The sun was setting over the ocean, and a giant raptor was retreating to its nest with supper caught in its talons, unaware that it had snagged an exotic appetizer along the way.
"Oh, Clo-Clo! Why didn't you come to my birthday party that I'm not supposed to know about!" Julien wept and started punching the air. "So you could show this buzzard a thing or two and save your king!"
"Esto no es real. This wasn't supposed to happen!" Keke lamented while clinging to his chest, the wind blowing through her fur.
"I know." A fearful Julien concurred, trying to ignore all the blood rushing to his head. "Nobody wants to be in the clutches of the dreaded lemur-reaper."
"That's not what I meant!" Keke snapped. "I'm talking about getting in trouble. Mary Ann saw me and she must be enfurecida!"
"Oh, yeah? That is very bad too." Julien realized as his face fell with sorrow. "Look, I'm sorry I got you into this mess, I had no idea that bottle caps were like beacons for eagles…"
"It's not your fault…" Keke started but her voice trailed off as they both saw that they were flying very close to a tree.
Seeing that, Julien sighed. Time to be the selfless, stalwart hero, like he always was. He especially hated the selfless part, which entailed putting his kingly self in harm's way.
"Jump on that tree." He urged Keke. "You don't have to share my fate. I'll get out of this… somehow."
"Muy bien." Keke agreed without hesitation and jumped off, much to his horror.
"Wait, wait!" Julien cupped his mouth as she dove beneath the foliage. "This is the part where you're supposed to be saying, "No, I won't leave you behind!" Keke? KEKE!"
"CAAAAWWW!"
Julien winced as the eagle reached its nest, nestled between the thorny branches of an acacia tree.
The lemur king was unceremoniously dropped like a sack of mangos. The landing wasn't particularly painful, but that mattered little as he came face to face with a lemur skull, covered with puncture marks and scratches. Cue horror string.
Screaming like a little girl, he scooted away in fear, only to get pocked in the booty.
"Ow!" he looked back while rubbing his butt, and his pupils shrank as he saw the protruding ribs of a disarticulated skeleton belonging to another lemur.
Looking around frantically, he realized that this was a full-blown lemur cemetery!
"Frank, preserve me!" he clutched his head when he heard wingbeats and was engulfed by a massive shadow.
Crying in terror, he curled up into a fetal position, wrapping his tail around him and shaking as the eagle now loomed over him and folded its wings.
"Please, don't use your meat-slicing talons on me, I'm not worth it! I can assure you that ringtail meat is very chewy and poor in the nutrition!"
"Oh, no. You misunderstand." The eagle spoke, like a middle-aged Midwestern woman, and being oddly causal. "I didn't bring you here to eat you."
"Eh…you didn't?" Julien dared to look.
"Of course not, feeding myself is the last thing on my mind." The eagle assured him and gestured at a clutch of three eggs. "I'm expecting."
"Aww…you're going to be blessed with the miracle of maternity?" Julien got up and gushed, forgetting his predicament. "Oh, I'm so happy for you. Have you thought about baby names yet?"
"Certainly, and more." She smiled. "I'm eager to give them an early start, by teaching them crucial survival skills."
"Oh, you mean like flying?" Julien inquired.
"Yes, but firstly, I intend to teach them how to hunt. For a bird of prey, hunting lessons can never come too soon. But for that, they need something to hunt."
"Awww…you truly are a wonderful parent." Julien said approvingly. "You thought of everything in advaaaa…."
"Wait?" it finally dawned on him. "It is not me who is the hunted, right?"
The eagle nodded, and Julien screamed anew and tried to make a mad dash out of here, only to find himself running in place, as his tail was caught by the eagle's foot, while she lovingly observed her eggs, with some of them starting to stir.
"I apologize for the messy state of my nest." She continued. "It was one eventful baby shower last night and all my girlfriends carried gifts from far and wide."
Julien looked around and realized that the scattered bones must have been the gifts in question. That would explain why most had tags saying "To Gladys".
"N-now listen here, Miss Gladys!" Julien tried to assert his authority. "Don't you have any idea who I am!"
Gladys shrugged her wings.
"King Julien! THE King Julien, the King of Madagascar! If you feed me to your chicks, you'll be in big trouble, ma'am!"
"Meh, I don't follow politics." The eagled shrugged again. "They never accomplish anything in the end."
