leave that to the person in question…” Vincent proposes, gazing at Seko.

“What, me?”

They nodded.

“Frankly… I’d rather not…”

“You’re not helping me here, you know…” Vincent sighed.

“Hey, give him a break, will ya?” Shenya snapped, moving closer towards Seko, “It’s hard enough for him as it is…”

“Apparently,” Vincent noted scornful, “Right then, I’ll try summarizing it. Last night, our sensitive friend over here was out on a hunting trip, beyond the border, with two companions…”

“Keavy and Nya,” Shenya interrupted.

“Yeah, them. Anyway, it seems like they didn’t follow foreign hunting protocol, ‘cause they got spotted.”

“Hey, it had nothing to do with that, it was the tall grass! We were as careful as one could be!” Seko exclaimed to his defense.

“I bet you were. And now stop interrupting me, will ya? To make a long story short: two of ours, Keavy and Nya, didn’t make it. But fortunately, Seko here was able to flee the field and save the day,” Vincent concluded, suggesting rather bluntly that cowardice was at the base of the tragedy. This, of course, enraged both Seko and his life partner, Shenya, who responded immediately and fiercely.

“For Spirits' sake, Vincent, shove it! Try showing some damn respect for a change! They were outnumbered two to one, what did you expect him to do? He even returned after the lions had left to try and help out, I’d like to see you do the same.”

“I’d prefer he’d have stayed around when the lions hadn’t left yet…” Banzaï whispered.

It all came back, again. He found himself sneaking through the grass again, tense, scared shitless, shaking like a leaf. He looked around, listened, tried to catch their smell, but they were gone. He crept forward. Why hadn’t they known? Why did she take the pray, why didn’t they just ran? Too late now. He could still hear the screams. The sound of them was long gone, but those shrill screams of pain, agony and fear still echoed in his head. Whose were they? One thing he knew for sure, it weren’t lions’. Then suddenly, he found them. Nya he saw first, her once mighty posture now reduced to a grayish pile of dirty fur, casting no shadows in the pale moonlight. With dead, empty eyes she stared out into the darkness in front of her, her mouth slightly opened and her back lodged in an unnatural twist. But even her broken figure looked peaceful when compared to Keavy.

Seko didn’t see her at first, and he’d long wish he hadn’t: she was laying on her side, eyes closed, and paws lying limply at her side. Gutted. At first, Seko wanted to run away, but then he imagined seeing her chest slowly moving up and down. As he approached to investigate, he saw her head was covered in scars. But she was still alive, he could tell because she was crying softly, breathing irregularly. He sat down next to her, whispered in her ear. She could just barely open her eyes, doing her utmost best to get a glimpse of Seko. He could tell she knew she wouldn’t last long just by the look she gave him. Fortunately, she wasn’t in pain anymore; there’s only so much one can take before your body shuts down your perception of physical pain, Seko had seen it countless times with prey he caught.

Now it was just the knowledge of dying, of never seeing her family and friends again that tormented her. So Seko tried comforting her, keeping her head close to him, softly licking her muzzle and gently caressing her manes to let her know she wasn’t alone. He couldn’t think of anything more fearsome than the thought of having to die alone. And for what seemed like an eternity, he just sat there, as she cried, asking about her mother from time to time, recounting in bits and pieces what the lions had done to her. Only moments ago a strong, proud and optimist hyena trying to keep everyone’s spirits up by making up puns involving mainly cheetahs, now beaten, her paws broken one by one and her belly torn open, only to be left to die. Seko continued talking to her and stroking her, until finally, after what seemed to have been the better part of a lifetime, she closed her eyes and stopped breathing.

“I fail to see how that makes any difference,” Vincent sneered, “But enough of this. We didn’t call this meeting to discuss the past. I’d rather hear your thoughts on what ought to be done now.”

“First thing of all, we ought to cut this ridiculous secrecy. The clan doesn’t even know what happened to their friends yet, and I don’t find it appropriate to keep them ignorant any longer. We ought to announce what happened,” Shenya suggested, provocatively staring at Vincent.

“In time, we will, sis.”

“Why not now?”

“Please, don’t play stupid. I get where this is going at, you know. We just have to make sure our ‘announcement’ doesn’t spark too much tension.”

