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"I bring you Sol Yulaan."

Vicente Xaxalpa pulled a monkey-tailed girl out of a duffel bag. He held her up to his chest for a moment and set her upon a metal table. She balled her fists.

Standing against the two was one Dr. Golitsyn. "Vicente, I'm going to have to, uh, I'll have to tell you that this is the strangest thing you've ever put on this table."

The girl's tail dipped over the edge and wrapped first around the main support leg of the table and then into the bag, and she pulled from it a bone-cast scimitar. The doctor stepped back and raised his eyebrow at the miasma of motion threatening his face.

"Yulaan," snapped Vicente. "Put the sword down." He slipped his hands into his pockets for a brief moment, then with a hurried gesture pointed at her and said, "Be forceful with her. She doesn't hear too well."

Yulaan lowered the scimitar with a huff and dropped it back into the bag where it fell to a dull 'thunk!'

Dr. Golitsyn slouched in a hearty chum's laugh and said, "Where did you find her? Or is this one of your cousins?"

Flatly, Vicente said, "Old Hearst Highway, a week ago. A very flamboyant man, possibly a transman or perhaps not a man at all, I couldn't say— a feminine male in bright drag came from another universe to give this creature to me. So now I own her. I am allegedly her master. I don't like hearing that out of my mouth, but those were his statements." He locked eyes with the doctor, his mouth pulled into his dimples.

To say Golitsyn's eyes were incredulous would be to insult the concept of incredulity. He pulled his own mouth in and turned his head down as he snickered. "Okay. Sure. What's the tail made of? It looks really good, almost Hollywood-tier." He stepped forward to feel its texture, and flinched when the appendage lurched away from his hand. "A-also, I get that kids can be wily, but I'm going to need her off the examining table. They're not actually monkeys, and there could be contaminants that survived the bleaching."

As he waited for Vicente to respond, Dr. Golitsyn shoved Yulaan to push her off the table. His eyes simultaneously boggled and narrowed as he felt a horrible heaviness and heft as if the wild cosplaying girl had been carved from marble. Involuntarily he set his hand on her flesh again, squeezing her upper arm. Her head nodded towards his hand and then back to his face with careful movements and the hint of some guttural noise from behind her lips.

"I'm sorry, what's the occasion?"

Vicente blinked and rubbed his eyes. "God, I'm sorry. I'm still... dazed, still not really processing all this. What's that?" As if it had just occurred to him, he slid his Panama hat off his head and set it upon the table beside him. "Oh, no occasion. Just wanted you to check up on her. I was thinking of doing a full check-up because she's had the absolute gnarliest gastrointestinal issues, but one look at the rest of her body, her limp, her injuries— I figured we'd do a preliminary check-up first and then figure out where to go from there."

The doctor's eyes grew glossy and voidlike as he ran his fingers across Yulaan's leathery pelt. Repeatedly he met Vicente's gaze and said, "You know I don't treat people. If this is a genuine emergency. Look, I get humans are primates, but it's better to go with an actual human doctor."

Again Vicente set his hands in his pockets. "I quite realize that. And there's no occasion, good sir, other than this day being exceptionally strange for us both. And to that end, I'll say that I strongly doubt a human doctor would do any good for our friend here."

Yulaan curled herself up into a ball on the table and aimed her head towards Golitsyn. Was she looking at him? Where were her eyes? Hidden behind long bangs of hair that reached her cheeks. How did she see? Yet the uncanny vibe Golitsyn felt gave him a need to reassure himself, for he could not rule out the possibility that he'd lift those black bangs and see flesh where this girl's eyes should have been.

No, that was silly.

"That tail, though..." Golitsyn stood as if in the presence of an atomic bomb, criticality unknown. The tip of Yulaan's tail flipped and thumped on the narrow side of the table in ways that unsettled him, for the motions proved too fluid and lifelike to be the work of animatronics. "How'd you make it? That tail. Who made it?"

A shrug and twist answered him, as Vicente bowed ever so slightly towards Yulaan. Once he stood fully erect again, Golitsyn needed no more to understand that his instincts had betrayed him. It was like his youth all over again: this trip was starting to go bad and his grasp on rational reality slipped further and further as the uncanniness won over.

"Alright, I don't know." He threw down a pen and stepped towards the door. "I don't think I can help you with this. This isn't right. Something isn't right."

Vicente rushed out to grab his shoulder. "Hold on, hold up." With a scratch to his snout and a little grin. "You've looked at strange things before. You can handle this.

The frazzled man shouted, "Vicente, that thing's not human!"

"Obviously. That's why she's here— at the vet. I wanted to come to the zoo's medical wing just for the extra tools you'd have to work with. But beyond that, I'd just rather you'd see her first."

