Fighting Chance 2-4

Zain stomped out of Sensei Wing’s dojo with sweat cooling on his neck and a bruise blooming behind his right elbow. The bruise rolled sweet in his head, like a trophy he could push and feel and remember landing that spinning back fist on the older Japanese girl while she barked at him over and over, angle, angle, angle!.

He rolled his eyes and flapped his hands as he mocked her voice, letting out a light scoff under his breath at the same time.

Sure, he appreciated it, but it was real real easy to forget how hot she was when she yelled like a drill sergeant with a smoking habit. Even when she’s walking around in those shorts and a tank top.

Which was insane, when you think about it. I’m a teenager, my hormones should be everything, right? He narrowed his eyes. Right???

Zain shrugged continued on down the block with his chain wrapped once around his waist, links rattling under the hoodie whenever his hips snapped. Ten p.m. in Brooklyn tasted like diesel and fried chicken bones. Summer heat still clung to the concrete; everything else in the city had gone half-quiet except for sirens, drunk laughter, and one dude in front of a bodega banging a freestyle off-beat, as if today was the day someone would buy his mixtape.

Zain cut left at Nostrand, feet hitting the cracks he already memorized, body loose, brain drifting, stomach yelling almost as loud as his barking Sensei Collie about chicken lo mein. He thought about cutting across the park, decided nah, then froze as he heard it.

Screaming.

Not drunk screams. Not “yo that’s my girl” screams. This one ripped down the block like somebody was stapling lungs to drywall.

“HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

His sneakers were already slapping, already tearing down side streets toward the alley where it came from as everyone else minded their business. Reflex.

He hated that. Loved it too. We do dumb things for strangers now, huh?

As if he didn’t do dumb things just cause he felt like it too.

Streetlights thinned and buildings squeezed in and finally he spotted the alley: chain-link fence on one side, cracked brick on the other, dumpsters jammed with black garbage bags, spray paint ghosting everything. Shouts bounced off the walls and crashed into him as Zain slid to a stop, boots scraping gravel.

A kid, thirteen tops, stood dead-center. Flames rolled over and up his arms, bright orange licking his shoulders, yet not burning his skin in the slightest. His raggedy old white T-shirt wasn’t even singed either as he stared forward, eyes wide, cheeks streaked with soot, and lungs wheezing through raw panic.

Ten feet in front of that guy stood another boy—maybe fifteen—gripped a whole stopsign in his hands. Holy shit, Zain somehow managed to take a step back, standing his ground as he took it in.

It wasn’t a pole.

Not just.

It was the whole sign plus a stump of pipe and a crumbling concrete plug at the bottom. The bigger kid glared at the fire kid, as his mucles bulged under a black Wu-Tang muscle shirt, his veins standing out like cables. “Turn it off!”

Fire Kid flailed around, waving his arms like he was trying to take off. “Bro, I can’t turn it off!”

The big kid hefted the sign like he wanted a home run. “Stop moving ‘less you wanna burn the whole block down.”

“I’m TRYING!” Flames spiked brighter as the kid flapped harder, lighting up the graffiti on the walls with every single shake of his arms.

Zain exhaled, the sound the only thing he could pull to keep from laughing. Okay… let’s help out here. He edged in, taking a couple steps further into the alley. “Yo, what the hell—”

Big Kid snapped around, the big-ass stopsign still in his hands as his eyes locked on Zain.

For a second, nobody said anything.

Then the kid started growing. Fast. 

Five foot six became six foot, then six and a half, in front of Greg’s widening eyes. Shoulders popped like thick steel cables, while forearms thickened, and every bone in his body seemed to pop and bulge along with the rest of him as the pipe handle groaned in his grip.

A deep bass voice rolled out, way different from the slightly deep but much more normal sound from before. “The fuck are you?”

Zain blinked. “The fuck are you?”

Big Kid’s nostrils flared as he took an aggressive step forward. “I asked first.”

“Actually?” Zain shot back, pulling a face. “Technically? I did.”

Behind them, Fire Kid screeched again at the top of his lungs, sounding like he was auditioning for a Southern rock band when the fire clearly wasn’t hurting him. Both sets of eyes narrowed in irritation as Zain and the giant turned at the same instant.

“SHUT UP!,” they barked together.

Fire Kid’s flames went out as if a switch flipped, the only sign of it being smoke curling off the kid’s palms. The blond white kid stared at his no-longer lit palms, mouth hanging open. “Oh. Oh wow. That worked.”

Zain pulled another face. “What worked?”

