For a few seconds after the monkey man suddenly showed himself like that, no one said anything. No one even moved. Hell, I was pretty sure even the group of Revenants were surprised. And why wouldn’t they be? It probably wasn’t often that they saw a beetle crawl out of someone’s pocket and transform into a humanoid being who said he was going to have some fun. That was… yeah, I was willing to say that was a decidedly odd occurrence for anyone.
On the other hand, he basically said he was here to help. Not in that many words, but still. He was definitely focused on the Revenants. And he was smiling. No, grinning. Not to mention sort of… vibrating with excitement. It was like he’d never been happier in his life. So, okay, I’d had a crazy beetle-monkey person in my pocket all this time. Fantastic.
And yet, even now, the Revenants hadn’t moved. They were just standing there staring. They didn’t say anything or move. They just watched, as though weirdly fascinated by our new arrival. I could sense their confusion and… it kind of felt like uncertainty. It was like they could smell something on him. Something that made them hesitate.
Mom found her voice first. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but perhaps the time for questions is after we survive the army of Revenants. You seem to be willing to help, and we could use every bit of that we can get. Whatever you’re here for–”
She was interrupted as the man offered a lopsided but seemingly sincere grin. “Hold that thought for a second. I’d love to chat soon, you have no idea. Being silent for days ain’t my idea of a good time. But first I’ve gotta go handle this.” He nodded over his shoulder.
The Revenants whom I hadn’t actually managed to freeze had finally reacted by that point, pulling themselves together before the three in front lunged with a collective shriek that sent a chill down my spine. It made me want to fall on the floor and cover my head, even after all my training. There had to be a magical component to it, something that made it even more terrifying than it should’ve been. Whatever it was, the shake was powerful, especially when the other nine followed suit. Twelve Revenants, all giving off that bone-chilling, horrific scream as they rushed toward us, intent on creating new bodies for the rest of their kind to take over.
This… this was going to be bad. Even if we had one Revenant on our side with Persephone, they had twelve. A dozen of what had to be some of the most dangerous beings in the universe if they were inside a dead body. And these were. The bodies wouldn’t last that long, but that didn’t help us in this immediate moment.
Mom, Persephone, and Nevada were already moving in front of Shiori and me. Mom held her hand out and let Mercury jump inside to empower her. Asenath and Stasia went to the left, a pair of vampire blurs, while Twister transformed into a rhino right on their heels. Robin and Judas went right, just behind Persephone, who was going straight toward the nearest Revenant. She didn’t even hesitate for a second before jumping to defend the rest of us from her own kind.
I had no idea what Denuvus was going to do, but she knew that getting what she wanted depended on the rest of us surviving. And she probably also knew that her own survival strongly hinged on that too. Maybe she would actually help right now.
Meanwhile, Tabbris had already jumped back into me. We could maybe take out a couple of them if we lined up a good shot with her wings, or at least put them down for a bit. We could do something to help. Besides, I still had my Necromancy, so maybe I could slow these things down a little bit, or even stop a couple of them in their tracks. I’d done so with Persephone before. I was under no illusions that I could do it with all of them at once, but it could still help.
Between all of us, depending on how much help this monkey-man was, maybe we could survive this. But we were going to have to act quickly and try to avoid getting split up and cornered. If these things managed to… to kill one of us and get one of their companions into the body… oh God, it would be a bloodbath. Raising my staff protectively, I focused on–
I focused on the monkey-man himself, who abruptly vanished from where he had been standing. There was no blur, no sign of movement at all. It was like he’d teleported, but I could tell he was just that fast. One second he was standing there, grinning as the Revenants rushed toward us, and in the next, he was standing on the far side of the three who had been in front. The–wait. Two. There were two the–oh. He was covered in blood, bits of bone, and… other things. The Revenant who had been in the middle was uhh… gone. He was gone. The body had basically completely disintegrated. What little was left of it was splattered across the walls, floor, and ceiling.
The two Revenants who had been on either side of that third one kept going forward, still shrieking. But the monkey man pivoted on his heel, hands snapping out. And again, it was like he hadn’t actually physically moved. I didn’t see his arms, which had started down at his sides, rise up and extend outward. They were just in one position one instant and in the other the next. His arms moved so fast my eyes couldn’t even track any sort of motion. They were at his sides and then they were extended, with his hands on either side of the two Revenants’ heads. And then he slammed them together. Two Revenants at once. They were in fresh bodies, dead within the past few minutes. So they were definitely at the peak of their strength. And yet, when this… whoever he was slammed their heads together, they burst like that Gallagher guy smashing a watermelon.
Everyone else had come to an abrupt halt at the sight of three Revenant-possessed bodies dropping like that, even as the monkey-man tossed the two now-headless corpses against either wall.
Just like that, three of the Revenants were dead. The remaining nine clearly hadn’t been expecting that sort of resistance from all of us, let alone just one. They seemed about as shocked as we were. At least for a moment, before the nearest one let out a renewed scream and threw itself at the monkey-man’s back as he stood still facing us.
