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Marvel MK: CH 113 – The Monkey's Mandate
🕑 Added 2025-07-03 13:03:49 +0000 UTCThe air around the Tokyo Imperial Palace was heavy and still, thick with the kind of tension that only followed a national disaster. The perimeter was a fortress of modern security. Agent Phil Coulson stepped out of his armored SUV and was escorted through a series of checkpoints, his gaze sweeping over the disciplined lines of the Imperial Guard.
As he walked toward the main palace entrance, a streak of light tore across the night sky. It wasn't a meteor, but a comet of controlled fire, descending with breathtaking speed and grace. It was Shiro Yoshida, Sunfire, the hero of Japan. He landed softly on the palace steps, the flames receding to leave him standing, unharmed and regal.
Coulson couldn't help but feel a flicker of admiration. Japan, Korea, and other nations in the East had embraced their heroes, integrating them into their society as protectors. Meanwhile, America and Europe were still drowning in bureaucracy and hesitation, debating the rights and risks of individuals like these. He thought of South Korea's newly formed Tiger Division; it was a powerful, state-sanctioned team, a model for what Nick Fury hoped the Avengers could be. But even that wasn't quite right. The Tiger Division was still managed by its country. What Nick truly wanted was independence—a team that answered to the world, not to any single flag.
It's still a long way to go, Coulson sighed internally. But at the very least, with Tony Stark's official cooperation, the initiative was finally moving forward.
He put on his signature, disarmingly pleasant agent smile as Shiro approached.
"A SHIELD agent," Shiro noted, his voice tired but sharp. "I suspect you're quite high up on the ladder, seeing as you have bodyguards of your own."
Coulson gestured to the two Japanese branch agents flanking him. "These two are my colleagues. May I inquire where you've just been, Mr. Yoshida?"
They began walking inside together, their footsteps echoing in the grand, silent halls. "I just got back from one of the shelters," Shiro answered. "There are a lot of casualties, and many more are still missing. The rubble won't clear itself."
"Ah, yes," Phil said with a nod. "Do you have any idea what the Crown Prince wishes to discuss?"
Shiro shrugged. "I have no idea. I just received the news from one of your field agents myself."
They arrived at a pair of massive, ornate doors. The guards bowed and pushed them open, revealing the meeting hall. Inside, several powerful figures were already seated around a long, polished table. The General of Japan stood stiffly, his right-hand man a shadow behind him. The Prime Minister of Japan sat with his secretary. And to Coulson's surprise, the leader of South Korea's Tiger Division, Ami Han, was present, along with another member of her team, Tae-Won.
At the head of the table, Crown Prince Naruhito, a man of fifty with a calm, commanding presence, sat on the main seat.
Phil and Shiro bowed in unison. "We apologize for our late arrival."
The Crown Prince waved a dismissive hand. "It is alright. These are all the people we need." He then turned his gaze toward the guards at the door and gave a single, sharp nod.
The guards moved at once, pulling the heavy doors shut. A series of loud, definitive clicks echoed through the hall as the locks engaged. They were all sealed inside.
…
Alexander Aaron arrived at a gloomy, ruined temple, its stones choked with weeds and its pillars crumbling under the weight of a forgotten history. She breathed heavily, leaning against a moss-covered wall, the shock of the last few hours still a roaring tempest in her mind. Her hand, slick with sweat, gripped the hilt of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi.
Several hours ago…
The world was a muffled beeping sound and the lurch of a moving vehicle. Then, a calm, sad voice declared a time of death. Her death. She had been on her way home, another soul ground down by the 9-to-5 machine, when the truck came out of nowhere.
It was supposed to be a quick death.
But then, she opened her eyes. The paramedics in the back of the ambulance stared, stunned. Her half-dead body began to knit itself back together, wounds closing, bones setting with an unnatural speed. And with the healing came something else. A familiar fire. A white-hot rage that she had been taught to suppress her entire life, the same rage she felt as a child when boys would bully her for her foreign features.
With a snarl that was not her own, she moved. She shoved one paramedic against the side of the ambulance and kicked the other with a strength she didn't know she possessed.
Good, a voice whispered in her head, cold and ancient. 'Now go.'
