This wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

At least that's what Ham Song wanted to believe. He stood there alone in the street, breathing rather heavily even though he had hardly exerted himself. I suppose yelling at Sun Ritsu moments ago had knocked the wind out of him.

It was as Ham Song had feared. He would have to call on them for help with this situation. Bodhi was the only spirit this side of the Heavenly River who could get that damn monkey to listen to reason.

As Ham Song trundled through the maze of back alleys, he couldn't shake off the disbelief of what had recently transpired.

What was that just now?

Sun Ritsu, his benevolent monkey king, had left him behind.

This wasn't odd behavior for the spideress and definitely not that wet excuse for a monk. But Ritsu wasn't like normal spirits. He didn't leave his friends behind.

Ham Song reprimanded himself for his actions. He had pushed the monkey king too far.

Or... had he really?

This wasn't the first time that Ham Song had let his passion get the best of him. He was known to lose his composure in the midst of trying to sway Sun Ritsu's heart. So why would his behavior come as a surprise to Ritsu now? Did something change?

Or could it have been something else entirely?

A sudden breeze whipped around the corner and kicked up the litter in the alley. Ham Song felt a gentle tug underfoot. He glanced down and with a curious snort, lifted his leg. That pesky tournament flyer was stuck to the underside of his hoof.

The Sevenfold Peach Championship.

What was it about this silly tourney that drove Sun Ritsu to behave so out of character?

"Woof."

Ham Song looked up to see two dog spirits towering over him. They weren't corgis. Their glamour was weak enough for him to notice that one had spots and the other couldn't keep his tongue in his mouth.

"Huh, check out this pig. Must be nice to Lucky and fat."

Ham Song shuffled to the side, pardoning himself.

But when he tried to step around the two mongrels, they simply got in his way again.

"Drop some more Luck and we'll let you go," the spotted one said.

Ham Song bristled. "I don't know how to do that." He could tell by the lightness in his shoulders that he had already shed some Luck just by standing in the shadow of the dog spirits. What more could they possibly want?

"Look here, porky pie," the one with the lopsided tongue dropped to Ham Song's level and deliberately leaned close enough to lick him if he wanted.

"If you don't stop being so fucking stingy with the Luck, then we'll just take you with us. It's not cute to leave food lying about in the streets."

The spotted one barked.

"Right. Not cute at all."

By now, our dear old Ham Song had broken out in a sweat.

"Please. C-can you please." He swallowed a hard lump in his throat. "Just let me leave. I'm not — heaven help me — just because I'm unglamoured doesn't mean I'm food!"

The crouching dog flicked Ham Song's squishy snout.

"Who are you raising your voice to?" He slowly rose to full height. "Huh? You porky little fuck?"

The spotted one barked again.

"Oh no! Excuse me. I didn't mean—" Ham Song rapidly backed up, but he had nowhere to go.

"Nuh-uh!"

The dog spirits snatched Ham Song up by his back legs. Before he knew it, he was dangling over concrete.

"You're not getting away. No, not by the hairs on your chinny-chin-chin. "

Ham Song tried to scream for Sun Ritsu, but one of the dogs bit him.

The environment around Ham Song became distorted and off-kilter as the razored edge of absolute panic began to take over.

"Put the pig down."

There was a burst of color. Gitter rained from above. One of the dogs sneezed on it.

For a moment, Ham Song's senses realigned as he tried to process this interruption in what was very clearly about to be a kidnapping.

"Ahh, it's that monkey thief idol! What the hell is she doing here?" Ham Song's spotted captor growled.

The pig craned his neck and blinked to clear his sight among the glittery snowfall.

"Sailor Sun?"

There was a smooth chuckle and then, "In the flesh, dear old Ham Song. Need a hand?"

Before Ham Song could respond, his ears rang with the eruption of manic barking.

"Get lost, bitch!"

Ham Song's dark beady eyes bulged as the dog spirits suddenly tightened their hold on him and jerked him back. Sun Surina twirled her shiny star-tipped scepter and pounced.

In the heat of the moment, something swelled up and hardened in Ham Song's gut of guts – something that was both familiar and terrifying. Whatever was happening to him, the dogs must have sensed it as well because their voices grew uncertain.

"What's the matter with the hog?"

"I don't know, but he looks like he's about to pop!"

Sun Surina dashed forward right at the same time Ham Song hacked up a missile of sweet immortal peaches. His sudden projectile vomit packed enough punch to fire himself and the two dogs backwards into the concrete building behind them.

Thankfully, the dogs served as reliable cushions for Ham Song, so he was able to tumble out of their clutches unharmed. The would-be captors groaned before going into cold unconsciousness.

"Stupid, crazy mongrels!" Ham Song grunted angrily right before a new wave of slimy peaches came up. Once again, he became a fountain of immortal riches until the spell of acid reflux passed.

"Wow. You are one Lucky pig. Looks like you didn't need my help after all, huh?" Sailor Sun said as she whipped out a recycled trash bag and helped Ham Song gather all of the glowing peaches inside.

"If you had plans to go shopping, I deeply apologize," Ham Song grunted as he used the tip of his snout to roll the last peach inside the plastic bag.

Suri's starry earrings rattled as she gently shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I always carry an extra grocery bag or two whenever I go out. What are you doing all the way in the slums on your own anyway?"

Ham Song licked his protruding tusk and narrowed his eyes. "What about you? Aren't you supposed to be robbing somebody blind? There's no tourists over this way."

