Chapter Text
The Flower Fruit Mountain was in its regular weekend condition for the past couple of months – shaking from an onslaught of attacks from two mortal monkeys towards one immortal monkey.
“Huh, we are definitely having some progress!” said Wukong, appearing behind his twin after Macaque struck down the ground with his black staff right in front of Monkie King’s face and aiming towards the Sage’s midsection with the golden staff. That made their teacher drop almost flat to the ground and then grab the orange monkey’s weapon with his tail, lifting himself up and landing on the top of the spiky staff, after what the immortal jumped from it to behind his pupils. “We have been fighting for so long, and I’ve barely broken a sweat.”
“While I appreciate the energy,” chuckled Xiaotian, charging at his students, while staying close to the ground and then dodging each of their strikes, making the cliff they were on littered with more and more cracks, “being arrogant on the battlefield is not a good idea.”
“Says you?” jokingly asked Macaque, only for his smirk to quickly disappear once the cracks that they just made began to stretch, connecting in a big fracture, which separated the part of the cliff he and his brother were standing on, sending it down the hillside with a great speed. But, before Monkey Duo could reach the bottom of the mountain and get buried under rocks, they were caught by the scruff of their tank tops.
“Says me,” answered the immortal, sitting on his cloud and holding his two disciplines several centimetres above the pile of rocks the fallen cliff transformed into.
After the legendary hero lowered two mortals on the ground, he jumped from his orange cloud and clapped his hands. “So, class, what was today’s lesson?”
“Use the terrain around you to your advantage?” asked Macaque.
Monkie King opened his mouth to answer and then closed it, deep in thought. “That’s, actually, a good one too,” muttered the Sage loud enough for his students to hear. “What I was going for is actually ‘use the power of your enemy against them’, but you know what – yeah, let’s go with the terrain as well. Good job, Macaque!” praised his student the former Pilgrim, making the black monkey puff up with pride. “Actually, good job both of you!” added Qi Xiaotian, ruffling Monkey Duo’s heads. “What Wukong said was right – you did make progress! With such tempo, you’ll be ready to take my position in no time!”
Exchanging glances with his twin, Wukong asked the question that was bothering both of them for some time. “And what are you going to do after that? You know, after giving up your place?”
“Who knows?” shrugged Monkie King. “Probably go travel around the world. There are not a lot of places where I’m welcomed, but I think I’ll manage to find some. And also, obviously, I’m still going to hang out with you two!” smiled the immortal towards the two other demon monkeys. “Or what, were you planning to discard your master after I’ll have nothing to teach you?” The question was said in a joking manner, but monkey twins could feel that it was actually serious.
“No!” hurried to reassure their mentor Monkey Kids. “It’s actually the opposite,” added Wukong. “We would really like it if you still stayed with us after that,” nodded to his brother’s words Macaque.
“Aww, you two are so sweet!” hugged the duo the immortal.
“A-actually...” stammered the peach monkey, though his colour was leaning more towards red right now. “We were wondering… Today is going to be a New Year festival, and, well…”
“Do you have plans for it?” came to his brother’s rescue no less red Macaque.
“Well, I…” started answering Monkie King, but then stopped, letting go of his two students (to the said students’ displeasure) and looking at the remains of the cliff. “I just realised we destroyed the cliff I was going to watch fireworks from…”
“Well, why don’t you spend it with us then?” asked the orange monkey, receiving an unimpressed glance from his twin and hearing the unsaid sarcastic “ Smooth, Wukong, very smooth ”.
“With you?” questioningly tilted his head the Sage.
“Our family is putting up a stall for the first half, and then we can go watch the parade together during the second,” specified Macaque.
“Hmm… Do I get to help with the stall?” inquired Monkie King. “‘Cause it would be strange for me to just stand around doing nothing.”
“Oh, y-yeah, of course, if you want to…” hurried to answer the peach monkey, not anticipating that this would be the thing the hero would be worried about.
“Awesome!” cheered Xiaotian. “Then I’ll just change clothes and transform while you two go take a shower. Even if you’ve ‘barely broken a sweat’,” winked the immortal, changing into a bird and flying up the mountain. The two mortal monkeys exchanged glances.
“Transform?”
