Previously on The Lion Guard: Life In The Pride Lands:

And then he began to sing. But not just any song. "Can you feel my love tonight? The peace the evening brings." I let out a shaky breath before stepping in and singing the next line. "The world for once in perfect harmony." I saw a tear leaking from his left eye before we both sang the last line together in perfect harmony. Get it? Never mind. "With all its living things." Tears began leaking from my eyes as I realized there was only one person who knew that song. I stepped forward and looked this lion in the eyes and began caressing his mane and smelling cherries all over his fur.

I closed my teary eyes.

"Dad?"

He slowly walked up to the creature and sniffed him down to the point where the scent was almost impossible to match to anyone else as his eyes widened with disbelief. Was it a dream? Was it reality? How did he get here? Why was he here? Questions, questions, questions. That's pretty much the only thing Kopa's brain knew how to work for the longest time. But it wasn't until he started singing a certain song towards the Watu, and the Watu singing it back in perfect harmony, was the identity of said-Watu unanimous. It became enough to the point where tears of joy were being cried as he realized the only person he could be.

"Dylan?"

Now:

I couldn't breathe. I literally forgot how to breathe. My heart was doing backflips and I felt like my body was moving in slow motion as I collapsed to the ground. "It can't be him. It can't! How is he… why is he… when did he… like, like, like, like!" My brain was rejecting the information on what had just happened and my thought process was on a fritz. The man I had heard stories of my whole life, the man my mother loved with everything she was, the man that left me when I was 3, was standing right in front of me, only with a mane and fur. My mother told me there was something special about him but I never imagined something like this. I backed my way into a wall as my vision began to blur and my legs began to feel like spaghetti noodles. This must've been what it felt like to have a panic attack.

Everything I ever knew suddenly made no sense and it felt like I was going to drive myself crazy. This whole day was nothing but abnormal. Not even that because when people years from now look up the word "abnormal", they will look back to that very day when me and my talking-animal friends were ambushed by a lion made out of fire and I find out that my father, who disappeared for over 9 years, is in fact alive but is also a lion in a world that I thought only existed on the receiving end of a television. And here I was finally starting to feel normal again! "Are you okay," the male lion (A.K.A. my father) asked me as he slowly made his way towards me with caution as if I was a hazard to his health. "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I, well I-I-I-I-I-I. I don't know," I shakily whispered. "I can't believe it. It's you," he whispered back. My body suddenly regained its strength and I stood straight up, towering over him as I shouted through tears, "You can't believe it's me? I can't believe it's you!"

We stood there silent for minutes before we both had the courage to say something. "What are you doing here," me and him both said simultaneously. His brown eyes stared into mine enchantingly before I finally realized what was happening. By putting away all the stress and confusion, this scenario was simply just about a boy and his father. My father.

The one I haven't seen since I learned how to talk. The one who I thought didn't love me anymore. The one...who was standing right in front of me. Seizing the moment, I ran towards him with open arms. "DADDY!" "DYLAN," he roared as he ran towards me with open arms as well. Well, open paws. As soon as our bodies collided into a tight hug, there was this feeling spreading from my chest to my arms to my legs and even behind my eyes. A feeling that I haven't felt in a very long time. A feeling that made me feel safe and that anything was possible. The closest thing I can compare it to is when you see your mom for the very first time and you just suddenly have this inseverable connection with her as the sunlight slowly begins to blind you. That's how hugging my old man for the first time in years felt. Like being alive for the first time.

Do you know how in all those nostalgic movies whenever a pet or person is lost and is reunited with their family or counterpart as the angelic music in the background slowly builds and tears of joy are cried by them and the people watching from their TV? That is exactly how this moment went. I was never much of an emotional person but the sentimental waterworks were in business after 12 years. Tears of joy are supposed to be experienced by your soul whenever something truly magical happens and that moment will never fade. It's truly eternal and everytime you think about it, it gives you an emotional feeling of true happiness. This moment? Bingo! The salty water leaking from my eyes landed on his cherry-scented fur as his did with mine. Not my fur necessarily but… you get the picture. I could hear the happiness and relief in his breathing and I wasn't one to judge because I was pretty much the same way. We remained that way for what seemed like an eternity before we broke apart only to embrace each other once more.

