I have submitted this story in response to the July 2020 Gang of Five word prompt, 'alternatives'. You can find it on FanFiction at https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13646304/1/What-Do-Sharpteeth-Eat. It takes place in my 'War Before Time' continuity, which (predictably) places emphasis on action with (somewhat less predictable) sci-fi twists, amid character development, new faces and some fresh world building. I always wanted to delve deeper into the mystery of the Rainbow Faces. If you feel the same way, check out the War Before Time tales on FanFiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13516136/1/War-Before-Time-Part-1-Mentors-of-Yesteryears
Enjoy!
Summary: It was an unthinkable question. Young adults Littlefoot and Cera have been passing on The Lone Dinosaur's training to the next generation of leafeaters, but it never occurred to them that these children, born and sheltered in The Great Valley, had no idea why sharpteeth are so 'mean'. How will they explain alternative diets to the munchkins?[/b]
What Do Sharpteeth Eat?
A War Before Time Oneshot
"The trick is to end a fight as quickly as possible," young adult Littlefoot explained. "Sharpteeth aren't looking to exchange blows. They don't wanna get injured. Their aim is to take you down in one fell swoop, so ... um ..."
No one was listening.
Well, with the exception of the young parasaurolophus, Ark, the ankylosaurus, Tosh, and protoceratops, Dimi, the other kids were busy chatting and joking around. A few of them were even darting about, giggling as they chased each other.
Cera shook her head. "I don't know what's wrong with kids these days. In my time, I'd be eating up this training like sweet bubbles."
A smirk tugged at Littlefoot's lips. "'Your time'?"
Her eyes widened at the implication. "I'm NOT old, and I'm NOT starting to sound like Mr. Thicknose!"
Littlefoot gave her a smug smile, lowering his head to her level. The fact that she was barely half his size compounded the effect.
"I didn't say that. You did," Littlefoot quipped.
Cera huffed and rapidly turned with her snout in the air, kicking dirt at Littlefoot's face with her hind leg. It was a quick move, but she'd done it enough for Littlefoot to see it coming. This time, he managed to pull away before the soil reached his snout.
Frowning all the more, Cera stomped away. "Just for that, you'll be handling the ankle biters for the next few minutes."
Littlefoot playfully rolled his eyes. He actually enjoyed handling the 'ankle biters'. Now, if he could just get their attention.
"Okay, everyone. Eyes on me," he instructed.
Their laughter seemed to absorb his voice.
*( ( KRA-KOOOM! ) )*
The kids went silent as the boom ebbed into the distance. A little more and they would have expected smoke to be rising from the tip of Littlefoot's raised tail. It was a known fact that longnecks could create 'thunder' with the crack of their tails, but after The Lone Dinosaur's training, Littlefoot was practically a walking storm. There was no missing the awe on their faces. How easy it was to forget that demonstrations were more effective than words.
Littlefoot cleared his throat. "As I was saying, sharpteeth try to end a fight as fast as possible, which is why you gotta beat them to it. Strike fast, hit hard, and don't let your body language give away your movements too early."
He broke into an intricate display of tail melee, cracking peels of thunder before the captivated audience.
"Try to resist the urge to headbutt or bite, unless you know exactly what you're doing," Littlefoot advised in the process. "There's nothing a sharptooth would love more than for you to bring your head and throat close enough to bite. If they latch on, you might not be able to escape. Have you been practising your tail combinations?"
"Uhhh ..." came a collective answer.
Ark's ordinarily focussed mind seemed to wander. "Huh? Oh, right."
He loosed tail strikes against the air, swiftly, efficiently and seemingly effortlessly.
"Hmph. Show off ..." mumbled Zin the therizinosaurus.
"Very good!" Littlefoot commended. "Let's see if you can be a little sharper with your blows, like this."
The longneck proceeded to demonstrate.
Eyes settling on the ground, Ark didn't appear to hear.
Littlefoot frowned in concern. "What's on your mind, buddy?"
"Umm ... Littlefoot, I was just wondering," began Ark, "what do sharpteeth eat?"
Littlefoot's brain practically choked on the question. Since he was a kid, Doc had trained him to be remarkably fast and graceful, even as he grew. However, when Ark asked that question, all those years of training were forgotten as he tripped on his own feet and fell like a tree.
"HE'S GOING DOWN!" yelped a scrambling Dimi. "QUICK! GET UNDER SOMETHING!"
