Chapter Text
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King and the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, was in a bind. He stared at the far wall of his room, his hands propping up his chin as he thought. Or, tried to think. His mind was the calm before the storm. A wild typhoon of memories surrounding a deceiving calm of home. It was like centuries ago, when he’d returned from the Journey to the West, when he’d expected adversaries behind every wall, nook, cranny, and gate. So hopped up on vigilance and anxiety–and pain, couldn’t forget that–that his mind went silent and his body reacted before his mind could rationalize. It took years to calm that, to steady his mind into the here and now, and forgo those baser instincts.
But as he stared longer, he realized those instincts hadn’t gone away. They just lingered. Waiting for the moment to pounce and paralyze him. His body wanted to run and find her. Destroy her before she could hurt anyone else. Remove her from the playing board before she lured someone else to be her pawn.
The rational part of him, though, knew he’d need something to defeat her with. She was about as powerful as when he last saw her, all those centuries ago. If, and this was a big if, MK was ready, he’d be happy to tell his kid and go together to take her down. But MK wasn’t ready. Not really. He loved his kid, not as much as his dad, sure, but he loved him. And he didn’t want to come back without a plan.
But, Dajing. Wukong groaned, sliding onto his bed. “Why do you have to keep so many secrets…” he whispered, rubbing his face and fighting the urge to pull at his fur. Dajing would be perfect to bring on this quest. He was a skilled warrior, a fighter, and fully capable of making hard decisions that MK might freeze at. But, but, but, Dajing was 17. He never got to be a kid. Dajing was still keeping secrets, even if he had a hunch that he shared some of the burden with MK. He should–no, he must–grant Dajing every shot at a normal life as he could. This could end his life. And if he ever figured out how to get a portal open to Dajing’s home, then he’d have a lot of explaining to do to Bajie.
He chuckled. It was surreal to think that, in a distant world, a version of his brother still lived. Sure, that was true for this world–MK’s dad was his latest incarnation and descendant–but seeing him again, and actually having it be him, was amazing. His deepest dreams coming true.
He sighed, pulling himself up to his feet, and took to his desk. His itinerary, so to speak, taunted him.
“I never wanted to deal with Heaven again,” he groaned, putting the notes aside. He looked up, past the ceiling, past the skies, and at the gates themselves. He could visualize it all. The pearly and gold-crested gates. The engravings and details painstakingly designed to glorify the Jade Emperor. He’d never wanted to go back. He knew he might have to, given that he had MK and now Dajing, but he never assumed in a million years that it’d be so soon.
But he could feel her presence. Even so far away. Even a few days after the event. The visions she’d given him still haunt his dreams.
“I will rip the memory of you from this world,” her ghostly voice said. Coming from everywhere and nowhere. Blue smoke clouded his eyes, forcing him to look at what she wanted him to see.
Her mech, standing tall over the burning remains of Megapolis. And her, standing at the top, her true form unveiled and staring down at her handiwork with glee. She, the Lady Bone Demon. A living human skeleton with glowing red eyes and flowing white hair, dressed in Celestial fashion.
Then, it’d flash to MK. Him screaming in pain with glowing blue eyes. “Monkey King! Monkey King!” He’d scream, his voice going shrill as he tested its limits. Subsumed by blue fire and smoke.
Then, there, covered in blood and clinging to life, was Dajing. Dressed in the finest armor a blacksmith could make, he’d crawl to his staff, be inches from grasping it, before falling limp as a blue-clad thrall destroyed him.
The city burned. The world burned. Heaven burned. The universe as they knew it burned. His worst fears, manifested in a vision.
He tightened his fist on his notes, threatening to rip the paper. He couldn’t be sure the visions were real, or that his leaving to find something to defeat her with wasn’t what she wanted him to do. He’d met her before, on the Journey; he knew how she worked. She’d played them like fiddles back then; he had no doubt that she’d play him like one now. But he also knew his instincts weren’t unwarranted. His first thought of a weapon wasn’t unwarranted.
The Samadhi Fire, created with Red Son’s birth, was separated into three–in truth, four–rings, and were powerful enough to destroy her. But he had to see if there was some other option. Some other weapon he could use that wouldn’t put Mei’s life in danger. He didn’t know her all that well, but she was MK’s closest friend, so his care for him extended to her. And, to boot, she was a sweet and vibrant girl. Strong in her love for her family and friends. He didn’t want to put her down as a potential sacrifice, not if he could avoid it.
