Haruka's Fanfiction

Written for Bewize’s Candy Heart Ficathon.
*note* For the purposes of the Ficathon, this fic will remain open until after Feb 14th, then will be under F-lock.

Kuzco’s Love Day (The Emperor’s New School)

By Haruka (haruka@ymail.com)

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Every February, there’s a special day known throughout the land as Kuzco’s Love Day. Originally, the idea was for everyone to express their love for ME, but somehow the focus got lost and people started thinking that this was their day to express love for each other. Silly people. Problem is, once they got onto this idea, they were like a dog with a bone, all grrr, I’m a stubborn dog that’s gonna gnaw this thing to death! Like that. Before long, no one remembered the whole point to making this holiday.

Which meant I had to create Kuzco Appreciation Day. But that’s another story.

This is about this year’s Kuzco’s Love Day. I had managed to mostly ignore all the stupid red heart decorations and the peddlers in the marketplace enticing people to buy presents for their loved ones. On my way to school, though, there was one guy blocking the road, and as I approached, it looked like he was giving stuff away. I don’t mind being blocked from school if it means free stuff, so I looked at him curiously when I reached him.

“What’s that you’ve got there, old peddler-type person?”

He turned a wrinkly might-have-been-handsome-once-but-was-yucky-now face to me and said, “Ahh, my young Emperor-to-be, these are the staple of Kuzco’s Love Day – everyone should receive at least one of these.” He grabbed my wrist (hey, old guy, no touchie!) and pushed something into my hand. “Take this and keep it for someone special.”

I heard the school bell start to ring and decided I’d had enough of keeping company with road-blocking peasants. I shoved the whatever-it-was into my pocket and high-tailed it to school.

It wasn’t until I was in class and not listening to Mr. Moleguaco going blabbity-blah-blah about something or other when I remembered to check out what it was the old peddler guy had given me. I pulled it out of my pocket and was instantly disappointed. It was nothing but a pink candy heart with the words ‘Got Love?’ on it.

THIS was the staple of Kuzco’s Love Day? A hard dusty heart with a stupid phrase on it that didn’t even make sense? ‘Got Love?’ – what was that supposed to mean, anyway? I stuffed it back into my pocket and sighed. Even Mr. Moleguaco’s lecture was more interesting than that. Well, not really, they were equally boring.

I didn't think much about the little candy heart thing again until after I'd returned to Pacha's after school. I went in the door and stopped.

Pacha and Chicha were both there. She was sitting on his lap, and they were all smoochy-smoochy face with each other. My first instinct was to recoil, make disgusted noises, and possibly throw up, but then a vision of that little heart came to me. 'Got Love?' From the looks of things, Pacha and Chicha 'got' plenty of love.

The wrinkly guy had said the heart should go to someone special. I supposed if Pacha had one of these, he'd give it to Chicha? She'd probably love it, even if it was dusty and hard as rock and would break her teeth.

“Kuzco?”

I looked up to see that the two of them had stopped slobbering all over each other and were now gazing at me with concern on their faces.

“Are you all right?” Chicha asked. “You look troubled.”

I covered up my doubts with a laugh. “Silly Chicha! I’m fine, of course; I’m better than fine! What could be better than being Kuzco?” I did a little twirl and posed. “Boom bam baby!”

They glanced at each other and I saw on their faces that I wasn’t fooling them for a second. “All right,” Pacha said diplomatically. “You let us know if you need to talk.”

"Sure, okay, no problem!" I went to my room and flopped onto the bed. I pulled out the little heart again and turned it around in my fingers. Part of me wanted to just throw it away, but for some reason I wasn't able to do it. I frowned, wondering if the thing was covered with some kind of invisible glue that made it stick to me.

"Are you okay?"

I looked over toward Chaka and Tipo, who were watching me with the same expressions of concern their parents had earlier. What, do they rehearse these things as a family?

"Sure I'm okay, why wouldn’t I be?"

The kids peered at my hand. "What's that?" Tipo asked.

"It's a candy heart," Chaka told him.

"'Got Love?'" Tipo read, puzzled. "What does that mean?"

