Crossing Lions.. Ahem *Lines: Prologue
You know when you have this one day that starts out really mundane and unremarkable and then something insane happens?
Today was one of those days.
Now guys, before I get completely ahead of myself and confuse you six ways from Sunday, I think it's fair to at least introduce myself, no?
Sakura Haruno, at your service; absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance!
Aged at 23 years, graduated from Colorado State University after five years worth of earning my Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, and my Doctor's degree.
My best qualities I'd have to say are acquired intellect, natural perseverance, and born as strong as an ox.
Psst. Mind if I share a little bit of my personal background? Great!
As a little girl, I'd been a bully victim, and now that I look back, it's a little unsurprising.
I'm not bitter over it as I think back, but it was a factor of my life that I had to acknowledge.
So, as it was, I was a healthy, optimistic kid, but other people's shitty little kids were taught that 'different = bad'.
That was unfortunate for me considering I had been blessed with, uh, pink hair.
That's right, honey, you heard correctly; my hair, God knows why, was naturally flamingo's-ass pink.
According to my mom and my dad, when I was a newborn, my hair had been a bright red; they had told me that it grew lighter as I grew older, and that's that.
Now, they had thought that was because perhaps the sun had bleached it throughout the years or some weird phenomenon along that line.
My theory was that it was probably some genetic S.N.A.F.U. and I suppose in theory that could make sense.
I'll explain in a hypothetical fashon. Say that when I was born, my DNA contained genetic codes telling my body to produce the red pigments that determine my hair color.
Say there was a malfunction or something as I developed, and my DNA slowly reduced having the information that was sent to my brain to create red pigments over time, and perhaps that information slowly added the information to make the pigments' color non-apparent or translucent.
For those who aren't aware, when your hair doesn't contain the color pigments, it results in white hair; that's what happens to albinos.
Unlike albinos, my hair still must have some red pigmentation mixed with translucent pigmentation.
Ta-da! Motherfucker, you just got pink hair!
This would be considered a rare genetic malfunction; it shows though against all naturally intended odds and this happens occasionally in the animal kingdom.
It's not harmful, per say, nor impossible, and albinism isn't unheard of.
It is no different than a lion being born with white fur or a lobster being born with a bright blue exoskeleton.
Don't believe me? I have some evidence that supports my theory.
You see my dear, I have been born with a few commonly-known recessive traits found in humans.
Examples such as: left handedness, moderately pale complexion, light-colored eyes, such as my light gray-green ones.
I have a slight hunch as to what you may be thinking: How the hell do I know all this crap?
My occupation actually, but I'll get there in a minute, pushy, I'm still telling you about my childhood.
Sheesh.
Anyway, my parents love me dearly the way I am, and they have always been there for me, and helped shape me into the woman I am today.
They look little like me, however, and nobody fully understands it.
My mother had strawberry blonde locks, tanned skin, and grey eyes whilst my father was a redhead in every sense of the word, with freckles, and had hazel eyes.
No matter, I don't think that it's important to look like them, but if you looked closer, I resembled the Haruno's well known personallity and charm.
The Harunos are known to be strong-willed, intellectual, and caring, and that did matter, and I tried to live up to that as best as I knew how to.
Now, back to my kiddie days.
I was easily targeted, and kids could be cruel.
I mean, I knew if I were them I wouldn't be jumping at the chance to befriend the weird, pink-headed, clumsy, chubby girl with a giant forehead in my class.
My momma had always explained how shitty kids could be, and over time I developed a habit of ignoring them and toning down my give-a-shit meter.
Though, they picked on me more and more because I was reacting less and less to their taunts, and then things started to become physical.
A shove here, a prod there, and I started getting frustrated; I started fighting back.
Low and behold, I saw how unnaturally strong I was, and negatively used it to my advantage.
When my parents found out, they were beyond upset and disappointed so they talked me into looking for extracurricular activities to channel my stress to control outbursts.
At first, we looked into ballet, but I just never took to it.
Then gymnastics; it never held my interest.
At last I was introduced to martial arts.
For comparison's sake let's just say I took to it like a fat kid to a piece of cake after a month-long diet of broccoli.
From the age of eight on, I had grown as a person entirely.
I found my talents and had become a more balanced, stable human being.
As I turned fourteen I had become a double black-belt in Tae Kwan Do, Muay Thai, and even knew my way around the boxing ring.
That resulted in better discipline, both in grace and temper.
On the other hand, I outgrew my chubbiness in which martial arts certainly helped, but somehow never my forehead.
Heh, I can't be all perfect now can I? *wink, wonk*
I had even found a few good friends in some of my fellow martial artists.
