Concrete Kings
by D D
An origin story of two brothers who acquire supernatural abilities and come together to fight against evil.
Realistic 3D
sci_fi
09
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Concrete Kings
The people of Ashcroft had a saying: If you could survive Eastgate, you could survive anywhere.
Eastgate sat on the southern edge of the city, boxed in by abandoned factories, elevated train tracks, and rows of aging brick apartment buildings. During the day, children raced bicycles through narrow streets while music poured from open windows. Smoke from barbecue grills drifted over crowded porches, and old men slapped dominoes against folding tables outside Franklin’s Market.
At night, the neighborhood became something else.
Streetlights flickered. Store owners lowered steel gates over their windows. Mothers called their children inside before the sun disappeared behind the empty Westfield Steel Plant.
Twenty-two-year-old Tamir Brooks had spent most of his life trying to convince people that Eastgate was more than what appeared on the evening news.
Tamir stood six-foot-three with broad shoulders, long arms, and deep mahogany-brown skin. Years of construction work had built dense muscle across his back and chest. His face was serious and angular, with a square jaw, a neatly trimmed beard, and a thin scar cutting diagonally through his left eyebrow. Short black twists rested beneath the fitted caps he wore almost every day.
His dark brown eyes always seemed to be studying something.
A damaged roof.
A frightened child.
A man standing too long near a parked car.
Tamir noticed trouble before trouble noticed him.
His younger brother, Trevon Brooks, usually noticed trouble after he had already run toward it.
At nineteen, Trevon was lean and athletic, with warm caramel-brown skin and shoulder-length freeform locs tied loosely behind his head. His face was narrower than Tamir’s, with high cheekbones, expressive eyebrows, and a bright smile that appeared even when circumstances gave him no reason to use it. A small tattoo reading FAMILY FIRST stretched beneath his left collarbone.
Trevon had quick hands, quicker feet, and almost no patience.
Where Tamir measured every decision, Trevon trusted instinct.
Where Tamir saw consequences, Trevon saw possibilities.
They argued constantly.
They also never abandoned each other.
Their mother, Denise Brooks, often said they were two halves of one whole person.
Denise was a forty-eight-year-old nurse with smooth dark skin, tired hazel-brown eyes, and thick black curls usually gathered into a bun. She had raised her sons alone after their father disappeared when Trevon was five. Her voice could soften an angry patient or silence both sons with a single word.
Their closest friend, Malik Owens, had grown up in the apartment building next door.
Malik was twenty-three, stocky and strong, with dark chocolate skin, a low fade, a sharply shaped beard, and unusually light hazel eyes. He owned a struggling auto-repair garage called Owens Motor Works, though most people in Eastgate simply called it Malik’s.
He could repair nearly anything with an engine.
He was also one unpaid bill away from losing the garage.
“You two keep fixing things for free,” Malik said one summer afternoon, “and eventually y’all are going to be broke heroes with excellent reputations.”
Tamir tightened a bolt on a newly installed basketball hoop at Jefferson Park.
“Somebody had to replace it.”
“The city was supposed to replace it.”
“The city forgot.”
Malik leaned against the fence and folded his thick arms. “The city forgets Eastgate exists every day. That doesn’t mean you have to become the mayor.”
Trevon hung from the basketball rim with one hand.
“Mayor Tamir Brooks,” he announced. “First law: nobody allowed to have fun.”
“Get off the rim before you break it again,” Tamir said.
A group of children laughed.
For a few minutes, Jefferson Park felt like the neighborhood Tamir remembered from childhood.
Then thunder rolled across the sky.
Dark clouds gathered over the Westfield Steel Plant.
The temperature dropped so quickly that Tamir saw his breath.
“That storm came out of nowhere,” Malik said.
Lightning spread through the clouds in branching blue veins.
Every streetlight went dark.
Phones shut off.
Cars stalled in the middle of traffic.
The children stopped laughing.
A glowing object tore through the clouds.
It was larger than a truck and surrounded by blue fire. It crossed the sky without making a sound, then disappeared behind the rusted smokestacks of Westfield Steel.
The explosion came several seconds later.
The ground lifted beneath their feet.
