<div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    Sixteen-year-old Felicity Chambers was sitting in the back office of the newspaper where her father worked. It was an unused room, at least officially. She had been given permission to work in there to prepare the school paper since the room where it would normally be done over there was being renovated. Not that many people would have cared if the paper just didn''t come out at all for a few weeks (or at all), but she cared, damn it.


    It was getting late by that point. She had told her dad as he left for the evening that she would come home as soon as she was done. Unfortunately, it was turning out to be harder to finish than she expected. At this point, judging from the silence and the dark rooms she could see through the nearby window looking out onto the rest of the open office area, Flick was pretty sure she was the only one in the building.


    At least, she was pretty sure of that until an audible tap came against the window. She glanced up and blinked in confusion, only to see nothing there. Dismissing it as her imagination, she returned her attention to her work, only to hear the tap again. It wasn''t like a finger tapping that window. It was more like a nail or a knife. Looking up once more, the blonde girl rose from the desk and stared that way. Nothing. She couldn''t see anyone. But on the other hand, someone could be crouched under the window, or standing to the side, hidden by the wall. The hallway and larger room beyond, as well as the other offices, were all pretty dark aside from a few glowing computer monitors that cast shadows throughout the open space. Not enough to know if anyone was hiding right beyond the glow of the light from this single room.


    Okay, something was definitely going on. Either someone was trying to play a prank, or this was something bad. She''d read enough stories, particularly from her father''s time in Los Angeles, to know how sick some people could be. But this was an old newspaper office in a small town in Wyoming. This was Laramie Falls, could it actually be anything that bad?


    Maybe or maybe not, but she wasn’t stupid enough to make assumptions like that. Instead, she reached down to pick up a letter opener from the desk and took a few steps that way. She moved slowly, keeping her eyes on the window just in case. At the same time, she produced her phone with the other hand and kept her finger over the contact list to call her dad if need be. Another couple steps led her to the door, and she leaned against it to listen. Nothing. The air was completely silent. Taking a breath, Flick turned the knob and pushed the door open while peeking out.


    Aaaand again, there was nothing. The area in front of and past the window was empty. Turning to peek around the other side of the door revealed nothing there either. Flick frowned, still holding the letter opener in one hand and her phone in the other as she took a step out into the hall. “Okay, that’s not funny!” the teenage girl called through the silence. “You can come out now, damn it! Who’s playing games?!”


    “Games?” The voice came from above her, as Flick’s gaze snapped upward to see a figure crouched against the ceiling. He appeared to be part human and part… part monkey, including the long prehensile tail that was wrapped around a decorative beam there. “I like games!”


    The soft, confused whimper came before Flick consciously realized it. She wasn’t screaming, though she had no idea why not. It really felt like she should. Instead, the girl stumbled backward against the wall, staring with wide eyes at the figure dangling above her. “Y-y-you… you’re… you’re…” Her head tilted curiously despite herself. “Are you real?”


    “Gosh!” came the quick response, as the monkey-figure released his tail’s grip on the ceiling and dropped. He inverted in the air, landing directly in front of her. Which gave Flick the chance to see that he was only an inch taller than her. And definitely not just a human in a costume. “I hope I’m real!” His eyes met hers, as a wide smile appeared on his face. “Can you imagine how boring this world would be if I wasn’t around to make it exciting?” He shuddered visibly at the very thought. “Now that’s a nightmare.”


    Mouth opening and shutting several times in quick succession as she stared at the figure in front of her, Flick found herself bursting with questions. There were so many that they kept bouncing into one another in her head. Finally, one of them managed to make it all the way from her brain to her mouth, as she blurted, “What''s your name?" Yeah, it sounded like a weird and completely inadequate question given the circumstances, but she had to start somewhere.


