TLG: Origins of Kion's Lion Guard
Happy 10th Anniversary to The Lion Guard!
As an inverse of my typical depictions of an adult version of Kion's Guard, I decided to go the other way, in which they're all shown very young.
After rewatching the beginning of Return of the Roar and being curious about Kion and Bunga's game of Baobab Ball, it made me wonder what the friends' lives must've been like before they were chosen for the Lion Guard.
Some slice-of-life filler episodes could've told so much about their lives outside of their jobs as underage police. But, ah well, guess I had to come up with that, myself.
Stories for each Lion Guard member below:
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Kion:
Kion was born in a safe, private patch of bushes in the Oasis as the Pridelands were still recovering from the drought and Zira's banishment. Simba felt Nala would be safest in a familiar place far enough away from danger.
Simba and Nala brought Kion home to show Kiara her new baby brother as soon as the cub could start walking. Kiara immediately told Kion the story of Mufasa and Scar, originating Kion's vow to follow in Mufasa's pawprints, and to never reenact Scar's actions.
Kiara, happy that the new baby was getting all the attention, but lonely that there were no other children her age to play with, attempted to sneak out of Pride Rock, only to be outsmarted by her parents before she could wander too far. Kiara promised she'd be careful and stay out of trouble.
Timon and Pumbaa, who were sent to watch Kiara, barged in on Simba and Nala teaching baby Kion to walk, reporting they'd lost track of Kiara. Upon hearing this news, Simba rushed out of Pride Rock with Nala, placing Kion in Sarabi's arms for the time-being until he and Nala returned with Kiara.
Following the incident of encountering the Outsiders, Simba introduced Kiara to cubs from allying prides who were very close to her age to prevent future loneliness. Simba's helicoptering over Kiara intensified since that day, and her new friends' eagerness to become her royal advisors pressured her to accept her role. Meanwhile, Kion was seen as less prone to sneak off, and was to be trusted under the watch of babysitters, such as Zazu.
The imbalanced attention between keeping a watchful eye on Kiara and being left under Zazu's watch led to Kion being unintentionally distant from his parents, causing him to feel expected to act more grown up and therefore dreading to reach out for help. In turn, Kiara felt infantilized and insecure from the constant monitoring.
Bunga:
Bunga was born to a crime couple of honey badgers in the Outlands named Asali and Beji. The Bonnie and Clyde-like duo once encountered one of the most feared animals in all the Outlands – the one and only Kenge.
The two troublemakers got together because they shared a violent way of stealing food from other Outlanders, uniting with Asali as the brain and Beji as the brawn. They had an intimate night together in the middle of their adventures.
One day, their laughter over the latest Outlander they terrorized was interrupted by an encounter by yet another infamously violent Outlander.
With Asali's smarts and sweet-talking skills, the couple was initially able to sway Kenge out of eating them and their stolen goods. However, at some point of the exchange, Asali's tongue slipped, calling Kenge a "little lizard", which set the violent monitor lizard off.
The honey badger couple spent months on the run from Kenge since then. In the midst of it, Asali realized she had been pregnant. Pretty soon, their relationship built on their mutual amusement in getting into trouble morphed into arguments of parental responsibility and dragging another mouth to feed around on their adventures.
Soon after their kit was born, Kenge caught up to them, bigger and angrier than ever. The couple was torn between giving up the extra weight to continue running, or to consider giving up their criminal lives to make room for a baby. They favored the former, and left their kit on Flat Ridge Rock, a landmark bordering the Outlands and Pridelands, not caring what happened to him, as long as he was out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Asali secretly felt a twinge of regret, but it subsided over time.
The kit was outrageously brave, surviving all the odds that led him to his adoptive parents, Timon and Pumbaa. Timon and Pumbaa, proud of their new little one for catching Utamu grubs, went to Pride Rock to tell Simba and Nala all about it. They introduced baby Bunga to baby Kion, which is why they've been friends for as long as they could remember.