Windows shattered across Eastgate.
A column of blue energy shot toward the clouds.
Tamir looked at Trevon.
Trevon was already running toward Malik’s car.
“No,” Tamir said.
“Yes.”
“We don’t know what that was.”
“That’s why we have to go look.”
“That is the exact opposite of good reasoning.”
Malik pulled out his keys.
Tamir stared at him.
Malik shrugged. “You know he’ll go without us.”
Ten minutes later, the three of them stood outside the abandoned steel plant.
The twisted gates had been blown inward.
Blue light pulsed from inside the enormous building.
Malik remained near the car.
“I’ve officially changed my mind,” he said. “We should leave.”
Trevon stepped through the gates.
Tamir sighed and followed him.
The factory smelled of rust, rainwater, and burned metal. Broken conveyor belts stretched through the darkness. Chains swung from the ceiling even though there was no wind.
At the center of the building, a crater had torn through the concrete floor.
Inside it rested a black metallic sphere the size of a van.
Its surface moved like liquid.
Blue lines pulsed across it in a rhythm that resembled a heartbeat.
Trevon approached it.
Tamir caught his shoulder.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were reaching for it.”
“I was pointing.”
“With all five fingers?”
The sphere unfolded.
Metallic layers peeled back like the petals of a mechanical flower.
A crystal floated inside.
It was nearly four feet tall, transparent but filled with swirling blue clouds, flickering stars, and thin bolts of silver lightning.
A voice entered their minds.
ENERGY-BEARING WORLD LOCATED.
Tamir stumbled backward.
Trevon grabbed his head.
Malik ran toward them. “What’s wrong?”
The crystal brightened.
BIOLOGICAL COMPATIBILITY DETECTED.
“Everybody move!” Tamir shouted.
The crystal exploded.
Blue energy struck the brothers.
Tamir threw himself in front of Trevon, but the blast divided around him and entered both their bodies.
Malik was thrown across the factory.
The entire building shook.
Steel beams ripped from the ceiling.
Concrete split beneath Tamir’s feet.
Then everything went black.
Tamir awoke floating above the crater.
His body hung horizontally six feet above the ground.
Dust and broken glass orbited him in slow circles.
He opened his eyes.
The gravity vanished.
He crashed to the floor.
Across the factory, Trevon rose unsteadily.
Metal bolts rolled toward his shoes.
Chains lifted from the floor.
An abandoned forklift slid several feet in his direction.
“Trevon,” Tamir said carefully. “Don’t move.”
“I’m not doing this.”
Electricity burst from Trevon’s hands.
The blast struck a support column.
The column exploded.
The ceiling collapsed.
Tamir raised his arms.
A pulse moved through his body.
The falling steel beams stopped in midair.
Tamir stared upward.
Thousands of pounds of metal floated inches above them.
His nose began bleeding.
“I can’t hold it!”
Malik dragged himself behind a concrete barrier.
“Then put it somewhere else!”
Tamir thrust both hands sideways.
The beams flew through the factory wall.
The effort launched Tamir in the opposite direction. He crashed through a window and disappeared into the storm.
“TAMIR!”
Trevon ran after him.
A blue electrical field surrounded Trevon’s body.
Every metal object nearby was pulled toward him.
A car door tore from its hinges.
Tools shot through the air.
Malik flattened himself against the ground.
“Trevon, shut it off!”
“I don’t know how!”
The electrical field expanded.
Then a bolt of lightning struck Trevon through the broken roof.
The factory windows exploded.
For one terrifying second, Trevon’s skeleton glowed beneath his skin.
Then the power vanished.
He collapsed beside the crater.
Tamir landed in the Ashcroft River almost half a mile away.
He climbed onto the muddy bank, coughing and shaking.
When he tried to stand, his feet left the ground.
He rose slowly into the air.
“No, no, no.”
He grabbed a tree branch.
The branch bent.
Tamir floated upside down above the river, gripping it with both hands.
A police helicopter passed in the distance.
Tamir pulled himself into the branches and remained there until Malik found him.
By sunrise, the three friends had agreed on two things.
First, nobody could know what had happened.
Second, Tamir and Trevon needed help.
