It was another one of those days, Lion-O grunted as he sat down in his office after a tedious morning spent in the throne room with the audiences. So far, three of the people who had been in the audience had managed to piss him off at least once and two more had done it twice in a row. Being king wasn't all it cracked up to be and he growled as he typed up the reports he needed. There was a score of other things to do as well that he had almost no time to devote to either his twin sister Lioness-A or Cynthia, his girlfriend who had come from an alternate timeline of Earth. She was a human and quite pretty and he smiled when he saw the photograph of her he had on his desk.
'I hate that I can't spend time with her right now but all of this work is keeping me tied up all day,' he thought grouchily. Lioness-A poked her head in his office then.
"You want to go to lunch with me and Cynthia and try to come back to all that?" she asked. He sighed and saved the document he was on.
"Yeah," he said as he stood up and stretched. "Where's Cynthia?" he asked her.
"She's with Cheetara and Pumyra doing something but we can get her on the way out," Lioness-A told him. "She's fitting in fine with everyone and made some new friends at least."
"Glad to know she has. I was a bit worried for her," he said. Lioness-A glanced at him.
"What's bugging you?" she asked.
"Just the usual audiences and the crap that happens with them," Lion-O told her as they went downstairs toward the main floor as she sighed. "I've had two people piss me off once and a third one piss me off twice and then there's the paperwork from the elders that I'm not done with yet."
"Tedious things going on," Lioness-A told him. "But then, no one expected things to go well once everyone came back to New ThunDera," she added.
"I know," Lion-O growled. The two found Cynthia in one of the lounges playing a game with Cheetara and Pumyra that got halted when they came in. Cynthia came up to the twins then. She was wearing a cute short skirt and blouse and Lion-O liked the look on her. Her glasses only added to her charm. "You look good girl," Lion-O said as she smiled.
"Thank you," she said softly. She saw his face as they left the lounge to head to a cafe for lunch. "Long day?" she asked him.
"Putting it mildly and I may not be available for dinner either," he said as she sighed.
"It's alright," she said gently. "I understand that the whole job of being king is a daunting one, especially when your kingdom is the size of a planet."
"Thanks for understanding girl," Lion-O said and kissed her gently. They had lunch and went back to the palace a short bit later and Cynthia went to relax in her room for a while. Lion-O was back in his office going through the paperwork and managed to knock out part of one thing Elder Linkor needed him to do. The other part was going to take a bit longer and rather than tackling it at the moment, Lion-O took a break and worked on filing some of the forms from earlier in the day. Cheetara came by to drop off a couple of things and he got her to send off one item for him as she nodded before leaving. Cynthia came by a moment later to see his office was a mess.
"Lion-O?" she asked, looking around.
"I'm in the bathroom!" he yelled back. His office was next to a room he used as his lounge with a bathroom in between them and Cynthia decided to wait a moment. She saw some of the papers on the desk then. He came into the office then.
"Need some help?" she asked him.
"I think I got it down," he answered. He lifted a few papers and looked through them before looking for a pen. Cynthia found one and handed it to him. "Thanks girl."
"What is all of this?" she asked him.
"Just a lot of reports, forms and other mundane stuff," Lion-O told her sourly as he went to file the papers. Lioness-A found him then and came in.
"Elder Linkor's on the phone for you about that task he sent you," she said as he growled and picked up his phone and took the call as Cynthia sighed. Lion-O hung up with the elder and went to look for the papers for that and swore when he couldn't find them.
"Easy Lion-O," Cynthia soothed. "They're somewhere in here under some of this stuff."
"If he'd clean his office once in a while, he'd find the stuff he was missing," Lioness-A muttered under her breath. Lion-O glared at her and she beat a hasty exit for the door. Cynthia didn't know if she should stay or leave and she watched him a moment as he rifled through the papers before raking a hand through his mane.
"I'm gonna go for a bit and let you have some time to try and find where you put that stuff," she said gently. Lion-O grunted which meant that he either hadn't heard her or wasn't acknowledging it. Cynthia sighed and gave up and left the office and went to find Lioness-A.
The lioness was in her paint room when Cynthia found her nearly an hour later. Unlike Lion-O's office this one was fairly clean and in reasonable shape. Lioness-A was somewhat organized and had her paintings stacked in boxes out of the way.
"He didn't run you off, did he?" Lioness-A asked when she saw Cynthia.
"No I left on my own before he got too mad," Cynthia said. "He was filing a lot of stuff when I stopped by there a few minutes before you came by."
"He hasn't organized that office since it was set up," Lioness-A said sourly.
"Which was when?" Cynthia asked her.
"About six months after we landed here and he got rid of Mumm-Ra. The crown kind of demands he has an office so he can see to things and also complete stuff when he's not training the legions or having audiences," Lioness-A told her.
"This is one job that's twenty-four hours a day," Cynthia said sourly as she nodded.
"And why it's so stressful for him," Lioness-A muttered. "The fact that his office is a mess tells me that he has no idea what he's doing with all those papers. Most of the stuff that's electronic he doesn't have to worry about."
"I knew that," Cynthia said as she found a seat on a bench. "How long before he cools down you think?" she asked.
"A while I would guess," Lioness-A admitted. Cynthia sighed. "At least until he figures out that he needs some kind of organization on that desk of his."
"How is he keeping his bedroom clean and not the office?" Cynthia asked. "I've seen his suite a couple of times and it's as neat as a pin compared to his office." Lioness-A frowned.