The doctor said, “What the fuck is that thing? Vicente, what the fuck is it? Why is it— what does it have a tail? What do you need me to do then?"

The reply was, “A check-up. That’s it! And I know it sounds strange. But you have my assurances that she won’t attack or spew acid or anything like that. Yulaan is, by the words of that strange man, docile. I don’t know what that means in this context, but she’s docile. Okay?” He brought his hands together. “Okay?”

Hearing these words put a shiver in Dr. Golitsyn. His spirit fell into a pool of causeless terror. How had he touched her? What was this thing Vicente now owned? The most unnatural occurrence in human history was unfolding in this ward.

Or was this all still an elaborate prank? Blinking red lights appeared in his peripheral vision constantly— the silly wink of a prank camera that vanished whenever he turned to look. A tension festered between him and Vicente: at any second, the Man in the Zoot Suit's mouth would move and give him the all-clear to laugh and begin treating an actual exotic animal. The girl would comb her hair, pull off her tail, and leave, and then something like a Bili ape or new species of spider monkey would be brought in.

Where was his kid cousin? Or that mass of girls?

Golitsyn stepped forward, hurriedly glancing towards the duffle bag to see if there was a hidden macaque or Capuchin monkey inside that would bust the prank sooner.

Nothing.

Nothing except the jagged blade made of bone, one which he noted even in the shadows of the bag seemed to have many off-colored splotches.

Finally he grabbed a stethoscope and approached Yulaan with moist, trembling hands. "I'll, uh... I'll listen for a heartb-b-beat. Is that what you want?" He kept his eyes on Vicente's as he leaned in closer to Yulaan. "Is that fine?"

Vicente said, "Stop scaring him. He can't give you the all-clear if he's about to have a heart attack, you goof." Just the sudden higher volume put the fear of God in Golitsyn, and he had to catch his breath.

With her arms crossed over her knees and head turned towards the wall, Yulaan huffed hard enough to blow her bangs up. Golitsyn caught a fleeting glance of a single flash of gold.

"He's going to press a stethoscope against your chest to listen to your heart. Don't strike him. Don't. Strike him." Vicente squeezed her shoulder. Her tail fluttered off the table's edge. With haste he grabbed it as well.

Yulaan turned her head towards him with such violence that Golitsyn retracted in shock that she had not dislocated her spine.

He marveled at the hair tie keeping a massive plume from falling further over her face or her back. It wasn't a scrunchy or even a piece of metal— it was a bone. In fact a human vertebra.

"It's crazy how feral she looks, isn't it..." Vicente took a seat in one of the blue plastic chairs and crossed his arms and legs. "It surprised me at first too."

"It's a pelt."

Vicente laughed at the blank observation and heavy tone. "Indeed! Yeah, it is."

With subtle smacks of his lips keeping him calm, the vet listened to her heart as best he could with his own pounding in his ears. Nothing sounded distressing, at least at first. Yet as he listened closer, he had the faintest sensation that the girl's heartbeat was an octave too low, as if it was enlarged or pumping ten times more blood than should exist in a body her size.

"It's like a classic caveman pelt. If only it had a tiger or leopard print. Not entirely sure what the substance is, but..." Vicente's voice became low. "I don't think I want to know."

With haste the doctor pulled the stethoscope away and rushed to the other side of the room to log the results. "132 beats per minute. Extremely high, but..." He pulled the sides of his mouth in and coughed. "I can't tell you if that's healthy or not. For a human, obviously not. But for most species of Old World and New World monkeys, that's in line with the norm. Most smaller monkeys have similar heart rates." He shook his head and facepalmed. "I'm sorry, this is just ridiculous. Dr. Xaxalpa, is she a monkey? Just tell me."

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"She is."

Beat. "I still feel this is not my jurisdiction."

He pushed himself back against the wall-attached island upon hearing Yulaan growl. She bore her teeth, and while most seemed to be fairly humanlike, her canines were exaggeratedly large— vampiric as if she regularly feasted on flesh. Her tail lifted and curled, and she unwrapped her arms from around her legs. All of the doctor's panic signals were flaring. It was about to attack.

Vicente shouted, "Yulaan, I said calm it!" He stood and set himself over her. "I'll give you, I dunno, a whole mess of those hocks later on. I'll take you to my grandfather's house and you can run wild. Just calm yourself."

To the doctor's frustration and bemusement, he made no effort to physically restrain her or even unfold his arms. Rather, the two watched each other like a furious starving dog and its master. With great hesitation, Yulaan wrapped herself up again, this time curling her tail around her legs as well.

Like being dragged back to dry land, all of Golitsyn's tensions had vanished. The air in the room lifted. Everything felt fine. His terror ceased so totally that he stepped towards her as if she was a familiar face. No fear. No hesitation.

