AN: So, yesterday I went to watch the Jungle Book with the rest of the family as a present for my mom for Mothersday. It. was. awesome. I absolutely loved all of the voice acting, and Idris Elba voicing Shere Khan is probably my favorite villain since Jeremy Irons did Scar. Anyway, as we went home and I was lying in bed, this plotbunny kept attacking me, and so I wrote it out. Enjoy :)
King Louie scratched his humongous belly with an equally humongous hand, as his electric blue eyes gazed out over his many subjects, boredom clearly visible on his face. Dozens of smaller apes were running about, gathering food and trinkets for their leader, the King of the Bandar-Log.
Already, his massive piles of treasure were growing even more in size, though they were still nowhere near his enormous girth, yet it was not enough for the Gigantopithecus.
"C'mon, what's a King gotta do 'round here for some… entertainment, huh?" King Louie thundered, his voice making his subjects scatter in fear.
"Ain't there nothing for me to do no more? Nothing to add to my power, or someone to challenge it?!" the giant ape roared, shaking dust loose from the ancient ceiling of the abandoned human temple that the Bandar-Log called home.
These last few years, Louie had started to call it 'prison' instead whenever nobody was listening.
"What about that tiger, what's his name again, ya know, the one with the burned eyeball?" the King asked of one of his countless minions, who paled in fear and awe.
"Sher Khan, your kingship." The little monkey said, taking care not to look his lord in the eye.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy! Sher Khan, what about him huh? Can't he prove something of a challenge for the Bandar-Log?" Louie asked, showing excitement for the first time in days.
He was disappointed however, when another monkey shook its head, making its golden mane flap madly around.
"Deepest and humblest apologies your majesty, but Sher Khan has chosen another hunting ground during the draught before the last. He has not been seen since."
A nervous silence gripped the countless monkeys in the Bandar-Log palace, as King Louie appeared to be in deep concentration. Any moment now, their gigantic leader would surely explode in a fit of rage and destruction, as feared as Man's Red Flower, and consume them all.
But it never came.
Instead, their immense King closed his eyes and gave a deep sigh, which created a large enough gust of wind to knock over a few of the smaller monkeys nearby.
"I guess that's it for old Louie then, huh? Ain't nobody else like me no more." The colossal ape sighed forlornly.
Turning away from the sea of monkeys that called him King, Louie made to leave, intent on going back to his nest to go to sleep. It wasn't as if there was anything exiting coming his way-
THUD
Slowly, Louie turned back towards the entrance, eyes narrowing in anticipation.
THUD
All around him, his minions started to panic, screeching in their high voices, creating an almost unbearable cacophony of noise.
THUD
King Louie lifted himself to his gargantuan feet with a great heave and an enormous grunt of effort, and started to cautiously make his way towards the exit which lead to the courtyard.
THUD
Finally the stomps stopped, right as Louie stepped into the light. He briefly squinted as his eyes adjusted themselves, before they eagerly roamed the open courtyard. It seemed empty however.
Louie growled, a deep baritone sound that could be mistaken for that of an elephant, as he failed to see the one who had the gall to step foot inside his Kingdom.
"Where are you! Show yourself!" Louie roared, and behind him, his countless minions screeched in concert with him, adding their voices to his.
Brief silence met their challenge, before a soft rumbling could be heard, like that one time, several summers ago, when one of the hollow stone trees Man had built in the temple had collapsed.
"I ALREADY HAVE, LITTLE ONE."
The massive voice thundered throughout the courtyard, making a few of the smallest monkeys wince as it felt as if their teeth were rattling around in their skull.
King Louie frantically looked around for the origin of the voice, but did not see it. Until he saw that the shadow the temple cast on him and his minions from behind suddenly started to grow longer, as if it was giving itself a good stretch.
With dread pooling in his sizable gut, the Gigantopithecus slowly turned around, risking a glance over his shoulder at the building behind him.
And couldn't believe his eyes.
Standing on one of the many ledges that decorated the temple of the Bandar-Log, with the sun in its back, an immense silhouette stared down at him. Louie mistook it for a piece of the temple itself at first glance, simply unable to believe that there was an animal that big.
"WELL? AREN'T YOU GOING TO SAY SOMETHING?" the monstrous voice rumbled again, sounding like to great slabs of stone were being ground against each other.
Even so, the voice was commanding of respect, in a regal sort of way. Louie should know. After all, he was royalty on his mother's side.
