I Am Zeus

Wukong's grin didn't just hold; it widened into something utterly insolent. He leaned on his staff as if it were a walking stick, examining Mephisto from head to toe like a farmer inspecting a strange bug.

"Mephisto?" he echoed, scratching his ear with his free hand. "Sounds like a sneeze. You sure that's your name? Not something like 'Stuck-Up Fancy-Pants' or 'Lord of the Really Bad Haircut'? Because, honestly," he gestured with his chin at Mephisto's slicked-back hair, "it looks like a wet rat sat on your head."

Mephisto's smile remained, but it became a thin, strained line. The temperature dropped another few degrees. "You seek to provoke me with infantile prattle. It is beneath my notice."

"Oh, it's beneath you, is it?" Wukong cackled. "Is that why you're standing in the mud? Couldn't your fancy boots find a nicer puddle to step in? This is a bit low-rent for a king, don't you think?"

A faint tremor ran through Mephisto's scepter. "I have laid waste to beings far greater than you. I have broken empires that worshipped gods far more impressive than you."

"And yet here you are," Wukong said, his tone shifting to one of mock sympathy. "Picking on a bunch of mortals who were probably just trying to milk their yaks. Real impressive stuff. Truly terrifying. I'm shaking in my fur." He made an exaggerated shivering motion.

Mephisto's eyes narrowed. The air around him began to warp, the very light bending away from his form. "You will learn respect."

He didn't so much move as reappear, his scepter slicing through the space where Wukong's head had been. But Wukong was already leaning backwards, the tip of the black scepter passing inches from his nose.

"Whoa, careful there, Sneezy!" Wukong chirped, flipping backwards and landing on the tip of his own staff, which was now planted vertically in the ground. He balanced on one foot. "You almost messed up my glorious complexion. That's a celestial crime, you know."

Mephisto vanished again. This time, he appeared above Wukong, scepter pointed down, unleashing a torrent of black fire that screamed with the voices of the damned.

Wukong didn't dodge. He just shrank his staff back to needle-size and dropped through the flames, landing neatly as the inferno scorched the earth around him. He brushed a few embers from his shoulder. "Ooh, toasty! You know, for the 'King of Hell,' your fire's a bit… lukewarm. I've had spicier noodles."

A vein throbbed on Mephisto's temple. The sheer, casual impossibility of the monkey's evasion was an insult in itself. He thrust his scepter forward, and the ground beneath Wukong erupted in a forest of black, crystalline spikes, each one sharp enough to pierce a dragon's hide.

Wukong simply hopped from one spike to another, using them as stepping stones. Tap. Tap. Tap. He reached the end of the deadly forest and looked back. "Nice try! A bit pointy for my taste, though. You should really consider some landscaping. Maybe a nice pond? Some flowers?"

"You insufferable vermin!" Mephisto snarled, his smooth voice finally cracking. He slammed his scepter into the ground. The shadows themselves came alive, stretching and grasping for Wukong like a thousand greedy hands.

Wukong yawned. He plucked a single hair, blew on it, and created a giant banana. He took a big bite as the shadow-hands wrapped around his legs. "Mmm, a bit chewy." He then sank into the shadows, disappearing completely.

Mephisto allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction. Finally.

A tap on his shoulder made him jump.

He spun around to find Wukong standing there, finishing the banana. "Not bad! A classic 'sink into the shadow' move. Very dramatic. Very you." He tossed the peel over his shoulder, where it landed perfectly on the head of a smoldering demon corpse. "But you forgot one thing."

"And what is that?" Mephisto hissed, his composure utterly gone, his face a mask of raw fury.

"I'm the Monkey King," Wukong said, his grin now feral and sharp. "I go where I please."

He vanished again. This time, he didn't reappear behind Mephisto. He reappeared in front of him, so close their noses almost touched. Before Mephisto could react, Wukong bopped him on the nose with his now-full-sized staff.

Boop.

It wasn't a powerful blow. It didn't even hurt. But the sheer, humiliating audacity of it—the boop—was a weapon Mephisto's eons of existence had never prepared him for.

He roared, a sound of pure, undiluted rage that shook the sky. No longer a king, but a furious beast. He abandoned all pretense of style, lashing out with raw, destructive power. Blasts of energy that vaporized hillsides, curses that withered the air, attacks meant not just to kill, but to utterly erase.

And Wukong danced through it all.

He weaved between the blasts, slid under the curses, and flipped over the waves of force. He was a leaf on the wind, a trick of the light, an unstoppable, unmovable concept of mischief made flesh. He wasn't trying to win. He was proving he couldn't lose.

"Getting a little warm under the collar there, aren't we?" Wukong called out, perched on a rock that had somehow survived the devastation. "Maybe you should take that fancy robe off. You're sweating."

Mephisto stood panting in the center of the wasteland he had created, his robes slightly disheveled, his hair now falling out of its perfect shape. He stared at the monkey, who looked as fresh and unbothered as when he'd first arrived.

The King of Hell had thrown everything he had—at least, everything he was willing to use in a preliminary skirmish—and his opponent had treated it like a game of tag.

The realization was a cold splash of water. This was not a foe to be crushed with brute force or intimidated with displays of power. This was something else entirely. An anomaly.

Wukong saw the calculation return to Mephisto's eyes, the rage being forced back under a layer of icy control. The monkey's grin softened from taunting to knowing.

"Tired already?" Wukong asked, leaping down and planting his staff back in the earth. "We were just getting started. I haven't even shown you my four-thousand-pound trick."

Mephisto straightened his robes, a slow, deliberate motion. The murder in his eyes was now banked, replaced by a cold, simmering hatred. "This… diversion… is over. You have made your point, beast."

"Beast?" Wukong laughed. "I'm the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven. Don't get it twisted."

Mephisto didn't answer. He gave Wukong one last, long look, committing every feature to memory. This was not a defeat, but a reconnaissance. And he had learned a great deal.

With a final, contemptuous swirl of his robes, he turned and walked back into the red portal, which snapped shut behind him, leaving only silence and destruction.

Sun Wukong stood alone in the quiet, his staff on his shoulder. The grin finally left his face. He looked at the scorched earth, the shattered village, and the fading stench of hell.

"Well," he muttered to the empty plain. "That was fun. But he's going to be really annoying next time."

He sighed, summoned his cloud, and shot into the sky. The game was over. The war was just beginning.