Let me just begin by saying that I have not written fanfiction in years, but lockdown got me bored. I decided to re-watch all the Ice Age movies. I ended up reading Ice Age fanfiction. Now I'm here, writing Ice Age fanfiction… Again. Hopefully this time I have improved massively because I re-read some of the stuff I wrote and I really don't know how I managed to get positive reviews on it.

Anyway, I'm not good at finishing fanfiction stories and I don't know how long this will keep my interest - which is why I plan on writing mini stories and one-shot style chapters. These will all be based around Diego and Shira's cubs because when I come here looking for something to read that's one of the main things I look for and I can never seem to manage to find a lot of it. Here's a little list of the cub's names and any other OCs that I may include;

Eliza - Diego and Shira's daughter and Toby's twin sister. She inherited Shira's fur and eye colour, but not the same markings - she just has one dark marking down her back and a little bit of dark fur on her front, so her markings are more similar to Diego.

Toby - Diego and Shira's son and Eliza's twin brother. He inherited Diego's fur colour but more of Shira's markings.

Ruby - cougar cub (from the cougars who Shira was mentioned to hunt with in The Great Egg-Scapade), friends with Eliza and Toby.

If anyone has any ideas for what the cubs could get up to, feel free to suggest some and I'll try and include them!

Sid was enjoying his third nap of the day, dreaming of a dandelion field. In the dream, he was there with Brooke and they were dancing around happily. Approaching his small cave were two sabre cubs, both staring at the sleeping sloth curiously.

"Hey, Uncle Sid!" Toby said, raising his voice to try and wake Sid up. There was no response.

Sid was still in a deep sleep, talking to Brooke about having their own kids. "Oh, Brooke. You make me so happy," he said in his dream. "I can't wait for the day a tiny little Sid calls me-"

"Uncle Sid," Brooke said in his dream.

"Uncle Sid? No, no, I meant-"

"UNCLE SID!"

Suddenly, Sid was awoken by both cubs pouncing on him.

"Oh, good! You're alive!" Eliza said excitedly, "For a second there, we thought for sure that you had eaten some bad berries and you were dead."

"Yeah!" Toby agreed, jumping off Sid. "You weren't moving for ages and you were starting to smell bad. Crash told me that's when you know something is dead."

Sid got up and stretched, brushing himself off. "Don't worry, kitty cats. Your Uncle Sid knows his berries."

"Time to play catch!" Eliza announced, getting ready to pounce.

Sid knew this game too well - the cubs called it catch, but all they would do is pounce and catch everyone's tails.

"Wait!" Sid stopped them, both cubs immediately froze. "We can play catch, but… You'll have to catch me first!" With that, he dashed out of the cave with a high pitched scream. He didn't look where he was going, he just kept running.

Both sabre cubs took off after him, jumping from different boulders and branches to give them a quicker start.

Sid looked behind him, seeing they were still quite far away from him. "You'll never catch me! Na-na-na-AAH!" He shrieked, colliding with something as he wasn't looking where he was going. Sid looked up to see that something he had collided with was Diego.

"Sid, have you seen the others? No one is-" He was interrupted by Toby pouncing on Sid's tail, making the sloth jump.

"Got ya! One point to Toby!" The young sabre proudly announced.

"That's not fair, Toby!" His sister annoyingly expressed, trotting up to them. "/I/ would have got here first if you didn't push me off the boulder!"

"Well /you/ should have jumped back up quicker!"

"Cheater!"

"Slow-poke!"

"Meanie!"

"KIDS!" Their argument and name calling was cut short by their dad, both of them immediately muttering a quiet 'sorry dad'. "Sid, have you seen the others? One of them usually watches the twins whilst me and Shira go hunting."

If they were going hunting for smaller prey, Diego and Shira would usually take Eliza and Toby with them so they could practice their hunting skills. However, right now the cubs were still small and they were hunting for bigger prey for their dinner - meaning that usually, Ellie, Manny or Peaches and Julien would babysit. On this occasion, one of the mammoths could be found.

