or CUBHOOD III

Per request of the King, and under the insistence of Queen Hafzah, a sacred ibis (member of Queen Hafzah's entourage) joins Gavivi as guard for the cubs. He is meant to be air support, but so far has been doing an amazing job on engaining Gavivi into conversation. She doesn't look too pleased about it, hands on either hilt of her dual swords at each of her sides. The same way most people would shove their hands into their pockets.

The Waterhole is one of the closest landmarks from Pride Rock. The path well marked from the feet and paws that have come and gone a thousand times over. Even from afar, Simba can see the zebras and giraffes and wildebeests gather around to drink.

Nala leans in to whisper, "Where are we really going?"

Simba grins. "Elephant Graveyard."

Tama squeezes her head between them, unruly curls tickling Simba's nose. From the back of his throat he mewls a sound of complaint. Tama pays not attention, as per usual.

"What are you two whispering about?"

Nala uses her cheek to press Tama's hair to her skull and away from her face. "We're going to the Elephant Graveyard."

"We are?" Tama pulls Tojo in. "We're going to the Elephant Graveyard."

Tojo looks over his shoulder, at Gavivi and the sacred ibis (whose name Simba believes to be Dubaku). "We can't."

"We just need a distraction," Nala says.

Chumvi appears by Simba's shoulder, Kula appears by Nala's.

"What's going on?" Chumvi asks.

"You look suspicious," it is Malka who speaks. He's keeping his distance, out of place in the presence of the tight group of friends. "Stop whispering. What are you even whispering about?"

Tama's smile to answer his question is all kinds of troublesome. That is all he gets. The idea of a tail slashing behind Malka in annoyance is almost visible.

"How can we create a diversion?" Tojo asks.

"Let's get to the Waterhole first," says Nala.

[ * ]

The giraffes lift their long, long, long necks to look at the children running around. The zebras flicker their tails and make those funny whiny sounds zebras do. There are humans too, washing their hands in the water and with staffs herders usually carry around. A hippo exhales two gusts of water through his nostrils from the middle of the Waterhole.

A confused Malka is dragged along with Tama, Nala and Kula.

"So, what are we going to do?" Kula asks.

"We should create a stampede," says Tama, her hand closed around Malka's wrist. He doesn't seem very happy about it but no matter how much he twists his arm Tama won't let go.

"That would only make Gavivi panic and more adamant on finding us," says Nala, "we need something else."

"Oh!" Kula perks, though it loses some of its charm without her lion ears. "I know! Let's play hide-and-seek!"

Tama and Nala exchange looks. Malka says, "That's actually pretty clever." Then, "Why are we doing this?"

"You'll find out," purrs Tama.

They go around the Waterhole to find Simba, Tojo and Chumvi where they gather behind a rock. Whispering furiously and waving their arms in emphasis.

"We have a plan," announces Tojo when he sees them.

"Oh, really?" Tama, unable to cross her arms while holding Malka's wrist, settles with putting her free hand on her hip. She looks a lot like General Ujana, her mother, right at that moment. A small, unthreatening version of the big and threatening General.

"A musical number," says Simba.

The three girls share looks, then laugh. Malka laughs, too, even if just a little.

"Ours is better," says Nala, disregarding the hurt and angry looks of the boys. "Let's play hide-and-seek."

"Hide-and— Oh! " Chumvi grins. "That is actually pretty clever."

"My idea," says Kula.

Chumvi stands to rub foreheads with Kula as praise. Tojo and Simba grumble about their idea being more fun, but fine they can use Kula's idea.

"Who's counting?" asks Tojo.

"Me," says Simba.

"Make sure to do it close to Gavivi so she doesn't come looking for us," says Nala, "We'll wait for you on the far side of the Waterhole."

[ * ]

Gavivi is still busy nodding and pretending to listen to Dubaku. She doesn't notice Simba coming to start counting to twenty on a nearby rock until he reaches the number fifteen. When she notices she merely asks, "Hide-and-seek?" and when she gets Simba's nod she goes back to tuning out Dubaku and humming non-committal sounds.

"Twenty!" Simba yells, "Ready or not here I come!"

The others are where they said they would be (a little to the left, but they were there). Once Simba joins them, giggling, they all run from the Waterhole making sure to stay out of sight of Gavivi and Dubaku.

