The conditions stipulated for freedom were met when Mason stopped after ten minutes of non-stop sprinting. Ten minutes of moving at velocities that would make him invisible to the most focused and intense of human observation.
Trees, so tall and numerous they seemed to box him in, were all he could see when he spun around. The solitude sapped away at the tenseness holding his muscles hostage and gave him room to think.
Rather than go over how he messed up and got people killed, he worked out how to obtain proper clothes and prolong his freedom by getting as far away as possible .
He’d rather not deal with the problems that would arise from the fact that he’d not only caused a breakout, gotten someone killed, but also gotten some of that blood on his hands, superhero blood.
That woman with her beliefs was a perversion of the term, however the large and active online following she’d garnered spoke otherwise. Mason was no stranger to this; the worst kind of people congregating together under one, equally worse banner.
Granted, Stormfront’s fans didn’t know she was a Nazi. No one knew, from the videos he’d watched of her on social media and the comments under them. But him knowing the truth practically gave him new lenses.
And they painted the things she said which her fans parroted like the gospel in a light Hitler would love to see. She was essentially a white supremacist unable to properly hide in plain sight. And to think she was venerated as a superhero.
Mason wouldn't waste his breath complaining about this world. Apart from the presence of supes, it differed in no way compared to where he came from. In fact, the presence of supes had seemingly cranked up the evil and mass stupidity scale.
If his former world had no god, this one had the devil himself sitting on the throne.
But that was none of his business. He was just a lone person trying to figure out what to do with himself now that he no longer wished to die. And as anyone could well imagine, he was at a complete loss.
He was free, in both mental and physical respects, but he had no idea what to do with his life. So he focused on his most immediate problem. Clothes. Food. Shelter. That’s why he risked giving up his location by retrieving this phone from the inventory in the first place.
Still, it was worth it in the end. He had now a solid idea of his geographical position and where to head next.
A glance at the time in the top corner of the screen informed him he’d spent a total of twenty minutes using the phone. Plenty enough time for anyone looking to lock on to him.
The thought made him look up, but all he found was the glare of the midday sun being hampered by the trees. He crushed the phone with a squeeze, tossed the ruined thing and blasted it with a stream of fire.
For a prolonged moment, the sheer novelty kept his arm and the flames going, even when the battery made a pop.
‘I can shoot fire. And lightning too. Let’s not forget,’ his lips curved into a tiny smile. ‘Thank you, Maya.’
Once the phone had been properly cremated, he crouched, leaning his upper body forward slightly. The dial keeping him at his new baseline of 450 pounds winded down till it reached one.
Primed and ready to go, he kicked off the ground.
His superpowered muscles hurled him forward and upward, shooting him past the treeline in a long, concave arc. The sea of leaves blurred past as he waved his limbs and soared, the force of the jump launching him over two hundred meters and more horizontally.
Mason laughed at the biting of the wind and the utter freedom of moving through the air. He went into this with no expectations, but that amplified the experience even more.
Weighing a single pound prolonged the time it took the momentum to bleed off, but it did bleed off, eventually.
Unwilling to relinquish this experience by returning to the ground, Mason held both arms out at his sides and conjured two small flames. He turned his hands over so the palms and flames faced down before trying what he’d seen many of the firebenders achieve in the ATLA show.
He directed his chi to the flames and they grew into long streams that went past his legs and almost touched the treetops. But he had no time to notice this, because that simple act sent him zooming forward.
Normal, skilled firebenders could propel themselves and resist gravity for more than a few seconds if their breaths could sustain it. During Sozin’s comet, this translated into near indefinite flight time as demonstrated by Ozai.
With his more intense flames, the ability to conjure said flames without breathing, and the ability to reduce gravity’s effects on himself, it stood to reason Mason could achieve real flight.
That is… if he learned control.
Forward didn’t mean straight or perfect. The sudden thrust sent him hurtling, but in a messy way, like someone had slapped jet boosters on him without any plan in mind and activated them at the same time.
