The Simian Witch:
Chapter 14: Gorilla Fist and Tiger Hunter
Months later, during the events of GORILLA FIST
Silvia tapped her fingers impatiently on the dining table as she watched the grandfather clock in the dining hall indicate that it was fast 6 o' clock. "It's past tea time and almost past dinnertime," she said. "Monty should have been back from his trip right now!"
"Maybe he got sent to jail by Team Possible?" Gil suggested. He was playing on the floor with Martin. Over the last few months, the baby had grown quite a lot and was already beginning to walk on his own legs (though he did occasionally knuckle-walk like his father occasionally did). When his parents or Bates weren't taking care of him (trust me when I say Monkey Fist and the Simian Witch pampered their son 24/7), the little Fiske enjoyed playing with Gil, who specialized in making Martin laugh whenever he transformed into Gill in order to play 'Peekaboo' with the monkey boy.
"OK, Little Boss, see this?" Gil showed him some playing cards he bought from Smarty Mart in order to attempt educating the little thing. He showed a playing card with a goofy monkey on it. "What's this? It's a monkey! See the monkey?"
"What are you doing?" Silvia frowned as she watched her apprentice make himself look foolish in front of her son.
"I'm trying to teach him what a monkey is." Gil shrugged before making a fist while pointing at the picture. "OK, Little Boss. We got a monkey and a fist. What does that make...AAAAAAH!" Gil screamed when Martin grabbed him by the fist and tossed him into the wall, breaking some fine monkeyish paintings.
"The master's antiques!" Bates, who had just come in with the tea, exclaimed.
"Monkey Fist's son's a menace!" Gil rubbed his head while Martin toddled towards him.
"Monkey Fist!" Martin said.
"His first words!" Gil gasped. "I just taught the kid his first words!"
"My little treasure learned his first two words." Silvia picked up her son in her arms and cradled the precious thing. "Your daddy would be so proud of you if he knew that you learned how to say his name." She glared back at the clock. "And that simian mutant is a week late!"
"Uh, oh, she's calling him 'simian mutant', this can only mean one thing," Gil told Bates. "She's angry."
"Milady, it does happen for the master to spend his trips for hunting artifacts longer than he anticipated," Bates tried to reassure the Simian Witch as she put Martin on his baby chair. "And you know how he is about using technology."
"Because he knows that Team Possible can track him thanks to the annoying computer guy?" Gil suggested.
"Well, that and because he was raised as a nobleman and not a common teenager who just loves to spend time on computers and video games, which is probably how your fellow villains like Dr. Drakken and Professor Dementor have..."
"He could have least warned me in advance that he'd be late!" Silvia snapped before a dramatic idea hit her. "What if he abandoned me for another?"
"Is there another monkey-obsessed villainess and fangirl of the archeologist that I don't know of?" Gil asked sarcastically. Finally, after five more minutes of waiting, Silvia couldn't stand it. She got of her chair brutally. "That's it! I'm going to drag him back here even if I have to suck the water out of every ocean on Earth!" She snapped her fingers, creating an aura of Monkey Witchcraft that turned her lady clothes into her Simian Witch outfit. Martin clapped in excitement as he watched his mother transform.
"Now you be a good boy while Mommy goes to fetch Daddy." Silvia kissed her son on the forehead before turning her attention to Gil and Bates. "You're in babysitting patrol and if anything happens to my son, I will destroy you."
"What if you get killed before..." Gil began to say.
"I'll haunt you."
"Worth asking."
Silvia pulled out her cell phone and dialed a certain number. "Hi, Shego! How are you doing? Say, remember that favor you owe me?"
Hours later, in an African jungle
"Is this were you want me to drop you off?" Shego asked as she pulled her flying vehicle into an opening in the middle of the jungle.
"Thanks, Shego! I'll see you at the next villainess get-together!" Silvia, followed by the loyal Homo Simius Homer, jumped off the vehicle and watched it disappear into the clouds. They made their way through the green jungle, searching for hints of where Monkey Fist went.
"If I may ask, Mistress, why did the Master come here again?" Homer asked as he slashed the plants blocking their path with his saber.
"It was his turn to look for other mystical monkey artifacts to use for world domination and he seemed to have found a possibly good one in this area, but he never came back." Silvia put a hand up in the air to shield her eyes from the sun. They kept walking until Homer put an arm out and blocked her path. "What is it?"
"Is this what he was looking for?"
They looked ahead of them and saw a ravine up ahead with a waterfall filling the bottom with water. What stunned them the most was that the waterfall came out of the mouth of a crafted gorilla head connected to a white marble building with a somewhat Asian roof style.
"This can certainly not be authentic." Homer shook his head as they walked towards the rope bridge that connected them to the other side of the ravine, where the building was located. Silvia got a closer look at the bridged and tapped on the planks with her finger.