“That,” the giant rumbled as his frame shrank inch by inch, chest sinking, shoulders relaxing as he squelched back down to a more normal size. A few seconds later, he looked much more like he should for a teenager, even if slightly winded.

With a loud sigh, he dropped the sign. Concrete chunk hit asphalt with a bone-sharp crack and a rat squeaked somewhere near the trash bags.

Zain cleared his throat as they all stared at each other, and he took the chance to look the bigger kid up and down. “So you a kid that gets big or an old dude that shrinks?”

The tall boy’s lip curled upwards, a curse either on his tongue or on his mind. Whether through patience or carefulness, the bigger kid held himself back and simply responded with a “What you think?”

Fire Kid rubbed his wrists, voice small. “Are you… um… are you calling the cops?”

Zain put a finger to his chin like he was actually thinking of doing something that dickheadish for no reason. “You gonna set me on fire?”

Fire Kid blinked. “I— uhh… no.”

“Then we good, flameboy.” He jerked his chin toward the street. “C’mon.”

Three minutes later, they found a hot-dog cart still open after the sunset because New York never does bedtime. The hot-dog man wasn’t really subtly the way he side-eyed all three of them but money talked louder than three suspicious-looking kids out after curfew, and nobody really liked to ask a lot of questions in this city.

One good thing about it. Zain crushed one dog in two bites, got mustard on his hoodie, and went after two more. Even the cops mind their business. The amount of random crime he’d seen in the months he’d been here…

If the cops were on the up-and-up, no way it’d be that bad.

The big kid wiped sweat off his forehead, and let out a burp as he crushed a pepsi almost as quickly as Zain finished off his first hotdog, and quickly went back into munching down another dog. “Name’s Elvin,” he said between mouthfuls.

Zain lifted a brow. “Elvin,” he repeated. Woooow, that’s a name.

“Got sum’ to say bout that?”

Zain knew he wasn’t strong enough to easily piss off the kind of guy who could one hand a stop sign, especially not someone who could rip it out of the ground, and that was before the weird mini-Hulk thing. Wait… mini-Hulk. His last name wouldn’t happen to be Cash… would it? His eyes narrowed for a second as he tried to think back. Wait, no, that wasn’t that guy’s real name, though… damn. “No, but like… the growing thing?”

Elvin shrugged, cheeks stuffed. “Been strong since kindergarten. The big-on-demand stuff started last year.”

Fire Kid hugged his free arm like he missed the flames’ warmth, his voice a slow drawl and his accent thick as cold maple syrup. “Vince. I’m from Arkansas.” 

Zain tilted his head slowly. Bro really hopped a Greyhound from the sticks and ended up in NYC? “So you spontaneously combust and he goes full jacked. Nice.”

Vince’s face went red, clear embarrassment showing on pale skin. “I don’t combust. It’s like… a switch. Sometimes it sticks.” He flicked a napkin. A tiny flame popped from his finger and vanished before it could light up the white paper. “Strength too. Not like big man, but like a little more than normal.”

Elvin crushed his third hot dog, cheeks puffed for a good few seconds as he chewed. “Been acting as street security for the last couple months in my hood. Folks pay for a big-ass bouncer, specially one like me.”

Zain couldn’t help but laugh at that, Pepsi almost trickling out of a closed mouth. “Bet.” Pushing down the soda, he licked mustard off his thumb and studied the other two. Two other kids, powers raw as uncooked chicken, city full of bad guys… hmmm.

He raised an eyebrow. “So… backstory time? How you two get the upgrades?”

Elvin flexed casually, veins still rope-thick even without transforming. “Always been big. Granny thinks it was some chemical spill on me when I was a baby, after this truck crashed on my street, splashing on me and my folks.” His face went weird, jaw tightening. “Grandma rushed us to the hospital, but the doctors said I was fine. Parents… not so much.”

Zain blinked. Damn.

“…Been getting even stronger since.” His tone went softer. “Size jumps started a couple years back right after thirteen.”

Vince edged closer to the edge of the street, sitting on the curb with his head hung a bit lower than it was before. “Used to be my old man’d knock me ‘round. Mama too. Belt, fists… whatever he had in reach.” Zain frowned as he watched the kid shake a little, as he sucked in a long low ragged breath. “One night… i just… I just lit up, y’know. Not like, mad. Lit up. Whole fire just comin’ off me. His arm ended up lookin’ like it just came off the grill.”

He shook his head, tongue licking dry lips. “Mama called me the damn devil and my brothers and sisters…. they were scared o’ me. So I went running, all the way here.”

