Tournament of Change Prelude P3 (Patreon)

Part 3: The World Ends With Jam...

"Jelly" (formerly known as Jam) was at the mercy of the Knight of Friday! Reduced to just a Hooters waitress subservient to his needs, the monkey was forced to bring him whatever he desired. Jelly brought the knight drink after drink, plate of food after plate of food. He didn't drink a drop or eat a bite, he just wanted to control the monkey and bend her to his will.

The knight laughed as the monkey continued to bring him food against her will, "Ah, a subservient simian! Foolish creatures like you exist to serve higher beings like myself,"

The monkey let out muffled growls at the knight, prompting him to laugh, "Oh, don't be so angry, my dear! Here, let me free those lips of yours!" With just a wave of his finger, Jelly regained the ability to talk.

"Ah, that's better! Now shut your face! The only foolish creature is you, turning mortals into literal building blocks for your empire!"

"Blame not me, my good monkey! The king is the one who decrees that we make the Equinians into the cards that comprise our world. I told him using actual inanimate objects would do just fine, but he would not listen. But who am I to question his orders?"

"So, what you're saying is that you're pawn who does blindly follows what his master tells him? Don't you have free will of your own?!"

The knight stood up and held his sword to the monkey's neck, "Of course I do! There are things you don't understand, at least not yet. This isn't about 'free will', or what my king asks of me. This is about making a change, right here, right now!"

"And this change is turning me into a busty babe and having me serve you food?"

The knight laughed and dropped his sword as he walked behind Jelly and reached around, grabbing her breasts and causing the simian to moan. He squeezed them firmly as he juggled them back and forth, "No, that's just a fun extra! I'm keeping you here for the time being, so that you're out of the way. In my special 'Card Zone', no one can see or hear you! We'll be playmates in this little side dimension until I deem otherwise,"

The monkey blushed and moaned as the knight played with her, "Hng, you jerk! I'll get out of this and you'll pay!"

The knight responded by reaching down and grabbing her ass next, Jelly still unable to fight back, "Oh please, there's nothing you can do to stop me! Your soon-to-be wife and friend will be made into fabulous floor panels while I keep you here as my personal playmate, until the time is right that is!"

Jelly's eyes began to glow yellow as she felt her anger building, "Excuse me?!"

"You heard me! That doughy meerkat and scrawny human are going to make excellent building materials for your cell! They'll be PERMANENT fixtures on the wall to remind you of your failure!"

Jelly's anger reached a crescendo as her body let out an explosion of golden energy, which reverted her back to her male form. Once he was Jam again, the monkey turned to look up at the knight with a look of pure malice pasted across his simian face, "How dare you?!"

The knight-captain realized his folly and grabbed his sword to defend himself, "Now, relax! It was merely in jest, just a joke!"

The monkey's glow intensified as his fur started to turn black, "A joke?! YOU CALL THREATENING MY BETHROTHED A FUCKING JOKE?!"

"You don't understand, you- Wait, did you just swear?!"

The monkey nodded just as his fur completed its shift from brown to black, "Of course, you pissant! I've never sworn a day in my life, but you've pushed me to this! Now I'll KILL you!"

Jam's energy reached its crescendo as cracks started to form in the mini-universe the card-knight had trapped him in. It then exploded, sending both the knight and Jam back to the universe they were previously in. Axel, Meerina, and Wukong stared in wonder as Jam reappeared before them along with the knight.

However, it wasn't the Jam they knew! This black-furred, snarling, and psychotic simian made them all uneasy. Meerina gasped, "I-Is that Jam?!"

The black-furred monkey turned and gave them a sadistic grin, "You better fucking believe it! I've never felt more alive, but you won't be able to say the same about our card-lined friend here in a minute!"

Wukong bit the bottom of his lip, "It's what I feared, he's in 'Dark Wukong mode'! He's tapped into my powers accidentally without understanding them. This is bad..."

Axel raised an eyebrow, "Wait, did you seriously name Jam's evil form after yourself?!"

The larger monkey scratched his butt, "I literally gave myself the title of 'Great Sage Equal To Heaven', and you're expecting me to be humble?"