Because Bunga was left at Flat Ridge Rock as a baby, it played into why he vaguely remembered being there before. To this day, he does not know his biological parents, and has never come close to crossing paths with them. They in turn don't know, nor care, if he survived. He is also unaware of his Outlander roots, despite fighting against Outlanders as a member of the Lion Guard. He narrowly avoided becoming a fearless and crafty criminal due to not being raised by Asali and Beji.
Fuli:
Fuli was born to the regal and independent Kimbia after all the animals had returned to the Pridelands.
Years after Kimbia watched the presentation of baby Simba, she watched the Pridelands plummet into a drought that caused the herds to leave once Scar rose to power. Due to the herds migrating outwards in all directions, Kimbia began to hunt near the Oasis.
There, she met Maili, a romantic male cheetah. Maili was once known by the name of Fast-Track, and was part of a coalition of two other brothers, nicknamed Lightfoot and Speedy.
Despite desiring to become a loner, Maili slowly began to harbor romantic feelings for Kimbia, but Kimbia did not reciprocate those feelings, believing it was the female cheetah way to raise a cub alone. Maili remained in the Oasis area, while Kimbia made her way back to the Pridelands by following the herds.
As Fuli grew into young cubhood, Kimbia filled her head with her beliefs that cheetahs were superior. Kimbia's haughty personality eventually rubbed off on Fuli for a brief time, explaining Fuli's own standoffishness when she met her friends.
Tense times ensued during the post-Scar restoration period. Before a storm had formed, Kimbia hid Fuli in tall grass and successfully hunted a young olive baboon who'd fallen behind while trying to seek shelter under a tree as the rain came.
A dispute broke out between the young baboon's troop and Kimbia. The hungry cheetah refused to give up her hard-earned meal, causing the troop to demand revenge for their fallen young. Kimbia left the kill behind, running from the powerful troop with Fuli in her mouth.
The flash-flood caused by the rain had separated Fuli from her mother. Kimbia fell behind and was lost in a crowd of wrathful baboons, while Fuli eventually floated to safety.
Zazu found Fuli and reported the tragedy to Simba, who promptly banished the olive baboon troop. Zazu would watch over her as he babysat for Kion and Bunga, until she reached a more independent age. Fuli grew to dislike baboons and water since the traumatic day she lost her mother.
Beshte:
Beshte was born to Basi and Bendi after the couple had migrated back to a safer Pridelands, just before Kiara was born.
Basi is the leader of his pod at Big Springs and creates the Hippo Lanes every rainy season, and his wife Bendi was a wonderful singer and performer for the annual Kupatana Community Choir.
During the forced migration due to overhunting during Scar's Reign, food and safe water to swim in was becoming scarce. Bendi developed a chronic bacterial infection from unsafe water outside the Pridelands while finding a safe place to raise her calf.
Bendi was mostly unaware of until the infection finally showed severe signs a while after she and Basi moved back to the Pridelands. She slowly grew ill during Beshte's young calfhood, passing away a little after the time her son had helped rescue Ono's egg.
Before rescuing Ono's egg, Beshte met Kion, Bunga, and Fuli when they played too close to the water. Fuli nearly fell in, but was rescued by falling atop an initially unaware Beshte, whose head was underwater due to grazing grass with his pod.
Basi honors his wife by volunteering as a singer for the Kupatana Community Choir every year, and Beshte honors his mom by occasionally performing for the Bellow Fellows, as well as inheriting her sweet, friendly nature.
Ono:
Ono was the result of two cattle egrets meeting far from the continent during migration. Ndoto is a Western cattle egret from the Pridelands, and Onya is an Eastern cattle egret who originated not too far from the Tree of Life,
Ndoto and Onya crossed paths during one migration, both sharing an interest and role in reporting their discoveries of other worlds and knowledge of fauna to their fellow animals.
Despite the odds, as each of their kind evolved separately ages ago, they were successfully able to have an egg together. They carefully watched this egg, until it was time to migrate again.
It had been just too soon, as their egg was not yet ready to hatch. The couple had to get a move-on before resources would run low where they'd settled together.
