"You annoying little… thing!" Tama exclaimed as she held Tojo's head under the water. He continued to struggle against her grasp, desperately trying to prevent himself from drowning. Tama sure knew how to keep a hold of his head, though. Maybe she'd had previous practise…

Tama noticed Tojo was beginning to struggle less, and violently pulled his head back up to the surface, gulping in air frantically. "What… did… you… do… that… for?" he asked in between deep breaths. Did she always have to react so harshly?

She responded with an angry slap to Tojo's face. "That enough water for you?" she roared. "Or do you want some more?"

"No, no, I've had plenty!" he replied, swimming away from her, his paws resting over the edge of the water hole. "Jeez, Tama, do you always have to be so mean?"

"Hmm… let me think," she faked a thoughtful look, staring up at the sky. "Yes! I'm an evil genius! That's the point, you fool!"

"I like to think of you as nothing more than a bully," Tojo told her. "And I think this slavery is a violation of my rights as a lion cub, too."

"You have no rights, Tojo," said Tama. "You got rid of all of those when you b ecame my slave in the first place! Now I order you to get out of the water hole right now and—"

Tama's sentence was cut off when someone wrenched her out of the water hole, and she found herself staring into a pair of menacing brown eyes. It only took her a few seconds to realise that she was staring into the menacing eyes of a lion – and a rather scary looking one, at that.

"Where's the Prince?" the lion snarled, causing Tama to narrow her eyes in response. That wasn't something she was likely to tell this new arrival.

"What makes you think I know the Prince, and even if I did, what makes you think I'd tell you?" Tama said to the lion bravely. "Who the heck do you think you are, anyway?"

The lion replied by violently shoving Tama onto her back; she felt her body being pressed down hard into the dirt, and then she felt a pair of jagged claws being pushed up to her throat, ready to kill her.

"You can call me Mtumwa," the lion told her. "But you won't get to call me that much if you don't tell me where Prince Simba is right now."

Tama looked desperately to Tojo for help. "Tojo – help me!"

Tojo shrugged, climbing out of the water hole. "Nah. Don't think I will. After all, you know what they say: what goes around… comes around!" he exclaimed with a little maniacal giggle. "Ooh, that sounded a little bit evil."

"You'll be next, you little brat," Mtumwa warned him, resulting in Tojo becoming suddenly enthusiastic.

"Right!" Tojo exclaimed. "I'd better help you, Tama. You look like you're in trouble."

"You creep!" Tama shouted, as Mtumwa pressed his claws against her throat even harder, causing her to gag a little. "Okay, okay! He's in the Pride Lands!"

Mtumwa rolled his eyes. Was this cub really that stupid? He expected the cubs here to have a slightly higher level of intelligence than the ones in most prides. Apparently not. "Well, I know that!" he exclaimed. "I want to know where in the Pride Lands!"

Tama shrugged, trying to keep her throat as far away from Mtumwa's claws as possible. "That's something I'd like to know the answer to. I don't know where he is. You're better off asking someone else. Or you could just do the smart thing and try to find him yourself. It doesn't take an idiot to walk around the place. Or, I don't know, maybe you are an—"

Mtumwa clamped his paw over Tama's mouth, preventing her from speaking further. "Someone really needs to teach you to speak when you're spoken to," he said before removing his paw from her mouth and walking away.

Tama sat up, an enraged look on her face. "I was being spoken to!" she shouted after him. Mtumwa just ignored her, and carried on walking. Frowning, Tama turned to Tojo. "Creep. Why did he want to know where my one true love was?"

"Well, by the looks of it, he doesn't seem too happy with the Prince," Tojo concluded. "Maybe he wants to kill him, or something along those lines."

Tama was walking toward Tojo when he said that, and she instantly stopped dead in her tracks. She just stood there, looking totally stunned.

"Is there some kind of problem, Tama?" Tojo asked.

Her left eye began to twitch, angered by the mere mention of Simba being killed. She didn't want a cutie like him dying. Not while she was around, anyway! "Simba? Dead? Now? Well, I'm certainly not going to let that happen anytime soon! He'll have to get through me first!"

Tama stomped away from the water hole. Tojo rolled his eyes and bounded after her. "Don't you think the guy can take care of himself?" Tojo asked her. "I mean, you've only met him once or twice, and you sound like his girlfriend."

"One day I will be his girlfriend," she declared. "Simba will be mine, no matter what I have to do…"

"There's a chilling thought," Tojo remarked. "How exactly do you plan on defending Simba from this guy?"

Tama shrugged. "I'll just set him on fire or something. He won't be too much trouble to take care of."

"And why didn't you do that when he had his claws to your throat?" Tojo said in a teasing voice.

"I was scared – I mean, I w-was s-surprised," she stammered, looking nervously left or right. She despised it when people saw weakness inside of her. It made her feel totally worthless. "But this time, I know what's coming, and I'm going to burn that lion to a crisp. And I'll burn you, too, if you don't follow my every command today."

"More empty threats," Tojo muttered under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."