🌌 Saiyan of the Red Dawn
Chapter 5 – The Second Hunt
(Part 3 – Conclusion)
The deserters fanned out, forming a crescent around him.
Recco stood in the center—tall, broad-shouldered, with skin the gray of ash.
A ragged cape fluttered behind his armor, and one of his eyes was hidden beneath a cracked scouter lens.
Even at a distance, Kael felt the pressure of his ki—dense and coiled like a predator ready to pounce.
The two lesser fighters moved first.
Kael read their approach in the flicker of their muscles.
Left. Right.
He pivoted around the heavier one's lunge, driving his knee into its abdomen.
The weighted gauntlet made his follow-up strike slower—but the force of it still crushed the deserter's jaw in a spray of blood.
He turned in time to catch the other in a grappling hold.
They stumbled, locked together.
Kael gritted his teeth, feeling the pull of his own ki roaring for release.
No transformations, he reminded himself again.
Discipline.
Instead of blasting the foe apart, he twisted, using leverage and body weight to break the deserter's spine across his knee.
The corpse slumped to the sand.
Two down, he thought, breath ragged.
He looked up.
Recco hadn't moved an inch.
"Impressive," the deserter leader rumbled. His voice was low and smooth, almost amused.
"You're young."
Kael didn't answer.
"And yet you killed them so easily."
Recco lifted one hand, and a pale-blue ki orb flickered into existence, casting cold shadows across his scarred face.
"Let's see how you fare when you can't hide in the dark."
He hurled the orb.
Kael dove aside.
The blast detonated where he'd stood, carving a crater twenty meters wide.
Rocks and burning sand rained down in a choking storm.
Kael forced himself to his feet, vision blurring.
No transformations, he thought again, fighting the urge to explode upward into his higher states.
Discipline.
Recco stalked toward him, gathering another sphere of ki.
Kael knew he couldn't weather those barrages forever.
Have to close the distance.
The moment Recco's arm swept back to throw, Kael lunged.
He crossed the gap in a single heartbeat, his boots carving twin trenches in the gravel.
He smashed his weighted gauntlet into Recco's midsection—
—and felt his fist sink into armor as thick as starship plating.
Recco didn't even grunt.
Instead, he brought his elbow down across Kael's back.
White pain flared through every nerve.
Kael collapsed onto one knee, gasping.
Recco grabbed him by the hair and wrenched his head back, scouter lens glinting.
"You should have run," he hissed.
He pressed the glowing orb to Kael's chest.
Kael felt the energy burning into his ribs, searing through muscle and bone.
He saw darkness edging in at the corners of his vision.
I won't die.
He clenched his teeth so hard he tasted blood.
I won't die like this.
The river of power inside him bucked and howled—demanding he transform.
But instead of letting it burst free, he dragged it back by sheer will.
No.
I am stronger than my instincts.
I am more.
He slammed his head backward into Recco's face.
The crunch of cartilage and bone.
Recco roared, stumbling.
Kael fell onto his hands.
Every motion was agony.
But he didn't stop.
He forced himself upright, muscles screaming under the gauntlets' weight.
Recco wiped blood from his nose, his ki rising in a swirling corona.
"Persistent little insect," he spat.
He lunged again.
Kael met him head-on, ducking under the first strike and driving his fist straight into Recco's throat.
The impact staggered the larger fighter just enough—
Kael twisted behind him, locking his arm around Recco's neck.
He braced his heels in the sand.
And he pulled.
The weighted gauntlets made his arms feel like slabs of iron.
But they also made his hold unbreakable.
Recco thrashed, clawing at Kael's forearms.
He tried to elbow backward, to break free.
Kael held on, tightening his grip millimeter by millimeter.
His vision blurred.
The pain was incandescent.
Still he didn't let go.
Discipline.
Control.
Victory.
At last, with a strangled gurgle, Recco's struggles slowed.
Kael's heart slammed against his ribs in time with the dying pulses of Recco's ki.
The scouter flickered—
SIGNATURE: FLATLINE
He released the body and let it crumple to the sand.
For a moment he stood over the corpse, every breath ragged, blood dripping from his split brow.
I did it.
Not because he'd unleashed a transformation.
Not because he'd abandoned control.
But because he'd chosen discipline over raw instinct.
The scouter pinged a priority signal.
Kael pressed the side of the visor.
Varis's voice crackled in his ear.
"Report."
Kael swallowed. His throat felt raw.
"Mission complete. Recco is dead."
A long silence.
Then Varis's voice, quieter:
"Return. You've earned your place among us."
He limped back to the dropship before dawn.
As the ramp closed behind him, he looked down at his shaking hands—still encased in the weighted gauntlets.
He didn't take them off.
He knew now they weren't a burden.
They were a promise.
That no matter how strong he became, he would never surrender to mindless rage.
I will be more than a beast, he thought.
And as the ship lifted into the pale sky, Kael closed his eyes, imagining a day when he'd need no weights—because he'd mastered every scrap of power within him.
End of Chapter 5