Chapter 2
A/N: Disclaimer: I own nobody save anyone and anything not yet used on the Timon and Pumbaa show, or the Lion King franchise in general. Everything else is mine. So hands off, ya grubby ingrates!
"Now here, take the compass. There's bugs to uncover!"
6 ½ hours later...
"Water... need... water..." gasped Pumbaa. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, puffy and dry from lack of water. It felt like cardboard.
"Ice... cream... everywhere..." mumbled Timon from on top of Pumbaa's back, his eye twitching and a crazy grin on his face. He was loosely holding a sweat soaked map that sagged at their sides, of no use to them because, rather unfortunately, neither of them knew where they were in the first place. All around them there was nothing but flat land that was dry, hot, featureless, boring, and above all, totally vacant of bugs. Both of them were ragingly thirsty, and terribly hungry.
Pumbaa took a careful look back at Timon, who was still acting crazy and mumbling to himself. Pumbaa managed to gasp out a question.
"Ti... Timon... do... do we know... where we are?"
"Iceee creeeeaaaammmm..."
"Timon?"
"Huh? Wha-who? What? Oh man! Pumbaa! I was having the most wonderful dream... there was... there was ice cream... everywhere... packed with frozen bugs..."
"Yeah, uh, you kinda mentioned the ice cream already Timon..."
"So, why'd you wake me? Are we at the town yet?"
"Um... no..."
"What?!?" Timon suddenly seemed to actually "wake up" and realize the full depth of their situation, throwing his head wildly in all directions. Then he did what he did best in these situations: whine and mope.
"Ugghhh! This is crazy Pumbaa! We're lost, hungry, and thirsty in a gigantic bowl of dirt! I told you going off to look for a town was a bad idea!"
"Um..."
"Hey, which way are we going anyway...?" Timon picked up the map that had stuck to his leg with all the perspiration, twisting it around and turning Oklahoma sideways and folding it in half.
"Sheesh... who's the mook that drew this thing? None of it makes sense!"
"Timon? It's not even open all the way. You're looking at the triple-a logo."
"Oh... well uh, I knew that! I mean, obviously it's that um... big "A" thing. I was just pointing out how stupid it was..."
"Ohhh... I see... I think."
"Um... okay. There's a town over here. We dropped over here right? ....Right. 'Course we did. Well anyway, we chose to go in the direction of this town here, which was west. And you said we were going west, right?"
"West?" Pumbaa said falteringly. "Um... I thought we were supposed to go... Mest..."
"What?!? Mest?? What are you talking about Pumbaa? Let me see the compass..."
Pumbaa gingerly held out the offending navigation piece. Timon took one glance at it and groaned.
"Oy... Pumbaa... you're holding it upside down.... Turn it right side up... See? We've been going east this whole time!!!"
"Ohh, I'm sorry Timon! I was just so hot and... and hungry and thirsty and... and... I'm just a bad navigator!" Pumbaa, poor little hog he was, felt so terrible over his mishap that he had collapsed onto his stomach and covered his eyes with his hooves, sobbing pitifully. Timon sighed and rolled his eyes wearily, then hopped down to try and comfort his pathetic looking companion. He patted the hog's snout cautiously.
"Um... there, there, Pumbaa... um... you didn't do anything wrong, I mean... take a look, our lives are saved!"
"No, no... I'm a horrible friend! You should just leave me here to shrivel up!"
"No, really Pumbaa! We're saved, would you look? We're saved! Totally, utterly, wonderfully saved!"
"No, Timon, don't try and make me feel any better! Just go away and don't let me sully our friendship any longer-"
"Pumbaa, would you shut up and quit bawling? Look!"
Pumbaa looked. Sure enough, there, due to some divine intervention or sheer chance of luck, they had stumbled across a sleepy old farming community. It was a sprawl of buildings and silos with discolored crops spreading out in all directions. Old, rusted trucks hung out next to shops and on the streets.
"Yay!" said Pumbaa, tears and sobbing instantly forgotten.
/=/
As they neared the town and entered it, it was obvious the town was a quiet place. There was hardly a soul in the streets, aside from some old codger in a rocking chair under the awning of an old grocery store. Timon took one look at the place and immediately declared his displeasure.
"Now would you look at this dump? It's like the puny town of nothing that time forgot." Pumbaa glanced around worriedly.
"Well there's gotta be somebody around here that can help us," he said. He glanced over at the old codger in the rocking chair, nodding at him.
