Sun Rise Ch. 2

Simba and the Guard made their way for the Backlands, walking through a small valley-like area. The walls lined with hard stone, and the ground laid with yellowish green grass. With Ono flying overhead, Fuli and Beshte escorting on both sides, and Bunga riding on Kion's back, there was no way anyone was going to mess with the king.

"Are we there yet?" Asked Bunga.

"No Bunga, be patient." Replied Kion

He waited for a couple of seconds, then asked again, "Are we there now?"

Everyone stopped and turned to him with stern looks on their faces.

"Right, I get the point."

Beshte looked at the honey badger and told him, "You know Bunga, you may have gotten older, but you sure haven't changed one bit have you?"

They both chuckled a little bit.

"What if we can't get them to leave?" Ono asked from up above.

"Hakuna Matata" Simba replied. "If we can't, we'll still try to make the most out of the situation."

Ono came down and landed on Besthe's back. Simba continued.

"I just want to say now guys, I'm really proud of you all and what you've done. I've faced a lot of hardships in my days, and seeing you all like this makes it all worth it."

"Thank you king, it means a lot to hear you say that." Beshte said.

"No, please, you can call me Simba."

Then, what Kion added next caught Simba off guard for a moment.

"You're the best dad a lion could ask for."

Simba thought back to his days when he was a cub, and when he thought the same about his dad, Mufasa. He smiled because he never imagined having his own son believe the same about him.

Ono suddenly saw something in the distance, and he squinted his eyes to get a good look. In the distance, a blue figure emerged.

"Alright everyone, stay sharp." Kion said loadly.

"Ono, fly up and look for any potential ambushes."

"On it Kion!" The egret yelled while immediately shooting up into the sky. Simba turned to the rest and said, "Let me do most of the talking"

They stopped and waited for the rhino to come to them. Everything was silent, even Ono flying around and flapping his wings somehow made absolutely no noise. The silence wasn't around for long, because they could hear Thimba's mighty foot steps on the ground from yards away.

THUD

THUD

THUD

Kion noticed some pebbles rattling as the ground shook as he drew near. When Thimba finally arrived, his body was so large it casted a shadow on the ground in front of the behemoth.

Fuli spoke up and said, "That's him guys, that's Thimba."

Thimba was a blue rhino, the only of his kind. No one knows how, but Thimba is a massive, hulking, powerful Rhino that is a sort of yale blue in color, with his underside being a lighter sky blue, and a patch of navy blue fur on his back. His horn is about the size of his head, and it looks like it is stronger than steel. That horn has rammed boulders, lions, other rhinos, and pushed through every single one of them. His eyes were surrounded in Navy Blue patches, and had a yellow color to them.

"Zuka Zama. You weren't kidding when you said he was big!" The honey banger commented.

He stomped his way up to Simba, both of them locking eyes and never looking away. Simba started to walk closer to him, almost as if they were challenging each other, trying to show off dominance to one another. Kion had not seen his father act like this in a while, it was almost scary. Then again, his dad was the guy who faced off against Scar, and when you stare down Scar, nothing scares you. They stopped inches away from each other. Everything was dead silent. Ono would give anything to be able to watch the scene play out to it's full, but he had to do his job and keep surveying the land. The wind wasn't even blowing, and the rest of the Guard didn't say a word. There was such an absence of noise, that you could probably be able to hear the tiniest bug skittering across the ground.

Finally Simba broke the silence in a serious tone with, "So you're the guy I've been hearing about."

Thimba finally spoke too. Even though his voice was almost a whisper, it still sounded powerful. Each wave of sound pounding on your eardrum, letting you know his presence. You could learn everything about this Rhino from just his voice alone, his strength, his accomplishments, his will power.

"That is my main goal."

Simba responded with a snicker, "I expected you to be bigger."

The blue rhino was unphased by the insult.

"That's what they all said, right before I snapped their spines."

Bunga jumped off of Kion's back and put up his fists saying, "Well come on big boy, we can take ya!"

Everyone turned to face Bunga with stern looks on their faces.

"Right, I get it."

He slowly climbed back onto Kion's back.

Simba squinted his eyes and drew closer to Thimba. "Now listen closely, I'm only going to say this once. I've seen you're kind before, and it never ends well for them. Usually I'm a nice king, but you've been pushing us around for a month now. You are allowed to live in the Pridelands, but peacefully. If you wish, we could even find a place for you where you would fit right in."

Friendly tactics hadn't been working for an entire month, and now Thimba was taking advantage of it. So Simba added on, "I'm going to give you one chance to let the Zebra go, or I will declare war."

Once again, the hulking rhino was unphased by this threat. He drew closer to Simba, to the point where his horn was touching Simba's nose.

"Have you ever considered that's exactly what I want?"

Simba squinted his eyes again.

"So tell me, what brings you here in the first place?"

"I don't like lions. Never did. You all always think you're on top, well guess what, you're not."

"Oh really now? I couldn't tell that you hated lions Thimba, 'Lion Hunter'" Simba mocked at the name. Still, Thimba did not move.

Ono was circling around the entire area, still trying to find anything suspicious. He knew there had to be some reason why Thimba would want to meet with king Simba. Thimba took notice of this.

"You tell the bird to come down right now."

"No" was the only response he got.

"You don't want to make this mistake Lion."

Simba bared his teeth and growled in response. Things weren't going well. Kion was getting worried. He walked over to his dad and whispered to him, "Keep you're cool, we got this."

Ono suddenly had spotted some movement in some underbrush. He stopped for a moment in the sky to catch a closer look. That's when he saw a familiar orange glow.

Fire.

