The kitchen was a slaughterhouse.
The metallic tang of blood was thick enough to taste, and the silence that followed the explosion of violence was heavy, broken only by the wet thwip of gore sliding down the pantry door.
Mason stood over the remains of the first man, his knuckles dripping, his chest rising and falling with a rhythmic, terrifying precision.
The second robber, the large man who had looked so imposing just moments ago, was now a trembling wreck.
A dark stain spread across the crotch of his jeans, the smell of piss mixing with the copper in the air.
He didn’t even try to reach for his knife; he just stared at the hole in his partner’s chest, his jaw unhinged.
“Mason!
Stop!”
David’s voice cracked through the trance.
He scrambled forward, slipping slightly on the slick floor, and grabbed Mason by the shoulders.
He didn’t look at the body; he kept his eyes locked on his son’s glowing gaze.
“Look at me!
It’s over!
He’s dead, Mason.
You got him!”
Elena, gasping for air as her bruised throat flared, lunged forward and grabbed Mason’s bloodied hand.
“Honey, please.
Don’t.
Not like this.”
Mason’s eyes flickered.
The golden-green light dimmed, receding back into his marrow, but the coldness in his expression remained.
He looked past his father at the man cowering on the floor.
“Get out,” Mason said.
The voice didn’t sound like a fourteen-year-old boy’s.
It sounded like an ultimatum from a higher power.
“I—I—” the man stammered.
“Run,” Mason whispered.
“Before I change my mind.”
The man didn’t need a third warning.
He scrambled to his feet, tripping over the duffel bag, and bolted through the shattered back door, his boots pounding against the pavement until the sound faded into the distance.
David and Elena were shaking.
They moved with a frantic, desperate energy, trying to check Mason for injuries he clearly didn’t have.
“We’ll tell them it was an accident,” David muttered, his hands hovering over the mess.
“He had a heart condition.
No, that won’t work.
We’ll say…
God, Elena, look at the wall.”
“I need some air,” Mason interrupted.
His parents stopped.
They looked at him, their faces a mask of relief and burgeoning fear.
They thought they had reached him.
They thought their pleas for “humanity” had won out over the Saiyan’s instinct.
“Mason, wait, we need to stay together,” Elena started, reaching for him.
“I just need to think,” Mason said, his voice softer now, regaining that deceptive ‘normal’ tone.
“I’ll be back.
I promise.”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
He stepped out of the back door and, with a subtle flex of his core, launched into the sky.
He didn’t create a sonic boom this time; he rose like a silent shadow, disappearing into the evening gloom before his parents could even reach the threshold.
‘They think I let him go,’ Mason thought, the wind whipping past his face as he leveled out a thousand feet above the suburbs.
‘They think the world works on mercy.’
He closed his eyes, tuning out the roar of the wind.
He focused on the jagged, frantic rhythm of a specific heartbeat.
It was moving fast, stumbling, turning into an industrial district three miles out.
The scent of fear was like a beacon in the night.
Mason banked left, dropping through the clouds like a hawk.
The robber collapsed against a brick wall in a dead-end alley, his lungs burning.
He was sobbing, his hands shaking so hard he couldn’t even wipe the sweat from his eyes.
“I’m alive,” he wheezed, clutching his chest.
“Oh, God, I’m alive.
That kid…
that monster…”
“Monster is a bit harsh.”
The man froze.
Mason was floating five feet off the ground at the mouth of the alley.
He wasn’t glowing anymore.
He just looked like a handsome kid in a blood-stained shirt, silhouetted against the streetlights.
The contrast was somehow worse than the aura.
“You…
you let me go,” the man gasped, backing into the shadows of a dumpster.
“The lady said…
your dad said…”
Mason landed softly, his sneakers hitting the damp pavement with a dull thud.
He began to walk forward, his footsteps slow and deliberate.
‘Mercy is a luxury for people who aren’t being hunted,’ Mason mused internally.
‘If I let you live, you talk.
You tell the wrong person about the kid who punches holes through people.
And then my parents, the only good things in this shitty world, become targets.’
“My parents are good people,” Mason said aloud, his voice echoing off the brick walls.
“They believe in things like ‘second chances’ and ‘the sanctity of life.’ They really wanted me to be a hero today.”
He stopped a foot away from the man.
The robber was hyperventilating, his eyes wide with the realization that the exit was blocked by something far more dangerous than a cop.
Mason reached out, his hand moving with a terrifying, liquid speed.
He gripped the man’s throat, lifting the three-hundred-pound brute off the ground as if he were a plush toy.
“But I told you back in the kitchen,” Mason whispered, his eyes finally igniting with a cold, emerald spark.
“I told you it was your turn.”
Mason didn’t use a punch.
He didn’t want the noise.
He simply tightened his grip.
There was a sickening, dry crunch of vertebrae and windpipe collapsing simultaneously.
The man’s legs gave a final, desperate twitch before falling still.
Mason held the body for a moment, staring at the lifeless eyes, before tossing it into the shadows behind the dumpster like a piece of discarded trash.
He wiped his hand on his jeans, looked up at the stars, and took a deep, steadying breath.
‘One life to protect two,’ he thought, crouching down before exploding back into the night sky.
‘That’s the kind of math I can live with.’