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It’s only after the battle that the exhaustion hits.
Mei watched as Pigsy and Tang bundled MK into Sandy’s van. His clothes were singed and burnt off at places - just like it had when she had inadvertently hurt him with the Samadhi fire. Already there were the tell-tale hint of bruises forming on the exposed parts of his arm and knuckles; Pigsy was quicker, cleaning whatever wounds he could see with the spare gauze they all knew he kept at all times.
She was fairly lucky. All in all, pretty much unscathed.
Plus, you know, she wasn’t the one who had literally gone up against the Azure Lion one on one.
She hated him. Hated that he had lied and tricked and hurt MK.
But-
He was gone now, wasn’t he.
Yellow-Tusk, for all his support, too seemed resigned to his fate. He knelt on the earth, bound and sealed by Nezha's celestial magic, and made no move to protest. The Golden-Winged Peng had long since flown off.
Somewhere.
That coward. Ugh, she could not believe she was agreeing with Macaque on this.
Mei could not imagine the reality of running from any battle. Could not imagine leaving MK and the others to fend for themselves.
Azure Lion and Peng and Yellow-Tusk, they were the villains.
(they thought each other friends)
One died, one turned, the other fled.
And then there was the Monkey King. In the moments that he thought nobody was looking, his expression slipped into something much more hollow. Drained. When his gaze had drifted against Yellow-Tusk, they shared a single second of the same emotion - the haze of thick grief.
Then Wukong turned away, and it was done.
Yellow-Tusk sank his head, defeated. Whatever remnant embers of fight gone in an instance.
“Mei, are you coming?” Mr Tang calls, and she startles. She recovers quickly. With a bright answer, "Coming!”
The ride back to Pigsy’s place is mostly quiet. MK and her use each other as pillows. He’s slumped and drooling the second his head hits her shoulder, but she takes just a moment longer to join him in sleepy land. Instead, she drinks in the sight of her friends around her, content to let the memory linger.
The Monkey King had disappeared with Nezha, something blah blah about official heaven-y business.
For now, it was just MK and her and Pigsy and Mr Tang and Sandy.
Team Monkie Kid all the way.
She steps outside for air for only a moment on the balcony of MK’s apartment when she notices that her shadow has teeth and, wait a brick-ing second, she knows that dark purplish hue. What could she say, trauma lingers. Especially if it was someone that had practically threatened her life, the lives of her friends, and forced the fourth dormant Samadhi ring to burst and rip and burn at her insides and hah hah- she was not even going to go there .
Stop thinking. Stop thinking.
Though that purple really did go well with the green of her ancestral dragon inheritance-spirit thingy.
She plays it calm.
“Oh.” Mei says bored. “It’s you.”
“What, no surprise?” Macaque says, and sinks upwards from the rails. He sits cross-legged, motionless for the span of a breath, before he stretches lazily. Every motion is fluid and poised, in a way that she’s honestly kinda maybe just a bit jealous of.
“Are you here for MK or me?” She asks, her arms folded against the rails as she stares over the sprawling horizon of the city. “Because if you even try to hurt him, I’ll-”
“Burn me from existence?” He challenges.
“Completely.” She nods, deadpan serious. “There will be no trace for even ashes.”
There is another flash of sharp teeth. “But the memory stays. It always does. Trust me, kiddo. No matter how far you run. How much you bury. How much you pretend.”
“I think you’re projecting.” She matches his stupid smile, lets her voice go airy and pointed.
“And you’re changing the subject.”
“This,” she says, “is not even a conversation. This is me telling you to leave . Or else I’ll kick you off MK’s lawn for him.”
He taps the rails, then corrects. “Balcony.”
“Balcony-baloney-lawn. It’s metaphorical.”
She draws her sword, more for the effect than anything else because look, MK was still sleeping and like hell was she going to wake him.
“I’m not here for him.” Macaque tells her.
This stops her. “Huh?”