Even his voice was jolly! "Well, Vicente, I didn't hear anything to worry about too terribly, though perhaps I could run her through an EKG machine for a better analysis of why it sounds like her heart's enlarged." He rubbed his chin and ran his hand across her wild hair. "I was curious about this vertebr— OUCH!" He retracted his hand. A spark had flown between it and her hair, so large that it clapped and a burning red sear ran across the doctor's wrist.

"What on Earth..." Vicente's brow furrowed, and the anxiety that had vanished peeked back before being repressed with a hearty laugh from deep within the doctor.

"Very shocking! I've had that happen before with cats, but never monkeys. Ahhh...." He shook and waved his hand to cool off the burn.

Vicente stood up and ran his own hand into Yulaan's thick hair. "How'd you do that? You haven't done anything like that before now."

Yulaan huffed and looked away. The dirty skin and wildness of her hair gave both men the sense that she had been dredged up from some savage primeval age or perhaps the pages of a blood-and-thunder paperback, but it was the guttural noises and grunts that convinced them.

"A gay man on the side of the highway gave her to you," Golitsyn asked.

"I don't even know if he was a man."

"So you're guessing Butch?"

"No, no, no. I mean, I don't know if he was a MAN. He seemed male to me, but I don't think he was human. There was something... alien about his appearance. His face, his eyes, his skin, his ears... Either he was a cosplayer wandering around the middle of a cemetery in the boonies, or something else. But yeah, he was from another universe he said. 'He.' 'He!' I don't even know if it was a he. The alien! The alien said she's from a primal warrior race called 'Yabans.' Or Yaban monkeys, or... I don't know, I'd need to talk to him again."

"And how do you know she's a she?"

This was an easy question to answer: "Because that alien said so. He was actually a tad firm in telling me that she is a female Yaban."

Golitsyn stepped away to run cold water over his wound in his stainless steel sink. "That vertebra, though. Why is she wearing it? It doesn't look like it's doing anything for her eyes, surely."

Each rub of her hair softened until Vicente's mouth fell agape as he felt the strangest vibration through Yulaan's skull. He stooped lower and brought his ear down. "Wait, are you a monkey?" He felt around the sides of the top of her head. No ears. Just a spiky mess.

"What's wrong, boy?"

"She's purring! How is she a monkey?" They both looked at her and saw there was a slight contented smile curled on her face, exaggerated by half her face being obscured. As soon as he took his hand away, the purr-like noise ceased and she looked over her shoulder at him.

"I dunno, good sir. This hair though! Ever heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees?"

The doctor laughed. "My little sister was the biggest fan of them and the Cure. Of course, of course. I think I get what you're saying."

"Yeah, it's like if Siouxsie Sioux stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. I never thought I'd see hair like that in real life outside of a, you know, an anime convention. And you know, now I think I know why." He looked at the doctor's hand and back to her.

After tending to the wound further, Golitsyn checked her eyes with a light and saw that they did not respond to any increases in brightness, nor did she flinch. He did, however, note that a massive scar ran the length of her forehead.

"I can't say just how old she is, but she's more heavily scarred than Peter the lion. And he was both a hunter Alpha and poached multiple times. Craziness."

Next he asked, "May I get you to step on that scale over there?" Yulaan quickly jumped to the floor and hobbled over.

"See, she understands English. I have no idea why. Why would interdimensional aliens know English?"

This was brushed off for another question. "So why does she do that anyway? You mentioned some injuries, but this is a fairly pronounced limp."

"I'm not entirely clear on it myself. But it doesn't take much imagination to guess."

At the very last second, both men heard the sound of extreme tension and it came straight from where Yulaan stood. She lifted a foot and set it down atop the scale.

"Yulaan! Yulaan, wait, stop it!" The machine collapsed inwards as if made of aluminum foil. "Stop it! Stop it!"

She had, in fact, not stopped it. Rather she put her other foot on the scale, completing the machine's total destruction. No number registered. And where she stood, she left broken tiles and deeply depressed plaster as if her weight had suddenly octupled.

Vicente ran his hands across his head. "Goddammit... Sir, I'm so sorry. I should have told her to not bother with the scale."

"Ah, it's alright. Though I'm... confused."

Vicente shifted about in his chair and said, "Yulaan, get off the scale and come back up here. We told you, you can't weigh so much. Things can't handle your true weight."

"True weight?"

She saluted him, and Golitsyn's face scrunched as if a clown materialized in the room.

"Oh, a comedian," Vicente spat. "You're doing this on purpose." He turned. "This is my new burden. See that? This is what I have to deal with."

He turned back and his eyes boggled. Golitsyn's eyes boggled. All four eyes boggled until they nearly fell out their sockets.

Yulaan was floating— her body suspended in midair as if by wires. She slipped over to and above the table, then set herself down to curl herself back into a ball.