***
The meaning of Monkie King’s words became clear when, once Monkey Duo washed themselves and changed out of their training clothes. Outside of the hut they saw a human man in a light orange changpao with mint clouds-ornament along its bottom hem, fastened with a red belt, white trousers and boots. The signature red bandana now had white and black arcs in the centre. The said man had spiky black hair and brown eyes. And yes, this man was their mentor, Monkie King.
Turning to the sound of his students leaving his house, the Sage was met with two scrutinising gazes.
“Is something wrong?” asked the immortal.
“Your monkey form is better,” immediately blurted Wukong, making his teacher burst with laughter.
“Wow, this is new,” managed to mumble the legendary hero between giggles.
“Why did you take this form, though?” questioned Macaque.
“Because I want to spend time having fun with my friends,” quickly answered his mentor, “not running away from crazy fans.”
“What about Wukong?” jokingly asked the brunette, ignoring a loud “Hey!” from his twin.
“I’ll make an exception,” joined the teasing the ex-Pilgrim. The ginger didn’t even bother to deny the truth.
“Oh, and one more thing!” suddenly said the Sage. “It’s mostly for the festival, because, well, it would still attract some glances if you would just call me ‘Monkie King’ all the time, but I would actually prefer if this continues even after that, though if you don’t want to, it’s also okay, I just thought it kinda sounds too official and all, like we are a boss and subordinates instead of friends, and…”
“Monkie King,” interrupted his mentor’s rambling Macaque.
“MK,” quickly replied back the immortal. Seeing confusion in his disciples eyes, the transformed monkey explained. “Call me ‘MK’. For the festival. And after. If this is okay.”
Receiving no answer, Monkie King finally summoned his cloud, jumping on it and inviting his students to join. “A-anyway, let’s go to the festival, shall we?”
The way to the mainland, two pupils spent deep in thought.
***
Well, that was one way of solving Princess Iron Fan's problem of contacting Monkie King without her kids' notice. When her youngest sons came to their stall not only a couple of minutes early, but with some man it tow, who turned out to be the legendary hero in disguise, the woman, who was currently dressed in red-and-white hanfu with golden-coloured trims instead of her usual attire, was a little bit lost. She became even more confused when, on her husband's question about what this all was about, the immortal eagerly answered that he came to help with the festival. Though, despite the Great Sage’s excited smile, he was still throwing worried glances towards her from time to time.
Getting a promise from Qi Xiaotian that he would strictly follow instructions and not mess around, Luocha decided to allow him to join. If nothing else, this would give her an opportunity to chat with her sons’ mentor about her predecessor later. The rest of the Bull Family was also informed that, for the duration of the festival, Monkie King would be called “MK” to not attract unneeded attention.
The stone monkey turned out to be quite a good worker. Quickly fully taking the process of cooking and serving jianbing all by himself, the immortal actually looked happy to do something as mundane as working at the street stall. He either chatted with clients or, if he saw that the person would prefer to not interact with the vendor, hummed a song, which, according to Monkie King, was “Parting at Yangguan Pass”. MK also made sure to always smile at his clients, wishing them great happiness and prosperity in the New Lunar Year. Iron Fan was sure that the hero would quickly get bored of doing the same thing over and over, but in reality the man was actually enjoying it more than anyone.
“Didn’t expect you, out of all people, to be happy to serve street food at the stall,” commented on the brunette’s surprising behaviour her husband, who, along with their eldest son, was responsible for serving chou dou fu.
“Oh, well,” nervously chuckled Xiaotian after giving out another portion of jianbing. “I guess it’s just the first time in a looooot of years that I’m spending the New Year with someone besides my monkeys. It’s not that they are a bad company, but it’s, well, you know… It’s different.”
For a second, the Bull Family fell silent from the immortal’s confession. And then Princess Iron Fan, who was in the process of adding the recent payment to the rest of the money in the box under the counter, uncertainly proposed, “You can join us the next year too, if you want.”
Monkie King snapped his head towards her so fast, she was worried that he would break his neck. “Really? I can?” The woman nodded, receiving a huge grin from the Sage. “Thanks! I’ll definitely do that!”
Behind their mother, two mortal monkey twins, who went to fetch new napkins from the Inferno Truck near the stall, gave each other a high-five.
