Chapter Four
He scowled down at the living monkey - living in the sense he was actual flesh, blood and bone while the accursed himself was not. He wondered why on earth he was made of stone while the former Destroyer was not. He demanded to know.
"If you wish to 'help' me," he sneered, crossing his arms over his chest, "then do kindly tell me why I am no longer flesh and blood as you are."
The simian chuckled and shook his head, mimicking the folding of the limbs before himself, then flopped down to sit with his legs crossed just like Monkey Fist. His teeth were bared in that insidious grin of his. "Well, to put it bluntly, Monty boy, your transformation was extremely different than the redheaded woman as well as the old dodger himself and the rodent. After all, they were affected by my own powers whilst you yourself was ensnared by your own doing." He winked, making the other man very angry.
Monkey Fist snarled at him, ready to unleash the full power here and now. He felt the fire within his core, slowly awakening to his rage. If this was how the original felt - hate and rage combined - then he was already learning fast and could not wait to use it. The former Yono sensed this and rumbled, holding up both paws. "Ah uh, my pupil, none of my old tricks just yet."
Growling, Monkey Fist bore down on him, settling on leaning forward. "Then WHAT can I do? I have far more pressing matters to do. The Han I failed to acquire, but now I get that chance. Then I'll find the others and finish them off now that you have made me unstoppable -"
The features twisted at once, and a monstrous roar took him back, but he was stone; why would he be hurt now?
"YOU DARE CALL YOURSELF UNSTOPPABLE! YOU HAVE MUCH TO LEARN BEFORE YOU CAN CALL YOURSELF THE DARK DESTROYER!" Then the monkey softened, to his own level of tenderness as if assuming the role of the wise old man, if not matching that old relic of Yamanouchi.
"Get yourself up so we can plan as meticulously as you should have done the first time. You will not succeed in ensnaring the counterpart the way you did last time. The first lesson you must learn is the balance of the dark and light of the universe...coexisting as one..."
Monkey Fist blinked as they started walking in the southern direction of the mountains. Of all things, he did not expect that kind of philosophy from the one he damned himself to, blamed for taking his freedom from him...but the words echoed in his head: coexisting as one...what did that mean?
It was then and there he recalled the ancient prophecy that led him right to the two sides of the same coin.
"Achieving the weapon is your good fortune, for loving it makes it unstoppable..."
~o~
Her dress was in the box, jewels set, and she was ready to go. Somehow she managed to forget the troubles for now and was ready to go home relaxed to her man. Humming as she unlocked the front door with her keys, box tucked under one arm and her handbag in the other, she slipped inside the warm abode and called out.
"Honey, I'm home!"
It was then and there that she heard his voice along with another familiar one, if a bit technical. He was talking to Jane. Oh, damn it! She had the answers for them - and just like that, she was beside him on their striped sofa in a buzz, eager to listen to what their friend found. "Great, whatcha got?" she asked hurriedly, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear; her black locks were still in the bun if devoid of the crystal adornment.
"The match belongs to that of a Lord Montgomery Fiske. Does that name sound familiar?"
Crispin's eyes lit up before they faded to a dullness. "Oh, yes, I remember that name...the British archaeologist turned villain, an old enemy of Dr. Stoppable's from her younger days," he said, gritting his teeth, looking at Hana then. She felt the blood drain her face.
Montgomery Fiske...renowned English explorer and scholar as her fiancée said, the world's foremost expert on all things simian - oh, God, now she remembered hearing that name. She'd studied his works in high school, but other than that, she knew nothing about him. Her blood turned to ice at once when the coldest arrow pierced through her heart.
Was that walking carving of silicate this Lord Fiske, a man of dedicated knowledge and had raised awareness to critically endangered species of ape and monkeys...?!
"Jane, what do you know about him besides his work?" Hana asked, fingering the pearl around her neck nervously. The other woman swallowed, being just as pale as she knew she was. Crispin's apprehensive blue gaze darted back and forth between them.
"Well, not everyone is able to piece it together because they tended to separate him from his villainous persona, and he always did his activities in private unlike so many of the other foes of Kim Possible. Anyway, he was known for having a twisted, insane obsession with something called Mystical Monkey Power. He was discovered when he called in Kim and her husband - when they were still in high school and just best friends, of course - to help him recover a rare monkey icon which was one of four...and it turned out he'd stolen the previous three and did the same with this one. He intended to get the mythical power for himself, and your brother stopped him, Hana."