"Touche!"

Meerina pointed at Jam as he turned back to look at the card-knight, "Guys, let's focus here! We need to get Jam under control!"

The tiny monkey scoffed, "Who needs control when I have all this power?!" The monkey floated into the air and then snapped his fingers, causing several of the cards below him to return to their true forms as anthropomorphic stallions and mares.

"Thank you, kind sir!"

"Kind? Hardly, I just need more pawns on the fucking board!" Jam snapped his fingers, causing the mares and stallions to grow larger. Their muscle mass increased to ludicrous lengths, turning them into hulking monstrosities. Their eyes turned blood-red as they lost any form of consciousness or understanding, they were just bloated meat puppets to the simian god.

"Ha, what lovely buff freaks you made! I'll be sure to test your obedience in a minute, once I have you KILL the freak standing before me!"

Meerina panicked, "J-Jam, you can't! You're against killing, you've never killed a thing in your life!"

"Who cares?! This monster threatened you, he threatened Axel, and he tried to contain me! He awoke the dragon and now he'll get burned! Speaking of dragons..."

Jam's eyes turned green as his body started to grow, his black fur turning into hardened scales of the same color. His fingernails turned into sharp white claws, which expanded along with the rest of his body. His hands and hand-feet shifted into large scaly paws, big enough to crush mountains! His simian tail grew longer and thicker, becoming a massive reptilian tail the size of a long bus.

Jam's monkey muzzle grew out into a massive dragon's snout, smoke brimming from his crater-shaped nostrils. His body lowered itself into a four-legged stance, making him look more bestial in the process. Lastly, a pair of large black wings emerged from his back! The wings resembled the cape of some kind of evil villain, which Jam felt befit his new personality.

Jam stopped magically floating and began flapping his wings, which kept him airborne just as well. The new dragon ran his long, slimy tongue across his sharpened fangs. He then cackled maniacally as he marveled at his bulky reptile paws, "Yes, beware! Jam the monkey is no more, all hail Jam, the 'Dragon of Absolute Darkness'!"

Friday readied his blade, "Crap, this wasn't supposed to happen!"

Sun Wukong glared at Friday and gave him a reaffirming nod, Friday responding by giving a silent nod of his own. Wukong then turned to face the meerkat, "Meerina, whatever happens, I want you and Axel to go with the flow! Follow whatever is told of you and I'll be sure to contact you later,"

Meerina panicked, "O-Okay, but what about Jam?"

"He'll live, I'll be sure of it!" Sun Wukong said, right before giving his body a good stretch.

As the monkey king did his warmup stretches, the dark dragon stared daggers at Friday, "You bastard! You'll pay for threatening the ones I love! I'll bathe this whole universe in hellfire if I have to!"

The knight took to the air and held up the blunt end of his sword, "We'll just see about that, knights exist to slay dragons!"

"You're no knight, just a monster! Now, my lovely mutant Equinians, KILL HIM!"

The dragon pointed his claw at Friday, prompting the mutated horse-men to come after him. The knight fought them off with the blunt end of his sword, doing his best not to kill the mind controlled horse-people. Unfortunately for him, they proved too strong and started knocking him around! Sun Wukong noticed this and finished his stretching, before taking to the air and flying towards Jam.

He stopped in front of him and held his monkey paw out, "Jam, you have to calm down! You'll destroy the universe if you keep this up!"

"So fucking what?! This universe is an aberration, it turns its citizens into building blocks to form its wretched world! Who the fuck cares if I destroy it all?! NOW FUCK OFF!" Jam shouted, before taking a deep breath, which caused smoke to start billowing out from his nostrils. Jam then breathed a long stream of fire at Sun Wukong, engulfing the simian in flame! Jam eventually stopped and was surprised to find The Monkey King still floating there and completely unharmed!

The only thing that had been singed off was his orange jumpsuit, leaving the tall monkey man naked. He blushed and covered himself, "Dammit, Jam! That was the only outfit I had on me, y'know?! And I think we both know who cares: Your wife-to-be!"

Jam looked down at Meerina and noticed she was now crying. Jam's head began to throb as he grabbed hold of it, fighting to regain his sanity as he did so, "No, this is not me! I'm not a monster!"