For the rest of the work, MK was happily swaying in one place, and his smile became even wider. Iron Fan could bet that, if the immortal had his tail at that time, it would be wagging as well.
***
Somewhere a couple of stalls away, another lonely demon was also having fun. Dressed in a purple cheongsam with golden flower ornaments, Scorpion Queen in her human form was happily giving another cup of herbal tea to one of her customers, watching as the man’s face acquired the too-wide smile after the first sip and his eyes got a pink hue. Thanking her for the wonderful tea, the man quickly bowed, promising to bring other people to drink this magnificent infusion, and hurried away.
At first the scorpion demon was worried that the strategy with a friendship tea that Longnü taught her to do wouldn’t work, because every time she tried it before, she needed to constantly make others drink it almost every thirty minutes, and they would still eventually angrily leave after around five hours. But with her new friend's, Naluo, addition of lotus leaves, the tea was working splendidly, adding new and new friends to her list with every second. To be honest, Scorpion Queen would be more than satisfied with just two or three, but after Longnü assured her that there was no such thing as “too many friends”, Xiezijing yielded.
She met Longnü a couple of months ago – the poor dragon girl got kicked out of her home after a fight with her older brother that ended with her horn being broken. Knowing how it felt to be alone and rejected (even if it became less unbearable ever since she met Xietu), Scorpion Queen accepted the poor dragoness with open arms. And it was one of the best decisions she could have made! Scorpion Queen did suspect that her mother’s teachings could be wrong since Xietu became her friend and stayed with her without her needing to sleep with him, but she just didn’t know any other method besides that. Thankfully, her new friend instantly volunteered to teach her and Xietu the other ways of acquiring friends after she learned of her social skills’ problems. And even despite Xiezijing being so hopeless that she failed again and again even with her help, the dragoness still hadn’t given up on her. Even brought a new nice friend a couple of days ago! Naluo was a childhood friend of Longnü and a very nice girl. She said that she had some problems at home too, so she had to run away, and the scorpion demoness was more than ready to let her live at her place. The poor girl was so scared she refused to come up even for the festival but promised to be there for the main tea party. Something Xiezijing was also very excited about.
A young man in a light orange changpao pulled Scorpion Queen out of her thoughts, asking for two portions of her tea. Pouring him two cups and receiving the payment, the demoness watched as the man took his tea and went to a woman in a red-and-white hanfu, who, she assumed, was the man’s friend. The female took a cup from his hand, and they went further along the stalls. The man looked somewhat familiar to Scorpion Queen, but she couldn't point her finger at where exactly she could have met him. Maybe at the market.
***
When the time for the parade came close enough for the Bull Family to decide to close their stall, Princess Iron Fan saw this as her chance to have a talk with Monkie King. Leaving the cleaning for the rest of her family, Luocha tugged the immortal a little bit away so that her younger sons couldn’t hear what the two were going to chat about.
“Mon…MK. There was something I wanted to talk about with you.”
The relaxed and cheerful attitude that the Great Sage was showing to everyone, including her, for a change, instantly vanished. Now in its place were fear and nervousness, the emotions that Luocha got used to seeing every time she was around the former Bimawen. But now she was going to find out the reason behind it.
“What were your relationships with the Great Monk Dapeng Jinchi?” went straight to the point Iron Fan.
Monkie King instantly paled. His breathing quickened, his eyes darted around in search of something, clearly avoiding looking at Luocha. The immortal was opening and closing his mouth, his right hand went to scratch at his bandana, crumpling it, and letting the woman see a part of a deep scar that went around the immortal's head. It looked like her suspicions might be correct.
“Did he…torture you?” asked Princess Iron Fan the dreaded question. She really wanted the answer to be “no”. For the stone monkey to just laugh and explain that it was a misunderstanding. That he was nervous about something else. That he and the Great Monk were actually best friends, like it was described in the books. Monkie King noticed where she was looking and quickly fixed his bandana, glancing away. This didn’t seem like “no”.
“I…Them…” tried to start the man. “My relationships with them… It’s…complicated.”
“Them?” asked Luocha, thinking if other Pilgrims were not as friendly with each other as it was told in the legends as well.
