Saved by a Monkey
A pure white dove wandered on the sea. She had a mission, a country to save. She didn't let the vastness of the ocean stop her, or the depths of the evil living in it overwhelm her. She flew with purpose and strength.
But she was alone, on a sea teeming with monsters.
Then she met a monkey with a beaming grin and boundless energy.
"We're on an adventure!" He announced. A shark, deadly calm and still until he became ferocity incarnate, and a cat, graceful, cunning, and kinder than the greedy glint in her eye, both sighed. The monkey laughed and offered his hand to the dove.
"You can come if you want!"
She reluctantly accepted. They took her home, and she found the monkey had a power beyond what he used to defeat the monsters they faced.
She still flew alone. The monkey watched her ride the wind, fighting against the sand that filled her vision and stuck in her wings. He frowned at her.
"Why are you all the way up there?" He asked.
"I can't see my country from down there anymore," she said, fluttering and straining to rise higher. "I need to see it. I have to fly over the sand. So that my people can hear me."
The monkey jumped, and reached her easily. He pulled her down to earth.
"I can hear you." He said.
She panicked, flailing and swatting him furiously.
"I'll beat the sand," he promised. "Then you can show us your home."
The dove stared at him. He grinned.
"We're nakama!"
"I am broken."
The horse 'yohohoho'd at his own misery, filling the cracks in his mind with much practiced laughter.
"My apologies, you are very kind," he said, bowing to the monkey and his friends. "But I cannot join you."
The horse departed on his too-light feet, grateful and warm for meeting someone who did not shrink away from his gaunt figure. He would savor that feeling for his remaining years, call upon it for those days when the promise he made brought him more bone-aching loneliness.
Skull joke~! Yohohoho!
"Screw that!"
But, to his amazement, the monkey did not leave.
"A leek stole it, right? I'll get it back!"
And he did, after much screeching and clawing and impossible resilience, the horse had his shadow again.
"You made a promise to someone, right? We met him!"
The horse gaped. He wept. Such wonderful news!
He may still be broken, but-
"It's so cool that you're a skeleton!" The monkey cheered. The horse chuckled, still crying, for what was unsaid.
"We don't care about what's broken!"
"Ah," the horse said. "Would it be all right if I came along with you?"
The monkey laughed.
A duck, who smoked and kicked and scoffed at swans, barked at an idiot monkey who refused to leave him alone.
"I can't fly!" He finally shouted, after he'd been saved by the monkey who'd gone ape on a shiny set of armor disguised as a man.
The monkey blinked with a blank face and looked down. He pawed at a rope around the duck's feet and wings.
"That's only cause you tied yourself down," he said, shaking his head. "Idiot."
He couldn't argue with that, even though he wanted to.
"Not yet, then." He almost said, but the shimmering blue ocean caught his eye. He remembered his dream. He sighed, and a trail of smoke slowly rose from his bill.
"All right."
Later, later, after all his nakama had been beaten, separated, and then reunited under the monkey who rescued each of them, the duck received a calling. He pretended to be a prince. When his savior inevitably came to fetch him, he feigned preference for a life he despised and wore a mask of indifference while the monkey suffered his abuse.
"BULLSHIT!"
Of course, the shitty captain knew better, simple and honest idiot he was. He refused again, just like the first time. The duck finally came back to him, let him eat for the first time in days. He accused the monkey, called him a liar (he was the one lying).
"I don't deserve to fly."
The duck would forever remember that moment as the only time he'd made his captain, the monkey he'd staked his dreams on, truly furious with him.
Because shit, the punch he got a second later fucking hurt.
The monkey panted, still hungry and seething and he screamed.
"I can't fly without you!"
Without any choice, against the monkey who couldn't be denied because he knew him, the duck stopped pretending.
And he came home.
An armadillo, shivering, fearful and with a heart that beat louder (stronger) than he knew, poked his head out at the amiable, monstrous monkey.
"We're nakama now, right?"
Dumbstruck, the armadillo leapt in with the monkey's strange group. He made his lies and tall tales more magnificent and taller than the mountains as he strove to measure up to the overwhelming will and fortitude he sailed beside.
"I want to become brave!" He declared with a stammer, hoping his dream would prove worthy in the lot of impossibilities his nakama sought.
"I know you can."
The monkey never mocked him for being a liar, never doubted the armadillo for a moment.
"You're the sniper. Not the captain."
Though he did quickly set the record straight on a couple things.
The armadillo stayed as close to the monkey as he could- his captain embodied all he wished to one day be.
"I'm too weak for you, aren't I?"
Until the dark hour came when his protective shell was stripped. Until he was forced to confront in no uncertain terms just how different they all were from him. Even the cat and the reindeer, who shared his fears, had more of a right than he.
