To Guest: On the Dark Sword, that's more or less what's happening with the Dark Acolytes – a positive purpose which has become twisted. They see themselves as restoring balance when they are in reality a perversion of balance (similar to the dynamic between Jedi and Sith in Star Wars). And you are correct about what's causing the Zoo mayhem!
To Butterfly: That's the one!
To anonymousfriend27: Your guess is probably right; I didn't hide it too much (and it gets explained in this chapter). I'm not sure if I'm going to team Kim and Nathaniel together again, or when that will happen. Geber is mostly a background character in this story. He will get a little more focus in the next story he's in.
On instinct, King Monkey dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the charging bear that bounded through the exact spot where he had been standing moments earlier. He landed on all fours, thankful he had kept his grip on the Ruyi Jingu Bang, and looked up to see the bear making its way down a side path. He was about to follow when he nearly lost his balance as the ground began shaking under his hands. He looked back just in time to see a stampede of wildebeests charging straight at him. Uttering a Vietnamese curse of which his mother would not approve, he leaned forward into a handspring, flipping over in midair and landing on the back of the lead animal.
King Monkey grabbed the wildebeest's horns and jerked its head sharply to the right, turning it – and the herd following it – down the path back to the wildebeest habitat. The thundering stampede behind him, however, could not drown out Geber's voice in his communicator.
"Any chance you could get the monkeys under control?" he was shouting. "You are the King Monkey after all!"
"Yeah, well, they didn't get that memo," he retorted heatedly, ducking under a banner and forcing the wildebeest into another turn. "I'm a little busy cattle rustling at the moment," he continued. "I won't be able to help you for a few minutes. What's up?"
"It's just – I think the monkeys, snakes, and rodents are all working together!" Geber shouted, his voice rising sharply in pitch. The cacophony of shrieking monkeys from the other side of the zoo came through the communicator clearly.
"What?"
"I–"
At that moment, King Monkey's eyes widened as Carapace dropped down out of nowhere next to the gate to the wildebeest enclosure, held his shield out backward, and shouted, "Shell-ter!" A translucent green force field expanded out following the curvature of the shield. The force field blocked off the pathway behind him and curved toward the gate in a simulated cattle chute. King Monkey gave the wildebeest he was riding a prod in the head pushing it toward the gate for good measure before he leaped off its back, flipped twice, and flew over the Shell-ter to land next to Carapace.
"Neat trick," he observed.
"We could hear the chaos from our location, dude!" Carapace told him, grinning and shaking his head. "You weren't answering, so we came over to back you up. You good? Any idea what's happening?"
King Monkey shrugged before jumping back over the Shell-ter and slamming the gate shut behind the last animal, twisting the metal together for good measure. "No idea, boss. One minute, business as usual. The next…" He spread his arms to encompass the zoo around them. Animals flew around in swarms, diving to peck at the heads of the few visitors left in the area. A small pack of feral cats was riding a pair of camels down the main pathway, hissing and yowling. Squirrels were throwing discarded trash in all directions. Near the concessions, a pair of tortoises used their heads to nudge a woman with her two children who had all taken shelter under a picnic table.
Carapace's eyebrows disappeared under his helmet and his jaw dropped open. He muttered something under his breath and slammed his fist into his shield as he allowed the Shell-ter to blink away. To King Monkey's confused look he explained, "I… might have an idea. There's a magic thing that supposedly allows the wearer to communicate with animals."
"You're joking, right?" King Monkey scoffed.
Carapace gave him a look. "You have a tiny demigod who hangs out in your pocket and turns you into a superhero, and this is too much for you, dude?" He laughed. "Miss Pinky and I will take care of the rest of the animals; you and Geber focus on finding someone with a necklace," Carapace told him.
"You can't be serious!" King Monkey exclaimed. "'Someone with a necklace' – everyone wears necklaces! How am I supposed to–"
"You've got a partner," Carapace retorted, looking him straight in the eye. He reached down, grabbed a heron by the neck without taking his eyes off of King Monkey, and tossed it back into its cage. "Figure it out!" Without another word, he raced down the path toward the concession area.
King Monkey groaned, but jumped onto the roof of a nearby building to find Geber. In the distance he saw two figures – one pink and one orange-and-red – standing back to back and surrounded by a large assortment of animals. He raced toward their location, heedless of the animal chaos beneath him. A pair of eagles dove toward his head as he leapt from the aviary roof, which he evaded by laying out and rolling across the next building's roof. Geber looked up at the roof on hearing his landing, and jumped up to join him.
"Cornucopia!" Miss Pinky shouted, drawing her jiuchidingpa rake across the gravel in front of her and dragging it into a nearby enclosure. Nine rows of plants sprang up from the furrows, budded, flowered, and produced fruit in an instant. The animals surrounding her descended on the plants ravenously and followed the plants into the enclosure, allowing her to start separating them into their individual habitats.
"So… do we have a plan?" Geber asked, nonplussed, while watching Miss Pinky wrestle a giraffe back into its habitat.
King Monkey shrugged. "We need to find the person controlling them, apparently," he replied. He smacked his forehead in realization. "That's what Carapace meant… Now do the thing already!"
Geber nodded, spun his spur above his head, and slammed one end into the roof below them with a shout of "Vigilance!" An orange ring emanated out from the point of contact, spread out over the building, and disappeared into the distance. In a moment, King Monkey lost track of the orange circle as the Vigilance searched the zoo. A minute later, a single orange line shot back to meet the spur end that Geber still held to the roof. "This way," Geber shouted, leaping off the roof in the direction indicated by the line.
