There, next chapter up. Thanks for all the reviews for the last one... and I'm sorry, that I don't get around to reply to all the reviews, but things are busy around here. Anyway, here it is, enjoy. And please do review - Atrice.
Part 8 – Respect
It was another early morning, when the king named Scar woke up to strange and high voices and sounds outside his cave.
"Sire… it sounds like a…" Zazu began in his cage, and the king finished the sentence.
"…fight. Indeed it does, I wonder what it is now?" Scar stood up and looked at the bird. Sometimes they got along just fine.
"Hunger?" the bird suggested, and Scar nodded – that was the usual excuse for fighting these days. He went outside, to a rare sunny day, and just as he thought, he found hyenas and lionesses down in front of Pride Rock. A few lionesses were fighting some hyenas, with a lot of other hyenas standing around them, cheering for their race of course. Scar sighed and walked down to them. "Stop it!" he called. They all stopped and looked up. "What is this? We need to stick together, all of us!"
"But we're…" a hyena began.
"Hungry, and so what? We don't need fights, not now!" Scar said and was a bit amazed by his own words. But it was true, for now he didn't like a fight. "Who started?" he asked as the lionesses also straightened up and looked at him.
"He did… we only came walking." One of them said, he remembered her as Keira. He turned to look at the hyenas, did they have anything to say? They did…
"They didn't! They provoked us!" the hyena from before said.
"I doubt that… but please, try to get along. What say you?" Scar asked them all, and the hyenas sent mad glances at the lionesses who looked coldly back at them.
"I won't, unless he apologize!" another lioness said, and Scar smiled when he saw it was Zira. The lioness had gotten several bites on her body, and seemed like the one who'd been fighting most.
"Apologize to you? You must be mad… Scar, we've done nothing…" the hyena complained, and the king moved closer.
"It sure didn't look like that… do you apologize?" he asked and sent a hidden glimpse towards Zira. If this was what she wanted… the hyena took a few steps back.
"I'd rather die, than apologize to a lioness! They've never done anything for us!" the hyena shouted and jumped further back as Scar moved in on him, a gloomy look in his eyes – for a moment they seemed a darker green than usual. The other hyenas backed away.
"If that is how you feel… goodbye." Without another warning, Scar leapt onto the hyena, nailing it to the ground while he let his teeth rip the hyena neck apart. A strange sound of bones and flesh splitting, then silence as the king moved away from the victim. He looked down at the hyena and spat a bit of its own blood out on the dead carcass. "This is the reality you face, if I find anyone fighting again!" Scar left the scene, with both hyenas and lionesses stunned after what they'd just seen the king do. So he meant what he said. None of those present would ever go against him, they knew that much. To prove it right, Zira excused herself and went towards his cave.
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Scar had only just returned to his cave, when he heard someone behind him, and jumped around. Forgetting all about the bird in the cage.
"Zira… what do you want now?" the king said, a bit annoyed with her. Couldn't she just leave him alone, at least sometimes?
"Well, you sure earned my respect today, Scar! I believe in you, your worth as king!" she said with a smirk, and walked closer to him.
"Thanks for letting me know, but I don't care… I am king, if you believe in me or not." Scar explained and sat down on his small pedestal.
"I know, I'm…" she began, and almost with a laugh, he interrupted her.
"Sorry? You always are, dear… until today, right? Don't be sorry, all is good." He went down from his pedestal again, deciding to give her whatever she wanted. But before he made a move on it, he remembered Zazu, watching it all. "Come with me… please?" he said, as gentle as he hadn't spoken in years. And Zira followed him.