As night fell, the trio was greeted by yet another bone-chilling blizzard, forcing them to look for shelter. Fortunately, they found a cave and settled into it for the night.
While Diego had been away feasting, considerate enough to stay far away from his friends while doing so, Manny, after shoving away snow with his enormous tusks for hours, managed to find a patch of grass. It was cold and soggy, and far from enough to satisfy his mammoth appetite, but it was better than nothing.
Sid wanted to join in, despite not being a grazer, but soon enough learned that chewing on grass was a lot tougher than it looked, so, at the risk of wearing out his teeth prematurely, he scraped together some mosses and lichens. They tasted horribly but beggars couldn't be choosers. It wasn't much for either, but it helped lift the two herbivores' morale.
Unfortunately, there was no wood for the "Lord of the Flames" to make a fire, so they had to tough it out for the night. Manny had hunkered down in the dark cavern and watched Sid hugging himself and shaking, every once in a while blowing into his paws and rubbing them together.
Manny knew and dreaded what the sloth was going to ask, and sure enough, he waddled up to the mammoth, hugging himself and sporting a pitiful expression.
"You couldn't... maybe keep me warm tonight, Manny, ol' buddy? Ol' pal?" Sid begged, his breath visible with each exhale.
Manny rolled his eyes. This wasn't going to be a pleasant experience but he wasn't heartless. He already snubbed Sid once and left him at the mercy of the hail and rain. In retrospect, it had been a big jerk move on Manny's part, and thinking about it made him realize how cold and detached he had become after losing the one thing that mattered to him the most.
"Fine, but just don't get any drool on me, kay?" he muttered as Sid beamed with joy.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" he wasted no time grabbing Manny's trunk and wrapping it around his frame like a blanket.
Manny cringed and tried to ignore the horrid smell of fungus, and exhaled irritably. The first chance they reached a body of water whose temperature wasn't below freezing, the sloth was getting a thorough scrub, whether he liked it or not.
"Ahhh, much better." Sid smiled as he leaned against Manny's tusk. "Y'know...for a guy who's always so cold and moody, you're also very warm and fluffy?"
"Yeah, yeah, just don't get used to it." Manny deadpanned. "I'm only doing this so I won't wake up to you being a frozen popsicle."
"Am I interrupting this manly cuddling session?" a familiar husky voice jeered.
Manny and Sid saw Diego approaching them and both grew looks of shock. The tiger smirked, unaware that their horror didn't come from embarrassment.
"And thanks, but no. I'll take a pass. Tigers ain't huggers." he snarked while waving his paw.
A mortified Sid pointed a claw at him, trying to form words but only terrified gasps came out.
"Eh...Diego?" Manny gestured with his trunk. "You've got something on...on your..."
Diego looked at his reflection in a frozen puddle and noticed blood smeared on his left saber and parts of his chin.
"Oh, sorry..." Growing sheepish, he grabbed a pawful of snow and used it to rinse the blood off his face before hunkering down himself.
"Um...where are my table manners, right?" he tried to make light of the situation, not that it did much for his companions, especially Sid.
In his old pack, the sight of a little blood wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but Diego had to remind himself that Sid and Manny were very different beasts. An awkward silence ensued, as neither side knew how to discuss this topic. So they tried to move past it.
"Um...I'm happy you had your fill. Should make traveling a bit easier for you, huh?" Manny tried to break the ice.
"Yeah, it should..." Diego replied, avoiding eye contact. "Glad that I won't have to deal with more hunger pains tomorrow."
"Umm...lucky you?"
"Are we gonna be seeing more of...that stuff in the future?" Sid fearfully asked. "Eh...I don't handle the sight of blood very well, and I think that reindeer's dying cries will haunt my dreams forever."
Talking about this, Sid couldn't help but remember the few times where Diego had not-so-subtly threatened him when they first met, and of course, the time he used the tiger to fake his death in front of Carl and Frank, but after the rhinos left, Diego didn't seem to be in a hurry to release Sid from his deadly jaws. For many sloths, that was the exact description of their final moments.
Though he wanted to think of Diego as his friend now, Sid was still hard-wired to fear predators. It wasn't the easiest thing being friends with someone your instincts were constantly screaming at you to run away from.
Diego sighed. "I'm a tiger, and a tiger's got to eat. But don't worry. I always liked to hunt solo anyway. You won't have to spectate the...gory details again."
Manny nodded knowingly. This was the best Diego could do for their sake, and they needed to adjust to it. He was born a carnivore and he couldn't change that.
