The Lion King

Chapter 7 - Be Prepared

Chapter 7

It started gradually. His legs relaxed, his eyebrows furrowed, and he lowered himself gently, gently, gently to the ground. Suddenly, pain, and he was yelping, back on his paws, his tousled fur on end.

Banzai looked grumpily over his shoulder.

"Man, that lousy Mufasa," he grumbled, gently nosing the still-pulsing wounds on his rear. "I won't be able to sit for a week!"

He continued to nose through his fur, but as the musty tang of his own blood filled his nose, he heard a faint snicker behind him. With a self-conscious twitch of his ears, Banzai glared over his shoulder. Sure enough, Ed sat in the midst of the rock walls, giggling uncontrollably.

"It's not funny, Ed," he snapped, but this only made Ed laugh harder.

The hyena threw his head back, laughing so maniacally that the whole cavern echoed with it. It was only a matter of time before the others came. Impossibly, Banzai was angrier at Ed than he was at Mufasa.

"Hey, shut up!" he yelled, snarling furiously and throwing himself at Ed.

He fastened his jaws around Ed's ears and yanked back, pulling the still-giggling hyena with him. The hyena's laughs immediately turned into yelps, and Banzai felt his satisfaction grow as he gave Ed a pair of identical wounds on his rear. Ed leaped away from him, shrieking, but Banzai grabbed him again, pulled him back, prepared to nick him again . . .

"Will you knock it off?!"

Shenzi!

"Well, he started it!" Banzai gasped, yanking himself away from Ed, who tumbled away into the dust, chewing viciously on his leg.

Idiot, Banzai thought with a self-satisfied sniff in Ed's direction.

"Look at you guys," Shenzi growled, hopping down from her perch on a gray rock. "No wonder we're dangling at the bottom of the food chain."

Banzai glanced at Ed, who was staring, transfixed, at the bite marks on his leg, and sagged.

"Man, I hate dangling," he muttered just as a wad of spit came tumbling out of his mouth.

"Shyeah?" Shenzi said, plopping down next to him. "You know, if it weren't for those lions, we'd be runnin' the joint."

"Yeah . . . " Banzai found himself staring at his wounds again, remembering the spike of pain that had shot through him as Mufasa's claws met in his flesh. His own claws began to dig into the hard rock floor, and he imagined what it would be like to swipe Mufasa back. "Man, I hate lions," he growled.

"So pushy," Shenzi hissed.

"And hairy," Banzai added.

Shenzi glanced sideways at him, eyebrows raised, and then smiled teasingly.

"And stinky," she said, sidling up next to him.

The two exchanged a short look, but it was enough. Together, they chorused, "And, man, are they u-u-u-gly!"

He was laughing before he could even stop himself, laughing harder than Ed. But Shenzi was laughing, too, and the sound was echoing all around them. For a moment, Banzai could almost forget about the cuts on his rear.

"Oh, surely we lions are not all that bad."

The voice was deep, and it shook the very rocks themselves. Banzai felt his body go rigid, his blood run cold, and he looked this way and that, expecting Mufasa, Mufasa, Mufasa at every corner . . .

Then he saw him, perched on a ledge high above their heads, his velvety paws draped casually over the edge of the rock face. An instant later, warmth had returned to Banzai's veins, and he was laughing.