Simba manages to tough it out in Kaa's coils and under heavy hypnosis. That means he can get Nala to safety, right? Right?
Alternate Fate: Simba's "Victory"
"...to play with my fooooooood..."
Kaa drew out the last word while squeezing Simba's throat tighter than ever and expected a smile to stretch across his cheeks by now. However, he was bemused to discover that the prince of the Pride Lands had only barely cracked a sliver of a grin. Kaa felt Simba's whittle resistence still standing its ground much to his mix of disappointment and delight. The sadistic serpent knew Mufasa to be resilient as a cub. He never expected his whelp to have the same moxie.
"Firssst time I've losssst in a while..." Kaa complimented with an impressed smirk. "And to a cub at that." Simba felt the coils around him loosen their grip around him considerably and allow him to take in air however hard it still was. "I'm a sssnake of my word when it comessss to my wagerssss." The cub could feel the hypnotic hold on his mind waning ever so slightly. "I won't have you for lunch." Simba felt a strong twinge of hope through the fake bliss. He had won.
"Your mate will have to ssssatisssssfy my appetite," Kaa declared when he looked away from Simba and straight for Nala. The prince's gasp came out as a sharp wheeze of air when the triumph in his heart sunk like a rock. "Nooooo..." Simba strained to get out in a semi-whisper. He turned his head towards Nala and could only be horrified at the sight of Kaa's head slithering up to her. Her eyes were still flooded with the snake's radiant rainbow above a stretched smile.
"I agreed to releasssse you if you won," Kaa reminded with sadism coating every word. "That didn't mean Nala wassss off the menu." He got a good look at the lioness cub's most adorable if uncanny expression of bliss. "Do learn to read between the linesss, kitten" The way Nala's body sat up straight to attention like a good soldier follow orders was perfection. Kaa found the posture to lend itself well to how he swallowed them up. He flickered his tongue for a taste test.
"Na... la..." Simba strained to croak out with the little air he'd been allowed. "Run..." Kaa's coils still held him tight enough to make breathing a chore yet not enough to totally kill him. "Please..." Simba desperately wanted to scream from the top of his lungs and snap Nala out of it so she could make a break for it. However, any hope for a miracle was snuffed out when he saw Kaa widening his maw above her noggin. The rock python took a second to savor the moment.
"Nooooo..." Simba barely screamed when Kaa brought his maw down fast upon Nala. He saw the way the snake engulfed her head and shoulders in one fell swoop and felt his heart sink all the while. The python made very strong swallows that lifted Nala's forepaws way off the ground when her torso was further consumed. Simba tried to deny what he was witnessing and wanted to look away. However, he couldn't even shut his eyes from his best friend's slow demise.
Kaa swallowed once more to bring his lips up to Nala's waistline and allowed her hind legs to dangle listlessly in the air. He needed to pace himself but also wanted Simba to get a good long look at what was left of his friend. The look in Simba's now decolored eyes was a delicious expression of despair and guilt. While this wasn't according to plan, Kaa found himself enjoying this bit of improv thanks to the prince's terror. Hopefully, his client would be on the same page.
Kaa swallowed strongly to gulp in Nala's buttocks before leaving her hind paws and tail tip out in the air. Simba teared up when the gravity of the situation couldn't be ignored even as he begged Nala to snap out of it and pull herself out... somehow. However, Kaa's next gulp took in all that was left of his best friend and send her down his throat within a sizable bulge. "Na... la..." Simba choked out feebly when he realized he left his friend to this. He murdered her.
Simba gasped in a sharp intake of air when Kaa's loosen his coils around him and let him slip out. The prince hit the ground front first with his legs all sprawled out and his stamina shot after how the rock python worked him over. "Nala..." Simba strain to speak with his voice still so horse from being strangled. He could only barely lift up his head and see the bulge traveling down Kaa's innards. The prince'd felt so drained that he could only lay there in the depths of his despair.
Kaa's smug smirk came into Simba's fading view when the python lowered his head in front of his head. "I truly musssst thank you, your highnessss," he gleefully gloated, delighting in the poor cat's struggle to stay awake. "You practically sssserved your mate on a ssssilver platter jusssst by ssstumbling upon here." A knitted brow of distraught appeared on the lion cub's face to Kaa's delight. He found rubbing salt in his victim's wounds made up for letting them off.
"Please..." Simba strained to beg while keeping his head up weakly. "Take me..." Kaa replied with a sniggering oh so sadistic over the lion cub's despair. "A naughty kitten like you needsssss to live with the conssssequenccccessss of your actiiionssss." Simba's eyes felt heavier as his fatigue became too much to hold off. "Remember thisssss day, kitten, and never forget your ssssinssss." At last, the prince's eye shut while his chin hit the ground once he fell unconscious.
"...imba?"
"Simba?"
"Are you okay?"
Simba moaned while lifting his eyelids open and his chin off the ground to find Scar's nervous expression in his blurry vision. "Un... cle?" he spoke clearly with his throat having cleared up. "Thank heaven I found you," Scar sighed with relief while Simba slowly stood up. "I hoped you would've been wise to stay away but at least you're safe." The prince felt pain all over from Kaa's squeezings. "Let's leave before 'he' comes." His eyes went wide upon remembering the snake.
"Nala!" Simba gasped in his returning despair, ignoring any pain lingering. "Your friend?" Scar asked curiously before gasping himself. "Simba, tell me that you didn't bring her with you." His nephew stepped back in his growing dread, memories of Nala being swallowed alive replaying in his mind. "We have to find Kaa!" he exclaimed frantically. " You're tough enough to tear open his stomach." However, all he got from his uncle was a most mournful look that made his heart sink.
