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Macaque knows he’s not exactly the most popular individual in MK’s life right now, but after everything that just happened, he can’t keep away.
He spends a moment observing the boy from the shadows. The pig demon, the water demon, Red Son and the monk’s reincarnation are the only ones left, and they’re clearly panicking. Macaque doesn’t blame them -all of their heavy hitters have been either corrupted or taken and without the staff, MK must be feeling pretty useless as of now.
Macaque silently wishes he’d taught the boy to not depend on that bloody staff, looking back.
But now’s not the time to reconsider his options for the hundredth time. He has none, other than turning around and bending the knee to the witch, silently hoping she doesn’t crack his skull open, sticks a claw inside and swirls it around until she’s happy as a clam and he’s nothing but an extension of her magic, just like his current quarry.
He’s always hated the creature masquerading as a mayor, hated to see its empty blue eyes and its undying devotion to the witch that twisted it into the decrepit beast it is now. More so of how strong it was when the witch had it under her spell, it felt like a warning to Macaque; a show of what could happen if she grew bored of his games; a dangerous example of what will happen once she tired of seeing him dance around the tasks she gives him.
Macaque could never stand the sight of it and thus, he feels little pity when he tosses the thrall at MK’s feet and hopes it’s enough of a white flag.
Surprisingly, it works.
Macaque’s not enough of a fool to think it's not due to the fact they are desperate -with the girl taken, with Sun Wukong under the Lady Bone Demon’s control, they have very few cards to play.
The pig demon looks like he wants to take a swing at him, but MK stops the demon before he gets anywhere close to Macaque. The rest simply stay well away, wary and distrustful. Unsurprisingly Red Son is one of the more wary of the group -something Macaque expected. He’s studied wind magic alongside his mother under the tutelage of a now long dead demon lord.
No doubt she’s shared stories of the Six Eared Macaque and imparted wisdom as to never cross, or trust him.
But the bull child isn’t his concern -only MK is.
Or at least, his opinion.
“He’s here to help!”
A tactical opinion. They’re out of ideas and Macaque has a single, terrible one.
Easy as pie.
“He tried to kill you -several times!”
Macaque silently wonders just how much the pig demon has considered this whole ‘ being the Monkey King’s successor’ actually entails. All of Wukong’s allies have tried to kill the damned monkey at one point -and while Macaque is no damn ally, he used to have a much more amicable past with the king.
…until Wukong looked at heaven and dreamed of more. He shoves those thoughts away, locks them in a box at the back of his mind alongside everything else besides his hatred of the Sage. Some things are not even worth considering anymore.
The past is one of them.
He turns to the pig demon, narrowing his eyes at him.
“We’re out of options here, pig.” The cook growls, a rumbling sound that makes Macaque’s ears lay lower down beneath layers and layers of glamor. “If you keep whining, I can just take this bastard with me and find another merry group of idiots to make deals with.” he snaps, flicking his tail.
“But there’s no one else.” MK points out with a tiny snort, his eyes all but spelling that he knows Macaque’s game, and he’s not going to play it the way the shadow demon wants him to.
His growing confidence is more like Wukong and it irks something deep within Macaque’s chest. But the way he looks at him, waiting for him to take the lead, trusting Macaque, makes that same sharpness soften like ice under sunlight. He’s not sure whether to hate or distrust it.
It’s surprising the boy can even smile when his mentor is currently under the witch’s spell.
They’re at a complete disadvantage now -the one time there is an opening in the Lady Bone Demon’s armor. Wukong is under her control, the girl with the Samadhi Fire is locked inside her mech, the staff is out of reach -she has everything. She has too much. She’s being greedy so close to her victory and this is exactly what they need, the chance Macaque had been waiting for years.
Only, they have a minuscule window of a chance and they could not fuck it up.
If it means being free of his debt, Macaque will gladly side with these idiots. And that alliance starts with the man currently hogtied in front of them.
Regardless of how free he now is from the witch’s influence, the human’s eyes remain that bright, chilling blue. The sneer that stretches his tired, battered face is one of pure hatred -hatred directed at Macaque.
“Our Lady always knew you shouldn’t be trusted.” The man spits out at him; Macaque’s nose wrinkles as the glob of saliva hits his boot. Someone, likely Red Son, makes a gagging noise of disgust. He merely crosses his arms and stares the creature down, unamused.
“Oh joy, so she’s not an idiot.” He replies smoothly, smirking as the creature’s expression grows more furious.
