It was more than a little creepy how quickly Monkey Fist could switch between a half-feral gait that suited his moniker and the full poise of a proper gentleman. Where he'd been ranting and raving moments ago, now he positively loomed over where Max struggled in the clutches of the animated statue. From where he was positioned, Max could finally see the source of both the strange voice that had been speaking with Monkey Fist and the stranger glow still lighting up this part of the room: a tiny projection of a robed man that was hovering above some kind of pedestal. The projection said nothing, but watched the scene with a concerned furrow in his brow.
Overall, it wasn't looking good. The five monkey ninjas that weren't holding onto Rufus had moved to surround their captives, and the gorillas' grips were as heavy and unyielding as… well, stone.
It felt like this was the right time to say something defiant. He wasn't sure how well it would work on the gorillas, but who knew? Monkey Fist was so unstable right now that Max might be able to get somewhere by throwing him off with a sufficiently bold and witty line.
"Whelp?" he blurted out instead. "Seriously, that's the insulting nickname you picked for me?"
Monkey Fist just stared at him at first. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the backpack slung over Kim's back, and one of the monkey ninjas scampered up and started rifling through it.
"And why not?" he finally replied. "You are but the latest example of the many young people who have plagued me throughout my villainous career."
The monkey pulled the Tempus Simia out of Kim's pack, chittering triumphantly, and she could only glare as it clambered back to the floor and passed the artifact into Monkey Fist's waiting hands. A nasty grin flashed across his face for just a moment, but then he tucked it away in his robe and jabbed a hairy finger toward Kim and Ron.
"First, you two and your little friends hand me defeat after humiliating defeat, from the moment I first access the Mystical Monkey Power to what should have been my discovery of the Han. Then, once you have her on your side, she goes and gets me sealed away for decades!"
Kim blinked. "The who now?"
Ron raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, this evil rant was working a lot better before you started ranting about stuff that hasn't happened to us yet."
But Max snarled. "I do know that story, well enough to know you're absolutely full of it. Aunt Han didn't do anything but defend herself, and even that much was barely anything more than some kinda magical instinct. You were the one who made that deal with the Yono, you sent him after her, and if you weren't so busy trying to blame everyone else for your screwups, you could have just gone back to before all that and warned yourself to leave her alone!"
Not that he would have been able to change things anyway, apparently, but it was the principle of the matter. Max could see why it had taken so long for someone to revive this jerk.
Monkey Fist rounded on him, eyes narrowed dangerously. "And now we come to you, the boy who likes to pretend he knows what he's talking about." He took a few steps forward, and something in that movement had Max shying back against his captor in spite of himself.
"To think," Monkey Fist said, "I finally managed to come out ahead of Team Possible, even after all my time away. And then who should come along to make things difficult again but the very spawn of the two meddlers who started it all!"
Max flinched at the dual exclamations of "What?!" that suddenly sounded behind him. He glanced back to see Kim and Ron alternating between giving him gobsmacked stares and throwing supremely uncomfortable looks at one another.
"Dude, seriously?" he groaned, shooting Monkey Fist another glare.
The criminal scoffed and waved him off. "Please, you know as well as I by now that your existence is secure… at least up to a point."
The gaze he held was shifting to something calculating and almost hungry, and again Max was starting to feel more than a little uneasy. He tried to shove the feeling away and keep up his own defiant stare.
"H-Hey!" Ron cut in. "Didn't you hear the glowey ghost dude? You already lost!"
"Oh, have I?" Monkey Fist asked casually. "Because I thought of something very curious when I found you all intruding in my sanctum. Why, if the timeline remains unchanged, did my past self never hear about any of this?"
Max's eyes narrowed. "Maybe you're just not as good at research as you thought."
Monkey Fist didn't take the bait. "Highly unlikely," he said. "Perhaps, instead, it was by my own design. Perhaps I will make — and have made — the effort to keep this whole incident from becoming known to the wider world."