So, that meant research. After MK left and Dajing fell asleep, Wukong went researching through his archives.
He found nothing.
Heaven better understand why he was doing what he was doing.
Dajing and MK had a plan. They were going to talk about his relic situation with Monkey King after they all rested from the fight on New Year’s Day. MK wanted to tell Monkey King immediately, but Dajing held him back, saying that he was exhausted, MK was exhausted, and Monkey King was also very likely exhausted. It felt odd to say that his mentor, the indomitable Monkey King, could ever get tired, but then he actually saw his mentor after the battle high. He slumped in on himself when the others weren’t looking, face fallen into a thoughtful expression, and his eyes weighed down with bags. Not to mention the short jitters his hands made when he wasn’t focusing or tensing to control them.
So, MK conceded, and they waited a few days. Waited for everyone to be well-rested and ready for the awful conversation they had to have.
Or, that was what they would have done, had Monkey King not started packing his bags.
“What do you mean ‘vacation?’” MK asked, quizzically, staring at the growing pile in Monkey King’s suitcase. His phone rang–something about an app–and MK threw it aside into the bushes. He could deal with that later; he and Dajing needed answers now. “That makes no sense!”
“Aw, come on, bud,” Monkey King said, rummaging through a crate. “I promised myself that when I found a successor, I’d go see some friends, take a tour of my old stomping grounds. Cut loose, you know? Oh, I’m definitely going to need these-”
“But, you can’t just leave!” MK complained, uncrossing his arms to gesture widely. “What if someone attacks the city again? What if the Spider Queen comes back? What if there’s something I can’t handle?” Nothing about this made sense to him. Nor did it make sense to Dajing, who was glaring at Monkey King from atop the hut. After Monkey King made that initial announcement, Dajing had been ignoring Monkey King entirely. Content to stew in a miasma of frustration and anger rather than bully answers out of him.
“Aww, you’ll figure it out,” was the confident response he got to that. Then Monkey King yelped as Dajing threw a pebble at him, nailing him on the head and making him wince. “Guys, you’ll be fine. It’s adorable that you two are nervous, but you guys don’t have to be. You both have come a long way since I first met both of you, and I have absolute confidence you’ll be able to manage yourselves until I come back.” Then, Monkey King rubbed his chin, talking to himself, really. “Actually, I have more confidence in MK managing well. Dajing…ehhhh-”
That earned another rock, this time the size of a palm. Monkey King caught it, then threw it back at Dajing, who dodged it. “Okay, I’m placing MK in charge of you,” he said, wiping his hands. “You two could learn a lot from each other if given half the chance.”
MK huffed, crossing his arms and glaring at the ground. Logically, he knew it was right. Dajing had a lot of combat experience that MK could–and had–learned from, and MK could teach Dajing more about just being a person. Being something more than a searcher. A relic bearer. A vessel for someone else’s glory. But Monkey King didn’t know that much. He hadn’t given them the chance to explain, or to ask for fucking help. He glanced up at Dajing, who was still scowling. The monkey glanced at him, and they shared eye contact for a split moment. Dajing’s face softened slightly, raising a brow and jutting his head slightly at Monkey King. MK, in turn, shrugged, grimacing slightly. Rolling his eyes, Dajing jumped down from the roof, finally asking Monkey King a direct question. “How long will you be gone for?”
The King shrugged. “I don’t know for certain. I might get caught up, or sidetracked.” He sounded genuinely apologetic, and the uncertainty was real. “But, don’t worry! I’ll check in. Give you guys some training tools, some remote lessons,” he said, loading his suitcase onto his cloud, and leaping on himself. “We’ll figure it out! You’ll be great! Don’t worry!”
That, alone, made MK want to worry more. Say less about Monkey King’s tone. It was cheerful, yes. But it was forced. Stiff and taut like a bowstring. Monkey King was trying to be reassuring but was failing. And, to boot, he was lying. MK didn’t know all the tells for Monkey King’s lies, since so far, he’d been very honest with him and Dajing. But this? He could tell it was a lie. About what, MK couldn’t tell. Dajing seemed to notice this as well, raising an eyebrow as Monkey King downright fled to the skies. Far away in an instant.
MK grumbled, “Fine, just leave! At least my friends won’t abandon me.”
