The Half That Deserves to Live

Mandisa padded out in the fading light. Such strange creatures they allowed to conduct training sessions. But the idle thought was put out of her head as quickly as it came. She stood at attention, giving Kron a curious, almost smirk. He was going on about winners and losers, unknowing that the biggest winner of them all was in his very presence. She was a winner and was always going to be a winner.

It was strange, though, these past few days. The meeting with Iseult weighed on Mandi's mind heavily, which is why she decided to come out and train. The patchwork lioness knew that she didn't really need it. She had proved in more ways than one that she was worth Scar's time. And her father's for that matter.

But still, it was always fun to show off and to get in a little extra practice. There wasn't a soul out there that was overtrained, after all. And she had been having a little too much fun in Paris. Now it was time for Mandisa to get back to what she was good at. She was the apex predator, after all.

A gulp traveled loudly down the crooked throat of Janja. The hyena glanced around, fixed his nervous expression, and rapidly followed it up with a short chuckle. ”Huh! Nooo problem.” The darker grey of his muzzle curved jaggedly up into his dark eyeliner, but the grin wasn’t it’s normal cruelly happy self.

But hey, who could blame him? That dinosaur guy was big. Like, very big. Bigger than the monitor lizards he’d known. Way, way bigger than Scar. Bigger than Mufasa. If he tried to stand on Pride Rock the way he was rumbling around the termite mounds, it would probably crack. How much did the big reptile eat? And did his diet include hyenas?

The mohawked villain shook himself, tattered ears flapping like bat’s wings. Nope. He was used to making other animals afraid of his stomach, not being on the other end of that food chain.

Actually, Janja was still kinda gnawing on the bone of slinking away back into the jungle. Sniffing around the shade—maybe finding some chow—was sounding a lot better than going through some crazy exercise for this scaly jerk.

Then his eye caught Mandisa the lioness. Well. If a lioness could do it, and he could too...yeah. What would ma think of that? And wait till he told Cheezi and Chungu. Bet Jasiri would see hyenas could be way, way more than the clean-up crew when she heard he was running with lions and Dino’s. The teen spread his inky legs and gritted his teeth in a more excited grin. Yeah. Sure. They were all on the same side, and this was just training, right? He could do this. Probably better than any of these other scrubs, in fact.

At least one of the gathered animals had taken part in the ambush Kron mentioned, but she made no mention of it. As far as Sabor was concerned, she had no need to speak up concerning her accomplishments. She was a creature of few words, even when she had something to say.

She paid her other companions no heed as she regarded the big reptile with an intense, almost judging gaze, as if taking his measure, though whatever she might be thinking didn't show on her face. Inwardly though, she could tell by the way he carried himself that he was very confident in his abilities, beyond what she'd seen from most. And he was certainly by far the single most dangerous creature present, even if the other giant reptile was the larger of the two.

That the bigger one was subservient to Kron spoke volumes.

In her own way, her presence here was a way to judge Kron as much as he was about to judge them. That, and to see for herself the quality, or lack thereof, of her allies. So far, she had little respect for many of them.

The dinosaur’s height may have been impressive reared, but the sheer length of his rusty bulk was just as intimidating as Kron turned to pace back. It was good to have all of their beady little eyes on him, especially when they were looking up. He needed to be standing roughly in the center, facing the line of subordinates that was forming, The ridged reptile’s head jerked a stern nod to Bruton as the last of the little bloods filed in. He had Neera on one side. Now all that was left was for his second to fill in the emptiness on the other.

While he waited on the darker giant, Kron smiled ever more grimly at the smaller creatures. His gaze was traveling more lazily now. None of these insects looked like they would be useful...if they survived his exercise. But perhaps, if the enemy were similarly runty...well, then it wouldn’t matter how successful the fodder were. Kron and Bruton could take out the Suns by themselves. Best to go through with this anyway.

There was some sort of primate with a long toothed branch. Cute.

An even tinier, spiky animal with dark fuzz and spots. It’s yellow eyes were scared. Neera could probably break it’s spine with one step—it looked like the thing’s crooked back had already been snapped before. Maybe that was their kind’s way. Wouldn’t last ten minutes,

The feline ones were the most promising. At least he could see their muscle. The first looked capable, but the second had a look in it’s pebble-sized gaze that unsettled something deep inside of the General. Kron realized he was feeling vaguely the same cloud of ferocity from that brightly colored female that he smelled on Carnotaurs before they attacked. He kept his own condescending stare on her and began to speak as soon as he was confident that Bruton had obeyed orders and moved to his opposite flank,

”Your goal is simple.” His prominent snout pointed back, about seven tail-lengths behind himself and his fellow iguanodons. There, rising out of the dirt, was to one thing breaking flat land between the tree line and the beginning of the thorns, like an island. It was a large boulder. Growing around it was a scrubby tree. It’s unimpressive canopy was about a dinosaur’s head higher than Kron himself. ”Reach the highest branch of the tree that will hold your weight.”

