14
The chase was on! Prince John's spider-walking throne-mobile skittered across the landscape as Marty, Robin Hood, Little John and Marian pursued on their hover-boards. As the throne-mobile began to pull ahead, Robin Hood drew his bow and fired an arrow with a rope tied around it. The arrow pieced the underbelly of the machine, sticking fast. Grinning, Robin began to pull himself forward, closing the gap.
The Prince, feeling the impact, turned around in his chair. He shook his furry fist at Robin Hood and twisted his steering wheel sharply to the left. Robin Hood was whipped around, his legs flying sideways, but he managed to maintain a grip on the hover-board with his feet. Snarling, the Prince steered his contraption towards the trees of Sherwood Forest, hoping to smash his land-skiing passenger.
The throne-mobile wove through pine trees, forcing Robin to jump, duck, or twist out of harm's way every few seconds. After a particularly near miss with a gnarled stump, he put the rope in his teeth and fired another arrow with a rope around it. When it stuck as well, Robin now had two cords attaching himself to the Prince's vehicle and was able to steer himself with more success.
Though the Prince's path through the woods made things difficult for Robin Hood, it did give the other three hover-boarders a chance to catch up. On their narrow boards, they were able to maneuver through the foliage with more ease than the Prince's gargantuan contraption. When the Prince spotted Marty, the most accomplished of all the boarders, in his peripheral vision, he gave a little gasp, and turned his vehicle towards a gap in the underbrush that led to an open meadow. The spider-walker crashed into the sunlight, and Prince pushed a lever that sent the craft to its maximum speed.
As the Prince sped through the meadow, Robin Hood pulled himself close enough to jump from his hover-board onto the back of the throne-mobile. His hands caught the back of the chair, though his legs and tail were jostled by the churning mechanical legs. As the craft bobbed up and down, Robin tried to climb to the side of the throne, where the Prince was.
But the Prince heard the scrape of claws on metal and turned around, drawing his sword. Robin Hood, seeing a flicker of movement above him, let go with one hand and swung his body sideways, just as a great sword strike came down from above him. With his one remaining hand, Robin Hood pulled himself over the chair and flipped onto the seat next to Prince John. He had no sword of his own.
"ROBIN HOOD!" screamed the Prince, trying to stab his foe with a thrust.
Robin Hood spun out of the way of the attack and grabbed the hilt of the sword, trying to wrest it away from the monarch. At last, Robin pried it from the Prince's grip. Prince John, suddenly terrified, fell to his knees on the padded cushion of the throne.
"Wait! Please don't hurt me! I'll give you anything you want!"
Robin Hood pointed the sword at the trembling tyrant but found he could not hurt him. It was not in his nature to attack an unarmed foe, even one as repellant as Prince John. "All I want is for you to leave this–"
Suddenly, the speeding throne-mobile hit a bump, and flew into the air. Robin Hood, who had been standing, was thrown from the seat and fell into the grass. Prince John, on the other hand, had been kneeling, and thus was able to grab onto the arm-rests and stay on the vehicle. His terrified expression was replaced by one of smugness. He looked back and saw that Robin Hood, now on foot, was falling far behind.
"AH ha!" laughed the Prince. "I have defeated the great Robin Hood in hand-to-hand combat! I, Prince John the Invincible! I defeated Robin Hood!"
"Congratulations," came a voice. Prince John looked down and saw Marty McFly, balancing on his hover-board, holding on to the front of the throne-mobile. Marty smiled. "I just defeated your steering wheel. Feels good to win a fight, doesn't it?"
Prince John gasped. His entire control panel – steering wheel, acceleration, brakes – was now a smoking piece of wreckage. "You…you…you…"
Marty reached into his vest pocket and put on a pair of sunglasses. "You've just been terminated." With that, he pushed himself away from the throne-mobile and coasted to a stop.
Prince John pounded on his shattered control panel, but nothing he did affected the momentum or direction of his speeding throne-mobile. As he pressed broken buttons and levers, he noticed that he was approaching a dark mountain.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" screamed Prince John as he crashed into an enormous pile of manure.
Marian hover-boarded over to her uncle, who, dazed and befouled, was extricating himself from the waste and the broken machinery that surrounded him. Marian pushed herself closer and drew a sword.
