ENCOUNTER TABLE TALES
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are property of Disney and perhaps their various subsidiaries.
So, welcome to "Encounter Table Tales"! It's a writing exercise I created for myself, inspired by Dungeons & Dragons encounter tables. I have created a chart consisting of 99 characters from Disney films, all numbered. I roll two ten-sided dice, creating a two-digit number which corresponds to one of the characters. When I do this twice, I try to write a small story about the two random characters who came up.
(if I roll a 00, as on real encounter tables, that's "roll twice and combine" - which in this case means I write about three randomly-selected characters instead of two)
So here it is at last, hopefully to be the first chapter of many. Let's begin.
#1: Kuzco and Merida
In the depths of a dark forest, the last embers of a campfire were starting to fade away. A small black llama was laying on his back on a long fallen log, while a young woman with an impossibly tangled mass of curly red hair sat on another log, sharpening the heads of numerous arrows.
The llama raised his front hoof as if to snap his fingers. "Hey, ginger snap! Can you get me some food?"
"We don't have any food, yer emperorness," she replied coolly.
"Well then, can you go get some?" Kuzco sneered.
Merida raised her eyebrows at him. "Get some food? Now, how d'you expect me ta do that?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, you can… whatchacallit, chase down some animals or pick berries or something."
"Ye want me ta hunt and forage for ya?" Merida said innocently.
"Hunt and forage!" Kuzco exclaimed, sitting up. "Yeah! Those are the words! Go do those things."
Merida set her arrows aside, calmly stood up, and walked over to him, leaning down to whisper to him. "How about no?" she hissed.
"Come on," he snapped. "I'm payin' you good money here!"
"Ye're payin' me ta get ya to the Shrine o' Retsbol Repus in one piece, not ta feed you."
"Yeah, but you gotta get me there alive to get paid, right?"
"Ah, you'll live," she said dismissively, returning to her seat.
"Don't you need to eat?" he challenged.
"Nah, I'm good."
Kuzco blinked. "Oh… oh, you're good. I see."
She sat down and beamed at him.
"Well, you're certainly earning every penny of your pay, aren't you?" he retorted. "I came to you because I heard you had experience with humans being turned into animals. What was that, a scam?"
"No, I do indeed have that experience," Merida said casually, picking up another arrow to sharpen. "But that doesn't exactly make me an expert. This isn't what I do for a living, ya know. Your case is different from any experience I have, because every case is different. This? This is a highly dangerous journey to a shrine that you were told might exist. There may not be any prize at the end o' this for either of us, Your Highness, so just shut up and let me try ta do the job I'm bein' paid for."
"It's 'Excellency'," said Kuzco.
"What's that?"
"'Highness' is for princesses, with their pretty little skirts and tiaras," Kuzco explained snidely. "As the emperor, I'm an 'Excellency'. Not a 'Highness', not a 'Majesty'. 'Excellency'. Remember that."
"I see," said Merida. "I'm a 'Highness' myself. Emperors may have absolute power, but people respect princesses." She winked at him. "Goodnight, Kuzco."
"…Goodnight," he grumbled back to her.
-0-0-0-
The next day, the two of them walked up the mountain trail, Merida laden down by her heavy pack, quiver slung over one shoulder, and bow in hand. Kuzco trailed behind her, weaving back and forth dizzily.
"Aaaaagh," he whined.
"What now?" she demanded exhaustedly.
"My feet hurt."
"You have hooves."
"Well, my hooves hurt. And my back hurts. And I'm exhausted and, oh yeah, I'm hungryyyyyy…"
Merida immediately spun, dropping her backpack to the ground and drawing an arrow in one fluid motion, setting it in her bow and aiming it squarely at Kuzco's face.
"What, am I 'annoying' you?" he sneered. "You gonna shoot me?"
Something over his shoulder caught her attention. "Well, that was the plan," she said softly. "Hold still."
"What?" he said blankly.
"Just don't move."
He obeyed, freezing in place. She kept her eyes firmly trained on something behind him.
"Goblins," she whispered.
In response, a chilling and feral scream echoed out from the trees, and the creatures began swinging down at the pair of them on vines. The creatures were barely a foot tall, with bright green skin and bald heads, dressed in loincloths and most of them wielding tiny stone axes.
