Okay, here's another chapter! Manny and Sid are officially in the picture, Awesome! Hope u guys like these chapters, was wondering whether they are a bit too short or not, so made this one longer for u guys!
Anywho, Here are the replies to ur awesome reviews:
(HINT HINT: MORE REVIEWS, QUICKER UPDATE! *WINKWINK*)
Shiego627: Yup, here they are! Hope I didn't make any of them OOC!
TimberPaw: Haha, He'll probably react a little grumpier than usual! Anyway, here's Manny and Sid, hope I didn't make any of them OOC. Don't really have a specific plan for whether to add in the baby after the 4th movie, but I'll see what happens and...wing it! XD And as to what happens next...well, read and find out! XD
Btw, Italics means telepathic communication.
Warning: OC pairing, Don't like, DON'T READ!
Disclaimer: Don't own the Ice Age franchise or any of the characters in it; that all belongs to Blue Sky
"Uuuughhh...wait inside the cove he said...would be fun he said...okay, maybe he didn't say 'fun' but he just HAD to pick the most boring cove on the planet..." Taura thought as she lay inside the cold, damp cove. It was rather small and to get inside, you had to be thin enough to fit through a small gap behind the rushing waterfall that crashed onto the river. The sounds of the gushing blue curtain echoed throughout the hollow cove and the intensified sounds nearly caused Taura's eardrums to bleed, what with her having very sensitive feline ears. She was currently laying on the hard, lumpy ground and drawing imaginary lines with her paw as she gazed out at the cove's entrance, as bored as hell.
"Gah! What's taking him so lo~ong?" Taura whined. She then abruptly got up and walked towards the entrance to take a peek outside. She put her entire head outside, so as to look at the entire area.
"Ouch!"
She felt something small bump into her nose from above. Taura crossed her eye to make sure whatever hit her nose didn't cause a bruise before looking up to find more pebbles crashing. She took a sharp intake of breath before using her quick reflexes to duck away.
"Okay, either I'm starting to lose it, or someone is actually stupid enough to climb beside a waterfall..." Taura thought as she looked at the pile of rocks under the water. Her curiosity got the best of her and so decided to come out halfway to see what was going on...she definitely didn't expect the scene that played before her...
Above her was what looked like a green, greasy sloth with a yellow pelt and fur that stood up on end like it was electrocuted...and what do you know? He was apparently stupid enough to climb up near the waterfall according to Taura's logic. It wasn't necessarily what the unhygienic looking sloth was doing that turned her eyes into saucers, it was what was dangling from his clawed foot: the human baby that they were looking for! How did it even survive?!
"MANNY!" the sloth yelled as the baby started to slip from his foot. Taura didn't really think on what she did next: the baby was slipping and she was right there, what else was she supposed to do?!
Just as the baby fell from the sloth's grasp, or rather his foot's grasp, Taura launched herself at it and caught it from the scruff of his collar using her teeth. She landed safely on a ledge that jutted out from the ground and turned around to find a trunk slamming into her chin, which caused her to loosen her hold on the collar. This gave the mammoth, who appeared from nowhere, the chance to snatch it away from her.
The mammoth was really large, and Taura couldn't decide whether he was just fat, or just relatively large with coincidentally fluffy fur. He was mainly brown, but the fur at the end of his feet and trunk were a darker shade. He also had a tuft of fur that looked like some soft of hair-do on his head with also the same dark brown shade.
Feeling rather irked that she got the child snatched away from her JUST when she got it back, Taura was about to claw the mammoth's trunk off, but it seemed that Diego decided to butt in at this moment.
Diego suddenly dashed in from behind her and attacked the mammoth, growling, by trying to swipe at him. The mammoth didn't seem to take kindly to that action and growled back at him even louder and deeper with narrowed eyes while clutching the baby around its waist using his trunk. Diego, growling even louder, was about to attack again when he was interrupted by Taura's voice inside his head:
"Woah there, I know that we just got the baby back, but there is no way we'll be able to take down the mammoth with just the two of us!"
Diego looked back to find Taura sitting on her haunches rather than his crouched position, ready to pounce and claw the annoying pachyderm's face off. She had a calm expression, but she was glaring at Diego as if warning him to back down. He huffed irritably towards her before coughing into his paw and gesturing towards the child in the mammoth's clutches.
"Um, that pink thing is ours." Diego said, while trying to put on a small friendly smile.
The mammoth looked at him skeptically with one of his eyebrows raised, but before he could reply, his sloth friend interrupted: "Uh no, actually that pink thing belongs to us!" No sooner did he say that did he start to awkwardly tumble down the walls, Taura wincing pitifully each time his face hit either side before he finally landed on the floor face-first. She noticed that when he spoke, he did it with a lisp, as if he had a mouthful of food.
