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"We lost him. I can't believe we lost him." MK groaned into his hands, Mei patting him comfortingly on the back, while Red Son continued to stand on his toes, glancing out at the sizeable crowd of people that surrounded them. Macaque rolled his eyes.
"That's just what you get when you take the 'Number One Focus Guy' to a busy marketplace." He deadpanned, "We probably won't find Wukong until the market closes down in about... 3 hours."
"But we don't have three hours." Red Son pulled out his phone, (well, technically, it was actually Mei's phone, but he'd been using it for the past month or so, it was basically as good as his), glancing at the time. "Pigsy expects us back in about....thirteen minutes. I don't know about you, but I for one am not looking forwards to having a spoon tossed at my head today."
"You have a point there." Macaque sighed, his ears twitching. Normally, he would just listen for Wukong's voice or heartbeat, but with this many people around, there was far too much background noise to be able to distinguish one voice from the next. Just another reason for him to hate larger crowds. "Not much other ways for us to find him though. Once he realizes he's separated from the rest of us, he'll probably try to blend in with the crowd and keep hiding so that he can try and claim he 'wasn't lost' and that he'd been 'searching for us for so long, I can't believe you would just vanish on me like that, don't you know that I was worried'- that kinda bullshit y'know?"
"Sounds like you speak from experience." Mei smirked, "But I do think there's one idea that you're forgetting."
"And what would that be, oh knowledgeable Miss Dragon?"
"A certain...sparkling laugh is very noticeable." Mei said, and Macaque fell silent, contemplating.
"Uh, Mei?" MK started, catching his friend's attention. "Not that it's a bad idea or anything like that, but how, exactly, do you expect us to get Monkey King to laugh when we don't know where he is?"
"Aw c'mon MK, it can't be that hard?" Mei swung an arm around MK's shoulders. "Besides, Red Son agrees with me, right Red Boy?"
"I have to admit Dragon Girl, I was hoping you'd stuck a tracker on him." Red Son admitted, "There's no way we could get him to laugh when we can't even see him-"
"Actually there's one thing you could try."
The trio fell silent as they turned back to Macaque in eerie sync, the shadow monkey avoiding their curious gaze. He shifted from foot to foot, seemingly contemplating something, before letting out a sigh.
"Okay. Alright. Here's the deal. Just-" He paused for a moment, his face twisting into an expression MK had started to recognize as indicating the other was struggling not to laugh. "Just shout 'flufflebutter' at the top of your lungs."
"Flufflebutter? Why flufflebutter-" Red Son started to ask-
"Just do it." Macaque cut him off, before going back to looking away from the three of them, his scarf now covering how his mouth had wobbled in his attempt not to smile.
MK glanced at Mei and Red Son. The both of them shrugged, clearly just as confused about the whole thing as he was.
Well. There was no point in not trying he guessed.
MK took a deep breath, and then yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Flufflebutter!"
A few people passing by spared a confused glance at him, before continuing to walk on by. MK chose not to focus on that, ignoring both them and the faint silver glow starting up behind him, instead staying on the lookout for a golden shine.
"Got him!" Mei suddenly zipped off, a few green sparks coming off of her, MK and Red Son having to lean to the side to avoid getting bowled over by the dragon on a mission. Within seconds, Mei was back, holding a still-snickering Wukong by his scarf, his golden glow still going strong.
"You." Wukong said between giggles, pointing at Macaque, who's silver glow was still flickering faintly. "I can't believe you used fl-flufflebutter against me!"
"It's your own damn fault for getting yourself lost." Macaque said. Wukong opened his mouth, probably to say that he had not, in fact, been lost, but-
"I'm sorry to interrupt." Red Son drew the monkeys attention back to the trio. "But I get the sense that there is some...story behind 'flufflebutter', and I, quite personally, would love to know what that story is."
Surprisingly enough, Wukong's face suddenly ignited in a blush.
"Ah, um, there's no story really!" He said, "It's just a silly word Macaque came up with a long time ago, okay?"
The trio looked at the shadow monkey for confirmation. Following their gaze, Wukong tried to lunge at Macaque, clearly with the intent of keeping him silent, only for Macaque to place one hand against the Monkey King's forehead, a few shadow tendrils wrapping around Wukong's ankles, keeping him at a distance, and preventing him from getting any closer.
"I knew this would happen." Macaque sighed, and, ignoring Wukong's struggling, continued. "To make a kinda-long story short, he threw me a little bit too hard during a spar, and when he saw how dazed I was, in his panic, he couldn't decide whether to say 'butternuts' or 'fuck', and somehow, his brain came to 'flufflebutter'. I made a comment about it, and somehow we ended up joking about it so much that saying it when he's distracted always makes him laugh."
"Like, always, always?" Mei asked, a smirk growing on her face as Macaque nodded in confirmation. Wukong slumped, defeated, giving up on attempting to silence Macaque.
"I should've let you think it was a side effect of your concussion." He mumbled, "Or, better yet, I should've thrown you again and given you amnesia."
"But Monkey King!" MK said, "If Macaque had amnesia, who would be there to give us such entertaining stories of your childhood."
"Hopefully? No-one. There's a reason none of the books detail all of my childhood." Wukong said. Macaque smirked.
"Honestly I'm still so disappointed that they cut out that one time you tried to literally fight the rain-"
"Macaque, if you don't shut up-"