"Indeed. Usually rope bridges connected to ancient temples would start breaking apart as eras fly by and not only do I know this place doesn't even look like a traditional African temple, I can even tell from where I'm standing that the white marble on the walls are man-crafted to make the edges smoother," Silvia said. "And Monty would never bother with fake 'temples', which can only mean one thing: he's late because he's in trouble. We'd better get him out of here!"
"As you wish." They crossed the rope bridge, which was really strong as Silvia predicted due to being modernly made, and proceeded to go inside the building. Surprisingly, nobody was guarding the front door and the inside was just as cheesy as the outside from their perspective. Everything from the monkey banners hanging from the ceiling and the bare amounts of furniture showed that whoever lived here was making this place look like a tourist attraction.
"Lord Fiske would never go with untraditional decorations," Homer said. "He's a decent simian."
"Yes, he..."
"AAH! LET GO!" Homer and Silvia jumped when they heard Monkey Fist's voice coming from a doorway up ahead and the sound of gorilla growling following his screams.
"Monty!" Silvia gasped.
"Let's hurry!" Homer and Silvia ran towards the doorway, which led to some sort of tacky living room brightened by the fire inside a fireplace and Team Possible was fighting with two Japanese ninjas against two gorillas dressed in samurai armor while Monkey Fist was held up by the collar like a rag doll by a gorilla samurai that seemed to be the leader of the beasts.
"ENOUGH!" She blasted her magic at the two gorilla samurais that Team Possible was dealing with and used her powers to wrap the beasts with the banners like sushi rolls before storming her way towards their leader, who still held her husband captive. "RELEASE MY HUSBAND NOW, YOU APEISH NUISANCE!"
"Did she just call the big monkey a nuisance?" Ron Stoppable said.
"Husband?" The leader's grip tightened on Monkey Fist's collar while the former glared at Silvia. "What rubbish is this? Monkey Fist isn't married!"
"No, then why is he wearing a ring that looks like mine?" Silvia showed off her right hand at the gorilla leader while Monkey Fist showed out his left one, revealing that they both wore their matrimonial rings on their index fingers. The leader looked stunned and let go of Monty, who fell on the floor with a thud. As Silvia rushed to her husband, the leader did something to its helmet. Turned out that the leader wasn't actually a gorilla but...
"AAAAAAAAHHH! NOOOOOOO!" For the first time in her life, Silvia saw Monty scream and hide behind her at the sight of the chubby-cheeked woman with cropped black hair, reading glasses, and a toothy grin (which was ironic, since she was missing a tooth).
"DNAmy?" Kim Possible gasped.
"This goes beyond sick and wrong... It's wrongsick!" Ron Stoppable exclaimed.
"I'm sorry...Who is this?" Silvia asked Team Possible while referring to the weird lady with a gorilla body before her.
"DNAmy, a genetist who specializes in genetic splicing," Kim Possible said. "Ron and I already dealt with her, but for some reason she's after Monkey Fist."
"After Mon..." Then it hit her. Her denim eyes turned to face the icy ones of her husband, her arms crossed with one another, and she tapped her foot, waiting for an answer. "Say, Montgomery Fiske, is this a brand new habit of yours to leave your wife and child in order to go on an expedition and not forward her in advance that you might be a week late because some demented lady you paid to get your monkey limbs is chasing you BECAUSE OF HER CREEPY CRUSH ON YOU?" She nearly screamed at him.
"And...how did you manage to conclude so perfectly?" he chuckled nervously.
"It's common for insane people to stalk others, you never want to talk about how you got your mutations other than the fact it cost you a lot, and let's face it, we got an overweight lady who added more weight by giving herself a gorilla body and samurai armor!" Silvia then turned to address DNAmy disapprovingly. "And doing such a thing? This is an insult! My husband's into monkeys and ninjas, not samurais and gorillas, which is offensive because combining the two together along with you is suggesting that you think apes overall are fat! You're a monster!"
"I am not overweight and you are a meanie! Cuddle Monkey here would never be with someone like you!" DNAmy shouted.
"As opposed to you? You're almost twice his age, you live in a pink house that matches your tacky pink outfit, your favorite Cuddle Buddy is an otterfly -which is repulsive, you can't mash a mammal with an insect, your best word to talk about a villain is 'meanie', you got the face of someone who ate too much cookies, and you're clearly a hugger who doesn't notice her missing tooth!" Her words were so hard that DNAmy curled up like a ball. "You disgust me...JUST GET OUT!"
"Yes, ma'am!" DNAmy got up and ran off screaming like a baby.
"Truly, you are rather defensive towards your husband, Silvia Winterfields."
Silvia stiffened. She turned to see who had spoken and saw who had spoken: the elderly ninja in golden robes who stood with Team Possible. "How does he know my name?" she asked Monkey Fist.