"That's, mighty gracious of you..." Sid awkwardly started "...but I still don't get why you can't go vegan. It works for me, it works for Manny, it works for those two rhinos, even if they find other excuses for killing..."
The mammoth and tiger simultaneously rolled their eyes.
"Sid, for the last time, I'm a cat." Diego tried to explain, though he doubted it would get through the sloth's thick skull this time either. "For me, eating that green stuff is about as nutritious as eating rocks and dirt."
"Well...don't knock it until you try it, is all I'm saying." Sid replied.
"So, have you ever tried having rocks and dirt for lunch?" Diego quipped, earning an annoyed look. With Sid, it was too easy sometimes.
"And I wouldn't say your diet is doing wonders for you, Sid." Manny added while poking Sid's paunch with his trunk.
"Hey!"
"He's right." Diego continued, dripping with sarcasm. Making fun of Sid was the first and still the biggest commonality that helped him and Manny bond.
"There must be a reason those two "fetching" lady sloths ditched you the moment Manny took away the baby."
Sid huffed. "That's their loss. They could have had all of this..." he gestured at his less-than-impressive physique "...but they let it slip through their claws. Their loss will be another lucky female's gain."
Manny and Diego exchanged knowing looks. "That's the spirit, Sid. You don't go down easy." Diego humored him.
"Yes, I'm sure someday, you'll meet a nice girl..." Manny started "...who doesn't care much about looks, or physique..."
"...or charisma, or personal hygiene..." Diego shrugged "...you just have to keep looking until you find the right one."
"Ha ha..." Sid retorted drably "...you guys crack me up. Always ganging up on the sloth."
His mood improved quickly though as he reclined against Manny's tusk and used the mammoth's trunk like a blanket again."But I'm serious about this, guys. My time with Pinky made me realize what a privilege it is to be blessed with the joys of parenthood."
"Including all the crying and poopy accidents?" Manny asked rhetorically but Sid nodded without a moment's hesitation, to his companions' surprise.
"Mhhmmm...so I'd like to have kids of my own someday, start a new family, and teach them proper family values."
"That's concerning..." Diego joked but Manny stayed silent. There was an earnestness in the sloth's tone that was hard to fake. And it was evident that during their previous journey, Sid felt the most attached to Pinky.
Though Manny was kind of surprised that Sid would have such wholesome life goals, given some of his earlier remarks about mating for life and his sleazy attempts to woo those lady sloths. Seems all three of them changed quite a bit over the course of their journey.
As usual, Sid didn't catch the obvious sarcasm in Diego's tone and waved his paw. "Don't worry, Diego. I'll make sure they are nothing like my old family. No ditching of relatives while I'm head of the cave, no matter how annoying they might be."
"Well...in case the impossible ever does happen, just remember what I told you." Manny reminded the sloth, starting off in jest but quickly turning serious. "If you find a mate in life, you should be loyal to her, and grateful to have her."
"I know, words to live byyyyy..." Sid paused as something finally dawned on him and he looked up at Manny apologetically while fiddling with his claws.
"Ohhhh...I think I might have said something slightly insensitive to ya back at the waterfall?"
"It's okay..." Manny looked aside sadly. "You couldn't have known..."
Diego and Sid sat in silence. They had already expressed their sympathy to Manny for what happened to his family, there wasn't much more to add now. The moment in the cave where they saw Manny gazing at that painting of a mammoth couple and their calf pretty much told them everything they needed to know. Well, for Diego anyway.
Sid initially thought that Manny was dealing with self-image issues after seeing how portly and unattractive the bull mammoth on the cave wall looked, so Diego had to explain it to him after they returned the baby. Suddenly, a lot about Manny started making sense to Sid, including why the mammoth was standing at the edge of a cliff when Sid literally bumped into him.
Even Sid knew better than to ask if Manny would ever consider finding a new mate, it was far too soon. He did kind of hope that his big buddy could find happiness again someday, but right now, he worried that even him talking about his own dreams of matrimony was upsetting to the mammoth.
Sensing their unease, Manny didn't want to dampen the mood and sighed, "...I just need time...and anyways..." he forced a smile "...I at least have you two knuckleheads to keep me from being too lonely."
"Hey, you know me." a relieved Sid tried to cheer him up. "No matter how hard you try, I always find ya."
"Unfortunately..." Manny shook his head good-naturedly.