    “Hmm?” The figure blinked that way, as though he had briefly forgotten she was there while lost in the terrible thought of a world where he didn’t exist. “Oh! The name’s Sun, like the big ball in the sky. Or Monkey, if you prefer. I am a monkey, and I’m bright like the sun! Or, you know, the sun’s bright like me. Who knows which came first?” His words were punctuated by a high-pitched giggle before he did a cartwheel down the hall and bounced back to his feet like he was showing off. “They say the big question is the chicken or the egg, but isn’t it really the Monkey or the Sun? The Sun or the Sun!” That laugh came again. “Lose one and die of cold. Lose the other and die of boredom! And trust me, that’s worse!” With that, he began to skip down the hall, moving into one of the other offices to start poking at the computer there curiously.


    Flick found herself shoving the phone back into her pocket, along with the letter opener, as she hurried to follow the figure. “Sun, your name is Sun. Or Monkey, got it. And you''ve been around for a long time?" She was trying to pick through his remark about whether he or the actual Sun had come first. It was impossible that he was as old as that, of course. But then, this entire situation was impossible. A talking half-human half-monkey? It was ridiculous. It was impossible. It was--


    “What am I doing out here?” Flick asked out loud, looking around in confusion. She had been in the office working on the paper, but now she was standing in the hallway. What was--


    “Hey!” Suddenly, a furry figure appeared in front of her, making the girl jump. Before she could react further, or process the fact that she was looking at a half-man half-monkey, he jammed something up against her lips. It was a bottle, and he made her swallow a gulp of liquid from it.


    Coughing and gagging at the taste, Flick stumbled a bit. But then she remembered everything that had happened. “Wha--what the hell?”


    “Yeah, knock it off!” It took her a second to realize the figure was shaking his fist at the ceiling, addressing some unknown person or thing rather than her. "I don''t like people forgetting who I am while I''m talking to them, stupid Bystander Effect! Get outta our conversation!”


    “Wha-what Bystander Effect? What are you--” Flick could still taste the--whatever the monkey-man had made her drink. And she could still remember forgetting (weird as that was as a sentence) everything that had happened in the previous couple minutes before he made her drink it. Part of her panicked, wondering if it was poison. But no, that didn’t make sense. Whatever it was, she had forgotten stuff and then that thing he made her drink made her remember it. “What was in that thing? Why did I forget--”


    “Ehhhh, not now, that’s boring.” Sun shook his head rapidly. “Remember how bad boring is? This whole planet dying from a lack of Other Sun, distant second to being bored. Come on, I wanna talk more about me. You were asking questions, keep doing that. It’s much better when people ask me questions.”


    “I… I…” Thinking quickly, Flick repeated her earlier question. “You’ve been alive for awhile? How um, how old do you think you are?” Her hand found her phone once more, and she quickly activated the recording app. She had to make sure to get all of this down. If her dad was here, if he could see this…


    He would see it. She would make sure everyone saw it. Getting to talk to an actual real-life… whatever this guy was would be news all over the world!


    Adopting a clearly put-on bashful expression, the figure stared at her. “Aww, don’t you know it can be rude to ask an old person’s age? But I’ll give you a hint.” Leaning forward conspiratorially, he stage-whispered, “I’m older than this building. And this town. And this country. And… uh, the modern concept of governments, really. But who’s counting?”


    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    The answer made Flick blink a couple times, processing it with a gulp. “That’s--that’s pretty old. So I bet you’ve seen--” She stopped herself in mid-sentence, thinking about what he said so far. He was clearly most interested in talking about himself, not other things. So, she quickly adjusted. “I bet you''ve done some pretty amazing things over all that time, right?”


    His broad smile returned, even brighter than ever he showed his teeth. “Have I ever?! Come, come, I’ll tell you about the time I wrestled three manticores at once while I had to hold one of their eggs in my other hand so it wouldn’t break. Or the time I had to hold up this mountain for like five hundred years. Or the time…”


    It continued on like that, the monkey man regaling Flick with story after story as they continued to walk everywhere throughout the newspaper office. He kept going in various rooms, prodding things, turning computers and lights off and on, throwing mugs in the break room so that she had to run and catch them before they could break And in general just poking into everything he could find, like some sort of curious toddler.


