A/N:Well hey! Here's my first Lion King story! It's only T&P action from here on in, folks! Forget all that rot about Simba and his little struggles with kingship (dodges projectiles from Simba fans...), cause Timon and Pumbaa are the only ones I'll be writing about, I promise you that now. I think I'll turn this into my own little private Timon and Pumbaa series! Tell me what you think! Do it now! Hurry! Well anyway. Here's the story. Please review. I'll give you doughnuts. Big chewy ones. Oh yeah... I don't own anything here related to the Lion King or the show Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Adventures. Or whatever the show is called, I can't remember right now.

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The air was hot on the plains of Oklahoma, scorching even the bitingly dry dirt that roiled and trundled in huge clouds across the empty dust bowl area of the agricultural state. The wind was scarce, but whenever it picked up, blinding dust devils were sure to follow. But plants were grown here, as evidenced by the large, green, geometric squares that Pumbaa the warthog squinted down at through his goggles from his terrifying perch of ten thousand feet in the air, circling in a large propeller driven airplane. He was dressed, or rather, stuffed into a jumpsuit made for sky diving, a parachute strapped tightly to his back.

There was, in a slanted contrast to the ground below, more than enough cool air and high wind to be found up here. Pumbaa turned and looked nervously down at his best friend Timon, the wisecracking meerkat, and questioned him in a shaky voice that was barely heard over the whipping winds and driving engines.

"Timon, you are sure that this is the best way to exit an airplane, right?"

Contrary to the panic-stricken look of unsure horror on Pumbaa's face, Timon was wearing a huge grin, and shouted back to his friend in a voice full of adrenaline.

"Heck yeah, Pumbaa! This, my fellow swindling swine friend, is a surefire way of safely and efficiently removing ourselves from the premises!"

"But how do you know that?" said Pumbaa, feeling some slight chagrin at being called a swindling swine. Timon's mouth suddenly drew itself into a flat line.

"Because Pumbaa, we have to be off the plane before the pilot finds out all I gave him for money was thirty aphids and a can of sugar! And anyway, don't you want to get down there before we miss the biggest bug feast in all of Hakuna Matata history?!?"

"Uhhhh...." Pumbaa thought hard, the lines in his face . Timon had told him why they were coming here at the start of the trip, but everything was so fuzzy after ten sweaty hours in a sack of coconuts...

Timon slapped his paw against his forehead and yelled over the wind.

"We're here to chow down on the locusts! Don't you remember the locust swarms I told you all about? The ones that come out every farming season! Millions of hopping, juicy, crunchy, absolutely mouth-watering grasshoppers fat enough to make a meal a munch!" The meerkat had been growing more frantic with each tasty word in his speech, and by the end, Timon was positively drooling; the thought of a nigh everlasting feast of swarms of bugs too fat to crawl spurred him to action.

"I ain't missing this for the world, buddy! Geronimoooooooo!!!" With that, Timon had taken a cannonball position and leaped into the air. Pumbaa took one look down, but simply seeing Timon jump was enough to make him follow.

"Hakuna Matataaaaaa!!!"

Meanwhile, back in the cockpit, the pilot suddenly found himself wrestling with thirty hyperactive aphids that seemed intent on taking control of the airplane.

/=/

Hard rock music blared from nowhere as Timon and Pumbaa plummeted to the Earth at approximately one hundred ten miles per hour, the wind whipping their cheeks and eyelids back into a cartoonishly comic pose, looks of sheer exhilaration all over their faces. They whooped with the excitement and peeled away from each other during the long fall, Pumbaa still in a bunched up ball and thus dropping like a rock compared to Timon, who pulled out his trusty blue suitcase, yanking out something that looked suspiciously like a snowboard, and began "surfing" the rest of the way down. He came up upon Pumbaa again.

"I tell ya buddy, this is the only way to travel!"

"You're playing with a gavel?" said Pumbaa, obviously not understanding over the noise of their falling.

"No! This is the only way to travel!" yelled Timon, with more emphasis on his words.

"I have a steak in my satchel?!"

Timon moaned loudly and cupped his paws around his mouth. "The only way to travel!"

"You say there's a rake to unravel?"

"Pumbaa!!! This! Is! The! Only! Way! To! Travel!"

Pumbaa's face lit up in recognition. "Oooohhh! Well why didn't you say so? But I still think this is the only way to travel!"

"Oy..."

/=/

Once they had made it safely down (if one can call landing in a pricker bush safe) and extricating themselves from their less than stellar landing spot, they stood up and stared in varying degrees of disappointment at the blandness of the landscape. Mostly it was flat, with lots of dirt, but it was colorful dirt in many areas. Timon looked severely ticked, with his paws on his hips and his eyes narrowed. He looked up at Pumbaa, who seemed not to know what to make of the situation.

"Pumbaa?" he asked.

"Yes?" the pig replied.

"You know what?"

"What?"

"I don't think there are any locusts around here."

"Aw, cheer up Timon. There's got to be something around... here... I mean look at- no, that's just a rock... ooo, here's some... um... dirt..."

Timon suddenly threw up his arms and began pacing. "Grraaggh! I knew it! This was a waste of time! We fly all the way from home, cram ourselves into a little bag full of... COCONUTS for ten hours straight, jump out of it and land in a pricker bush, and now we find out that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HERE!!!" Timon dropped to his knees and flung his fists at the sky when he was done yelling, his shouts echoing across the dusty plains. He let his arms drop and then patted ruefully at his stomach.

"And now I'm hungry..." Pumbaa sighed and chewed on his lip. They wouldn't get what they came here for after all... then, suddenly, an idea popped into his head.

"Hey, maybe we could go into town or something and ask people about what's going on! Maybe they can tell us why the locusts aren't here!"

Timon blew a raspberry with his tongue and glowered at Pumbaa, shrugging off the suggestion.

"What? That's plain stupid, Pumbaa. Who in their right minds would stroll into a town they've never been to in the middle of nowhere and just ask about a locust plague! Why that's- hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we find our way to town and ask some people about why the locusts aren't here!"

Pumbaa seemed to have forgotten about his earlier idea and beamed admiringly at Timon as the meerkat leaped up on Pumbaa's back and whipped out a map.

"Gee Timon that sounds great! How do you come up with all these smart ideas?"

"How many times do I have to tell you Pumbaa? Who's the brains of this outfit?"

"Ohh! Ohh! I know! It's definitely absolutely you Timon! You're the most smartest meerkat ever!"

"Couldn't have said it better myself! Now here, take the compass. There's bugs to uncover!"