In a rush to catch up with the flock, they'd hardly noticed that they'd left their egg behind somewhere in the Pridelands during one of their rest stops until they'd almost flown too far away.
Onya, noticing mid-flight, frantically demanded she and Ndoto turn back for their egg, wherever they had left it. To their relief, a kind band of young animals rescued the egg from being eaten.
The egret couple was so thankful for the children's heroism that they trusted them and Ndoto's native flock to watch over Ono as they continued their ambassador-like duties to the Pridelands.
Ndoto and Onya's knowledge of other biomes was passed down to their son, which is why he knows about creatures such as reindeer. Ono has spent long flights with his parents, leading him to practice his keen eyesight which would soon come to use.
Anga:
And lastly, comically, of all of the Lion Guard members, the goth and deadpan Anga has quite possibly the most normal childhood story.
Anga hatched to a pair of very romantic martial eagles, named Mpenzi (Swahili for "darling"), and Ghali (Swahili for "dear", "expensive"), who supported and sometimes doted on their daughter.
Anga, with a subtle personality and flat tone since hatching, naturally did not reflect what would otherwise be a slightly spoiled and carefree upbringing.
The martial eagle family originated far out in the outskirts of the Pridelands, in woodlands of tall, spiky trees near the Backlands, therefore making Anga the least affected by Scar's Reign out of Kion's Lion Guard due to being so out-of-reach of the kingdom.
Anga was a content loner and would be allowed by her parents to fly as high and as far as she could go as soon as she was ready to fledge.
Although Anga never really spoke to anyone nor made friends growing up, she knows just about everything about those she has observed with great interest from above, especially heroes such as Hadithi and the Lion Guard.
Anga met Ono on the way to one of Hadithi's conventions, briefly mingling about their common interest in the hawk-eagle. Beshte knew as much as he could about Anga a long time — such as the tree she lived in — before they officially spoke to each other through Ono formally introducing the two of them to each other.
Her obtained knowledge earned her instant friendships with each of the aforementioned factions. She never could've imagined becoming a member of the Lion Guard, nor deemed a hero by her idol, Hadithi, in a million years.
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(Fun Facts:
I based Kion's early cubhood on the ending of Mufasa: The Lion King. I decided to link Kion to the cub at the end of that movie since the cub was called "Kion" in production notes. Also, I very much believe that while Simba and Nala are good people, I totally feel their family dynamic is dysfunctional, albeit unintentionally. I know their polar-opposite attention and trust they put in each of their kids is something people validly criticize about the show, itself, but I see it as canon in-universe, too.
I forget why I linked Bunga's parents and Kenge together, but I do recall wanting to give Kenge a bigger role by having him be an already greatly feared animal in the Outlands. Decided him having a grudge against Asali and Beji would add depth to his hatred of Bunga.
Fast-Track, Lightfoot, and Speedy are cheetahs from the Hakuna Matata magazine, notably the issue "Home, Sweet Home". Decided to lump one of them together with my OC Maili just to narrow down the amount of cheetah characters and to keep the connections to existing TLK publications interesting.
Bacterial infections, such as Anthrax, E. Coli, and Streptococcus are one of the common causes of death in hippos, and are especially present in the dry season. Since the Pridelands faced a drought, it would make sense that Bendi would have a high likelihood of coming into contact with unsafe waters. I was originally going to have her cause of death be cancer, but found out cancer has not been documented in wild hippos.
In the first image of Ono's origin, the trees featured are native to Florida, which is where cattle egrets migrate through. Ndoto's Western cattle egret flock was migrating Westward around the globe, while Onya was migrating Eastward, meeting halfway in North America.
Anga's parents are based on Morticia and Gomez Addams. Mpenzi is Anga's father, and Ghali is Anga's mother. They're named after pet-names Morticia and Gomez give each other. Interestingly, Mpenzi and Ghali share initials to the Addams Family couple, although, inverse to their respective characters they're based on.)
