"Ding ding!" Kaegan called helpfully as the two older meerkats began fighting. Pumbaa winced occasionally, then took to sheilding his eyes from the scene.

"Is she always this violent?" Pumbaa asked, wincing as he heard Timon shout.

"Hey! That's my tail!"

"You pulled my hair! You're in for it now, big-nose!"

"My nose AIN'T BIG!"

Kaegan shrugged. "I really haven't known her long enough to say. What about him?"

"I just met him yesterday. So I couldn't say, either." Pumbaa winced again.

Isha dodged as Timon tried to tackle her, causing him to fall face-first into the dirt. She gave a yawn as he got up. "That all you got? Please. My grandma faught better than you."

Timon growled as he stood up. "Oh yeah?"

Isha arched an eyebrow with a smirk. "Oh yeah, big-nose."

He growled louder. "Call me big-nose one more time."

She leaned forward, to where their noses were almost touching, and her smirk grew. "Big. Nose."

His eyes grew wide and he lunged for her, too quick for her to comprehend, and the two were fighting again.

Kaegan was having a great time, munching on bugs that happened to crawl his way, while Pumbaa just hid his eyes with his hooves.

"I say! What barbaric actions! Stop it! Stop it right this instant!" Chiku had eaten her fill, and had come back to see the fight going on. The two meerkats, however, didn't hear her. "Isha! Isha, quit that right now! That's no way for a proper lady to act! Why, had my mother been here, you'd both be getting a pecking! One you'd never forget!"

"Hush, Chiku, it's getting good!" Kaegan shushed the hornbill. "Put 'im in a headlock, Isha! Hit 'im left! Right! Left again!"

Chiku glared at the young meerkat. "I say, you'd get a pecking too, I should think!" She glanced over at Pumbaa, before doing a double-take. "Well, I say, hello, Pumbaa! Haven't seen you in quite a time, quite a time indeed!"

Pumbaa smiled cheerfully at her for a moment. "Oh, hey, Chiku." But then a yell interrupted him, and he hid his eyes again.

The three creatures turned back to the fight, and saw Timon had wrestled Isha to the ground, and pinned her there. "I win! You lose! So shut up and leave, already."

She threw him off, and pushed him into the water. She was panting for breath, glaring down at him as he came up for air. "Didn't want to stay here anyway. You can have it! It has an awful draft, and the grass is itchy!" And with that, she kicked water in his face and stormed off, muttering to herself as she went.

With departing glances at Pumbaa, Kaegan and Chiku followed, the former having to hurry to keep up, while the latter just flew.

--

"Isha?"

"What," she snapped at Kaegan. She had been in another of her moods since she had lost the fight, which had been earlier that morning. It was getting close to sun-down, now. Scrawny, big-nosed cheater...

"I was just wondering... what are we gonna do now?" The male meerkat wisely ignored her anger. "I mean, we went and saw the prince's ceremony... what now?"

That question made her think, forgetting her brooding. It was a good thought, for sure. The whole reason for coming to the Prideland's was to see the prince, and she hadn't thought much past that point.

"If I might make a suggestion?" Chiku asked, hesitantly.

"Yes, Chiku?" Isha asked, calmer now that she had something to occupy her mind.

"Well, perhaps we could go in search of the Kazi-Kuchimba mob. I mentioned them a while ago, the night we discovered this pestilence was following us," the hornbill fixed a look on Kaegan, who stuck his tongue out. "They live slightly west of here, in the scrubs."

Kaegan's eyes lit up. "You think there'll be girls there?"

Isha snorted, tweaking his ear. "As if any girl would like you, pup. They'd all run away from you the moment they saw you." Then she seriously considered Chiku's idea. "Hmm... Maybe. But that means we would have to turn around and go all the way back to Priderock." Her mind turned back to the encounter with Timon and Pumbaa. Pumbaa wasn't that bad, in fact she imagined they would get along just fine. But that hyena-face, Timon, he was another story.

"Oh! I never got to ask, Chiku." Kaegan began. "How'd you know that warthog, Puma or whatever his name was?"

"Pumbaa, Kaegan." Chiku corrected. "We met a while ago, back when we were both on our own. Pleasant but simple fellow. Very polite and likable. How he ended up with that riff-raff 'kat, Timon, I'll never know. He's far too good for that one, he is. Though I do remember Pumbaa having a slight flatulence problem."

"Flatchoo-whatence problem?" Kaegan asked, cocking his head to the side in a confused manner, which made Isha smile and shake her head slightly.

"She means he has a bad digestive system."

"Ooooh, you mean he farts a lot." Kaegan nodded understandingly. "We used to have a meerkat in our colony who had that problem. Downright hilarious at times, though."

Isha rolled her eyes. "I'll bet." Then she sighed. "Well, we're not going any further tonight. And since we're homeless, thanks to that no-good big-nosed freak that called himself a meerkat, will you please find us a fairly suitable place to sleep, Chiku?"

The bird nodded and flew higher, scanning the terrain.

Kaegan looked over at Isha. "You know, you did really good in that fight. I didn't expect you to kick butt like that."

She rolled her eyes again. "Oh, shut up already. When you live on your own, you have to learn to fight, otherwise you die. Simple as that." She growled. "And we're not going to say another word on the subject, are we?"

Kaegan sighed. "Isha, you really need to lighten up. It's not that big of a deal, seriously. If we had stayed there, we would have ended up never going off again. And I kinda like roaming around."

Isha snorted. "Yeah, until you've been alone so long you can't stand to stay away from home. And believe me, you will. The life of a loner isn't all it's cracked up to be. It isn't glamorous, it isn't exciting, and it doesn't get you fans. All it'll get you is loneliness, danger, and if you're lucky, a quick death."

"I hate to interrupt this pessimistic conversation," Chiku had returned. "But I believe I've found a suitable spot to spend the night. It's not to much further ahead, a hollow log that appears to be full of grubs and such."

Isha sighed. "Good. That'll do." And with that, the two meerkats followed Chiku in silence to the log. It was fairly large, and hollowed out, so it made an ideal spot to hide. It was crawling from end to end with bugs, but most importantly...

Isha's eyes widened. "Termites? Oh, Chiku, you wonderful bird! You've led us to a rotten log full of termites!" And with that, the female entered the log, snatching pawfuls of termites as she went, stuffing them into her mouth.

Kaegan and Chiku looked at each other for a moment, then both chuckled as he went into the log after Isha, and the hornbill flew up into the tree behind it.

However, they were not alone.

Two figures glared down from a hill close by. The smaller of the two turned to the taller. "Come. We must tell Gerda what we have seen."

The taller agreed. "Yes, she will be pleased to know that Iesha has returned." And with that, the two scampered quickly away into the night, leaving behind no trace that they had ever been there.


ah, much better. longer, too. 1,362 words. i am happy with that. i've figured out how the whole thing will end, so now it's just working through and writing to get to that point. but now that the plot's getting interesting, i do believe writing will be easy, though i do suck at writing fights, as you can tell. read and review, people!