"See here, sweet pig, I had no intentions of descending from on high into this dampened alleyway. Absolutely none. I was just cloud-strolling when I heard you squealing for dear life." Suri nudged Ham Song away from the dogs and back out onto the main street corridor. "So, to be fair, you owe me again. I'll kindly take these peaches as payment."

Suri briefly peeked inside the bag to count the number of peaches. "Oh, what do you know? You've tried to overpay me yet again. Would you like to cash in the rest and get a lift to wherever you were going?"

Ham Song then remembered his initial dilemma. "Could you take me to the local correctional facility? There's someone there that I need to speak to."

Surina arched a pink eyebrow. "Is a friend of yours behind bars?" She bent down to pick up the pig.

He grunted as he got comfortable in her arms. "Do you remember that incorrigible monk I traveled with?"

It's funny, Dear Traveler, the things that Ham Song could never admit to himself, but had no problem voicing aloud to the likes of Sun Surina.

"As much as I hate to say it, that monk has a way with my dear benevolent monkey that I, at this present moment in time, do not possess."

"Hold that thought, sweet pig. We're about to take off."

A phantom wind swirled around Sun Surina's ankles as she knelt low and double wrapped the handle of the grocery bag swollen with peaches around her wrist. With her other arm, she tucked Ham Song snug against her abdomen.

The bristly hairs along Ham Song's body tingled at the anticipation of sudden flight. He wanted to ask Suri if she was about to perform that amazing feat that only highly adept sun clones could pull off – the coveted cloud-somersault.

Cotton-candy colored clouds materialized in the sky just under Sun Surina's feet. Ham Song watched in wonder as Suri bounced from cloud to cloud like a spacer treading across the surface of the moon. The border between the Dog and Rabbit Provinces stretched out below them, creating a hard contrast between the dreamy pastels of Kawaii Village versus the more washed-out colors of the Dog Province slums.

During this buoyant flight to Bodhi's holding cell, Ham Song couldn't help but put together a few things. For one, he knew that sun clones could not cloud-somersault without a staff. It was one of the reasons why he made sure that Sun Ritsu did his best to always keep the staff on his person and to hide it in plain sight. At first, Ritsu had been reluctant to do so, but when Ham Song asked if Ritsu wanted another incident like the one at the Hall of Perfect Light, the monkey heeded his companion and begrudgingly reattached the miniaturized Golden-Hooped Rod to his ear.

All this time, Ham Song had assumed Sun Surina had wanted the staff to increase her rank and improve her ability to travel. But now he was realizing that her little star-tipped scepter was also a staff. Suri was merely clever enough to disguise it as a decoration – a harmless element of flair in her cheeky schoolgirl act.

It begged the question, Dear Traveler, what would Suri want with a monkey's staff when she already had one that suited her needs just fine? She didn't seem like the black market peddling type. So the only explanation was that she was taking the staff on behalf of someone else.

Perhaps it was a stretch, Ham Song was beginning to realize. Still, he couldn't help his mind working out the possibilities. He knew Sun Surina wasn't a bad spirit, but with the spideress having gone AWOL and the monk a whole walking disaster, it was now up to Ham Song to look out for Sun Ritsu's best interests.

"What's the matter, dear pig? Never traveled by way of cloud-strolling before?" Sun Surina asked as she gracefully took off from another dissolving cloud.

Dismissing the suspicions for now, Ham Song grunted thoughtfully. "Cloud-strolling? Is that what they're calling it these days? Hm. Well, I've never seen a Sun cloud-somersault like this before."

"Sweet immortal peaches, you think I'm cloud-somersaulting. That's a laugh."

Ham Song didn't know there was a difference and he told Suri so. The celebrity thief was patient enough to explain the difference between the various forms of travel among today's sun clones. According to Sun Surina, you had your cloud-strollers, cloud-surfers, and lastly, your cloud-crawlers.

"Only the real heavy hitters can cloud-somersault, dear pig. See how my clouds don't stay together once I've pushed off from them? I don't have the spiritual energy to sustain them after I've moved on."

A round of applause sounded off below as a crowd of locals recognized their favorite idol floating overhead.

"Now that you think about it," Ham Song said, "back in my day, monkey kings always left a streak of cloud trails in the sky when they traveled by these means."

Surina hummed at the thought. "Back in your day, hm? I must hold in my arms a rare and ancient hog in that case. I myself only know of one sun clone who can streak the sky with his cloud-somersaulting."

It was impossible to tell, Dear Traveler, but Ham Song went positively pink when Suri called him rare and ancient. Then, clearing his throat, he asked, "So you do? Who might that be?"

Suri's arms tightened around the pig's midsection and she dove into a front flip off of the final cloud before landing on the pale yellow concrete.

"A very good friend of mine, who honestly hates it when I brag about him. So I'm going to respect his privacy for now." She sweetly tapped the triangular tip of Ham Song's snout with her scepter before setting him down.

Ham Song, who hadn't been expecting that sudden swerve in body orientation, needed a moment to reclaim his balance and put his urge to puke again in check.

"Look alive, dear pig. We are here." Surina's tone grew serious and professional as she smoothed down her pleated skirt uniform.

Ham Song swallowed a few times, blinked the dizziness away and looked up at the mint-tiled building looming ominously just across the street.

"The Kawaii Village Correctional Facility."