“P-peng…Peng is them,” explained himself Xiaotian. This wasn’t the answer Iron Fan was expecting, but, at least, it was a start.
“Were you friends with them?” tried to continue their conversation the dark-haired woman.
“No.” The answer from the stone monkey was immediate. If Monkey Duo’s mother was sceptical about how true the legends about her ancestor were before, she lost any faith in them in that moment.
“Do you hate them?” asked Princess Iron Fan, thinking how she would explain that to her family. To her sons. That, apparently, their mentor flinched every time she was around, because he was afraid that she would be as cruel to him as her predecessor.
“I… It’s…We…” This time MK wasn’t as quick with his answer as before. Instead, his eyes finally found something, and he suddenly asked, “Do you want some tea?”
Being caught off guard by the change of topic, Luocha followed the gaze of Monkie King, seeing a tea stall with a woman in a purple cheongsam behind it.
“I…Yes, I wouldn’t mind…” Before Iron Fan could even finish her agreement, the disguised simian darted towards the stall with the money that she gave him for his work (even if he tried to decline them at first) in hand.
Sighing, Luocha decided to wait for her sons’ mentor, observing the crowd around. People were laughing, dragging balloons and kites around, eating food, and just enjoying the festival. The rays from the setting sun were giving the scenery a nice orange hue, with the temperature being still warm enough since the city still didn’t receive any snow and most trees still had their leaves, despite winter coming to an end. A white kite resembling an eagle flew above her head, reminding her of her three sons’ first attempt at building their own, which ended as a scary purple and red abomination that covered half of the children’s room (the one the trio still shared when Macaque and Wukong would decide to sleep at their home instead of their flat) and was supposed to resemble her husband. It was still somewhere in their house with the rest of their kids’ crafts that DBK guarded as if they were the biggest treasures in the world.
(They were for the Bull Couple, but still it not once had led to an awkward moment, when another too sure of themselves thieves tried to steal something they thought would be an expensive artefact, only to see their vault being filled with children’s paintings, embroidery, and plasticine figures. The few fools who still tried to take them didn’t live to tell the tale.)
Seeing that her current companion came back with two cups of tea, Iron Fan waved away nostalgic thoughts and brought her attention back to the matter in hand.
“So, what’s your answer to the question?” Luocha swirled the cup in her hands, looking as the small pieces of dried leaves that managed to get past a tea strainer circled around with the flow and then slowly descended back at the bottom of the cup.
“What question?” tried to avoid answering the immortal.
“It’s unbecoming of someone called ‘The Great Sage Equal to Heaven’ to play dumb, MK,” snapped the woman, instantly regretting it as she saw Monkie King flinch and take a step back. “Sorry.”
The man looked at her with wide eyes, apparently not expecting to hear an apology. Glancing at his cup, the hero decided to ask the question of his own, “What’s your opinion on the Great Monk?”
“Collected a lot of interesting books,” answered the Bull Family’s matriarch. “Seemed to be quite clever. Loved his family.”
“And that’s all?” prodded the disguised monkey after Iron Fan didn’t add anything else to that list. “Like, them being your idol whose guidance and teachings your family still follows to this day or something like that?”
“Well,” started the woman, “my blood family indeed worships them as some sort of deity. But I’ve never agreed with them on that part. I don’t agree with my relatives about a lot of things.”
“Doesn’t sound like you have that good of a relationship with your blood family.”
“You can say that,” nodded the dark-haired female. “They were extremely against me marrying a demon. Said to choose either them or him. I’ve chosen him.”
“Huh. The Great Monk’s descendants hate demons. Isn’t that ironic…” mumbled the Sage, finally taking a sip from his tea.
“So, what about you and Dape…” But Luocha’s question got interrupted by Monkie King spitting the tea on the ground, rubbing his mouth, and looking at the cup with his Golden Vision. “What’s wrong?”
“A hypnotic potion. Quite a strong one as well. Haven’t seen one of those since…” In that moment, the immortal got roughly grabbed by a man that was passing nearby. Looking at MK with wide pink eyes, he tried to drag the legendary hero towards the tea stall. “It’s not nice to spit such wonderful tea. Here, buddy, let me buy you another cup, so you could enjoy this marvellous drink as you should have.”