Malik brought them to the only person he trusted.
His aunt, Dr. Imani Cross.
Imani lived above a closed electronics store on the west side of Ashcroft. She was fifty-five, tall and slender, with copper-brown skin, silver-streaked locs, and rectangular glasses that magnified her intelligent dark eyes. Before the Westfield plant closed, she had worked there as a materials engineer.
Her apartment was crowded with machines, circuit boards, computer screens, and half-built inventions.
Imani listened silently as the brothers explained.
Then she examined their blood beneath a microscope.
“The energy didn’t simply enter your bodies,” she said. “It rewrote them.”
Trevon leaned forward. “Rewrote them into what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Tamir folded his arms. “Can it be removed?”
Imani looked at him.
“No.”
During the following weeks, the brothers trained inside an abandoned subway tunnel beneath Malik’s garage.
Tamir discovered that he could manipulate gravitational fields.
At first, he could only make himself lighter or heavier.
Then he learned to affect objects around him.
He lifted cars.
Pinned concrete blocks to the ground.
Ran along walls.
During one training session, he accidentally increased his own weight so severely that his feet sank through the tunnel floor.
Flying was even more difficult.
Tamir could remove gravity’s pull, but steering required concentration.
He crashed into walls, pipes, dumpsters, and once through the roof of Malik’s garage.
Trevon laughed until Tamir reminded him that Trevon had blacked out half the neighborhood the previous evening.
Trevon’s body generated electromagnetic energy.
He could control electricity, draw power from nearby sources, manipulate metal, and produce magnetic shields.
His abilities were stronger than Tamir’s but far less stable.
When Trevon became angry, lights flickered.
When he became frightened, phones malfunctioned.
When he sneezed, every car alarm within two blocks activated.
The brothers soon realized their normal clothes could not survive their powers.
Tamir’s shirts tore whenever he increased his density.
Trevon burned through six pairs of shoes.
Dr. Cross began designing protective suits using fragments recovered from the alien sphere.
Malik handled the construction.
“I fix transmissions,” he complained while welding a chest plate. “I don’t build space armor.”
“You’ve been saying that for three weeks,” Trevon said.
“And yet, here I am building space armor.”
Tamir’s suit was designed first.
The base layer consisted of flexible black material that tightened around his muscular frame without restricting movement. Dark gray armor covered his chest, shoulders, forearms, thighs, and shins. The armor’s rough texture resembled cracked concrete, and thin blue lines glowed beneath the cracks whenever Tamir used his abilities.
A silver emblem stretched across his chest: two tall buildings forming the sides of a crown.
His mask covered the upper half of his face, leaving his jaw and beard exposed. A short hood attached to the back of his suit, and a heavy black cape fell from one shoulder. Dr. Cross had woven the cape from alien fibers that reacted to gravitational shifts, allowing it to stabilize him during flight.
Trevon’s suit was leaner and more flexible.
It was charcoal black with metallic silver panels along his ribs, shoulders, and legs. Glowing blue circuits spread across the material like lightning veins. His forearms were protected by thick magnetic gauntlets capable of storing excess energy.
His full mask had narrow blue lenses over the eyes and left his locs flowing freely behind his head. The same crown emblem appeared on his chest, split through the center by a lightning bolt.
Trevon studied himself in the mirror.
“I look incredible.”
“You look like a light-up action figure,” Tamir said.
“A very expensive light-up action figure.”
Malik stepped back and admired them.
“So what are people supposed to call you?”
Tamir looked down at the crown emblem.
“We’re not trying to become celebrities.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Before they could answer, every television in the apartment activated.
A bald man appeared on the screens.
He sat in a dark room wearing a charcoal-gray suit over a powerful six-foot-six frame. His skin was medium brown, his jaw clean-shaven, and green serpent tattoos curled from beneath his collar toward the back of his head.
His left eye had been replaced with a mechanical lens glowing poisonous green.
“My name is Silas Vane,” he said. “But Ashcroft will soon know me as King Viper.”
Dr. Cross became pale.
“You know him?” Tamir asked.
Imani nodded slowly.
“He owned the company that bought Westfield Steel before it closed.”
On the screen, Silas smiled.