"You're alive. I can't believe you're alive," I sobbed into his mounted shoulders. "I don't believe this. You're practically all grown up." "Not even close," I laughed. "Seriously, though, what are you doing here, Dylan?" "It's a long story. And right now this just seems like my happily ever after. What are you doing here?" "Ditto on whatever you just said," he chuckled, burying his fuzzy chin into my neck. Gingerly, we both spilt our bodies apart for real this time before a sudden realization hit me: the Guard! "Oh no." "What?" "THE GUARD!" "Who?" "My friends."

I had completely forgotten that before all this reunion shit happened, I was on a mission with my friends before we were ambushed by a ghost which led to me tumbling what seemed 50 feet underground where I encountered my thought-to-be-deceased father! "My grandpa, which I'm guessing is your father, sent me and my friends here on some sort of mission to stop some gorilla named Sokwe cause he I guess hurt a bunch of animals-," bounced off my tongue before my dad butted in. "King Sokwe? I've known him since I was a cub. He wouldn't normally harm anything but I haven't been to the surface in a very long time so I wouldn't know. How would you know? What are you even doing here? We never established that….I'm sorry. Please continue." I knew this was going to take forever. I figured I might as well catch him up all the way from the beginning. "It was the beginning of 6th grade."

My father stood patiently in the corner as I babbled on and on about my heart wrenching and perilous experiences that led me to find him, his facial expressions constantly rising and dropping like he was watching a Nicholas Sparks movie. In his defense, there were some very happy scenes and some very bleak and disturbing scenes in this movie.

"Anyways, we found him on our way up this very big and surprisingly frigid mountain, as furious as described by Zazu, except I was the only one that noticed something off about him before something even more off happened. One minute we're prepared to fight off this oversized baboon, and the next he collapses like he worked the graveyard shift and these rain clouds come out of nowhere!" The slight mention of unexpected rain clouds seemed to stun him. Wait until I told him what happened next.

"And as if that wasn't strange enough, this lightning bolt set a tree on purple fire and then this...thing attacked us, except she wasn't normal. She, well, she was-," I started to tell him before he once again cut me off, except he seemed more tense and paranoid, with his fur becoming doused in sweat. I had no idea lions could even sweat. "F-f-f-f-fire? W-was she made of fire? That thing in the mountains. Y-y-y-y-y-you met her?"

What? He knew who I was talking about? How? "You met her?" "A long time ago. She's the reason I'm down here. I don't really have time to explain. We have to go." And just like that, he grabbed my shirt in his mouth, propped me onto his back as if he was a horse, and began running deeper and deeper into the caverns, farther and farther to where I needed to go and find my friends. I had no idea if they were okay or if the fire lion did something to them, but that's the last outcome I wanted to not be true.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" "Getting you to safety! We can run away together and find a different spot to hide. If she finds us down here, the past 9 years will have been for nothing! She'll kill us all and if she gets that Disk piece, she'll kill everyone in the universe!" Running as fast as Fuli it seemed, I realized that as much as I wanted to be with my dad more than anything in the world, the only thing I would think about was my friends. So when I saw the opportunity I jumped off of the swift feline and began a race of my own: a race back up to the surface to find my friends. "Dylan! Where are you going!?" I wanted to respond, but my mouth just couldn't make the words and my brain just kept my body running and nothing more than that. "Dylan! Dylan! DYLAN! Get back here! Please!" Tears began escaping from my eyes as my feet picked up the pace and I was right back to where I started. I quickly scanned my surroundings and looked up to see if there was any possible way that I could climb back up. I saw some rocks coincidentally aligned to form a sort of rock climbing ladder that I could use and that was the very first instinct that I had. It wasn't until I was 7 steps up that I heard someone stomp their way into the room. My head jerked back to see my dad standing there, completely out of breath.

