You don’t mean to save a monkey.

It just happens.

One moment you’re vaulting across a half-collapsed warehouse roof on the edge of the docks, rain slicking the rusted metal under your boots, senses tuned for muggers or smugglers or anything loud and obvious. The next, you hear a small, sharp sound. Balf-chatter, half-almost-word followed by the unmistakable crackle of unstable energy.

You skid to a stop and peer down.

There, tangled in a snare of sparking cables and fallen scaffolding, is a monkey.

A very strange monkey. Baboon.

He’s dark-furred, unnervingly tidy even while upside down, and instead of panicking, he’s staring at the broken machinery with visible irritation, as if personally offended by physics. When your eyes meet his, he freezes. Then, politely, he taps the metal with one finger and looks back at you. Help?

You sigh. Of course.

You drop down, tear the cables free, and scoop him up just as the generator behind you finally detonates in a harmless but flashy burst of light. The monkey clings to your shoulder, chitters once in what feels suspiciously like gratitude, and pats your head. You blink.

“…You’re weirdly well-behaved,” you mutter.

That’s when slow clapping echoes through the warehouse.

“Ah,” a dry, thickly accented voice says. “My instincts were correct.”

You turn and immediately regret it.

A tall, gaunt man in a crimson-and-white suit phases halfway through a steel wall like it’s mist. Red Ghost. His eyes gleam behind his goggles, not with rage, but with delighted scientific interest. Behind him two more shapes emerge.

The Super-Apes.

One hulking gorilla slams into the floor with seismic force, concrete cracking beneath his knuckles as he grins, teeth bared. A slender orangutan flickers in and out of sight, reappearing on a crane beam above you, upside down and waving.

The baboon on your shoulder straightens. He chitters sharply.

“Oh,” you say weakly. “You’re their monkey.”

“Indeed,” Kragoff says proudly. “You have rescued Igor. He is particular.”

Igor preens.