If I may, I now introduce you all to my friends Rock Lee, and let's not forget Kiba Inuzuka, great guys, but they're completely wacky as hell.
Kiba was just a crazy, dog-loving, cheery guy.
However, Lee was quite the character.
He constantly wore dark green spandex biking outfits, was obsessed with youth, stayed active 'round the clock, and never ran out of energy.
His eyebrows were planning face domination, and his black hair in a bowl-cut hair style was a little Spock-ish.
Nonstop, he declares his undying, unrequited love for me every chance he gets in the most obnoxious fashion possible.
Just thinking about it made me want to drive all the way to Manitou Springs and grab an extra large Black Orchid margarita at The Loop.
We've been friends since I earned my yellow-belt, and continue to be this very day; makes me remember when we first all met
...Good times...
Huh?
Alright, fine, I'll switch back to now and whatever I do for a living.
Yikes, so impatient; you don't have to read this crap, you know.
So, I chose to pursue a career in biology, environmental science, wildlife conservation, medical studies for both humans and animals, as well as presenting what I do as far as my job goes.
Just recently I've enabled myself and practiced speaking out about how to educate others on wildlife, too!
I find that I prefer to help hands-on rather than speaking on its behalf, but yes. I know; believe me, I know that the more awareness that can be spread, the more help the various causes can receive.
Meanwhile, I've been working in Denver, Colorado, switching between the animal shelters, animal emergency services, and the Denver Zoo.
My favorite thing about my job is being around so many incredible animals and helping them, raising them, and just being with them in their environments.
Yes, I do play favorites when there are so many incredible animals out there.
My absolute favorites are the predators, namely in the big cat family.
Working in the Denver Zoo's Lion exhibit and Tiger exhibit are just, ugh, I feel honored.
You know what's unbelievable crazy and funny?
I get to regularly rough house with the cats when I'm working!
Once, I got special permission for my former dorm-mate Anko Mitarashi to visit them in their exhibit, and the look on her face was just classic.
Shit, wait.
You mean I haven't mentioned her yet?
Fuck me, my bad.
Guys, we couldn't have been better friends though, seriously.
It started when I went to college early when I was seventeen.
I had been embarrassingly nervous about rooming with someone and had a million questions wondering what they were going to be like.
And then I met her.
So, apparently she was just as nervous as I was about sharing a room.
We were testing the waters, so to speak, and trying to figure each other out for the first couple weeks or so, but after a couple pranks, some snappy bitching, and going through an astonishing nineteen Hershey's chocolate bars each, we found that we weren't that different, and we grew to like each other.
After some growing pains as far as accommodations, we were going to be just fine as roommates go.
As far as we could tell, we were both brilliant, independent, strong, and, yes, occasionally *snort* bitchy, and to this day even after graduation, we are still roommates, and living in a really nice apartment close to both of our jobs.
Her career was going well, and she was a respected member and kicked ass working at the animal precinct.
Occasionally when the precinct needs a helping hand we both take her car and work in the same building, which is nice.
Our pay has been exceptionally good hence our incredible apartment slash living situation.
The work hours are insane, and that's the only drawback, but our work is satisfying, so I'd really hate to complain.
I mean, not many people have been as fortunate as us, which we are very grateful; we've come a long, long ways.
Relationship-wise, Anko and I are straight, single and ready to mingle.
Well, recently, anyways; long story short, I severed a serious relationship, but I don't want to get into the gory details just yet and Anko's sweetheart turned out to be gay.
I wasn't cruel enough to tell her 'I told you so.', but I did indeed have my suspicions.
*cough*
Well, darlings, that's about all I can recall to tell you as to who I am, so onto my little tale of normal turned crazy.
Let's begin shall we?
So here I am, two in the morning, on the tail end of my shift in the Lion's exhibit.
I've been working since four in the afternoon.
Our pregnant lioness Zira had just, within the past half hour, given birth to five cubs.
Five is an unusually high number in a single litter; the most you'd see is about four, and they are all fairly tiny even for being newborns.
On average, newborn cubs usually weigh between 1.2 to 2.1 kg (aka 2.6 to 4.6 lbs.).
The heaviest just barely reached 2.6 lbs. and the tiniest which is definitely the runt of the litter reaching a mere 2.2 lbs.
I'm in charge of observing the cubs and the mother, and I watch them interact and report if there is anything out of the ordinary.
For the first few minutes I sat in a chair, clipboard time-sheet on my lap, and found nothing out of sorts.
I just sat whilst recording their activity and the time, but as time went by I noticed that the runt, which I had the privilege to name myself and had chosen the name Maua, was getting pushed aside as the bigger cubs were trying to nurse from their mother.
There was just no room for the poor thing to eat, and the other cubs had shoved it away from their mother.