The dusty reptile turned back to face his trainees. ”To get there, you go through us.” He indicated his sister and his lieutenant with an ever-growing grin of smugness. ”I said the goal was simple, not easy. The first of you to climb the rock, then the tree, and get all your...limbs into the branches succeeds. The rest are failures. Don’t stop your charge until I say so, and don’t let anyone—anyone—get in your way as you go.””

There. That was more instruction than he usually bothered to give the Herd. He cast one arch look at Neera. She was on he and Bruton’s “team” for this exercise—if she wanted to go easy on the runts, like he sometimes suspected she wanted to, what did it matter? The strongest of mind would sense she was the weakest link in the barrier between them and their goal. Then Kron sent another nod Bruton’s way to bellow and begin the drill.

A slithering beast moved her way around the group as if she was hunting them. Zira's ears were up and alert, her eyes narrowed to stare towards the group of creatures gathered. She spotted her perfect daughter among the group. Her tail flicked to the side, the only signal of pride she'd ever give in public. Even though none of them could see her yet as she was slinking among the thorns. She spotted Shenzi's gross offspring, another lioness, Sabor (who had earned enough of her respect to be called by a name) and a human. She hissed silently at the human. What was that flat-faced ape doing there? He was going to get eaten alive, stupid thing.

She tilted her head curiously at the instructions. Such a bizarre training exercise. No fighting. No sparring. Climbing up a tree. She let out a small huff. What could they expect from a non-predatory animal. Zira had obviously never seen a creature such as Kron before. He was scaly like a crocodile but enormous like an elephant and shaped very much like a rhino. A mismatched chimera of a creature the likes of which Zira had never seen. And there were three out there. Kron, his second and a slender one Zira could almost say was beautiful. Probably for their species, she thought casually, to me she still looks like a horse lizard.

Ebony claws dug into the dirt as the commanding feline slid from the darkness of the thorns. Her ears flicked back, a scowl on her face as she slid next to Kron. Her eyes narrowed. She would appear fairly unimpressed to anyone who looked at her. "You think climbing trees is a decent exercise?"

"Climbing trees? Do I look like a lion to you?"

The remark was made without thought. Banzai had been sitting further back, observing for the most part, and trying to work out what he thought about Kron. The dinosaur looked like a large lizard. At first, Banzai hadn't thought that that meant anything bad. Apparently, though, this training exercise wasn't going to be easy. They'd have to climb a rock, then a tree, and get up onto a branch. It sounded dumb. The challenge part was making sure that no one stopped them, sure, but it wasn't exactly like a hyena had to worry about that much to begin with. Usually people didn't tangle with hyenas if they knew what was good for them. He gave his neck an idle scratch as his gaze shifted to the rest of the gathered Thorns. Zira was there, of course she was. She always seemed to be sticking her nose in these sorts of things because she was someone Scar thought highly of. Then there was a couple of her offspring. Mini Scar... Kovu or something, and Vitani? Banzai didn't really care too much for them. Lions all were starting to look more or less the same.

Then there was a human, another couple of dinosaurs, Mandisa, and Sabor. An odd group to say the very least. Still, Banzai at least seemed to have realized that maybe his comment wouldn't be appreciated. A small, nervous laugh escaped him a moment before he made himself get to his paws. Then his head was tipped down for a brief moment.

"I mean, you guys are the one in charge. If we gotta climb trees then I guess we gotta. Heh." No one had started moving toward the rock and the tree yet, had they? ...Oh! He'd spotted Janja, finally. At least there was another hyena there. They could stick together. Or something.

He hardly spared a moment. Since no one had decided to start the challenge, Banzai wanted to get going. But no one had given a signal. The fire in his eyes started to fizzle out and a sort of noise akin to confusion escaped him. How were they supposed to know when to start if no one had given them any indication? Was it just because Zira had questioned Kron's tactics?

"...Do we start now or what?"

It seemed she'd been singled out in Kron's mind. This, to Sabor, was a challenge that she welcomed. She stared back at him as he spoke, and slowly began to tense up as he outlined what was expected of them. It almost sounded laughably easy. If all there was to it was to climb a tree, she'd have walked off in disdain. But, climbing a tree after getting past three elephant-sized reptiles? That was a different case.

As he continued speaking, her gaze slid to the smallest of the three dinosaurs. The one lacking the fierce looks of the two larger males. She was the obvious target to make for. But was she truly the least threatening? She'd have to make her decision quickly. As soon as the big one signaled the start of the challenge, she'd have to run as quickly as she could. The trees were her domain, and she was unrivaled when in their branches. But on the flat ground, the grown lioness at least would be faster than she.

Once Bruton bellowed, she was off, apparently making for the narrow gap between Kron and Neera, zig-zagging slightly as she raced forward, focusing solely on her goal, teeth half-bared, and eyes gleaming.