"Nala, don't pull on it like that!"
"Come on, Simba – it doesn't hurt that much."
Nala was in the process of trying to pull Simba by his tail out of a bush he had gotten himself stuck into. Apparently before jumping out of a tree he forgot to look at the ground. Nala thought he should really take some more time to survey his surroundings before he made rash decisions. He was too quick to act – couldn't he use his brain just a little for once?
"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Simba cried as Nala tugged on his tail, slowly pulling him out of the bush. "This! Ow! Is! Ow! Really! Ow! Hurting!"
Finally – with one final tug – Simba popped out of the bush, his body covered in thorns. Nala laughed at the sight.
"You could have been more careful," Simba told him.
"You could have been more careful," Nala repeated. "Next time you decide to go jumping out of a tree, make sure you're looking at the ground b efore you jump."
"Well, I was concentrating on my… uh… technique," he lied.
"Sure you were, Simba," said Nala sarcastically. "I believe you, all right."
"You're mocking me, aren't you?" Simba asked.
Nala laughed. "Why would I do that, Simba? After all, you're so perfect, aren't you?"
Simba pulled a thorn out of his paw with his teeth. "Stupid thorns," he remarked, spitting it out onto the ground. "Who invented these things, anyway?"
"The Thorn King?" Nala suggested jokingly.
Simba extracted another thorn from his body, wincing. "Why me?" he moaned. "Can it really get much worse?"
Suddenly, something hard struck Simba on the head, causing him to stagger about the ground wildly, a dazed smile on his face. He laughed and fell to the ground.
Nala gasped in shock. "Simba!" she cried, falling to his side. "Are you okay?"
"Boy, those flies pack a punch…" Simba mumbled before slipping into unconsciousness.
Nala turned her head to the side, and she narrowed her eyes in suspicion when she spotted a rock on the ground lying a few feet away from Simba's unconscious body. She looked ahead – and just in time, too – to see a lion quickly hide behind a tree. "Why do I get the feeling I know who threw the rock?" she asked herself, before deciding to investigate.
Whoever it was, they sure weren't going to get away with knocking out her best friend. Big lion or not, she was going to give whoever it was a piece of her mind.
Mtumwa snickered from behind the tree. "Scar will be so proud of me," he said to himself. "He'll make me his second in command, his partner – maybe even his best friend. Now that would be something! And when he's King, I could be his Royal Advisor. Mom and Dad would be so proud!"
Of course, Mtumwa had completely ignored the precise instructions Scar had instructed him on. First of all, he had failed to make Simba's death look like an accident, so Scar wasn't exactly going to be pleased when Mtumwa reported back to him.
And second, Simba wasn't actually dead. Just knocked out, that's all. The worst that could possibly happen to Simba is that he might have a little bump on his head for the next few days. Nothing life-threatening.
So really, Mtumwa had failed to do the task Scar had given him. And to make matters worse, Nala had seen him do it.
And there she was, standing next to him, ready to have a confrontation with him.
"Something funny?" Nala asked, unimpressed, interrupting Mtumwa's victorious snickering.
Mtumwa yelled in shock when he saw Nala, and jumped backwards, sliding across the ground on his back. She didn't look happy at all… Who was she again?
Mtumwa winced when he realised that was the girl who was with Simba. His girlfriend, most likely. She didn't look like someone who would go down without a fight.
"H–Hi," Mtumwa stammered nervously from the ground, waving at her. "How can I… help you?" He laughed nervously.
Nala raised an eyebrow at this guy. He looked crazy – insane, even. The type of person who would throw rocks at cubs just for kicks. Apparently Nala's mother had to put up with a few of these psychos when she was a cub. Well, if her mother could deal with them, then so could Nala.
Well, what she didn't know was that Mtumwa was just an obsesses fan of Scar, mindlessly doing whatever Scar demanded from him. After all, fans would do absolutely anything for their idols.
"Well, you could start by telling me why you threw a rock at my—"
"Look, I'm sorry I hit your boyfriend, okay?" Mtumwa interrupted quickly. "I wasn't aiming for him, I was – I was trying to hit that tree over there." Mtumwa pointed to a random tree, stupidly picking the one that was behind him.
"Yeah, right," Nala said, not believing Mtumwa's story one bit. "First of all, he's not my—"
"Okay, okay, I wasn't really actually throwing the rock. I was just looking at it really closely, and then I… noticed some nice, juicy fruit hanging from that branch, and when I reached up to grab the fruit it… flew out of my paw."
Nala looked up at the tree. It was a dead tree with no leaves. No fruit whatsoever. Nala didn't even think this tree had had anything growing from it in about a hundred years.
"You do realise this tree is dead, don't you?" Nala asked Mtumwa.
Mtumwa looked up at the decayed tree, and laughed nervously when he realised it truly was a lifeless tree. "Oops," he said, smiling. "Well, I…" Mtumwa put his paw to his ear, and pretended to hear something. "I think I hear my mother calling. Gotta go!"
Mtumwa quickly ran away, leaving Nala standing on her own, wondering what the heck just happened. That lion had to be the weirdest one she had ever seen in her life. The people you meet these days…