After spinning and somersaulting a few times, he pulled back on the flames and also conjured some beneath his feet, taking points from Tony Stark’s tests in the first Iron Man movie.
Four long streams of blue fire burned the canopies of the trees beneath him in his bid to regain some semblance of control. Carefully dialling back the heat, he pulled his arms to his side and pressed his legs close together.
This finally got him to stop moving and simply hover in place.
Since he barely weighed anything, the booster flames were tiny, about the size of three candle flames, but they served their purpose.
Glancing down, he checked to ensure he hadn’t started a forest fire. This endeavor let him sense pockets of heat below. His mere intent to douse them roused his chi and the tiny flames he could sense below became no more.
Mentally noting this ability down, he looked up, focusing on going up and farther away from the forest filled with flammable substances. It took him 0.1 percent of his efforts to keep him hovering.
To achieve true flight, he guessed one percent would be a good place to start.
Finding the earlier scene of long streams wasteful, he held more tightly onto the boosted flames while feeding them. They still grew in size, obviously, but they looked more solid, with a definable shape.
Still, despite using one percent of his prowess and being small as they were, the jets managed to send Mason straight up like a rocket. The forest below quickly became less than that and similar to the aerial views used in agricultural documentaries.
‘Alright this is high enough.’
Up there and at the mercy of winds blowing him to and fro, Mason adjusted in real time, changing the angles of his hands and feet to maintain his hovering stance.
This allowed him to stay there for much longer and admire the view. Sure, it was all green wherever he turned to look, but the indescribable feeling accompanying the experience kept him rooted there.
He didn’t forget his situation though and reeled it in after a while.
‘Time to go.’
By leaning forward and adjusting the direction he faced, he put himself in the right position to test his long distance flight capabilities. One percent thrust moved him forward at a similar pace to how he ascended.
Pretty fast. Almost as fast as the jump threw him. But it was one percent.
He added a zero to that over the course of ten seconds and his speed slowly entered a whole new realm. The wind pushed against him and his hair, pulling each strand straight to the back of his head.
It was like riding a bike but a thousand times better. Mason had never felt such joy. So much so that he couldn’t stop smiling. In fact, it took all his self control and fear of embarrassment to keep himself from shouting at the top of his lungs.
Though he wasn’t sure anyone would hear at the speed he was moving.
Loosening himself up more and more, he gave into his exploratory instincts and stopped flying in a straight line. First, he banked left and circled back, tightly controlling the flames to bring him back to his original position.
His first attempt to fly in a circle went off without a hitch. Granted, it wasn’t particularly difficult, but that couldn’t be said for some of the subsequent ones.
Take spinning for example. Had his flight simply let him move in space as he wished, spinning his body like a top would come easy.
However, his method flight required him to maintain awareness and control of not just the flames and the extremities they shot out of, but of his whole body as well. A harmless lean could alter his trajectory greatly and disrupt the delicate balance he had ongoing.
Despite all this, he managed to spin after about a dozen tries. It was not perfect and neither did he stay in place, but he still completed a revolution after trying just a few times.
He chalked it up to the ability that made him a genius at any movement related activity, silently thanking Maya for choosing it.
Thinking about her deflated his joy.
Deep down he knew that if she was truly responsible for this second chance, she’d curse him out for moping like a little bitch. Recalling her obscenely foul mouth made him chuckle.
How someone with such colorful vocabulary chose writing as a career flew over his head, but he missed her nonetheless. Right then and there he asked himself what she would do if she were in his place.
Certain parts of the document gained personal lightbulbs in his head and gave him a vague idea of her intentions. Why else would she give him Edna Mode’s knowledge on superhero fashion?
Mason didn’t think he was ready to entertain such a future yet, so he shelved it and resumed the journey. It took him a mere three minutes to catch a glimpse of the state park, more specifically, the immense, black lake sitting in the center.