I reported to my higher-up, which unfortunately was Myrtle Snider.
I call her Manwitch, and before you laugh and call me mean, I have reason to not like her.
When I had just gotten the job, I thought maybe she was just having a bad day, and let her disdainful attitude not get to me and let it go, like water off a duck's back.
No, I had been poorly mistaken, and learned this when it became a daily thing; she's terrible and I call her Manwitch because she looks like a man, is a complete witch, and she always eats some gross, messy sandwich concoction for lunch break.
Yuck.
You know how you can have a job that you love and then that one coworker just fucks your shit up because they are act like an ass?
Yeah, that's her; ugh.
Anyway, that doesn't matter at the moment.
I handed her my report; she looked up at me from her chair while she sat at her desk, giving me the snottiest look she could possibly throw my way.
She was taking forever, with time that was short on hand, and finally emailed the report to the main office.
When she sent it, she looked back up at me from the corner of her eye pointedly with her portly, scrunched up, freckled face contorting in distaste.
"Haruno, I sent it over, so I'm pretty sure you can go back to whatever you're supposed to be doing again. Beat it."
She's always had some fucking nerve, talking to me like that!
It's not like I was sitting on my ass doing nothing, she does enough of that herself.
"I'll just go and get Mr. Wellman so he can check on the cubs. Is that alright, Myrtle?"
I couldn't help but sneer as I said her name.
"Fine, whatever. Gosh Sakura, so incompetent you can't handle it yourself."
"It doesn't hurt to make sure I'm doing my job the right way, does it?" I retorted sharply, walking over to the office where Mr. Wellman, our animal behavioral expert, was.
The thing was, she had no idea that he didn't care for her presence in the building either, but we were short on hand around here so he didn't have the luxury to fire her.
I knocked on Mr. Wellman's door, and I heard a polite 'Come in.' on the other side.
"Ah, Sakura, what brings you here?"
I smiled politely at the older man's kind face.
"I was wondering if you could take a look at the cubs. I noticed that the little runt of the litter Maua, isn't fairing well. The other cubs were behaving very exclusively toward her. I handed Myrtle the time-sheet and I asked her to send it over."
"I see. I'll be there in no time at all. I just have to finish this letter. I promise this won't take but a moment more."
I nodded and headed back to where the cubs and their mother were being kept; so far there was zero improvement.
Thankfully, I hadn't waited long when Mr. Wellman entered the room; however, he didn't look very optimistic.
"Sakura?"
"Sir?"
"You are aware of what happens when a cub is unable to get nutrients from its mother?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then you already know how important this is if we want all of the cubs to live."
"I'd do anything to help, sir."
"I know you would, so why don't we get started?"
I felt my spirits lift a little, and I smiled.
"Yes, sir! May I suggest that the cubs that have already eaten be moved and cleaned up, while Maua can eat in solitude with her mother?"
"That sounds like a fine idea."
Once we had retrieved the other cubs carefully as to not upset Zira, Mr. Wellman cleaned off the cubs, and helped Maua reach her mother.
My heart broke once I saw Zira reject the small cub and she turned away from the small kit.
I've heard of this happening when a mother won't accept her young, but I never thought that I'd ever be witnessing it.
Heading over to where Mr. Wellman was, he had been watching over the cleaned and fed cubs, and I told him about Zira rejecting Maua.
His eyes immediately portrayed the worst.
"I'm sorry, Sakura. There may be nothing we can do for the poor cub. If this doesn't turn out well, we'll have to put her down."
"Well, sir, if I may suggest. I've heard of animal adoption in cases like this. Do you think another lioness would take her in as her own?"
"I suppose we could try and see, but until then, we need to get the cub fed. Would you like to feed her? I believe we have some special formula that the cub can have."
I heard the phone ring, and Mr. Wellman waved me off to help the cub as he left to answer it.
Once the formula was ready, I held the little, spotted lioness in one arm while I fed her with a baby bottle specialized for animals.
Man was Maua hungry.
As I was feeding her, she nuzzled her nose against my hand.
I automatically knew that I was doing the right thing.
She could sense that I was caring for her; whether she knew that I wasn't her mother or another lion I can only guess, but I could tell that she was satisfied.
Once she had her fill of the formula, she mewled a little. I saw he was off the phone so I called Mr. Wellman over to see if he needed me to do anything else to help.
"Sakura? Can I ask something?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"What is this job worth to you?"
"Why, sir?"
"How much could you sacrifice to ensure the survival of Maua and other cubs like herself?"
The questions took me by surprise. I looked down at the small cub in my arms.
"Almost anything, sir. Why do you ask?"
"Because Sakura, I need you to go to Africa. With the cub."
"...Pardon?"