Somewhere in the Net...

Monkey.exe was on his Somersault Cloud, enjoying his new-found freedom. Chips became viruses. Navis switched bodies. Vending machines stopped working. Lan finally stopped throwing away his chips after every single world-ending boss stage. In other words, chaos.

"Where shall I go next? Ah... This place looks nice!" The Monkey King pupils flared as he scanned the nearby areas. Within the blink of an eye, he teleported to his destination.
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NG HQ, aka Go Nuts Donut Shop.

Cryos and Sam were playing chess. David and Carlos were once again fighting each other and Jon and Adrienne were patrolling the 'Net.

"JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST! ALL THE MONKEYS!! ALL THE MONKEYS!!" The shout rang through the whole place. Cryos jumped in shock, causing the table to fall. David and Carlos stopped their fighting.

"Dude, what happened?" David asked.

"Look for yourself," Jon replied. In the computer, a clearly distraught Bowlman was being comforted by Darky.

"Now, now, it was only a swarm of evil, rabid monkeys who attacked you. I just sent them to the depths of hell."

"The monkeys.....monkeys...." He fainted.

*************************************

"You think this is the work of those Hackers?" Adrienne asked.

"Don't know. You know how they are. But I'm surprised at the amount of damage." David said as the group's navis look at what laid at them. There were no navis left in the nearby 'Net areas. Some places were completely deleted. Fortunately, there were back ups. But they would take a lot of time.

"Hey, I spot something!" Metalman waved to the others. "Look at this!" There were a few hairs at where Metal pointed.

Meanwhile, Monkey was watching them, invisible to the Guardians. He whispered to a navi in the shadows, before doubling over with laughter.


"Yes, My Majesty, The Great Sage Equal to Heaven, The Monkey King." The navi said in a monotone and in one breath before disappearing.



*************************************

Having no clues to the destruction of the city's network, the group had jacked out their navis. Suddenly, Sam got up from his computer.

"Acid Hackers spotted. Shall we?"

"Uh-huh."

"Jack in! Execute!"

The Acid Hackers' navis were wrecking the already decimated Area. Navis who were brave enough to return were logged out again.

Serenade was seething with anger, "Hackers!"

"Battle routine set! Execute!"

"Dream on!" Punk turned to face his hated foe. "Insert Chip Slot In! Black Bomb!"

"Grass Stage!" The field turned grassy and flowers bloomed, paralyzing the Guardians.

"FLAME BREATH! WOOHOO!" Flame burned the field, as the Guardians fell in pain.

"Oh, you're just making me angrier. Yamato!" Carlos commanded.

"I'm right on it!" He jumped and stabbed the nearest navi, Beast.

"Argh!" Beastman was automatically deleted.

"Weird, they don't get deleted so easily..." Bowlman said as he set up a tower bowl and Dark blasted some bats at a recklessly charging Flash, who was also deleted.

Before long, the AH were all defeated. The Guardians scratched their heads.

"Those can't be the AH." Sam narrowed his eyes. "The real ones sure as hell ain't here."

"HOW VERY CLEVER!" A monkey grinning hysterically suddenly popped out amongst the navis.

Yamatoman instinctively readied his spear.

"Who are you? Another of the Hackers' cronies?" David got out his chips.

"I assure you I'm not one of those 'hackers', I just want to test you out," Monkey took a flying somersault and floated above them, "Ehehehe!"

"What the hell do you want?" The group enquired.

"Well, defeat me and I promise you.....NOTHING! Ahahaha!"

"We finally get of those crazy "take over the world" types..." Carlos grumbled. "Well, let's put him in his place, shall we?"
"Battle routine, set!"

"You think you can defeat me? Dream on!" Monkey took out his rod. He deftly blocked the navis' incoming attacks. With not even the slightest waver he blasted them all away with his rod.

"MONKEYS! ATTAAAACK!" He shouted at the top of his voice. A swarm of monkeys were sic upon the guardians. Tearing at them with astonishing speed, even Serenade was defenseless against them.

"Ahahahahaha, so many navis can't even defeat me! I'm Immortal!" Monkey gleefully proclaimed.

"Argh!" Monkey suddenly fell down to his knees. He screamed out in pain as he clutched the hoop encircling his fore head. "T-the....Argh....Pain!"

The great sage immediately set off to look for the source of his horrible pain. The monkeys disappeared and the NGs' navis were recovering. The monkeys while great in number didn't do a lot of damage.

"That's it?" Serenade looked a bit surprised. David shrugged his shoulders.

"Movies say that he will come back and be a pain in our ass until we delete him." Cryos prepared to jack out. "While we wait, let's get back to what to doing whatever we were doing. I almost came close to winning Sam..."
******************************************

"WHO ARE YOU?!" Monkey shouted into the blank space. "I am the monkey king! I demand you" He was interrupted by a booming voice coming from nowhere, yet everywhere.

"Silence. Unless you wish to suffer the pain again."

Monkey kept quiet.

"I want you to defeat the Guardians....." The voice trailed off.

Monkey was fed up, "But that was what I was doing in the first place!"

"But, you weren't ready." A long tentacle shot out and stabbed Monkey filling him with energy. Beautiful armor grew like an extension to his fur. His rod began to glow, its two ends seemingly alight, and his eyes ablaze and on his head a most magnificent head piece.

"Now you are ready."

"Woohoo! Thank you!" With that Monkey took off.


*************************************************************
"He's back!" Carlos announced from his computer. "Looks like he got some new threads as well."

"Jack in! Execute!"

"Die!" Monkey targeted Serenade first. Serenade quickly deflected his attacks but the agile Monkey also deflected the ribbons lashing out.