Diego smiled, happy to see Manny being able to look at the bright side of things, especially since all three of them had anything but uplifting backstories. Manny lost his family, Sid was cruelly abandoned by his, and himself...well, he never suffered any familial tragedies, but no tiger stayed in their birth pack once they were of age (inbreeding was no good for the gene pool), and unfortunately for Diego, he fell in with the wrong crowd, headed by a tiger who did not have his pack's best interests in mind.
"And what about you, Diego?" Sid suddenly asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"What about me?"
"Have you any plans of hooking up with a nice tigress..." Sid winked "...or did ya have a mate before?"
"Sid..." Manny hissed, earning the sloth's attention as he whispered "...half of pack wiped out by the humans, remember."
"Oh?" Sid gulped and looked nervous. "Sorry, Diego! I didn't mean to run my mouth again-"
"It's fine, Sid." Diego replied in a chill tone. "I never had a mate, never really looked for one either. I'm not much of a family guy, more of a free spirit, a rebel. I don't like to be tied down."
He thought over his words as he locked eyes with Manny. "But...that's just my opinion."
"To each their own." Manny understood, but their conversation going back to Diego's pack piqued his curiosity for different reasons.
Sid chuckled. "Well yeah? You're hanging out with two mammals you would normally have for lunch. Can't get more "rebel" than that, right?"
Diego looked away, lingering guilt still weighing on his conscience. He had almost willingly led Manny and Sid to their deaths, two mammals who were more moral and upstanding than he could ever hope to be, especially Manny.
Learning Manny's backstory made Diego realize that the former and Soto weren't too different in one regard; they both suffered at the hands of humans, but the two reacted to it in completely different ways.
Diego doubted that he, if had he been in Manny's place, would have ever found it in his heart to not only forgive the humans, especially if his grief was still fresh, but to not kill Pinky on the spot when he found him, let alone risk his own life to bring the infant back to his tribe.
"Diego, you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to..." Manny inquired gently "...but you mentioned half of your pack getting wiped out by the humans. It's why your leader wanted the baby, right?"
"Yes. Doesn't mean it was justified though." Diego said simply. He could guess why Manny felt compelled to ask. The tiger wasn't the only one who had guilt on their conscience.
"Did you have friends back there? Like...real friends?" Sid asked, trying not to be too intrusive with his question.
Diego looked unsure before sighing, adopting a sullen look. "Guess I did see some of them as friends of sorts, but they were all dead by the time I met you guys."
"And what about your leader? Soto, was it?" Manny asked. Hearing that, Diego's expression hardened.
"Soto? We respected each other, I can tell ya that much. The day before we attacked Pinky's tribe, he said in front of the whole pack that I was the only one he "trusted"." he admitted while resting his head on his paws.
Manny's brow knitted, while Sid rubbed the back of his head and asked, "So...you were close then?"
"No." Diego had no trouble saying. "We respected each other, that was it. I don't know if Soto ever saw me as a friend, he was always the strong and silent type, keeping his emotions under wraps, unless he was pissed. Oh boy, did he have no issue showing anger."
Diego snorted a bit. "But given that he threatened me with death if I failed to return the baby, I can safely say that any affection he might have felt for me at one time was gone once he got consumed with vengeance."
"Ouch." was all Sid could say. Both he and Manny could tell from his tone that Diego didn't miss any of his pack mates, at least the four that lived long enough to fight the trio at Half-Peak.
"Vengence can cloud one's mind." Manny said thoughtfully. Hearing this confirmation from Diego did make him feel a bit better. It also explained why Soto had been so nonchalant about fighting Diego to the death once the latter revealed that he was siding with Manny.
"Yes, but to be frank...I'm not sure how much vengence actually played into his obsession with the humans, despite what he might have said. I kind of think it had more to do with pride."
"Pride?" Sid asked.
"Yup. Soto was a firm believer in "survival of the fittest", he had little tolerance for weakness and prided himself on being a model alpha; strong, capable, determined, fearless..." Diego reminisced "...and all too willing to send a message to any other predators that he's top cat. Finally getting humbled by someone set him off something fierce, and...I can't say we never antagonized the humans, that we were innocent victims."
Admitting this drenched up some unpleasant memories for Diego. Soto was ruthless when it came to asserting his dominance and Diego used to follow his leader's mantra without questioning, including being willing to harm others for reasons other than food.
Manny's face darkened. Protecting the baby wasn't the only reason why he lashed out and slammed Soto into the rock wall. Seeing him strike down Diego had also infuriated him beyond belief, but he guessed the tiger knew that already.
He also made it no secret that he despised animals that killed for pleasure, and based on Diego's description of Soto, the late tiger had been all too willing to end a life in order to protect his own ego, not just because his stomach was rumbling.