She burst out of the back of the moving ambulance, landing on the pavement with a jarring thud. Then she began to run. She didn't know where she was going; she just ran.
'Left,' the voice commanded. She took a left. 'Right.' She turned right. 'Straight.' She ran straight.
All she did was run and follow. She arrived at a pristine, ancient temple just as the voice in her head said, 'Stop.'
She stopped, hiding in the forest line, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Below, the road leading to the temple was lined with black cars and stern-faced guards. "What do we do now?" she whispered to the voice.
'Now we wait,' Amatsu-Mikaboshi answered. 'I have a feeling fate has favored us.'
From her hiding spot, she could see a procession of monks in ceremonial attire, their movements slow and reverent. They were carrying something… a sword.
"It's the Kusanagi no Tsurugi," Alexander whispered, a name she knew only from legends.
'Yesss,' the voice hissed with glee. 'The Grasscutter. The god-killing weapon.'
"What do you mean? It's just a legend, right?"
'We will take that,' Mikaboshi said, ignoring her question. 'And awaken it.'
Before she could ask anything else, chaos erupted. Figures in black, moving with inhuman speed, descended upon the procession. The Hand. Amatsu-Mikaboshi seemed agitated. 'What is this? Who are these insects?'
Alexander couldn't follow the fight. The ninjas were too fast for her untrained eyes. All she saw were the falling bodies of the monks and guards.
'Go now!' the voice screamed in her mind.
"No! It's dangerous!" she cried.
'Nothing is dangerous as long as you have me.'
Steeling herself, Alexander broke from the treeline and sprinted toward the chaos. A ninja saw her and moved to intercept, his blade raised. But just as he was about to strike, a hand made of pure shadow erupted from Alexander's own shadow on the ground. It grabbed the ninja by the ankle and pulled him screaming into the darkness.
Alexander didn't even see it. All she did was run, snatch the ancient sword from its ceremonial stand, and keep running.
To deal with the remaining ninjas, Amatsu-Mikaboshi created several Shadow Copies from her shadow, silent, deadly duplicates that tore through the Hand with brutal efficiency. When the last ninja fell, the copies began to coagulate, melting back into one another, absorbing the bodies of the fallen and leaving behind an empty, bloodless trail.
But in the process, the chaos god lost control. The coagulation broke apart, the shadows erupting outward in a violent, uncontrolled wave. It was this wave of pure, primordial chaos that became the earthquake, its dark energy scattering in fragments across the whole of Japan.
…
The first rays of the Japanese sun filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the hotel suite, painting the room in serene, golden stripes. Cheng Wudao's eyes fluttered open. For a moment, he felt a sense of peace he hadn't known since he was a child. Then, a foot plopped directly onto his face.
It was his new master's foot. A loud, obnoxious snore could be heard from the other side of the king-sized bed.
Wudao tried to move, but a universe of pain answered him. It was as if his own blood had betrayed him, turning into millions of sharp, angry needles stabbing him from the inside out. He remembered the fight last night—the desperate struggle against the Hand ninjas, the feeling of his own body giving out. The fact that he was still alive, that he had survived, filled him with a small, surprising flicker of pride. He let out a soft, pained chuckle.
BAM!
Jack's foot, with a speed that defied his sleeping state, suddenly slapped Wudao across the face.
"You become proud of yourself just because you almost died in the hands of some Konoha rejects?" Jack's voice was lazy, still thick with sleep.
Wudao froze, the sting on his cheek a distant second to his shock. "How did you know, Master? Did you read my mind?"
"I don't need to do unethical things like reading your mind," Jack grumbled, stretching his arms. "Anyway, you let your guard down just because you thought I was asleep. That's not the kind of behavior I'd love to see."
Wudao grunted, trying to push himself up. "Master… why can't I move?"
"No big deal. It's just an introduction," Jack said with a yawn. "From now on, this is how your body will feel every day when you wake up, if you still decide to be my disciple. So, how was it? Are you really willing?"
There was no hesitation. "Yes," Wudao said, his voice firm.
"Then kowtow and do the disciple ceremony."