"I don't know what "polly ticks" are, but everyone knows what this is!" an indignant Julien pointed at his naked head. "You may be a crowned eagle but this here crown means I'm the guy calling the shots!"
"What crown?" Gladys arched her brow.
Confused, Julien touched his head and gasped. "My crown! The royal melon's all naked!"
He covered his head in shame. "Don't look at me! I'm hideous!"
"It's nothing personal, just the food chain." Gladys told him. "Now, regarding baby names? I was thinking of naming one chick Daniel, or maybe Jacob? Any thoughts?"
"If I'm gonna be consumed, I at least demand that you name one of them Julien!" the ringtail insisted.
"Hola, señorita águila!" both of them heard a new voice.
Julien's eyes widened in horror as he saw Keke standing on the edge of the nest.
"Keke, what in Frank's name are you doing here!" he grasped his head. Did that crazy kid have a death wish?
"Awww…what adorable bebés!" Keke cooed and clutched her paws as she observed the eggs. "Are those yours?"
"Yes, they are, dear." Gladys smiled. "They are my pride and joy. I've spent the last three months keeping them warm and secure."
"That's so sweet, and you even brought them their first meal." Keke pointed at Julien, who trembled in fear.
"Yes, they deserve only the best."
"I bet you really love them?"
"Of course. What mother doesn't love her little ones?" Gladys asked rhetorically.
"And you would never let anything bad happen to them?" Keke asked while holding one of the eggs up. "Like falling off a tree?"
"Naturally, I would be mortified if-" Gladys froze as she realized what was happening, and with a grin, Keke dropped the egg off the 50-foot tree.
"MY BABY!?" Gladys screamed and dove after it, releasing Julien.
"Muévanse, we gotta go!" Keke grabbed his hand.
"Nice work!" Julien nodded but accidentally stepped on a sharp bone.
Yelping, he clutched his foot and lost balance, falling into the foliage below, which was filled to the brim with thorns.
Luckily, hitting several branches along the way broke Julien's fall before creating a small impression in the ground, with several thorny branches wrapped around him.
Keke touched down next to him, also covered in thorns, and tugged his arm.
"Come on, she won't wait for her chicks to hatch now!" she urged him.
Looking up, Julien saw Gladys returning her egg before glaring down at them.
"Nobody makes scrambled eggs out of my babies!?" she yelled and swooped down with a vicious shriek.
Screaming for his life, Julien followed Keke, both running on all fours, but the bird quickly caught them and pinned them into the dirt. Only to scream in agony and let them go, flying up with dozens of thorns stuck in her feet.
Realizing what happened, Julien laughed and bragged. "Ha! Sorry for being a thorn in your ugly chicken feet!"
"There!" Keke pointed at a cluster of bushes and palmettos and the two bolted toward it.
They dove into the undergrowth while Gladys attacked, but only managed to rip out a bunch of leaves with her feet and was forced to fly up to spot her prey, only to completely lose sight of them in the dense vegetation, causing her to shriek in frustration.
We zoom out to see the scene on the screen of a handheld remote, followed by Karl laughing triumphantly.
"I told you they would get away without any casualties. The king's dumb luck is the stuff of legend." The fanaloka reminded Mary Ann as they traveled through the darkening jungle.
"Good, if she doesn't tear him asunder I sure will." The fossa growled with growing frustration.
"Calm yourself, Mary Ann. We only have to find them and escort them back to the safety of our kingdom." Karl told her while keeping one eye on the screen.
"Besides, King Julien might not be the most cautious person but he wouldn't harass a crowned eagle. That foster child of yours though…"
Mary Ann wanted to argue but knew he had a point. That foolish girl was going to get an earful. As was Horst. Especially Horst.
"You can keep track of them, right?"
"Absolutely. My drone is following them as we speak…" Karl explained in a self-assured tone as they watched the duo running through the dense jungle.
"…and its tracking chip will lead us straight to them. They seem to be heading north."
His confidence waned though as he saw the two running by a croaking bullfrog, with Julien yelping and backing away nervously.
The frog's creepy, horizontal pupils shifted toward the drone, and in an instant, the screen was consumed by the amphibian's pink tongue before going static.
"No!" Mary Ann panicked.
"Confounded!" Karl beat the remote before sighing in resignation. "Designing my drones after flies has many advantages but also a few drawbacks."
"Then we got to hurry!" Mary Ann said urgently and bolted ahead. "We're heading north!"