“I knew it!” Shenya exclaimed angrily.

“Knew what?” Banzaï asked, attempting to figure out why the two hyenas he considered closest to him in the whole-wide world were about to enter a fierce argument.

“Come on, Banzaï, don’t you see it? He wants to cower out, again! Three times our clan members don’t return home, and three times he wants us to sit and do nothing!”

“It’s called caution. Not that you would know, dear sister, as isn’t exactly a virtue common to femmes. You prefer to rush in, leaving me to clean the mess.”

Instead of responding to her brother’s sexist comment, Shenya just sat there and glared at him. Seko stepped in to her defense, his temper fueled by his recollection of that one fatal night.

“Caution? You call that caution? Letting those savages pick us off one by one? Nya left one orphan already, how many more before you finally get it through your thick skull? We’ve waited long enough, now’s the time to stop your fancy talk and act.”

“What do you suggest then? We storm ‘em, head on? You talk about one orphan; the best we can hope for is twenty more if we were to do things your way. Thanks, but no. I prefer we sustain some marginal losses over obliteration.”

If it wouldn’t have been for his dark fur, Seko would’ve turned pale as the moon. ‘Marginal losses’. In a single sentence he reduced Keavy’s suffering to mere marginal losses. Seko just couldn’t grasp it; it felt as if something snapped. The creature sitting in front of him was no hyena; it wasn’t even a living creature. In front of him sat the embodiment of indifference, cold and power hungry indifference. He couldn’t care less about his clan’s suffering; they were just tools to further his ambitions. And like all tools, they were susceptible of marginal loss in efficiency. From what Seko could tell, Shenya seemed to think likewise.

“How… how dare you even say that? And those who gave their lives at the Rock all those years ago, those were marginal losses as well?” she yelled out in anger. Banzaï tried to defuse the situation, but Vincent brutally interrupted him.

“Please, Banzaï, don’t bother. Femmes are immune to reason. That’s why dad had to take over in the first place, because female dominance failed us. What happened at the Rock weren’t marginal losses; it was just the result of plain old stupidity.”

Insulting females was one thing. Mocking the clan, she could handle. Even a lack of respect for the dead she might have forgiven him. But in desecrating their mother’s heritage, Vincent crossed the line. Rage enflamed within her, she couldn’t control it anymore nor would she have wanted to do so. Without a seconds notice, Shenya pounced Vincent, her otherwise sympathetic eyes now burning with anger. Whilst uttering various screams and profanities the likes of which I shall not describe here, the two of them engaged in a bitter twist. Banzaï couldn’t bring himself to pick side for either of them, as he felt deeply for both. But when Seko appeared to come to the aid of Shenya, Banzaï was quick to slam him onto the ground. Then, while Seko was still somehow what stunned and unable get up, Banzaï intervened to the aid of Vincent, trying to calm down the much larger and more powerful female. When they finally had her more or les pinned down, she seemed to come back to her senses.

“Get off me already! I said get off!” she yelled, as she kicked back Vincent. After she got up, she cast one last grim glare at both Vincent and Banzaï, before taking off with a final angry whoop.

Seko now knew. He had felt it before, but now he was sure of it. Vincent’s existence couldn’t be tolerated anymore. His mere presence was a threat to him, Shenya and even to the clan as a whole. If he ever was to do anything for Shenya, this was it: eliminating Vincent. And it had to happen fast, before he led the whole clan to ruin.

Vincent, beat up and still in his adrenaline-rush, was just about to turn his attention to the still present Seko, when another hyena, seemingly exhausted, suddenly appeared. As one could have come to expect, she was quite surprised when she saw Vincent in his present state: panting, his fur full of dirt, and blood sipping down from his nose.

“And what do you want?”

Seeing as she had just run her paws down to the bone to find him, he could have been a little nicer. However, since she was utterly exhausted, she limited her speech to a minimum, for the moment.

‘I-eh…I’ve… I got a message for you,” the messenger gasped, “Real urgent.”

“Yeah, I guessed as much… This better be good news, Sunshine.”

For a moment, it looked as if she would start talking again, in her very distinguishably hurried and twitchy