He turned away from the group and walked over to an antique display cabinet near one corner of the room to search for something. "Here is one theory. While the Monkey Fist of the past was indisposed at some penitentiary, the Monkey Fist of the future arrived to borrow his minions for the purpose of preventing the former's unfortunate fate. This time-displaced self — that is to say, I — was dogged throughout my journey by a stowaway who had called upon the aid of Team Possible, but it was not until my quest had failed that I learned I was going about it the wrong way. This much we already know."
Monkey Fist seemed to find what he was looking for then. He lifted the object up to admire it, and Max realized with a sinking feeling that it was an ornate dagger.
"Of course," Monkey Fist continued, "it did not take a visionary like myself long to realize that it would be as impossible to end my nemeses as it was to neutralize the Han. The Monkey Fist of the past would go on to face them several more times, after all. But neither he nor I recall ever hearing of their friend. And so, to preserve the timeline and to punish the team for its insolence, I silenced the boy."
"Don't you touch him!" Kim snarled as Monkey Fist turned, dagger in hand. He didn't respond directly, but instead watched her with slightly narrowed eyes as he went on.
"Of course, it would not do for Miss Possible and Mister Stoppable to go on knowing that their own child had been killed in front of them. Certainly not when I fully intended to recover my missing time even if it meant taking the slow path back to my future. So I had their memories of the whole incident sealed. It was something of a shame that my perfect revenge would go unknown for so long… but then again, the Tempus Simia has told me that the memories will return the moment one meets the future one learned about. What better time to realize that I have been there all long, quietly building up my strength away from prying eyes, than when it is far too late to stop me?"
With that, Monkey Fist began to approach. Max found his panic rising quickly as he struggled in vain against the stone gorilla's tight hold. He hadn't had much experience dealing with supervillain death traps yet, but he could safely say that there was a big difference between being strapped to a slow-moving conveyor belt of doom with an off switch his more experienced teammates were already planning to exploit and having the villain of the hour moments away from dispatching him personally.
"No!" he hissed, aiming a wild kick at Monkey Fist that the latter easily sidestepped. "No, don't – s-someone –" Monkey Fist began to raise the dagger, and he squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself. "Mom –"
He didn't entirely register what happened in that moment, but he did recognize that the sudden shriek that sounded a second later was not his own. He opened his eyes to see that Monkey Fist had stumbled back and dropped the dagger, and was clutching one hand in pain. A quick look back told him why: Kim had managed to get one hand free and retrieve her laser cutter, which was now pointed squarely at the criminal. The fury she'd shown when she found out Max had been lying to her was positively cheerful compared to the look she was giving Monkey Fist now.
"I said," she spat, "don't touch him."
As if a spell had just been broken, all at once the monkeys began to scream and swarm her in defense of their master. Kim fought back as best as she could, but there was little more she could do than make inefficient swipes at the nearest ones as they hemmed her in.
They weren't the only ones to react, though. The gorilla holding Max loosened its grip for just a moment, whatever magic was keeping it active torn between following its current directive and moving to the defense of its commander. Max took full advantage of this tiny opening and slipped his arms free, then ducked under its hands and out of its reach before it could retaliate.
It all took only a few seconds, and in that time Monkey Fist was still reeling from his injury. Max tried to think quickly as he scrambled to distance himself from both would-be assailants. Okay, first priority is… well, not dying, but that's been taken care of for now. Rufus had gotten free at some point in the chaos, but even in the unlikely event Monkey Fist stayed down, the two of them were still horribly outnumbered. So, next priority is to free the rest of the team.
The monkeys were still swarming Kim and making it difficult for her to do much, and Max doubted that going in himself would do anything but complicate matters further. But Kim wasn't the only one being held by the other gorilla, and if everyone's attention was on her…
"Dad!" Max called out half a second before realizing what he'd just said.
Ron yelped, wide eyes turning toward him. "Okay, this has gotten weird enough without you calling me that!"