The Earth shook as the longneck hit the ground. Having conditioned his bones and scales for years, he was considerably more sturdy than the average longneck. That was the only reason why he didn't break a rib the moment he landed. Still ... ow ...
Cera came rushing in, barely sparing Littlefoot a glance as she stared open mouthed at the youngster.
"Ark! Did you just ask what sharpteeth eat?!" she demanded.
"I'm fine, thanks for asking, Cera," Littlefoot responded dryly.
Ark fidgeted, under her eyes. "I mean, why don't we just call them 'leafeaters' too? Do they eat green food without leaves? What kind? Some of us eat plants without leaves, but we still call ourselves leafeaters. What makes them so different?"
Agreement rippled across the kids.
"Yeah, I've been wondering about that too."
"Me too."
"Same here."
"Uh huh."
Littlefoot slowly nodded as he got up. Most of Ark's generation had been born in the valley, but it never occurred to him that no one would tell him such basic facts. Then again, he himself seldom mentioned it.
"Um ... why do you think we've been teaching you how to fight them?" asked Littlefoot.
Ark paused. "I've been wondering about that. I mean, it's obvious they're super mean and territorial, like threehorns, but a bit worse."
Ark's sister, Anati, shot him a glare. "Hey! Threehorns aren't like that! At least, not Cera! She's really just a big softie on the inside!"
Cera narrowed her eyes. "What'd you just call me?"
"N-nothing, Ma'am!" Anati stuttered as she shrank back. "Please don't hurt me!"
Cera smiled with a pleased 'hmph'. It was good to know she still struck fear into the hearts of munchkins.
Ark thumped his tail in thought. "Perhaps sharpteeth only eat the ground green food without leaves. We can eat it too, so maybe they fight us to protect their limited food supply."
"That's a pretty smart theory," Littlefoot chuckled soberly. "But ... oh boy. I guess it's time we gave you The Talk."
Ark tilted his head. "'The Talk'?"
"Also known as 'The Feathered Flyers and the Stinging Buzzers'," Littlefoot continued. "You see, not all dinosaurs are like us. There are ... alternatives. Some eat what we eat, and other stuff. Some just eat ... other stuff. It's sort of like how stinging buzzers drink the sweet juice from flowers, and feathered flyers eat the stinging buzzers. Likewise, we eat green food, and sharpteeth eat ... um ... red food. Do you see where I'm coming from?"
"What's a feathered flyer?" asked Dimi.
Littlefoot resisted the urge to slap his tail against his forehead.
"Come on, Dim!" Zin sneered. "We all see feathered flyers in the valley these days! Guido's a feathered flyer! Keep up!"
Dimi marched right up to the bigger youngster and stared him in the eye. "It's 'Dimi', not 'Dim'! I know I'm not that smart, but I'm here to learn, so don't you EVER call me that again!"
Zin took a step back, deflating. Littlefoot regretted his initial judgement. Cera grunted in approval, finding herself unexpectedly proud of the little guy.
"Sooo ... what's 'red food'?" asked Ark.
An awkward silence fell upon them all.
Again, Ark thumped his tail as he pondered the subject. Suddenly, he gasped as something clicked.
Littlefoot nodded. "Yeah. I know it must be hard to imagine."
"They eat only red flowers?" Ark exclaimed. "No wonder they're so aggressive! Their food supply is even more limited than I thought!"
"But how does something that big survive on flowers?" Anati exclaimed. "Not even stinging buzzers live off just red flowers!"
Tosh shook his head. "No. You guys aren't getting it. The feathered flyers represent the sharpteeth, not the stinging buzzers."
Littlefoot nodded grimly.
"Obviously Littlefoot's saying that sharpteeth eat creepy crawlers, just like feathered flyers," Tosh explained. "Some of the crawlers are pretty big, and I'm guessing they're a lot of them in The Mysterious Beyond."
Cera's eye twitched.
"Ohhhh ..." the kids went in realisation.
"Wait, then why are they so mean?" asked Ark. "We don't compete with them for food."
"They eat US!" Cera exploded. "WE are the RED FOOD!"
The youngsters exchanged glances before bursting into laughter.
Littlefoot cast Cera a hopeless look.
"Don't look at me. They're your students," she disowned.
"Dinosaurs EATING other dinosaurs?" Ark roared. "That's THE CRAZIEST thing I've ever heard! NO ONE would do that, no matter how mean they are!"
