#until canon changes my headcanon I'm gonna stick with MK's celestial primate name being Shengxiao Ni'hou / Zodiac Clay Monkey

[void-multimuse]

MK smiles fondly as his mentor ruffles his hair. He might not think of Monkey King as his dad, but he still definitely had a cool uncle kind of vibe MK could get behind.

...He'd heard the story from Mr. Tang. He asked the scholar about it after he met Macaque for the first time. MK was told the story about the Four Celestial Primates, just like Monkey King.

Shí hóu is how Monkey King's name ended. MK also knows Macaque's name is also Mihou.

A distant memory in the back of his mind, full of clay figures gives him the name Ni'hou. But he knows there isn't a Clay Monkey in the original legend. And yet the name won't leave his head. It's a name he knows, a name he suspects to be-

"-Hey, so uh... so you got this awesome found family and all, but have you ever, you know, wished you had a biological one? Knew who created you in the first place and WHY they did it? Who gave you the name they did before you changed it to Monkey King? You ever ask those kind of questions?"

void-multimuse​:

“….heh, yeah I guess. You know me, I’m head lightening-the-mood guy!” MK chuckles at the Monkey King’s joke, shoving his hands in his pockets and forcing a smile.

It drops after a moment, MK taking in his mentor’s looks for a moment before something he wants to ask crosses his mind. He doesn’t like talking about his past too much, preferring to live in the moment, but…

“Hey… Monkey King. You’re like… a stone monkey, right?” He starts slowly, trying to figure out how to word this.

“Did you… ever have people you’d call your family, even if they weren’t actually related to you?”

“Hee, best one I know to brighten things up.”

Reaching out to playfully ruffle his student’s hair. Even with the playful back and forth joking, it was clear to the golden simian that something was on his kid’s mind. Didn’t take being the Intelligent Stone Monkey to see that MK was going through some crisis — and who could fault him? With everything that he had and was going through, it would be asinine if he hadn’t.

And there it was, the young man spilling what had been rattling around in his skull — what had been causing his worries. He should’ve know it would have something to do with that.

“Yeah, Shí Hóu the Intelligent Stone Monkey.”

“And plenty…the troop, the Fraternal Brotherhood, the Pilgrims…just to name a few. Just because we weren’t blood didn’t mean I didn’t consider them my family, they all were and will always be.”