"'Us'? You two are a bit of an odd couple..." Diego drawled with one eyebrow raised, while Taura tried to stifle her laughter by covering it up with a cough. Well THIS is a first: a sloth and a mammoth gay couple...the Ice Age just never ceases to amaze her...
"There is no 'us'!" the mammoth finally spoke as he glared at his companion, you couldn't really tell the scowl on his face since his large trunk covers up the bottom half of it. Diego just ignored himand continued to taunt.
"I see, can't have one of your own so you're planning to adopt..."
The sloth started to cautiously drag the baby towards him by the back of his collar with a sheepish bucktoothed smile on his face. What he said next though took both cats by surprise: "Look I'm sorry to interrupt this snack with your date, but we gotta go,"
The two gave each other sideways glances, before Taura finally spoke with a deadpanned expression: "Could you please et this over with before I lose it and tear up his intestines to choke him with it?"
It wasn't the first time people assumed that they were both...intimate. So after a while of people always making that assumption, Taura just ended up getting real pissed about it and ended up either A) beating the crap out of them or B) sending her death threats towards Diego telepathically.
Diego rolled his eyes before scoffing: "Number one: not my date, and Number two: I was returning the baby to his herd."
"Oh-ho yeah, nice try bucktooth!" The sloth guffawed with a sardonic grin as he continued to drag the baby to the mammoth's side. Taura scoffed at his comment, "And HE'S one to talk!" glancing at his disorientated front teeth. Diego nearly smirked at her comment, but fought it off as he leaped towards the sloth.
"You callin' me liar?" Diego threatened with a sneer that showed off his fangs, making him seem even more intimidating. He put his face up close to the sloth's, his high leverage on the ledge making it easy for him. The sloth tried to lean his head back by bending his neck away from the tiger, his eyes taking a frightened look.
"I didn't say that!" He defeneded himself quickly, while trying to avoid eye contact by glancing at random objects.
"You were thinkin' it!" Diego glowered while trying to hold off the satisfied smirk at the sloth's terrified expression.
The sloth turned his head towards the mammoth and whispered not too softly, "I don't like this cat, he reads minds!". Taura raised one of her eyebrows at that comment whilst grinning mischievously. Hmm...how long would it take for him to notice that they ALL sabers were telepathic?
"Probably a lo~ong time until he does..." Diego's voice rang in her head, which caused her to start in surprise and glance at him with wide eyes. Diego sent her a confidential and small wink before standing up away from the sloth and looking towards the mammoth.
"Name's Diego and Taura friend," He introduced themselves, whilst trying to appear friendly. He only ended up with a tight-lipped smile.
"Manfred," The mammoth, or rather 'Manfred', gruffly said, "And I'm not your friend."
"Fine...'Manfred'," Diego sneered with a taut expression, his narrowed eyes following the sloth as he picked up the baby and waddled away behind Manfred. "If you're looking for the humans, you're wasting your time," Diego continued, "They left this morning."
"Thanks for the advice, now beat it!" Manfred said, keeping a very straight poker-face. The only thing that could have given away what he was thinking was his narrowed and suspicious eyes that glanced back and forth from Diego to Taura. He then turned his head towards his smelly companion and reluctantly grumbled, "Alright, I'll help you bring it to its herd, but promise me you'll leave me along after that!"
"Okay, Okay, Deal! What's your problem?" The Sloth complied.
Whatever the bickering chickens said next was lost to Diego's ears, as he was too busy seething and glaring holes at Manfred's back. Taura caught a glimpse of something or other about Manfred's fur being all poof-y (So probably wasn't fat...PROBABLY...), but got distracted by the baby waving back at them with an adorably clueless face. She couldn't help but wave back with a small grin that showed off some of her teeth.
"I told you that they were gone,"
What with Diego being persistent, they both followed them back up at the camp. The place seemed barren and tattered from the fighting that commenced here: tents were tattered, spears were left lying around everywhere and the firewood was still burning fresh from this morning. Manny hadn't been to a lot of human camps, but the mess seemed rather suspicious even to him. The sloth didn't seem to notice as he was too busy being slapped in the face by random tools left on the floor as he chased the baby, which Taura desperately tried not to giggle at.
"Oh look who it is," Manny drawled with a roll of his eyes, "Don't you two have some poor, defenseless animal to disembowel ?"
They were randomly interrupted by the sloth when he waddled near them in a strange position in which he was staring closely at the floor as he randomly pointed at Different directions. "Well they couldn't have went far...maybe they went this way...o-or this way, or, uh..." He randomly stuttered. He was about to run into another tool lying across him and Taura decided that he had had enough and placed a paw in front of his face. The sloth looked up at her questioningly, to which she replied by shoving the tool away from him. It took him a second to realize what she did, but afterwards he sent her a toothy grin that showed off his wonky teeth.
"Thanks!" He beamed, Taura copied his smile as if to say 'you're welcome'.
