Nala was horrified. Scar didn't know what he was talking about; she really had recommended what was best for Simba. It was simply lucky that her choice also happened to benefit her. But when she noticed her thoughts drifting from the bombshell Scar had just dropped to the smell of the meat sitting in front of her, realization hit so hard that no amount of denial could wash it away. She didn't care about Simba nearly as much as she cared about eating.

And what was worse was that the realization didn't bother her. Her former friend had had the gall to call her disgusting after killing his own father! Eating, on the other hand, had never brought her anything but happiness. Maybe what she had done was objectively wrong. But it had been the right thing to do to increase her own pleasure, and after weeks of pampered hedonism, that was enough for her. And the only person who had never tried to stop her eating, the only person who'd never been anything but supportive of her gain...was Scar. Without the food he brought her, she would never have been able to gain so much weight so quickly.

She supposed that she loved him, as much as she loved anything that wasn't eating. She was eternally grateful to him, at least, and to her adolescent mind, it was more or less the same thing. Sure, he was kind of underhanded, and he could be pretty scary, but he'd never done anything "bad" that wasn't in Nala's best interest. And, as he had pointed out, she was just the same as him, when one got right down to it.

"Yes," she said decisively. "I would love to be your queen. Can I eat now?"

"Of course, darling," Scar replied, pleased. "I'd like nothing more."

Nala felt his eyes on her as she buried her face in the fresh pile of meat, but it didn't bother her. Letting him admire her was the least she could do after all he'd done for her, both in terms of food and of personal revelations. She had never really thought about the moral ramifications of her eating, but it was clear to her now that if she wanted to keep going down her current path (and there was nothing she wanted more), she would have to give up most of the semblance of a normal life.

Somehow, the thought that she was doing something that most people would classify as "bad" made gluttony all the better. She was eating more than she ever had before, and was probably in real danger of overdoing it, but she didn't care. Her already-mountainous stomach strained to contain all the food she consumed as she continued to gorge herself at a ferocious pace. The four wildebeest disappeared surprisingly quickly, given how much she had already eaten that day.