Scar of the Outlands Ch. 2

Chapter Two: Life in the Outlands
My life changed forever after that moment, but I'm not necessarily complaining. We all know what happened at Pride Rock on that day. Scar was killed and Simba had become king of the Pridelands. At the time however, I had no clue what was going on. The first thing I remember after seeing the fire was a hyena from Shenzi's clan running up and telling us "Scar is dead, we gotta get out of here!"

My mom quickly responded with "Where do we go?"

"We have to go back to the Outlands, the other animals are running us out!"

My dad immediately grabbed me as my mom picked up Buibui.

In my early childhood I grew up under Scar's reign, and now his reign was over. The dramatic shift early in my childhood taught me another valuable lesson though, nothing is permanent, the only thing true to life. As soon as you come accustomed to something, life will throw a rock at you, never letting you catch a break. Why is that so? Wouldn't like for everything to stay the same? So that way you can be in the familiar? So that way you wouldn't loose everything that you have?

After that I don't remember much besides a bunch of running. Pride Rock disappeared into the distance as we passed countless trees and endless fields of grass. A new landmark appeared over the horizon though, almost as popular as Pride Rock itself now, a volcano.

We entered a much more rocky terrain, and our parents continued running until we had got to their old home where they grew up.

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Life in the Outlands was different. I learned a lot though within a couple months, how to hunt better, how to fight an defend myself. My sister and I got tours of everything in the Outlands our parents could show us so that way we could become accustomed to our environment. Always being a quick learner also helped out a lot. I guess first I'll start with where we lived.

We're a large sized clan made up of misfits from all of the other hyena clans. We lived in the farther back regions of the Outlands, way in the back where no one really ever goes, the only areas that wasn't claimed yet. At first we had food and water, enough living space, so we just sort of lived in our little corner, staying away from the chaos. No one ever really noticed us much, sometimes they would forget we were even here. Living in our clan was pretty normal. We didn't do much, a lot of clan members had lives and normal daily routines. You had your pranksters, you had your jocks, you had your parents who were raising cubs, you had you nerds. I couldn't give you an exact number of hyenas in the clan, but I would say roughly about maybe 70 through 80.

Our clan wasn't known for much besides being really big, but then again, Shenzi's clan was big too. We never took part in big events, in fact joining Shanzi's clan in moving to the Pride lands was the first thing we had done in generations.

Speaking of Shenzi, my mother was not happy when she found out those two hyenas that chased me and my sister were part of Shenzi's clan. My mother also had decided not to associate with Shenzi anymore, and broke all ties with her in the next meeting they had. I got to see all of it. There was a lot of yelling and arguing, a fight almost even broke out. I also got to come with her to meet another clan. This was Jasiri's clan, though at the time it wasn't run by Jasiri, she was too young. Instead it was run by her mother, can't remember her name to save my life. Asha took notes from Jasiri's clan and wanted to establish relations with them, wanting to know how to better our clan to make it a more friendly living environment.

It was an interesting idea, especially to me.

I got to go to a lot of meetings with Asha and my sister. She wanted to teach us how to lead the clan, saying that one day in the future it could be one of us in charge.

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In other news, Simba also had two cubs not shortly after, Kiara and Kion.

Kion would eventually go on to start a "Lion Guard" that didn't have lions in it. Will give him credit though for the idea of broadening the selection of creatures, it was actually a smart move. Besides that though, I don't respect him much. He has a very unique gift that has given him the ultamite advantage. "The Roar of the Elders" is what it's called, it just creates a giant wind storm to blow away all of the "bad guys". It is loud and dangerous, too chaotic and destructive for my tastes. Not only that, but that little pip squeak had everything handed to him, and one day that is going to completely ruin him!

Guess what kid, being brave and "just roaring" isn't going to help you at all in the future, you're just lucky.

Kiara is gonna be the next ruler of the Pridelands... nothing else special about her.