Gathering his wits and his underlings, the Monkey King raised himself on his hind legs, baring his teeth in challenge.
"Do you know who I am? I am the ruler of the Bandar-Log, the Great King Louie!" he yelled, his voice carrying easily across the open courtyard.
Silence reigned, only broken by a couple of nosy birds, circling low overhead, as Louie tried to look his adversary in the eyes. Something he didn't quite succeed at, due to the sun being in the trespassers back, casting his face in shadow, and shining Louie right in the eyes.
Eventually, the rumbling sound returned, which the King of the Apes only now recognized as the being chuckling. The gigantic shape shifted, before it leapt from the ledge of the temple into the courtyard. While for King Louie and his many subjects such a fall would've been very dangerous indeed, the trespasser's sheer size meant that relatively speaking, it was the same distance for him, as jumping off the stairs was for Louie.
It was not a comforting thought.
BOOOMMM
A huge cloud of dust billowed out from where the massive shape had landed, obscuring him from King Louie's gaze for a few seconds, before a sudden strong breeze took it away, revealing the interloper to the Bandar-Log for the first time.
Louie almost wished it hadn't.
He had seen elephants once, when he had been younger and not yet a King. Their great size made even him feel small, even though at that age he already towered over all other apes.
An elephant would probably feel small himself, if faced with this… giant.
It looked like one of the Gorilla's Louie had met once or twice. But while those gorilla's barely reached his chest, with this one, Louie barely reached the other's hip!
All in all, even standing on its knuckles, it must've been around 25 feet tall, which made it twice as tall as any elephant Louie had ever seen. What was even worse, however, was that the enormous ape was covered in massive scars, all along its body, with several nasty looking ones on its face. He absently noted that the supersized gorilla had a crooked jaw as well, making one of the other primates' fangs permanently stick out.
He almost backed down, if it weren't for the fact that almost his entire army was now watching him and the gigantic interloper. If he were to turn away now, he would surely loose his position as king. Seeing no other option, Louie raised himself to his own impressive 10 feet, and repeated himself.
"I am Louie, King of the Bandar-Log! And who might you be?!" he roared in his baritone voice, proud of the fact that his voice was firm and didn't shake.
Behind him, the other monkey screeched in approval, once more creating a tidal wave of noise.
The stranger didn't seem fazed though. Slowly a terrible grin stretched itself across the humongous Gorilla's face, making the fang stick out even more from its crooked maw. It took a few ponderous steps towards Louie and his minions, each step shaking the earth like the elephants did when they were walking in their great hosts.
Nervousness started to broil within King Louie sizable stomach, not helped by the fact that he saw that every time the battle-scarred Gorilla took a step forward, his minions took two steps back. After a few steps, the monstrously large Ape crossed the entire courtyard, and, despite standing at the bottom of the stairs, looked the Gigantopithecus straight in the eye, even though he was standing at the top of the stairs.
"I AM KONG, KING OF THE WORLD. WHICH MEANS, YOU'RE TRESPASSING."
Mowgli was nervous as he followed his captors with shaking knees. He didn't recognize this part of the jungle and had no idea where the monkeys had taken him. They were now leading him to some great stone structure, like a mountain, but full of small holes, like the homes of the bees.
He was roughly pushed inside, and as he was forced to walk down the hallway, his eyes kept darting around the strange room. Strange carvings lined both walls, though Mowgli didn't understand them. So focused was he on his surroundings, he failed to look ahead, making him walk into a wall.
"Ouch!"
Except the wall had… fur… and was… moving?
Dreading what he might find, Mowgli looked up.
And up.
And up once more.
Towering over him stood the largest Ape he had ever seen, with a rusty orange hair covering its body. Two baleful ice blue eyes bored into his own, a frown creasing the Monkey's heavy brow.
"And what's this then? What's a Man-Cub doing amongst the Bandar-Log?" the giant monkey said, its voice a very distinctive drawl.
Unintelligible chatter was its answer, though it appeared to understand the language of the monkeys enough to decipher it. It turned towards Mowgli with a raised eyebrow, before jerking his head towards the center of the stone mountain.
"Go on then, let's take him to see the King, shall we?"
'This guy isn't the King around here? Then who is?' Mowgli thought to himself worriedly.
He couldn't really think anything else, as the massive ape that had talked grabbed his entire body in a single paw, hobbling deep into the Man Mountain. Mowgli was shaken back and forth quite a lot, before being unceremoniously tossed on the floor of some roofless room.