“For decades, this city has been ruled by cowards. Politicians who promise change. Police who protect wealth instead of people. Businessmen who drain neighborhoods and leave behind empty buildings.”
Behind him appeared footage of Eastgate.
“I was born in those streets. I watched my mother die because an ambulance took forty minutes to arrive. I watched my father work himself into an early grave inside Westfield Steel. Ashcroft abandoned us.”
His mechanical eye narrowed.
“So I will rebuild Ashcroft through control. Resistance will be treated as disease. And I will be the cure.”
The broadcast ended.
Tamir stared at the blank screen.
“He thinks he’s saving the city.”
“No,” Dr. Cross said. “Silas Vane stopped caring about saving anyone years ago.”
King Viper’s first attack came during the Eastgate Summer Festival.
The streets were filled with food vendors, music, games, and hundreds of families.
Denise Brooks stood beneath a red canopy serving plates of barbecue chicken. Malik worked on a generator near the stage. Tamir and Trevon walked through the crowd in ordinary clothes.
A high-pitched hum spread across the sky.
Tamir looked up.
Black drones descended between the buildings.
They were shaped like metallic insects, with green lights glowing beneath their wings.
One fired into the street.
The explosion overturned a food truck.
People screamed and ran.
More drones appeared.
A city bus swerved to avoid the crowd, crashed through a barrier, and stopped with half of its body hanging from an elevated bridge.
Children were trapped inside.
Tamir grabbed Trevon.
“The suits.”
They sprinted into an alley.
Moments later, two masked figures launched from the rooftop.
Tamir flew toward the bus, his cape snapping behind him.
The vehicle began sliding over the edge.
Passengers pounded against the windows.
Tamir landed beneath it and raised both hands.
Gravity bent around the bus.
The vehicle became nearly weightless.
Tamir pushed it back onto the bridge.
Below, the crowd stared in disbelief.
Trevon leaped onto a streetlight and extended his gauntlets.
Blue electricity raced through the air.
He seized control of the drones’ metal frames, pulling six machines together before crushing them into a compact ball.
A drone fired at him.
Trevon created a glowing magnetic shield.
The blast reflected into another drone.
Tamir flew past him.
“Show-off.”
“You wore a cape!”
A larger drone descended behind Tamir.
Trevon hurled the metal ball.
It struck the drone and sent it through the side of an abandoned building.
Near the festival stage, a damaged apartment wall began collapsing toward a group of children.
Tamir flew downward and increased gravity beneath the falling bricks.
The debris slammed harmlessly into the ground.
Trevon landed beside him, surrounded by arcs of blue electricity.
News cameras captured the moment.
Two Black brothers stood in the center of Eastgate wearing crowns on their chests while broken machines burned around them.
A young boy pointed.
“They look like kings!”
Someone in the crowd shouted, “The Concrete Kings!”
Others repeated it.
The name spread through Eastgate before the brothers could object.
By nightfall, it was trending across the country.
Ashcroft changed after the festival.
Murals appeared on brick walls depicting Tamir and Trevon standing above the skyline.
Children tied towels around their shoulders and jumped from porch steps.
Local businesses sold shirts bearing the crown emblem.
But King Viper began hunting them.
His soldiers raided power stations, research laboratories, and military warehouses.
Each robbery involved technology created from alien material.
Dr. Cross discovered that the crystal from Westfield Steel had broken apart before reaching Earth. King Viper had recovered several fragments years earlier from an underground impact site beneath the factory.
He had spent years building weapons.
The largest fragment remained somewhere beneath Ashcroft.
One night, King Viper’s soldiers attacked an elevated train carrying nearly two hundred passengers.
The train accelerated beyond control.
It tore through stations and struck cars from the tracks.
Tamir flew beside it while Trevon landed on the roof.
“I need you to slow it down!” Tamir shouted.
“The brakes are fried!”
“Use the tracks!”
“That could derail it!”
The train approached a sharp curve.
Trevon pressed both gauntlets against the roof.
His eyes glowed blue behind his mask.
Electricity poured through the train.
He magnetized the wheels against the rails.
Metal screamed.
Sparks surrounded the train.