Max ducked out of the way of his own gorilla's grasping arms and took a moment to put more space between it and himself. "Just – listen, you remember that thing I told Chiyo earlier about Mystical Monkey Power?"
Ron glanced between him and Kim, who was busy trying to keep her laser cutter away from three monkeys at once. "Yeah? I don't see how intermittent mystical kung-fu skills are supposed to help here though!"
Max clambered up onto a high wooden archway near the middle of the room, just out of reach of his pursuant. "You're the Monkey Master, your powers are a lot stronger than you know!" he shouted back. "Just focus on what needs protecting and they should be able to work with you!"
It was a bit of a gamble – he knew his dad's powers were at their most potent by far when he was looking out for his family, but he probably hadn't fully processed that Max was family yet. But whatever Ron thought of this not-so-random time traveling kid, hopefully the simple idea of protecting the future would be enough.
Ron looked between Max and Kim one last time, glanced back at Monkey Fist, and then a deep resolve hardened his expression. Something flashed in his eyes, and for just a moment everything went blue.
Before anyone could react, Ron stomped hard against the ground and shoved himself back. Even from his difficult position, he had enough force to push back his gorilla and slam it against the wall with a heavy crunch. The construct froze in place, cracks spiderwebbing across its body.
And then, all at once, it collapsed into a pile of rubble. Clambering monkeys tumbled down with an array of confused howls, and its human prisoners dropped from its no-longer-existent grasp.
Ron gaped as he stumbled to the ground. "How did I…?"
"Move!" Kim barked, pulling him up and out of the wreckage. The monkeys all crashed into the spot where they'd fallen half a second later, and the two teens had to move fast if they wanted to keep their advantage.
A frustrated growl drew Max's attention down below his perch, where he saw that Monkey Fist was back up and holding the dagger a little awkwardly in his uninjured hand. The remaining gorilla had idled when it couldn't reach its quarry without damaging its master's home, but now it was leaning over to scoop up Monkey Fist for a boost.
"I will not leave this time period empty-handed!" he snapped, stepping onto the gorilla's proffered palm and gingerly using his other hand to steady himself against its shoulder. "So why don't you stand still and accept your –"
Kim dove into him, cutting him off and tackling him to the ground. The dagger flew from his grip for the second time and clattered to the floor, sliding several yards further from the struggling pair.
A pale pink blur darted from a shadowed corner as Rufus made a beeline for the fallen weapon. One of the monkey ninjas outpaced him, though, forcing him to a halt when it scooped up the dagger and brandished it at him.
"Chippy!" Monkey Fist barked, raising his head off the floor and pulling one hand free from where Kim was pinning him to reach toward the monkey. "Bring me the sacred knife!"
The monkey – Chippy, apparently – looked from him back to the dagger. Its (Max wasn't sure what kind of name "Chippy" was, so he was going to stick with 'its') expression was all but unreadable behind the mask, but even as it took a few steps forward, something in its movements seemed hesitant.
Rufus was decidedly less so. While the monkey was distracted by its own thoughts, he leaped up and kicked the dagger from its hands. Chippy swiped at both mole rat and weapon, but Rufus moved too quickly, grabbing the dagger's handle in his jaws and scampering off with it. In moments, he had pulled the dagger beneath the cabinet, which was situated too low for anything not rodent-sized to get under.
"No!" Monkey Fist yelled. With a low growl, he pushed Kim off of himself and rose up to fight her head-on. The two of them punched and kicked and blocked and dodged, but with Monkey Fist still injured, he wouldn't last long without help.
That left one stone gorilla, the rest of the monkeys, and Ron. Max looked around the room for a moment, only for Ron to answer his unspoken question by scrambling his way up to the other end of his archway perch. Two of the monkey ninjas were trying to follow him, but he managed to bat them off.
"So," he asked, looking over at Max, "what's the plan?"
Max balked a little at that. "You're asking me?"
