Chapter XXX

Taking one more look at his unconscious friend, Simba turned around and treaded forth to the others who were each looking intently upon him. Breathing deeply, Simba sat down beside Nala once more and looked ahead of him to the laptop.

"Well that'll give us about an hour or two before he wakes up." Simba said.

Nala looked ahead to Pumbaa, who appeared to be rather indifferent about the whole situation. "I guess you're in charge of this now, Pumbaa." She said to him. The warthog scooted back over to his original spot, and as quick as he could he closed the page with the Timon/Shenzi material, which earned him a few collective sighs of relief from behind. After four days of being secretly tucked away, the tab was finally closed. He sighed.

"Well then... today definitely isn't going the way I thought it would." Pumbaa said.

"Boy, isn't that the truth." Vitani murmured to him. After a brief moment of silence, Simba cleared his throat. "So Pumbaa... what fanfic were we going to hear today?" He asked. When he did, the warthog unexpectedly shook his head.

"Oh uh, actually Simba... we weren't going to do that today."

Simba and a few others raised their eyebrows at the same time. Kiara was the first one to react. "What? Why not?" She asked. Pumbaa replied to her,

"Before... well, this morning happened, Timon and I were thinking: You guys seemed to be taking that dirty art kind of hard. And he was actually feeling pretty bad about how you had to see all that. Even I thought it was disgusting."

"I'm listening..." Kopa said skeptically when the warthog took a moment to pause. He continued, "So we were thinking of maybe showing you all some more of the regular art your fans made about you. The kind that doesn't... well, make you sick."

"I think 'make our eyes bleed' would be a better way to put it." Kovu cut in firmly.

Kopa stood up. "What kind of art, Pumbaa?"

The warthog smiled at him. "The good kind, Kopa. The ones that are just made by normal people again." He replied.

Kopa sat back down. When he did, Vitani leaned into him and whispered, "I'd trust Pumbaa over Timon with this sort of thing any day of the week."

"Although maybe I should warn you now..." He went on, his tone beginning to sound a hint reluctant. "Some of it you'll like and some of it you won't. In fact... some of it you'll probably hate, actually."

"So much for that." Kopa sneered to Vitani.

"Trust me, if it doesn't involve me having sex with Simba for no reason at all, it's already better!" Kovu said loudly, which got him some odd looks from the others, Simba especially. His ears drooped.

"I've really gotta learn to keep my mouth shut." He muttered to himself.

Another moment of silence passed before Kiara asked him, "So basically we're going back to the fan art, right?"

Pumbaa nodded. "If you want, I can start you off with the kind I know you'll like." He said with enthusiasm rising in his voice.

Then Vitani sneered in an incredibly sarcastic tone, "No, I thought we'd start with the kind we hate. What do you think we want, some kind of relief after that review?"

This got a few laughs from the others, especially Kopa who lovingly placed his paw on her right shoulder. She rested her muzzle into his brown mane as Kopa asked, "All right, seriously, what'd you have in mind, Pumbaa?"

The warthog gave no response as he leaned into the laptop's screen, and carefully using his hooves, steadily typed something into the search bar. He clicked around a few places for a while, pulling up the new fan art. While he did, anxiety rose for them all. Although they trusted Pumbaa more than Timon to show them fan art, they were still afraid of what could possibly come up. But then Pumbaa finally moved out of the way for all to see. And the instant he did, not only did the anxiety melt away immediately, but the cooing could begin.

He had pulled up an absolutely adorable drawn image of what appeared to be Kiara as a baby innocently biting Kopa in the tail while he was a cub. And of course, that was how she was waking him up in the picture as indicated by Simba and Nala's exhausted looks just beside them. It was labeled "Wakey Wakey".

Nala was the first one to say something after she gasped and her smile grew instantly upon looking at this for a few seconds. "Oh my gosh... that is adorable!" The lioness cooed. "You look so cute in this, Kiara!"

Kiara blushed vibrantly when she saw how small she was in the picture, plus the expression on Kopa's face in it. She chuckled before she said, "Awww. That is the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life! Look at both of us!"

"Look at you!" Kovu said smiling radiantly. "Is that what you looked like when you were a baby? You were adorable!"

"I hope our cubs turn out like that." The lioness replied, giving her mate a lick on his muzzle.

Simba was the next one to say something after he finally managed to close his mouth in awe. He smirked awkwardly. "Wow... I have to say, that's exactly how you both looked at those ages." The lion said to Kopa and Kiara. "Even though Kiara wasn't born yet when Kopa was at that age... oh what the hell. This is gorgeous!"

