A Boy’s Tail 5

“Who the h—”

His head snapped around, every muscle in his body coiling tight as his tail sensed trouble before his brain caught up. Huh…  Blonde hair caught the streetlight, a perfect bob cut that looked like it cost as much as Hassan paid him this morning. 

I know you. 

Well, he’d seen her at least. 

Now and then.

Now? She stood behind his dojo, half-swallowed by the shadows of the alley, perfectly still as his breathing slowed down.

Then? She was the same white woman from this morning, the one standing there and here all still and calm like she hadn’t just been ten feet from a goddamn firefight. Her clothes were wrong for the neighborhood too, the long coat she wore expensive enough that it looked like it belonged in Georgetown, not East Baltimore, the type of person who was probably too good for Stabucks. 

His tail twitched once against his waist as he looked her up and down, and she looked back at him the way Sylvester looked at Tweety Bird; hungry.

“Mary.” The word left her lips, sounding as soft as they looked.

Shawn blinked. “…huh?”

“You can call me Mary,” she said with a smirk, clearly having caught him staring. “We need to move.”

What? He steadied his breath, blinking again as his tail twitched a second time; something about the way she said her name not feeling right. “What do you m—”

“Not here.” Her voice went from soft to warm, the woman looking over her shoulder. “The BPD response time to a supe-involved incident in this district is, on average, three minutes and forty-seven seconds. We have less than two.”

Shawn opened his mouth to argue, but the sound of distant sirens getting closer proved her point. He shut it with a click of teeth, jaw muscle jumping as he followed the already-moving woman down the block.

Bare feet gripped on concrete still warm from the day’s heat and minutes later, he was at the far end of the street. Behind them, his block was a mess of flashing lights, annoyed cops, and city grunts cleaning up Vought’s mess. Mary stood there waiting, hands in her pockets, looking at him the way mechanics looked at engines they were about to take apart.

“So,” he said, because somebody had to break the silence and it didn’t look like it was gonna be her.

“So.” She tilted her head slightly, a calm smile spreading across her face. “You’re fast, you’re strong, and you’re running a one-man protection racket to pay for groceries. You don’t remember anything past six… seven months ago, a tail that isn’t human, and you’re wondering how a Vought tactical team knew exactly where to find your dojo.”

Shawn just watched Mary’s mouth as she kept talking, heavy hands flexing and unflexing at his sides. Part of him wanted to ask how she knew all that, but the smarter parts were telling him to let her talk. Still, though… How does she… dumb question, prob’ly working with the government.  “Yeah, what about it?

“You think you’re alone running around wondering where your powers came from?” A recruitment pitch, huh. Shawn knew he wasn’t as smart as he used to remember; whether he could blame that on being dead or being part alien monkey he wasn’t sure, but he knew one of those when he heard one. “You’re not.”

Brown eyes narrowed as they stared back into blue, wondering where this lady was going with this pitch of hers though. “…okay?”

“Vought didn’t send that team to kill you, handsome.” Her voice dropped, went soft and round, vowels stretching out like honey. “They sent them to test their new hardware. A live-fire exercise.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“You didn’t wonder where they get the bodies to test anti-supe tech on?”

“No! The fuck would I?” He frowned, lowered his voice when he realized he was getting loud again. “I’ve never thought about anti-supe tech till right goddamn now.”

“Right,” she nodded slowly as if she was just realizing something, Shawn not buying it a single bit. “You’ve been busy playing neighborhood hero, keeping your head down, teaching kids how to throw a punch. Very admirable. Very… contained.”

Mary’s smile got a little sharper around the edges.. “What do you know about underground fighting?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“Malik!”

The air in here smelled like weed, dog shit, and mold in that order.

Three things he wasn’t a fan of.

“Malik!”

Shawn stood outside the ratty apartment in Greenmount East, gray paint chipping off the door in curls that looked like scabs. His fist hit the door again, heavy as he could without breaking the damn thing down.. Each one just a little harder, not frantic but getting there.

No answer. Again.

It’d been three days since the Gambino boys tried to fuck up his dojo, three days since he’d heard from the kid. Malik hadn’t shown up for class, didn’t pick up calls, didn’t even text back with some bullshit excuse about being sick. Just… gone.

That didn’t make sense.

If there was one thing Malik didn’t play about, it was his money and it was already payday.

