EXTRA: SOMEBODY TOUCHA MY BUDDHA!

The sky over Oakhaven screamed.

Mordecai remained on the bench beside the fountain with a bag of fireproof baby clothes at his feet.

He had felt this coming the moment the distant rumble started, the way a man standing on train tracks feels the rail begin to hum. And only then did he realize that there was no point in running. There was never any point running.

A golden streak tore out of the clouds, trailing celestial fire across the otherwise pleasant afternoon sky. It was moving far too fast for a controlled descent, but controlled descents had always been beneath the dignity of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.

The Nimbus cloud dispersed at the last possible instant, and Sun Wukong hit the plaza with a BOOM that cracked the freshly cleaned flagstones into a radial starburst.

Dust rolled over everything Nyalen's skeletons had spent the morning polishing.

Everyone turned their gaze on the beautiful Monkey Queen.

Across the square, a sanitation skeleton set down its broom, looked at the second crater of the day, and appeared to reconsider its entire unlife.

Beside Mordecai, Cassandra sat with her hands folded and her green eyes wide. She had already used up her allotment of shock watching this exact deity nuzzle into the man she'd been on a not-a-date with. For now, she had made the wise executive decision to become furniture until the situation resolved itself. The Great Sage was a threat to a lawyer. Journey to the West already told us.

As the dust settled, Wukong rose from her crouch with Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and her tail lashing behind her. She then drew in a deep breath, sampling the air of all three realms at once, then followed a scent past the crowd and shopfronts to the unremarkable Level 40 mage on the bench. In that moment, her face lit up.

"MY BUDDHA!"

She crossed the forty yards in the time it took Mordecai to exhale, skidding to a halt before him. With her staff held ready, she planted herself between him and the rest of the square, scanning the entire city with her divine eyes.

"How are you? Are you hurt? Is anything broken?" The words tumbled out fast and fierce, her eyes never leaving the buildings. "That muscle girl told me EVERYTHING. She told me about that disgusting imitation of mine that wants to hurt you. WHERE IS THAT DISGUSTING THING? Where is that face-stealing coward? I can smell every living thing in this city, I will FIND him, and I will tear him into so many pieces that not even the Buddha himself could reassemble the..."

Mordecai could feel the pressure building as her divine senses spread across Oakhaven. In about ten seconds she would start "clearing" the city block by block, searching for a monkey that did not exist.

Brenda would be doing the paperwork for months, and paying goblins to rebuild the city would've cost a lot of gold.

'Drastic situations require drastic measures. I hate that. I must use my strongest weapon now.'

So, he reached out and placed his hand on top of Wukong's head. The change was instantaneous.

Her fury died halfway through the threat, along with the pressure in the air. As he began stroking her divine hair, her eyes grew half-lidded and a deep, thoroughly ungodlike purr rumbled from the chest of the being who had once declared war on Heaven itself.

"You did well to come and protect me, Wukong," Mordecai said, in the calm tone one uses on a very large predator that has decided it loves you. "Good work. Your Buddha is proud of you."

The choker at her throat, once the fearsome golden restriction circlet of legend and now a snug band of dark leather, pulsed a happy purple. Wukong leaned into his palm, her grip slackening until Ruyi Jingu Bang slipped from her fingers and hit the flagstones point-first with a heavy CHNK, sinking several feet into the earth under its own impossible weight.

Neither of them acknowledged the new sinkhole. Her tail thumped the broken stones in slow, blissful beats.

"Mmmnh. Headpats," she mumbled, eyes closed. "Missed the headpats. You've been ignoring me, my Buddha. I felt so lonely." She purred.

Mordecai kept stroking while he kept thinking. He knew this monkey's attention span, and the instant she remembered the six-eared macaque, she would be back on the hunt, and no amount of headpats would pull her out of a proper three-thousand-year grudge spiral. He needed to point her somewhere far away from a city full of civilians and taxpayers.

He needed to give her a quest.

"Wukong," he said gently, still petting. "I need you to do something for me."

Her eyes opened, and she sank to one knee before the bench, back straight and head bowed. A deity who took orders from no one in all of creation was kneeling on cracked flagstones to receive instructions from a disguised electrician.

"Anything, my Buddha," she said. "Name it."

"I've heard about that evil macaque." Mordecai lowered his voice. "He's not in the city. He's been spotted in a dungeon, a long way from here. Far to the east. I need you to go back to base and speak with Ugo. He has all the details, the location, the layout, everything. He'll brief you fully."

Wukong's ears twitched with interest.

"And there's more. I've heard there's a talking pig wandering around inside that dungeon. Been lost in there for days, apparently."

Her head slowly came up, her slit golden eyes wide.

"...A talking pig?" She asked, her voice barely a whisper.

"That's what I heard." Mordecai Nodded.