"Dad, I know I haven't seen or known you for very long, but I have to save my friends. They've been protecting me and helping me through this whole situation and have been teaching me how to adapt. Until a few minutes ago, they were the only family I had and I can't lose them now. So you can try and stop me all you want, but unless you're coming with me, I can't run away with you!" It broke my heart to be having to say those words to him, especially since I just got him back, but right now the Guard's safety and well-being was my top and only priority. But something about his face after I told him how much I cared for my friends sent a different vibe than what I was getting before. He actually started to smile a little bit. He started to walk over towards me, but instead of pulling me off, he began to push me upwards as he began to ascend along the rocks with me.

I couldn't believe it. I sighed in relief before continuing to allow him to assist me up to the top while I checked in on him the whole way to make sure he was doing ok as well. We were so close. Sunlight started to shine down on us and it wasn't until flurries of snow began falling on us that I knew we were close to the top. My hand gripped the frozen edge of the top of the hole I fell down and I was pushed all the way to the very top and… FREEDOM! My body collapsed on a fresh blanket of ice and snow and I was so RELIEVED that I was out of there. It took awhile for my vision to adjust, but I was just so happy to be free! And now that I was, I could find my friends. I quickly looked around to find everything exactly the same, except we were missing my friends. Where were they? Are they safe? What happened?

But that's when I noticed the slightest trail of footprints wandering off in another direction from the giant mountain we sought to get to, and a scent lingering in the air that could only belong to one assorted group of animals. Completely forgetting about my dad accompanying me on this sort of quest, I sprinted off in that direction with my father surprisingly behind me. Wow; is he fast. The scent was getting stronger with every step I took and the tracks kept on going until suddenly they disappeared. The scent too. "Dylan. What. exactly. are. we. looking. for," my panting dad said in between breaths. "We're looking for a lion cub, a honey badger, a hippo, a cheetah, and an egret. An odd pair, I know, but they work really well together." He just nodded in agreement but I knew that deep down he was still totally confused and lost. I was too, because I still had about a million questions for him but that would have to wait. "Ono! Beshte! Bunga! Fuli! Kion! You guys! Where are you!?" A sense of worry overcame me and I wasn't thinking straight anymore. Was I crazy? Possibly. Maybe spending too much time with talking animals fried a colony of my brain cells. We just kept on walking and walking and walking up until the point where we were too tired and had absolutely no idea where we were. We both sat on a boulder covered in ice by another mountain. I guess I just had to accept the fact that they were gone and I had lost them. For good.

"They're gone. I just know it. This is all my fault." "No, no, no, Dylan. This isn't your fault. You couldn't foresee this; no one could. I sure as hell didn't." "You're right. This isn't my fault. This... is YOUR fault," I shouted at the male lion sitting next to me as I stood up and towered over him. I could see the confusion and fear in his eyes as I began to ramble on. "Wha. How is this my fault? I've done nothing wrong."

"You really wanna go down that road? Well for starters, you abandoned me and my mother when I was just a baby. All I had to remember you by were sob stories and a stupid lullaby. It was hard as hell growing up with a normal life when I was always sitting in a police station listening to her telling the police that something bad happened to you when all they ever told us in return was that you just chickened out of your guys' relationship. We could almost never talk about you just because I didn't want to see my mom cry or be so sad because of something that happened in the past. All the other kids got football lessons while I was stuck at home with a mom who was working her ass off to provide for the both of us. And as if that wasn't enough, I found out that everything was a big fat lie! You are not who me and her thought you were, but a fucking cartoon character in a universe that's supposed to be fictional. I somehow end up in said universe after enduring one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, I meet new friends and new family, and just when I thought things were going good and I was going to be a kid again, me and my new friends are assigned to defeat a rampaging gorilla who turned out to be a pawn in a psychotic demonic lion's plan to eradicate us! I could've saved them but instead I was stuck talking to you this whole time! This is all your fault! It's your fault, your fault, your fault," I said trying to swing a fist or two at my old man while all he did after that, was... hug me. After all the shit I threw down on him, he hugs me? I had no idea where all that even came from. I guess it was all the pent up anger that he caused me and my mom after 9 years. But I didn't mean any of it. Well, some of it but I was just so happy to see him again and I was just so frustrated that I needed someone to blame. But I instantly regretted it and just hugged my dad back while sobbing regret and shame into his furry chest.