A hard frown on his face, Shawn stepped back from the door, and shot a dirty look at the man who walked right past him, his tail flicking out enough to mark him as a supe before the idiot could try something. “Motherfuck… where are you?” Shaking his head, the fighter reached into the pocket of his gi and pulled out his phone, quickly dialing Malik’s number while staring at the peeling door. 

It rang once, twice, a third time, and his frown only deepened. What the…

He leaned closer, ear almost up tight against the door and he heard it. A faint buzzing from inside the apartment, tinny and far away. Fuck me.

He didn’t even have his phone on him. That… that ain’t normal.

Something like ice twisted in his gut, Shawn hoping this wasn’t as bad as it was already looking like. Okay… No time to feel bad about shit; decisions had to be made and he was gonna make them. Time to hit the streets.

His plan was simple enough.

He wasn’t gonna ask randoms about Malik ‘cause they wouldn’t say shit. This was Baltimore; they’d lie right to his face or just act stupid to avoid getting involved. 

But Mrs. Henderson was different. She was old, she liked to talk, and on top of that, she sat on her stoop every morning and didn’t leave till the evening, seven to seven. Her eyes might be going but she still saw almost everything that moved in the neighborhood. 

More than that, she liked him.

It took him a couple minutes, no longer than five, and he found her two blocks over, gray hair wrapped in a scarf, sitting on the stoop and watching everything go by.

“Mrs. Henderson.”

The old lady looked up, and squinted at him through thick glasses. “Shawny boy, how you doing, young man?”

“I’m doing okay,” he answered back, keeping his body as still as he could as he stood at the very bottom of the stoop. Getting too close to Mrs. Henderson was an issue. Old lady was grabby sometimes.

She pursed her lips, eyes narrowed behind those silver-framed glasses. “Just okay don’t sound all that good to me. You need your tail brushed again?”

Shawn’s lips went just as tight as his tail, as it wrapped itself just a little bit more around his waist. “Umm… nah, I don’t think so, umm… I think once was enough.”

“If you say so, baby.”

She was a nice old lady, he knew that much; just a little weird about his tail. “You happen to see Malik around?” he asked, keeping his voice light as he changed the subject. “Been looking for him. He left his check behind at work a couple days ago.”

“The Tillman boy?”

Shawn nodded slow. “Yeah, Malik.”

“Hmmm, maybe two nights ago, I saw the boy.” She nodded along with him, as if to jog her own memory. “Got into a car with some men. Didn’t look like they belonged round here.”

Shawn’s eyes narrowed a little. “What… what kinda men?”

“Wearing suits, but too big for them,” the old lady chuckled a little, still nodding. “Look like they never worked a job a day in their life that needed one though. Headed toward the docks, I’m pretty sure..”

The docks. Mary’s voice echoed in his head from three days back, smooth and promising secrets. Underground fighting. Why are all my kids so dumb, bro? He growled low in his chest, a sound that came from somewhere deeper than human. “Goddamnit, man.”

“Watch your fuckin’ mouth, boy.”

Shawn winced. “Sorry, Mrs. Henderson.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The Canton docks at night were a graveyard made of shadows and salt air.

Shawn moved through the maze of shipping containers, bare feet silent on cracked asphalt as he kept thinking about Malik and what shit the kid could have gotten up to. The math was all coming together in his head, and he didn’t need to think any deeper about it.

The kid needed cash for his grandmother’s medical bills and while Shawn was paying above minimum wage, he wasn’t paying that much above it.

Add the fact that there was apparently a meat grinder down at the docks paying top dollar for fresh meat. If you were eighteen and needed money quick and didn’t have the connections to move drugs, it made perfect sense honestly… if you were a fucking idiot.

On top of that, the two problems; Malik disappearing and Vought coming for him with fancy gear; he didn’t like how they were all of a sudden the same shape.

Scrambling up on top of a shipping container, Shawn froze and went flat a half-second later as he clocked the guards rounding the corner. Not regular dock security, he could tell that much; these guys were too big for that, honestly.. 

Well, at least half of them did. Even from a distance, they looked like they weighed at least as much as he did. Juiced?

On top of that, they were carrying cattle prods, the kind you used to move stubborn animals.

Or maybe fighters who got out of line.

He followed them at a distance, staying low, using the containers for cover. His tail unwrapped from his waist, black against the darkness, hooking around a steel beam as he climbed unheard to the roof of a warehouse.