"Manny, you have nothing to regret." Diego assured him as he lifted his head up. "You did what you had to. Soto would have killed the baby right then and there if you hadn't intervened..."
Sid shuddered, vividly remembering the vicious glint in the tiger's eyes when he spotted Sid cluelessly walking into the battle scene with the baby in his arms. There was no doubt what Soto was intending to do at that moment.
Diego glanced down sullenly "...and knowing Soto, when he set his mind on something, killing him would be the only way of stopping him."
"Wow...your leader was very hardcore...and not in a good way." Sid tried to wrap his mind around that. "Guess you and those other tigers we met weren't very chummy?"
"Not even remotely." Diego smirked a bit before resting his chin on his paws again. "I couldn't stand the sight of those three idiots, especially one blowhard named Oscar. He and I never ever saw eye to eye, mainly because he was jealous of my prowess and actually having Soto's respect...for whatever that was worth."
"Guess it's true what they say, the spiteful ones live the longest." Manny finally spoke. Diego nodded.
"Good thing we won't have to worry about him ever again." the mammoth continued before turning his head to the mouth of the cave as the roaring of the winds grew louder, as did Diego and Sid.
"I'm all for reminiscing..." Diego joked before letting out a big yawn "...but we should probably get some shut-eye. If luck is on our side again, we'll have a long trek ahead of us tomorrow."
"Aww...c'mon, guys. It's still early." Sid insisted. "We should stay up until midnight sharing campfire sto..." his head fell back over Manny's tusk and he started snoring like a hog with sinus infections.
"Good night, Diego." Manny said sleepily, wrapping his trunk around Sid tightly, and soon enough, he dozed off himself.
"Night." Diego replied and took one last glance at the mouth of the cave, watching the raging snowstorm outside. The snowfall was so dense and the winds so strong, that it was a complete whiteout out there.
But he knew they were far away from Half-Peak by now, the place where Diego buried the last remnants of his old life, both literally and figuratively.
He didn't know what the future had in store for him, especially given his current situation, but it could only be an improvement over his time serving Soto. He knew some of it was better left unsaid, as Manny and Sid simply wouldn't understand certain things a predator was bound to do during their fast and dangerous lives, and although he felt some shame, Diego was content with taking that knowledge to his grave. There was nothing to gain by being too open about his past.
The past was the past, and you couldn't change it. There was no point in beating himself up over it. The best he could do was move forward as a better beast, especially after being granted a second chance at life following a near-death experience. Only a fool would squander that.
His past was behind him now.
Many miles south...
Under the moonlit sky, in the middle of a snow-blanketed taiga, lay the freezing carcass of a large trunked ungulate, with most of its gut region eaten and its ribs sticking out. Lying next to it was a rather obese tiger, who was busy chewing off the remaining meat from a femur bone. After being left to starve in the name of vengeance for days and days, he was more than happy to satiate his ravenous hunger.
Right above him, resting on a boulder was a slimmer tiger who observed his peer with a haughty expression, his front limbs folded. Even though his pack had it rough for the last year or so, why with most of them dying and their idiot leader slowly losing his grip on sanity, Oscar was rather happy with his current situation. His pack had lost the battle at Half-Peak as well as their leader, but in Oscar's eyes, that was a win-win.
Soto was finally out of the way, and so was his not-so-loyal flunky whom Oscar had detested so much, and at the fangs of his former leader no less. That was some beautiful irony if he ever saw any. With both of them dead, Oscar could finally do the sensible thing and run south as fast as he could, without the threat of execution for insubordination looming over him, and he took his only two surviving pack mates with him, even if he had to save one of them from their own idiocy.
Finally, Oscar had risen to the position of alpha...well, unofficially. He still had trouble getting his two cronies to view him as their undisputed leader but they were starting to fall in line. After suffering from Soto's idiocy for so long, Oscar looked like a huge improvement by default.
"How humorous." he thought to himself as he observed the other two tigers. They used to be a mighty pack, numbering 12 strong, and yet out of all of them, Oscar would never have expected the lard ass and the twitchy runt to be the last ones standing.
Speaking of the twitchy runt, he was in the middle of one of his usual schizophrenic rants while toying with his food.
"Uhhh...when I get my claws into that SLOTH! I'll make him sorry!" he giggled madly and twitched while letting a saber-toothed squirrel run around in circles and blocking its escape route at every turn.
The poor rodent squeaked in fear every time he got within a hair's length of the tiger's razor-sharp claws.