"All right!" Simba shouts to the winds when they are a good way off. "It worked!"

"We lost 'em!" says Tojo.

Ostriches pass close by. Songbirds cry from the branches of nearby trees, where monkeys are perched too. Further away there is a herd of elephants, the trumpets are audible even from a distance. The matriarch is berating or giving orders, hard to tell.

"I'm a… genius." Simba makes as if to grab the lapels of formal clothes.

"Hey, genius," says Nala, "it was Kula's idea."

"Yeah, but I pulled it off."

"With us, and all you did was count. Anyone could have done that, I could have done that."

"Oh yeah?" At the less of a brisk pace they are moving now, Simba jumps and shifts, landing on Nala who is a lion now too. They roll on the dirt, the others laughing around them.

There is an offhanded comment from Malka, a hesitant attempt at joining the jokes, on how he didn't want to think how much Simba would brag had they done the musical number. Tama, always up for making fun of him, supplies Simba would have wanted to be the lead singer and they would have definitely heard a lot more of it. Tojo, the traitor, laughs with everyone else. Not even Chumvi stops them.

"Pinned ya!" boasts Nala.

"Hey, lemme up." Simba nudges her with his paws.

Just as Nala turns away from him with whiskers twitching in amusement, Simba jumps on her again. He feels his stomach plummet when they fall down a slope. Always close are the steps of the others. Shoes scrape against dirt.

Nala pins him down."Pinned ya, again."

The girls are just beginning to praise Nala when a loud sound make them all jump.

A geyser.

Simba easily nudges Nala off him, he shifts back and quickly dresses with the clothes Tojo picked when he turned. Nala does the same, her clothes on Kula's hands.

All seven of them survey the landscape, not having realised the sun seemed to have suddenly disappeared. Simba vaguely remembers what his History professor said about the Sun God, Jua, abandoning this patch of land when it was corrupted by the Hyena Clan. Even if the sky is blue above them, it feels cold and dark like a stormy night. And just as eerie, ominous, threatening.

"This is it," says Simba, "we made it."

They walk up to a raised portion of the ground, on top of which rests a massive elephant skull. Gathered in a line with hands on the tusk, they look beyond. Dirt and decay, crumbling bones, and more geysers exhaling toward the sky. There is a sense of lacking in this place, not just because of the sun. There are no birds singing faintly on the trees, or a breeze rustling through the tall grass. It is just all seven of them, breathing. Only they are alive.

"It's really creepy," says Nala.

"Yeah," breaths Samba, hands on the elephant tusk where it curves to a point, "Isn't it great?"

"We could get in trouble," says Kula, though she sounds more afraid.

Simba grins. "I know, huh."

Tama tugs on Malka's wrist, he seems to have accepted his fate of being dragged around and now he looks only mildly bored. "I wonder if its brains are still in there."

In unison, the twins whimper.

Simba hurries to catch up with Tama, bumping Malka on the shoulder. "There's only one way to find out. Come on, let's go check it out."

Nala and Tojo join them. Kula and Chumvi hurry after, with Chumvi saying, "Wait up!"

"I think we should go back," says Kula. She grabs Nala's and Chumvi's hands.

"Come on, Kula," says Tama, "Where's your sense of adventure? You knew we were coming here."

"I didn't think it would be this scary. It seems dangerous."

"Danger? Hah! " Simba leaps to stand before the others, stopping their slow walk to the opening leading to the inside of the elephant skull. "I laugh in the face of danger!"

Simba's laugh is interrupted by a sound like laughter, but not laughter, coming from inside the elephant skull. Something maniacal, something like a howl. Tojo and Chumvi grab Simba and pull him back, all seven cubs gather and press closer, closer, closer.

"Well, well, well." A woman in rags saunters out of the elephant skull, a necklace of mismatched bones and teeth falling over her bare breasts. Hair cut mercilessly short. "Banji, what do we have here?"

Two men follow, dressed in rags and bones and teeth as well. The face of the shorter looks like it has been incessantly picked by fleas and ticks. In contrast to her, they have long hair with flies buzzing around their heads. That sounds fills the silence where there should have been white noise.

"I don't know, Shenzi," says the taller of the male, "What do you think, Ebo?"