Waiting for the world to stop spinning, Mowgli stood up on shaking legs, trying to take in where he was brought to now. There was no roof, bathing where he was standing in the warm light of the sun. To his left and right however, the roof threw everything in darkness, allowing Mowgli to see nothing more than some shadowy rooms and nothing else.
In front of him, a gigantic black stone blocked his view of what rooms may lie ahead. Not sparing it more than a quick glance, Mowgli quickly looked around. Lying on the ground in large mountains were treasures of food and shiny things that Mowgli didn't really recognize.
'Whoever the King is, he is really rich! But where is he?'
The question answered itself, when the gargantuan stone shifted. Freezing in place, Mowgli couldn't do anything but stare in shock and disbelief as the humongous stone turned out to be another Ape instead!
A head as large as Baloo lowered itself from somewhere up high, as scarred as Shere Kahn's, though the immense Ape still had both eyes.
Which were now fixed on him.
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD AND THE BANDAR-LOG."
The massive head came a little closer still, an enormous grin stretching itself across a mouth large enough to swallow Mowgli whole, filled with teeth as large as his forearm.
"CALL ME KONG."
Mowgli fainted on the spot.
Shere Khan was lounging in the sun around on the Council Rock of the Seeonee's Wolves. It was just a matter of time until that wretched whelp of a Man-Cub would return to avenge his precious Akela and then he would finally have the annoying child in his jaws.
He licked his chops in anticipation, before he forced himself to calm down. It would probably still take a few days for the Man-Cub to show up after all. It would take some time for the news of Akela's death to reach him, and that wasn't even taking into account the terror that was probably gripping the boy's heart whenever he thought about the tiger he had fled for.
No, it would probably be a few days off before-
"Hey! Shere Khan! Heeeyyy!"
What.
Disbelievingly, the Tiger King turned his head so his good eye was looking in the direction the sound came from. Sure enough, standing on the edge where the jungle met the plains of the Wolves' territory, was the Man-Cub.
And he was calling to him.
"You're stupid!"
No, not just calling to him, insulting him!
"How's the eye?!"
Right.
That did it.
The kid was dead.
Exploding into motion, Shere Khan raced towards the Man-Cub, batting Raksha and a few others of the wolves out of the way without even really paying attention to it. His mind was consumed with the sight of the measly Man-Cub, taunting him, his heart was overtaken with the need to tear, to rip, to kill!
Letting out a mighty roar, Shere Khan pursued the Man-Cub as it turned around and fled before him. Did it think the trees would protect it from him? No matter, he'd have his prize, he'd have the body of the whelp within his teeth. Without a moment of hesitation, Shere Khan leaped through the underbrush lining the start of the jungle.
Had he been calmer, he might have seen the massive shape, hidden amongst the trees by its dark coat, ready to pounce on him. But even then, it was unlikely, since the huge silhouette had hidden himself to his left, where he had been blinded by Man's Red Flower. On top of that, it had been many years since Shere Khan had needed to fear any other animal of the Jungle, not since he had been a mere cub in fact.
So it was almost inevitable, that as he leapt amongst the trees, all of his being focused on the Man-Child in front of him, he never saw the enormous hand come down from above, catching him in mid-air.
There was a moment of confusion, before Shere Khan's mind caught up to what had happened. Staring incredulously at the gargantuan hand now wrapped around his body both his eyes widened in confusion. Tracing the humongous hand to an equally humongous arm, and finally to an incomprehensibly humongous body, the Tiger King felt his jaw fall open in shock.
"GREETINGS, SHERE KHAN. I AM KONG, KING OF THE WORLD."
The monster grinned even wider, lifting the hand with Shere Khan inside of it high above his head.
"GOODBYE."
Before he could really understand what the scarred Gorilla had said, the arm was slammed downwards, with the ground rushing up to meet him.
And then there was only darkness.
Mowgli pointedly ignored looking at the limp form of Khan as it dangled in one of Kong's massive hands. Underneath his palms, he could feel Bagheera shake in fear, something he could understand all too well. Next to him, Baloo was looking vaguely ill, as General Overseer of the Bandar-Log Louie slung a massive arm around the bear's shoulders with an enormous grin on his face.
Which might be part of the reason Baloo was looking ill in the first place, come to think of it.
"And that, gentlemen, is why Kong, is King of the Jungle." Louie said smugly.