He stands gracefully, tail flickering through the floor. He shrugs. “I do believe I still owe you and your friends a play. Seems a shame to let the money go to waste.”
Mei remembers this. “And whose fault was that?” She says outraged. “You literally shadow-napped us.”
“Let’s just say I needed a little more time to develop the characters. One can never… rush the screenplay.”
“Yeah, well, your screenplay sucked!”
He clicks his tongue. “Now I’m just wounded. But…” He trails off.
“What.”
“Constructive criticism does wonders. Especially when it's from the audience.” The ground swirls with more of his shadows. Mei dips a toe into it experimentally. It’s strangely warm. A far cry from the icy coldness she had kinda expected because, oh yeah.
The first time around that she’d been on the direct end of his attack and half of his face had literal icicles sticking out of it. The Lady Bone Demon, duh, right.
She turns to look at Macaque. Then at MK, still happily asleep.
“Why?” Mei asks.
It’s a bad idea, she knows. But-
Before she can finish her train of thought, the ground beneath her drops away.
Instinct has her tucking into a drop and roll. The blade of her beloved sword scratches against panelled ground, and she’s on her feet in an instance, ready to attack. She recognises the place - the theatre that Pigsy and Mr Tang had brought MK and her. Plus she spent way too long as a stupid shadow in Macaque’s stupid lantern not to, you know, intuitively remember. Somewhere.
“You could’ve warned me!” She shrieks, and her voice echoes in the empty theatre.
“Now where’s the fun in that?” He’s sitting in the aisle. The lights flicker purple, then kick into a dull glow.
Mei mutters unintelligible curses in his direction, makes a face, then sticks her sword into the ground. “I’m going to go get snacks.” She announces, and storms off.
She returns with two cheese teas and a bag of popcorn. Her sword is laying across the front-row bench, and Macaque - the big drama king that he so obviously was - already standing on the stage with a hoodie pulled over his face. “For obvious reasons,” His voice pitched low and echo-y. “My lantern is gone.”
“LBD reasons?” She asks.
He shrugs noncommittal.
Mei thinks of her own sword. The sound of it shattering still stayed with her. The phantom feel of the crystal spray of fragments. “That sucks.”
“Indeed.” Macaque clears his throat, and begins, “Now, shall we begin?”
Mei slurps her cheese tea.
“Like light, heroes bring warmth. Hope. And friendship. But,” Popcorn crunches. His expression is unreadable in the shadow glare he casts over his own features. Eh. She can feel him glowering anyway. “They also give life to the darkness.”
“Oh yeah, hmm-mm, superrr dark.” She agrees.
The shadows condense, so thick that she can almost feel it pooling in the air. It is pretty cool when it comes together to form the shapes. “The hero and the warrior were like the sun and the moon, their light a protective glow shining upon this world. Together there was nothing that could stop the two of them, either of the celestial realms or on earth.”
“You’re still projecting.” Mei says cheerfully.
“Would you please.”
She shovels another handful of popcorn into her mouth. Crunches harder.
“As time went on,” Macaque faded as the shadows enveloped him, flowing like the gentle ebb and pull of a tide, “the hero attained power beyond comprehension. And as the hero’s light grew, so too did his shadow, and soon, the warrior was cast in that shadow.”
The darkness coagulated in his hands, writhing and burning and angry like bruised embers. “In that darkness, the warrior was forgotten by the hero. ”
The Monkey King seems to remember you just fine , Mei wants to say.
And I’m more of like, the greatest bestie in the whole entire world than a warrior , Mei doesn’t say.
“We are not your characters, Macaque.” Mei calls instead. She rubs her hands together, chasing warmth, trying to discretely rub away the sticky layer of melted caramel.
“It’s metaphorical.” He retorts, then sighs. The glamour falls away like the lightness of a feather with a snap of his fingers. It leaves the visage of a now hoodie-less him visibly scowling. The bottom of her popcorn container empties out as he helps himself. Then before she can even blink, he’s next to her, posture straight and tail curling in the air, “You really are the worst, aren’t you.”
