#and the mental image of a brainwashed Sanzang with Vega's signature static eyes

[unseelie-robynx]

Um…hope you don’t mind me trying to guess this but about the recent ask about Oblivion and the Wife-ified character’s designs and the hints to the newcomer…would it happen to be Tripataka? (Like, we know the newcomer will be involved with Sun Wukong and Macaque because of the sun and moon thing and Tripataka needed Wukong’s protection thought the journey and I remember you mentioning Mac finding a bug so…yeah. I’m officially more worried now)

Refrencing @vegalocity 's POST

Ok so anon wins the 'reading the tags' award as well as the 'making very sold jumps in reasoning from very little directly provided details' so go you.

But yes. In one of our Bad Ends, the Tang Monk does, in fact, get caught.

See a certain Monk isn't happy with the celestial realm's strict, stay the hell away from there until we know what's up, policy. And so he's very much breaking the rules to help Sun Wukong and is one of the main reasons said monkey is still mostly sane and not heavily brainwashed. In the 'middle ground' ending, he's one of the major players in finding out the origins of oblivion and how to stop it.

However, because Sanzang can only do so much, SWK is sill getting brainwashed and there were certain things that pushed him over the edge about the Jade Emporer's rules and... well lets just say that a certain Monk might have thrown a certain staff at a certain bureaucrat's face and then left.

Which, while awesome and enabling him to help more directly, means that he's also around, somewhat. Physically there and tangible because he went to see Macaque (who is ally but also there's a whole clusterfuck of stuff there)

And being physically present means that there's the opportunity for him to be... found.

And caught.

And a certain Prince has a certain calabash that has been remade to blast Oblivion and overwhelm whoever's inside it.

And there's only so long anyone, even an enlightened being, can hold out against that.

And, well, just maybe a certain monk has been pinning and in denial for a very, VERY long time. And maybe something get's said inside the calabash that sparks a whole chain of other unpleasantness, and a crack in the armor that a certain Tyrant Prince can use to break him.

All of this started with an Oblivion induced confession after all, things are just staying true to their roots