Author's Note, 16th June 2013: This is a rewrite of a story originally known as Soto: The Resurrection. The original was meant to be a lot longer than one chapter but this is all I wrote all those years ago (2006, I believe?) and thus is how the story stands today. Take it for what it is.

Disclaimer: I do not own any Ice Age character featured within this story as they all belong to Blue Sky Studios.

Original Author's Note, 2006: Ok, this is my first Ice Age fanfic and I think this is going to be a bit of a whacky one. It starts near the end of the first movie when Manny and Sid leave with the baby and Diego is presumed dead.

As Manny and Sid left Half Peak with the baby, only two creatures were left behind. Two tigers, One lethally injured (Soto), and one just faking it until his new friends were out of view (Diego). Two green eyes opened as the mammoth and sloth were nearly out of sight, before turning towards the other tiger. "Soto?" Diego said softly as he quietly got up to avoid being noticed. Soto was lying in the snow, stirring. Diego had a few last things to say to him.

Sid looked around to take one last look at Diego as he went. He could not believe what he saw - Diego appeared to be moving... and alive. Sid shook Manny's leg in a frantic attempt to gain the mammoth's attention.

"Manny! Manny!" he yelled excitedly, Manny looking down upon him sternly.

"It's Diego, HE'S ALIVE!" Sid boomed. His voice echoed back to Diego, who was still trying to wake up Soto.

"Oh sh... I mean sugar! They've caught me!" Diego said before diving back into his death position, looking around, covering up any incriminating paw prints he just created, and then falling back into his death position.

...And then realising that he erased the wrong paw prints, having to redraw them making more incriminating prints, having to erase those, getting rid of some of the other ones by accident, and I think you get the point here.

Sid continued insisting to Manny that Diego was still alive, the fact becoming increasingly evident as the stunned sloth kept looking back at the panicking saber as if a miracle was occurring. To Sid's frustration, Manny never once turned around to see this, so the sloth just got louder and more hyper.

"Manny look! Look Manny! He's alive! He's alive!" The sloth's sudden bout of hysteria softening Manny's facial expression in sympathy.

"No Sid, it's all in your head." Replied Manny in sorrow to what he perceived as a delusional carry-on from his smaller, stinkier friend.

"It's not in my head, see for yourself!" Sid snapped defiantly.

"No Sid, he's not alive." Manny continued, a tone of annoyance becoming present in his deep, nasaled voice.

"You just want him to be alive again, and so you start imagining things. Trust me - I've been there myself." Manny finished before giving Sid a light pat on the head with his trunk and proceeding to walk off, but Sid wasn't going to give up until Manny was utterly convinced of the sloth's uncharacteristically keen sighting.

"Manny, look around - look at what he is doing..." Sid gasped desperately before he finished his sentence in a tone that could best be described as completely and utterly perplexed.

"...What the hell is he doing?"

Meanwhile, Diego continued to puzzle over the pawprints.

"Ok, so this must have been where... No! No! No! Lenny couldn't possibly have moved that much and... OH NO I forgot! Zeke only has three toes on his right back leg! I'll have to do it all over again, I'm gonna get caught for sure!" Diego dug his claws into his head in frustration and then collapsed to the ground exhausted. Soto continuing to stir, Sid being the only onlooker.

"Oh no, oh no, now he REALLY is dying! Manny we've gotta do something!" Sid said as he watched Diego drop, Manny however was starting to get REALLY pissed.

"Now that's ENOUGH Sid." Manny snapped, giving Sid a nasty glare. Although he didn't show it much, by now, the mammoth was utterly FUMING inside at Sid's incessant and tenacious folly.

"But.. but..." Sid's stammered, and that was it - the very straw that had finally broke the mammoth's back.

"I said THAT'S F$!#ING ENOUGH! HE'S F#$!ING DEAD AND YOUR GOING TO BE F$&!ING DEAD AS WELL IF I HAVE TO KEEP ON PUTTING UP WITH THIS BULLS$!T! ALL I'VE DAMN WELL HEARD FROM THIS WHOLE FRIG!$N TRIP IS ALL YOUR WHORE A$$ WHININ' ABOUT IMBECILIC FATHERF#$ING HORSES#!T! SO SHUT THAT FRIG$#N MOUTH OR I'M GONNA BREAK YOUR BALLS BIATCH! Ah-huh, ah-huh YEAH!" said Manny, just a tad aggressively I might add.

(Now that's what I call Ice Age: The Meltdown!)

The mammoth barely took a second to cool down before resuming as his normal, in-character self.

"Wow Sid! How do you make your lower jaw drop to the ground like that!" Manny exclaimed in amazement.

Sid, now convinced that Diego was dead despite what he saw with his own two goofy eyes, could hardly say a word.

"Um... um I think I um... b-believe you um... about um... um b-being um, um, um..." Sid stammered out in terror of the mammoth's sudden outburst just moments before, Manny not catching a word he said.

"What the f... oh, yes, atta boy!" He said playfully before giving Sid a hard clonk on the head with his trunk.

"Now come on, we've got to go!" Manny stated as his final words before both he and the sloth wandered off into the distance leaving Diego and Soto behind.

"GEEZE, what a commotion that was!" Soto said as he dusted himself off and removed the well-concealed pack of fake blood that was still oozing out from under his armpit. "Sure tricked them though."

(Oh yeah, Soto wasn't actually injured either. Not because I'm inconsistent at writing, I just so happened to be in on that joke. In reality I'm actually a saber and an old friend of Soto's, even check my avatar for proof!)

"I know, I mean holy mother of Mufasa, who would wanna be besties with those two grass-munching weirdos?" Diego answered as he looked towards the fading silhouette of the mammoth and sloth pair with a scrunched-up, disgusted expression on his face.

"You would never get a girl being in a 'herd' like that." Soto chuckled as he looked upon them also.

"Of course not, I'd have absolutely no fun at all. I mean what could a tiger and a bunch of herbivores get up to together?" Diego mused before he and Soto began to walk back to Half Peak where the other sabers were.

"Especially the sloth, my god..." Soto said with a shudder.

"I know! So lucky to have you as a pal instead!" Diego said joyfully before he and Soto hi-fived each other.

"Wouldn't want it any other way. Now though, what are our next set of plans for that human baby?" Said Soto with a smirk before the two tigers disappeared off into the distance and were obscured by the prevailing ice age fog just like the mammoth and sloth before them.

The End! I couldn't help myself, I had to write an extended ending just to finish it off a little more but here it is. I'm actually tempted to continue this story even further but this will have to do for now. Hope you liked it!