Then it was finally Kopa's turn to speak. His wild blush could not be contained or concealed. His mouth fell open in humility and he tried to look away from the laptop and everyone cooing at it out of exasperation, but Vitani stopped him from doing that.

"Oh, look at that, Kopa!" She said happily to him. "Look at how sweet that picture is!"

Kopa covered his eyes with his paw. His pace of breathing grew heavier when he said, "Well this is embarrassing."

"Embarrassing?" Vitani asked curiously. "What for?"

Reluctantly, Kopa moved his paw away from his eyes and gazed upon the image again. If lions were able sweat with anxiety, Kopa would've been covered in it at that moment. His forehead felt hot and his cheeks were burning red.

"Just look at it." He said to his mate. "Look at me, I'm clearly in pain right there."

Vitani smirked and looked back at the picture. "Well, that definitely looks like one hell of a wake up call. But still, look at how real that looks though."

Here Simba chose to speak to his son. "And don't you think it would've been great for things to have really been like that, Kopa?"

The prince gave him an odd look. "You mean you'd want me to get bitten in the tail every morning, dad?"

"Well that too." Kovu interrupted with a joking laugh. Kopa glared at him.

Simba shook his head. "No, I mean to have been able to see Kiara be born. If you were around when she was a baby like she is there."

He stood up and walked over to his son, now giving him an earnestly warm look. Kopa scooted back in embarrassment. "You would've been a great brother to her." Simba said as he placed a paw on his son's shoulder. Kopa felt at least some of the embarrassment trickle away now seeing as his father wasn't going to humiliate him about it.

"Thanks, then." The prince said.

"You know?" Kiara started from the other side of the den from them, which got their attention. "Just because of this, I think I can say I now have at least some faith in our fan base again."

"I don't know about that just yet, Kiara." Vitani said to her sister-in-law with her tone becoming more serious. "With all the crap we've seen so far, it's gonna take a lot more than one cute picture for me to have hope again."

Here, Pumbaa spoke up to the lioness. "Oh don't worry, Vitani. If that's what you want, then I think I know what I should show you next."

"Is it a drawing of whoever the hell wrote Lion of the Rings getting kicked in the ass by me?" She eagerly asked. Pumbaa shook his head.

"No."

"What about whoever made that review getting smacked in the face?" She guessed again.

This time Pumbaa replied, "Well actually, yes and no. No because it isn't him... but also yes because it actually does have someone who deserves it getting hit in the face."

"I like it already." Vitani replied with a smug smile and tone.

Simba walked back to his spot next to Nala as Pumbaa clicked on something else, looking intently on the screen in an attempt to find what he was looking for. Silence fell upon them before Kovu broke it.

"So what've you got next?" Kovu asked him with only a faint hint of anxiety left in his tone. Pumbaa slowly looked over to the lion and smirked.

"Remember all those people who said they hated Kiara for no good reason?"

Both Kovu and his mate perked up at the mention of this. Kiara gasped very subtly. "Yeah... what about them?" Kovu asked reluctantly and with fear glowing in his voice. Pumbaa narrowed his eyes and his smirk grew even larger.

"Then this is for the both of you."

And with that, Pumbaa stood up and moved out of the way for all to see what he had pulled up on the screen. It took a moment for everyone to really comprehend what it was they were looking at, but it didn't take long for them to see its purpose. It was a four panel comic. The first panel showed a human girl drawing something with cub Kiara watching beside her. The second panel showed another girl showing up behind them and angrily ranting on how they hate Kiara, complete with an intentionally over-the-top 'Kiara sux' T-shirt. The third panel showed the girl who was drawing beside Kiara gloriously creaming the other in the face, and the expression cub Kiara had when she did this was very cartoony. And the last panel wasn't much more than Kiara thanking the girl for doing such a thing.

They didn't even need the speech bubbles to understand what was going on. Immediately when she got to the last panel, Kiara was the first one to burst out in laughing. Seconds later, Kovu did too.

"Oh holy crap, this is great!" Kovu said enthusiastically. "Finally they get what the hell they deserve!"

He placed a paw halfway down Kiara's back as he turned to her. "Guess whoever made this doesn't hate you either, Kiara."

Kiara looked over to both of her parents now. "Mother, father! You understand what this is, right?"

Simba and Nala squinted at the comic for a moment more before they both widened their eyes. Simba spoke first. "Oh my... this... this has to be the most glorious thing I've seen from this place yet!"

Nala heartily agreed. "Wow. I can see why you chose this, Pumbaa. Yes, this is absolutely what those people deserve!"