Someone was going to light up a line of grass, cutting off the only escape route for the Guard and Simba! He quickly flew back to the guard. Ono swooped down, so fast that it almost caught everyone off guard. Ono landed on Kion's back next to Bunga. He quickly whispered to the rest of the guard, "Guys, Thimba has someone lighting a fire, he's gonna trap us in here, we've got to move!"

Kion and Fuli quickly ran over to Simba, trying to get him to move away. By then it was too late, and out of nowhere a blaze of glorious red flames had erupted from the grass and into a giant wall of fire. In the ensuing chaos, Thimba had readied his horn, and picked up Simba with it, quickly turned, and ran straight for one of the rock walls. Kion and Fuli leaped onto the giant and tried their best to claw into him. This threw Thimba off a little bit, and thankfully, Simba was not stabbed on the pointed end of the horn, but was still crushed between the horn and the rock face. He let out a scream in agony.

Thimba backed up and kicked around violently, the force of his muscles too much for the large cats to hold on to. He flung the lion and the cheetah off of him. Kion jumped back up as Ono flew over to him.

"Kion! The fire is still fresh, I think some of you could jump over it!"

"I think so too. Ono, you keep up the surveillance. Beshte and Bunga, you two hold back Mr. Overgrown Horn over here. Fuli, you help me get Simba out of here!"

All of them said "On it!" in unison, and split up to do their parts. Bunga quickly climbed on top of Beshte.

"Alright, let's do this!"

Both Beshte and Thimba readied their stance.

"TWIN-DE-KI-BO-KO!" Beshte yelled as loud as he could, charging head on at the rhino. The two massive mammals clashed on to one another in a powerful display of strength and willpower. Kion and Fuli rushed over to Simba, who seemed to be ok, but his chest hurting a bit from the attack.

"I thought I could take him, but that blasted rhino hits hard!"

"This was a mistake, we shouldn't have come here." Kion said.

"We need to jump over the fire before it gets too big."

The two cats helped Simba up on his paws, and he slowly walked over to the burning hot flames with Kion and Fuli escorting him on both sides.

"You think you've got a good leap in you dad?"

"Yeah, I believe I do."

Fuli ran at the fire and leaped elegantly over it.

"I'm not going until you're safely on the other side dad!" Kion yelled.

Beshte pushed on Thimba with all his might, but it was like pushing against a mountain.

It just wasn't going to move. His muscles strained as he tried to press his entire weight against the rhino, but it wasn't working. Sometimes bringing himself back to build up some more strength and would ram into the blue rhino again and again. Bunga in the middle of the fighting had crawled his way over to Thimba and leaped onto his horn. He slid down to the base and latched on to Thimba's face, attempting to attack a weak point. This only made the now blind rhino even more angry, and pushed harder and harder on the hippo. Beshte was loosing the tough ground beneath him, and was slowly being pushed back by the Rhino.

Simba backed up, and prepared for a leap of faith. He ran at the flames, and jumped like his life depended on it. When the pain in his chest had come back and a searing and sharp stab into his lungs, he closed his eyes in anguish. Thankfully though, he landed on the other side, but with a hard thud on the ground.

Kion quickly turned around to see Beshte getting pushed back into the wall, Thimba's speed rising up. Thimba caught Beshte's head with his horn and bashed the side of Beshte's face into the solid rock wall. Thimba backed up, willing through the pain Bunga was causing him as the badger desperately scratched at his face. Thimba rammed into Beshte's head again and again, with each time being harder than the last.

"NO, STOP!" Kion yelled, but his words fell flat next to the roaring blaze of heat.

THUD

BAM

SMASH

Eventually, the hippo toppled over, and fell like a mighty oak. The loud smash that was made when he hit the ground had shook the hearts of both Kion and Bunga. Both of their mouths hung wide open. Before they could do anything else, Bunga was thrown into the wall by Thimba. Fuli yelled back through the fire, "HEY KION, WHAT'S WITH THE HOLD UP?!"

Kion did not answer back. Bunga tried to wake up Beshte, but had no luck. Thimba took a step back to recover from what Bunga had done to him, now with some fresh bloody scars on his face. Ono flew down to Fuli, "No sign of the ones who started the fire, they got away."

"Ono what's happening over there!?"

"That's why I came here, Beshte got knocked out!"

"Hapana" Fuli said in amazement and shock. Simba slowly tried to stand up, and Ono flew over to him. "We gotta get you out of here first. We'll be back as soon as we can for the rest."

"I can handle that Ono, you get back to them and help!" Fuli yelled.

Bunga turned to Kion, to see the lion's eyes beginning to glow. He turned back to Thimba and yelled, "Oh you're gonna get it now!"

Kion bent his head down, with storm clouds circling over the fire behind him. He lifted his head, and let out a massive roar. The clouds quickly shifted into the vague shapes of more lions, and a massive surge of wind had blown down from the skies above. Thimba had never experienced the roar before, and planted his feet deep into the ground, and shifted his body wait to be very low and impossible to pick up.

It had blown Kion's mind, almost like the wind had blown the surrounding area. Thimba did not fly off into the air like so many other villains before him. Instead, Thimba was only dragged back farther away from the scene.

The powerful winds and woken up Beshte, and Bunga and Kion quickly helped him up. He was dizzy, but could kinda tell where he was going. Kion turned around and looked around for a way to get Beshte out of there.

Ono flew over as Kion frantically asked, "If I use the roar on the fire, is there any grass it could get blown on and get bigger?"

Ono flew up and looked around, "All clear Kion! The roar shouldn't make the fire spread!"

Kion's eyes lit up again, and he roared in the direction of the flame wall, blowing a massive hole in it big enough for a adult male hippo to fit through. Kion didn't even have to say anything for Beshte to run through with Bunga on his back. Kion quickly followed, and they ran off back to pride rock under the now darkened sky, leaving the blue rhino watching from a distance.

"This is only the beginning. Destiny always arrives, always."