With a will of iron, Wudao pushed his screaming muscles, forcing his body off the luxurious hotel bed and onto his knees. The effort was so great that a trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. As he performed the ancient, solemn ceremony, Jack yawned as if waiting in a long queue at the DMV.
When it was done, Wudao was officially Jack Hou's second disciple.
"Kekeke, alright," Jack said, hopping out of bed. "Get a bath, and we'll go search for a suitable weapon for you."
Wudao, still on his knees, looked up, his expression serious. "Master, can I ask you a question?"
Jack turned. "Yeah, what?"
"What is Konoha?" Wudao asked, his tone full of genuine curiosity. "Is it one of the Cities of Heaven?"
Jack stared. His brain buffered. Then his face twisted into a look of profound disbelief. "Haaahhh? How do you not know? It's from Naruto! You know… anime?"
Wudao simply shook his head.
Jack sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. "Haaahhh, it's the late 2010s, there's no way you don't know…"
Luckily, he had instructed Madam Gao to book him a presidential suite in one of Japan's finest 5-star hotels, which came equipped with a high-end personal computer. He strode over to the desk, sat down, and began typing furiously into the search bar. Naruto. The results popped up. Pictures of a sliced fish cake used as a ramen topping.
"What?" Jack muttered. He kept searching for other anime he knew. They were all different, or worse, didn't exist at all.
Then, with a growing sense of dread, he typed in the most important search term of all. Dragon Ball.
The screen filled with images of crystal balls and… decorative dragon statues. There was no Goku. No Super Saiyans. No Kamehameha. The most popular story ever told in his past life, a story derived directly from the legend of the Monkey King, simply… did not exist here. Because in this world, there was no Sun Wukong in the minds of mortals to inspire it.
Wudao, oblivious to his master's existential crisis, was using every ounce of his remaining strength to crawl toward the bathroom. Meanwhile, Jack stared at the screen, his world-view cracking. "There's… there's no Dragon Ball in this world?"
Hours later, Jack strode out of the hotel lobby, and the world seemed to pause in confusion. He was dressed in a striking black hanbok, the traditional Korean attire, its silk robes flowing around him with a quiet elegance. To top it off, he wore a tall, black gat, the traditional Korean hat, its wide brim casting a sharp shadow over his face. It was a bold, culturally dissonant statement in the heart of Japan.
Beside him, Zephyr floated dutifully, carrying the slumbering, massive form of Cheng Wudao. The sight was comical—a burly, muscle-bound monk laid out on a fluffy white cloud like a snoring, oversized baby.
As Jack walked, he took in the true scale of the devastation. The earthquake had ripped through the city, leaving scars on every street. Buildings that were built to the highest seismic standards were now just piles of rubble. What he thought would be a simple breeze of a hunt to find Bakuto had just become infinitely more complicated.
He sighed, rolling up the long sleeves of his hanbok. He caught the faint shimmer of the ring the Alfar had made for him. Well, he thought, at least he got it fixed, so his new clothes won't get dirty.
"Master," a groggy voice mumbled from the cloud. Wudao was stirring. "Does it matter if your clothes get dirty?"
Jack looked over at his disciple, aghast. "Duuuh! Of course it matters! What if there are paparazzi in the midst of the people? What if they take a photo of me mid-sneeze with a dirty hanbok? My territory will lose faith in their protector if I look like a hobo!"
He then continued walking, his posture regal, his steps purposeful. He plucked a single strand of hair from his head. It shimmered, then became a perfect clone. The clone plucked a hair to make another. And another. The process repeated, multiplying exponentially until the street was filled with hundreds of Jacks, all dressed in the same immaculate black hanbok and gat.
"Alright, boys!" the real Jack commanded, his voice echoing through the ranks of himself. "Let's finish this rescue effort!"
He pointed toward the most devastated parts of the city. "One team, create peach trees! Make sure to share the fruit to heal the victims! Now, disperse!"
Like a perfectly drilled army, the clones moved with sharp precision, vanishing into the ruins to begin their work.
From his perch on the cloud, Wudao watched it all, his mind reeling. He saw his master, in a land where he held no title, no jurisdiction, no commanding power. And in a single second, with a single command, he had created it. He had made the world bend to his will. That, Wudao realized, is what true power was.
