Please don't take this story seriously. I wrote it as a loving tribute to those who defined my childhood and yours, and who ruined our perceptions of men for the rest of our lives.
The parking lot buzzed with the revving of engines, the crunching of gravel, the clatter of dolly wheels and the shouts of bellhops and valets. The sparkling sliding doors of the imposing Evafta Hotel and Convention Center hummed inward and outward, jerking and halting like cautious meerkats as trunks, garment bags, and slickly dressed managers flowed through them into the magnificent atrium. The citizens of the town of Yesdin stared through their car windows at the spectacle. The first annual Mr. Disney Renaissance Pageant Competition was, after so many years of planning, about to begin.
At 9:55, exactly five minutes before the orientation breakfast was to start, an East Asian man in ceremonial Han Chinese military attire stalked through the door to the Ochre Room. Several pageant assistants milled about the stage, checking sound equipment, and he was left quite to his own devices. Calmly, he surveyed the large round table around which the twelve contestants would sit. He placed his helmet decisively on the chair that would allow him the most advantageous view of the room and resumed a casual position by the door.
Next through the door came a harmless-looking dandy with a naïve nature. The light shone in his blue eyes as he gazed around the Ochre Room. The first man scoffed inwardly; surely this effeminate blond would pose no competition. However, he respectfully stepped forward to introduce himself. "Good morning."
"Oh! Good morning!" The voice perfectly matched the demeanor; had this man reached age thirteen yet? "How do you do?"
"Very well, thank you. And yourself?"
"Very well."
"My name is Li Shang." Shang straightened, determined to use his military training to his full advantage. "General of the Emperor's Army."
"Pleasure to meet you, Li." Shang winced. "My name is Adam – Adam Bête, of the Chateau de Joiale." The two men bowed, Adam artfully, Shang rigidly. Silence ensued.
Adam shifted, sighed, and finally broke it. "The room is lovely."
"Indeed."
"Where are you from, Li?"
"I bear allegiance to the Emperor of China. You, I have guessed, are French."
"You guessed well." Adam giggled self-consciously. He and Shang were of the same height, but Shang's barrel chest encased in metal immediately put Adam on his guard.
Since Adam's back was to the door, Shang was the first to see the beast enter. Despite walking on all fours, it stood nearly as tall as a man. The tawny coat and mahogany mane shone like fire, and the strong square muzzle denoted an alpha male. Shang had heard tales of men being ravaged by creatures such as these, and he shifted his body into a subtle defensive. Adam looked startled at Shang's change in attitude and followed his gaze; yet instead of screaming, as Shang expected, he seemed to perk up.
"Hello." Adam rushed over to where the lion stood and bowed. "Adam Bête of the Chateau de Joiale, at your service."
The lion seemed taken aback; yet against all odds, it spoke. "I'm Simba, Pride Rock."
Adam nodded. "The Savannah, I presume?"
The great beast nodded.
Adam grinned. "Can I just say, your mane is beautifully kept. Now, I've had some experience myself with…"
And the lion was gone. Rather, the speed with which it rolled into the dining room was such that for several seconds, Adam stared at the spot he had vacated, uncomprehending. Simba had become a blur of fur and snarls, spinning like a dog trying to rid himself of an unwelcome accessory. Shang's sword was halfway out of its sheath before he realized the rage wasn't unprecedented; a sinewy man clad in naught but a leather wrap had secured himself around the lion's neck and was trying to pin him down, while snarling in the most inhuman way. By comparison, Simba, clearly panicked, was talking uncontrollably.
"Hey, what are you doing? Get off me! Get off me, you idiot! Ow! Are you crazy?!"
Adam set his jaw and spoke assertively, yet his prepubescent voice had no effect. "Stop it! Stop this foolishness! At once, you hear?"
Shang surveyed the scene calmly before walking to the fray, picking the man up around the waist, and setting him on his feet. "This is not the environment," he intoned.
Simba frantically tried to straighten his mane. "Thank you." Turning to the offending man, he glared. "What are you, some kind of maniac?"
"No Numa!" snarled the feral man. "No killing!"
"Exactly!" cried Simba. "What's a numa?"
Tarzan bared his teeth and pointed at Simba. "NUMA!"
"He's calling you a 'numa', whatever that means," said Adam.
"That's insane," muttered Simba, but he turned back patiently to face his attacker. "I'm not going to kill anyone. My name is Simba."