"Maybe he knows something!" Timon glanced only once at the relaxing elderly man and shook his head.
"Oh, come on, Pumbaa! He's just some old mook with too little brain to get out of this dusty air! I mean look at him! He's all wrinkled and... crusty and stuff."
Pumbaa, however, paid no heed to Timon's warnings and trotted over to the wrinkled, bent man.
"Howdy!" He said in his best Oklahoman accent (which was terrible by the way). The old man smiled and stood up, leaning heavily on his walking staff, grinning a crooked mouth spotted in some places by lost teeth. Dust that had caked onto his faded blue overalls came off in billowing clouds. His muscles were stretched taut over his gaunt frame, and his knobby hands fondled the cane to find purchase on the smooth wood.
"Neh, eh, howdy there stranger! Gyeh... nice day today!"
Timon folded his arms and looked distastefully upwards as Pumbaa replied heartily in his usual good manner, losing the accent this time.
"And a good day to you, sir! Me and my pal Timon here were passing through trying to get something to eat. We're insectivores, you see, which means our diet consists only of small bugs and other invertebrates-"
"We're hungry, and we're here for the locusts!" quipped Timon, always the impatient one. The second the word "locust" passed the meerkat's lips, the old man's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and he stumbled backwards, his cracked lips quivering.
"Geh... locusts?!? Where?? Where are th' vermin, eh? Where!" Timon and Pumbaa jumped back and cowered as the old man began swinging his cane to and fro. Timon held up his paws pleadingly.
"Whoa, whoa, steady on there old timer! There are no locusts, they aren't anywhere! Believe us, we looked..." his eyes darted nervously back to the open plains from whence he and Pumbaa had come. The old man seemed to calm a little.
"Nyeh... eh... hmm... you're right, Mr. T-bone-"
"It's um... Timon," coughed the meerkat.
"The locusts are gone!" yelled the old man, suddenly full of panicked energy once more. Timon dashed behind Pumbaa's considerable girth as the old man began brandishing his cane again.
"Gone, gone! They're supposed to be here! 'Tis unnatural, unnatural I tell ye'!" The old man continued his rambling, leaving Timon and Pumbaa staring wide-eyed at the spectacle. The old man muttered a few things under his breath, then suddenly whipped around and grabbed Pumbaa by the shoulders.
"Ye've gotta find 'em! Ye' just gotta!" Pumbaa squinted his eyes against the rain of spittle that flew from the old man's mouth.
"Ummm... okay... but why? You didn't seem to happy when Timon mentioned locusts..." drawled Pumbaa, obviously very confused. The old man only grew more frantic.
"Mehemanem! Don't ye' see, Plumb-bomb-?"
"Pumbaa."
"It's all a balance, a balance I tell ye'! The locusts are supposed to come! It's Nature's way, they come, they fly, they eat, they die, an' all over agin' next time! If they don't come, why... why the ecology of the place will be ruined! Ruined I say! Ruined!"
Timon now took the time to try and regain control of the situation."Now see here, my fine, leathery faced friend..."
"Ruined!!!" yelled the old man.
"Yes, we know it's all ruined!!! But please sir, if you may, tell us... how in the heck are we supposed to find them? We don't even know where they come from!" The old man shook his head despairingly, finally letting go of Pumbaa's shoulders.
"Oh, I don't know boys, I don't know... but you have to find them! Who knows what kind of absolutely sinister... gyeh, devious... eh, malicious... um, nem... maleficent plot is behind all this! I eh... I gotta tell the town how dire this is!"
The old man gathered up his cane and began shambling away at a fairly good clip for a man as ancient as he, huffing and puffing all the way. Timon and Pumbaa were left standing in the street, staring after the old man, and then at each other. Timon was the first to recover, clapping his paws together in mock eagerness.
"Well, doesn't that just take the cake! We came here to lay around in the sun, stuff ourselves silly, maybe get a tan... but now we see that we can restore the 'Balance of Nature'!" said the meerkat with mockingly dramatic emphasis on those last words. Pumbaa was taken in by the act easily, as he always was.
"Yay! This is the greatest Timon!" The naïve warthog began hopping a circle around Timon, who stared at his friend with bleak, condescending eyes. "We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes!" chanted Pumbaa, until Timon's paw finally snapped out and grabbed Pumbaa's tusk, pulling him down so they could be face-to-face.