"I'd say it's time to bring in the monkeys, this battle's too boring without them!" with that, Monkey summoned his hairy horde. The tailed menaces begain raining from the sky screeching like mad.

Kingman leapt up to higher ground and snapped his fingers. "We're ready for them this time. I have a horde of my own." and with that a complete set of Kingman's pieces appeared on another platform, each one wrapped in banannas and other fruits like a Hawaiian-themed chess set. The monkeys were noticably distracted, and left their master alone in the battle. Kingman stayed where he was moving his pieces around as quickly as possible to slow down the simian feast, so it seemed his place was set in that conflict.

Monkey snickered and spun his rod. "Fine, more for me! Buster Rod G!"

The remaining six NetGuardians were shocked to be lifted into the air as the spinning rod seemed to generate a strong wind surrounding the strong navi. As the tornado picked up the Guardians found themselves colliding into each other and random debris while the Monkey King stood in the center and laughed maniacally.

"Ugh, who looses a navi like this on the net anyway?" Bowlman grumbled. "If you're going to program a navi with such an annoying personality, it should be made with suitably weak powers, you know like Bubbleman."

"It doesn't matter, we can beat him!" Serenade shouted. "First we gotta disarm him. Drillman, Metalman, it's up to you!"

With their jet-powered flight Drillman and Metalman were able to overpower the winds and get closer to Monkey. The powerful mystery navi struck them both back with his rod without even stopping the winds, but as soon as that happened they each shot out their own missiles at point-blank range. The blasts took Monkey off guard and forced him to cut the winds. He quickly struck Metalman with the rod but Metalman grabbed it in his massive fists. Metalman instantly felt the pain of Monkey's power tearing through him, but he held on long enough for Drillman to drill into Monkey's hand with his DrillArm attack. Monkey swatted at Drillman with his tail until Yamatoman arrived and pinned the tail to the ground with his spear. Eventually Monkey had no choice but to release his weapon, and the instant that happened DarkLady uncloaked and wrapped it in chains. She flew out of Monkey's reach as the other five NetGuardians continued fighting. It became apparent to the Monkey King that his power was being out-matched by their numbers and teamwork.

Becoming angry, Monkey used his new armour to release immense waves of energy, deleting Drillman and Metalman and knocking the rest back. Serenade activated a barrier to repel the assault and Bowlman and Yamatoman get behind a StoneCube for cover. Monkey focused on Serenade, leaping at him, cutting right through his barrier, and grabbing him by the throat.

"Hey! I'm sure you know that if a navi is deleted with enough power then it's gone for good, right? Well bring back my rod or the girl gets deleted and she's not going back to the PET!"

Bowlman and Darklady cringed, Yamatoman chuckled, Serenade gritted his teeth. "Just go for the head!" Serenade called out bravely. "It's his weak point maybe."

"Dream on! I have no weaknesses!" Monkey laughed mockingly just before a bowling ball smacked him in the face followed by a Yamato Arrow. The two attacks were enough to crack the hoop on his forehead. Spotting this, Serenade got free of Monkey's grip and tore the hoop from his head, and crushed it.

The four remaining NetGuardians gathered around Monkey who was slouched over quietly. After a moment the silence was broken by the sound of growing chuckling. Monkey then began howling with laughter. "You fools! That hoop was the only thing restraining me! Now no one can control me! Not even...that guy with the...hey, why am I so light-headed all of a sudden?"

The creature's glittering armour had suddenly become dull and grey. After a moment of staggering the armour fell off piece-by-piece and disintegrated. Monkey himself seemed to be losing energy fast. The operators could tell he would be deleted in just a few seconds, but then he disappeared slightly sooner than that. At the same moment a heavy air sseemed to be lifted from the network. The monkeys Kingman was dealing with all vanished, as did the rod in DarkLady's chains. It seemed everything was back to normal.

*****************

A few hours later, the news had informed the Net Guardians just how much of a crisis they almost missed. The bizarre plights plaguing the net ceased the moment they defeated Monkey. The NG was still left with a lot of questions though.

"So what was that thing? I'd still like to know who made it." said Jon.

Cyros thought for a moment. "Well, a super-powerful monkey weilding a rod. Reminds me of that ancient oriental legend...you know, 'Dragon Ball'. Maybe it was a navi made in honour of that."

"I think you mean 'Journey to the West', but I don't think that legend is important." Carlos added. "This navi seems different somehow, like that rod-weilding monkey was just a front, just an image to distract us from what it was really about. You saw how it replicated the AH. I think it's more about deception than anything."

David rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's really helpful there great detective. All we know is that it doesn't really have anything to do with the Acid Hackers." he leaned back in his chair as if he had said enough, but everyone looked at him expecting some clarification. "Because they're too stupid for it, that's why! Well, they're not subtle enough to pull something so whacked, anyway. All I know is our business is the AH, and that Monkey wasn't the AH, so it's none of our business. We'd just get headaches trying to figure out what today's encounter meant anyway. Let's just forget it and hope it doesn't bother us again."

"And if it does?" Carlos shot back.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and kick its ass again too."

**************************

A man held a chip containing the remaining data of the Monkey King. After contemplating crushing it between his fingers, he lightly tucked it away into his coat pocket. He then began talking softly to the chip, even though it couldn't hear him. "True. The hoop on your head was what kept you in check, but it wasn't preventing you from rebelling, you don't have the ability to rebel, you're just a vessel for stolen power. With the constraints gone the power tried to escape from you. You need me Monkey King, you need me to control you. And once you're restored I'll see to it that you realize it. Your soul is just an illusion, you're just a bloated program that thinks it's a god, but all you are is a tool for the one tht harnesses you, and that is me. I am your Fate..."

The End

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