Yet again, there was no visible motion. This stranger was so incredibly fast that whenever he really moved, we only saw the results of it, and his ending position. One second he was just standing there with the Revenant lunging at his back, and in the next, he had pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees to face the monster while catching both of its extended arms. The thing screeched, until the man ripped its arms right out of its shoulders with little apparent effort. As a look of what seemed like surprise crossed the Revenant’s stolen-corpse face with the loss of its arms, the man’s tail slipped down to wrap around one of its ankles. An instant later, it was yanked off its feet and slammed into the nearby wall by that tail with enough force to basically liquefy the thing. All while the monkey figure walked through the space it had just been standing in, as casual as could be.
Another–no, it wasn’t a flash of motion. It wasn’t a blur. There was literally nothing to see at all. He was over there, and then he was right in front of me. It was like he teleported, but not. He was physically crossing the distance that quickly. That was just how fast he was.
“Boop.” He poked me in the nose with that slightly furry finger. And yes, he literally said ‘boop.’ “Could ya do a Monkey King a favor and release those three over there? This whole thing would just be a lot more fun if they had every advantage they can get.”
“I… uhh…” I stared at him, then over at the Revenants who remained. Or all of them, rather. Because to be clear, the other Revenants weren’t actually destroyed, they had simply lost their physical bodies. Those ones appeared among their brethren, looking sort of like ghosts but more… jagged was the best explanation I could think of. Their form was half-ghost, half-lightning bolt. It was like there were spikes sticking out of every side of them, and they were wearing long, very cut-up and tattered cloaks. Their faces were angular, almost like Fomorians but twisted even more. They were also taller than any human, standing a good seven and a half feet tall at least. Nothing about them was easy or fun to look at, and the very sight seemed to send an instinctive shiver down my spine. These were terrifying beings, whose sole purpose seemed to be to possess a corpse and do as much damage as possible. Given the chance, they would tear all of us apart and use our bodies to kill even more. And this guy wanted me to release the few I had managed to trap.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Mercury, who had stepped out of my mother, spoke up. “Do it, Felicity. It’s okay.”
So… I did. I relaxed my power, allowing those three Revenants to move. Which put the total back up to eleven. Eleven of these monsters, who looked like they were recovering from their surprise at what had happened over the past few moments and were starting to move again.
“Hey, thanks, kid!” The monkey-man flashed me another brilliant smile. “Now you don’t have to get me a birthday present!”
With that, he spun back that way and took a few steps toward the Revenants while reaching up to what looked like a toothpick tucked behind his ear. He tugged it out, spinning the little stick between his fingers before it transformed into a larger staff, red with gold ends. He continued allowing it to spin in a couple more circles before striking the ground with it hard enough to send a long, six-inch-wide crack through the floor. Standing there with the staff extended out and down like that, the man lifted his head to stare at the remaining Revenants. He said nothing, and I couldn’t see his face. But whatever they saw there made the rest of the monsters screech in unison before charging in to attack.
Their charge was met by the man himself. Or at least, I assumed it was. Just like before, we didn’t actually see him move. But we definitely saw the results. He vanished from where he was standing, and the Revenants immediately began to be torn apart. Their bodies and pieces of those bodies were sent flying in every direction, like they had gone into a blender. I caught a glimpse of the man as he stopped short to the left of one of the monsters. It turned to look at him, just before the staff lashed out. Not that I saw him raise it or swing. It was at his side, and in the next instant, it was extended out that way into the space where the monster’s head had been. The head itself had snapped all the way around to face the wrong direction and was dangling backwards and upside down from the force of the blow. Immediately after that, the man’s foot was planted into the monster’s chest, completely collapsing its body inward.
While that body was falling, one of the intangible Revenants in their natural form appeared behind the man. I started to focus on making it stop, but the end of that staff abruptly slammed into its face. He didn’t swing it backwards, the staff simply extended and grew out that far. It shouldn’t have been able to hit the thing in its ghost-like body since I didn’t see any ghost-fire, but it did anyway. And did it with enough force to pierce straight through the Revenant’s head, making the whole thing disintegrate.
That was essentially how the rest of that entire fight went. Not that it was much of a fight on their parts. The Revenants were completely outclassed in every possible way. While the rest of us simply stood there and watched, he ripped through them as though they were toddlers facing some sort of marine supersoldier ninja. They didn’t stand even the slightest chance. Whether they were possessing bodies or in their natural ghost-like states, it didn’t matter. This stranger killed all of them without any actual notable effort. A few of them actually landed blows, but I was pretty sure he allowed that to happen because he was… playing with them? Either way, they didn’t do any visible damage. They hit him and he just shrugged it off. Actually, I was pretty sure he seemed almost disappointed that they weren’t capable of hitting him even harder. He actually made what sounded like a tutting sound under his breath when one landed a solid blow right to his face that didn’t even make him turn his head. At best, it made him roll his eyes.