“You had everything!” The thrall roars, wiggling in his binds. From the corner of his vision, Macaque notices that more than one person makes a move forward, as if to stop the human if he tried getting up and attacking Macaque. Amusing. He can handle himself. “She merely gave you a chance to be part of her utopia -and you squandered it!” The creature snarls, disbelief across his face.
Macaque takes one look at those crazed eyes, the white-gray hair, the winkles slowly seeping back in as more and more of the witch’s magic fades from the human’s skin, and sneers.
“Unfortunate.” He chuckles, enjoying the human’s furious growl that follows. After so many years twisted by the witch, the man is more demon than human and it shows. “Truly fucking regretful, but she should have known I’ll pass on that.” Macaque adds with a flourish, adjusting his scarf nonchalantly to add to his image of indifference.
Of all things the thrall could have done, he doesn’t expect it to sit back and bark out a laugh. The shadow warrior blinks, pausing at this development. Against his will, he shares a glance with MK. The boy looks engrossed in their conversation, but there’s a growing look in his eyes, something Macaque can’t quite put but he most definitely doesn’t like.
Just like how the thrall is laughing and laughing and laughing, mouth so wide he could swallow a fly.
“Ha! Think she didn’t think that?” The man crackles, straining against his ropes. He tilts his head low, peering up at Macaque between long, frayed locks of gray-black hair. “You were always a distraction, shadow. A bait to dangle in front of the Sage to keep him busy -to keep him from looking too closely.” He purrs.
Macaque frowns, but says nothing…far too well aware of how the others are shifting on their feet. He doesn’t want to look at them -doesn’t want to look at MK. Not out of nervousness -he doesn’t care- he just…doesn’t want to.
“...what?”
Especially when MK’s voice sounds so small.
“Get back to the topic at hand.” Macaque snaps at the thrall. He only grins in return, delighted in the small amount of power he has gained. Gears are turning inside the creature’s mangled brain -Macaque can feel it.
“No, I want to hear this!” Goddamn it, MK.
Unfortunately for Macaque, someone else is putting things together faster. The pig. “You were working with her this whole time?!” The younger demon bellows and beneath a thousand glamors, Macaque’s namesakes flinch down and bristle at the unexpected noise.
“Wait.” The sharp breath Mk takes only solidifies the fact that Macaque does not want to look. “From the start…like, before she made the mech….?”
Macaque sighs, closing his eyes.
(Tries hard to ignore the quiet betrayal in the boy's voice.)
“Ha! You don’t know?” The thrall crackles, digging the knife in, adding a problem on top of a problem and by the accursed gods, Macaque should have dropped it in a goddamn volcano. “This one has been working for my Lady since the very start!” It chirps.
Opening his eyes, Macaque glares.
It only smiles a terrible, innocent smirk, satisfied.
The thrall wants to expose something, wants to make Macaque vulnerable -but the shadow warrior is much more experienced in lies and manipulation than some old, possessed human. He knows how to sidestep this attempt at mockery, this act of trying to pull him off his balance and laughing as he scrambles to center himself.
The best tactic is to ensure and let it show that whatever the creature says, does not bother him.
As if it’s old news. Macaque is a master at this.
“You’re deflecting.”
“And you’re evading the truth.” The thrall quips back with a giggle. Macaque’s fingers twitch with the urge to sink his claws in the damned thing’s throat. “Don’t you want to tell your new friends the truth?” The mayor continues, tilting his head to the left, looking straight at MK. “Wouldn’t you like to know who he truly is? What he really is?”
Macaque bites down the immediate urge to pry the formerly possessed human’s head off.
Surely he wouldn’t-
“Awww, Liu'er, what's with that face? Are you deliberately forgetting it was through me that our fair Lady resurrected you?” The human speaks, ecstatic, talking to him but looking at MK. MK, who Macaque dares not look at. It’s not fear. It’s not.
It feels deeper.
(He doesn’t want to know what the kid thinks of this. Disgust? Horror? Betrayal?)
He hears them all shift on their feet; the sound of the soft intake of breath MK takes, the flutter of Red Son’s jacket as the demon prince sits up, interested, for resurrection magic is a taboo topic even among the greatest of demon circles. It’s forbidden, considered mostly impossible. There’s only so much time a soul remains in hell before it reincarnates, and only so much one can do to try and pry that soul out from the realm of the dead.
He knows.
After all, Macaque was dead for a few hundred years prior to his own resurrection.
“I was there. I cast the magic.” the mayor adds, turning back to Macaque -who ignores the sudden shift in the atmosphere, the weight of several eyes on him -the feeling of MK’s eyes drilling into his skull more securely than Wukong’s staff has ever done. "Through my hands, my fair Lady created this wretched thing."
Thing.