Inside, the air was thick enough to chew, enough to give him a headache as his nose fought for its life. Sweat, stale beer, and blood mixing into industrial strength bleach made this whole place hell on earth for him. A makeshift arena sat in the center, concrete barriers and chain-link fence lit by harsh industrial lamps that turned everything ugly yellow. The crowd was a tight knot of people with greedy faces, money changing hands fast and quiet.

In the ring, two figures were locked in a brutal clinch. Supes, he realized.

They had to be. They were moving too fast, hitting too hard for regular people.

On top of that, one of them had stone-looking skin. So, there was that, too.

He had never seen either of them too, which was weird. Shawn’s mind ran through faces he’d memorized back when he was still busting his ass to get a Vought contract, before he gave up when they asked if he’d consider cutting off his tail for “mainstream appeal.” Even after giving that up months ago, he remembered enough to know that there were maybe two dozen supes this side of Baltimore, and all of them no stronger than him. 

And that was him being generous as hell. These guys weren’t much stronger than those supes but they definitely weren’t them, either.

Which meant they were importing talent. Where from, though? He frowned at the thought. And why’s Malik part of it?

Shawn’s hands flexed once, eyes narrowing as he tracked the fight, trying to make sense of what was going on here.

One of the fighters had skin that looked like the pavement outside his dojo; gray, cracked and beat to fuckin’ hell, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The guy was a big bastard, built for haymakers and stupid power, and he seemed to be as strong as he was tough. 

The other guy in the ring with him was a different story; a smaller looking guy with no hair like Mr. Asphalt but normal looking dark-caramel skin. He was faster than the other guy too, dancing around with some kind of crackling energy wrapped tight around his arms and legs that made the air shimmer.

But the energy was flickering. 

Shawn’s eyes narrowed. Tired. Or he could also be hurt, too.

Crackles stumbled back, wincing as his foot hit the mat and Shawn nodded as he realized he was thinking too small. Both.

The stone-skin supe saw it too, and the road-warrior pressed forward. Energy-boy tried again with one more blast, something that should’ve sent granite-skin flying like it did before, but it barely pushed him back a step.

Then it was over.

Stone-skin caught the smaller guy by the throat, lifted him up, and drove his head into the concrete floor with a sound that made Shawn wince. KRACK.

The kind of crunch that said somebody wasn’t getting back up for at least a couple days..

The crowd lost its damn mind, a bunch of grown men suddenly toddlers as they were screaming and throwing money and beer cans and probably piss for all he knew.

Shawn’s eyes moved away from the mess in the ring, scanning the edges of the crowd, looking for… there.

Malik.

He was standing near the back with his shoulders bunched up around his ears, trying to look tough and failing hard. The kid was talking to some white guy in a suit, and even from up here Shawn could see the terror written all over his face.

The cold knot in his gut turned to ice and, without even thinking, Malik let go and dropped from the rafters.

His bare feet landed with a soft thud on the warehouse floor, three heads turning his way almost immediately. He ignored the confused looks of more and more people as he moved through the crowd, people stepping aside without knowing why, some animal part of their brains telling them to get out of the way.

Before he could even get halfway, two big fuckers stepped in his path, both built thick as Baltimore brownstones in suits that were built for people both bigger and smaller than them at the same time. “Private party, man. You ain’t on the list.”

Shawn didn’t waste breath answering as the first guard reached for his shoulder.

The fighter caught the guard’s arm and twisted hard, bone grinding against bone until something gave with a wet pop.

The man screamed but the sound never finished—a heavy hook slammed into his ribs with the wet crunch of bone folding, all the air leaving his body as he dropped, body folded like an omelet. Don’t fuckin’ touch me.

He didn’t stop moving, already ducking the baton whistling straight towards his head in a quick arc. Shawn’s muscles coiled, a growl bursting from his mouth the same instant his legs burst forward, a hard shoulder tackle hitting the taller man right in the chest.

Both of their bodies went through the makeshift bar like it was cardboard; people scrambling and screaming as wood exploded into splinters, bottles erupting into nothing but shards of glass and rivers of liquor.

Three more guards rushed at him, boots hammering his way from different angles; each one seemingly as tough as the guys who just came at him. Definitely some kind of juice, he could tell with the way he had to put some actual weight into his hits. Shaking his head, Shawn jumped back to his feet and rushed forward. These guys are too tough to be normal.

Rushing up to the nearest guard, Shawn spun as he swung his tail out in a brutal arc, catching the bastard square in the face before the man could raise his hands. The impact knocked him back, almost a straight launch into the crowd behind him as he bowled through five bystanders, bodies tumbling and screaming as they went down in a mess of limbs.