"Probably due to all of the crap that people keep bringing him or leaving for him during the day when he's in there or at a meeting somewhere," she replied. "He has a study in his suite but it's not like his office."
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Meanwhile Lion-O was digging his way through the stacks of paper that littered his desk and he found a couple of trays to set them in as he labeled one 'forms' and one 'requests' for the moment. It was while he was organizing the forms that he located the paperwork from Elder Linkor and he set that on top of one of the file cabinets behind the desk. The stuff that needed to get filed was done next once he found all of those and the rest of the paperwork for Linkor was in one of the folders in the cabinet he had opened.
'Damn it got mixed up with some of the other stuff I was trying to put up. Maybe my sister was right and I need to clean this mess up. My bedroom's nowhere near this messy,' he thought. He finished the paperwork for Elder Linkor and found a courier to take it to the elder and went back into his office and finished the sorting a moment later. Once that was done Lion-O removed the trash and spent a few moments organizing his desk till it looked a little bit better. It was still cluttered but not as bad as it had been. On top of the filing cabinets behind him were bins holding the various papers that he either needed to sign or file along with one devoted to business from the elders. Lion-O felt like he had accomplished something as he gazed around at the organization.
The work took a little bit longer to complete but Lion-O was able to file it according to his system and it helped greatly. Lion-O saw that it was after dinner and was surprised no one had been by to remind him. He was getting hungry though and that was a good enough reason for a break. He went to find his sister and apologized to her as she smiled and patted his shoulder.
"How did I miss dinner?" he asked her.
"I felt you were working on your office so I told Snarf to hold a plate for you," Lioness-A told him as she put away her paint brushes and some of the jars of paint.
"Thanks," he said and sighed. "Where's Cynthia?" he asked.
"She might be in the dining room or kitchen one," Lioness-A answered. "She was waiting on something in the oven when dinner finished. Snarf gave her permission to use the kitchen after the staff finished cleaning it from dinner preparations." Lion-O thanked her and went looking for Cynthia. He didn't see her in the main dining room and one of the servants pointed towards the kitchen when he asked about Cynthia. He went into the kitchen and found her at the counter near the stove reading a book. She looked up as he came to her.
"Been busy?" she asked. He sighed and nodded as he sat at the counter. Cynthia found where his plate was in one of the fridges and set it inside a warming oven for a few minutes.
"I managed to get my office a bit more organized and wondered why I hadn't done it sooner than I had," he said as she smiled as she got him some iced tea and refilled her own cup.
"Those things slip our minds once in a while," she said. "But then, a lot of things do that."
"Like?" Lion-O asked as the warming oven beeped. Cynthia pulled out the meal and set it in front of him and got his flatware as he began eating.
"Deadlines come to mind for one thing," she answered. "And I speak from personal experience on that."
"Oh?" Lion-O asked. She sighed.
"You would," she said with a grunt as he smiled. "It was a couple of deadlines for projects for some college classes and for some reason I let the deadline slip. There was a lot going on in my family life at the time and I just didn't have the time or the commitment to the assignments and it ended up costing me big time though I got them in but a day or two late." She sighed and felt him grasp her hand. "I got put on academic probation that term and nothing I did the following term would bring me out of it."
"Was that about when the vortex showed up bringing you here?" Lion-O asked as he finished his plate and went to wash it off. She nodded.
"I was on break between terms when it showed up," she said. "I'm kind of glad it did though cause I wasn't sure I was going to be able to continue it." She looked at him. "And right now, there's less and less chance of me going back."
"Would you go back if you had the chance to?" Lion-O asked her. Cynthia heaved a sigh and bit her lip and he wondered if he had said the wrong thing. Did she want to go home? Sure, but there wasn't much left on her world for her if she had gone back and with her money all gone, the chances of her getting any kind of degree was zilch. Not to mention that her parents were dead and the remaining relatives were scattered and doing their own things and none really had the time for her. As shocking as the vortex was, she liked where she was now.
"I don't know Lion-O," she said softly. "There's not much left for me since my parents are dead and my relatives are scattered to the four winds and back." She chuckled bitterly. "Most of them split after the funerals and I haven't seen or heard from them since. And then there's the fact that I have little to no money to even consider going back to school and that's if I could get back in." She sighed and studied her phone which had come with her along with a few other items, including her laptop. Her green eyes met his. "As shocking as that vortex was, I kind of like where I am now."
"You did find some new friends here," he said as she smiled. The timer dinged and he looked at her. "What's that?" he asked.
"A pecan pie and a recipe from my mom's that I brought here. Snarf had everything I needed for it so I decided to make one," she said as she slipped it out of the oven. She set it on the cooling rack then. "I'm feeling a little homesick and this helps."
"It smells good," Lion-O said as she smiled.
"You get a piece of it then," she said and found a knife. She cut the pie and eased a piece on a plate for him as he got two forks for them. Lion-O took a bite and purred softly.
"That is good," he said as she smiled warmly.
"Reminds me of better times," Cynthia said softly. They finished eating and rinsed off the plates and Cynthia covered the pie and put it in the fridge. Lion-O held out his hand and she took it and they went walking and found the gardens.
"Sorry for not acknowledging you earlier but today wasn't one of my better days," he said as she nodded.
"I gathered that," she said softly. "Some days are good and some are bad and I hope tomorrow is better for you," she said as he smiled.
"It should be," he said and leaned over to kiss her. "I'm taking part of the afternoon off and you and I are going on a picnic to the Gardens of ThunDera."
"I can't wait," she whispered before he kissed her again. He was happy to be with her and she was happy with him so it was a win all around.