Still don't own it. I noticed That Nuka has a funny tail, thought I'd put some explanation in for why it's all bent like that. I know it's similar to the start of the first movie, it's supposed to be a cute homage thing.
Grinning, Kovu stretched in the sunrise, then turned and scampered into his family's cave, leaping over the lesser lionesses and occasionally stepping on a hyena in his hurry to reach his father, who slept at the very back, separate from the other creatures in there, his queen at his side.
"Daaad!" Kovu whined, nudging the sleeping lion, "Dad, wake up!" He grabbed one ear and tugged it. "Get up, we gotta go!"
Zira growled in her throat and nudged her mate beside her. "Your son is awake."
Scar didn't move, "We agreed before sunrise he's your son."
"No," she snarled, "That was Nuka."
"You're quite welcome to Nuka all day." Scar muttered.
"Dearest, do you want to baby-sit Nuka all day?" Zira growled as her youngest cub began to head-butt his father, nudging her in the process.
"Good god no." Scar snapped, trying to remain asleep.
Zira sat up and snarled into his ear, "Then get up and deal with Kovu!"
Scar groaned and lifted himself up, holding Kovu off with one paw, "As is blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes, I'm up, Kovu." He yawned and stretched. "Are your siblings ready?"
Kovu nodded, "But Nuka said he didn't want to come." The cub turned and ran to the entrance of the cave, "C'mon dad, the sun's rising!"
Scar sighed and stretched, slinking out into the rising sun, where Kovu and his sister Vitani were waiting. Scar didn't question why Nuka didn't want to be there, he was becoming a juvenile lion, and had started trying to hunt alone. He never brought home anything but injuries.
Scar mused as he walked away from the cave, that his eldest son was very quickly turning into a major embarrassment for the entire family. Even the two cubs who rolled around in front of him, play-fighting, sometimes hung their heads in shame when Nuka came back to the pride limping and bleeding with nothing to show for his cuts and bruises. Still, Scar tried to ignore it, Nuka was his son, and blood was thicker than water.
Scar led the two playful cubs over to a fallen tree trunk and climbed up it to the highest point, waiting calmly for the two to reach him. When they did, he began to speak.
"Kovu, Vitani, everything you see before you is our kingdom. One day, I will pass on, and it will be your joint duty to ensure we remain in power."
Kovu frowned in confusion at the deadened landscape, ending with an almost dry river. "But dad, what about all that light place over the river?"
Scar's claws gripped the ground. "That was ours too, once. But I was usurped from my throne by a lion named Simba. Now we must remain here, but we still have noble blood, we are still royalty."
Vitani smiled and nuzzled her father's leg, but Kovu seemed more confused, "Why would I wanna be king of this place? It's all dead!"
Scar snarled and pinned the cub to the ground with one paw, "Because, Kovu, the outlands are OURS. They may not be very attractive, but we don't turn our backs on something just because it's not perfect. I mean, look at your older brother!" he lifted his paw from the trembling cub, remembering at the last minute that the child meant no harm by what he said. "Remember, my children, you must never try to face a pride lander alone. Take others with you, and even then, use every dirty trick you can think of to fight them." He sighed and stared at Pride rock, wondering if Simba had cubs of his own, if he was telling the little nitwits to always be on their guard for outlanders.
"So one day the whole outlands will be mine?" Kovu asked, obviously trying to get back into his father's favour.
Scar nodded, "Yes," he leapt down from the tree and looked up at the two, "Come along, I'll tell you everything you must know about being king."
Kovu looked at his sister, who smiled and nodded, "You go ahead Kovu, he's talkin to you."
Kovu grinned and leapt down on the branches and landed beside his father, purring with glee at being the favoured one.
The two lions began to walk slowly through their kingdom, there were no grasslands or herds of antelopes here, but the place did have a kind of serene peace. There was no noise of fighting, because the pride saved their energy for hunting, so there was a silence here that made it much easier to speak.
Scar was just going over the finer details of making sure not to over-hunt anything when there came an ear-splitting scream from the river that joined the two lands. Scar frowned in confusion and ran towards their only water supply, kicking up dust as he did and almost causing his young son to loose sight of him.
He peered over the edge of the bank and groaned. He needn't have ran so quickly, it was Nuka who was shrieking like a girl.
He was desperately trying to climb up the bank, but was being held back by a highly amused Alligator, who was chewing on his tail thoughtfully.
"DAAAAD!" Nuka screamed into his father' face as he managed to pull himself up a little further. "IT'S GONNA EAT ME!!!" his eyes had gone wide and almost psychopathic to look at and his scraggly mane was stuck upwards in terror.