"Are you nuts?!?" yelled Timon, his eyes huge and his mouth even bigger. "We're getting out of here before something even weirder happens! I'm not going to work for my food! This was supposed to be a vacation! We're bug eaters, not glory gluttons! Besides, to get this kind of glory, we have to work. And working most definitely interrupts our very busy and full schedule of doing absolutely nothing for the rest of our lives!" Pumbaa's face suddenly got very pleading, his eyes taking on the exact aura of a sad puppy dog's.
"Aww, come on Timon! It'll be fun, I promise! And when we're done we can eat allll the locusts we want! Please, can we go restore the balance of nature pleasepleaseprettypleasepleeeeaaasssseee?"
Timon sighed, covering his eyes with his free paw. "Oy... I'm gonna regret this, but... okay. Pumbaa... let's go be heroes!" Timon finished his statement by striking a heroic pose, pointing his finger off in some random point in the sky. Pumbaa jumped up beside.
"Oh, goody! This is going to be so much fun!"
"Right, whatever, Pumbaa... now come on, let's go see what we can find out."
They began walking off down the street. However, unbeknownst to them, a pair of devious, scheming eyes glowered at them from behind the corner of a nearby building. The figure watched them go with unswerving self- confidence, knowing those two bumbling fools would never be able to uncover his insidious plans. Once they were gone, the figure leaped theatrically from the shadows. He was a muscular fellow, with a large, round, red nose and combed back raven hair. He was wearing a clean cut white tuxedo and black dress shoes, and he wielded a polished pitchfork. Making sure nobody was around, he began laughing imperiously.
"Hahahahaha! I, Cultivator Quint, the most affluent, ambitious, irrigated, organic, miserly, malicious, and home-grown farming mogul this side of the dust bowl, am nearly complete with my dastardly plans! Those two will never find the locusts... for I have them all for myself! I will soon be poised to unleash them solely upon my strongest competitors and wipe out their crops, securing my own monopoly over the farming community! I shall be the richest farmer in the state! But why stop there? I could be the richest agricultural magistrate in the country, nay, the world! Muahahahaha! Muahahahahaaaa!"
A/N: Well well well. It seems we have encountered the antagonist! Reveal your criticisms, ye who read this fic, and tell me if this guy is a keeper!
A/N: Disclaimer: I own nobody save anyone and anything not yet used on the Timon and Pumbaa show, or the Lion King franchise in general. Everything else is mine. So hands off, ya grubby ingrates!
"Now here, take the compass. There's bugs to uncover!"
6 ½ hours later...
"Water... need... water..." gasped Pumbaa. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, puffy and dry from lack of water. It felt like cardboard.
"Ice... cream... everywhere..." mumbled Timon from on top of Pumbaa's back, his eye twitching and a crazy grin on his face. He was loosely holding a sweat soaked map that sagged at their sides, of no use to them because, rather unfortunately, neither of them knew where they were in the first place. All around them there was nothing but flat land that was dry, hot, featureless, boring, and above all, totally vacant of bugs. Both of them were ragingly thirsty, and terribly hungry.
Pumbaa took a careful look back at Timon, who was still acting crazy and mumbling to himself. Pumbaa managed to gasp out a question.
"Ti... Timon... do... do we know... where we are?"
"Iceee creeeeaaaammmm..."
"Timon?"
"Huh? Wha-who? What? Oh man! Pumbaa! I was having the most wonderful dream... there was... there was ice cream... everywhere... packed with frozen bugs..."
"Yeah, uh, you kinda mentioned the ice cream already Timon..."
"So, why'd you wake me? Are we at the town yet?"
"Um... no..."
"What?!?" Timon suddenly seemed to actually "wake up" and realize the full depth of their situation, throwing his head wildly in all directions. Then he did what he did best in these situations: whine and mope.
"Ugghhh! This is crazy Pumbaa! We're lost, hungry, and thirsty in a gigantic bowl of dirt! I told you going off to look for a town was a bad idea!"
"Um..."
"Hey, which way are we going anyway...?" Timon picked up the map that had stuck to his leg with all the perspiration, twisting it around and turning Oklahoma sideways and folding it in half.
"Sheesh... who's the mook that drew this thing? None of it makes sense!"
"Timon? It's not even open all the way. You're looking at the triple-a logo."
"Oh... well uh, I knew that! I mean, obviously it's that um... big "A" thing. I was just pointing out how stupid it was..."
"Ohhh... I see... I think."