    Through it all, Flick asked the strange figure questions. And in the process, she managed to very carefully work details about other things into the subject of Sun himself. Over the next hour as they talked, she discovered that this Bystander Effect he had mentioned was some sort of magical field that made normal people forget everything supernatural they saw. Which she would have dismissed as ridiculous except for the fact that it had literally just happened to her. No matter how absurd something was, calling it impossible was hard when you personally experienced it. And she learned about all sorts of monsters that were supposedly out there in the world. At least, the ones he hadn’t already personally killed, which itself sounded like a pretty extensive list, to say the least.


    She also managed to use her phone to google the name Sun Wukong, which had sounded vaguely familiar. Which brought up--well, a whole bunch of articles that left the girl reeling even more. This guy was practically a god. He had definitely fought gods, she was pretty sure. At least, beings who called themselves gods. All of this, every bit of it, seemed completely impossible. But she was recording it. She was looking at the proof right in front of her. This wasn''t a trick, it wasn''t a dream. She knew that much from the many times she had pinched herself. Something incredible was happening. But she was still confused on several points. One in particular. “Why are you here? I mean, why did you tap on the window to get my attention? You fight monsters all across the world, now you''re in some small town newspaper? Why?” Saying that out loud made Flick feel even more ridiculous. Fight monsters? Supernatural creatures were real? A magical aura thousands of years old made every ordinary human across the world forget everything strange they saw? None of it made sense. But she rolled with it, because what else could she do with Sun Wukong right in front of her?


    And speaking of the monkey man himself, he shook that off. “Oh, that wasn’t me tapping on the window. It was the guy who was trying to kill you.”


    The reply came so nonchalantly that it took Flick a few seconds to register exactly what he had said. She was just watching along with his words at first before giving an almost violent double-take. “Wait, what? Wha--huh?”


    “Oh, right, I meant to tell you about that. I got distracted. Talking about myself always does that.” Sun gave her a completely incorrigible grin before adding, “Come on, I’ll show you.”


    Still quite thoroughly confused, and even more apprehensive than she had been for a while since she first decided the strange and incredible figure in front of her wasn’t a threat, Flick nonetheless followed him. They went back through the building to the room she had been working in. Sun turned to a nearby supply closet and pushed it open, giving Flick her first real look at a monster. It would have been eight feet tall if it was standing up instead of lying in a broken heap. Thin, with gray-green skin and an angular face, it looked a bit like the stereotypical gray alien from so many myths and movies. Seeing it there struck such a primal fear in Flick that she jerked backward with an audible gasp. Her heart began practically slamming its way out of her chest, as an unbidden whimper escaped her.


    “It’s okay,” Sun informed her cheerfully, giving the thing a light kick. “I made sure it was dead. That''s why I was here. I was looking for something fun to fight and I found that thing’s trail. He was planning some really bad stuff, so I stopped him. Cuz I…” He struck a dramatic pose, fists on his hips and elbows out like the old Superman stance. “... am a hero!” Somehow, the tattered clothes he was wearing seemed to sway in a nonexistent breeze.


    Well, if she hadn''t been convinced that all this was real before, that would have done the trick. Staring at the figure in front of her silently before slowly turning her gaze back to the dead monster, she spoke in a soft voice. “Thanks, Sun. But if there’s really those… those things out there, I wish I could be strong like you.”


    A slow intake of air from the figure beside her made the girl look that way, only to see an incredibly wide smile beginning to blossom across the monkey-man’s face. “You know what?” he slowly and pointedly announced.


    “I just had an incredible idea.”