The shorter man makes the howling manic laughter.

The cubs press closer, closer, closer together. Simba feels more than sees Malka trying to set himself free from Tama's grip to stand and defend or something. Simba beats him to it, pushing Nala and Kula back and standing in front of the others. He can hear the little growl in the back of Tama's throat and see Nala's hand twitching over the hilt of her decorative dagger.

"Just what I was thinking," says the taller male, the one the female called Banji, "Trespassers."

"We're so sorry," mumbles Kula from over Simba's shoulder, "it was an accident."

All three of them laugh that manic laughter, now circling around the cubs and forcing them to come closer and closer and closer. Malka growls at them, but a cub's growl has nothing of scary. Tama already has her dagger out.

They smell like rot and decay, something between putrid fruit and putrid meat. The one named Edo is missing more than a couple of teeth, his tongue covered in spots hangs over the side of his jaw. All three pant like water buffalo in the sun. Shenzi, the woman, and Banji lick their lips and spit something dark. Could be blood, could be dirt, could be something else.

"That's some pretty knife you've got there, kitty," says Senzi, flickering Tama's dagger away from her when Tama thrusts it an inch in her face, "Where you get it?"

"Jua Limegusa," Tama thrusts the dagger again.

"Oooh," Shenzi leans down, her necklace of bones and teeth going click, click, click. "Royal Guard, huh? I know you." Her face comes closer to Tama. Tama is sensible enough to take a step back. "You're General Ujana's little brat, ain't ya?"

"My name's Tama."

Edo is sniffing along the hairs of the cubs. Kula is on the verge of tears. Tama pokes him experimentally with the point of her dagger and gains herself a growl. Nala keeps a firm hold on Simba's arm, hiding behind him when it should be the other way around. She's the one with the weapon. Chumvi is hugging her to a degree in their awkward angles to keep eyes on all three hyenas at once.

Banji says, "And that would make you—"

Simba flinches when he feels Banji pull on his ear. A startled mrr-ow! that is undignified and not threatening at all escapes him. He bares his teeth but Banji just smiles. His lower right canine is completely black.

"The future king!" Simba challenges.

Shenzi abandons Tama and appears right on Simba's face in a second. "Do you know what we do to kings who step out of their kingdom?"

Simba scoffs. He tries to spit at them, but he doesn't exactly manage it. "You can't do anything to me."

"You aren't prince here," mumbles Chumvi, "We're on their land."

"But Zazu told me they're nothing but slobbering mangy stupid poachers."

Simba feels all five of his friends (and Malka) shrink in on themselves at that. Tama mutters something he doesn't exactly hear but that calls him an idiot nonetheless. Shenzi, Banji and Edo move in closer if possible.

Banji takes Shenzi's place again. "Who you callin' a slobbering mangy poacher?!"

"Oh quit scaring them, Banji." Shenzi spits black onto the grey dirt. Something small and also black tries to crawl from the spit. "Look at this other one." She rounds to Malka, leaving Banji to breathe on Simba's face again.

Edo touches Tama's armlet. Grabs her dagger by the blade, but releases a giggle of a scream when it cuts his fingers and palm. Appalled, as if he's surprised it hurt him. Tama growls, but it's more adorable than threatening.

"You look well groomed," Shenzi says to Malka, "You a little prince too?"

Malka doesn't respond.

Shenzi grabs him by the hair, pulls back, makes him look at her. Tama tries for bravery again. Kula is actively whimpering now, she's latched herself to Tama and, borderline on desperation, grabs Tama's wrist to keep her from moving. Before she does something stupid with the dagger.

"Why don't you stay?" Shenzi says, "We'd love you stick around for dinner."

Simba grabs Nala's hand, the hand closed around the hilt of her dagger. With her, he unsheaths the dagger and, with her, makes a red gash on Shenzi's face.

The second between Shenzi's scream and the blood and the shock, the seven cubs take off running.

They don't know where. They just run.

Holding hands and arms and wrists, they run. Kula is crying.

"I can't breathe," Kula says, wheezes, "I can't breathe, stop. "

"We can't," says Tojo, but they stop.