"He's the Sensei from the Yamanouchi School," Monkey Fist warned. "Don't trust anything he says."
"We should take that into account on your part," Kim Possible said. Her allies got into combat pose while the simian villains did the same, but the battle didn't commence because all of a sudden, Team Possible and their allies dropped unconscious to the floor. Confused, the villains took cautious steps towards the bodies and saw that darts were poking their arms.
"Who'd be saving us from the cheer squad?" Monkey Fist frowned as he pulled out the dart on Ron Stoppable's arm and had a better look at the substance leaking out of the needle. "It's just a substance to put the target in a temporary slumber..."
"MISTRESS! MASTER! LOOK OUT!" Homer shoved them out of the way and ended up in the same state as the others: unconscious, only with two darts on his spine.
"Homer!" Silvia exclaimed until another scream got her attention and she caught Monkey Fist as he fell unconscious from a dart on his neck. "Monty! No..." Something stung her on the right shoulder, making her body collapse next to Monty's as well.
Who knows how much later
Silvia woke up from the fuzzy world of darkness she floated in by rough shaking. Her eyes opened to the sight of familiar monkey hands shaking her shoulders.
"Finally!" Monty sighed as he hugged his wife. "I was worried you wouldn't wake up!"
"Great, now you know what it's like to leave me waiting for a week!" Silvia got up and groaned at her aching head. "Ow! I haven't had such a headache ever since the asylum!"
"I think it's because this place is made with the same substance as your cage back there." Silvia saw that, much to her distaste, she, Monkey Fist, and the still unconscious Homer were still stuck with Team Possible and the ninjas, only this time it seemed like they were locked inside a dungeon made of...
"Silver, just great!" she threw her hands in the air. "My magic is ineffective to silver because I'm a witch!"
"Baby raising slightly driving you nuts?" Kim Possible asked sympathetically.
"You have no idea..." She felt a hand cover her mouth and saw that it was Team Possible's friend, the 'Sensei', who had done it.
"I highly advise you to not speak out loud of your child, Simian Witch," he said. "Unless you want to lose your last blood relative, Tiger Hunter must not know."
"Keep your hands away from my wife!" Monkey Fist kicked the old man out of the way and shielded Silvia while the other ninja, a Japanese teenage girl in the traditional black ninja garb, stood protectively in front of Sensei.
"Tiger Hunter?" Ron Stoppable frowned. "Are we talking about the same guy who locked us here in the first place? I mean, shouldn't he be hunting for, you know, tigers?"
"It's more complicated than that, Stoppable-san," the female ninja said. "His goal is to assassinate the Simian Witch."
The words hit Silvia harshly on the chest. "Kill me? What did I ever do to him?"
"None of this is caused by you, rest assured, Simian Witch," Sensei said, "but the Tiger Hunter is merely hunting you out of tradition. Your ancestor, the warrior Toshimu and founder of Yamanouchi, was not the only one with mystical powers related to animals..."
"Oh, no!" Silvia groaned in frustration. "Don't tell me it's another one of those 'the twelve animals on the Zodiac were actually based on twelve ancient warriors who wielded mystical powers based on the animal they represent' because my grandfather already blabbed about it when he was training me!"
"Did he 'blab' about the part where, as opposites in the zodiac and in order to maintain balance, the Tiger Hunters and the Simian Witches are blood enemies because a Tiger Hunter has to hunt down a Simian Witch at every single year of the Tiger?" the female ninja asked. Her question stiffened Silvia.
"He...didn't..." Silvia was stunned. Why did her grandfather miss out that particular detail when he had her trained?
"What's the sitch here, Yori?" Kim Possible asked.
"The 'sitch', as you call it Kim Possible, is that to maintain balance of their mystical powers, twelve humans hosting the powers related to twelve zodiac animals are paired against one another, one predator and one prey. When the year of the predator comes, the predator has the privilege of hunting down and kill its prey opposite. In this case, we have a Tiger Hunter, who has the ability to hunt down a Simian Witch on the Year of The Tiger..."
"Uh, unless I completely missed out on how the zodiac works, wasn't the Year of The Tiger like 7 years ago?" Ron Stoppable asked. "Isn't the Tiger Dude like breaking a rule?"
"I fear he is." Sensei shook his head. "7 years ago, the current Tiger Hunter had failed to hunt a Simian Witch he had run into in Italy and was severely mocked by the latter when the year was over. Angered and humiliated, the Tiger Hunter decided to put an end to his zodiac duty and tracked down the Simian Witch until the latter led him to the rest of the Simian Witches." He looked at Silvia with sincere regret. "He torched your home to the ground and was enraged when he eventually discovered that his wrath didn't destroy all the Simian Witches. Only one remains and it happens to be you."