Merida shot an arrow, catching one of the tiny monsters in the chest, then immediately fired another, piercing a goblin's skull. Another of the wicked creatures chopped at her ankles with its tiny axe, and she lifted her foot and stomped on it with all her might, but more of the creatures were pouring out of the forest from all directions.
"Take my pack and keep following the trail," Merida said sharply to Kuzco. "I'll be right behind you."
Kuzco grabbed the straps of the backpack in his mouth and ran off without hesitation. As the goblins began overtaking her, Merida found she couldn't reach her quiver, so she clubbed at them with her bow, scattering them with a single mighty swipe. When one remained, she successfully drew an arrow, shot it in the face, and ran up the mountain path after Kuzco. Before she caught sight of him, she could hear him screaming.
"AAAH!" he squealed girlishly. "More goblins! Get them away from me!"
Merida rounded a bend in the path and saw him, struggling and squirming as the tiny goblins swarmed all over his body. Merida drew an arrow and took careful aim at the goblin sitting on his head, easily shooting it off of him. She aimed at another one which was atop his back, whacking the back of his head with a club, and shot it down as well.
She heard the skittering of dozens of pairs of feet, racing up the trail where she had left them behind. She quickly turned around and started shooting at the oncoming swarm.
"They're still on meeeee!" Kuzco cried out.
"HEY! Pal!" Merida snapped. "You try fightin' with just a bow! If I had my sword—" She stopped speaking for a moment to shoot down another goblin, piercing it as well as the two following behind it. "But it's in my pack," she finished, as the horde of goblins reached her and began jumping on her. "Get off me, ya stinkin'—agh!"
They overwhelmed her, knocking her down to the ground with their weight.
"Merida!" Kuzco called, just before he was clubbed in the head. "Uh, sword!" he muttered. "In the pack. Right."
He shook his body violently, throwing the goblins off, and reached for the backpack, which had fallen out of his grip when the goblins had ambushed him. He batted away the tiny goblins who were swarming over it, then pulled it open to find a few goblins already inside it—he picked them up and threw them to the side. Hearing some scampering up behind him, he kicked randomly with his hind legs, hearing a few satisfying cracking noises and their squeals as they flew away through the air.
He found the sword, tucked into a special pocket sewn into the pack, and pulled it out by the blade. "Aha! Yeah!" he roared triumphantly. He gripped the handle between his two front hooves and stood up, wielding it clumsily. "Now get away from my guide, ya freaks!"
He sliced through their ranks and kicked at them, dancing through the ankle-deep sea of goblins to make his way to Merida. With a single sweep of the sword, he bisected each of the goblins crawling on her.
"On your feet, princess, I'll cover your back!" Kuzco snarled, waving his sword wildly at all the surviving goblins.
She started along the trail, shooting down the goblins in her path.
"Yeah!" Kuzco shouted, slashing and slicing at a goblin who was menacing him with two small swords. "You wanna get the princess, you gotta go through me!" He kicked that goblin in the face, knocking it into several others. "That's right! She's the reason I made it this far alive! Watch me give some back! Yah! Yah! Yah!"
Kuzco swung the sword around and around in a mad, wild-eyed frenzy, chasing down one goblin at a time.
"Will ye just come on, ya damned fool!" Merida called to him, grinning. "They're done. They want nothin' more ta do with ye."
Kuzco scanned the horde, realizing that they were all fleeing. "Yeah, I guess you're right." He hobbled back to her on his hind legs and returned her sword to her.
"You catch what I said back there?" he said slyly. "I said it very loudly so you could hear it."
"Yeah, I heard," Merida chuckled.
"Well…" Kuzco muttered, scratching the back of his neck, "after you seriously considered shooting me, it kind of had to be said."
"Ye're such a knucklehead," said Merida, rolling her eyes.
Kuzco's eyes darted to something over Merida's shoulder. "Oh hey, that one's got a minigun."
Merida drew an arrow and shot it over her shoulder without looking. "No he don't," she said simply.
"Yeah, he still does, actually. You missed."
"Oh, bloody hell."
They both rolled to the side in opposite directions, as a goblin high on the slopes above started firing the gun, peppering the ground with bullets. Merida finished her somersault and loaded another arrow, taking aim at the goblin and plugging it right in the eye with her arrow.