Simba's heartbeat is in his ears, his fingertips, his neck. Everywhere. He can no longer tell where they came from. Every skeleton looks like the other. The gas of the geysers makes the air hard to breathe. The same smell of putrid fruit and putrid meat of Shenzi, Banji and Edo comes with it.

"Did we lose them?" asks Chumvi.

"I think so," says Malka. This time he is holding Tama's wrist, though she doesn't seem to mind. His other wrist is being held by Chumvi. He is the tallest, and tries to stand taller to see around better by rising to his tiptoes.

Simba has one hand free, his other wrist is being held by Nala.

"Where to now?" asks Tojo.

"I think we came that way." Nala points, but they can't be sure.

Without the sun there is no east or west, just grey and something sweet and bones. Kula is still wheezing.

A geyser dangerously close to them roars towards the sky. Through the steaming water, the heads of three hyenas came through. Simba only has a split second to see Banji's black tooth and Edo's splotched tongue, Shenzi's face with a second mouth on her cheek. They break into a sprint again. Manic laughter like howls coming behind them.

Bones pile underneath their feet, making the way up slopes harder than it ought to be.

Seven pairs of feet become seven quartets of paws. They run faster, faster, faster.

Oh, gods, faster. They need to be faster.

A cave dead ahead, nowhere else to run. The ache of his laboured breathing stabs Simba's ribs. Nowhere to climb, just the furthest wall to back up against.

"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty," coos a howling laugh that has the cadence of Banji's voice.

Simba takes his place at the front again. He breathes, he growls. The strained mewl of the inner courtyard, the kind that can scare birds but not much else, rebounds within the walls. The hyenas are slobbering onto the rock below their paws. They mock. They laugh.

Malka is at his side. Before the other Prince can try and growl too, Simba opens his mouth again and roars.

That roar isn't his.

Something — someone — golden and red knocks the hyenas to the ground. Mufasa snarls and roars like Simba has never seen him before. Dubaku, the sacred ibis, perches himself on a nearby rock with ruffled feathers. Gavivi is close behind, human and holding piles of clothes.

Blood. So much blood. More blood than Simba has ever seen. Tufts of fur and the hyenas try to escape but Mufasa pins them down, roaring in their faces again.

"SILENCE," he bellows.

The hyenas mumble incoherent apologies and pleas, and blood, so much blood.

Mufasa snarls, "If you ever come near my son again..."

Apologies. Pleas. Blood. Blood. Blood. So much blood.

Mufasa roars and it sounds like thunder.

As fast as they can limping, the hyenas scamper. Whimpering. Whimpering. Whimpering. Their manic laughter mad in pain.

Simba slowly, oh, so slowly, leaves the corner and approaches Mufasa. He is careful not to step on the red shining on the floor, though not careful enough. Wet. Warm. Red, so red.

"Baba, I —"

"You deliberately disobeyed me." Mufasa is a lion then a human, fixing golden and red robes over his shoulders.

"Baba, I'm... I' m sorry."

"Let's go home."

The seven cubs turn back into kids. Gavivi hands them the clothes they dropped in their haste to run, even Malka dropped his. The Prince of Mto Mlima looks around as if waiting for his mother to show up as well, but there is no one. Dubaku says the Queen hadn't been informed of the circumstances for reasons of panic. Malka will probably hear of it from Queen Hafzah when they arrive at Pride Rock.

"I thought you were very brave," mumbles Nala to Simba.

me: am i going too over the top with the hyenas
also me: E V I L

Were they scary? I can never tell. I hope they made you feel like they're the type of people you never wanna cross paths when walking down the street. Also, yes, I changed Banzai and Ed's names because as previously stated I and the God and Creator and can do whatever the fuck I want.

On the subject of clothes, for the sake of my pseudo-poetic prose I couldn't mention most clothes made for kids in this universe are a kind easy to shake yourself from since most kids don't know how to shapeshift with clothes. It's an acquired skill, can't have a suddenly naked king in the middle of a meeting because he had to turn into a lion to prove a point. Though nakedness isn't as frowned upon in this world as it is over on the West. While running, the cubs obviously tripped on their clothes and dropped all their possessions too, like Nala and Tama's daggers and Tama's armlet. No worries, Gavivi picked them all up. Formal clothing is harder to shapeshift out of for reasons of layers, layers, layers.