He growled again as he felt a pair of big arms latch on to him from behind, some idiot going for a chokehold. Shawn spun inside the grip, hands grabbing a fistful of ill-fitting suit, and hurled the bastard through a stack of wooden pallets like he weighed nothing. The whole stack detonated like a bomb hit it, four hundred pounds of bulked-up bodyguard tearing right through it and turning the whole thing into shitty kindling.

The right one backed off, hands up with a taser still in his grip.

Shawn shot him a look. “You gon’ drop that?”

The thing dropped to the ground in a clatter of plastic and the last guard backed off even further, not taking his eyes off Shawn until he was hidden by the crowd.

The monkey-tailed man let out a breath; the whole thing had taken eight seconds, maybe ten, if he counted the last guy. Four guards down, scattered across the warehouse like broken toys in bad suits.

The whole warehouse went dead quiet for another three seconds. Then it erupted.

Nobody was watching the ring anymore. They were watching him. And somebody started chanting.

“King… Kong… King… Kong…”

Hate that fuckin’ name, man. Before he could yell at them to shut up, somebody walked up to him and Shawn found himself raising an eyebrow. 

A white guy in a blue suit worthy of Steve Harvey walked up to him, wearing blue sunglasses. 

Indoors. At night. 

“Mr. Kong. A pleasure,” the guy sounded off as he came to a stop, his voice low and clearly used to being listened to. “Name’s Bishop. Heard about you recently. Seems like your bite lives up to the bark indeed.”

Shawn’s head tilted to the side, voice going flat as he tried to fight the urge to do this guy like the guards. “I’m not a fuckin’ dog, man.”

Bishop’s smile was thin, not the kind of smile you laughed with. “Never said you were. Just an analogy, my friend. What can my little establishment do for you tonight?”

Shawn shook his head, pushing the anger down somewhere else for later. “I’m here to pick up a friend.”

“A friend?”

A fat finger pointed past Bishop, right at the eighteen-year-old Shawn had spent the latter half of his day looking for. “A friend,” he repeated.

“Oh, Malik’s your friend?” Bishop said back, thin smile widening as he tapped the side of his head with one hand. “That boy’s a good friend of mine, too. Unfortunately, he’s also a client of mine and I don’t really mix friendships with business like that.”

Fuck me… Shawn bit back the growl in his chest, heat rising as he fought to keep his hands loose. “…how much he owe you?”

That wide smile shifted into a grin. “Well, that’s less the question and more what he’s gonna do for me, okay? See, our mutual friend over there agreed to participate in the non-supe fights we also do here. Less popular, sure, but still good money, you understand? Now, his agreement is for a ten-fight win minimum. Shame he lost his first one already.”

Shawn looked at the kid’s face properly and the growl slipped out. It wasn’t anything too bad, but it was bad enough. A busted lip, left eye swollen half-shut, and some other purple to his skin; all of it about a day old. What’d you get yourself into, Malik? The kid still couldn’t meet his eyes, the beaten teenager just staring at the floor with shame rolling off him in waves thick enough to choke on.

“Ten wins goes toward the hospital bills I’m covering for him. Now, you could try to walk him out of here but then Granny Tillman might have a heart attack once she finds out how bad her bill’s gonna be.” Bishop paused, head tilting down to the now-clenched fists at Shawn’s sides, large arms clearly twitching for a figgt. “You could also act aggressively, but I don’t think you’re the type of supe that could brush off armor piercing rounds, no?”

Shawn winced, fists going loose after a few seconds. “…nobody’s gonna act aggressively.”

“Spectacular!” Bishop shouted out, hands coming together in a happy clap. “Now, above all else, I’m a fair man who believes in the art of the deal. So, I’mma make you one. You fight for me… on the supe side, of course, and make it to the main event, and as long as you win, the kid’s debt is cleared. He walks and you…” 

Bishop nodded his head. “You even get the winner’s purse. 100 stacks, all for you, monkey man. Now, tell me, that ain’t a fair deal?”

Shawn looked at Malik for a second longer before his eyes landed back on Bishop, the man’s smile smug as hell beneath those stupid sunglasses, confident in a way that said he’d had this conversation before and knew how it always ended.

Shawn let out a slow breath, air hissing between his teeth as his thick black tail twitched once against his waist.

“How many fights till the main?”