    ******


    Six Months Later


    “Now as this is a recreation of the actual night sky you would see from the Atlantic ocean, the constellations are the same.” As he said those words, Professor Zedekiah Pericles raised his hand to point out the stars in question for one of his newest students, Isaac Acosta. The two of them were standing out on the front steps of the main building. “Cygnus is one of my favorites, it actually means--”


    “Oooh, I like that one too!” The new, entirely unexpected voice came from the blonde girl who had just appeared as though by magic directly between both of them, popping into view.


    Isaac visibly jumped, while even Pericles turned his gaze sharply that way before settling. “Ah, Miss Chambers. It seems I was even more distracted than I thought, to not notice your approach.”


    “Yeah, that’s sort of what they were counting on,” Flick noted casually, jerking a thumb toward Isaac. “Him and his masters, I mean.”


    Isaac shook his head, eyes widening while he started to take a few steps away. “What the hell are you talking about? What masters? You’re just-- what?” The last bit came as he was suddenly stopped from backing up, looking down to see his wrist held tightly by a long, furry appendage. “What the fuck?! You have a tail?!”


    “Yeah, usually I have to hide it,” Flick replied. “You know, with magic. But since your masters shut down the surveillance around here, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Feels good to stretch, you know?”


    Pericles recovered admirably from his surprise, if not his confusion. “Miss Chambers, if you are a hybrid, we have--”


    “Oh hey! Sorry, I forgot you were still there for a second.” Flick offered the man a guilty smile. “See it turns out that being easily distracted and bored is part of the package when it comes to being a Natural Sun Here--excuse me.” The entire time that she had been talking, the girl’s tail continued to hold Isaac against all his attempts to pull himself free. Now he had produced a knife and went to cut the tail, only for it to release his arm, smack him several times across the face in rapid succession before he had any idea what had happened, then take the knife from his hand and throw it into his foot blade-first. While he doubled over with a cry, the end of the tail balled itself up like a fist and came down on the back of his head, knocking the boy completely senseless to the ground.


    “Miss Chambers!” Pericles took a step that way. “Whatever is actually happening here, we need… we… need to… to contact…” Through that, he began blinking rapidly, his speech slowing until the man finally collapsed to the ground.


    “Huh,” Flick murmured, looking down at the man. “I really hope I’m not that boring.”


    “Certainly not,” came the response from an older, slightly balding man wearing a three piece suit and fedora. “In fact, I’d say you’re quite intriguing, whoever you truly are.”


    “Oh I’m Flick Chambers,” the girl assured him. “And you’re Manakel. I heard Isaac there say your name when you guys met up earlier. See I thought he was acting suspicious so I sort of stowed away in his pocket as a bug. I bugged your meeting, get it? Heard everything you all said. So the way I figure it, right about now is when I should-- dodge!” In that instant, she abruptly pivoted, hand snapping down to catch what appeared to be empty air. Yet the painful cracking sound of a bone breaking was heard, before a dark-skinned woman appeared with her twisted arm in Flick’s grasp. As the woman violently cursed out loud, Flick cheerfully greeted her. “Hi, Charmeine!” A quick yank sent her to the ground, before the monkey-tailed girl put a foot on her back. “You should stay there so you don’t get hurt.”


    An enormous translucent figure, the ghost of an ogre, began to rise up out of the ground behind the girl as Manakel summoned a little help. But Flick simply snapped a hand out, poking it in both eyes Three Stooges-style while it was still rising. Despite being a ghost, her fingers still hurt the thing, making it recoil before bursting apart. “Boop!” The girl gestured. “Hey fighting ghosts sounds fun and all, but we really need to talk to you people. It’s important.”


    “We?” Manakel curiously noted, his eyes glancing one way, then the other.


    Flick’s head bobbed, even as her foot continued to hold the frantically and furiously struggling Charmeine right where she was without issue. “Yeah, see stopping you from killing Pericles was important too, but what we really wanna know is… well, you ask him.”


    With that, a small glowing figure emerged from her, before resolving into a blonde child. “Hi, I’m Tabbris,” she announced.


    “And we wanna know where my mama is.”