"Shhh. It's alright. It's ok. I'm here. I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere or leaving you ever again. My son." His sultry dad voice and speech somehow calmed me as I shuddered out all my emotions while tears still streamed down my cheek. I needed this. Like really needed this. He took his paw underneath my chin and lifted my head up to where our eyes met. His other paw he used as a sort of tissue to dry my eyes. Ironically, this just made me cry even more. His warmth and comfort just soothed me and somehow put a piece of me back together that was lost long ago. "Aaaaaw," I heard two voices say together in unison in the background. We both jerked our heads synchronously and saw two male gorillas stalking us from afar behind another boulder. We broke apart and started walking towards them.

"Who are you guys?"

"You mean us?"

"Who else would we be talking to?

"Well, that's easy. I'm Majinuni and this is my brother, Hafifu."

Huh? The gorilla named Hafifu was a bulkier gorilla in comparison to his apparent brother, Majinuni. He had charcoal colored fur which darkens around his legs, arms and the rim of his underbelly, as well as his face and bangs. He had light gray hands and his underbelly and ears were a gray-beige. His face was a lighter beige, with a pink nose and blue eyes. On his head, he had a bang which led right. He had three small black freckles on either side of his face. Majinuni, on the other hand, was a slightly slimmer yet still bulky young ape with grey fur all over his body, and darker grey fur rimming the bottom half of his chest, limbs, and bangs. His head had a large tuft of fur/bangs which moved across to the left of his face. His face, chest, ears, hands, and feet were beige. He also had two large pinkish-tan nostrils. His eyes were brown. "Nice to meet you both I guess. But what are you boys doing stalking us," I questioned the two brothers. "Oh, we didn't mean to impose on you two guys' bonding session. We were just searching for someone called 'Dilanne.' He's some kind of new animal called a 'Matu' when we overhead the loudest bickering we've ever heard and, well, here we are I guess."

Dilanne? Matu? WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE! "D-d-d-do you mean Dylan and Watu?" "Oh, yeah that's the one. Do you know him?" "Know him? I am him!" Their faces went blank. "What even are you? You look like a hairless monkey," Hafifu exclaimed in disgust. I just gave the two of them a snarky look before getting back to the subject of the matter. "Normally I'd be offended but not today. How did you know to come look for me?"

"Our friends sent us looking for you. They seemed extremely worried. And we hadn't seen them in such a long time so when they came to us and distressed and asked us for a favor, we were more than happy to return it. And my have they gotten bigger. Especially our pal, Kion." That name echoed throughout the back of my head, made the hairs of my arm stand up, and my stomach to turn inside out. "D-d-d-did you just say what I think you said?" "Well if what you were thinking was that we said Kion then I guess so."

Without thinking and hesitation, I bolted for the two of them and mounted them both with a very tight hug, knocking us all to the ground. "THANK YOU! THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU FOUND THEM AND I, I THOUGHT THAT, THEY WERE DEAD, AND... THANK YOU SO MUCH!" I've never hugged anyone tighter than I did them. I was just so exhilarated that they were still alive. But still a little guilty about the verbal havoc I gave my dad. I got off of them, their faces shocked and so confused as to what just happened, and slowly shame walked towards him.

"I'm sorry. You were only trying to help and I screwed it up. That seems to be a trend for me now. Screw up all the good things in my life. But you're here and that's all that matters. Not what happened before." "Hey, no apology necessary, buddy. I do owe you an explanation, but we'll talk later. Let's go find your friends." You remember how I said that I've never hugged anyone tighter than the two gorillas before? I lied. Because the way I hugged my dad in that moment after was a real prize winner. It was the biggest hug I had ever given anybody. And it just gave me some closure as to all the regret I had about him in the past. I was just so lucky and blessed that he was still out there. Some people never get a chance like that, and I just embraced the moment along with my pops and tightly closed my eyes. After we finished, we turned our attention to the two gorillas. "So, boys, where to?" They both looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

"Follow us."