Under the influence of Shang, the man seemed to be calming down. "Numa… Simba… Simba will not hurt? Not kill?"
Adam, Shang and Simba exchanged quizzical looks. Simba responded slowly, as though talking with a child. "No. I am a friendly lion. A friendly, er, numa. I'm Simba." He smiled. "And you are…"
"Tarzan," he muttered before pacing away and crouching ape-like on the ground.
Drawn together by the event, Shang and Adam shared an unspoken look of uncertainty before noticing the two men hanging by the door, jaws slack. Shang pulled himself together first and approached the two.
"Li Shang, general of the Emperor's Army." He bowed twice: once at a tall, fresh-faced youth with thick black hair, swarthy skin and dark blue eyes, and another at a strapping man with a military bearing yet an easygoing demeanor, with shaggy straw-coloured hair, a small goatee, and dark eyes. "You may refer to me as 'Shang'," he remarked pointedly. Adam shifted awkwardly.
"Eric, of Atlantica," offered the younger. He bowed awkwardly, clearly unused to the custom.
"Phoebus de Châteaupers," said the elder, inclining his head amiably. Lowering his voice, he whispered, "Was that lion speaking just now?"
"Yes," quipped Shang. Adam approached, beaming.
"Hello, Eric, Phoebus, am I right?" He bowed to both, introduced himself, and turned to face Phoebus. "From where in France are you, may I ask?"
Phoebus shifted his weight and scratched his head uneasily. "Paris, I suppose you would say. Shang," he added, changing the subject, "were you just mentioning that you serve as a general for China?"
"Yes." Shang nodded, pleased.
"China? One of my first expeditions ended in China," said a fair man just walking through the door. Tall, chiseled and domineering, Shang immediately singled him out as the fiercest competition. However, none noticed his sentiment as they bowed and introduced themselves.
"John Smith, originally from London." He offered his hand to the group at large and was shocked when Tarzan was the first to grab it. He did not stop there; he counted the five fingers and sniffed before letting it go.
"Tarzan," he intoned before loping off once more. John shrugged the encounter off.
"Have you been to Africa?" asked Simba.
"Oh, sure, it was… ha, a talking lion. Well," he added, inclining his head, "I suppose once one converses with a tree anything's…"
"I don't know about a tree, but I knew a pretty animated carpet once." This new voice belonged to a scrawny youth of barely 18 years, Arabian in appearance with a wide, toothy smile and mischievous eyes. "Call me Aladdin." It was clear from this boy's demeanor that, despite his shabbiness of dress and diminutive stature, he was the most at his ease of anyone in the room.
"It is past 10," boomed a voice from a corner of the room. Out of the shadows strode an extremely serious-looking man in deerskin pants, cape and moccasins, with skin like polished wood and a thick curtain of black hair. Conversation halted as this imposing figure drew nearer.
John pushed his way out of the crowd, an awkward grin on his lips as he extended his hand towards the man. "Kocoum, how are you?"
"Smith."
John used his neglected hand to brush back the hair that had fallen into his face. "Ah… Shang, Adam, Phoebus, Simba, Eric, Aladdin, and, ah, Tarzan, this," he gestured broadly, "is Kocoum. We've, er, met."
Phoebus raised his eyebrows. "Not much of a talker, are you, there?" Appropriately, silence accompanied this remark.
"What was it called again?"
"The 'Ochre Room', whatever that means."
"Is Ochre a colour?"
The pair of voices that now rang down the hallway was accompanied by heavy footsteps that started and stopped as the owners apparently made pause to look around. An unspoken acknowledgement passed among the men in the room: they're no competition. Phoebus, however, knit his eyebrows as he listened before darting out of the room. A second later, he re-entered, arm around the shoulders of a small man in a green tunic and brown hose.
"Everyone, this is Quasi. Quasi, this is…" as he ran through the list of names, the men took their time to subtly survey this strange character. Phoebus was obviously stooping quite a bit to reach his shoulders, as a hunchback reduced the otherwise strapping man to the size of a child, shorter than Simba. A protrusion nearly covered his left eye, his nose was pushed back snout-like, his teeth were huge and fought for space, and lank red hair fell like a shutter over his forehead. His age was impossible to tell, but he spoke and gazed at all with a heartwarming childlike innocence. Tarzan bounded forward and came to rest on his knuckles in front of Quasi, hooting softly; but when Quasi answered with a hesitant greeting Tarzan grew surly and loped away.