"Getting tricked by a sloth?" Oscar sneered. "You truly are a disgrace to our species, Ezekiel. I don't know why we even bothered pulling you out of that hole."
Oscar knew why though. Three tigers were better than one. Zeke and Oscar weren't particularly useful to him, sure, but Oscar knew that on his own, his chances of survival were even slimer.
"First! I'll slice his belly open!" Zeke laughed as he pinned Scrat down by his bushy tail.
"First vertically!" Zeke grazed Scrat's belly with his claw, making the squirrel whimper, and then again. "Then horizontally! Hehehe..."
"Will ya pipe down!" Lenny spat out his gnawed bone, fed up with Zeke's ramblings. "As if you'll even see him again. And even if you do, he'll still have that mammoth protecting him."
Oscar still didn't know what the deal with the mammoth and sloth was. Diego initially claimed that he was serving them up as dinner for his pack at Half-Peak, but how he got them to travel with him in the first place was anyone's guess. Then he betrayed his pack and sided with the mammoth during their final confrontation.
He didn't know if his old rival made some convoluted bid for leadership and planned to use the mammoth as a weapon against Soto or what? He supposed it was irrelevant now. Diego was dead and he took his secrets to his grave.
If nothing else, Oscar would forever cherish Diego's anguished expression when Soto's foot-long fangs made contact with his side.
Pinned under the tiger's paw, Scrat sobbed as Zeke continued with his rant "...then I'll stack his lungs and kidneys in one pile, and the gallbladder and pancreas in the other, and I'll use the fungus from his fur as seasoning-"
"Quit your blabbering, Zeke!" Oscar rose up, making the scrawny tiger cower and accidentally free the squirrel. Seizing his chance, Scrat scurried away from the tigers and disappeared into the dark woods.
"We didn't save your miserable life just so you can get yourselves flattened by a mammoth. Besides, you saw where Soto's obsession with vengeance got him."
"Bah...we're better off without him." the surly Lenny agreed.
"For once, you're on the mark." Oscar smiled gleefully. "Emancipation is quite rewarding."
Zeke giggled. "Yeah, no more clonks on the head for poor Zeke!"
"Exactly. Now we are free to follow the walking buffet heading south..." Oscar reaffirmed while eyeing Lenny, trying to butter his companions up, then turned to Zeke "...and you, my friend, have no shortage of animals to maul, am I right?"
"Eheheheh...I LOVE mauling!" Zeke hissed excitably while adopting a pouncing stance and digging his claws into the snow.
"Good, now get some rest. We'll resume our trek at the crack of dawn."
"What, again? Why? We've been traveling nonstop, my paws are still sore. Can't we take a little break?" Lenny complained. His defiance made Oscar seethe but he hid it with a charming smile.
"Why?" he asked rhetorically. "Would you rather stay here and freeze your tail off? It's only going to get colder the longer we stay."
"Yeah, Lenny!" Zeke sat up and patted his belly. "Think of the rest of the pack. We aren't as well insulated as you are!"
Zeke hollered with high-pitched laughter and clutched his sides, while Lenny snarled, and raised his paw. "Why you little!"
"Enough!" Oscar shouted. Being the only one blessed with brain cells could be quite arduous sometimes.
"You two buffoons can maim each other once we've reached warmer climes. Right now, we need to work together and save our energy. Are we clear?"
Lenny grunted but complied. He didn't like Oscar's bossiness but he had no ambition of leading himself and a full belly was all he really wanted.
Glaring at the grinning Zeke one more time, Lenny turned around with a growl and walked off in a huff.
"I'm getting a drink..." he grumbled to himself, not that his two companions cared too much.
"Don't drink up the whole river, tubby!" Zeke shouted, only to get smacked on the head by Oscar.
"Ow...what?" he asked while nursing his head. Oscar rolled his eyes.
"Shrill lil' degenerate..." Lenny muttered to himself as he trudged through the snow-covered forest, failing to notice the large, two-toed tracks he passed by.
He eventually reached the bank of a small river cutting through the woods, which was mostly covered in ice but he managed to put his bulk to good use and crushed the ice underneath his paws, allowing him to lean down and start lapping up the water through the crack.
Little did he know that he was being watched from the cover of darkness, with crimson irises focusing in on him. Lenny's ear twitched as he heard a rustle and he raised his head in alert. Scanning the surrounding woods, his acute night vision didn't spot anything.
