Brandon hovered in mid-air over the busiest intersection in town, long enough to be clearly and unmistakably seen. Then the twelve year-old shot up into the sky, Brightburn falling away beneath him as he took cover in the clouds. Covering miles in seconds, he entered the woods and practically skimmed the ground as he wove skillfully between the trees, coming to a halt just short of Aunt Merilee's backyard.
Retrieving his school backpack from the base of an oak, Brandon took off his repaired costume and stowed it inside, folded atop his school books. Swinging the pack onto his shoulders, he made his way through the trees and then along the road to the driveway. His side trip had taken only a couple of minutes; he'd still make it inside well before Aunt Merilee got home, so she wouldn't have a chance to worry about him.
The loss of first her husband, then her sister and brother-in-law, had all but destroyed his aunt emotionally. Now she clung to Brandon as if he was the last thing keeping her afloat. A serious fight had taken place before she agreed to let him to take the bus to and from school, rather than driving him herself. When it was just the two of them, she was always hugging him and telling him in a tear-choked voice how much she loved him.
Brandon wasn't fooled, though. He wouldn't be tricked that way again, not EVER! If at any point he believed his Aunt and guardian was starting to suspect his true nature, he'd kill her at once and greatly enjoy doing so. He felt nothing for her anymore; she was just a treacherous liar, like the rest of his so-called 'family'.
Flying up to his room rather than walking, Brandon unzipped his bag and took out his costume, hiding it out of sight on his highest closet shelf with his sketch book. Dropping his backpack in the corner, he grabbed a book from the pile on his nightstand, the only one he had yet to finish reading: "Psychology of Human Behavior". Although the titles differed, the other four books in the stack all concerned the same subject.
His aunt seemed to think he was reading her books as some form of self-help, seeking a way to deal with the loss of his parents. In reality Brandon was educating himself about the depths of human pride, stupidity and stubbornness in order to more efficiently conquer the species.
His study of psychology and history had led him to the conclusion that simply flying to Washington D.C. and leveling the city before declaring himself the new ruler would achieve less than nothing. First, he needed to use the already existing governmental structures in order to maintain control of the masses. There were simply far, far too many humans infesting the planet for only one vastly superior being, no matter how gifted, to police them all. Of course, he could easily reduce the human population and might well have to, but he had to keep in mind that he wasn't here to destroy this world; he was here to take it. A fully subdued world full of billions of slaves was undoubtedly what his real parents wanted, and he had every intention of making them proud of him!
Then, too, wiping the United States capital off the map would panic the humans to the point where a nuclear weapon might be used against him. While Brandon was reasonably confident in his own toughness, he had yet to truly test the limits of his apparent invulnerability, and had no desire to do so by putting himself at the center of an atomic inferno.
No, he needed to teach the humans fear of him gradually, to start small and steadily work his way up, allowing the terror-stricken survivors to spread tales of his power far and wide. He would produce greater and more deadly works of performance art as time went on, widening the area in which he operated, until word of him had spread to every corner of the planet and the mere rumor of his coming would send people fleeing madly! He had to break the humans' will to resist, torment them to the point where the populations would beg their respective governments to submit so that they would be spared his continuing wrath!
It would be a project spanning the next several years, but that was okay. Better to take his time and do things right rather than act impatiently and throw all into anarchy. Besides, the time scale would give his powers a chance to fully develop as he grew up, assuming they hadn't already.
Today Brandon had taken the first step in his plan by deliberately allowing himself to be seen and photographed above the streets of Brightburn. This was the beginning of the long road which would lead to his to utter dominion over everything.
"Brandon! Are you home?" Aunt Merilee called upstairs.
"I'm upstairs in my room," he called back to her.
She walked up the stairs and into his room, leaning down toward him and extending her arms for a hug. Dutifully he returned the embrace, trying not to roll his eyes.
"How was your day?" she asked.
"Fine," he answered tonelessly.
A shadow of a frown crossed over Aunt Merilee's face. She kept waiting for him to open up to her, as if she hadn't taught him herself how dangerous that was. Fortunately, for her, she seemed to have forgotten all about reporting his feelings to law enforcement, an oversight undoubtedly helped along by Sheriff Deever's death.
"What do you want for dinner?"
"Can you cook hamburgers and hot dogs tonight?"
"Sure!"
She started to leave, pausing at the door and turning back to look at him.
"Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, Brandon?"
"No," he told her, returning his attention to the last chapter of the book.
"Okay. Be down for dinner in half an hour, all right?"
His disinterested nod was enough to send her from his room, and good riddance.
ΩΩΩΩΩ
Life at school went on much as it had before, except the teachers all treated him sympathetically and Caitlyn Connor avoided him like the plague. He still wanted her, that hadn't changed. It was clear, however, that she didn't appreciate what he was offering her, so he was generously putting off making his next approach, giving her a chance to get her head together and thus lessen the possibility she would say or do something to fatally piss him off.