"Diego, you don't need to watch one of them to watch the kids - I'll do it!" Sid exclaimed happily, "You know me, I love kids. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Everything." Diego bluntly answered.

"They'll be fine! Remember that kids camp I ran?"

"Disaster."

"And I neutered three beautiful dinosaur eggs."

"Disaster."

"Then there was my pre-hatched pre-school!"

"Also. a disaster."

"I can promise you, as your friend, that both of these cubs will come back with both their little fangs and all their fur still perfectly groomed!" Sid patted Toby on the head, "Kids, don't you want to play more catch with your Uncle Sid?"

Both cubs looked at each other before nodding.

"We want to play more catch! Can we /please/ stay with Uncle Sid, dad? Pleeease." Eliza begged.

Diego realised he was left with almost no choice; he couldn't find the mammoths anywhere to watch them and taking them hunting for dinner would make it a lot harder - especially when the kids usually ended up arguing.

"Fine! Kids, you can stay with Sid but stay in the area. Sid, if you lose either one of them, you know it's not going to be me you have to worry about, right?" Diego pointed out.

Sid looked confused for a moment, before coming to the realisation that Diego was talking about Shira. That's when he gulped in fear, "No worries!" He tried to confidently say, "These two little ones will be fine! And we all know what a soft kitty cat Shira can be."

"Never let her hear you say that," Diego said as he took off.

Sid looked down at the two cubs he was now babysitting, both of them sat down staring at him with their big eyes.

"Can we play now?" Toby eagerly asked.

"We can play, but no more playing catch - I had a big lunch and don't think I can run very fast." This was a lie; Sid just wasn't very good at running from them whenever they played this game.

"But you said-" Eliza begun.

"I know! Let's play hide and seek. You guys can hide first." Sid said, covering his eyes with his paws as he began to count. The cubs seemed happy with the idea of playing hide and seek and both ran off to find somewhere to hide.

The babysitting was going surprisingly well so far. He didn't manage to lose them when they played hide and seek and he even snacked on the correct berries. He had finally convinced them to settle down and listen to a story, which kept them interested for a while but now they were beginning to get bored.

"Sid, we've heard the dinosaur story so many times already!" Toby sighed, rolling on the ground in boredom.

"Can we go and see Ruby? We're allowed to go and play with her." Eliza said, waiting for Sid to respond.

"Ruby the cougar cub? I don't think that would be a good idea, those cougar mothers always look at me like they want to kill me and that can't happen, I need to keep you kids safe. I know, how about I show you how I make a fire? It's easy, just watch." WIth that, Sid began to gather all the things he needed to make a fire.

The twins sighed; this was something they had seen Sid do so many times. They watched him for a few minutes as he got everything he needed; he was fully distracted starting up the fire.

"Let's go and find Ruby whilst Sid is distracted," Eliza whispered to her brother.

"But… Won't dad be mad at Uncle Sid?" Toby asked; he didn't want to get Sid into trouble.

"It's okay! Ruby's cave isn't far away from here and we can come and play back here," Eliza said, getting up from her sitting position. "Are you coming? Because I'm going anyway."

Toby was reluctant to leave at first, but Sid was fully busy and he was sure they would be back before he could even notice they were gone. He jumped up and ran after his sister, eventually catching up with her. As they got further away from Sid's cave, Eliza turned to go one way whereas Toby turned to go the other way.

"Where are you going?" Toby asked his sister, "Ruby's cave is this way."

"No, it's this way. I know where my best friend lives, Toby." Eliza scoffed at her brother.

"If you knew where your best friend lived, then you would be going this way."

"This is a shortcut and secret way! Mom showed me."

"How can it be a shortcut if it's in a different direction?" Toby said as he tried to go in the direction he thought the cave was.

"It's this way! Now come, idiot!" Eliza insisted,

Toby stopped to turn, only to start arguing with her. "I'm not an idiot… Loser!"