She closed her eyes. Her heroic big brother stopped a man with monkey - wait, if he DID get this "Mystical Monkey Power", what else? Those strange features on the statue... "What else did Lord Fiske do to himself?" she pressed, getting another nervous swallow.
Jane closed her hands into a fist into each other and placed them under her chin. "Well, Crispin, you're not going to like hearing this, but at some point during the illegal acquiring of the first three monkey statues, he had his reasons for going to...Dr. Amy Hall and getting her services to mutate his hands and feet into a monkey's appendages."
A dramatic pause filled the air, the only sound being her own heartbeat - before it was broken by none other than -
"Goddamn, that dumb son of a bitch, and I thought no sane man would be insane enough to willingly go to that she-beast!"
~o~
Anyone including these two important women in front of him would understand why he burst out like this, but for himself? This man - he remembered friends talking about him among the other goons long before either of them were born, during high school years. But to be perfectly honest, as much as he was impressed that this was a man raising awareness to near-extinct species and found ancient relics no one else would dare to bring to the National Museum, history or anything else wasn't up his alley as it was his fiancée's.
But apparently, this proved a seemingly good man could go mad sometimes.
Han's eyes and the computer nerd's were on him, agape and stunned. He pulled himself together and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Jane," he said. "Please continue." He smiled shyly, cheeks burning, but she knew him well for this.
"Well, the only known public attention he had to do was attempt to sabotage Dr. Stoppable's - well, when she was just Kim Possible in those days - father's space station here in Middleton, claimed to be 'mentally insane' when he babbled about becoming the 'Ultimate Monkey Master', would have been unstoppable. But once again, you guys know how that ended," Jane said with a little wink. "After that, he was arrested once at Middleton High for 'impersonating a mascot' during the regionals. Other than that, there are no public mentions of crimes involving the Mystical Monkey Power."
"Jane, not to cut you off, but I'm finding this a little hard to believe," Hana said. "I'm a scientist, not a fanatic of religion, magic, fairytales and all that -" She stopped there. "But is there a way you can dig up more on this Mystical Monkey Power?"
Jane grinned. "I knew you'd ask, Han, and I already did that. You see, like I said, those monkey statues were the only four in existence, each of their separate temples over the globe built by the practitioners of the religion. When brought together, the warriors were given advanced strength beyond recognition. Lord Monty Fiske must have gotten lost in the past too much and wasn't happy with what he had already, or something like that," she said with a shrug. "But other than that, not even twenty-five years ago, he simply disappeared without a trace."
Having done the mental math already, that had to have been when the three of them were either not even toddlers or perhaps not born yet. Crispin felt his brows furrow and Hana mimicked him.
"Without a trace?" he repeated. "What did they say about that?"
Jane shrugged again, turning her eyes to the side to look at what she'd pulled up for them. "That's all it was. No one knows, only that he was proclaimed dead after seven years, as it usually goes when a person is declared missing. His British castle and its fellow properties across Europe are in custody of the queen herself and other landmarks." Crispin sniffed; he'd be damned if anyone would ever want to live in anything owned by a madman like this one.
And it begged the biggest question: he'd vanished, been turned to stone, and he'd been in the home of a certain DNAmy all this time - why else would she have his petrified form if she didn't have feelings for him? That was still mere speculation, but it might still make sense, but on the other hand...
"I am only half-inclined to believe this ancient magic stuff, only because I know what I saw," Hana said suddenly, clearing her throat once again just out of habit, "but maybe he was turned to stone as a result of magic. He might have gone too far and dealt with dark forces beyond comprehension, like we know in those stories from when we were children," she added when she glanced his way. "I might not believe in magic as I believe in natural sciences, but it makes sense somehow, right, babe?"
He closed his eyes, trying not to moan. If only he could agree completely on that...
"It still doesn't answer HOW he ended up at DNAmy's home, right, guys?" Jane asked uncertainly. "Since all she's known for is genetic splicing, it might be a little impossible for her to gather that much precision to preserve him in stone with her own hands, and she'd have to take an enormous amount of hands to kidnap him, restrain him and the likes. Besides, this is a bit extreme."
"Extreme compared to what she did to my uncle and others?" Crispin snapped, his blood boiling.
"Crispin -" Hana put her hand over his. "- please. Right now regards Monkey Fist who is running around in stone, and who knows when he'll come back. If we got to do anything since we're too far in to be pushed away, and can't even ignore it, then we have to consult someone who knows more."