Zain’s chain links clinked as he shifted weight and nudged Vince’s shoulder. “You safe now, fam.”

Elvin did the same as him. “Yeah, man, you good.”

Vince managed a smile, thin and crooked. “Thanks.”

“What about you?” Elvin turned his eyes Zain’s direction, locking onto him with a question. “You do something or just… y’know… normal?”

The martial artist out of the three let out another laugh, this one choking on nothing. “W-well, not normal, but like… my stuff came out of nowhere too. Weird things kinda happen to me, and I get weird… weird powers out of it. I’m a little tougher and stronger and faster than I should be… I guess.” He didn’t guess in the slightest, he knew that for a fact. Not a lot of fourteen year olds were out here deadlift 350 or sprinting almost a full mile in a little over two minutes without crashing out of exhaustion.

Hell, just holding a sprint for longer than 40 seconds was better than the average person could manage unless they trained cardio.

He was definitely not normal. “On top of that, I can like fall from anywhere, like any height, I think… and get up with like only some pain, no broken bones or nothin’.”

Elvin and Vince shot him weird looks, Elvin choosing to speak up first. “That’s… a weird mix, man.”

Vince blinked his way. “Yeah, a lil’ bit.”

Zain Powers caught himself staring back at Vince and blinked twice, mind trying to reach for something that had been scratching at the back of his mind. Something brushed his memory but the word jammed in his throat, barely even getting out of his mouth. Mut… mu… mut… huh. He shook it off. “So you both Wonders like Captain America or the Hulk?”

Elvin shrugged, still chewing. “Pretty much.”

Vince frowned. “N-nah, I wasn’t injected with anything, I don’t think.”

Zain nodded, fine with that information as the slight pain in his head seemed to recede. “Y’all got code names or you letting New York Post pick?”

Vince smirked, mood seeming to lighten. “Redneck.”

Elvin puffed up. “Rage.”

Zain rolled those two in his head, both of them seeming kind of familiar but not really, and grinned back at the both of them. “Aight. Call me Striker.”

Three more hot dogs each later, they found themselves leaning on a stoop one block away where old AC units rattled like sick respirators. Zain bounced his chain off his thigh, testing the weight, Elvin twisted a stub of pipe he found on the floor like a baton, while Vince rubbed some remaining soot off his arms.

Nobody spoke for a bit but they didn’t need to as the noise of New York at night filled the cracks enough. Finally, Elvin scratched the back of his neck. “I stay with Granny on Avenue U. She feeds everybody, even strays. If you two want, you can stay with me.”

Vince’s eyes went wide. “For real?”

Elvin smiled. “Can’t leave a bro freeze overnight.”

Zain laughed. “Facts.” He fist-bumped with each of them at once, a triangle of knuckles forming in the middle. Heat lingered from Vince’s skin; and Elvin’s fist felt like steel. “But don’t worry bout me, I got a place back on Monroe street in Chinatown.”

They backed onto the sidewalk as Vince glanced up. “So what do we do now?”

A low rough laugh spilled out of Elvin’s mouth, the bigger kid folding his arms. “You can do whatever, long as nobody disrespects Granny Halliday.”

Zain hooked his thumbs under his hoodie, looping around his chain beneath the cloth. Is this the start of a team-up? Aren’t we supposed to fight fi-

“You think we’re cursed?” Vince’s voice cut in, interrupting Zain mid-thought as the thirteen year old snapped his fingers and a fire sprung to life atop his thumb like a personal lighter. “Like, cause of stuff like this.”

Zain answered faster than he could think. “Nah… maybe if the fire burned you every time, it’d be a curse… but it could always be worse, man. Just keep moving forward.”

Elvin laughed, deep and rolling. “Granny’ll say God moves in weird ways.”

Zain shrugged. “We are pretty weird.”

They split at the corner, waving at each other. “Yo, Zee!” Elvin shouted back at him, “You should come by sometime. Grandma likes meeting my friends.”

Friends, huh?

“Hey, Striker!” Now, it was Vince’s turn to shout. “You ever wanna give an asshole a good kickin’, you can find me with the big guy.”

Elvin snorted. “Yeah, man. Plenty of shit in this city to clean up.”

Zain smiled back his way, expression growing wider till it hit a grin. “Good to meet y’all for real.”

Elvin and Vince headed south. Zain headed west, chain tucked again. He watched their backs until they vanished behind park gates. His fingers brushed metal links until they warmed.

This is either gonna be really fun or really stupid. He snorted to himself. Probably both.