"Wait up!" Karl called out as he tried to keep up with the galloping fossa, only to end up colliding with her back as she came to a screeching halt.
Karl fell over and rubbed his sore nose. "What are you doing?"
Mary Ann shushed him and dragged him behind a bush. They took a peek and saw a dozen fossa lounging around in the distance; sleeping, chasing their own tails, or fighting over nothing.
Mary Ann gulped and lowered her ears. When you were wanted for high treason, the last thing you wanted was to bump into your old comrades.
"Seems we got a bit of a problem?" Karl rubbed his chin. "These uncouth imbeciles look very peckish. Um…no offense."
"They're always peckish…" Mary Ann deflated when an idea hit her and she dug her paw into the dirt and proceeded to rub it over her beauty mark.
"What are you doing? Trying to mask your scent?"
"Sort of. I know how to get past them without drawing attention." Mary Ann explained. "But you're not going to like it."
"Time's of the essence, woman." Karl argued. "We have to save King Julien…and…eh…Whats-Her-Name."
Mary Ann sent him an annoyed look.
The oblivious Karl continued, "If it's effective, I'm willing to take the risk."
Lying on rocks, some of the fossa looked up as they spotted a dirty and disheveled female pass by them, growling in a feral manner while holding her limp catch in her jaws, his tongue dangling.
"This is so demeaning, and unsanitary." Karl tried not to shudder as his finely groomed fur got covered in saliva, and shut his eyes tight as a fossa with a lazy eye came up to them and sniffed his head.
Mary Ann growled at him with a crazed look, making him back away with a submissive whimper. She wasted no time moving on, while her conspecifics eyed her in shock.
"Fossa eat cousin fanaloka?" one of them asked his buddy.
"Fossa sick." The lazy-eyed one shuddered.
"Fossa cannibal!" the first one wilted with horror.
A roar was heard, and an eye-path-wearing fossa jumped onto the scene and scowled at the rest angrily. Seeing him, Mary Ann hastened her pace.
"What fossa doing lazing around?" Thrax snarled before turning to the one with the lazy eye. "Your hunting party supposed to find supper, Manny! Bone-Fossa hungry, and very cranky."
"Fossa have food." Manny nodded giddily, his tongue hanging out. "Look!"
Thrax saw him pointing at a bunch of tied-up jumping rats, all of whom were smiling blissfully.
"Heya!" King Joey smiled dumbly. "So nice of ya to invite us for dinner!"
Thrax looked displeased and whacked Manny over the head, which the latter barely seemed to register. "Bone-Fossa want finest meat! Not ratty junk food!"
Their tyrannical leader had been doing a lot of thinking ever since he retook his old position, and lots of thinking led to an increase in standards, including pickier tastes in meat.
"Bone-Fossa not be happy…" Thrax worried when they all heard wingbeats and saw Gladys hovering over them, causing the other fossa to squeak and hide behind Thrax.
"Pardon me, fellow carnivores." She addressed them politely. "You haven't perchance seen a ringtail lemur with a weird, undecipherable accent, accompanied by a yellow-furred child? I wish to tear them to shreds for trying to murder my babies."
Thrax blinked in confusion before shaking his head. "Eh…no? Fossa not see any lemur."
"Damn… sorry for bothering you then." Gladys took off without another word, leaving Thrax to mull over what she said.
It took him a few minutes to liken the former description to someone he knew, someone important.
"Wait?" he counted off his fingers. "Lemur? Ringed tail? Weird accent? Bird mean King Julien?"
"She no mention crown?" Manny pointed out.
"Yeah…" Thrax wondered and slowly counted again. "But…three out of four good enough?"
Thrax chuckled with glee, "Bone-Fossa gonna be pleased!"
"Fossa, follow Thrax!" he ordered the rest, and they all ran after him, leaving their catches behind.
Joey and his fellow rats continued to sit there with vacant, content looks as a fly landed on the rat king's nose.
Inside a log, a red mouse was reading a bedtime story to her dozen or so slumbering babies, when Horst poked his head inside.
"Keke! Are you in there!"
The babies woke up and started crying, prompting the mother to shake her fist and yell at him in high-pitched gibberish.
"I'm terribly sorry, ma'am." Horst said with a sheepish grin before pulling his head out and looking around frantically.
"Where is she? I've searched every nook and cranny in this blasted jungle, and it's getting dark!" He clutched his head.