Simba was a very different king from Scar. First off, Simba ruled according to the "Circle of Life", a system of nature that dictates life flows in a circle through the food chain. He believed in everything being balanced, and so did most the Pridelanders.

The Circle of Life is an interesting system, nice and orderly, but if it weren't for Kion, that system would completely collapse. Anyways, Simba's rule didn't really affect me much, because I live in the Outlands, and nobody cares about the Outlands except Jasiri's clan. I quickly learned that the Outlands was a place where all the animals who refuse to follow the Circle of Life are casted to. You have a lot of different creatures who come here or live here: reptiles, insects, some jackals, and then you have Jasiri's clan.

They confuse me. They respect the Circle of Life and follow it by scavenging and hunting for food instead of stealing like hyenas are supposed to do, but because they're hyenas they're forced to live in the Outlands with the rest of us. Shows what the Pridelanders are really like if you ask me, and why would her clan still respect them when the Pridelanders still hate hyenas?

I'm getting off track here.

My tactics to get food had to change as well, this new home was even more cynical and harsh, it was dangerous and absolute anarchy, I hated it. Before I could get up to my usual schemes though, my parents stopped me, telling me "You must think we're the stupidest hyenas on Earth (yes I do) if you think we're gonna let you try to do that again".

And so it began.

After the whole thing with my sister, my parents were afraid that I would do something like that again, so as punishment, they took away a lot of my privileges. It was something I knew I would have to get rid of, and soon. The ever watchful eye of my parents. I was forced to scavenge for scraps. It made me even angrier, it was not that I wasn't getting enough food or anything like that, it was just, I felt like I was being watched at all times, never having free will.

My mother wasn't there much. She was in the process of trying to change the clans lifestyle, and that was taking all of her attention away to convincing the clan to change. She tried to be a mother, but leading the entire clan always got in her way. Sometimes I wonder how I would have turned out if we had talked more...

She still wanted to know what I was up to though, so she had some of the other clan mates watch over me.

Looking back, I remember a bunch of times when, I just felt different. On the outside, I looked normal, I acted normal, but on the inside I didn't feel just right, as if, they had something that I didn't. Every night I would think long and hard about what I had done that day, and what others were doing. I wouldn't be able to get any sleep sometimes because of how paranoid I was about what others were doing, and how their lives were going. Were they happy? Were they sad? Was their life going good? Is it going terrible? Are they doing better than me?

My parents would tell me that even though they were mad at me, they still loved me. It doesn't make sense to me, why in a world like this where you have to eat others to survive, how could anyone have such attachments to one another?

Maybe I'm like this cause I never had many friends to talk too. I had people to talk too, I've just never really had a close friend. My mother was never there anyways, and my father was too busy trying to help my sister get over what I did to her.

It was hard though, every night when I went to sleep, I would feel the exact same presence every night, as if someone was actually there.

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Eventually I realized that I could have a lot more advantages if I had my sisters trust again. I went to go and try to apologize to her. Buibui tried to avoid me when we first moved to the Outlands, but after a couple months, she just tried not to talk to me. However, one night I made my move.

"Hey, um... I would like to talk to you about what happened back in the Pridelands."

She responded with nothing.

"Oh come one, you gotta say something!"

"..."

"C'mon, I don't have anyone to talk too!"

She still didn't say anything, and I knew why.

"Ok, look... I'm... I'm sorry about what I did, it wasn't right. C'mon, let's just move on from that, huh?"

She still responded with nothing.

I simply said "Well... I'll still be here if you're ready to make up."

I turned around and walked away after that, I knew she would eventually come around. Sometimes you have to loose a battle to win the war.

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Things finally got interesting again though. Shenzi's clan had fallen under new leadership. This new clan eventually became a dominating powerhouse in the Outlands.

They forced me to upgrade my strategies for everything. They took as much food and territory as possible, not because they were hungry or needed new living room, but because of greed.

You might have heard about their leader before, a male teenage spotted hyena, his name is Janja