While chaos surged in the alley and light from fists and flashing blades painted the night in violent strokes, another figure moved in the dark—swift, brutal, unseen by those clashing beneath the fractured glow of sodium streetlamps. At the edge of the battleground, where Avalon's neighborhood met the hush of sleeping homes and shuttered bodegas, several ninja crept silently along the rooftops and eaves, not to fight the defenders but to slip past them, to move like serpents toward something softer, more vulnerable—an apartment unit two buildings down, old brick crumbling at the corners, curtains barely drawn. The Brown residence.
But the ninjas never made it past the stairwell.
A blur struck first—black on black, a shape that moved without warning and hit without restraint. The first ninja's face met a fist with such force his body didn't crumple but instead launched backward into a chain fence, bending the metal frame before he slid to the pavement with a low moan. Two others turned, weapons drawn, crouching in trained silence—but it was no use. The attacker came down the stairwell like a storm, hitting low, driving his knee into one gut while whipping his elbow into the temple of another. Bones cracked. One let out a muffled yelp. The third tried to run.
He didn't make it to the fire escape.
The man who moved among them wasn't wearing the ornate robes of a monk, nor the silken flair of a martial master. He wore a dark jacket stretched tight across broad shoulders, simple pants, old combat boots laced sloppily. His eyes were sharp, intense, calculating every motion like a machine. Around his neck hung a dark metal medallion—dull black, shaped like a tiger's head with shadowed contours and heavy edges. Where Bob's shimmered white, and The Ninja's pulsed orange, this one felt heavy just by sight—like it held weight from things unsaid and debts unpaid. He didn't speak as he dropped the last attacker with a sweeping backhand that knocked the man clean into the dirt. But when the fourth ninja crept up from behind and tried to slit his throat with a short blade, the man spun and caught him mid-air with a hand around his neck, eyes burning.
He didn't squeeze. Not yet.
He looked into the man's eyes and finally spoke, voice gravel-choked and ice-calm.
"You boys don't know what you're messing with."
The attacker struggled, legs flailing, knife clattering uselessly to the ground. But the man's grip didn't waver.
"I've buried better men than you without blinking. You think sneaking into my city gives you rights? You think you can sniff around my bloodline without consequence?" His voice deepened with fury. "Nah. Not tonight."
He stared down the man trembling in his grip, then added with brutal finality:
"Name's Black Tiger. And I protect what's mine."
And the street, as if recognizing the name, seemed to hush in acknowledgment.
Years ago—decades now—Harlem knew that name not as myth or legend but as a living, roaring reality. Back then, the man who would become Black Tiger had another name. Abe Brown. He was sharp, lean, and fast—a street tactician, a silent protector, a born brawler. He wasn't always the biggest, but he was always the one left standing. He rose through the blocks of Harlem not as a drug pusher or flashy pimp, but as a guardian. A gang leader, yes, but with rules. No dealing to kids. No extortion from locals. No blood for ego. The men who followed him knew the line, and the line was kept. For years, Black Tiger reigned—he didn't need to shout to command loyalty. His fists spoke well enough.
And then came her.
Elena. She was the light in the gutter, the smile in the storm. A jazz singer who worked nights in a Harlem lounge and hated gangsters with a fire hotter than the spotlight she sang under. But Abe wasn't just a gangster. Not to her. He was something broken, cracked at the edges but trying to stay whole. He changed—for her. Less street. More peace. More nights in, less blood out. They married. She moved into his life like music fills a room. They had children—six in total—four boys, two girls. And he swore nothing, not the streets, not money, not pride, would ever matter more than them.
But the streets aren't kind to peace.
The fracture began with a shooting. His right-hand man—a good soldier, loyal—pulled the trigger in a retaliation hit. Clean by the code. No women. No children. But a bullet strayed, and the collateral casualty happened to be the cousin of a local CIA director. That was enough. The man, fueled by rage and racial contempt, took it as a personal attack. He called in favors, twisted strings, made a few arrests stick where they shouldn't. The hammer came down not just hard—but surgical. False flags planted. Arms drops traced. Reports doctored. Within weeks, Black Tiger's crew was branded domestic terrorists.
One by one, his lieutenants vanished. Shot in the street. Thrown in solitary. Disappeared.
Abe fought. At first, legally. Then with fists. Then with fire. But the walls closed in. Elena, eight months pregnant with their sixth child, begged him to walk away. But he couldn't. Not while his brothers bled. Not while his name was spat on. Not while justice rotted in a suit's office.
The final straw came the night his youngest child was born. News reached him that the CIA had started threatening his family—his children were no longer off-limits. Elena sobbed in the hospital bed. He kissed her forehead, named the child Hobbie, and left.
That night, he charged a known CIA logistics hub with two dozen rounds in a stolen duffel bag and the fury of every wrong burned into his chest. He didn't go to kill. He went to take. He stormed the building, dropped twelve agents with non-lethal blows, and barricaded the rest inside a secured conference hall. He held them for six hours. Then he called the director.
"I walk out alone, and my family disappears from your map," he said. "You get your people back. I get silence."
The deal was struck.
He released every hostage.
Then walked out with his hands up.
They sentenced him to sixty years.
He took a deal to reduce it to ten—on one condition: he would work.
The CIA turned him into a ghost. A shadow tasked with doing their worst work—eliminating compromised assets, staging deniable events, extracting rogue agents. He was never thanked. He was never trusted. But he was used. And when the ten years ended, he was dumped back into the world with a check, a burned file, and a warning: "You're free. But not forgotten."
When he returned to Harlem, the world had changed.
His wife drank now—quietly, bitterly. His sons? Three were in prison. One was missing. His eldest daughter worked two jobs and didn't return his calls. Only the youngest three—his girls and the boy he had never met—still lived with their mother. He didn't even know what Hobbie looked like until he passed him one day at the park—small, wiry, trying to make a paper kite fly. Abe didn't approach. Not then. Not yet. But he knew.
And tonight—when the fight started—when he saw men in masks creeping toward that crumbling brick apartment—he stepped out of the dark and became Black Tiger once again.
He threw the ninja down now, holding him by the neck, eyes burning. "You tell your boss," he growled. "If he comes near my family again, I won't be polite next time."
The ninja spat, a curse forming—
—but Abe tightened his grip, silencing it, and tossed the man into the garbage pile beside the alley.
Then he straightened.
Wiped blood from his knuckles.
And turned toward the battlefield.