(A/N: Is it Monday yet? Nope! It's Friday! I figure I'd post a bit early. Hmm...a form of repayment? How about more reviews? That'd be nice. Enjoy!)
Nala was pleasantly surprised when she woke up and it was morning: that meant that the rest of the night had been hornbill free. Considering that she had been in a new bed in a new cave, she had slept extremely well. She gave a long yawn and then lifted her head up.
BANG!
"Ow! What the…?"
"Morning Nala!"
Nala blinked. "Eh…Simba…what is that?"
"A bed, so I can sleep in the dry."
"It's a shelf…and it's above my head."
"You are more than welcome to take the top bunk. I'll warn you…it's rather cramped."
Nala could see what Simba was saying: half of the lion's body was hanging over the edge of the shelf. Nala knew, just by looking, that Simba's night couldn't have been completely without rain. Suddenly, a loud creak was heard and Simba's bed-shelf collapsed, resulting in the lion falling on top of his mate.
"Whoops…eh…sorry Nala."
With her mate's tail draped over her face and eyes, Nala chose to groan as a reply.
"You know, you could have just slept on top of me."
"I figured you wouldn't have liked it."
Nala chuckled. "Like you care. You always do it."
"When?"
"When you fall asleep during s…"
"Hey, how about you just finish up those eggs?"
"Sure. You're more than welcome to help, by the way."
"I thought you'd say that, so I did one last night."
"Really?" asked Nala, eyebrows raised. "Where is it?"
"Here," Simba replied, holding up an egg proudly. Two uneven black jagged lines ran along the top and bottom of the egg, which was painted white with smudges where Simba had squashed the brush against the egg. A yellow band with jagged edges ran through the center with blue dots running around it, which were meant to all be the same size…but weren't. And on one side, Simba had decided to draw a smiley face: two dots for eyes with one bigger than the other, and a smiling mouth that went up much higher on the right side than the left side.
"You didn't even try, did you?" asked Nala amused.
"Hey! I spent two hours on this!"
Nala rolled an unpainted egg towards her mate. "Here, practice makes perfect."
"Bwa-bwaak!"
Simba and Nala jumped as another hornbill gave a call, just before it darted into the structure. A couple of cracks were heard, but nothing came tumbling down. The two lions watched through the cracks as the hornbill flew back off into the sky.
"I thought that was the noise chickens made," whispered Simba to Nala, "not hornbills."
"Well I guess we were both wrong," replied Nala.
"Bwa-bwaak!"
CRACK!...creak…BOOM!
The two lions watched on as a rock fell off the roof and broke through a log before coming to a rest on a plank below it. Another rock fell over, but they were still protected from the outside elements…which consisted mainly of hornbills.
"You can't stay in there forever, you two."
Simba and Nala's ears perked up. That was Zazu!
"Zazu, I command you to stop," said Simba authoritatively.
"Ha! I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice, sir. If I don't do it, the rest will. I can't turn around and tell them to stop, I feel that my dignity is low enough at times even with the fact that I am accepted by the club. From an ethical standpoint, you two stole our eggs, and if you won't return them peacefully, we'll force you to return them. And one more thing…my club name is Blue Carrot, the Kamikaze Chicken…not 'Zazu.'"
"Zazu, it's for the cubs! You know that!" protested Nala. "Tell him, Simba."
Simba, however, was rolling on the floor laughing. "Ha ha! Blue Carrot! The Kamikaze Chicken? Zazu, you're a hornbill!"
"Simba!" whispered Nala angrily, "I really think that this would be an excellent time not to make Zazu mad."
Nala looked back up the tower to see if Zazu had heard her. Where there had been a silhouette before, however, there now was nothing. Apparently Zazu had flown back off.
Simba's laughs resided. "Yeah…yeah…you're right," he said getting up. Suddenly reality sunk back into Simba. A really long and loud whistle was approaching their structure from the side. Simba's face fell. "Oh no…stay behind me, Nala!" he shouted, jumping in front of his mate just as a hornbill blasted into the side of the structure.
A terrifying sound echoed around the den as the wall collapsed and the roof began to cave in. Simba and Nala ran back into the cave as best they could while the structure continued to slowly tumble. Fortunately for the lions, it eventually stopped, and they still fully protected from all angles, but now their floor and ceiling space had both been reduced by half, and their external structure was growing ever weaker.
The heartbeats of Simba and Nala were now racing ever quicker. Tons of questions were floating through both their heads.
When was the next attack going to come?
How much longer could their tower hold up?
Would the hornbills think of something else?
How was the pride doing without them governing?
Cutaway:
"Celebrate good times, come on!" sung all the animals of the savannah, from the lions to the zebras, together as they danced around to the music.
End cutaway:
"When will they be back?" whispered Nala to Simba. "Why do they keep disappearing?"
"I don't know," replied Simba. "Perhaps they're thinking of a Plan B. Perhaps they need time to recuperate. Perhaps one of their guys is injured. I really don't know."
Nala groaned. "Ooh…what do you think they're doing right now?
Another cutaway:
"Okay, so you dislodged one rock, that's one hundred and twenty points, snapped a log in half, that's two hundred points. So that's three hundred and twenty points. Now, Yellow Beak…"
"Bwa-bwaak!"
"…yes, indeed. You broke a plank so that's three hundred points…"
"Bwa-bwaak?"
"Bwa-bwaak?"
"Hoo-hoot?"
"Bwa-bwaak?"
"Hey! Its three hundred points, okay? And Bolly Brown, we are kamikaze chickens, alright? Not kamikaze owls."
"Hoo-hoot?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
End cutaway:
Nala clutched on tight to her mate. "Oh gods Simba, I'm so scared!" she whispered.
"Hey, it's alright," Simba replied, "these guys aren't going to hurt us. They want their eggs back intact. All they want is to bring our tower down so they can get to us."
"But if we don't make it to Easter…just think of the consequences! We'd be accused as criminals, the cubs won't get their eggs…we've got to make this last!"
"And we will. Trust me. Just give it ten more minutes and, if we don't get attacked again, I'll go up and make some repairs. You just keep on painting, okay?"
(A/N: Confused? Good! Not good? Then read it again until it makes sense! Have a great weekend, and remember to review!)