"NICE ONE, Miss Threehorn!" Zin blurted. "You HONESTLY thought after the COUNTLESS times you've messed with us, we wouldn't catch on?"
"Okay, I'll take responsibility for that," Cera admitted with a shrug.
"How STUPID do you think we are?!" Dimi laughed.
Cera squeezed her lips shut. Even she didn't feel comfortable voicing the words that came to mind.
"Besides!" Anati giggled. "We aren't even red!"
"We are on the inside," Littlefoot assured.
The laughing ceased.
Cera's word was one thing, but Littlefoot's? This was no laughing matter. This was the end of innocence.
Littlefoot winced at the youngsters' frozen expressions. They'd never been this quiet, but there was always the calm before the storm. He braced himself.
Cera counted: "Three ... two ... one ..."
The youngsters exploded into a plethora of reactions. Spearheaded by Ark, several of them bombarded Littlefoot and Cera with questions barely coherent in their hysteria. Though Tosh was among the rabid inquisitors, he rapidly fluctuated between demands for answers, outrage at the very idea of 'red food', and vehement refusal to accept it. Anati sat herself down, clutching her chest in unfamiliarity with the uncomfortable sensation of palpitations. Zin stood quietly, eyes darting about as his brain strained to make sense of the revelation, only to suffer a bad case of mental indigestion. Dimi curled into a ball and quietly wept, while others weren't nearly as quiet about it.
Cera tried to keep a straight face as she attempted to convince herself that there was nothing funny about this. The kids were reeling from a harsh reality. So what if their responses were outlandishly wacky? This wasn't funny. This ... wasn't ... funny ...
The threehorn keeled over, racked with hearty laughter.
Littlefoot gave her an incredulous stare.
"I'm sorry!" she exclaimed in the midst of it. "My mean streak gets a real kick outa this!"
In spite of everything, Littlefoot managed a deadpan comeback. "'Streak'?"
That stopped her cold. Intuition told her she was the victim of a wisecrack, but how? It took her a moment to unravel the one-liner.
She put on an unamused facade. "Oh, har har. You think you're smart, don't you, longneck?"
Littlefoot shrugged smugly before returning his attention to the frantic youngsters. "Hey, guys! Calm down. It's not the end of the world."
His words did little to temper the tizzy.
Cera smiled, shook her head and rolled her eyes at his soft approach before clearing her throat. "HEY! GUYS!"
The children grew silent.
"So what if sharpteeth try to snack on us?" she began, pacing in front of the youngsters. "That's why the Unknown One gave us horns, claws, powerful tails, smarts and the training to turn all that into a sharptooth's worst nightmare. Some of you will be big enough to literally stomp a sharptooth, and ..."
Cera paused mid-step, realising that she'd almost stepped on Dimi. His kind was commonly viewed as lacking all that she had mentioned. "Puny bodies, puny minds," threehorns would often say of their much smaller, hornless cousins. Dimi's little tail had been wagging up a storm, until he put two and two together and falling self-esteem dragged his eyes to the ground.
The threehorn furrowed her brow in determination. She would not be having one of her students feeling this dejected.
"And some of you are small enough to fit in all the best hiding spaces, where no sharptooth could hope to reach you." Cera winked at him. "If you do it right, and mask your scent, you'll be able to sneak past them pretty much wherever you are. You'll be practically invisible to them."
Dimi brightened, his wag returning with a vengeance.
"And you know the greatest the greatest thing He's given us?" asked Littlefoot. "Look to your side."
Ark turned to see his sister. After brief confusion, he smiled before holding her paw. She returned the expression. She was his best friend. Perhaps that meant he needed to mingle a little more outside of his family, but it was fortunate that they managed to get along this well. Many siblings weren't as lucky.
"Now your other side," Littlefoot instructed.
Having caught on, Ark looked to see Tosh standing next to him. He repressed a frown. Tosh made less of an effort to hide his own sour expression ... but on second thought, it wasn't meant for Ark specifically. He always frowned. After his father left him and his mother to start a new family among a group of far walkers, his expressions tended toward scowls conspicuous even for a clubtail. With conflicting personalities, Ark and Tosh were acquaintances at best. It was hard to picture them as close friends, but Littlefoot and Cera had somehow managed to make it work. Maybe, just maybe, he could see it happening with a little effort. They both had a strong sense of justice, although Tosh's way of showing it would have involved wordlessly whacking Zin upside the head if he continued to harass Dimi. Ark had even spotted him pulling back his tail in preparation. When Zin backed off, the tail went down.