Tamir flew ahead and created a gravitational field in front of it.
The speeding cars became heavier with every foot they traveled.
Windows shattered.
Passengers were thrown forward.
But the train slowed.
It stopped inches before the broken section of track.
Trevon dropped to one knee, exhausted.
Tamir landed beside him.
“You good?”
“My entire body feels like it got microwaved.”
“So that’s a no.”
A green beam struck Tamir in the chest.
He flew from the train.
King Viper landed on the tracks wearing a heavy black-and-green armored suit. Alien metal covered his shoulders and arms. His mechanical eye connected to a glowing crystal embedded in his chest plate.
He seized Trevon by the throat.
“You were given the power to transform this city,” Viper said. “And you waste it rescuing people who will forget you.”
Trevon released electricity into Viper’s armor.
Nothing happened.
Viper smiled.
“My suit feeds on energy.”
He slammed Trevon through the train roof.
Tamir returned like a missile.
He struck Viper and carried him through two concrete support columns.
The elevated track shook.
Viper fired a green blast into Tamir’s side.
Tamir crashed into the street below.
Viper looked down at both brothers.
“Join me,” he said. “Eastgate could become the center of a new world.”
Tamir struggled to his feet.
“A world with you controlling everybody?”
“A world where no child waits forty minutes for an ambulance.”
“And how many children do you kill building it?”
Viper’s expression hardened.
“Sacrifice is the price of progress.”
Tamir increased Viper’s weight.
The track cracked beneath the villain’s boots.
Trevon magnetically ripped the crystal from Viper’s chest.
His armor shut down.
Viper fell through the damaged track and disappeared into the darkness below.
When the brothers searched the street, he was gone.
The battle divided Tamir and Trevon.
Trevon could not stop thinking about Viper’s words.
“He’s wrong,” Trevon said one night. “But he’s not wrong about everything.”
Tamir removed his damaged chest armor.
“What does that mean?”
“We save people, then everything goes back to normal. Buildings still abandoned. Schools still underfunded. People still scared.”
“So we help where we can.”
“We could do more.”
“With powers?”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t get to decide how everybody lives.”
Trevon paced across the subway tunnel.
“You always act like doing nothing is somehow more responsible than taking a risk.”
“And you act like good intentions erase consequences.”
Their argument grew louder.
Lights flickered around Trevon.
Loose metal trembled.
Tamir’s gravity field deepened, cracking the floor.
Malik stepped between them.
“Both of you stop.”
Neither listened.
Trevon fired an accidental electrical pulse.
Tamir deflected it with a gravity wave.
The blast destroyed half the training equipment.
Silence followed.
Trevon removed his mask.
For the first time, Tamir saw fear in his younger brother’s eyes.
“You still think I’m a kid,” Trevon said.
“I think you’re my brother.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Trevon walked away.
Three days later, King Viper attacked downtown Ashcroft.
The streets split open.
A mechanical serpent erupted from beneath the city.
It was nearly four hundred feet long, covered in overlapping black scales with green energy glowing between them. Its head rose above the skyscrapers. Its eyes burned like twin suns.
The serpent fired a beam across downtown.
Buildings exploded.
Viper appeared on every digital screen.
“Ashcroft refused salvation,” he announced. “Now it will receive correction.”
Tamir arrived alone.
He struck the serpent with enough gravitational force to collapse a building.
The machine barely moved.
Its tail hit him and sent him through the upper floors of Ashcroft Tower.
Tamir emerged from the rubble and flew back.
The serpent opened its mouth.
A green beam gathered in its throat.
Tamir created a gravity field around its head, forcing its jaws closed.
The machine’s energy exploded inside its body.
Several armored scales ruptured.
But the serpent continued forward.
It headed toward Eastgate.
Toward their mother.
Toward thousands of families.
Tamir flew above the machine and increased its weight.
The street beneath it collapsed.
His vision blurred.
Blood ran from his nose.
The serpent lifted its head and fired.
Tamir raised a gravity shield.
The beam forced him backward through the sky.
His suit began tearing.
The blue lines across his armor flickered.
Then lightning struck the serpent.
Trevon descended from the clouds.