Taking a few deep breaths, Horst tried to calm himself.
"Don't get worked up, Horst." He told himself without much conviction. "This isn't so bad? I mean, Mr. Alex is protecting us, there are no fossa skulking around, most of the kingdom's enemies are dead or reformed. Worst case scenario… Keke's off somewhere causing harmless mischief."
He chuckled nervously before losing what little confidence he had.
"Oh, who am I kidding? Mary Ann's gonna flip out! I'll be in the doghouse for weeks, or torn to shreds? Whichever comes first."
"Fore!" he heard someone shout, followed by a "ping" sound and a familiar deep voice crying "Ouch!"
"Maurice?" Horst realized and grew a smile. "Yes, yes, I'm sure KJ knows where Keke is? She seems quite fond of him. He'll do me a solid?"
The blue-eyed lemur heard the first person clearing their throat as he pushed palmettos out of the way, and spotted Prince Barty, wearing a golfer hat and holding a club standing on the far end of the golf course, while a battered Maurice picked up the golf ball that had fallen some thirty feet away from the intended hole and came back to drop it in.
"Well done, your majesty." he forced a smile and gave Barty a standing ovation. "Perfect score."
While his blackened eyes and bruised face hurt, at least keeping his distance had spared him more unintentional clonks to his cranium from Barty's club.
"Don't act so surprised, old boy." Barty huffed while leaning on his club and adjusting his hat. "I was a golf champion before you were even born."
"Yeah…speaking of surprises and births?" Maurice started for the umpteenth time. "You sure you're not planning a surprise for someone? I dunno, maybe to celebrate the day of their birth?"
"Hmm…that's an oddly specific question, Milford." Barty scratched his chin before shrugging. "But I would have to say "no", why would we?"
Grumbling, the exasperated Maurice was about to tell him what was going on, when he heard Hector shouting, "There he is!"
Caught off guard, Maurice turned around and was faced with an angry mob. Not just lemurs, but also the two penguins, the chimps, Melman, and the Crocodile Ambassador.
"Oh, no." Maurice knew what this meant. "What did King Julien do this time?"
"I say, what's this hullabaloo about?" Barty walked up to Maurice.
"Um…I'm assuming you wish to have an audience with the king?" the aye-aye offered the crowd an awkward smile.
"What do ya think, genius! He and that Guatemalan delinquent have been running amok! They shaved off all my fur, and then made me relieve the horrors of war!"
"They made Dorothy kick me out because she thinks I have flatulence problems!" Ted whimpered.
"That brat tricked us into consuming spicy foods!" Kowalski ranted while pointing at Private clutching his churning stomach. "The poor boy will never recover from the trauma!"
"They made me think I was dying from "mad bushpig distemper-it is"!" Melman lamented, covered in dirt up to his neck. "And I'm already dealing with eleven terminal ailments!"
"Do I even need to say anything!" Pancho pointed at his behind, which was still glued to a toilet.
"King Julien forced me and my subjects to confront our fears!" the distraught Crocodile Ambassador cried into his tiny hands.
"They gave us bananas stuffed with explosives!" An ash-face Mason shook his fist, while an also ash-faced Phill made some very obscene signs.
Hans pointed at his missing head, amidst many other complaints.
Horst chewed on his finger tails. This was bad, seriously bad.
"Oh no, not 'nother pranking rampage…" Maurice freaked out. King Julien was a whirlwind of destruction whenever he wanted to remind the kingdom why he was the Prince of Pranks. And he roped Keke into accompanying him? What was that fool thinking?
"Poppycock." Barty said stiffly. "It couldn't possibly have been my son engaging in such tomfoolery. Such behavior does not befit a king."
"Yeah, like yall were there to teach 'im better…" Maurice muttered under his breath.
"Aren't I absolutely right, Monroe?" Barty glanced at him.
"Well….umm…" Maurice rubbed the back of his neck before turning to the mob. "Eh…jus' calm down everyone. I'm sure this has to be a mistake?"
"I know." Tammy and her gal pals suddenly appeared, looking as smug as ever. "The first one was letting a fossa live among us."
"Um…were ya eavesdropping on us?" Maurice arched an eyebrow.
"That's not important." Tammy waved her hand. "What matters is that Mary Ann is already failing her trial, to no one's surprise."
"Trial?" Horst wondered, his blood running cold.
