Mason

Misfortune after misfortune befalls Mason Erickson. It runs thick in this city, like blood, like oil in the river. It oozes into every crack, crevice, hole, or fissure and sticks there, congealing as it sets up. But to congeal, the misery must sit and wallow; Mason moves forward. Not for his mother, his father, or the mentor who wanted to give him the city, for none of them would he stop.
He shouldered the weight of the empire left behind in the fatal clash, having already felt its weight. He paces the city, bridge to bridge, by night in boots he designed himself and he does not wallow, he plans. He rebuilds.
Mason is good with his hands in that way; he’d always been tinkering in the background as his father did the mentor’s work, such is what drew their attentions when succession came to mind. His father couldn’t have been prouder. He was still proud when he died in that cavalcade, that cataclysmic night. His mentor would be proud too, if they’d known how they’d been avenged. It was right, it was just. Mason felt anything but righteous. He just felt numb. But he did not wallow, and that would be his undoing. It would make him sloppy, it would make him careless, trudging on like that, shirking grief, and it would make him freeze up with a knife to his throat, every gear in his head giving in. It would be easier, he thought, to let the vengeful boy kill him. He would be able to rest then, to grieve, but instead he sends a couple hundred volts through the child in the bloodstained cape and has him confined to the unused loading bay. He tries to bargain, tries to question, tries to soothe, but the boy just glares at him and tries to escape at every turn. Mason would’ve let him go in a heartbeat—keeping him was wrong and he knew it— if not for his crew, the last remaining dregs of his family. If the boy left and brought back others, they would die. They would all die. So he kept him, talked with him, cared for him, and in time, on his own, he chose to stay. A sidekick. A brother.