"It's a question," his older sister answered knowingly. "On Kuzco’s Love Day, you give these little hearts to people you care about. This one is asking the one who receives it if they have any love for the giver."

Oh, so THAT’S what it meant. " I knew that," I said, even though I hadn't.

"Who are you going to give it to?" Tipo asked me.

Chaka answered for me. “Malina, of course. He’s got it bad for her.”

Why hadn’t _I_ thought of that?! I sprang up from the bed. “You figured it out, that’s exactly who I planned to give it to all along!” I charged out of there so fast I nearly bowled the kids over. Or maybe I really did.

Meanwhile, in the not-so-secret lab, somehow Yzma knew what was going on in my life at that moment. She’s scary that way (and in a lot of other ways, too, especially the way she looks, but don’t get me started on that or we’ll be here all day.)

“Kronk!” she bellowed. “Kuzco is on a mission to find someone to give a candy heart to! There must be some way to turn this to our advantage!”

“Well, of course he’ll be giving it to Malina,” Kronk replied, taking a fresh batch of spinach puffs out of the oven. “She’s the one he’s in love with, after all.”

Yzma thrust a bony finger in the air. “Ah, but he is unaware that Malina and her family left after school to go visit her grandmother! So if we disguise you as Malina and you reject his pathetic offering, he’ll become so despondent that he’ll quit school to become a hermit on a mountaintop in Tibet and then I’ll be Empress! It’s brrrrriliant!”

“I don’t know,” Kronk said slowly. “Seems kind of mean to mess with Kuzco’s Love Day gift, since it IS officially Kuzco’s Love Day, a day of love. Kuzco’s Love Day.”

“Well, what would YOU suggest?!”

“Won’t it be bad enough for Kuzco not to be able to pass on his Kuzco’s Love Day gift because Malina is gone? Think how miserable he’ll be.” He put his arm across his eyes and sniffled. “All alone on Kuzco’s Love Day with no one to share it with.” He paused. “It’s sad.”

Yzma tapped her chin with a finger thoughtfully, and somehow it didn’t get tangled in the unwieldy hairs that grew there. “Maybe you’re right, he WILL be discouraged and lonely – maybe even enough that he’ll quit school to become a hermit on a mountaintop in Tibet and then I’ll be Empress!”

“Riiiiiiiight,” Kronk drawled. “Or at least he’ll have a lousy Kuzco’s Love Day. And that’s sad.” He picked up the plate of spinach puffs he’d arranged and turned toward her.

“What’s this?” she asked and looked at them. They were heart-shaped.

“Happy Kuzco’s Love Day!” he declared. “Now don’t go getting the wrong idea about this; I mean, I don’t feel THAT way about you – who could? You’re a hundred and fourteen years old. That’s not a generation gap, that’s a chasm. But everyone should get something special on Kuzco’s Love Day. It’s nice.”

Yzma’s rheumy old eyes stared at the puffs, then at Kronk, then back at the puffs, and then she burst into embarrassing wails (sounding like a dying walrus) and hugged him. Yuck. Poor guy, but he sorta asked for it.

Enough of them. Back to the important part -- me!

Like Yzma said, I had no idea that Malina was out of town, but those two old checker players – what are their names again? – told me that when they noticed me knocking on her door.

“Malina’s out of town, Kuzco,” the skinny one said. “She won’t be back for a couple of days.”

“What?” I said in dismay and looked down at the candy heart. “But she HAS to be here! How am I going to give her this if –“ I stopped myself. I hadn’t meant to tell them why I was there; it was embarrassing. Me no likey embarrassment; when it’s mine, that is.

They both smiled at me in a kindly-old-man way and the fat one said, “I’m sure she would have been happy to get it.”

“I’ll never know now,” I mumbled, heading back down the hill.

“Cheer up, Kuzco!” one of them called after me. “When you get to be our age, you realize that there’s all kinds of love involved in Kuzco’s Love Day!”

What was with all the cryptic stuff today? Couldn’t anyone just come out and say what they meant without me having to actually THINK about it?

I was about half-way home when a gigantic red heart appeared in front of my face, making me jump.

“Happy Kuzco’s Love Day, Sir!” declared Guaca, my number-one fan and stalker.