The man who entered behind Quasi wasn't immediately noticed; Quasi himself was quite a distraction. However, once the men saw him, the tension that had been dwindling snapped back to the fore. This man was of an objectively perfect physique. Chiseled, bronze arms protruded from the leather tunic, with legs to match. Bulging calves strained against laced sandals. His torso, though covered, clearly funneled from a chest of carved marble to a stomach seemingly composed of a column of orbs. So shocked by his physique were they that it was sometime before they noticed his face; which, by contrast to the rippling neck it perched upon, was smiling with an affable, friendly grin. A mop of ruddy curls completed the picture. Quasi gestured back to him with little intimidation. "This is Hercules."
The rest of the men shifted and muttered their greetings.
A piercing, inhuman wail pervaded the room, and they all glared accusingly at Tarzan as they covered their ears, until they realized he was glaring accusingly back at them. Immediately following, a voice pervaded the room – "Sorry, sorry, feedback…" and they relaxed. "If you'll take your places now, we'll begin shortly."
The table was large, but it took some time for the men to arrange themselves in an order that suited them. Phoebus and Quasi immediately took chairs next to each other, with Hercules on Quasi's opposite side. Eric chose the chair to the right of Phoebus, followed by Aladdin. Kocoum sat resolutely two chairs to the right of Aladdin, leaving a gap that John moved to fill, but Kocoum's glare sent him all but scurrying to sit next to Hercules. Shang took the gap instead, his military background making him somewhat immune to Kocoum's abrasive aura. Tarzan bounded towards the chair next to John, gesturing for Simba to follow; Simba looked wary, but realized he had little choice as the seat next to Tarzan was the only one converted to accommodate four legs. He hopped onto the seat and seemed to deflate further as Adam took the seat on his other side. There now remained one empty chair between Kocoum and Adam (for which Adam seemed thankful). An unspoken question arose: to whom did it belong?
"Good morning, good morning, gentlemen. We're still waiting on one other, but we'll begin anyway." The speaker behind an onstage podium was a 30-something woman in a rather pretty salmon dress; she seemed quite frazzled and her heavy brown hair was orchestrating an escape from its bobby pins. "Good morning, my name is Deminda O'Kelly, the chair of the Mr. Disney Renaissance Pageant Competition Executive Committee." The men politely applauded. "May I take this moment to most sincerely welcome you all and assure you that the inaugural event will surely surpass all expectations. Believe me when I say that all of us on the Committee are thrilled to pieces about your participation." Her rapid pacing seemed to suggest that she herself didn't believe it what she said. "Without further ado, I will now pass the microphone to our master of ceremonies, Michael Mouse."
Again, polite applause filled the room, but faltered somewhat as a five-foot-tall anthropomorphic mouse in a tuxedo sprinted into the room with a jovial, borderline maniacal grin on his face. Once at the podium, he seized the microphone with a white-gloved, four-fingered hand and wrenched it from is stand. "Ho-Ho! Thanks for the introduction, Deminda! Isn't she lovely! Allow me to introduce myself: Mickeeeeeeeey Mouse! Ha-Ha!"
The men applauded once more to cover the dead air as they stared the creature, trying to figure out what exactly it was they were looking at.
"Let me start by…"
Bang! Bang! The doors to the Ochre Room flew open and crashed against the wall. An imposing man strode into the room. Judging by the pectoral muscles straining against his scarlet tunic, he seemed to be Hercules' rival for the most muscular man in the room. His chin probably could have crushed rock, and his eyes underneath thick black eyebrows certainly displayed the intent. His ebony hair was drawn back from a handsome widow's peak into a short, curly tail. The air in the room instantly soured; the man seemed to exude loathsomeness, and each other person detected it.
"Late, am I?" he boomed as he swaggered towards the empty chair.
Mickey, however, chuckled. "Gentlemen, my I introduce Gaston Cerfeaux?"
Gaston flexed and settled himself in between Kocoum and Adam, the latter of who stared at him with shock and, strangely, rage. Looking over Adam, he addressed the rest of the table: "Who let this kid in here? Am I right?"
A hint of guilt underscored the other men's disapproving glances; each of them had entertained similar sentiments.
"Gaston Cerfeaux," Adam intoned, staring pointedly.