The sight of water somehow made the sensation of the crusted blood on his face, arms and soles more real. To avoid being seen, he went below the treeline and flew towards a spot where a portion of the lake was obscured by some low canopies.
No Lag let him weave through the trees at full speed, letting him dodge the closely gathered trunks by mere inches each time. Sadly, his continued success at flying ended not long after the dive.
A couple of quick dodges sent him into another tree, his back hitting it first. Neither of them broke and he rather rebounded, towards another tree.
Canceling the flame jets after several minutes of keeping them active, he threw his arms around the tree heading towards him and moved his head out of the way to avoid kissing the bark.
Huffing a chuckle, he canceled the weight shift too and slid down, his toughened skin removing any possible discomfort from the friction. From there, he legged it to the spot he’d chosen.
Without wasting any time, he stepped straight into the lake, storing the gun and holster. His height quickly became a problem again so he dived forward into the deeper parts, relishing the coolness as the water swallowed him.
While rubbing his feet together absentmindedly, he cleared away the streaks on his face and noticed something weird. No, he’d already noticed it before when he used firebending. However being underwater practically answered the question.
He did not need to breathe.
Just to be certain, he brought his head close to the surface and stopped holding his breath, trusting the inward feeling telling him he didn’t need to.
No bubbles rose from his open mouth or nostrils, and no water rushed into them either. Yet he remained fine, lungs not burning, tongue dry, vision uncloudy.
‘Is this my power? Oxygen independence?’
The document explained that anyone with a superpower in this world got them from Compound V. Mason had assumed the strength and durability were all he’d gotten. No, he believed it.
For him, it matched perfectly with his life, which had been as colorful as that of a starving artist with no drugs. However this discovery basically matched everything his grandfather and Maya told him.
That there was more to him than his condition. Right now, he believed them more than he ever had.
He stayed underneath the lake’s surface for quite a while after that, swimming around and exploring the portions of its bottom he could see.
When enough time passed for him to be certain there was no time limit on the ability, he swam back to the hidden spot, inventory full of dead trout. As soon his head broke the surface, his body began steaming.
It was faint at first but he turned up the heat the more of his body left the water, causing the steam to visibly waft off him in an almost wave-like manner.
By the time he’d taken his third steps on land, he’d become completely dry, same for his hair and his clothes.
There was still some time before sunset, so he went in search of Cabin D.
Since he’d rather not walk about during the day looking like a prime target for a cop’s curiosity, he chose to wait till visibility was low.
As to where he’d wait, that’s what risking his location being tracked was for. He didn’t just scout the possible locations that sold the things he needed, he also went to the website of this state park to peruse their map and reservations.
They were surprisingly unhelpful, but at least he knew they’d be busy this time of the year and that not all the cabins available for people to book would be occupied. That’s where the search came in.
He just needed to find one of these cabins, let himself in, and wait till it was dark.
However, just like the old adage, it was easier said than done. To maintain his anonymity, he reduced his weight and climbed to the top of the trees, pulling himself along them to not just keep himself out of sight but locate what he wanted faster.
There were a few close calls with this method of movement, such as one where a little girl spotted him and called for her parents. By the time they rushed out of their tents, he had already ascended and used the canopies as cover.
Even though this was the closest call, he considered it a failure because someone—it didn’t matter if it was a child—had made visual contact. It led to him trying to find a way to avoid this and he recalled how he sensed fire earlier.
Back then he didn’t need to see the fire to know it existed. His awareness, tuned to heat specifically, as he came to discover, told him it was there.
Fully tapping into this “Heat Sense,” he continued his search with renewed confidence and found the area with the cabins, accurately deducing which ones had occupants.
‘That’s got to be about half a mile.’ He concluded while focusing on one cabin in particular, trying to concentrate the heat sense into his eyes. They went wide instantly when the world shifted color.