"Oh no, no, no, NO! NOT THIS AGAIN!" Bei Da yelled.
She was in the alleyways again, the same alleyway where she lost her cat and got possessed by her. Bei Da hated this memory. She hated that night. She hated the Lady Bone Demon with every inch of her being.
"What's that, my host?"
Bei Da gasped in fear.
"No..no...NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!" she yelled.
"Heh...You really think you have a choice here?" the Lady Bone Demon said in a chill tone.
"I...I know that I don't have a choice..." Bei Da replied. "Please, just leave me alone, please?"
All of a sudden, when Bei Da blinked, she was wearing the dress that the Lady Bone Demon made her wear and she was at the Spider Queen's cave.
"W-WAIT! NO, MAKE THIS STOP!" Bei Da yelled in a pained voice.
She saw MK in front of the furnace. She knew where this was going and she didn't like it. Bei Da screamed for help and begged for all of it to stop, but no one heard her. No one heard her screams for help, her begging, and cries for it to stop. Her screams were useless. Bei Da had no choice in all of this, she was treated like a...like a puppet. Everything was going by so fast and yet everything still hurt. She didn't like this. She didn't like it. She didn't like being treated like this. She wanted it to stop. She was crying. Tears were flooding her eyes.
"Bei Da, come here!"
A familiar voice was heard. It wasn't the Lady Bone Demon's voice. It wasn't Macaque's voice. She remembered who the voice belonged to. It was her mother's voice.
"Mom?" Bei Da replied in confusion.
She was in her old room. She was confused about why she was here. She got up and walked out of her old room and went to her old living room. She saw her mother and father sitting down, waiting for her. She remembered this...she knew what was going to happen here.
"Bei Da, me and your father have some news for you." her mother said. "We will be moving out of the country soon, so start packing your things."
"I..I already know this, why are you telling me this again?" Bei Da asked.
Her mother didn't reply to her question, instead her father replied.
"BEI DA! Don't use that tone with your mother!" her father yelled.
"B- but I didn't use a tone though?" Bei Da stuttered.
"Just pack your things and get that stupid cat." her mother said with venom.
Bei Da felt her tears flooding down her face. She didn't like this. Why was it whenever she had a nightmare it's always this one? She hated this. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to have a nice dream and not this. Bei Da knew that it was just a nightmare, but it still hurt. She was back in her old room again and started crying.
"P-please...I just want t-this to stop..." Bei Da said in between hiccups. "Make it st-stop!"
"Suck. It. Up."
"H- huh?" Bei Da said in confusion.
It was her parents.
"Mom? Dad?" she said, pretending that she didn't hear them.
"SUCK. IT. UP." her parents said in unison.
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She didn't like it. She wanted it to stop. She needed it to stop. Why couldn't things go her way for once? She started yelling, begging for it to stop. Nothing worked as usual. She heard two other voices.
"Suck. It. Up." Macaque and the Lady Bone Demon said in unison.
She knew why LBD was here, but why Macaque? Why was Macaque here? She had no clue why any of this was happening. Bei Da felt weak, pathetic, stupid, and useless. She didn't like this. She hated this. She wanted it to stop. She continued to scream and cry for help. She kept screaming until everything went black.
She woke up.
She was awake. She noticed that Macaque's scarf was on top of her. Bei Da's hand reached her face. Her face felt wet. Did she cry in her sleep? Bei Da didn't want to go back to sleep. Everything was quiet until she heard thunder strike. She flinched at the sound and felt tears coming out of her eyes. She put Macaque's scarf to the side and began to silently sob into her knees.
Macaque had been awake since the thunder had been keeping him up. Macaque's six ears twitched at the muffled noise. Macaque tried ignoring it, but the more he listened, the more it sounded like muffled sobbing. He got out of his sleeping position and sat up. His vision was a little bit blurry, but he was able to notice Bei Da with her head in between her knees and the muffled sobbing noise was coming from her.
"Ngh...Bei? Is that you?" He asked.
"Hu- huh?" Bei Da said in between hiccups.
Macaque quickly realized that she was crying. He got up from the couch and walked over to where Bei Da was crying.
"Hey there, Bean. Is it ok if I sit there?"
Bei Da nodded in agreement and Macaque sat down next to the crying girl.
"I..I'm sorry for waking y-you up." she apologized in between sobs.
"It's okay, Bei. I know that you didn't mean to." He replied with a smile. "But Bei, why are you crying?"
There was a moment of silence before the girl spoke.
"I..I had a nightmare.." Bei Da mumbled, thinking that Macaque didn't hear her.
"You had a nightmare?"
"Yeah...it was really scary.."
Macaque felt bad, he didn't like seeing her like this. It looked like her nightmare scared her a lot. The black furred monkey opened his arms to the girl.
"Come here, kiddo." Macaque said.
Bei Da stared at him for a couple of seconds before going into the hug. She was still crying a bit, but he didn't mind. They hugged for a couple of minutes until Bei Da spoke again.
"You know how earlier today when I told you that there was another thing that bothered me, but I didn't like talking about it?" She asked.
"Yes, what about it?" He replied.
"I...I'm ready to talk about it, but only some parts of it." Bei Da said as she stopped crying and now sniffing.