"Uncle Scar?" Simba croaked out fearfully, dreading the inevitable response. "By the time I got here, I scoped the place for that evil serpent but... I lost any trails I picked up." The prince's chest heaved while he shook his head in dismay. "No..." he whispered in knowing what this meant. "If you were here knocked out for as long as I think you were..." Scar paused impressively, seeming to suppress any tears, "I doubt there's much left now." The prince's blood ran ice cold.
"Nala..." Simba choked out with tears soaking his furry face. "It was... suppose to be... me..." He could barely speak through his sniffling. "I... let him... eat..." Scar cut him off by putting his right paw on the back of his head for comfort. "I wish I could tell you that it'll be okay but..." his uncle began, pausing more to sigh in lament, "...I fear what it'll mean for our family." Simba looked up with his tear-stained face in confusion. "What do you mean?" It couldn't get any worse.
"That the crown prince causing one of his subject to be ingested will compromise the royal family," Uncle Scar dumped on poor Simba. "Sarafina won't take this lying down if she knows you lived at the expense of her daughter." His nephew shook his head in his dismay over how Nala's mother would react to all of this. "Every lioness could rally around her against the royal family, undoing all we've worked so hard to maintain." The lion cub's despair grew into distress very fast.
"There has to be something we can do," Simba desperately let out in his heartbreak for his family as well as Nala. "Run away," Scar answered in a most grave voice. Simba's pupil shrunk in his greater dread when he heard his uncle suggest such a thing. "If they believe both you and Nala were eaten, then Kaa will be deemed the sole enemy to rally against." Scar paused impressively again. "However, this means that you will never return." His nephew nearly forgot to breath.
Simba wanted to protest in his distress but soon remembered Nala. She was one of the few cubs who vibed with him and didn't care much about his royal status not to give him a playful tackle. Yet all Simba could've done was witness his best friend being swallowed alive all because he was trying to impress her. The lion prince shut his eyes in his heartbreak and decided. This would be his punishment. If Nala couldn't see her folks again, neither could Simba. He sniffled.
"Tell Dad I love him?" Simba asked Scar with a pleading look through his tears. "However possible, my boy," his Uncle promised with a compassionate frown. Simba took a deep breath before bolting off past Scar and leaping over the first tusk. He then jumped over the second tusk and looked out at the vastness of the Elephant Graveyard. Not too long ago, Simba delighted in how cool it all looked with Nala. Now? It was possible that his bones would be added to the pile.
Scar kept sighing in pity as he saw his nephew rush into the mists ahead. "Poor, poor pitiful Simba..." he pretended to lament while Kaa slithered up to his left with a smirk. "I will so miss that gullible little brat but... life just isn't fair, isn't it?" He made a rather flirtatious glance at the rock python. "I take it that my improvisssssing earnsssss your approval," Kaa asked with a pair of puppy-dog eyes. Scar rolled his eyes at his partner's playfulness. He couldn't be mad at him.
"I did enjoy seeing that brat's despair do himself in," Scar confessed, smiling back at Kaa. "It had a certain satisfaction that him being eaten might've lacked." He glanced over to see the bulge in the snake's stomach that contained Nala and felt his delight deepen. "I don't ssssuppossssse I sssshould purssssue him jusssst in casssse," Kaa asked with a hint of hopefulness in his voice. The rock python had been hoping to learn how long he could keep a cub live and hurting.
"I doubt poor Simba will dare return in his guilt," Scar decided. "Even if he lives out there, he'll spend the rest of his life reliving this horrible day for the rest of his life." The sadistic king-to-be chortled as if it was joke while Kaa sighed in disappointment. "Although," Scar mused while looking towards his favorite snake, "I might have use for you during my reign if the likes of Sarafina do become, erm, problematic." He looked into the python's devilish eyes and shared in laughter.
Nala moaned while she blinked and squeezed her eyelids before opening them. However, they both shot open wide in shock when she found herself facing a tight tunnel of flesh. "Where am I?" Nala asked in bewilderment before realizing that she couldn't turn her head. In fact, she could only barely wriggle her body in what was said slimy tunnel of flesh. The lioness cub felt how her body was all compressed with her fore-arms to her belly and her hind-legs pressed together.
"Simba?" Nala cried out in growing dread with whatever rancid air she could breath. "Simba!?" All she could remember was following Simba into the elephant skull and then... here she was. Nala felt her heart racing in her growing anxiety with how immobilized she was. There was seemingly now way to go back or forth with how tight it was. If Simba couldn't find and save her, she'd slowly starve to death. That or go insane from being stuck in place with no sense of time.
"Simba will save me," Nala repeated to herself in feeble attempt to give herself hope. "He'll find me and save-OW!" She winced and clenched her teeth when she felt sharp, searing pain pop up across her body like small but powerful pricks. Nala cried out in pain when the burning sensation spread across her body while becoming worse by the second. "What's... happening?" she cried out before screaming when a really bad one stung her. It was like the beehive incident.
Nala's screams of pain and pleas for help would barely, if at all, heard outside of Kaa's stomach. The innards of the rock python were so thick that he didn't even feel her wriggle and assumed any of it was just a little gas. Three hour would pass before Kaa's slow metabolism would fully digest Nala to the point of finally killing her. However, these would feel like an eternity of slow pain to the lioness cub. Even up to her last moment, she never stop believing in her friend.
"...Sim... ba..." was all she could let out before she was out like a light.
That's better, right? Simba is out in the wastelands where hyenas will likely make sport of him while Nala lives through three-fourths of Kaa's digestive process. Now that's a real happy ending.