"All right," Merida said darkly. "Let's get ya to that shrine."
-0-0-0-
"…And then," Kuzco said eagerly, stifling laughter, "right as the high priest reached the crescendo of his magic holy song or whatever, I spat a mouthful of water in his face."
"What?" Merida demanded, laughing wildly.
"Yep. I'd been keeping it in my mouth for the entire ceremony—four hours waiting for just the right moment to drench him."
"Oh, that's fantastic!" Merida crowed. "Kinda reminds me of the teeny-tiny sack o' flour I carry with me at all times." She whipped it out, a tiny sack dangling from a drawstring.
"Hehe, why?" said Kuzco.
"Just waitin' fer the perfect moment to fling it in somebody's face," Merida said deviously, tossing and catching the sack. "I hope that moment is fated to come in my lifetime."
"Heh, and I hope I'm there to see it," Kuzco chuckled. He fell silent suddenly as they continued trudging up the mountain. "…I'm not a very good emperor, am I?" he muttered. "I'm like a sucky, hedonistic, kind of Caligula-ey kind of… guy. Right?"
Merida shrugged. "That's not fer me ta say. I don't really know you."
"Oh, come on," said Kuzco. "I found you living in my empire. You must know what people say about me."
"…Yeah, I do," Merida admitted. "But I heard what ye said about giving something back. Got the feeling you were meaning to apply that to your whole life, not just me. 'Cause I'll tell ya, here's what I've learned about bein' a royal: ya have a duty and a responsibility ta your people, but that doesn't mean ya don't have a duty to yerself. 'Cause your life, not just as a royal, but as a person—it's fer other people, but it's also fer you. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you don't forget your people."
He nodded. "Wise advice, there. I'll have to keep it in mind." He looked to her. "You're saying people said that about you, too? That you only cared about yourself?"
"They still say that," Merida said simply. "And they're right… that's why I ran away. Maybe someday I'll come back and show 'em what I've learned. But enough o' that. Look, here we are. Just below the mountain's summit—the Shrine of Retsbol Repus."
It was carved from the black stone of the mountain, surrounded by a fence of standing stones, in the shape of a gigantic crustacean, hundreds of feet long, its back covered in painstakingly-detailed ridges.
"There it is," Kuzco whispered. "It'll make me… 'me' again, right?"
"I dunno," said Merida, shrugging. "Why don't you just try it out and we'll see?"
Kuzco started walking along the lobster's carved shell. "Right, I'm supposed to walk on it… and stand in the middle… and then it lights up, and the light swirls around me, and I turn back into the strapping and gorgeous emperor, right?"
He stood in the center of the shrine and grinned back at her hopefully.
"…Nothing's happening," he said.
"You're right," said Merida, biting her lip. "I wonder…" She stepped up to the carved stone lobster and touched its head. "I gotta tell ye, Kuzco… I know magic when I see it, and this… this isn't it. There's no magic here. None at all."
Kuzco staggered back to her numbly. "So this is it? I'm stuck as a llama forever?"
"I… I just don't know," said Merida, genuinely pained. She reached out a hand and scratched behind his ears. "I'm so sorry, Kuzco. Maybe ye are stuck as a llama… but ye're still an emperor. And now… now ye're a good man." She petted him. "A very good man."
He grinned at her nervously. "You really think so?"
"Yes. Yes, you are."
They gazed deeply into each other's eyes, before they both closed their eyes and slowly began to drift toward each other with their lips parted.
Merida peeked out at him just before their lips met, and shrieked and recoiled in disgust.
"What?" Kuzco said pitifully.
"Eeewwww," she shuddered. "I'm sorry, I know who ye are on the inside, but come on, ye're a llama. Ugh!"
She started stalking down the mountain, continuously shuddering. He stared after her, looking wounded.
Endnote: 1/20/2019
Greetings, reader. Don't know how you happened to stumble upon this story, but I hope you enjoyed it. As I said in the first note, I hoped this would be the first story of many, but after nearly five years of trying and failing to write the second Encounter Table Tale, I was forced to admit that Kuzco and Merida's story will have to be the only one I'll ever do. As an exercise for making my storytelling muscle more flexible, it seems to have failed.