"Whoever that is right there, she's doing what I've wanted to do to them since I found out what they think!" Kopa added, holding back his laughter. "It's like my ultimate fantasy come true!"

"Same here, Kopa!" Kovu said back to him.

Vitani looked at the comic for a few moments longer before she smiled happily at it. "You guys remember when you first told me people hate Kiara, and I said I wanted to smack them in the face? I think this is good enough right here for now."

Nala looked over to her daughter and smiled. "Looks like at least someone was willing to stand up for you here." She said warmly to her. Kiara blushed. "Yeah, it does feel good." She admitted. "Thanks for showing us that, Pumbaa!" Kiara then said to Pumbaa.

"You don't know how much I wanted to see something like that!" Kovu added in an absurdly pleased tone. Pumbaa blushed.

"That was for you guys." He replied earnestly. "I knew you were still upset about the whole thing, so I thought this'd be fun for you to see."

"And we thank you for it, Pumbaa." Simba said. "It was refreshing to see it."

"It's a breath of fresh freaking air is what it is!" Kopa added. "To hell with those idiots to hate you Kiara, this is what they deserve!"

Kiara stood up when her brother said this. Facing him directly, she sighed deeply before she replied, "Well Kopa... I have to say, I can't say that really bothers me as much as it did... but it does feel nice to know someone's willing to stand up for me like this."

A brief pause came to pass before Vitani said out loud with a hint of hesitation, "Okay... now I think I'm starting to have hope in these fans again. But I still need to see more."

Pumbaa replied to her, "In that case, you ought to see some of the other stuff they did here. The same one who drew this does other art about you all and... just..."

"What?" Vitani asked him. "What do they do?"

Pumbaa took a moment to think of how to word his next sentence before he replied, "Well... let's just say they are not your average fan artist around here."

Simba was now about to ask what he meant by such a thing, but before he could, Pumbaa turned back around and began to type something else in. He clicked 'search' with his hoof and he scooted out of the way for others to see. He had searched for the name of the same author who did the comic, and slowly he began to scroll through the results. As he did, all six of the lions' breaths were slowly taken completely from them. Upon the laptop's screen appeared some of the most well done, carefully drawn, and accurately designed and colored art about themselves that they had ever seen up to that point. Simba himself gasped. Whoever it was Pumbaa had looked up, it appeared as though they had extreme interest in what they though Kiara and Kovu's cubs would look like. Various drawings and comics of young cubs were abundant amongst their work, and they looked nothing short of perfect.

Kiara was the first one to say something. "Holy crap... t-these look amazing!" she managed to say with an astounded tone in her voice. "They look exactly like us!"

"Hot damn..." Kopa said. "These are awesome!"

More astonished gasps could be heard from each of them as Pumbaa continued to go through the results, growing to absolutely love the reactions the art was now getting. The illustrations depicting Kiara and/or Kovu with their cubs were especially interesting to look at since that sort of thing was going to happen to their real life counterparts anyway. The artist who made them seemed to stick with three well defined cubs, and in every picture they were of different ages. In some they were newborns, but in others they were teenagers and even full grown adults.

"I feel like they're telling us in advance what they'll look like." Kovu said to Kiara with wide eyes. "That's exactly what I imagined them looking at those ages!"

One image in particular that got their attention was one of an absolutely adorable nature: One of their cubs was coming out of a thorn bush with a flower in his mouth, preparing to give it to a girl cub his age with pure white fur. He was covered in thorns, but it looked as though he was doing it for the sake of the white cub. Kiara gasped before she cooed, "Awww! That's so sweet!"

Simba nodded. "I once did that same thing for Nala... even though I didn't have to go through a thorn bush to get that flower."

"Oh, I remember that, Simba." Nala said softly to her mate. The lion blushed. "That was so sweet of you."

As Pumbaa scrolled through these results, he said smugly to them, "What did I tell you all? Not everyone wants to draw you in dirty ways."

"And every single one of these were made by one person?" Vitani questioned sounding incredibly amazed. Pumbaa nodded.

"I didn't even know anyone could draw us this good! Goddamn!" The lioness went on. And she was right. Whoever had drawn this art had put an absolutely unheard of amount of detail into her depictions of them. Every color, every texture, and every size was completely accurate to their real life counterparts. The best part of all for them personally was that the artist seemed to show respect for every one of them. None of the drawings ever ridiculed or insulted any of them in even the subtlest of ways, and that was an especially large relief for them all especially if it involved Kiara.

"Hey, look at that!" Simba said raising his paw. "It looks like they're showing what it would've been like if Kopa and Kiara grew up together!"