"I'm not strong enough to walk with you."
The monkey silently glared at him. The armadillo curled back into what remained of his protective shell, retreating into the pretenses he'd created years ago, where he was fit to lead, not straggle behind.
"No one is allowed to leave without his express permission!"
Yet, when another test fell into his path, when the crane let herself be tricked by her own fears, the armadillo stood on his own without realizing it. He returned to his nakama, where the monkey waited with a face-splitting grin and an open hand.
"I knew you could."
The cat didn't have to purr, or suggestively swish her tail or even bat an eye at the monkey to get what she needed. He and the shark were immune to her charms. Not that they couldn't be tricked, they weren't smart, just painfully earnest and straightforward.
"I'm going to rob you blind one day." The cat all but outright told the monkey, from the minute she agreed to provide the hopeless pair with a sense of direction.
He blinked at her and tilted his head.
"But you'll navigate for me, right?"
She sighed.
"Yes, yes."
The monkey only grinned.
"Good! The treasure doesn't matter."
And their idiotic, stupid (wonderful) group grew a bit more, and their honest nature infected her. Her reactions to their antics were her own, never an act.
For every time she scratched the monkey with her claws ("It's the only way I can hurt you!") there were five moments she lamented his insanity with the armadillo, or laughed when the monkey pestered the napping shark. And she was happy.
'Maybe I could sail with them a while longer.'
That comfortable, hopeful thought told her she had to leave them. She made good on her word, and stole everything they had, crying privately the whole time.
"I don't care about the details."
Except the damn knucklehead followed her, waltzed right into the domain of the lion she slaved away to pay off. Put his head right in the beast's fucking mouth.
"Why?" She hissed, bleeding and injured (she preferred the pain to nothing.)
"You're our navigator." He said simply, as if he didn't have fangs that could rip through bone at his neck.
She threw a fit at him, pawed at the dirt and swatted him with her tail.
The monkey said nothing.
When finally, finally, she whimpered and cried, and asked, he still said nothing. He gave her his treasure, and he marched off with a promise to beat the hell out of her nightmare.
After all was over, after he de-clawed and de-fanged, defeated the lion, he gave her the only words that could hurt her for eight years.
"YOU ARE MY NAKAMA!"
And the cat sobbed with a smile.
They didn't hurt her anymore.
The bull's first meeting with the monkey did not involve any endearment or anything as loving as the duck's relationship with the shark.
"This is my town!" The bull roared while he charged. "You've got nerve, showing your face around here after what you did!"
The monkey, hurting more than he could know and uncharacteristically not smiling, only snarled and hit back and ran away.
Their alliance to save the crane proved brittle, best shown by the duck's reaction to meeting the bull for the first time.
"Do you prefer to be tenderized before or after I flay you?"
Beyond the initial ugliness, the bull couldn't help but respect the monkey for standing against the world for the crane, outnumbered six to all world nations. If he expressed that respect as eye leakage ("I'M NOT CRYING!") who could fault him?
Certainly not zipper mouth. The bull left him KO'd.
The bull ran wild alongside the monkey, and he felt free. Freer than he'd been his whole life.
A bull run wild was a dangerous one, though. Wildness cost him his mentor. Eight years and one burned blueprint didn't come close to atonement for that.
So the bull built the monkey and his nakama a new ship, carved it out of the best material in the world, legality and cost be damned. He had no intentions of handing it over himself. He knew his weaknesses, and the temptation for romance would be his undoing.
The stubborn monkey didn't let him off easily.
"This place is too small for you." He argued when they were set to depart. "Come and be free with us! Run wild!"
The bull stood stalwart in refusal.
"You've gotta make my dream happen!" He answered instead.
The monkey shook his head.
"I can't. It's not my dream."
The bull's resistance caved. He bristled and shook himself, at last letting his guilt go.
"PUT YOUR DAMN PANTS ON!"
And he climbed on board.
A reindeer, small and friendless, and so very, painfully different, met the monkey after he'd made a trek that should have broken him. He looked after him and the duck, curious what they felt for their nakama to push themselves so. His curiosity only grew when the cat, clever and sweet and not at all flattering, asshole~! asked him if he wanted to be a pirate.
His father loved pirates- aspired to his dreams like a pirate.
"No way!"
But he'd been told no too many times. Because of his blue nose. Because he walked differently. Because a monster couldn't make friends.
"He's a monster, more or less." The duck said of his captain with a casual grin.
Except the monkey threw everything he thought he knew about the world that denied him out of place. He stormed in like the blizzards he grew up weathering, and cured his home of the stupidity that sat on a throne.
"Join my crew!"
The reindeer wanted nothing else in the world. But. But- but- but
"The world said 'No'!"
