Chương 20: Domestic Disturbance

On his walk home, Kenji blasted heavy bass through his headphones to drown out the world. He kept flexing his fingers, still able to feel the heat. Replacing the volatile heat that usually threatened to burn the house down, he felt the satisfying, toasty warmth of the energy he had released into the ground. Ash, he had flash-fried wet grass to ash in a second. At the turn onto his street, he focused on the muscle of his Tanden. He had spent his life suppressing it, playing normal.

Today, he had relaxed his grip on purpose, surviving the release intact. He looked at his hand again.

"I actually used magic," he whispered to himself. By the front of his house, he lingered on the sidewalk for a moment, took a deep breath, and focused on his Tanden holding the energy back. Release, just a bit. Focusing, he eased his grip, and the heat in his chest spiked. He looked at his hand; a faint distortion of heat appeared around his fingers, like the air above hot pavement. And clench it. As he clamped down on the muscle, the heat vanished. He blew out a breath, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Shaking his head, he let out a laugh.

"All because of learning to flex a special muscle," he whispered, feeling lighter than he could ever remember as he walked up the driveway. Inside the entryway, Kenji dropped his backpack by the door. Gloria stood at the sink, her back to him, scrubbing a pot. With a yawn, Kenji made his way to his mother and leaned his forehead against her shoulder.

"Hey, honey," she paused her scrubbing, resting her head lightly against his for a moment.

"Bad day? OJ's in the fridge." Kenji grunted and pulled away, walking to the refrigerator. Grabbing the carton of orange juice, he poured himself a glass before sitting down at the kitchen table. He stared blankly at the sweating glass. With her task finished, Gloria turned off the faucet and dried her hands on a towel, then pulled out a chair to sit across from him.

"So," she started, watching his face.

"How was your day? How was visiting with your friend?"

"He's definitely not a friend," Kenji said.

"He's weird, a total freak." Gloria sighed.

"Kenji. Be nice."

"I'm being serious, Mom. He's even more of a freak than I thought. The dude has magic, real magic, and I am not quite sure," he bobbed his head from side to side.

"That even though I saw it, I believe it." With a forward lean, Gloria rested her elbows on the table as she looked at him.

"What did you see?" Kenji ran a hand through his hair.

"He had this explosive attack; it was like a Hadouken from a video game but made of red light. He blew a hole in his backyard. Then he filled the hole back up with dirt; he just touched the ground and the dirt moved like water."

"And then," Kenji continued, his voice cracking.

"He did the most unbelievable thing; he smashed his own finger!" Gloria's brow furrowed.

"He smashed his finger. Why would he do that?"

"Just to prove a point!" Kenji said, his hair flickering as his core began leaking energy in response to his rising emotions.

"He put his hand on a rock and crushed it with another rock just to show me he could heal it. Apparently his Chi magic or whatever is able to fix injuries instantly. It was gross; there was blood everywhere and then it was just gone."

"Well," Gloria whispered, looking down at her hands.

"That seems a little ext—" The kitchen window over the sink suddenly exploded inward, sending shards of glass spraying across the counter and floor like ice. Her chair screeching against the tile, Gloria screamed as she scrambled backward. A small, dark shape vaulted through the broken frame, landing in the sink with a splash and denting the metal basin before letting out a mix of a cackle and a growl. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Kenji froze, eyes locked on the creature in his mother's sink. Coiling its legs, the thing leaped across the room. Kicking backward to stand, Kenji tangled his chair in the rug. He tipped backward, taking the full brunt of the goblin as it slammed into his sternum, driving the air from his lungs. Amidst a tangle of limbs on the floor, Kenji bore the creature's weight as the stench of wet dog and rancid beef washed over him.

Through a suppressed gag, Kenji shouted as pain flared up his left arm, the goblin's claws shredding his hoodie to rake furrows into his flesh. Shoving his right forearm up, he pinned the creature's throat, keeping the snapping jaws inches from his face as it thrashed against his grip.

"Get off!" Kenji yelled, kicking wildly. His foot connected with the goblin's ribs, but it was like kicking a bag of wet sand. The goblin snarled, spittle flying onto Kenji's cheek as it bore down, its weight crushing Kenji's chest. The heat in Kenji's core flared. Overwhelmed by the panic, his Tanden lost its grip, venting an involuntary flood of energy into his pathways, but he couldn't focus it; he couldn't breathe. With a raised claw, the goblin aimed for Kenji's eyes.