"You don't know much about tracking, do you?" Diego remarked sarcastically, ignoring the friendly counter between the two.
The sloth shrugged as he grabbed a twig and snapped it into two. "Hey I'm a sloth, I see a tree, eat a leaf," he pointed his head towards the leaf sticking out of one of his twigs, "That's my tracking!"
"You didn't miss them by much," Diego muttered as he picked up another twig while Taura sniffed at it, "Still green...they headed north two hours ago." Taura nodded her head eagerly along with a bright smile as if confirming his theory.
Sid with a cheeky grin randomly placed the two twigs on either side of his mouth, which created a similar image of the sabers on both Smilodons. "Still green, they headed north two hours ago!" Sid imitated with a ridiculously deep voice and shaking his head like some pompous being. Taura desperately tried to stifle her giggles by placing her paw over her mouth, but Diego was still able to hear her clearly which caused him to twitch his ear in irritation. Taura immediately stopped when she received a very heated glare from him, but still had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.
The baby, who was inside the basket, laughed and gurgled at the sloth but suddenly slipped and fell on the handle of a spoon that acted like a catapult and shot a fish directly at Manny's face. This time, Taura couldn't hold it in and guffawed out a short chortle at Manny's blank and irked face before finally holding it back in.
"You don't need his aggravation," Diego said as he walked closer to the child. Manny didn't say anything, the fish sliding down his face until it finally flopped onto the floor. "Give me the baby, I can track humans faster than you can," Diego recommended, dragging the baby towards him with what he must have thought was a reassuring smirk.
Manny snorted and sarcastically said "And you two are just good citizens trying to help out huh?" as he dragged the baby back towards him.
Diego frowned and dragged the baby back to him "Me and Taura just know where the humans are,"
"Glacier Pass," Manny said without missing a beat, as if it was a very obvious fact. They three looked at where Manny gestured to and sure enough, there was the familiar sight of two large marble Glaciers, reaching out towards each other and encircling the entire area around them. "Everyone knows that they have a settlement on the other side," Manny explained as he dragged the baby back to thought that Diego would have given up by then, but he was even more persistent and stubborn than she thought!
"Well unless you know how to track, you'll never reach it before the Pass closes up with snow," Diego remarked with a smug smirk, "Which should be like... tomorrow?" He then shrugged his shoulders and remarked innocently "So you can give that baby to me, or get lost in the blizzard, its your choice..."
Manny looked at the two sabers, then at the baby, then back at them both. He seemed to be contemplating the idea, until finally he picked up the baby with his trunk. Diego thought that he was going to drop it to him, but when his trunk went past him AND Taura, he plunked it back into the Sloth's arms. Diego and Taura both shared a confused glance before looking back up at Manny questioningly.
"Here's your little bundle of joy, we're returning it to the humans." Manny simply stated before heading off.
The Sloth glanced happily back at Manny before grinning smugly at the two sabers and started to stroke their noses teasingly one at a time. "Aw, the big bad tigey wigey's gets left behind! Poor tigey wigey's!" He cooed, seeming to gain pleasure from the annoyed glares that were staring at him. Well, Taura glared at him, but Diego was giving him the evil eye of death that would've burnt toast.
"Sid," Manny called out, "The two tigery wigeys are going to lead the way."
Sid stood there shocked with wide terrified eyes at the realisation, his smug expression wiped clean off his face. Diego smirked evilly at the sloth while Taura grinned mischievously with an impish gleam in her eyes. "Oh we're gonna have so~o much fun with him!" She cackled mentally, which only caused Diego's smirk to widen even more. The Sloth started to hurriedly waddle back to Manny.
"Uh M-Manny, Manny!" He called out while he stuttered, "C-can I talk to you for a sec-"
"No." Manny interrupted while glaring back at him, "The sooner we find the humans, the sooner we get rid of Mr. Stinky-drool-face," Sid glanced down at the human child in his arms, thinking that he was talking about him, "And the baby too." Manny finished; you could hear the hint of amusement in his voice when he said that as he walked away.
Diego started to stalk towards the sloth as he stared helplessly at Manny's retreating back, like a predator would with his tapped prey, Taura following his steps a few feet away.
"You won't always have jumbo here to protect you," Diego taunted as he circled the sloth, who stood frozen with wide terrified eyes at the saber, "And when that day comes, I suggest you watch your back," He then leaned closer to the sloth's ear and deepened his voice, "'Cuz I'll be chewing on it!" And then marched away with satisfaction.
Taura stood there next to the sloth and watched Diego's retreating back. 'Is it just me...or did he kind of sound sexy just then?' She pondered, but made sure to block Diego from hearing it. Lord knows what would happen considering his ego was big enough and didn't need anymore boosting!
The Sloth still stood there petrified with the oblivious, gurgling child in his arms. He then finally squeaked out:
"Help...me..."