Dajing shook his head, disappointed. “We should have told him sooner.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda–too late now, we’ve gotta figure it out on our own,” he said, trying to wipe the tiredness from his face. He and Dajing could figure out later why Monkey King actually left. “At least we have unlimited access to Monkey King’s vaults now?”
The vaults were what he and Dajing discussed as the best place to start researching. While Monkey King hadn’t found anything worthwhile regarding sending Dajing home, that didn’t mean it was a loose end. There might be something about relics made from the dead having lingering echoes of their originators stuck inside them, and how to avoid being replaced by said ghosts.
It was an opportunity, one they shouldn’t, and didn’t, waste a second longer on. They quickly ran to the vault, with MK unlocking it and stepping inside. It, unlike the cavern containing Monkey King’s house, was massive. Tall golden pillars held up the ceiling and decorated the far walls. That was, if you could see the walls, given all the piles of stuff. Weapons, random items, armor pieces, broken pieces of statues- anything and everything was in here, piled together randomly and without even a faint idea of the concept of organization. It was like this old cartoon MK remembered his dad watching, about a duck with enough money to swim in? He was fuzzy on the details, but it was like that. Enough junk for someone to swim in, with only narrow pathways allowing easy traversal through the room.
And MK thought his bedroom was bad. At least he could see his floor!
Dajing walked ahead, his eyes shining gold as he led them to a far corner on the opposite side of the entryway. There lay tall bookshelves, each containing scrolls. That was, if half the scrolls weren’t dropped on the ground and some half-opened, as if someone had done a research binge.
“Monkey King must not have remembered to put everything away,” he commented, grabbing a random scroll and rolling it open to see what it said. The characters were a little hard to decipher, and the very old, traditional writing style obscured the exact meaning, but MK could tell it was some sort of spell meant to teleport a person from one place to another.
Dajing snapped his fingers. “It makes sense he would start with his own records.”
“Should we put everything away, first?” MK asked, carefully rolling the scroll up. “Before we start digging in?”
Dajing hummed, then nodded. “Let’s make room for ourselves.”
The organization and putting away of all the scrolls were a pain in the ass and just painful. MK’s idea of organization was to put things in places where he’d use them. Out of sight, out of mind was his biggest killer of leftovers. Dajing, to MK’s surprise, couldn’t organize to save his life. Apparently, he just had broad categories of things he used and kept them together. Jumbled. A lot like the piles behind them, but slightly more organized and contained in the infinite sack.
The more he learned, the more he saw the resemblance.
Anyways, he and Dajing quickly got to searching for anything about relics or relic bearers. First, through the pile Monkey King made. It got intimidating quickly, but there were points that were just funny.
“Since when did Monkey King have a cookbook?” MK asked, unburying an old tome complete with foods and dishes made from Mount Huaguo’s local fruits, vegetables, and delicacies. “He doesn’t often, like, cook.”
“He can be full of secrets,” said Dajing wryly, snatching the book and setting it aside. “I might need that later.”
MK nodded and moved on to the next pile. The scheme he put together was organizing all the spells that had similarities together, then putting away the spells they didn’t need for the time being. MK was, however, interested in learning one of the teleportation spells from the pile. It seemed to work by wrapping magic around yourself, then opening a pocket in reality to safely drop you into a new location. Very cool, in MK’s opinion. He set that aside to read later. After putting away all the spells they didn’t need, they were left with only a handful of spells or tomes that were possibly useful.
Namely, two tomes and five scrolls, and each sounded extremely boring.
“The art of crafting and manipulating ancient relics?” MK asked, skimming the scroll quickly. Or, well, as quickly as he could. He didn’t handle scrolls at all, not like Tang. This one felt fragile in his hands, the fine silken material it was made of fraying at the edges. The writing itself was softened by age, making skimming even harder since he wasn’t used to the traditional system. He could read it; anyone could, but it took more focus than the simplified version. Finding nothing about anyone in Dajing’s situation, he set it aside. Dajing, for his part, cracked open a tome and was thumbing through the pages quickly.
MK moved on to the next. “Property rights and celestial legalities regarding relic ownership?” He asked, squinting his eyes. “I don’t think we should have added this to the pile.”
Dajing let out a short snort, gesturing for MK to throw it to the legalese stack. The monkey then finished thumbing through his book, setting it aside also, and pulling out the next book while MK grabbed the last scroll. MK was rather surprised. It seemed to have been written far more recently, after the writing system was simplified. It also had a more useful title: "What are relics’ impacts on those who hold them?” he said softly, rolling it more slowly.