One person whose treatment of him hadn't changed in the least was Royce Martin. The black boy continued to make his little verbal taunts and jabs, his feeble witticisms affecting Brandon no more than they always had.
Until one Monday, roughly four weeks after he'd started living with Aunt Merilee. The last bell had rung, and the kids were filing down the halls toward the exit. With Halloween fast approaching, much of the talk centered around what costumes everyone would be wearing. As usual, Brandon wasn't participating in the conversation, but Royce called out to him anyway.
"Hey, Breyer, what are you going as, Tarzan? Oooh, that's right, you already are an orphan in real life!"
Much of the chatter fell silent at this. Even Royce looked taken aback for a moment, like he realized he'd gone too far.
Brandon came very close to ripping the idiotic boy's limbs off and letting him bleed to death on the dirty floor. Only the slenderest thread of self-control kept him from making that wonderful vision into reality. He shut his eyes tightly to hide their red glow; let the other kids think he was holding back tears. He blindly bulldozed his way through the crowd and out the door, his hands trembling with the desire to use his full strength to fling these insects from his path.
Brandon scrambled up over the side of the stone steps, dropping down to the ground. With his eyes open now, he sprinted past the track circle, past the football field, and into the woods. He stopped once he was safely out of sight, and drew in a deep breath. He couldn't kill Royce in front of everyone. He. Could. Not! Doing so would blow his cover and there was too much to be gained by keeping his identity a secret.
Yet his fury continued to boil and roil through him, coupled with the nigh irresistible urge to vent it through violence! There was no way he could calm himself down from this, not without killing. And if he couldn't kill Royce . . .
A cruel smile slid across Brandon's young face. Yes, that was perfect! Poetic justice! Dropping his backpack at his feet, he zipped home, changed his pants and shirt, and put on his costume. Soon he was staring down at the two-story office building in Brightburn which held Farmer's Insurance. Edward Martin was the head of this branch of the company, with his wife Shawna being one of the insurance agents working under him. Both of their cars, the black Cadillac and the golden Honda, were in the parking lot.
Flashing down at super-speed Brandon smashed through the doors and through the bodies of those in his way. He destroyed the building's internal supports as he traversed it lengthwise, also taking care to crush the heads of both Martins. As the structure collapsed inward behind him, Brandon used Martin blood to paint his double B on the last wall before exiting through the falling roof of his new work of art and curving sharply upward into the sky. He returned to his room, took off and hid his costume, changed his clothes back to what they were, and finally flew back to the woods near his school.
Picking up his backpack again, Brandon affected a downcast expression as he trudged back toward school and Aunt Merilee. He'd tell her he had missed the bus and she'd be glad to drive him back home.
Although satisfied and content now, the alien boy wasn't wholly at peace. This was a bigger step than he'd thought to take so soon. Would it expose him? He didn't think so. Caitlyn was the only one who would know what he'd done and she was clearly too frightened to tell anyone about him. Besides, he'd destroyed the building so quickly there may have been no witnesses to the act, assuming none of those within survived. That Royce should lose his own parents right after taunting Brandon would be quite a coincidence, but surely none of these idiot humans would pick up on that fact.
Over the next week Megan spent much of her time counseling Royce Martin over the loss of his parents. Then his uncle arrived to take custody of him and Royce moved away to his new home in South Carolina.
ΩΩΩΩΩ
To Brandon's ire, it turned out a woman named Marsha Rowan had succeeded in filming much of the building's collapse on her phone, even capturing footage of him as he flew away from the scene. That, added to a photo of him hovering above Brightburn, had generated a great deal interest, speculation, and fear. Not enough fear, though. It was time to take the next step. On Saturday he managed to persuade Aunt Merilee to let him play around in the nearby woods, unsupervised, until lunch.
Not wanting to risk burning his town, not yet, Brandon instead donned his costume and flew to the western part of Kansas. Once there he began using his heat vision to set forests aflame. Amid the blazing trees he joyfully hunted every fleeing lesser life form which caught his eye: birds, rabbits, possum, deer, humans. He drank in the nectar of his prey's terror, sadistically toying with his many victims, frequently making them choose between facing him and going into the flames.
A surprising number chose the fire.
After a blissfully glorious four hours, Brandon rose up like the boy god he was from the flickering, achingly beautiful yellow and orange Hell he'd created. He flew home for lunch, pausing only to scorch a giant version of his artistic signature into the field of a nearby farmer.
For the rest of the weekend Brandon was visibly happy, a fact for which his Aunt thanked God. Her twelve year-old nephew, her sister's son, was the last person she had left; she honestly didn't know what she would do without him.
Brandon knew very well what he'd do without her, but that was for the future. For now, Brandon reveled in the knowledge that he was fulfilling his destiny!