"Alrighty Bean, you can start telling me whenever you're ready."
"Okay. So I have really bad nightmares and it's always the same one. It gets worse every time I have that nightmare. It's very confusing and I don't know what it means." She explained.
"Can you tell me what happens in these nightmares of yours?" Macaque asked.
"It always starts the same. I'm in the alleyway where I lost my cat and got possessed by the Lady Bone Demon, then I start reliving everything that she made me do. It always ends with the last memory of me falling, but this nightmare was different..." she trailed off, now looking gloomy.
Macaque noticed this and decided that it would be best if they had this conversation later.
"Bei, do you want to talk about the nightmare you just had?" He asked.
"No..not really." She replied.
"Okay kiddo."
Some more thunder had striked and it made Bei Da and Macaque flinch. Macaque had started to hold Bei Da more tightly.
"You're squishing me!" Bei Da said jokely.
"Huh? OH! Sorry, Bean! It was just a reflex." Macaque apologized.
There was a moment of silence until Bei Da spoke.
"So you don't like thunder either?" She asked while breaking away from the hug.
"Hm? Oh yeah, I don't really like thunder either. It scares me sometimes and it also hurts my ears."
"It hurts your ears?" Bei Da asked while tilting her head a bit.
"Yeah, did you forget that I have six ears?" Macaque said jokely.
"Well I only saw you with two ears, so how would you have six ears?"
"That was an illusion, kiddo." he explained quickly.
"IT WAS AN ILLUSION?!" she exclaimed loudly.
Macaque covered his ears during that and Bei Da realized what she just did.
"I'm sorry! I mean, it was an illusion?" She repeated quietly.
"It's okay, kiddo and yes, it was an illusion."
The shadow monkey noticed that the girl looked as if she was fighting her sleep. He also noticed that his scarf was put to the side. So Macaque grabbed his scarf and wrapped it around Bei Da.
"Huh? What are you doing?" Bei Da asked tiredly.
"You look tired." Macaque quickly replied.
There was a moment of silence between the two before Bei Da decided to talk.
"Can you sing that song again?"
"You mean the lullaby that I used to calm you down?" He asked.
"Yeah, I really liked it."
"Heh, alrighty kiddo."
Macaque started singing the lullaby and Bei Da started drifting off to sleep. After singing the lullaby, Bei Da was asleep and now Macaque was alone with his thoughts.
'Poor kid, she shouldn't be going through that. She doesn't deserve to be going through that.' He thought. 'Now MK is looking for me and I don't even know how he would react to me keeping Bei Da.'
Macaque started to grip on to his pants.
'I don't even know if I can go through with my original plan since MK is looking for me. What if he tells Wukong? What would happen if Wukong found out about me keeping a child?!' He thought in a panic.
'I have to keep her safe, no matter what. Maybe I could teach her self defense? Yeah, that sounds good and she'll be able to defend herself!' He thought to himself.
He kept thinking to himself until he noticed his own tail, noticing that the tip was white. A cringed look was now plastered on his face. Macaque didn't like his original fur, it always looked weird to him. That's why he dyed his fur black, something more natural. He sighed and curled up into a ball. Macaque started to drift off to sleep.
Meanwhile at Pigsy's Noodles...
"I can't believe that we couldn't find him!" MK exclaimed.
Our heros searched the entire alleyways and didn't find Macaque. MK had thought that he had heard something in the alleyway, but it turned out to be a rat. Their search had to end a little bit short because it started to rain.
"What should we do now?" Sandy asked.
"We should start looking again tomorrow." MK replied.
Everyone nodded in agreement and decided to go home. MK walked up to his apartment that was above Pigsy's Noodles. He opened the door and walked into his messy living room to be greeted by Monkey King, who was just chilling on his couch with some peach chips.
"MONKEY KING?!"
"Hey there, bud!" Wukong said. "Mind explaining why you weren't at training today?"
"Oh! Um...well something came up today." MK replied.
"Oh really? What happened today?" Wukong asked while raising his eyebrow.
"Well...um, I'm not sure how you're going to react to this, but Sandy found Macaque in the alleyways and he was acting suspicious about his scarf. Also Macaque stole food from Pigsy's restaurant, so me and the gang decided to look for him in the alleyways which kinda failed since we couldn't find him there." MK explained.
Wukong was shocked at the news. He thought that MK just forgot about training today, but he couldn't believe that Macaque was spotted twice in one day!
"You and your friends were looking for Macaque?"
"Yea-"
"WITHOUT ME?!" The Monkey King exclaimed.
"Um...yes? I thought that you didn't want to see Macaque?" MK asked the great sage.
"I know, I know, but when it comes to stuff like that, come to me first. You know how dangerous he is!" The great sage replied.
"Well we are going to look for him again tomorrow, so do you wanna help us tomorrow?" The successor asked.
"Yes! Of course I want to help!" Wukong said.
MK offered Wukong to spend the night at his place due to the rainstorm. The monkey agreed and slept on the couch. MK knew that tomorrow was going to be very...interesting to say the least. The successor went to bed and drifted off to sleep.
"Bud, Wake up!"
End of chapter 5.