Then, Dajing knocked on the floor, catching MK’s attention. Dajing shifted, leaning in to show MK something in the book he’d picked up. “Whatcha got?” He asked, leaning over to see the pages. About halfway through the book was a page dedicated to…”The Long-Armed Gibbon?” He asked, incredulously. “I know demon names can be on-the-nose, but that’s more on-the-nose than I expected.” He scanned the pages, finding them beautifully decorated. Spread across two pages was an illustration of a gibbon, holding the sun and moon in opposite hands, grinning as it danced on what looked to be the disc of the Milky Way Galaxy. He read it aloud slowly. “The Long-Armed Gibbon, resplendent in power, could seize the sun and the moon, shorten a thousand mountains, distinguish auspicious from the inauspicious, and manipulate planets and stars. So mighty was his power that he threatened Heaven with his joyful dancing; thus, he was cast down to the Underworld, and his body reforged into–” MK gasped. “Into six relics. This is like you!” He said excitedly, turning to him. Dajing nodded excitedly, but then tapped a different portion of the page, lower than the text he’d read. “Okay, let’s see…While many attempted to collect all six relics, only one searcher came close, that being fellow stone monkey…The Six-Eared Macaque,” his voice trailed off, furrowing his brow. “He collected three before Heaven ordered him struck down, and the relics shuffled onto new hosts.” MK skimmed the rest, seeing if it mentioned how it affected Macaque, but alas, no luck there.
MK hummed. “Do you think we could track him down for answers?”
Dajing shook his head violently. So violently, he thought his head would shoot off like a rocket. Dajing shifted away slightly to give himself elbow room. “I do not trust him.”
“True,” MK said slowly. “But he’s also the only person who has experience with this from your side of things as a relic bearer.”
“He tried to kill you,” Dajing said succinctly, his face flat in annoyance.
“He was trying to get at Monkey King,” MK corrected.
“He will use us to try and lure the Monkey King back.”
“Possibly, but I think there’s more to him than he let on.”
“He. Tried. To. Kill. Us,” Dajing said, exaggerating each word, especially the word ‘us.’
“It’s an option we should at least think about if we get desperate enough,” MK said, unthinkingly, signing the word desperate while he was speaking.
Dajing scoffed, thumbing through the rest of the book before shutting it loudly.
“Nothing,” he reported, his face scowling in annoyance. Dajing rubbed his face, then glanced up at the tall stacks of shelves they hadn’t looked through yet.
MK followed his gaze, grimacing. “This might take a while.” Dajing sighed, grabbing at the scroll in MK’s hands before he stopped him. “Let’s take a break. I want to take you to Pigsy’s restaurant, anyway. We might get some ideas there?” he asked hopefully.
Dajing frowned, his fingers twitching, before he signed, “Okay.”
The flight to Megapolis was uneventful. Mostly they were watching the water or sky–and avoiding getting hit by birds; that was a very important thing to note–and the landing was also uneventful.
What was weird were the bodies. People were lying on the streets, still as stones. They were breathing, Dajing checked, but it looked as if they were all asleep. When MK opened the front door to Pigsy’s, he saw a similar sight. Mei, Tang, and his dad were asleep. Mei was sprawled out on the ground, while Tang was face down on the counter, a textbook open just beside him. His dad, though, gave MK a heart attack. His dad had been lying in the middle of the kitchen, with the stove still on! The broth had boiled down to half, and it was bubbling violently, spilling over onto the stove. MK quickly shut the heat off, moving the pot off the heater, then swearing as he flicked his hands. “Fuck that was hot!”
After a minute, Dajing knocked on the counter. “Is this normal?” He asked, a confused expression on his face.
“Not at all,” MK said, hissing at the pain in his hands. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Dajing hummed, then his ears flicked, and he turned to face something on the ground. MK followed him, finding that it was a sound coming from Mei’s phone.
“Sleep Bug! Download it now from the Nap Store!” said the ad on Mei’s phone.
“Sleep Bug?” He asked softly, grabbing it. Then he realized, turning to Dajing. “Sleep Bug! This must have been what put everyone to sleep!”
Dajing’s face scrunched up slightly, his hands running quickly to ask, “How could that have done this?”
MK shrugged. “I don’t know, but I do know how to fix it.”