~o~
"Monkey Fist wasn't like any of the others that Ron and I faced," Kim said on the screen somberly, "and he was just as dangerous as Shego was back then. He called Ron his arch-enemy more than he called me that."
Hana was happy that her sister-in-law finally cleared that up with her as well as confirming what Jane uncovered, but there were a couple issues that were danced around that it irritated her to her core. "It doesn't answer another question, Kim: why would Dr. Amy Hall keep his statue if they used to be partners, and she was the one to give him mutated monkey hands and feet, hm?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. The redhead sighed and rubbed the back of her neck.
"I honestly don't know all of the details about that, but Dr. Hall developed a romantic obsession for him, as she did with all her Cuddle Buddy creations - only in that case, it was a man with the monkey hands and feet he wanted to make himself stronger and faster than any man on the world. I suppose she wasn't lucky in the romance department, and she wasn't willing to let loose ends remain opened. She went after him, and he always tried to flee her - but it seemed she got him in the end when she found out what happened to him." She stopped right there and frowned, as if mentally scolding herself for telling Hana, who thought with glee that she got the older woman. Yeah, she knew something, alright...
"Yes, what really happened to him? I need answers, and I deserve them," she said harshly. "That statue awoke to life, and the DNA sample that I found with my fiancée matches the remaining records in the database. It's no doubt to be Lord Monty Fiske - or Monkey Fist, as you prefer to call him. And let me ask you this..." She clenched her fist out of sheer frustration, the nails making her skin throb.
"...why is he so interested in ME?"
~o~
"Mom!" Leslie ran towards her and hugged her at the waist, but one such face wasn't there, not being a surprise but making her sigh anyway. Two things stressed her out in a day. She reached up to pull her hair out of its painful ponytail and let it fall down her shoulders.
First of all, Hana demanded answers that she couldn't give her, for her protection, but Kim had her reasons.
And two, her son, as usual. But it seemed the former was bothering her more than a rebellious teenage son who looked like his father but got a temperamental streak that neither parent possessed to pass down to him. Kim smiled at her husband when he walked up to her and swept her up, spinning her and kissing her with such long-lasting love and devotion. Leslie, red-haired and green-eyed like Mom, wrinkled her nose and announced she'd lost her appetite for the dinner that Dad had made.
"So, KP, how's Han taking this?" Ron asked when he set her down, then fell in the face when he saw her reaction. "Figures."
"I don't know if I can tell her everything," Kim said, walking over to the wine rack and getting one of the old Merlot made eight years ago. She really needed some mental zen tonight, and if they were lucky, they could sneak some bath time if Leslie didn't knock for them for anything tonight. Who knew what her brother was doing tonight. Teenagers, right? And she and his father got married right after she found out she was pregnant with him.
Ron took the bottle from her and did the honors of uncorking it. He'd made pork chops with baby baked potatoes and asparagus, making her stomach rumble. "Yeah, I dig it, KP. But now..." His gaze hardened, before he turned around and made sure their preteen wasn't around. Leslie might be washing up again, as she was a perfectionist and a germophobe in one which was amusing. Ron's lip curled.
"That monkey freak is on the move again." Had he'd been younger again, he would have freaked out over anything simian-related, but times had changed.
"The last thing we wanted," Kim answered, sitting down. "But he's made of stone, he's empowered more than ever, and who knows what he'll counter with. I hate to say this, Ron, but I don't know if we can even stop him this time."
He nearly spilled on the table when he poured her glass. "I might be a little old now, baby," he said through his teeth, "but he's gonna go through me again if he even thinks to come to our house." If neither of them forgot, baby Hana did save that day from Monkey Fist and the Yono, but that was back then. She was a grown woman now, and far from interested in martial arts of any kind - if Yori learned of this, who knew what she would think today. After all, Hana did come from there...but what was in the past would stay there. She deserved a normal life and not a ninja's way.
But now Monkey Fist had returned.
She sighed, slumping her shoulders. Ron knew this as much as she did; they weren't going to protect Han forever, but she needed to do something instead of nothing. But she felt old now, older than she was now. Yeah, that meant she might be too...jaded to fight the stoned Monkey Man, but she wasn't gone down yet. She promised back then Han would be protected when she fought the original Yono, and this time she would hold onto it.
"If we can't do it, Ron...then that means we have to speak to Hana, let the truth have its day."