Electricity covered his body like blue fire. His locs floated around his head, and the circuits across his suit burned brighter than ever.
He landed beside Tamir.
“You look terrible,” Trevon said.
Tamir smiled beneath his broken mask.
“You took long enough.”
Together, they attacked.
Tamir pinned the serpent beneath layers of crushing gravity.
Trevon ripped armor plates from its body using magnetic force.
The machine thrashed through downtown.
Its tail destroyed bridges.
Its jaws tore through buildings.
Tamir flew beneath a collapsing office tower and made it weightless long enough for people to escape.
Trevon absorbed electricity from the entire city grid, then fired a blast that severed one of the serpent’s mechanical eyes.
Inside the damaged socket, they saw it.
A massive alien crystal.
“The eye is powering it!” Tamir shouted.
Trevon flew toward the opening.
King Viper emerged from the serpent’s head wearing his armored suit.
He struck Trevon in midair.
The two crashed onto a rooftop.
Viper’s armor absorbed Trevon’s electricity.
Trevon switched tactics.
He magnetically tore air-conditioning units from the roof and hurled them.
Viper blasted them apart.
Tamir landed behind Viper and increased the villain’s gravity.
Viper dropped to one knee.
Trevon ripped the glowing chest crystal from his armor.
This time, Tamir caught it and crushed it inside a gravity field.
Viper screamed as his armor failed.
The mechanical serpent began charging one final blast aimed directly at Eastgate.
Trevon looked toward the glowing eye.
“I can overload the crystal.”
“That much energy could kill you,” Tamir said.
“Then don’t let it.”
Trevon flew into the serpent’s eye.
Tamir followed.
Inside the machine, the alien crystal pulsed like a giant heart.
Trevon placed both gauntlets against it.
Every remaining light in Ashcroft went dark.
Electricity poured from the city into his body.
His suit glowed white.
Tamir wrapped a gravity field around his brother, holding Trevon’s body together as waves of energy tore through him.
“More!” Trevon shouted.
“You’re at your limit!”
“Then raise the limit!”
Tamir tightened the field.
Trevon released everything.
The crystal shattered.
A blue explosion traveled through the serpent from head to tail.
The machine froze above Eastgate.
Then it collapsed.
Tamir carried Trevon from the serpent seconds before it struck the ground.
Dust covered the neighborhood.
For several moments, nobody moved.
Then Trevon coughed.
Tamir laughed and pulled him into an embrace.
Around them, the people of Eastgate emerged from buildings and shelters.
They cheered.
Not because their neighborhood had been spared by strangers.
Because the heroes standing before them were their own.
Two brothers raised on the same streets.
Two men who knew the broken sidewalks, the struggling families, and the names of the children playing in the parks.
King Viper was arrested beneath the ruins of downtown.
Weeks later, the mayor offered Tamir and Trevon medals during a ceremony at Jefferson Park.
They accepted them only after insisting the city restore funding to Eastgate’s schools, emergency services, and housing programs.
Malik’s garage became the unofficial headquarters of the Concrete Kings.
Dr. Cross continued studying the alien technology.
Denise pretended she was not terrified every time her sons left home wearing their suits.
The city slowly rebuilt.
One evening, Tamir and Trevon stood on the roof of their apartment building.
Below them, children played basketball beneath newly repaired lights.
Tamir wore his black-and-gray armor, the concrete texture reflecting the sunset. His cape moved gently behind him.
Trevon stood beside him in his glowing circuit-lined suit, mask held beneath one arm.
“You think the city’s finally safe?” Trevon asked.
Tamir looked across the skyline.
“No.”
Trevon smiled.
“Good.”
A distant explosion flashed beyond the river.
Tamir pulled up his hood.
Trevon placed his mask over his face.
The crown emblems on their chests began glowing.
Together, the brothers stepped from the roof.
Tamir rose into the sky on a wave of distorted gravity.
Trevon launched beside him in a burst of blue lightning.
Across Ashcroft, people looked upward as the Concrete Kings streaked above the city.
They were not gods.
They were not kings because they ruled.
They were kings because they served.
And as long as Ashcroft needed them, the brothers of Eastgate would answer.
THE END
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