Gloria shrieked his name, the sound tearing through the kitchen. In preparation for the strike, Kenji squeezed his eyes shut. A blur of metal cut the air with a woosh. Roland swung an aluminum baseball bat with a clean stroke, the metal barrel thumping into the side of the creature's head, sending it across the kitchen to crash into the refrigerator before finally sliding to the floor. It twitched once, its claws scratching feebly at the linoleum, and then went still.

Between ragged gasps, Kenji sucked in air before scrambling backward on hands and heels, clearing distance from the thing. From his stance over the goblin, Roland breathed heavily, his dress shirt wrinkled and tie flung over one shoulder. Gripping the bat tight enough to make his joints pop, he kept it ready to swing again.

"Thanks Dad," Kenji breathed, clutching his bleeding arm. Without breaking his gaze on the unconscious creature, Roland adjusted his grip on the bat.

"Gloria," Roland said, his voice deadly calm, though his chest heaved.

"Call the police. Tell them we had a break-in and the intruder is down." Kenji looked at the goblin on the floor, watching the black blood pool under its head. Shifting his gaze to his father, standing like a sentinel with a baseball bat, he finally looked down at his own arm, where the scratches were welling with blood. In a frantic scramble for her phone on the counter, Gloria's hands shook as she attempted to unlock the screen. Before hitting the call button, she froze, staring at Kenji as her eyes widened.

"Honey," she hissed, pointing a trembling finger at Kenji.

"Your hair. Fix your hair." Kenji frowned at her, until he caught his reflection in the shattered kitchen window. His hair had turned silver.

"Oh, right," Kenji muttered. Behind tightly shut eyes, Kenji scrambled to clamp down on the heat in his chest. He visualized the muscle squeezing tight, shoving the power down with a mental grunt. When he opened his eyes a second later, his hair was back to normal. Finally hitting the call button on her phone with a sigh, she looked at the blood dripping from his arm and grimaced.

"I don't suppose," she whispered, "that you learned that healing trick you were talking about, did you?" Kenji looked at the gouges, throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

"No," Kenji said dryly.

"I didn't." The wail of sirens arrived less than three minutes later. Red and blue lights flashed through the front window, washing the walls in color. Still staring at the creature, Roland nodded to the door.

"Let them in, please." Past the threshold with their weapons at the ready, three officers assessed the scene. Upon spotting the homeowner standing over the animal, a veteran officer stepped forward with a raised hand and gently took possession of the bat. With the weapon safely set aside, two officers secured the unconscious beast with zip-ties as Roland explained the situation to the veteran. Once the area was clear, the paramedics squeezed past the officers.

A gray-haired medic with a no-nonsense demeanor cut away Kenji's sleeve, hissing when he saw the wound.

"Nasty," the medic said. He quickly cleaned the area with saline and began wrapping it in thick gauze.

"We've stopped the bleeding, but you need to go to the ER immediately."

"Is it that bad?" Gloria asked, hovering behind him.

"It's not the depth," the medic said, taping the bandage down.

"It's the infection risk. We don't know what that thing has been clawing at. Could be unknown contaminants, bacteria we aren't equipped for, or worse. He needs a full workup and a tetanus booster, bare minimum." With his bandaged arm cradled, Kenji stared at the goblin, trussed up on the linoleum like a piece of luggage.

"You folks got lucky," the medic muttered, packing up his kit.

"Most people don't walk away from these things with just a scratch."

"Wait a minute," Kenji said, blinking.

"'Most people'? What are you talking about? These things aren't even... that's a goblin. From a video game." He gestured vaguely at the creature on the floor with his good hand.

"They aren't real." With a pull of the zipper, the medic stood and hoisted the kit onto his shoulder.

"Not real, huh… Yeah," he said, looking down at Kenji with his lips pursed.

"Tell that to those scratches on your arm… Hell, tell it to the last two days. I've patched up six injuries like this, or far worse since lunch today alone; Look, I don't care what you call 'em, just get a tetanus shot."