"Out of gas??? How can we be out of gas?!" Tang's eyes widens, standing beside Sandy as he do maintenance to his beloved T.E.A. "We've never needed gas before!"
"Sure we did," the blue giant smiles at him and taps the hood with a wrench, "I find a lot of good pieces for the van, at some point I also find some gas and kept it under the compartment. In every pitstop we made, I refill the tank so we hadn't been worrying about it in the travels."
The man turns to the forest, feeling a lot smaller than he already is. This could be the worst case scenario in any normal journey. But they aren't exactly in a normal journey, they have the Monkey Kid and Monkey King. But no matter how well he tried to soothe his mind with reassurance, Tang still can't help but hyperventilate.
"Any chance you know this place, Xiu?" Pigsy asks her, but the woman was already occupied on her phone, sitting under a tree with her knees tucked under her chin.
"Okay~ so we're stranded in a forest for who knows how long, with no means of getting gas and far from any village or cities," Mei pursed her lips, taking a picture of all creatures she sees crawling around, "Not too bad for a couple of amateurs who went on a journey with a map illustrating nothing but the exact locations of the rings."
"Maybe we shouldn't have taken that shortcut," MK hummed.
The road they drove through earlier had a forked path, and it just so happens that the left one says 'shortcut' so MK had to point Sandy to that direction.
"Well, it was the shortcut. Maybe the next town is nearer than it looks?" she shrugs.
Xiu awed when the cop and the convict adopted the little thief as their own son. The story is coming to an end and it makes her wanna tear up, the story and its plot engraved in her mind forever. Okay, maybe not forever. Maybe a week? At the moment that she's just three paragraphs from the ending, something falls on her head. She instinctively swats it away, but whatever it is, just clings itself around her hand.
'Why do I get déjà vu,' the woman deadpans, slowly looking towards her hand. Clutching around her is a long, brown, 30 legged centipede. Her head creaks forward, most of her friends are occupied with their own things to do and hasn't realized how pale she'd gotten. Xiu felt it crawl on her hand again and made a little squeak before passing out in fright.
"She's a husk."
"A light punishment shall be in order."
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A scent of burning essence greeted her upon awakening, sitting up, the woman moved her hands around the wooden bed, recognizing her surroundings as some sort of traditional hut. The hand that held the centipede had been wrapped in some kind of... talisman. Looking to the other, it was wrapped around entirely as well. As a demon huntress, she knew better than to try and rip off unknown talismans.
Xiu gets off the bed and slowly lifted the curtain to the door.
"— and there's really no other way?"
"Unless you give in to its ultimatum, then you need to have that determination to break free from it through this."
'That voice, it's Wukong's. But who's the old lady?' Xiu tiptoed out the frame and peeked through the side of another part of the hut. There, sat a grey haired woman, adorned with a headdress surrounded with beads. Her face painted with white lines vertically and had ears pulled down by a heavy set of earrings. A shaman.
Candles were handed out to him. "Take these with you, it'll help you enter that world. If luck's on your side, you'll catch sight of a guide on a new moon. It'll take you to—" she stops, noticing the woman on the door.
Monkey King turns around, his eyes widens when he sees her, "Oh good. You're awake!"
She glances back to the shaman, feeling like something's off about this whole conversation, "What happened? What's with these talisman on my hands?"
"Oh, those?" he chuckles, "According to MK, you were waving around a demonic centipede. But don't worry, the venom wouldn't spread as long as you keep those on."
"What?" her eyes bulges out in shock.
The old lady raises a brow at him.
"Yeah. Super creepy, right? So listen, I'm trying to get some info on how to make use of the Samadhi Fire, so— you know— we'll have a chance of wielding it properly without destroying the whole mortal realm. The others are waiting outside. You go ahead with them towards the van, I'll catch up."
He talked fast, he didn't even let her have a turn for a question. Monkey King waves his hand, shooing her away. Xiu gives him a glare before stomping out of the hut. The simian sighs through his nose, his eyes unwavering as he stared at the spot she occupied. He lowered his guard for a minute, and the next thing he knew is that she comes snooping around.
"Why didn't you tell her?" the shaman asks.
He clenched his fist, shifting back to how he was originally seated, "She doesn't need to know. This is something only I can do."
"Just because you carry it all so well doesn't mean that it's not heavy," she takes her time to stand on her feet with the support of a cane, "Sun Wukong, proclaimed Great Sage somewhat Equal to Heaven, sometimes to carry a burden is to share it with another. The human capacity for burdens is like bamboo— far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance. It is her curse, and no doubt she'll find out eventually. Efforts are still efforts whether you succeed or not."
He was ushered out of the hut by the end of the stick, but what she says hovered over his mind that he didn't have the mental capacity to argue with the treatment. The moon was full tonight, casting a shadow in front of him. What he was before, all he had ever done, and all that he never did, haunts him as he undergo all those meditations. Monkey King would then see her face, her radiating aura that had nothing but specific goals in mind, goals that involved him and what she needed and wasn't able to do.
"Go. And I do hope to never see your face here again," she jokingly stated.
"You'll be in Nether once I chose to look for you again," he retorts back, but realizes the cruelty of his own joke, making his fur stand on ends. "W-Which I hope you don't go to soon."
The shaman laughs, "Seems like you're not as impudent as they claimed you to be." Once he started walking away, the old lady remembers something crucial and reaching out to him again, "Do not let the fire disappear. You can never come back once it all blows away."
"... Thanks."
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That GIF though👀😁
Also, you guys, I'm already thinking of a plot for dear ol' Pigsy since I hate leaving him loveless right now🥺 And I don't see much fanfics of him either. I'll start the book for him as well when this is all over.