Still shaken from the surprise, I took the heart tentatively. “Uh, thanks.” It was thick, and kind of heavy. When I shook it, it rattled.

“There are chocolates in it – your favourite kind!” Guaca beamed.

Ooo, chocolates! “Thanks, Guaca,” I said, opening the box and popping one in my mouth. Delicious! He stood there grinning at me, and although it isn’t in my nature to share, for some reason I felt like I should. I held out the box. “Want one?”

You’d think I’d given him a million Kuzcoins. “Thanks!” he said eagerly and took one. “Where are you going? Home?”

“Yeah, I was going to see Malina, but she’s not there.”

“Hmm, last time I saw her was after school – she was giving something to Kronk.”

The chocolate hit my stomach like a rock. Had Malina given KRONK a Kuzco’s Love Day gift? The thought was too terrible to bear! My Malina with Kronk? WAHHHHH!

*ahem* Sorry about that. I’m back now.

“I’ve gotta go, Guaca. Uh, thanks again for the chocolates.” I rushed off, my mind in a panic as images of Kronk accepting some present from Malina ran through it.

I was so upset I wasn’t watching where I was going and bounced off something big and hard and unmoveable. It grasped my shoulders firmly and steadied me.

“Are you okay, Kuzco? You seem to be in a hurry. Since you were running. Hurriedly.”

Kronk!

I glared up at him, about to demand to know what Malina had given him, when he held out an envelope to me.

“This is for you,” he said. “Malina asked me to give it to you after school, but I had something to do first in the secre—“ he stopped himself and tried to cover up, “secre—tary’s office! Yeah, that’s it.”

I rolled my eyes and took the envelope, opening it. The note inside said:

‘Dear Kuzco,

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was going out of town; I didn’t want to see you cry like the last time. I also didn’t want you to feel badly that I DIDN’T tell you, which is why I asked Kronk to give you this. I’ll be back in a couple of days, and maybe we can get together at Mudka’s and find out how each other’s weekend went. Have a nice Kuzco’s Love Day, and I’ll see you soon.

Malina

P.S. That is NOT a date!’

I hugged the letter to my chest blissfully. She’d called me ‘Dear’!

I finally noticed Kronk still watching me and cleared my throat. “Uh, thanks for delivering this, Kronk.” It really was pretty nice of him to do that, since not hearing from Malina might have made me depressed enough to quit school and become a hermit on a mountaintop in Tibet or something.

“No problem, happy to help, it’s Kuzco’s Love Day after all. Hey, Bucky!” he called out to his squirrel buddy. “Squeakity Squeak Squeak!” he said as he passed the rodent a walnut tied with a ribbon.

That was my cue to go.

I headed back home with Malina’s letter in one hand and the candy heart in the other. As great as it was to have the letter’s reassurance from Malina, she wouldn’t be back until the holiday was over. The old peddler-peasant had told me the heart should go to someone special on Kuzco’s Love Day, so now what was I going to do?

I opened the door to Pacha’s hut and saw the whole family getting the table ready for dinner. “Just in time!” Chicha announced when she spotted me. “Are you feeling better now?”

“I think he must be,” Pacha patted my shoulder warmly in passing. “Kronk stopped by looking for you with a letter from Malina; looks like he found you.”

The kids giggled and grinned at me. “We’re sorry she wasn’t home to receive your Kuzco’s Love Day gift,” Chaka said. “What are you going to do with it now?”

I stared down at the little heart and the words on it that had confused me so much at first. I remembered Malina’s thoughtfulness, Kronk’s kindness, Guaca’s devotion, the checker players’ reassurance, and Pacha and his family’s unfailing support and compassion. I smiled; my decision was obvious.

“I’m going to do what the peddler-guy told me to,” I answered, tucking the heart back into my pocket and joining them at the table. Someone special was supposed to receive the candy heart, and THE most special person had -- me!

But just in case you’re shaking your head and thinking this whole exercise has been a waste of time, I DID learn something from it all, and the little heart was going to remind me whenever I doubted it.

‘Got Love?’ This was one Emperor-to-be who was lucky enough to realize he was surrounded by it.

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(2009)

The Emperor’s New School belongs to Disney.

This fic is not to be re-posted.