"Uncle, you have been defeated. Your days of terrorizing this land are over."
The Prince tried to stand, but slipped and fell back down in the manure. "You just wait, young lady! Soon my army will be here, and then they'll put you back behind bars."
Sure enough, Marian saw in the distance the royal army descending a hill from the north. At the same time, she realized, a huge mass of people were arriving from the opposite direction. She squinted her eyes, for it looked like a number far beyond their usual pack of outlaws.
"We'll see," she said. "It might be time for some renegotiation. Until then," and here she put the blade of the sword against his throat, "sit tight, uncle."
The two throngs arrived at the same time. There were the elephants, rhinos, wolves and vultures of the Prince's army, led in formation by a bee-stung Sheriff and a sneering Sketchy the Weasel. On the other side was not only Robin Hood, Little John, and Marty, but also Future Doc and the Merry Men, all those that escaped from the prison, and what looked like nearly the whole population of Nottingham, carrying pitchforks and torches. In the back of the crowd, Past Doc Brown and the old aardvark were smiling– it was they who had incited the townsfolk to at last raise their voices.
"Down with the Prince!" yelled Friar Tuck.
"He locked up our little boy Timmy!" roared two ferocious-looking tigers.
"Stay back!" yelled Sketchy the Weasel. "It's important in these times to stay loyal…"
"SILENCE!" bellowed Marian in a voice that was quite a departure from her usual shy soprano. The crowds, stunned, obeyed. Marian pressed a button on the hover-board, and it lifted up into the air. She looked around at the stunned crowd and raised her sword high.
"My name is Lady Marian. I have spent the last two months in prison. I committed no crime, just like most of those locked up with me; we were there solely by the whims of one man."
"This man you see before you, filthy and stinking. But it is not the manure that gives this land its true stench. It is the stink of poverty, from the Prince's hoarding and greed. It is the stink of injustice, as the good, honest people of Nottingham languish behind bars. It is the foul, contemptible smell of a man who would use even small children as pawns in his selfish game."
"Lady, you can't say–" began Sketchy the Weasel, but a rhino reached out an arm and pounded Sketchy into the ground like a hammer driving in a nail. A cartoonishly large bump arose on Sketchy's head and small canaries circled around him, whistling.
"Shut up, pea-brain. I wanna hear this," said the rhino.
"John would claim his power by birthright," Marian continued, "by his kinship to my uncle, the true king Richard. But I say that because of his corruption, his cruelty, and his avarice, John is no true kin of mine, nor of Richard's. Hence, by birth and by virtue, I have decided to rule in his stead. Until King Richard returns from his travels, I shall serve as Ruler and Protectorate of the Realm. I vow to keep our land safe, prosperous, and free."
She turned to the royal army. "If you pledge me an oath of fealty, your service to this loathsome phony king will be forgiven. If you think you can serve under the leadership of my husband, whom I plan to install as our new Sheriff, we will welcome you." She lowered the point of your sword. "If, however, you want to fight for this imposter, you will have to come through me." She looked at the villagers of Nottingham. "And there may be other brave souls who are ready for the end of tyranny as well!"
The townsfolk and Merry Men let out an enormous cheer and raised their pitchforks, swords, and torches. There was a moment of hesitation amongst the royal guards. Then, as one, they dropped to their knees. The townsfolk and Merry Men did likewise, and from the kneeling throngs came up a great cheer.
"Long live Queen Marian! Long live Queen Marian!"
Little John glanced over at Marty, who was staring at Marian after her passionate speech. "Son," said Little John, concerned, "do you have your dagger or something stored in your pants pocket? That's really not a safe place to put it!"
"Guards," Marian said, pointing to Sketchy, the Sheriff, and the bewildered Prince John, "arrest these ruffians."
Several elephants stepped forward at once to clap the scoundrels in chains.
"You can't do this to me!" said Prince John as he was hauled off. "I'm the KING! I'm Invincible!"
Marian pressed another button and floated back down to earth. She hopped off the hover-board and into the arms of Robin Hood.
"Darling," he said, "that was quite a speech."
"Oh, my dear Robin," she replied demurely, "I had a lot of time to practice it."