"Um... okay. There's a town over here. We dropped over here right? ....Right. 'Course we did. Well anyway, we chose to go in the direction of this town here, which was west. And you said we were going west, right?"
"West?" Pumbaa said falteringly. "Um... I thought we were supposed to go... Mest..."
"What?!? Mest?? What are you talking about Pumbaa? Let me see the compass..."
Pumbaa gingerly held out the offending navigation piece. Timon took one glance at it and groaned.
"Oy... Pumbaa... you're holding it upside down.... Turn it right side up... See? We've been going east this whole time!!!"
"Ohh, I'm sorry Timon! I was just so hot and... and hungry and thirsty and... and... I'm just a bad navigator!" Pumbaa, poor little hog he was, felt so terrible over his mishap that he had collapsed onto his stomach and covered his eyes with his hooves, sobbing pitifully. Timon sighed and rolled his eyes wearily, then hopped down to try and comfort his pathetic looking companion. He patted the hog's snout cautiously.
"Um... there, there, Pumbaa... um... you didn't do anything wrong, I mean... take a look, our lives are saved!"
"No, no... I'm a horrible friend! You should just leave me here to shrivel up!"
"No, really Pumbaa! We're saved, would you look? We're saved! Totally, utterly, wonderfully saved!"
"No, Timon, don't try and make me feel any better! Just go away and don't let me sully our friendship any longer-"
"Pumbaa, would you shut up and quit bawling? Look!"
Pumbaa looked. Sure enough, there, due to some divine intervention or sheer chance of luck, they had stumbled across a sleepy old farming community. It was a sprawl of buildings and silos with discolored crops spreading out in all directions. Old, rusted trucks hung out next to shops and on the streets.
"Yay!" said Pumbaa, tears and sobbing instantly forgotten.
/=/
As they neared the town and entered it, it was obvious the town was a quiet place. There was hardly a soul in the streets, aside from some old codger in a rocking chair under the awning of an old grocery store. Timon took one look at the place and immediately declared his displeasure.
"Now would you look at this dump? It's like the puny town of nothing that time forgot." Pumbaa glanced around worriedly.
"Well there's gotta be somebody around here that can help us," he said. He glanced over at the old codger in the rocking chair, nodding at him.
"Maybe he knows something!" Timon glanced only once at the relaxing elderly man and shook his head.
"Oh, come on, Pumbaa! He's just some old mook with too little brain to get out of this dusty air! I mean look at him! He's all wrinkled and... crusty and stuff."
Pumbaa, however, paid no heed to Timon's warnings and trotted over to the wrinkled, bent man.
"Howdy!" He said in his best Oklahoman accent (which was terrible by the way). The old man smiled and stood up, leaning heavily on his walking staff, grinning a crooked mouth spotted in some places by lost teeth. Dust that had caked onto his faded blue overalls came off in billowing clouds. His muscles were stretched taut over his gaunt frame, and his knobby hands fondled the cane to find purchase on the smooth wood.
"Neh, eh, howdy there stranger! Gyeh... nice day today!"
Timon folded his arms and looked distastefully upwards as Pumbaa replied heartily in his usual good manner, losing the accent this time.
"And a good day to you, sir! Me and my pal Timon here were passing through trying to get something to eat. We're insectivores, you see, which means our diet consists only of small bugs and other invertebrates-"
"We're hungry, and we're here for the locusts!" quipped Timon, always the impatient one. The second the word "locust" passed the meerkat's lips, the old man's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and he stumbled backwards, his cracked lips quivering.
"Geh... locusts?!? Where?? Where are th' vermin, eh? Where!" Timon and Pumbaa jumped back and cowered as the old man began swinging his cane to and fro. Timon held up his paws pleadingly.
"Whoa, whoa, steady on there old timer! There are no locusts, they aren't anywhere! Believe us, we looked..." his eyes darted nervously back to the open plains from whence he and Pumbaa had come. The old man seemed to calm a little.
"Nyeh... eh... hmm... you're right, Mr. T-bone-"
"It's um... Timon," coughed the meerkat.
"The locusts are gone!" yelled the old man, suddenly full of panicked energy once more. Timon dashed behind Pumbaa's considerable girth as the old man began brandishing his cane again.
"Gone, gone! They're supposed to be here! 'Tis unnatural, unnatural I tell ye'!" The old man continued his rambling, leaving Timon and Pumbaa staring wide-eyed at the spectacle. The old man muttered a few things under his breath, then suddenly whipped around and grabbed Pumbaa by the shoulders.