Meanwhile, the gargantuan ape in question had gotten bored with playing with Khan's remains and tossed it away over his shoulder, no longer interested in the late sociopathic tiger. He thundered towards Mowgli with ponderous steps, making the teeth rattle around in his head.
The small child pressed itself a little further into the warm and comforting fur of Bagheera and felt the panther press back reassuringly.
"SO THAT'S TAKEN CARE OF. NOW IT'S YOUR TURN KID, TIME TO HOLD UP YOUR PART OF THE DEAL." The giant ape rumbled, shaking the leaves of the trees with nothing but his voice.
Mowgli gulped, before taking a deep breath and nodding. He untangled himself from Bagheera and took a few steps until he stood alone in front of the huge ape. Kong plopped down, shaking the ground and making a nearby tree crash down.
Wincing, Mowgli prepared to keep up his part of the deal he had struck mere hours ago with the gargantuan ape.
"I really don't understand why you'd want me to do this. I'm not even that good at it." Mowgli muttered under his breath, but the King of the Jungle had heard him.
"NOSTALGIA KID. YOU'LL UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU GET OLDER."
Mowgli shrugged, before taking another deep breath. And then-
-he danced.
Or something that was supposed to pass as dancing, though even if it were accepted as such, it'd be considered as the worst dancing in the history of dancing ever.
Kong didn't seem to care though.
"HAHAHA, THAT'S IT KID! KEEP IT UP!"
And so Mowgli continued to jump up and down, swinging his arms and legs wildly about at random, and called it dancing. So it continued for several hours, until the sun started to make its descend from the sky to the land in the west. Mowgli was exhausted and fell to the ground in an undignified heap.
Kong snorted.
"THAT WAS GREAT KID. THANKS. CONCIDER US SQUARE NOW, AND WHENEVER YOU FEEL LIKE IT, COME BY THE BANDAR-LOG!" the giant ape thundered genially.
Mowgli panted and gave a half wave with his hand in some sort of confirmation.
"COMON LOUIE, LET'S HEAD BACK."
"Sure thing, my King, let's get underway." The Gigantopithecus rumbled, hobbling behind his humongous leader.
"Wait!"
Kong and Louie paused and turned back, surprised to see Mowgli work himself back to his feet. Gripping Baloo's thick fur in both hands just to remain standing, the young child stared defiantly at the King of the Jungle.
"Why did you agree to help me?"
Kong shrugged shoulders larger than most wolves.
"TOLD YOU ALREADY KID, 'CAUSE I WANTED TO SEE YOU DANCE."
Mowgli however shook his head, making his raven hair sway around his head.
"I don't believe that. There must be something more. Why did you decide to help out a Man-Cub at all? Aren't you afraid of me? Of what I'll grow up to be?"
Silence fell across the clearing, as every animal stared incredulously at the sole human.
Finally, after several long moments of looking in Mowgli's eyes, Kong gave a lazy smile, though his eyes were warm.
"BECAUSE SHERE KHAN WAS WRONG, MAN-CUB. NOT ALL MEN ARE EVIL, JUST LIKE NOT ALL ANIMALS ARE GOOD. IT TOOK ME A VERY LONG TIME TO REALISE THAT. NOW IT'S UP TO YOU TO DECIDE WHICH ONE YOU'LL BECOME; AND ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE THAT."
Having given his piece of advice, Kong continued on his way towards the palace of the Bandar-Log with Louie at his side, leaving a very thoughtful bear, panther and a little child behind.
Silence reigned long after Kong and Louie had left, before it was finally broken by Baloo.
"Phew! Glad that's done with! Just imagine if we didn't have Kong and had to fight Shere Khan ourselves!" the lazy bear laughed to himself.
Bagheera growled in annoyance as he rolled his eyes.
"Please, spare me Baloo. Knowing you, you'd probably manage to burn the Jungle down somehow."
"Hey!"
AN: Yes, Kong is a little OOC, but concidering he's been living as a (literal) king in a world where he doesn't have to fight off dinosaurs on a regular basis, I think he's allowed to mellow out a little. 2 Fun Facts this time, since this will remain a one-shot, so I'll give a Fact for each movie.
Fun Fact Jungle Book: Shere Khan can be tranlated as either Tiger King or King of the Tigers.
Fun Fact King Kong: In order to make Kong even more realistic than he already had (his Kong is the least anthropomorphic of all incarnations) Peter Jackson even gave Kong and his species a scientific name: Megaprimatus Kong a descendant species of the Gigantopithecus.