Pain went through Silvia's bones as she painfully tried to hide her dismayed emotions as she let Monty hold her closely. Because of some zodiac duty that a Tiger Hunter detested, he plunged her entire family into extinction, and if it weren't for...She shivered in disgust at the mere thought of it.
"Silvia?" Monty looked at her in worry.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but if Stoppable hadn't caused me to be locked up, I'd be dead by now..." She glared at Stoppable in pure bitter. "And don't think this changes anything!"
"Already noted." He gulped. Meanwhile, Kim Possible inspected the walls with the help of her Kimmunicator. "Aside from seeing that the entire base of the Tiger Hunter is made out of silver, I can't contact outside help," she said. "Tradition or not, killing somebody is wrong and we have to get out."
"Although Sensei and I do agree that the Tiger Hunter's present actions are wrong, we can't stop the zodiac rules," Yori said. "Even if we make our escape, the Tiger Hunter will still have to hunt the Simian Witch during the..."
"ENOUGH RULES!" The doors of the dungeon broke open and in came a man who shocked most of them. He seemed like he was in his mid-twenties, only half of his body was covered in an artificial Asian-fashioned armor while the second half made him look like a brown haired man with grey streaks running all over his skin and piercing red eyes. He carried a saber sword in his hands. "STEP ASIDE, SO THAT I MAY FINALLY PUT AN END TO THE LAST OF THE SIMIAN WITCHES!"
"Over my dead body!" Monkey Fist put himself in battle stance. "You will not put a hand on..."
"Uh, where did she go?" Ron Stoppable pointed out that Silvia was not in her initial spot. Before long, the Tiger Hunter started to make a series of grimaces until his eyes started to blank out and he fell stomach first on the ground. Silvia stood behind him while holding her hands up in an X formation.
"Alright, I've had ENOUGH of memory lane for one day so let's just be grateful that I used the illegal seven chakra blocking technique on him!" She walked over and grabbed Monty by the arm and dragged him to the doorway. "You sir kept me waiting for a week with no responses and we have a baby to get back to, so sayonara to all of you!" The heroes and ninjas blinked as the villains left.
"Wow," Ron Stoppable commented. "For someone who just met the guy who killed her family, she was very direct."
Later in the evening at Fiske Estate
Martin burped as he finished drinking his milk from the bottle as Monkey Fist prepared to tuck his baby into the crib. Going back home had been a relief for him: he got to see his son again and was surprised to see that while his parents were absent, the baby was improving his dialect.
The only strange part about all this? Meeting and killing the Tiger Hunter who killed her family had hardly put a dent on Silvia more than Monty's absence had. She, a woman younger than him by twelve years, had pulled him by the arm all the way back to England! "Your mother's still a mysterious one, son," he caressed his now sleeping son's head. "Don't ever mess with her."
He silently left the nursery and closed the door behind him. Bates was doing cleaning across the castle, the ninjas were training, and Gil had gone out, leaving the dark hallways silent from the wind and cold despite the cool warm weather outside.
He stepped inside the married couple's bedchamber. Silvia was sitting at one of the chairs by the fireplace, her fingertips trying to massage her forehead.
"Silvia?" He stepped inside and stood behind his sitting wife.
"I never should have used the illegal seven chakra blocking technique on the Tiger Hunter," Silvia groaned. "It's one of the homicidal techniques that Simian Witches aren't supposed to use on individuals no matter what."
"So the ancient texts weren't lying," Monkey Fist said. "There is a Monkey Witchcraft technique of paralyzing a body through chakras that in the end, blocking all seven of them will fatally block your respiratory and blood systems. But if it is illegal, why did you and our family still learn it?"
"The same way you're given a code to your locker and you shouldn't share it with anyone," she said. "Simian Witches could kill but that techniques is like ripping a soul and blasting it to oblivion without getting your hands dirty. It's better to use a killing technique that will let you kill your opponent and watch him bleed rather than one that will just make things look clean..." She sighed. "I don't want Martin to use it like I did..."
"We'll make sure that he never does." He gently pressed the side of his face close to hers and placed his lips on the crook of her neck, gently kissing it. He held her hand. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about DNAmy."
"She was rather weird, I'll give you that." She caressed the hair of the monkey hand she was holding. "I'm still surprised that a childish person like herself was able of giving you your perfect simian hands." Monkey Fist blushed a bit at her compliment. "And I still can't believe that I thought you left me for another..."
His hand gently made her head turn to face his right in the eye. "Silvia Winterfields, you are irreplaceable," he said in the firmest, most heartwarming tone ever. "I could never find a perfect partner, lover, and wife than you."
"Monty..." They pressed their foreheads close to one another as the fire continued to burn on the logs. "No more solo expeditions?"
"No more solo expeditions," he vowed before sharing a kiss with her. "From now on, we continue conquering the world together."