More monkey ninjas were coming up on his side, and he took a couple seconds to grab one and drop it onto the others. That sent all three tumbling back to the ground, buying him some time.
"Honestly, I'm still pretty new to this whole hero thing," he told Ron. "Why did you think I called you guys when I ended up in this time period?"
Ron raised an eyebrow. "Maybe because trying to deal with all these guys by yourself would have been stupid, and if you were trained by Kim because if you're related then why would you not have been, you obviously knew better." As if to demonstrate his point, he kicked off a monkey that had grabbed onto his leg.
"Anyway, KP's busy right now and I'm more of a whacky schemes kinda guy than a big picture planner. And you're the one who found a way to sneak up on Monkey Boy when he was at that house and got the Tempus thingy away from him without him noticing. So?"
Max considered that and scanned the rest of the room. The remaining gorilla had started providing Monkey Fist with backup, and their combined efforts were enough to finally put Kim on the defensive.
"If we can take that thing out, we should be able to overpower Monkey Fist's other forces," he thought aloud, nodding to the gorilla.
Ron grimaced down at the construct. "Okay, fair enough. But how? Monkey Master or not, I don't think I have enough juice left in me to make an encore performance with whatever I did to the other one."
One particularly enterprising monkey jumped up in Max's face in an effort to knock him down, and he grunted and grabbed onto the archway with one hand while using the other to pry it off and practically chuck it away. He watched the monkey fall with a scowl, but noticed something when it reached the bottom of the structure he was on.
"I don't think this arch is secured to the floor," he said, looking from the bottom of its support to the skirmishing trio to get a rough estimate of distance. "If we time it right, I think we can push it onto the statue while Kim has enough room to get out of the way."
He edged over to the very end of the archway's flattened surface – it was close to the wall, and he could just brace himself by wedging his feet in the gaps between the flagstones.
"Brace yourself on your end and follow my lead!" he called out to Ron. After one last check once the latter was in position, he said, "Okay, we push in three, two…"
The monkeys were climbing up the arch again, but when it began to shift, they abandoned their chase and scattered out of the way. The arch scraped a little across the floor and resisted every inch of movement – it may not have been bolted down, but it was very stable and very heavy. Max grunted and strained, heaving the shoulder of his good side against his end and throwing all of his weight into it. From the corner of his eye, he could see Ron doing the same.
Slowly, though, the archway began to tilt. The boys' combined force and high position were just barely enough to lever it onto the ends of its supports, but as they continued to push it forward, its own great weight began to work against it. Finally, it overbalanced, and Max swiftly found himself having to readjust to drop safely to the ground.
Kim and Monkey Fist both saw it coming, and dove out of the way with relative ease. But the gorilla statue was bigger, slower, and facing the wrong direction. With an almighty crash, the fallen arch pinned it to the ground.
"No!" was all Monkey Fist could shriek before Kim was on him again. He tried to counter, but the hand injury and all the stress he'd put himself through had taken their toll. One precise jab from her and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
With a low huff, Kim pulled her defeated opponent's wrists behind him and slapped on a pair of manacles. She then rifled through the deep pockets of his robe until she found and retrieved the Tempus Simia.
Max had picked himself up by that point, and he made his way carefully around the fallen arch and the still-groaning construct beneath it. The monkeys had all huddled in a far corner of the room – clearly, they knew when they'd been beaten – and Rufus scampered out from under the cabinet where he'd hidden with that dagger to rejoin Ron.
Kim held the Tempus Simia out to Max. "All things considered, you should have this."
Max accepted the artifact with a mute nod. It looked like Ron had been right after all: in a weird, time-traveley way, they had already won. And now that he'd caught up to that win, he could grab the restrained Monkey Fist and finally go home.
Except for the fact that, now that there was no big battle to preoccupy them, Kim and Ron were starting to give each other some intensely awkward and uncertain looks.
Max probably had some explaining to do.