Scar's expression didn't change, "I rather doubt that, Nuka. It doesn't look like it needs an upset stomach." He sighed, "Well, I suppose we'll have to cut the end of your tail off…" he almost smirked when the juvenile lion screamed again and began to pull harder at the ground. "If you keep doing that you're going to loose the end of it anyway."
"HELP MEEEEE!"
"In good time." Scar looked down at Kovu, who was obviously struggling not to burst into a fit of hysterics. "Now then, this is a prime example of why lions do not hunt alone. In fact, if there were more lionesses, you wouldn't have to hunt at all, but at the moment, you'd better remember to take someone with you when you hunt." He raised an eyebrow at the whimpering lion, "Stop that, it can't hurt that badly."
"Its gonna eat me!" Nuka repeated, resorting to squeaky mouse-voices.
Scar rolled his eyes, "Kovu, how do you think we should get him out of this?" Scar mentally added 'Assuming we want to.'
Kovu appeared thoughtful for a moment, concentrating on his struggling brother and the gator below him.
"He's gotta go limp, like he's dead, then it won't want him cuz he smells like he's gone off." Kovu replied.
"IF I GO LIMP IT'LL EAT ME!" Nuka wailed.
Scar sighed, bored of this situation, "Fair enough, come on Kovu." He turned to walk away and Nuka's wails increased.
"OKAY I'LL TRY! I'LL TRY! DON'T LET IT EAT MEEE!!" he screamed like a siren, then released his grip on the bank and tumbled backwards towards the gator. He landed on a small patch of mud by the water, and the two lions watched as the big reptile sniffed him a couple of times, then made a face and slunk away into the water.
Mere seconds later, Nuka had raced up the bank and was examining his now very bent tail.
"Maybe it'll stick that way!" Kovu chirped, poking the fluff at the end and watching his brother whimper.
Nuka's eyes widened, "It won't!" he turned to look at the unimpressed Scar, "will it?"
"Probably, yes. That'll teach you not to be stupid." Scar growled, "Go back to your mother, she'll find something useful for you to do. You are not to go hunting again without my express permission." He turned, "Come along Kovu." And the two left Nuka alone by the water.
And so it ended up that Nuka was appointed Kovu's babysitter until he could learn to stop looking for trouble.
"…I'm sick of gator." Zira snarled, clawing at the carcass of their latest kill, trying to get through the leathery hide. "Too much work for meat that tastes like fish."
Scar nodded, chewing on his one share, "It's revolting." He dropped the meat and watched some hyenas fight over it. "Remember when we ruled the pride lands, and we had zebra every night?"
"Or antelope." Zira added, resting her head against Scar's mane, "Sometimes even a wildebeest, if the hunt was good." Her stomach growled.
Scar smiled, of course, the hunt had always been good with Zira in charge, she may have been a little reckless with where she placed her anger in the pride, but she knew how to hunt far better than Sarabi's teams ever had. She had once, as a cub, come home to pride rock with a flamingo, an impressive catch even for an adult.
"I could murder a zebra." She muttered glumly, "Even a little one with mites and green bits."
Scar raised an eyebrow, he'd never seen her so genuinely desperate for something. "I suppose we could sneak into the pride lands." He suggested, "pick off one of the little sick ones, if we're quiet no-one'll ever know."
Zira grinned and began to get up, "I'll fetch my best hunters-"
Scar shook his head, "No, just us, I'm not sharing a meal fit for a king with them. Besides, the less of us go the better."
Getting into the pride lands was no problem, there were plenty of fallen locks and stepping stones to get across the alligator-infested river, and even the big, clumsy reptiles knew better than to try and fight Zira on a mission.
Once in the lands, a kind of intoxication filled the two, for a moment they fought the strange urge to race around in the grass playing like two cubs. They knew how dangerous this would be, and resisted.
"Simba's lionesses won't be out until dusk." Scar muttered, crouching down among the grass, "Let's just pick off a meal and-" he stopped, breathing in a few times. "…Do you smell that?"
Zira sniffed, "…Another lion." She crouched down lower to the ground, "sorry, lioness. Young… a cub."
Scar snarled, only one thing was important about that scent in his mind, not it's gender, age or anything else. "It smells of Simba." His claws started to knead the ground. "It'll be his cub…"
Zira began to shuffle through the grass, Scar close behind her, searching for this cub.
"Tag! You're it!" a sweet, little girly voice called. "Tag, you're it! You're it!" she giggled.
Scar and Zira saw her then; a cub coloured golden, like her father, but with feminine features that spoke of Nala. Both scowled and crouched deeper, not sure about what they were going to do, but hating the cub all the same.
Scar's eyes widened as another scent caught him, and he spotted a dark brown cub, with a black tuft of fur on his head.
"Kovu!" he hissed.