"Scaredy cat!"

"Stupid cat!"

Meanwhile, whilst the two remained arguing and calling each other names, Sid had finished the fire and was chatting away, telling another story to the cubs who weren't there. "You two are being awfully quiet. Are you tired? Kids?" He turned around, seeing that they were gone from the spot they were at. "Oh no… Eliza!? Toby!? Okay, Sid, just calm down. They're obviously playing hide and seek again and that's okay, Shira won't mind them playing hide and seek…" He noticed the small paw prints in the snow; he started running and following the tracks. "I'm going to find you two!"

By this point, Eliza and Toby had stopped with the arguing and the name calling but ended up going Eliza's way - it was only now that they were realising it was definitely the wrong way, since nothing was familiar.

"See? I told you it was the wrong way!" Toby said angrily, "That's it, we're going back to Sid's cave."

"Um, no." Eliza bluntly said, sitting down as she stuck her nose in the air. "You can't tell me what to do."

"I can if we're lost, now come on."

Eliza just ignored her brother at this point, not giving him any response.

"Eliza, we have to go back and find Sid. We don't know where we are right now and it might be dangerous! What if the pirate from the stories is in the trees?" Toby said, referring to Gutt. Eliza continued to ignore him, acting as though she hadn't heard anything he said. "You're so stubborn!" He said, beginning to get annoyed with his sister.

"Oh, yeah? Well, you're bossy!" She spoke up to defend herself.

"You got us lost!"

"You're a scaredy cat!"

"Stop being such a precious little kitty and listen to me!"

That comment got more of Eliza's attention. "Did you just call me kitty? Don't call me kitty!"

One of the things Shira had taught the both of them - don't let anyone get away with calling you kitty. For a sabre, that wasn't a fun or cute nickname.

Realising that it had got his sister's attention, Toby grinned as he began to taunt his sister. "Kitty, kitty, kitt-"

Before he could finish, Eliza pounced on him, pinning him down to the ground. "Mom said you can't say that!"

"Well-" Toby began, trying to push his sister off him. "I just did, KITTY!"

"Kids! Oh, I found you!" Sid cheered, running up to them. Both cubs were still fighting and arguing - they were pushing each other all over the place, mostly screaming kitty at each other. "Um… Kids, you're getting very close to the edge of that slope there and I really think you should-" Sid let out another high pitched scream as both of them went tumbling down the slope - it wasn't a steep slope, but it was steep enough that both cubs went tumbling down and landed on the ground with an 'oomph!'

"Ouch!" Eliza groaned, shaking herself off. "That was all your fault, Toby! You shouldn't have- oh…" she went quiet, seeing Diego and Shira stood in front of them.

"Hi, mommy… Hi, daddy…" Toby said quietly, looking down at the ground.

"Where's Sid?" Shira immediately asked, "Wasn't he supposed to be watching you two?"

"Um… He is, he's just…"

"Right here!" Sid shouted, running up to the four sabres. "Wow, good game of hide and seek, guys! But you know, technically you're not hiding right now!" He patted them both on the head, acting like it was all part of the game.

"Right…" Shira looked suspicious of Sid and what just happened, but there wasn't much to question. Sid was right there next to them, so they must have been with him all the time. "Come on, kids. Dinner time."

"Thanks for keeping an eye on them, Sid." Diego said, "It actually didn't seem to be a disaster."

"Disaster? With these two cuties? Of course not!" Sid chuckled awkwardly, "Anyway, bye, everyone! Have a nice night!" He quickly ran off before he ended up saying the wrong thing, which would probably get him into trouble more than anything.

The cubs quietly started walking back with their parents, mostly because they were trying to not slip up and say the wrong thing too - and they were still annoyed with each other.

That was until Eliza piped up, "Mom, just so you know, Toby called me a kitty!"

Toby gasped, looking over at his sister. "Hey! You're such a… Tattle tale!"

"Whiner!"

"Wimp!"

"Crybaby!"