After getting Zazu pinned under a rhino's butt, Simba and Nala reached the elephant graveyard to find it lived up to Scar's hype. Bones laid everywhere with a huge skull as some kind of entrance to certain doom. For juvenile lion cubs, it was everything they could've asked for and left them awestruck. Simba boldly bet that the rotted brains were still in the imposing skull and snuck towards it with Nala right behind him. However, the lioness cub suddenly found something just in the corner of her eye draw her attention. Something bright... and... colorful...

Simba let out a, "Whoa!" over the crude stench inside of the skull and told Nala to get a whiff of this to laugh at her reaction. However, he looked back to see that Nala was just behind one of the tusks randomly and rushes over. Simba came up to his best friend and joked that it smelled like something died in there until he saw her face. Nala's lips were curled into a smile that stretched from cheek to cheek so... unnaturally. It was like some invisible fingers were forcing them to be that wide.

However, it was Nala's eyes that left Simba with an unsettling feeling. They were also stretched wide open without blinking even once, much less any lids drooping. The lioness cub also sat perfectly straight with her paws all lined up together just as their parents had scolded them on not doing. A series of glowing rings of various colors also flowed out from where her pupils use to be, something that further disturbed Simba. The prince tried to stay calm and repeatedly call Nala's name with growing concern. He waved his right paw right up in her face and claimed that this wasn't funny anymore but got zero reaction.

Simba stepped back in growing dread and asked himself what was going on. He got his answer in the form of a sharp hiss that sent shivers down his spine. A brown-scaled python slithered up from behind his left and turned around to look Simba in the eye. "Resssst asssssure, your highnessssss," the snake hissed with ever "s" slurred in his speakings, "I sssssaw to it that the lady would be left in peaccccce." Simba could only back away so much as fear weighted his body down. He recognized Kaa as the kind of python Scar told him in scary stories at night. He remembered tales of how they made plaything of their prey with their coils.

"W-w-w-w-what'd you do-do-do to Nala?" Simba stammered in a failed attempt to show no fear like the prince he was. "Please... don't hurt her." The prospect of a python eating him was bad enough but his thoughts were more about Nala's state and how he dragged his best friend into certain death. Kaa smirked almost playfully and declared that he takes care to avoid needless collateral damage. "Assss for what I did," the rock python began like he hoped Simba would ask, "a demonssstratiiion ssseemsss to be in order."

Simba's mouth hung open in initial surprise when Kaa's eyes flooded with glowing colors. The very same that flooded Nala's eyes. The prince couldn't keep himself from looking away when he felt a blissful sensation fill his body from his eyes down. He felt... at peace more and more by the second. His feeling of dread and imminent danger were becoming... alleviated. His vision became tinted with the same series of colorful rings that mirrored what he saw from Kaa. He... liked it.

"N-n-no..." Simba begged weakily, his brow knitting. "P... p... please..." He quickly realized that the snake was hypnotizing him just like he had with Nala. Simba panted in his effort to resist but found that he couldn't break eye contact or keep himself from feeling some bliss. A part of Simba... wanted this. To escape the horror of his current situation. Yet he knew that both he and Nala were doomed if he succumbed to the silent yet tempting offer. The lion cub felt a twisted kind of dread when the snake brought his face closed to his.

"Hmmmm," Kaa mused in amusement when Simba tried to tug his gaze away from his. "You truly are asss sssstubborn as he promisssssed." The prince suddenly felt something scaly slither around his sitting paws and butt despite being in the throes of Kaa's thrall. "Nothing to fear, your highnessss." The scales wrapped around Simba's torso with a growing grip while he prayed that he was just imagining things. A side effect of the hypnosis. "I alwayssss sssssend off cubssss with a ssssmile." However, the snake's snickering said otherwise.

"Nnnn..." Simba struggled to get out with what resistence he could cling to. "Na..." He felt the coils slithering up to his shoulders faster and faster while he tried to spit it out. Whatever happened to him, he needed to snap Nala out of it if nothing else. She could run to get help or at least get to safety. "Na... la-URK!" he managed to weakly croak out before a coil slithered around his neck and gave a tight tug. All at once, his oxygen was cut off while any focus he had on his resistance had crumbled to near nothingness.

Kaa enjoyed this classic picture: a lion cub's head atop of a cocoon of his coils. He slowly squeezed Simba's torso to deflate him of most of the air in his lungs and listened to the wheeze with great delight. A violet hue overtook the prince's face in his growing oxygen deprivation. The rock python could see that Simba was still trying to hold on and not succumb but didn't mind the wait. The more the cub was strangled, the more lightheaded he would become. The more lightheaded he would become, the more lasting his hypnosis would be like a bad stain that won't come out of a rug. Lasting enough to make the digestive acids far less painful.

"Your uncle ssssendssss hisssss regardssss," Kaa hissed into Simba's ear. He knew the cub was too out of sorts to understand him yet but the line was too entertaining to pass up.

Simba could feel his body being crush slowly but surely and his head becoming more messed up without air. Despite this, he still tried to resist Kaa's gaze to the bitter end with the image of Nala still in his mind. He didn't trust the snake to leave her be. Simba knew he was done for but it wasn't fair that his best friend had to become a second course. Nobody was aware that Zazu was flying up above, fretting about the whereabouts of the cubs in question. Dust from the area would partially obscure the ghastly scene below but if he lingered just long enough, there was hope.

But only hope.