Macaque keeps his mouth shut, for fear of what could come out. Out of necessity, his undivided attention falls on the blue eyed human at his feet, who grins like the cat that caught a canary.
“You are nothing but shadows bound to old bones.” The human reminds him. Macaque feels his magic squirm at his words, zipping through his cold body, tugging at the cold that holds it together. “An afterimage of the real deal -how else can you explain how weak you are compared to Sun Wukong?”
Macaque remains silent, out of words, unable to stop the surprise from being clearly written across his face.
He can’t reply.
His throat feels tight and he can physically feel the weight of everyone’s stare on his back. As if sensing this, the human thrall smiles wider, flashing his teeth, giddy delight oozing out of every pore of his body as he leans closer, straining against the ropes as he coos:
“No more real than the boy’s hair clones, old shadow.” The thrall sneers, his laughter ringing in Macaque’s ear.
He leans ever more, smiling so wide, his eyes piercing and unusually aware as he coos softly:
“Nothing but magic that tricked itself into believing it's a person.”
Macaque swallows.
The thrall’s words stick to his mind like poison -filling his thoughts the longer he stares at that grinning face, the more that smirk grows and grows, its owner assured of the truth of his own words. Delighted in how just retelling the truth Macaque feels down to his bones.
(Because it must be the truth, right?
It explains the cold.
It explains why her magic is still in him, even after the Samadhi Fire was released.
It explains how weak he is compared to the Sage.
It explains how Macaque can’t hear his own heartbeat.
It explains why he bleeds black shadows and rotting magic.)
The mayor sees the look on Macaque’s face and seems to revel in whatever he finds. Happy in knowing that he’s throwing Macaque right back to that moment, to the memory of a staff ripping into his eye and the sensation of being pulled apart then ripped together again, a broken, rotting corpse sewn back into one piece by cold magic and giggling laughter that promises of a great destiny-
“-that’s enough!”
Macaque blinks -and finds that the man is not looking at him anymore. No, The pig demon has the thrall by the collar of his shirt, shaking him brutally. Even the mayor looks stunned at the sudden interruption, eyes wide and body limp in the demon’s grasp.
“Stop skipping around the subject and answer our questions!”
The mayor grins. “Aw, you spoil my fun.” He purrs.
Macaque feels distinctively happy in how the pig demon immediately socks the damn thrall in the face for his attitude. He feels the weight of his tentative allies’ stares shift, turning on the thrall, the pig’s interference succeeding in changing the topic.
“The pig is right.” The child of the Demon Bull King hisses, diverting everyone’s attention to him. “...and Macaque has a point. We need to strike now, when she’s still vulnerable.”
“But how?” MK’s voice is quieter than normal. Hesitant.
Macaque’s body feels like a live-wire.
Don’t look.
“By giving it everything we’ve got.” It’s the Cicada’s reincarnation that speaks up. “We don’t need to b-beat her, we just need to get to Mei. And…and if we can get you the staff-”
Mk breathes out a sigh of relief. “We’ll have a chance.”
Red Son lets out a snort. “Yeah, but we’re forgetting her new guard dog.”
Macaque takes a breath.
“I can handle Sun Wukong.”
Ringing laughter suddenly echoes through the glamor. Beneath the glamor, Macaque’s ears flick down and twitch as the thrall laughs and laughs and laughs, high pitched and hysterical, as if the demon just said the funniest thing it’s ever heard.
Alight.
Macaque will allow himself to be childish. He looks at the squirming, laughing thing in Pigsy’s grip and forces his expression to remain neutral and he bites out:
“Oh fuck you.” Macaque tells the thrall, watching him quieten down into giggles. The man got what he wanted, in the end. He threw Macaque off balance. Congratulations. Now it's time to move on from that childish game that means nothing. “I’ve handled Sun Wukong for the past few hundred years.” He turns to MK, annoyed, his irritation only faltering just when he notices the thoughtful look in the boy’s eyes. “I can hold him off long enough for you to get that damned staff.” Macaque tells him stiffly.
MK bites his lower lip.
“...are you sure?”
“Certain.” Macaque hisses, fighting the urge to lash his tail out at all this delay. The longer they stay here, tripping over themselves, falling for the thrall’s bait, the longer the witch has the time to fix her control over Wukong into something more permanent -and then they would truly be fucked. “Now can we focus? The staff and Wukong aren’t our only issue -there’s the girl, too.”
At the mention of the dragon child, MK immediately switches gears, to Macaque’s silent relief. The conversation moves on, but Macaque can’t miss the way the thrall keeps looking at him, smug.
(Or MK’s eyes on his back when he turns away, heavy and considering.)