And this was correct. Several of the illustrations depicted both of Simba and Nala's cubs at the same age and the same time as siblings, something that they had only wished could've happened in real life. A few of them had Kopa as a cub and Kiara as an infant, which got some absurdly pleasant reactions out of them all, Nala especially. Vitani sighed happily.

"This has gotta be the longest we've gone seeing cub art without having at least two of them bone." She sneered.

As the art progressed, they saw a particularly well done image of Kiara evidently teaching her teenage daughter how to hunt on her first time, alluding to her own first experience with that. Kiara smiled.

"Aww, look how nice that is." She said softly amongst Nala and Vitani's impressed coos of admiration for how cute they were.

Kopa leaned into Vitani and whispered to her, "You know something, Vitani? I am... so glad that whoever did these doesn't do smut off of us... as far as I know."

Vitani chuckled. "Geeze, could you imagine how real that'd look?"

The lion shuddered. "If I had to, I think there's a good chance I'd have the urge to just drown myself."

Vitani replied, "I had that urge the second I saw people seriously hooking me up with Simba."

With that, Pumbaa cleared his throat and stopped scrolling through the results of the new fan art, looking at all of their reactions. All of them were smiling joyously.

"So you guys said you wanted to see clean art... that's what we have here." The warthog said.

Simba was the first one to speak. "Pumbaa... thanks to that, I now have faith in our fans again."

Nala nodded beside him. "Yes, me too, Simba. If one person could do all this... I mean my God, look at it! It looks real!"

Then Kovu stood up and walked over to the laptop, intently looking at the image Pumbaa left it on. It was one of himself and Kiara as cubs. And much to the confusion of the others, he gently placed his paw upon the screen covering about half the image. He gasped.

"Damn... this is exact!" He said suddenly. "Look at this, the way its drawn matches perfectly with my paw! It's literally perfect!"

It took a moment, but several other gasps were heard as the others saw what he meant. Kiara also gasped upon seeing this, standing up also and leaning in close to the laptop's screen. She squinted long and hard before she said, "Wow... you're right, Kovu. It's like I could really touch it!"

"If you do, just keep it above the waist." her mate replied in a humorous tone. Kiara laughed.

As Kovu and Kiara slowly went back to their spots beside the laptop moment later, Pumbaa gave a proud expression to the others. He said with confidence, "So what do you have to say now?"

Vitani turned to her mate. "Hey Kopa?" She started. Kopa looked intently at her. "Do you remember what I said back in the Water Hole about being tempted to hate the art all together?... I think I can take that back now."

Kopa nodded. "Yeah, same here, Vitani."

"This is fantastic, Pumbaa!" Simba said proudly to his friend. "You never told us the art could be this good before!"

Pumbaa nodded. He could easily see that what he wanted to do was done. Relief from the Confused Matthew review had finally been achieved for them all. "So, you want to see more good art from different people now?"

Then Vitani sneered in an incredibly sarcastic tone, "No, I thought we'd go back to the kind we hate. I mean I'm just so curious about what insane sex pairings they could've possibly missed, aren't you?"

This got a few laughs from the others, especially Kopa who lovingly placed his paw on her left shoulder. He calmed down while he said, "See, that's why I love you, Vitani."

Vitani abruptly slammed her foot against Kopa's tail, which made him suddenly twinge loudly in pain. Vitani smirked. "And that's why I love you, Kopa."

Author's Note: Just in case anyone doesn't get the joke with Kovu putting his paw on the screen, I was poking fun at how closely the art matches the animation of the Lion King films, and if the characters here exist in an animated world... well this just got to bordering on Inception levels of fourth wall destruction, didn't it?

Sorry once again about the late update, I'm still getting used to my braces, which has made it hard to concentrate on writing. After having them watch Confused Matthew's review of The Lion King, I felt that these characters deserved a break to see the lighter side of their fan base.

Also, this chapter has been a tribute to one of my favorite, if not most favorite, Lion King artist currently active on DeviantArt. The user is named TC-96, and her Lion King art is absolutely incredible. It could very well be the best I've seen from any Lion King artist currently on there, and the fact that she's also a fan of Kiara and has stood up for her is a massive bonus. Even her earlier works are pretty impressive and look like they could've come straight from the films. I highly recommend checking out TC-96's work, I can assure that you will not be disappointed. She as a person and her work has been an absolute inspiration to me in every sense of the word.

Anyway, the next chapter will involve them delving deeper into the non-sexual fan art about themselves. And although their faith has been restored in it for now, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

I hope you enjoy, and please review!