They stood no chance. That much had been clear basically from the very start, and it only grew more so as he continued what seemed like a simple warm-up exercise for him. Soon, all fifteen monsters were completely gone. They had been utterly destroyed in every possible way, leaving nothing but the broken remains of the corpses they had been possessing. As for the monkey-man himself, he stood in the middle of the pile of bodies, tapping his staff thoughtfully against the floor a couple times before shrinking it down to tuck behind his ear once more.
This seemed to be impossible. I knew just how dangerous those Revenants should have been. It had been drilled into my head over and over, and I had seen how strong Persephone was. Even with all of us together, we shouldn’t have stood a chance against all of them at once, not without a hell of a lot more preparation than we’d had, particularly. We should have been in for one of the worst fights we had ever seen, a fight that may very well have ended with all of us dying. Instead, this single man had casually dispatched all of them without seeming to even break a sweat doing so. It was complete and utter insanity.
And yet, that had really just happened. Every single time I allowed myself to think that I had officially seen so much that I could never possibly be surprised again, something like this happened. Although, to be fair, it was going to take a lot to top the beetle I’d found on a random asteroid station and put in my pocket transforming into a monkey-man who could casually trounce a small army of Revenants as though they were small children.
“Flick?!” That was Shiori, giving me a wide eyed look while spreading her arms to either side and an expression of complete confusion. Her gaze was questioning. “I know you’ve got a habit of meeting powerful people and keeping secrets until it’s the right time, but–”
“I swear I didn’t know!” I shot back before turning my attention to the man in front of us. “Who the hell are you?!” My voice may have been a bit higher than it normally would have been, but in my defense, monkey-beetle who just destroyed a bunch of Revenants.
Mom had stepped forward then, eyes narrowing as she raised that sword protectively just in case. Not that I thought it would do much good if this guy did decide to be a threat. ”Girls, perhaps we should maintain an even, calm voice right now. And not start shouting demands.”
She had a good point. It was just her, Shiori, Asenath, Nevada, Twister, Judas, Stasia, Robin, Persephone, and me. And Denuvus, if she was going to contribute. Which might have seemed like a lot, but this was a man who had torn through twelve Revenants like they were nothing. Something made me doubt even all of us together would pose that much of a threat to him.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” That was Persephone. She was addressing Mercury. “It is really him.”
“I… uhh… uh huh.” Looking completely at a loss for words, the Seosten nodded slowly.
The monkey man, whoever he was, didn’t seem to be phased in the least by our reactions. He just poked one of the dead bodies with his foot curiously before looking up. That same broad, lopsided smile had returned. “That was fun! I knew you’d have some interesting things to do, Felicity Chambers.”
“Me? I–” As the others turned to stare my way, I swallowed. “You… you were the beetle I found on the station. How did you–I mean what were you–I mean what?” My voice audibly cracked through that whole thing. I had no idea what to say just then, the words simply came out in that line of clueless babbling. How on Earth was I supposed to react to this? Who was this guy?
“My name is Denuvus,” the woman behind us spoke up, clearly focusing on the man in question. “Tell me who you are and what you want.”
Instead of listening to her immediately as basically anyone else would have, the man cocked his head to the side, staring at the woman for a moment before brightly replying, “Say please.” His voice was cheerful, with only the barest hint of reprimand. It was like he didn’t even really care all that much, but wanted to make a point.
His reaction startled Denuvus, which was pretty wild to see. Her head snapped back as though she had been struck, mouth opening and shutting a couple times before she managed, “What?”
“You were being rude and demanding,” the man informed her while his tail idly poked at another dead body, as though he was trying to find one that was still alive so he could fight again. “I was going to introduce myself anyway, but now I think you should say please. I don’t appreciate being told what to do.”
“Oh… my God.” That was Robin. Or rather, Hood, given their amber-brown eyes. “It’s you. We thought you didn’t actually exist, that people were simply conflating and exaggerating stories that–oh.” The Mevari seemed completely subdued by all this. Which was understandable, given, well, yeah. They turned to look at Denuvus. “You should really do as he asks.”
The rest of us stared expectantly at her as well, until she gave a heavy, annoyed sigh. “Fine, who are you, please?”
Her words made the man in question smile even more. “I’m so glad you asked! I go by many names, more than we have time to list! But the one you should know is Sun Wukong. I am the Monkey King.” He had straightened up by then, hands on his hips as he literally puffed his chest while continuing proudly. “And I’m here to save the–hang on.”
Those last two words came as a blurted aside as the man vanished from where he had been standing. Suddenly, he was standing next to Shiori. His fingers dipped into one of her pockets, producing a package of peanut butter crackers. Holding it up in both hands, the furry man sniffed it intently a few times. Then he just… ate it, package and all, in a few quick and noisy bites.
Even as he finished doing that, the sound of running footsteps made all of us quickly look over the way we’d come. Trice, Miles, and the others came rushing into view. And they were accompanied by the same man who was standing in front of us. Or his twin, or… something?
Either way, the newly arrived version of the so-called Monkey King spoke in unison with the other, who had just finished the crackers. “Hey, what’re we all standing around for? There’s supposed to be a lot more of those things, right? So let’s go have some fun!
“I promise I won’t hog all of them this time.”