“Let me go!” shouted the brunette, ripping off his hand from the man’s grasp. That made all of the people around turn towards them, their pink eyes staring at the duo. “Shoot.”
MK and Luocha quickly got into a fighting position.
“Monkie King, do you have enough experience with fighting someone without killing?” suddenly asked Iron Fan, her eyes jumping from one pink-eyed person to another.
“Yes. Why?” said the immortal in confusion, while also observing any movement from the crowd around them.
“Good, because I don’t.”
“If this isn't nice news to hear…” muttered the Great Sage.
In that moment, one of the pink-eyed people finally lunged at the duo, and, as if this was some sort of signal, the rest followed. Monkie King quickly blocked the first punch coming towards his face, shoved the attacker away, and turned around to land a roundhouse kick to the midsection of a man who tried to attack him from behind. Meanwhile, Luocha grabbed the collar of a jacket of a girl on her front, pulled it above her head to disorient her, and then shoved the girl towards the people on her left. The woman then had to dodge hits from another guy, concentrating all her might to just push him away with her wind blades instead of cutting him in half.
The fact that they needed to limit their powers if they didn’t want this brawl to transform into a bloodbath was very inconvenient for the duo. Especially since one of them fought no more than three times with such conditions in her whole life. The safety measures made Luocha constantly concentrate on maintaining balance between her gust of winds to be strong enough to push her opponents but dull enough for them to survive it. Monkie King was doing a little bit better in this regard, especially with all of his trainings as Wukong and Macaque’s teacher, but the mortals around them were mostly just normal humans, unlike his more sturdy demon pupils, so he still had to control his power even more if he didn’t want to shutter someone’s cranium with a single punch.
Most of the fight the two spent with their backs almost glued to each other, but that quickly came to an end when Iron Fan and Monkie King had to quickly jump to the side to avoid a big sting hitting them on their heads. Looking at the owner of the sting, the duo saw a tall purple scorpion-demoness. The demoness who was very familiar to the Great Sage.
“Scorpion Queen? Are you kidding me?” screamed the immortal in annoyance. “Did every demon I’ve ever met decide to live in this city? Who should I expect next? Hu A’qi?!”
“Do I know you?” tilted her head in confusion the scorpion.
Instead of replying, MK just snapped his fingers, transforming back into his monkey form.
“Monkie King!” shouted Xiezijing in recognition. “Did the monk come here with you as well?”
The Sage looked at Luocha. “In a sense.”
“Well then, let’s bring them to the tea party as well!” clapped her claws Scorpion Queen, making the crowd resume their attacks on Iron Fan and Monkie King.
“Wh…?” But before the ex-Pilgrim could ask his question, his whole body shook from a feeling of raging flames reaching to his very core, the smell of lotus filling his nose. Turning his head to his right, the immortal saw a pink glow coming from the space between two now abandoned stalls.
“Shit…” muttered Monkie King and then quickly turned towards his student’s mother. “Princess Iron Fan! You need to find your family and get them out of here! I’ll give you an opening!”
“What? Why did you…?” tried to ask the woman but got immediately interrupted by the panicking monkey-demon, “No time to explain!” The immortal ripped a handful of hairs from his head, blowing them around and creating a bunch of clones of himself, who quickly went to attack the crowd circling them, including Scorpion Queen. Only for all of the copies to disappear a few seconds after, a brief spark of pink flames hitting each of the clones, fading faster than anyone could even blink. But these seconds were enough for Iron Fan to use her wind powers to quickly dash towards where her family should be. She just hoped that Monkie King would be alright.
The aforementioned immortal also used this moment to lunge towards the space the pink glow was coming from. But instead of seeing anyone, the immortal was hit with the bunch of lotus petals in his face, making the Sage cough and splutter the ones that got into his mouth. The moment Monkie King opened his eyes back, he was met with a green sword aiming at his neck. The demon monkey managed to dodge it, but he still got sent into the stall at the opposite side with the impact of energy sent by the slash. Being buried under the wooden boards and cloth that used to be the stall’s roof, the brunette hurried to pull himself out but got hit with something pointy in the head the moment he shoved away the last piece of boards. The unbearable headache made him fold in half, and then everything went black.