Mishka: that’s a name you don’t want to mention around Chimp Chi.

 Well before his consciousness was developed the way it is today, Chimp Chi was a regular lab rat; well, a lab chimp to be precise. When the experimental shuttle was shot down and the apes and monkeys started developing human traits, most likely due to the exposure to cosmic radiation, each of them started specializing in one area of expertise. For Chi it was different. He was quiet and shy, always getting out of the way of others. And that’s it as far as his talents went.
Guerilla was annoyed by a chimp who could not handle a gun nor win a fist fight and teased him mercilessly calling him Mishka.  “I’m no lab rat” Chimp Chi thought and his resentment grew each time he heard Guerilla’s booming voice mocking him with that name. Guerilla decided to send Chi on a wild-goose chase, hoping that this experience would either bring out the best in the chimp or overwhelm him completely. Chi’s mission was to verify the rumor that the Soviets launched a second spacecraft full of apes and recruit its passengers for the A.R.C.

 The journey was long. Chimp Chi used the estimated crash coordinates handed to him by Virus, the A.R.C.’s own technical genius. The tracking device took him to the Far East. High in the mountains lay a monastery where monks strove to achieve the equilibrium of body and mind. The shuttle, now adorned as a shrine for some obscure reason, was there, but the passengers were long gone, their tracks lost in the deep snow.

 The monks knew the secrets of the shuttle but would not share them with a stranger. So Chimp Chi, for the first time in his life instead of getting out or getting away, decided to get in and  offered them to join their ranks if only to obtain the information.

Chi had to train hard for many weeks to pass three trials of the brotherhood.

 The Trial of the Unspoken Evil sent Chimp Chi to a mountain village. For many days, the chimp could not figure out why he had been sent there. So he waited

patiently in hiding until it became obvious that something wrong was going on in the peaceful settlement. It turned out that the leader of the community had been closing her eyes to the fact that the elders were offering firstborn daughters to a yeti. Chi spoke to the council and managed to convince them he would take care of the bloodthirsty creature of the mountains.

 The Trial of the Unseen Evil took place in a complete darkness of the cavern, way below the monastery. Chimp Chi had to recover an object from the monks’ treasury stolen many decades earlier. Descending the stairs into utter blackness, he relied on his chimp hearing and sense of smell.  Hearing the snoring and smelling the Evil, he crept past it to the deepest level of its lair.  There he searched by touching the Evil’s booty until he felt the markings of the monks’ property. When he returned to the light, Chi saw that he held an ancient ninjaken that felt like feather and cut like razor.

 Armed with his new weapon, Chimp went searching for the yeti, to complete the Trial of the Unheard Evil.  The quest took him to Yeti Mountain.  When he was nearing the summit, the howling winds rose and snow fell in thick flakes. Silently, the creature attacked for the first time, the weather its ally. The man of the mountains was a true hunter, leaving no tracks behind and striking out of the blizzard and retreating like a ghost behind the curtain of ever falling snow. The cuts from the icy claws bit deep into Chimp Chi’s back and the chilling gusts of the storm froze his blood into red icicles. Weak and vulnerable, Chi closed his eyes and forced the sound of the blizzard to fade in his mind, switching to his instincts.  When the yeti attacked again, he was ready; one swift slice from the ninjaken severed the yeti’s head from his body.

The monks were impressed with Chi’s prowess and gladly told about a group of five apes and monkeys led by Red Bella that headed towards Hong Kong. When the chimp made it there, the comrades were already long gone but left many enemies bent on finding them.

 Traces of Red Bella show up here and there around the world, now and then. Chimp Chi is always there. He believes that one day he will find them and prove his skills to Guerilla.