"You know it," Gaston replied.
"Huhn."
Phoebus smiled and chuckled awkwardly. "Well, at least France is well represented, eh?" Quasi grinned.
Mickey interjected. "Yes, yes, welcome to Mr. Cerfeaux. We're very excited to have all of you here. This is going to be a zippidee-doo-dah week! With games, fun, and getting' to know ya, and let's not forget the very special Disney prize!"
Each man perked up.
"That's right! Whichever one of you princes demonstrates the most nebulous know-how will receive their very own spin-off series of novels, a merchandise reboot, and a 20-episode television program!"
The men fought to stem too gleeful a reaction.
"But of course, the main point of the competition is to really get to know each other and have fun!"
All smiled uneasily.
"And now for our most radiant judges!" A door onstage opened, and out stepped a plump woman in a muted sable-coloured gown. "Carlotta!" Erik grinned and clapped louder than the rest.
"Fifi Plume-Chiffon!" Each man's eyes widened at the coy brunette beauty in a slinky, low-cut black dress.
"Carpet!" A lushly embroidered carpet sailed in, balanced on two corner tassels and bowed; remembering Aladdin's earlier remark, the other tablemates stared at him as he laughed and cheered.
"Shenzi!" A smirking, vicious-looking hyena stalked forward; Simba growled.
"Grandmother Willow!" A window opened, and the bark of a tree outside seemed to morph to reveal a smiling face. This time, it was John who received curious stares.
"Clopin!" One heard this judge before seeing him; his brightly coloured pink and orange tumbling costume was fitted with numerous jingle bells. Quasi beamed and waved frantically, and Phoebus chuckled as though sharing a private joke with himself.
"Hermes!" A flash of blue light streaked through the door and came to rest in the air above the contestants, revealing itself to be a man bourn by wings on his shoes and helmet.
"Matchmaker Chun Mei!" A six-foot-tall, rather robust woman in flowing Chinese robes marched through the door with a disapproving glare. Her eyes sought out Shang and narrowed menacingly.
"And finally, Terkana!" Another animal, this time a medium-sized female gorilla, knuckle-walked through the door.
"Call me Terk," she quipped.
"TERK!" Upending his chair, Tarzan raced over to the gorilla and enveloped her in a crushing hug.
"Ah, heya, buddy…"
"Terk, I met a numa named Simba, but he's not going to hurt us, he's friendly!"
"Yeah, Tar…"
"And look at that man." He gestured at Quasi. "He walks like us! Look!"
Terk socked him across the face. "Would you shut up? You're embarrassing me!"
Tarzan rubbed his face. "Ow." Slowly, he resumed his place, apparently unaware that each man was staring at him condescendingly – except for Quasi, who regarded him with great interest.
Gaston guffawed. "Keep that freak away from me." He turned and caught the smouldering eye of Adam. "Something bothering you, junior?"
Mickey tugged at his collar. "Heh, heh, heh. Now, boys, I won't bother you with any more chatter… bon appétit!"
Instantly, an army of waiters materialized with covered plates, which cleared to reveal eggs Benedict carved in the shape of three interlocking circles. A quick glance confirmed that their breakfast was indeed modeled after Mickey's head.
I should explain "Adam". Since his name isn't given in the film, I was originally going to dub him "Hugh". It seemed to fit! But, after a quick Wikipedia reference, I was dismayed to discover that a name was assigned in some spinoff novel or comic. Begrudgingly, I searched and replaced each instance of "Hugh" with "Adam". It hurt, but such is the pain of writing Fanfiction. "Joiale", the name of his chateau, is a word I coined. It doesn't really mean anything, but it's somewhat based on "jolie" (pretty) and "joie" (joy).
I should also explain Gaston's last name. I coined it out of the word "cerf", which means "deer", and "eaux", which is a common pluralized suffix. It's pronounced "Serf-OH".
"De Châteaupers" is Phoebus' last name in the Victor Hugo novel.
"Numa" is the Mangana (language of the Apes) word for "Lion" in the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.
"Chun Mei" is an arbitrary Mandarin name.
And as for Deminda O'Kelly - her name is definitely very symbolic. First reviewer to correctly guess its meaning will be given a very, very special prize, details of which are to be released imminently.
On that note, please review! I would love to hear your critiques on my characterization, as well as any suggestions you might have.
Yours in jest,
~Curlz