Emperor Kuzco
Okay, that was bad. He was getting swarmed, and his kicks were suddenly less and less effective, until the last one just kind of bounced off of its target. As the shadow he'd just booted grinned at him, he grinned back most... emperor-ly. Nervously, he was nervous. Yeah, well, he guessed he was gonna die, then. At least it was a heroic death.
Until the one guy came in with a sword and hacked it to pieces. And then his heroic moment was cut off as a shadow tried to strangle him, and that shadow was beaten by another heroic moment from a... talking parrot? Dang it, how many people had Yzma transformed and gotten away with it?! Also, people needed to stop ruining each other's awesome moments of heroic sacrifice! They were interfering with his own heroic dodging back toward his last guard! Who, incidentally, was handling the shadows much more effectively, given that he did in fact have a spear and muscles. But even then, he was clearly starting to have trouble... what was causing that? Why were they suddenly so much stronger? Was it the light? The pumpkin man's light? He needed to cut it out, then!
'Hey, don't mind me, I'm just gonna get a better vantage point, maybe go group up with some other people too,' he muttered to his final guard, clambering up the guy's clothing-covered back as he sliced at another group of shadows. Man, those made it a lot easier. So did experience with climbing stuff as a llama, actually. Huh. Either way, Kuzco found himself standing and mostly balanced on the guard's shoulders, trying to make sure he had the bright- woah, really bright, too bright to look at- Pumpkin King in sight.
'HEY! TURN IT DOWN! You're ma- WOAH!' he yelled, nearly toppling over as the guard took another swing, this time at the shadows that had been chasing Kuzco himself, whilst making a path through toward that blonde knight from before, and some black-haired gunman. Okay, maybe he needed to do something about the shadows himself, too. 'You're making them stronger!' he finished up, now taking a leap of faith from his stalwart ward's back, winding up into a cool kung-fu pose, then lashing downward with his foot to propel himself with the momentum - bringing his full body weight into one of their faces, all focused on his heel. It knocked it down, at the very least, and that helped them both continue to make progress toward the two other fighters. Perfect, maybe they wouldn't get the stuffing knocked out of them by shadow monsters.
'Hey, fellas!' he called to them both as they kept making progress. 'You mind if we join you?' That was more cursory than anything else. He and his guard were definitely joining their group, whether they liked it or not, because he wasn't a dingus.