A/N: I wrote the first draft of this story eight years ago, and the hyenas still rock my world almost as much as they did then. Smear them and I shall bite you.

I don't own the Lion King, or any canon characters. But I used to really want a pet hyena (not very practical, I now realize).

The Lion King. The LION King. What kind of title is that? Didn't anything else in the story matter besides which lion was king? Such as me, a hyena who helped make both regime changes possible?

Sorry. I've been ticked about that for a while. Anyway, I DID have my own part in this story. It seems that most creatures just don't care about hyenas much. But perhaps you do, seeing as how you've come to my den. So gather 'round and I'll tell you my tale:

I was born in an elephant graveyard, into the shadows of a hard land. I would play hide-and-seek among the bones with my brothers, Banzai and Eduoi. Well, I mostly played with Banzai, while Ed (we called him that before we could pronounce "Eduoi", and it stuck) gnawed bones and chased his tail. Poor Ed was a fluke—hyenas are usually born two at a time—and his brain has never worked properly. But he was tough. You had to be, growing up there.

Not that my puphood was bad. How could it be, with a vast playground open to us, and a mother who loved us? Every night, we romped beneath the stars while she roamed the land searching for food, and every day we slept at her warm flank.

Our only problem: hunger. Sometimes Mother would bring home meat; more often she wouldn't. I learned to catch rats, but even those were hard to find.

One day, an elephant came and died near our den. I woke that night to see dozens of hyenas gathered around it, including other pups. We feasted and played together for many nights, our laughter filling the air. Oh, that was a treat!

I also liked to be alone, hearing only the sound of my own paws as I wandered my world. I wanted to learn its secrets: where streams ended, if birds ever slept, how elephants found enough food to grow so big. But I couldn't. Free I might be in the elephant graveyard, but I was forbidden to see the place where all of this happened: the Pridelands.

Over and over Mother would remind me sternly: Never go into the Pridelands. If you enter by accident, get out as fast as possible and don't let any creature see you. Above all, STAY AWAY FROM LIONS!

"What's so bad about lions?" I would ask. All she would say was, "I hope you never find out."

Of course that made me I want to find out more than ever. Something in the Pridelands was too dangerous for even her, something that happened if you were seen, and being around lions made it worse What could that be? But I believed her.

So, naturally, Simba's birth confused me…