"Zhu Bajie?!"

"Could be," Mordecai said, as if he hadn't engineered this reaction himself. "To protect me from the macaque properly, we're going to need more strong allies, Wukong, and an old comrade of yours wandering a dungeon sounds like exactly the kind of ally we need. It would be good to have him back at your side, wouldn't it?"

She was already looking delighted at the prospect. A lost friend to rescue, a journey to undertake, and all of it very far away from this particular city. Mordecai pressed on.

"But that's not all. I've also heard about the dungeon's boss. Word is it's none other than the Bone Demon. The White Bone Spirit."

The entire universe froze, once again. For the... 20th time, maybe? Idk.

The delight left her face. She rose and reached into the sinkhole to wrench Ruyi Jingu Bang from the earth, then hefted it over her shoulder.

"...What did you just say?"

"You heard me."

"That disgusting shapeshifter." Her voice dropped to a growl that made the fountain water tremble. "That three-times-cursed, form-stealing, disguise-wearing hag who tricked my old master into casting me out of the pilgrimage. Baigujing." A smile spread across her face, all teeth. "She's supposed to be dead, my Buddha. I killed her myself. Three separate times. If she's crawled her way back into some dungeon to play boss monster..." She rolled her shoulders, her joints cracking like distant artillery. "...then I'll simply have to kill her a fourth time. Properly, this time. I'll tear her limb from limb."

"Do it thoroughly," Mordecai said. "And Wukong. If you clear that dungeon quickly and come back with Zhu Bajie, the macaque's location, and that spirit's head, I'll give you two full hours of headpats. Uninterrupted. Not even Lucy or Yssrath will stop me. You'll have me for yourself, completely." He felt a shiver down his spine after his last words.

Wukong's tail shot straight up, rigid as a flagpole. She had waged war against the Celestial Bureaucracy and defied the Jade Emperor, but apparently two hours of Mordecai's undivided attention was where the real stakes began.

"IT WILL BE DONE, MY BUDDHA!" she declared, practically vibrating. "I will bring you the pig, the location, and the hag's skull! I will not fail you!" She exclaimed, jumping several meters back with a backflip that lit up the whole city.

"NIMBUS!"

The golden cloud shrieked down from the sky. Wukong leaped aboard, struck a triumphant pose, and rocketed upward with a CRACK that shattered every window in a three-block radius. A ring of white vapor hung in the air where she had broken the sound barrier.

"WAIT FOR ME, MY BUDDHA! I'LL DO IT! HAHAHA!" She laughed mischievously.

At least she was gone.

Somewhere, a car alarm that had no business existing in a fantasy world went off and then thought better of it. As the dust drifted down, the sanitation skeletons crept out to survey the damage with the weary resignation of a cleanup crew that had long since stopped asking questions.

Mordecai and Cassandra sat side by side, looking at the two craters, the sinkhole, and the celestial dust coating absolutely everything.

After a while, Cassandra let out a small laugh.

"She really is something else, isn't she? Wukong." Her voice softened.

"Yeah." Mordecai leaned back with a long breath and a tired smile. "She is. And she's also far stronger than I am. I'm completely sure about that." He watched the last of the vapor trail dissolve above the rooftops. "It's better to keep her happy. That monkey is unpredictable on the best of days, and the last thing anyone needs is the Great Sage Equal to Heaven in a bad mood." His smile softened. "But she's family now. Same as the rest of you."

Cassandra looked at him when he said family, though she quickly composed herself.

Mordecai, for his part, allowed himself to believe the interruptions were finally over. Perhaps he could finish one outing without another member of his ever-expanding payroll crashing into it.

But then, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Across the plaza, a figure was vaulting from rooftop to windowsill to lamppost at an absurd speed and with a fluid grace that no ordinary mortal could possess.

Mordecai recognized the red hair and scarred arms. It was Egel, but he'd never seen her move like this, not even during his training.

Her brute strength now worked with her Chi, carrying her across a forty-foot gap between buildings to land lightly on a signpost. She had apparently completed a two-thousand-year cultivation arc that morning and was now moving like it. That muscle mommy could literally kill the entire Orange Ninja cast with a snap of her fingers.

Egel spotted him from three rooftops away and broke into a delighted grin. Launching herself off the last building, she sailed down to the plaza and landed in a crouch before the bench, barely disturbing the dust.

'Oh, wow. I wonder what happened to her.'

"Kaitoyama!" She exclaimed, smiling warmly.

Mordecai looked from the beaming, freshly empowered muscle mommy to Cassandra, whose polite composure had gone slightly rigid at the arrival of yet another woman.

With two craters in front of him, a sinkhole nearby, and shopping bags full of baby clothes at his feet, he sighed and managed a small, resigned smile.

"Perfect," he said. "Now I have to buy her dinner, too..."