Another rustle, and he turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of a tall figure running through the woods. Instinctively, Lenny's back fur bristled and he growled threateningly only to suddenly be struck in the flank, coupled with excruciating pain.
Back at their kill, Oscar and Zeke jumped as they heard their pack mate screaming in agony.
"W-what was that?" Zeke blurted while a nervous Oscar sniffed the air and grew a terrified look.
"I gotta get out of here!" Without warning, he bolted away, leaving the confused Zeke behind, who lowered his ears and ran after him. For all his lust for carnage, he was also a sniveling coward when faced with a tougher opponent.
"Wait for me, Oscar!" Zeke cried after him as Oscar ran as fast as his legs could carry him, dodging tree trunks, and jumped off a small ledge and into a pebbly, dried-up river bed. Following his lead, Zeke got his foot caught on a root, lost his footing, and tumbled off the ledge and onto Oscar.
"Get off me, you imbecile!" Oscar yelled and shoved him off before realizing the mistake of raising his voice. He lowered his ears and tucked his head between his shoulders as he looked around.
Sure enough, he heard the crashing of vegetation right above them but before he could make a run for it, he heard a familiar voice crying, "Help! HELP ME!"
The voice belonged to Lenny, as he slid down a nearby embankment, tumbled around, and fell in front of the other two tigers.
Oscar and Zeke widened their eyes at the gruesome sight; their comrade was covered in slash marks and sported a deep hole in his chest, leaving behind a trail of blood across the pebbles.
He barely had the strength to prop himself up with his front legs as he looked at Oscar with pleading eyes. He feebly raised a paw and spoke in a raspy voice. "Don't...leave me, please."
His pleas failed to move Oscar, who stood petrified with fear before hearing a blood-curdling screech in the distance, which made birds fly out of the pine trees. He knew what it meant, and as far as he was concerned, Lenny was dead weight now.
With a sneer, he simply said, "We have no use for a crippled tiger."
Ignoring Lenny's whimpering, he turned around and made a mad dash out of there. Zeke stuck around for another second and giggled nervously as he eyed the wounded Lenny.
"See ya! W-wouldn't wanna be ya!" And with that, he ran after Oscar, leaving Lenny to his fate.
Lenny wept and collapsed to the ground. Soon enough, he heard the sound of encroaching footsteps. He turned around and was engulfed by towering shadows.
Lenny could do nothing but scream before one of his assailants punched a hole through his cranium.
Up ahead, Oscar and Zeke were running for their lives and had heard Lenny's scream, before it was abruptly cut off. Their trio had just been cut down to two.
With his heart pounding rapidly, Oscar cursed at their deceased leader.
So I'm officially experimenting with another franchise. I wrote this and the first chapter together during a flash of inspiration. Can't say when I will post the next one, as I'm currently trying to finish another fic and update another.
I actually got the gem of an idea for an Ice Age fic after realizing that, not counting the sea creatures and/or Mesozoic reptiles, we don't really see any other predators in this franchise outside of Smilodon, and after the first film, there's only really Diego and later Shira, and since this series isn't particularly concerned with anachronism or geography, showing actual Pleistocene animals from all corners of the globe coexisting with animals from the Eocene and later the Miocene, logically, various predators from all across the Cenozoic could be coexisting in this universe, so I started brainstorming some ideas, which led to this fic.
With this chapter, I wanted to convey some lingering awkwardness with the main trio, as they are still getting adjusted to their interspecies friendship without Roshan keeping them together anymore. Especially since Diego has a completely different background than the other two, being s carnivore who kills for a living. That's something that was completely ignored in the sequels, as nobody ever questioned why Diego was friends with Manny and Sid and nobody in their all-herbivore community seemed to take issue with a sabretooth just running around freely and mingling with them, though they at least didn't commit the ultimate sin of talking animal fiction by making Diego somehow defy his feline biology and turn vegan (which I mocked here) and actually showed him hunting (in Dawn of the Dinosaurs).
Something else I try to do is make this feel more like a proper continuation of the first film, hence the darker elements and why Diego's surviving (former) pack mates make a comeback, and so could other characters from the original. I gave Lenny the ax since he really had no personality to speak of in the original, he was just an extra goon, while Oscar and Zeke gave me something to work with (being played by voice acting pros like Diedrich Bader and Jack Black certainly helped), so I narrowed it down to the two of them. And as Soto was a bit nebulous in the original, his personal motives are open to interpretation. I opted not to romanticize him, so my interpretation is that he was always a prideful darwinist who only got worse following his feud with the humans, and his past actions have now come back to haunt his former subordinates.