Sun Wukong pumped his fists in the air, "That's right, you aren't! You're a perverted monkey who swaps bodies all the time and has misadventures!"

"Right, that's who I... That's who I..." Before Jam could finish, he passed out on the spot and started falling towards the ground. Jam transformed back into his brown-furred monkey self while plummeting, only for Sun Wukong to catch him mid-fall.

Meerina looked up with concern at the monkey duo as Sun Wukong floated back down towards them, "I-Is Jam okay?"

Sun Wukong nodded, "He is! It's just his demi-god powers awoke too soon and when mixed with rage, well... Let's just say it's not a good cocktail and leave it at that,"

Meerina sighed, "I can't believe this all went so wrong!"

Wukong pointed back at the Equinians, "I wouldn't say it ALL went wrong!"

Meerina turned and saw the Equinians that Jam had freed from their cards and mutated return to their proper anthropomorphic equine forms, "They're back to normal!"

Sun nodded, "Yes, even if that wasn't 'Dark Jam's' intention, he did manage to bring them back from a permanent fate. That doesn't make up for the chaos he wrought though,"

The beat-up knight-captain growled at them as he approached, "You better believe he doesn't!"

Sun Wukong winked at the knight as he made his way over to them, "Oh, dearie me! Look at the time, I must escape with my new 'son' in tow! Toodles!" With that, the Monkey King leaped into the sky with Jam still in his arms and disappeared in a flash of golden light. Friday didn't seem to care too much, turning his attention to Axel and Meerina instead.

Meerina readied her magic, "B-Back off!"

"Oh, my doughy meerkat, it's not me you have to fear! Our king is far more threatening than I, as you'll see..." The knight then clapped his hands, causing Axel and Meerina to feel funny. They felt their consciousness drifting into each other's bodies. They became dizzy for a bit, only to quickly snap into the reality of their new forms.

Axel pressed his fuzzy paw-like hands against his new snout, "I'm a meerkat?!"

Axel looked down at his body, admiring Meerina's flabby form. "She" now had soft yellow fur with a tan-colored belly. Her feet were now a pair of long meerkat paws, which made walking around in them feel like she was wearing clown shoes! She wore a green top with gold buttons, that kept her big, flabby breasts hidden.

She also had a large and rather fat belly, which drew Axel's attention the most. She grabbed her big belly and shook her flab about, like a chef twirling pizza dough. Axel snickered as he looked over at Meerina, now clad in Axel's former human body, "I hope you don't mind the belly grabbing, Meerina!"

The former meerkat hung his human head shamefully, refusing to make eye contact with Axel, "I-It's fine..."

Axel knew that Meerina was still shaken up about what happened, so he tried not to press further. She let go of her fat belly and let out a heavy sigh. She knew that Meerina couldn't enjoy the swap, not after seeing the near destruction of a universe at the hands of his beloved! Instead, the former human turned her attention to Friday, "So, why the swap? Not saying I don't appreciate Meerina's flabby form, but it seems kind of random,"

The knight nodded, "It does, but my king is explicit in that all mortals that appear before him must be in each other's bodies,"

"And why is that?"

"That's a question you'll have to ask him yourself, once I take you to his throne room!"

Meerina looked over at the Equinians, "What about them? Are you going to change them back into cards?"

The knight shook his head, "No, it's better they keep the forms they were born in. Regardless, shall we go?"

Meerina and Axel gave feint nods, prompting the knight to tap his sword on the ground. "Then we shall go! Steel yourselves, for the 'King of Saturday' is no normal being!" With that, Friday tapped his sword on the ground. This caused the trio to be encircled by a storm of playing cards, causing them to disappear from sight.

It looks like our heroes are in trouble! Jam has a new evil demi-god form he can't control, Meerina is broken, and now a mysterious evil king wants to meet with our heroes. With Jam captured and taken to a different world by his mysterious adoptive father for unknown purposes, things are heating up. Find out what happens in the next part, where we FINALLY find out about the tournament and what's going on in it! Yes, I know it's taking us 7000 words to get there, thanks for being patient!