"He gave us each other," Littlefoot went on. "We outnumber sharpteeth ten to one. You're all different: different kinds, different personalities, different stories, but that's good. That's very good. Make strong, lifelong friendships. Learn to understand each other, and get along even when you don't understand. Together, your differences will help you do wonderful things."
Littlefoot smiled as he thought back to the many adventures he and his friends had lived. Then he frowned as his memories fell on one particular day. The day they faced Red Claw and said goodbye to Chomper.
"You know, I talked to Red Claw once," he remarked.
The children gasped.
"But ... Red Claw doesn't talk," Anati stated.
"He does, he just speaks differently from us," Littlefoot explained. "My friend Chomper, the sharptooth who used to live here, taught me how to speak his tongue. I was trying to convince Red Claw to be friends with us, but you know what he said?"
They shook their heads.
"He said he hated us," Littlefoot continued. "He didn't just hunt because he needed food. He loved to see us suffer. In his mind, hatred is the most powerful force of life. It helps sharpteeth feel no mercy when they hurt us. I can see why he'd say that, but he was wrong. Hatred divides, and it can even get you killed, but the most powerful, brilliant thing you can do is to love each other. Because of our love, my friends and I were able to defeat him and his fast biters. No one died. No one got left behind, but sharpteeth expect the opposite. They're counting on you to be alone. They're counting on you to look out only for yourselves and leave each other to their jaws. That's how they catch a lot of leafeaters. If you stand together, most sharpteeth will back off pretty quickly. Even if they don't, never give up. The impossible can become reality if you hold on together."
Cera found herself smiling as she shook her head before gently bumping Littlefoot with a shoulder.
"You always have to out-inspire me, don'tcha?" she asked.
Littlefoot smiled back. "You did good, but it never was a contest, you know."
"With you, it hardly ever is," Cera replied. "One of the reasons why you're such a good friend."
Even after years of watching Cera soften up, her mushier moments often took Littlefoot off guard. He'd be hard pressed to name his favourite friend, but after all they'd been through? If someone told a younger Littlefoot that he and Cera would do practically everything together, and enjoy it to boot, he might not have believed it. What a wonderful surprise it turned out to be.
"Eyes on me, everyone," Littlefoot instructed.
The kids snapped to attention like a trained army. Even when thundering footfalls met their ears, their focus scarcely wavered.
"Sorry I'm late!" exclaimed a pink, teenage threehorn as she bolted in, skidding to a stop before surveying the youngsters. "Whoa! I've never seen them this attentive! Did I miss something?"
"Ark wanted to know what sharpteeth eat, so we gave him 'The Talk'," explained Littlefoot.
Tricia creased her brow in thought. "You know, I've been wondering about that myself ..."
Cera gaped. Her sister ... didn't know? A fiendish grin spread across her face. Her sister didn't know.
Tricia's alarms went off. Some disturbing truth was tucked behind that grin, and Cera was the kind of sister who would bring down a psychological landslide and soak in the reaction like a good mud bath.
Cera cleared her throat. "You see, my dear little sister, sharpteeth-"
"Hold it!" the pink threehorn interrupted, shoving a paw onto Cera's mouth.
Tricia had to think fast. She couldn't give her sister the pleasure. Now, why would a sharptooth's diet be such a big deal? Her brain rapidly sifted through the possibilities until it pieced together one so horrific that it simply had to be true.
Tricia gasped. "They eat US, don't they?"
"Oh, COME ON!" Cera howled in disappointment.
I wasn't the first one to use the term 'red food'. Don't know where it originally came from, but it's a pretty interesting way of referring to ... um ... you know.
I'm sure you can spot a Jurassic World reference in there.
For more tales from this continuity, visit me at FanFiction under 'The Mr E' and check out 'The Battle Before Time' (the oneshot that started it all) https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13404463/1/The-Battle-Before-Time, 'War Before Time Part 1: Mentors of Yesteryears' https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13516136/1/War-Before-Time-Part-1-Mentors-of-Yesteryears, 'Because You're a Sharpneck (A War Before Time Oneshot)', https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13556382/1/Because-You-re-a-Sharpneck-A-War-Before-Time-Oneshot and 'Babysitting a Sharpneck (A War Before Time Oneshot)', https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13557155/1/Babysitting-a-Sharpneck-A-War-Before-Time-Oneshot.