“I try.” Mei says.
“So you do.” Macaque says. “Look, kiddo, you’re sharp. I’ll give you that.”
“Thanks?”
“And I think Wukong has been tight-lipped enough for us all.” This, this gets her attention. She reaches for the hook, for the tentative maybe olive-branch that Macaque is extending. It could be more lies. It could be the truth. It could be also be another scheme from the enemy. He’d been exactly just that barely a few months prior after all.
Warily, “What do you mean?”
His gaze is distant, wispy like the unravelling threads of those fancy expensive clothes of her childhood. “There’s a storm coming.” Macaque says, echoes. His tail swishes. She catches a glimpse of bone white before the shadows stain it the colour of ink again. “You can feel it, can’t you.”
“Pfft.” She answers, relaxes, “There’s like, so many bad guys attacking the city practically every week.”
“Like they’re gearing up for something?” Macaque challenges, and there’s the sound of wind chimes again. Nothing like the sound of fracturing tiles and cracking pottery that had been the universe tearing itself apart, but something similar. A low reverb. The faintest growl from the darkest maw that was from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
His fingers touch the ripples of the air. It sends a sharp tingle through her. Ozone and lightning and earth and rust. Macaque’s hands move, spinning, weaving the atmosphere to add to his words, and it’s still super cool stuff. “Like the story pushing itself to the climax. Or,” his tone dips, gentle even, “like the pieces on a chessboard rearranging itself.”
Destiny.
The taste in her mouth instantly sours.
“You sound like her.” Mei says.
Reflexive and acid-sharp, “I am nothing like her.”
“That’s all she ever talked about! Pawns and pieces and,” She does the angry finger-quotes, “‘agents of chaos’ or whatever! That was all she ever kept saying. And you, you keep trying to tell me the same thing. Nothing is fixed!” She hisses. Her fingers dig into the bench, her sword is just a few inches away, she could easily grab it at any moment- “The universe wants nothing from us.”
“No.” Macaque says, and catches her fist before it can collide with his face. “Maybe not the universe. But somebody does.” He leans, words vicious and leaning for the strike, “And I would bet a lot of money that the somebody may be interested in your friend.”
“What does MK have to do with this?”
“Everything.” Macaque hisses. The world strobes, the ground falls, the ceiling rises, and Mei stands trapped in the heartbeat of thrumming magic. “He might as well have sent out a blinding signal flare with that little display of power back there. You know what it is like to be a weapon just as much as I do, kiddo.”
The shadows taunt, would you choose him, or the world?
The darkness roils an ocean surge, and would he?
With a battle cry, Mei raises her sword, and the dragon coils around her, fanged and snarling and furious. It is flames that greet her, fills her vision, black flames spouting from the cracks beneath her feet, from her breath, from the spaces between her bones. But it is not her rage that fuels it. It is the ghost of Macaque’s.
What is fire if you could extinguish it-
“Enough!” She shouts.
The dust cloud settles. The stillness slams into place.
It’s just her and Macaque now. She catches a glimpse of a single eye, pity silhouetted against a fading face.
And then it’s just her and the darkness.
But right before she staggers out of the exit, coughing on the invisible soot of that shadow magic, the void whispers to her, are you strong enough, the anchor or prison or lock, the dusk or rise, sun or moon or shadow, can you walk through fire unburnt, and if he acts the part of the saviour then who is left to save him
“Your play. Still. Completely. Sucks!” Mei shouts back, once she has even breath to find her voice again. She mentally makes up her mind to leave a zero-star Yelp review.
That will serve him right.
But then history repeats, and this is also still all the warning she gets before the ground is no longer beneath her, she stumbles, and crashes face-first into the wall of Pigsy’s noodle store. There is a startled yelp from the kitchen, then Pigsy hurries out with a panicked, “Mei?” Mr Tang wordlessly slides a bowl of soup over and asks sympathetically, “Magic monkey business?”
Mei groans.