"Ye've gotta find 'em! Ye' just gotta!" Pumbaa squinted his eyes against the rain of spittle that flew from the old man's mouth.
"Ummm... okay... but why? You didn't seem to happy when Timon mentioned locusts..." drawled Pumbaa, obviously very confused. The old man only grew more frantic.
"Mehemanem! Don't ye' see, Plumb-bomb-?"
"Pumbaa."
"It's all a balance, a balance I tell ye'! The locusts are supposed to come! It's Nature's way, they come, they fly, they eat, they die, an' all over agin' next time! If they don't come, why... why the ecology of the place will be ruined! Ruined I say! Ruined!"
Timon now took the time to try and regain control of the situation."Now see here, my fine, leathery faced friend..."
"Ruined!!!" yelled the old man.
"Yes, we know it's all ruined!!! But please sir, if you may, tell us... how in the heck are we supposed to find them? We don't even know where they come from!" The old man shook his head despairingly, finally letting go of Pumbaa's shoulders.
"Oh, I don't know boys, I don't know... but you have to find them! Who knows what kind of absolutely sinister... gyeh, devious... eh, malicious... um, nem... maleficent plot is behind all this! I eh... I gotta tell the town how dire this is!"
The old man gathered up his cane and began shambling away at a fairly good clip for a man as ancient as he, huffing and puffing all the way. Timon and Pumbaa were left standing in the street, staring after the old man, and then at each other. Timon was the first to recover, clapping his paws together in mock eagerness.
"Well, doesn't that just take the cake! We came here to lay around in the sun, stuff ourselves silly, maybe get a tan... but now we see that we can restore the 'Balance of Nature'!" said the meerkat with mockingly dramatic emphasis on those last words. Pumbaa was taken in by the act easily, as he always was.
"Yay! This is the greatest Timon!" The naïve warthog began hopping a circle around Timon, who stared at his friend with bleak, condescending eyes. "We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes!" chanted Pumbaa, until Timon's paw finally snapped out and grabbed Pumbaa's tusk, pulling him down so they could be face-to-face.
"Are you nuts?!?" yelled Timon, his eyes huge and his mouth even bigger. "We're getting out of here before something even weirder happens! I'm not going to work for my food! This was supposed to be a vacation! We're bug eaters, not glory gluttons! Besides, to get this kind of glory, we have to work. And working most definitely interrupts our very busy and full schedule of doing absolutely nothing for the rest of our lives!" Pumbaa's face suddenly got very pleading, his eyes taking on the exact aura of a sad puppy dog's.
"Aww, come on Timon! It'll be fun, I promise! And when we're done we can eat allll the locusts we want! Please, can we go restore the balance of nature pleasepleaseprettypleasepleeeeaaasssseee?"
Timon sighed, covering his eyes with his free paw. "Oy... I'm gonna regret this, but... okay. Pumbaa... let's go be heroes!" Timon finished his statement by striking a heroic pose, pointing his finger off in some random point in the sky. Pumbaa jumped up beside.
"Oh, goody! This is going to be so much fun!"
"Right, whatever, Pumbaa... now come on, let's go see what we can find out."
They began walking off down the street. However, unbeknownst to them, a pair of devious, scheming eyes glowered at them from behind the corner of a nearby building. The figure watched them go with unswerving self- confidence, knowing those two bumbling fools would never be able to uncover his insidious plans. Once they were gone, the figure leaped theatrically from the shadows. He was a muscular fellow, with a large, round, red nose and combed back raven hair. He was wearing a clean cut white tuxedo and black dress shoes, and he wielded a polished pitchfork. Making sure nobody was around, he began laughing imperiously.
"Hahahahaha! I, Cultivator Quint, the most affluent, ambitious, irrigated, organic, miserly, malicious, and home-grown farming mogul this side of the dust bowl, am nearly complete with my dastardly plans! Those two will never find the locusts... for I have them all for myself! I will soon be poised to unleash them solely upon my strongest competitors and wipe out their crops, securing my own monopoly over the farming community! I shall be the richest farmer in the state! But why stop there? I could be the richest agricultural magistrate in the country, nay, the world! Muahahahaha! Muahahahahaaaa!"
A/N: Well well well. It seems we have encountered the antagonist! Reveal your criticisms, ye who read this fic, and tell me if this guy is a keeper!