This brought a lump into Golitsyn's throat. "Well...!" The pleasantness and contentment finally broke as he once again felt the uncanniness win.

"Yeah." Vicente threw himself back into the chair with enough force to slide into the wall. His exhale mimicked the one from before. "Back at the family graveyard, I was sure that she was a Saiyan, if you're aware of what they are. She looks just like what I'd imagine a real one to be."

"I've..." Golitsyn licked his lips. "I've heard the term, but I'm not familiar."

"I guess, ah..." Vicente ran his hands through his hair and kept his gawking eyes hard on the supernatural entity sitting before him. "I don't even know anymore. Actually, you know what she looks like?"

Yulaan turned her head towards him as if she too had become interested in this gossip, while Dr. Golitsyn rested his free palm on the washtable behind him. "Phew, um... I can't say I expected a girl with a monkey tail to float in front of me today."

"She's like a Yahoo. A superpowered Yahoo."

Golitsyn nodded. "See, I know that one. And I can see it. With the hair and the pelt. And the muscles. I mean no disrespect but I was taken aback by how muscular and scarred she is."

Vicente laughed once, a quick airy exhale. "That's actually kinda cool to me, though. I thought she was a boy at first too. I don't know how old she is— 9 or 10, maybe? Maybe around there? She's got so many more gains than I ever did at that age."

The vet stepped forward to examine the copious crisscrossing scars along her arms. "Huh, I didn't even see the one on her cheek." He ran his thumb across her cheek under her right eye, and Yulaan bore her teeth again. "Okay, okay, little miss savage! I won't touch you again."

As he said this, he stopped and focused on her mouth. Her gums seemed fine, but they had the strangest pallor. Indeed, the more he studied her features, the more obvious the faint blackness became. "So she has white skin, right?"

Vicente blew his cheeks and shrugged. "She looks gray to me."

"That's what I thought, but I noticed her gums and lips have a faint dark hue to them." He grabbed a magnifying glass and peered in as close as he could without invading her personal space. "I don't see any fleshy coloration on her, but I don't see any blueness on her fingers or lips."

"What're you hypothesizing, doc?"

Golitsyn pulled himself back, flicking his hand under a faucet once more. "She may have black blood, but I'm unsure."

"Insane. Purely insane if true. You know, it would be interesting if it turned out she's actually an aswang and I was bamboozled." From his pocket he pulled a smartphone and began tapping on the glass.

Dr. Golitsyn smiled and returned to tending his hand. "I'll try to collect a blood sample. Perhaps we can send it in for government analysis, providing they don't try raiding this place and unpersoning us afterwards."

Both men staggered. Yulaan's tail lashed and wrapped around Vicente's phone, bringing it into her hands. By chance she sighted an advertisement of a sizzling, greasy meal.

"Whoa, whoa! Yulaan, what—"

She dropped off the table and hobbled away towards the exit, using her tail again to twist the handle and open the door. Vicente jumped up and ran after her with Dr. Golitsyn not far behind. Vicente's heart raced.

To their shock, she had managed to traverse the entirety of a lengthy hall far faster than her hobbled motions could possibly suggest. Once more, horror filled their hearts as they saw her scar-crossed feet did not even touch the floor.

If their hearts were not busting now, the fear of another person seeing the sheer paranormality pushed them to the brink. No shadows beckoned, giving them the opportunity to resolve this without fear of busting human psychosocial solvency wide open with the news that an otherworldly flying monkey existed. Still, Yulaan was flying through the halls, and God only knew why.

Yulaan hit the wall and pushed herself around the corner. Vicente turned around and ran the other way to catch up with her. With every muscle in his body pushed to his limit, he sprinted down the adjacent hall and saw the wild hair of Yulaan’s shadow long on the distant wall.

He and Golitsyn turned the corner at the same moment.

Both of them breathed the greatest sigh of relief when they came upon Yulaan, now crumpled into a heap and eating a bag of dog food by the handful.

"Alright!" Dr. Golitsyn loudly announced. "I'm ready for retirement!" He and Vicente shared a laugh as they lifted Yulaan up. She used her tail to grab another bag of dog food, carrying it all the way back to the room. She thankfully did not weigh the sickening amounts she used to destroy the 500-pound-capable scale. And once back in the room, she gleefully consumed the metal tips of needles, the bars of steel cages, and chains right as if it was just as nutritious as the heart-healthy lean dog treats.

Then came the stammered, "Vicente, I don't even know what to say. This is outrageous."

Having finished what ‘food’ she had in her hands, Yulaan yawned and blepped her tongue and rested herself on Vicente's shoulder. He shook his head and mouthed 'I know, I can't. I don’t know.'

“How did—…” Golitsyn pressed his hand against his face. “Oh boy Oh boy. Oh boy.”

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