The monkey frowned at him. He threw his head back and bellowed.
"I didn't ask the world to be my nakama!"
The reindeer cried, and he shouted to drown out echoes of all the denials and rejections he'd suffered. He gave the monkey the answer he (they) wanted.
Later, after a voyage brief in days but a lifetime in joy and fear and adventure, after they were separated and hurt more than any blow could hope to inflict, the reindeer learned exactly what it took to break his captain.
"I'LL BE A MONSTER!" He shouted a tear-filled promise to the sky, across oceans and land and apart. "I'll be whatever you need me to be! I won't let the world hurt you too!"
And once the reindeer came running back, coat fuller, stride longer and body more powerful, the monkey swept him up with a laugh and a cheer.
The reindeer knew he'd never be rejected while he was home.
A crane, a shadow painted black by the darkness which relentlessly pursued her, had given up. Tired down to what fragments of her spirit remained, she fully intended to surrender, failing yet again to find the knowledge she sought.
"Why the hell should I listen to you?"
The monkey would hear none of her pleas.
So, once out on the sea, she 'coerced' him into accepting her into his odd cluster.
"Oh. Okay. Welcome aboard!"
If the crane was a shadow, then the monkey's crew, and him with his blinding grin and hot-blooded appreciation for life, was a sun. Warm, fierce, omnipresent and so very loving that she came to fear intimacy with him and his nakama, afraid she would destroy the most precious discovery of her life.
"Captain-san."
Thus, the crane maintained a safe distance, arm's length (a relative term for her, naturally), neither close enough to taint nor far enough that she couldn't help and protect him and his fold. She had always abandoned others to the darkness that chased her. For them, she would gladly give herself.
"CP9."
And the day came, as she knew it must, when the darkness caught up, full of such audacity it wore the label of 'Justice'. Little more than a carefully impassive 'thank you' was all she could give them before she departed, unsmiling and resigned.
"I came to bring you back!"
But, even at the doorstep of ultimate authority, the monkey would not falter, did not change course once until he found her. She'd never believed a time would come that his grin would bring her dismay.
"I want to die! I've gone as far as I can go!"
The monkey blinked, and paused mid-charge. The buffoon beside her cackled, no doubt taking sadistic pleasure at the thought of the monkey, wounded by her declaration.
In his eternal, unique sort of wisdom, the monkey instead gave her a perturbed look, as if he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him (an impossibility, to her knowledge.)
"That's stupid." He said, all the while rooting around in his nostril with a pinky. "You can't go any farther? That's why we're nakama! I'll carry you when you can't run anymore!"
The crane, naturally poised and balanced, almost folded under chilling shock when the armadillo set the flag of the world aflame in plain view of its protectors.
"You're not a shadow," the monkey said, as if he hadn't just made an open declaration of war. "Tell me to chase the darkness away, and we'll bring you out of it."
She cried. The crane, who'd only ever allowed herself the phantoms of emotion, sobbed and she made her own declaration, a simple wish.
The monkey and his- and her, nakama rescued the crane, brought the sun to her.
She didn't run away.
"I've never done anything I regret. I'm not gonna start now."
The shark, bloodied, battered and breathing heavily, stared down his burden. A bear had shown up when they were all spent, made an impossible request of them. The lumbering, quiet predator had the nerve to ask them to surrender the monkey in exchange for their lives.
Like hell.
The shark lost, though. He'd broken his oath.
He did the only thing he could. He offered his own potential, his future, his ambition, for the monkey.
The shark, immensely, silently prideful and unyielding, bowed his head.
His captain's agony sat in front of him, given physical form by the bear. His atonement was to outlast it, endure its weight on his shaking shoulders.
He never retreated. Not one step.
"Good for you! I've decided you'll be my nakama!"
The monkey grinned his irritating grin, and the shark snapped and snarled from his bonds.
"That's not your decision!"
Even so, even after all his bluster, the shark came to an understanding with the loud monkey. Freed moments from execution, the carnivore, streamlined evolution in a form that required motion to survive, held back a dozen lesser fangs with three.
"I'm going to be the greatest," the shark said through his teeth and a hooded glower. "Do not get in my way."
The monkey didn't laugh at him. Didn't mock or balk or shoot him down.
He only grinned.
"Awesome!" He said, nodding proudly. "My nakama need to be able to keep up with me, after all!"
The shark, ambition and ferocity manifest, threw his head back and laughed.
"Damn straight."
The shark grit his teeth and lunged forward, aching muscles tense.
"You're gonna be King."
The duck came looking for him once it was finished, stupid eye wide at the blood spatter and the shark's rigid posture.
The shark had never done anything he regretted.
He wasn't gonna start now.