping. She was correct about Flippy liking the blueberry pancakes as well – he'd had six before finally giving up, saying he was way too stuffed to eat any more. The pancakes were almost more popular than the bacon.

Now that was an accomplishment, Flaky thought, smiling.