King Monkey followed hot on his heels. Vigilance led the two heroes to the monkey cage, where he was surprised to find the same man sitting on the same bench that he had passed on his earlier patrol around the zoo. The man had his eyes closed while murmuring quietly under his breath. The moneys in their cage were sitting and swaying trancelike in front of the cage bars.
"This is some weird stuff," King Monkey muttered. Louder he told Geber, "You take him head-on; I'll circle around."
Geber nodded and jumped down in front of the strange man. As he landed, a pair of panthers appeared from either side of the man's bench and leapt at him. Geber ducked under the first panther's attack, but couldn't avoid the second. He fell to the ground, the panther on his chest, and jammed his spur shaft between the panther's jaws with both hands to prevent it from biting his face off. The panther's front claws extended, scrabbling at his chest. Geber pulled his elbows in close to his sides to block the panther's claws as they reached up toward his face. He drew his knees up to his chest and kicked at the panther's underside, pushing it off of him and over his head. The panther tumbled through the air, head-over-tail. Geber rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up to his feet. Holding his spur in both hands like a hockey stick he extended one blade and swung underhanded at the first panther at it sprang at his legs. He struck the side of the panther's face with the flat of the blade, sending it careening away from him into the grass fringe alongside the path.
King Monkey, meanwhile, raced around to take up a position in the tree under which the stranger was sitting. He could hear the stranger whispering something sibilant in a language he did not recognize, and a pair of garden snakes slithered up behind the bench. King Monkey muttered, "Uproar," caught the rubber chicken that appeared next to his face, and dropped it on the man's head. The man sat upright in confusion, blinked, and turned around, searching wildly. At the same time, the monkeys in their cage shook their heads, moved away from the cage bars, and started climbing back into their artificial trees. The panthers, meanwhile, slunk away from Geber, crouching in the shadows and watching him. The snakes stopped halfway up the bench legs, licked the air, and slithered away. The clamor of noise from the zoo animals dropped considerably.
"Who would dare mess with the Animal Man?" the stranger demanded, jumping to his feet and pulling a whip from under his jacket, cracking it in the air in front of himself threateningly.
Whooping in triumph, King Monkey jumped from the tree and landed meters in front of the Animal Man. The man's eyes widened in fear, and he stumbled backward over the bench. King Monkey advanced on him, Ruyi Jingu Bang held in front of him defensively. He was about to jump over the bench when it suddenly caught fire. King Monkey fell back a pace, spinning the Ruyi Jingu Bang to shield himself from the heat and flames. He leapt over the flames and landed in a crouch on the other side, only to find that the Animal Man had vanished.
"Hey, King Monkey?" Geber called hesitantly. "I could use some help with these panthers!"
King Monkey groaned in frustration, even as the flames died down and disappeared. He narrowed his eyes at the slightly-charred bench suspiciously, edging around it while keeping one eye on it as though expecting it to burst into flames again if he turned his back on it. Geber was using his spur to block one of the still-loose panthers and prevent it from running away, while the other panther eyed his back predatorily. The panther let out a low growl and leapt, a moment before King Monkey jumped to interpose himself between the panther and Geber's unprotected back, swinging the Ruyi Jingu Bang into the panther's flank and knocking it aside. Between the two of them, King Monkey and Geber maneuvered both panthers down the pathway and back into their cage before Geber finally slammed the cage door shut. King Monkey grabbed the bars on either side of the door, squeezed them together, and twisted.
"You go that way; I'll go this way," King Monkey called, racing down the path toward where a pair of armadillos were waddling away from their habitat. He grabbed one in each hand and dropped them over the fence into their habitat before continuing on to the next group of animals. He was just debating whether to return the Gila monster or the flamingos first when a figure with pink hair mostly covered in a helmet materialized beside him.
"Need some help, Monkey Boy?" Alix asked, blowing out a bubble and eyeing him with some amusement.
"Actually, yeah," he replied, dropping the lizard into her arms. "If you bring this back where it belongs, I'll herd these birds back to where they belong."
"You got it, hero," she answered, skating away with the ungainly lizard balanced across her arms.
King Monkey sighed in relief. Leave it to Alix to skate toward the action instead of away from it! He poked one of the flamingos with the Ruyi Jingu Bang, pushing it in the opposite direction from where Alix had gone, trying to herd the flamingos toward the bird habitats. Slowly the flock started walking in the correct direction. With a couple extra prods from King Monkey, they took to the air and hopped over the fence into their habitat. From the sounds around him, it was clear that the majority of the animals were back in their enclosures.
His miraculous beeped at him, signaling that he was down to one minute left before his transformation wore off. He started looking around for a place to de-transform and feed Xuppu so he could re-transform and finish cleaning up the loose animals. So intent was he on looking for a hiding spot that he didn't hear the grunt behind him. Nor did he notice the paw swinging at his head.
AN: Several reviewers guessed it, but the necklace in question is called the "Mkufu wa Wanyama" ("Animal Necklace" in Swahili) and first appeared in "Along Came Anansi," which is how Carapace knows about it.
Miss Pinky's weapon, the "jiuchidingpa," is a nine-toothed rake from the Chinese myth of Zhu Bajie, the pig-themed friend of Sun Wukong, who is himself a confirmed previous Monkey Miraculous holder. For my stories, the Pig is the Miraculous of Generosity ("Cornucopia" essentially creates food) and the Rooster is the Miraculous of Watchfulness ("Vigilance" alerts the user to a direct threat).