"And King Julien is running around causing trouble with Mary Ann's ward. How utterly scandalous." Rebecca told her portly friend, trying not to giggle like a giddy schoolgirl.
"I know, that's at least a week's worth of ugly gossip to spread around." Tammy rubbed her hands. "We'll have our hands full."
Horst pursed his lips and turned around, hugging himself in terror. "Yeah, I screwed up big time. Mary Ann's gonna kill me."
"Now hold on a minute!" Maurice spoke up. "We should at least give King Julien the chance to explain himself. This has to be some kind of misunderstanding."
"At least we can spin it to look like one…" he added mentally, already thinking about how to salvage this situation.
As if on cue, Masikura appeared on his shoulder, making him jolt.
"That might be a bit of a problem." The chameleon told him before whispering into his ear. "It seems King Julien has gone missing, I found his crown lying in the middle of the jungle."
"What?" Maurice barely managed to keep his voice down and looked around, with everyone staring at him oddly. "Eh…scuse us for a sec." he grinned nervously and walked towards a safe distance.
King Julien would never EVER ditch his crown, any idiot knew that. That was all Maurice needed to know that something was very wrong, and he reacted accordingly.
"Missing? What do ya mean "missing"?! How? Since when?!" the aye-aye asked frantically, trying to organize his thoughts.
"I don't know. I've tried telling Karl but he seems to be missing as well… as is Mort. Though I doubt many will care about the last one." The chameleon explained.
"We gotta do something? There's an uproar within the kingdom?!" Maurice already regretted leaving Julien unsupervised while he was upset. He really should have known better and now the king had gone AWOL.
"Indeed." Masikura considered their options. "Perhaps a flashy PR stunt with a beloved celebrity might satiate the public and keep them distracted while we locate King Julien."
"We can do that…" Maurice sighed, not having to think hard about the former. At least that should cheer up Mr. Alex after his second S.O.S. sign got destroyed.
"Oh, Sid. I have the most wonderful news." Rebecca said cheerfully as she opened the window to her son's room for some air, while the latter was still nursing his sore nose.
The little crowned sifaka listened as his mother sat on his bed. "That girl that bullied you won't trouble anyone for much longer. I have good reasons to think she'll be taken out of Mary Ann's care and be given a proper upbringing."
"You mean Keke?" Sid didn't look so sure. "I dunno…I feel kinda bad for making fun of her."
"Don't be ridiculous, sweetie. She hit you."
"Yeah, but I made her angry first." Sid pointed out. "I just got mad that she was better at baseball than me, maybe I should apologize…"
Rebecca smiled and patted his hand. "For the last time, you did nothing wrong. Girls aren't meant to play sports."
"But weren't you a cheerleader in Lemur School?"
Rebecca rolled her eyes. Why was it so hard for children to grasp simple concepts?
"Yes, but that is a sport meant for girls, it's not the same thing. That's how things are supposed to be, if it's not broken, don't fix it. Just like one shouldn't allow sharp-toothed carnivores to live and roam free in our kingdom."
"Is Keke a carnivore?"
Rebecca leaned forward and whispered. "Well…I hear that the science penguin claims her kind are cut from the same cloth as fossa and fanaloka, so to speak. She may eat fruit but she's still a coldhearted killer at heart. You saw those big teeth of hers?"
Sid cowered and pulled his blanket over his nose. Not because of the thought that Keke might try to eat him but because he saw a pair of glowing yellow eyes rising above his mother, who remained oblivious.
"Exactly." Rebecca told him. "She's predisposed to violence and savagery. Just like Mary Ann or Karl. Trust me about Karl. I know that creep from school, when he was always stalking King Julien."
She laughed haughtily. "Everyone shunned him, and rightfully so. Not just for being a carnivore and a creeper, but also for just being a massive loooooser."
"Such harsh words, señorita." The sifaka froze as she heard a smooth voice speak with faux-sadness. "Not all of us predators are so bad."
We cut to a POV shot as Rebecca and Sid scream and hug each other while the predator lunges at them with lightning speed.
The screams woke up Rebecca's husband from bed and he rushed into his son's room, only to find it empty, the bed toppled over and the window flapping from the wind.
He knew a predator attack when he saw one, and gasped in shock…before cheering with unbridled joy and praying at the sky.
"Oh, thank you so much, Frank! Thank you for giving me back my freedom!" she expressed his gratitude before running off.
"Club Moist, here I come!"