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« on: March 27, 2011, 05:10:15 PM »
Well, I said I'd do it, so here it is: Based off the own characters I designed, my first Land Before Time fanfic.
Chapter 1: Prelude to the mystery
Possibly the strangest part of the Mystery of the Blackweeds was the way it all began. Nothing to anticipate the turn of events. No signs, no premonitions. It all started like any other day in the Great Valley.
The sky was clear, the sky-puffies notably absent, the grass was green, the inhabitants, those proud, majestic creatures, the Dinosaurs, as blissfully unaware as always of the impending turn of events. The Flyers flew in the sky, the swimmers paddled playfully in the ponds, the Threehorns found more and more ways to argue with the Longnecks, and the children played blissfully and energetically, as always.
This morning in particular, Litlefoot and his friends had discovered a colossal melon at the base of a tree. How it came to be there was a mystery, since it was still hard and unripe. But they took the opportunity when they saw it, and soon a game of kicking the melon to eachother ensued.
"Over here Spike! To me!"
Spike obediently butted the melon with his forehead, towards Cera. She in turn, kicked it to Littlefoot. He skillfully manouevred the melon with his tail, in and out of the clumps of long grass. He would have made it towards the pair of trees serving as a goal, had he not been skilfully tackled from behind by Ruby.
"Heh, you have to be faster if you want to go faster than me!" she cried back as she turned the melon away from the goal, kicking it over to Chomper. And with a mighty boot, the melon was away from the goal and back into play!
The game went back and forth for hours, the playing field moving with them. Every time they scored a goal, they would allocate a new goal, farther away. The game was fully underway, and all were fully into it. So into it, in fact, that none seemed to notice how high up they had moved.
Until, that is, a well aimed push by Ducky sent the melon inbetween the two rocks which formed the goal, and down the other side of the mountain ridge. The very ridge that formed the wall betwen the Valley and what lay beyond.
"Oops..."
Littlefoot, Chomper and Cera peeked over the rocks to see where the melon had gone. The trees were too dense to see for sure.
"Great!" the young Threehorn muttered, "That was our last good fruitball, and now we've lost it!"
"I am sorry, I am, I am!" Ducky cried, "But I did not realise we were up so high."
"She right! Even me not notice, and me could see everything from up high" Petried added, hovering a few meters off the ground. A sudden gust of wind picked up, and he quickly returned to the ground.
"You only ever notice something like that when you see it. And I didn't see it at all." Ruby piped in.
"So now what do we do?" Chomper asked, sitting on a nearby rock.
Littlefoot paced back and forth a few times, trying to come up with some idea of where they could get a new fruitball. Most of the other ones on the ground were too squishy to play with, and the ones in the tree would be hard to get down.
"Why don't we just go get it back?"
Petrie looked at Cera as if she had just suggested murder. "Go down there?! Into Mysterious Beyond?! No way, too dangerous!"
But Cera was adamant "Look, it's not that far down, and since it's a valley, the fruit probably rolled really close to the wall anyway. We could go down there and get it back before anyone knows we're gone!"
The gang looked to Littlefoot. He looked back into the valley, and saw that most of the grownups were over by the Thundering falls, well away. Turning back to his friends, he nodded reluctantly.
"Alright, but who goes? We need to think this through."
Within a few minutes, it was decided. Ducky and Cera would keep a lookout in case the grownups approached, from atop the ridge. Littlefoot and Spike would wait halfway down the slope, ready to help if anything went awry. Petrie would fly above them all, keeping a lookout for where the fruitball may have gone, as well as whether any sharpteeth were around.
Chomper and Ruby, having once been residents of the Beyond themselves, were given the task of actually going into the Beyond to retrieve the fruit. The other leaf-eaters would look a bit conspicuous, but Chomper was a Sharptooth himself, and Ruby a Fast-Biter, so if they encountered any creatures, they might be able to talk their way out of it.
And so they went to work, scouring the rocky canyons and wastes just by the Great Wall, all the while keeping an eye out for any movement.
"Chomper, I'll look this way. You try over by the wall."
Chomper nodded, sniffing for any scent of the aromatic fruit. Suddenly, he stopped stock still. He knew that smell for sure; The fruitball was so close! He ran in the direction of the smell, which got stronger and stronger with every step. He rounded a corner, the smell was so strong he felt like he'd be sick!
Turning another corner, and there it was! Perched among a crop of boulders, just atop the shortest one, the fruitball rested, pierced slightly by a spike of rock.
Grinning with satisfaction, he looked up. There was Petrie, a tiny speck in the sky, flying steadily, which could only mean that there was no trouble abound. As he turned his head back to the ground, he noticed another, larger flyer in the sky. It flew slowly, gliding on an air current, not too far from Petrie, not really moving anywhere. However, Petrie did not seem to react, so it couldn't be a problem.
Shrugging, he scampered up towards the rocks where the fruitball lay. His feet trampled the shale and slate underfoot, causing him to slip momentarily. But he regained his balance and continued on. Looking for a better footing, he moved towards a flat piece of stone, larger than the others, and placed a foot on it. It wobbled a bit, then was still. he placed another foot on it.
The stone held his weight for only a moment, before it gave under him, burying him in slate and gravel.
Chomper screamed for help, but only recieved a mouthful of grit in reply. Spitting it out, his eyesight became blurred. Looking skyward, he saw Petrie suddenly stop in the sky and flutter about in a panic. Obviously he had seen it, Chomper thought to himself. However, his relief turned to exhaustion as he felt the weight of the rock crushing the air from his lungs.
He noted two things before he blacked out. One, that Petrie finally seemed to notice the other flyer in the sky, as the larger of the two suddenly turned and flew towards the rest of the Mysterious Beyond. The second thing was that as well as the darkness of the rocks, he could see the sillhouette of strange figures, peering in through the gap in the rocks. Their eyes stood out in the darkness, one pair were red, one pair yellow, and the third pair a dark brownish-grey.
That was all he noted, before he blacked out.
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