Sighing, Tenderheart turned to the others; each one looked at him with varying degrees of shock, discomfort, and unsurity. So much had happened these past several months and this had only been the icing on the cake. “Ok, let’s try to get things in order and grab a bite to eat.” He said.

            No one protested and they slowly shuffled away, mumbling among themselves. Hugs and Tugs quickly came to his side and peppered him with questions. “Wow Tenderheart! I didn’t know that you knew karate! You were awesome!” gaped Hugs. “And then when you did that kick thing!” He attempted to do it and landed with a plop in his rump. Tenderheart helped him up.

            “Goody goody gosh! Neither did I! Could you teach it to us? Who taught it to you? Oh wow!” giggled Tugs. She practically bounced on the spot.

            Turning away, Tenderheart took in the damage that the fight had caused. Several chairs were turned over, a few of them were broken beyond repair; fur lay scattered all over the place and he was starting to feel his bruises. Several chunks of plaster littered the floor; whether they came from the nearly collapsed ceiling or from him being thrown into the walls—one wall he’d actually be thrown through, and the hole looked like a wide eye of disbelief—he knew that CareALot was indeed finished. When the Care Bears themselves stopped caring about one another, Care A Lot suffered worse than when people didn’t care. He could hear the wind screaming outside; it had only been blowing strong befor, now it shrieked worse than Shreeky on her worst day.

“C’mon, you two. Help me add a little order here and I’ll explain how I learned to defend myself.”

As they straightened up, Tenderheart began to talk about how he came to know martial arts.

 Befor the care bears had been strong enough to take care of themselves and learn the care bear stare, humans were brought to baby-sit them. Love-a-lot Bear and Nobel Heart Horse would go down to the Earth and would only get people who seemed to be on the brink of not caring to watch over them and to maybe teach them a little about themselves and the people of Earth. Hopefully, exposing them to help cute little cubs would help them care a little more. One such boy was a 10 year old orphan Chinese boy, who only answered to Kowan. Kowan was little for his age, he barely reached 4’5” and was very thin.

He’d been living in a foster home for most of his life and had been placed in several homes where the people put up a good front to get money from the state. Though the state made sure that these families were fit for the children, Kowan seemed to worst luck than most by getting families that didn’t care at all about the children, only the monthly payments for their own personal satisfaction. His current family, Jacky and Sonya Relance, was a white couple that seemed to be the worse of the lot; they drank heavily and argued a lot, but always appeared to be a modest average family when social services came around. They forced Kowan to do despicable things and he barely lived with the shame, but with no place to go and the state as his somewhat legal guardian, he could do nothing. Complaining to the Social Services only compounded his problem, as his “parents” would beat him until he passed out, warning him not to tell the services again unless he wanted death instead of a belt. Fearing this, he became compliant and did whatever they told him to do.

One day, while doing his chores, he spotted an ad in the local paper. Though his reading skills were iffy at best—Jacky didn’t believe that “no igit yell’r boy need ta ‘earn ta read”—he understood that a martial arts dojo was going to be set up in town for the summer and the master was looking for pupils. The size of the class was 50 students and the first 20 to sign up, were trained for free for the whole summer. And anyone who wanted to continue their studies would get a year round bus ticket to commute to the nearest city for training. A sign up sheet would be set up across from the local shopping center this Friday. Excited, he swore that he’d be one of the first 20. But his hopes quickly plummeted as he thought about Jacky and Sonya They’d never let him go to it! More than likely they’d beat him to a bloody pulp, or worse. He shuddered at what the worse could be. He teetered on indecision, and left the paper where it was. Only a fool would think about going against his only source of food, shelter and clothing, even if it was a horrible place to live. Better the horrors of living here than on the street. But the decision was taken out of his hands three days later.

It was Friday, which meant shopping day, which meant that the Relance’s were going into town to buy more beer and very little food. So Kowan crowded into the back with the 4 scrawny hound dogs that the Relance’s had wandering about on their property. The old Chevy had seen better days, but the Relance’s didn’t care, as long as it worked and got them where they wanted, it was an okay automobile…..

Tenderheart was interrupted when the ground suddenly began to shake violently followed by a massive crack that opened up underneath the table. Screams and yells of distress could be heard in the back. Tenderheart could see a black swirling mass through the crevasse. “Quickly, we need to get out of here!” Grabbing Hugs and Tugs by the paw he pulled them to the back. Plaster crumbled and fell in huge chunks, littering the floor and destroying what was left of the furniture.

“Tenderheart! Gah!” Hugs barely avoided getting splattered by a slab of plaster. “What’s going on!”

Between gasps for air and dodging the crumbling ceiling, he explained, “As you…know, Care A Lot is based…on caring. And when even we…care bears stop caring…watch out! Care A Lot is hu…hurt the most!” They’d arrived to the back of the hall. Chaos was everywhere! One of the walls had fallen in and several care bears were buried underneath; rain lashed angrily through the gap, wetting the rescuers. Cries for help were drowned out by the roar of the of the wind as it blew fiercely through the gap, hampering the rescue effort. Rushing over to help the other care bears, Tenderheart frantically began to dig. “We need to help them and get out of here!” yelled Tenderheart over the wind.

“But where will we go?” cried Swift Heart. She carefully extracted Grams Bear from under some of the rubble and passed her to Cozy Heart, who wrapped her blanket around the elderly bear.

“I don’t know! Care A Lot has never been this bad befor!”

“Tenderheart! Tenderheart!” shouted Hugs. “We know where we can go!” Tugs nodded.

Tenderheart only spared him a glance as he shoved some more rubble aside. The sky was pitch black and was barely lit by lightening. In this storm, do we even dare leave? Thunder cracked overhead, and lightening leaped about, gleefully looking for something to connect to. Where ever it is, I hope it’s safer than here he thought. “Alright everyone! Get these hurt care bears to all available cloud cars and rainbow rollers! We’re getting out of here!” shouted Tenderheart. Doubling their effort, the rubble was quickly cleared and any injured care bears extracted and quickly moved to the waiting cloud cars.

Once everyone was strapped in and gave the signal they were ready to go, Tenderheart gave Hugs the go ahead to lead them to wherever. “Alright, everyone listen up! Hugs and Tugs say that they know of a safe place where we can regroup. So everyone follow them!” He nodded at Hugs.

“Ok, here we go!” Hugs took a deep breath and cranked up the rainbow roller. The rainbow glowed brightly against the dark night; it would be an easy beacon to follow against the black night. There was no need for the hanger doors, as they were now bent and crumpled pieces of metal. Hugs guided the rainbow wheeler out through the hole that used to be the hanger doors and was almost zapped by lightening. “Whoa!” He careened out of control for a few wild moments but quickly straightened and rose into the air. Gasping in relief, he glanced behind to make sure the others were alright. They seemed to have made it without any mishap and he was ready to lead his family into safety.

And into a better future.

End Part 2