NOVEL NEXT Flying To New Orleans
Hey guys, I'm back. Patreon is at chapter 248.
(General P.O.V)
Saisei dug his snout deeper into Aden's hand. The teen rubbed the scales on his neck affectionately, right on the spot that Saisei liked. Not that he would ever admit it to Hakai or Breeze.
"See you later buddy. I gotta go take care of something."
The foreign thought projection appeared in his mind. The streaks of ideas intermixed with coherence feelings of hope, affection and a little impatience, allowed Saisei to understand that the Master was leaving.
"Take me with you."
Saisei responded, using the link to project his own feelings of loneliness, hope and excitement. Aden's face changed to a wince. Saisei couldn't understand facial expressions just yet but he was picking up on cues. The expression on his face did not match any of the feel good emotions The Master usually projected. And as if to prove him true, The Master replied with a no.
"Sorry, Saisei but I can't risk the world tainting any of you. I need you to wait. At least until you're a little bit older and I promise I'll take you and your sisters to places you've never been before, okay?"
Saisei was indignant but otherwise understood. The Master was forgiven after rubbing his scales right on that favored spot Saisei liked and with a wave of his hand, a portal appeared before Aden that he jumped in. Saisei watched him leave before he turned back to look around.
He was alone. Maybe he should go back Hakai and Breeze? But no they were too…colorful? Yes, colorful for him. Not to say they looked bad or something but everytime Saisei spent time with them…he felt himself losing something (manliness). He didn't want to be colorful. He wanted…he wanted to be not colorful. But not dull either. Saisei mulled it over before deciding to give up and admit he had no idea what he wanted. Which left him to explore the deserted island.
Saisei let out a plume of flame as he snorted, the Island itself was barren and dry. It only took a few minutes for him to fly around before returning to where he was. There was really nothing else to do here, huh? He snorted and was about to leave when his eyes caught the figure of the sleeping Match. Saisei was in need of friends. And Master did say he wanted Match to be a friend and Family…Saisei flew closer to the pod and used the connection he had made when he was trying to heal Match, to try and communicate. His snout touched the glass of the cage, while he used his spiritual abilities to touch upon the Soul of the Clone. Instantly, Saisei found himself in a gray room covered with cracks on it's metallic structure. In the middle of the room, a soul that looked like a 6 year old kid was sleeping down on the hard ground. His form was hazy and shrunk upon itself, wearing a white costume with a House of El symbol on the chest. Not that Saisei knew what the symbol stood for. Infact Saisei did not have much of an idea as to what he was about to do. Or the repercussions of his actions. The little dragon cocked his head to the side and reached out to the silent and blank faced child.
"Hello?"
His greetings went unanswered. So he flew closer and started floating above the Kid in circles.
"New Friend?"
Saisei tried again, only to meet the same blank faced silence. So he thought as to why his 'new friend' was ignoring him…maybe he didn't want to play with him because he looked different?! Yes! Saisei was sure that was the reason! Breeze had changed her form to look like a white dragon to compete and see who could fly faster between her, Hakai and Saisei. Saisei has enjoyed it. Maybe his new friend would want to play if Saisei changed to look like him?
Saisei concentrated and bent his spirit with minimal effort, something that would have shocked Iroh greatly. And with a pop, he slimmed down and in his place was a young dark skinned boy who looked to be 6 years old standing before the sleeping blank faced clone. The boy shared a lot of similarities with Aden. One could even say, it was a clone of him. Saisei, looked down at himself. Holding up his hands and wriggling his fingers. This form was weird.
He turned to his new potential friend and lay down next to him, so that they were now staring at each other. Saisei's brown eyes made contact with Match's own silver orbs.
"Hello."
Saisei said with a smile on his face.
Match's eyes gained a spark of intelligence.
(Aden's P.O.V)
I really need to travel more. This version of the US was different from my own with new whole cities, regions and towns. Meaning that I couldn't just boom tube anywhere I wanted or remembered from my previous world. I'd been to New Orleans before. At least in my version of the earth but that didn't count for anything given that this world was as stated earlier, different. So instead of trying out my luck and boom tubing there…I appeared in Washington DC, checked up on Iroh real quick and then flew to the clouds.
The distance from Washington DC to New Orleans is about a thousand miles give or take. I was going to fly there. Time for a road trip!! Plus, it had been a long time since I had tested my full flight speed. Grandmaster in Airbending was essentially a cheat code on reality. To be specific the air itself. I experienced no drag, air friction or pressure. Mmmh, that raises questions, if there is no friction, does that mean I can accelerate forever? Scary but also a bit improbable. My powers were not an exact science. The mystical element basically overshadowed any scientific principles I could come up with. To put it in simple terms, The wind basically obeyed and anticipated any of my wishes and hurried to carry them out.
My figure oriented itself above the din of the capital city. I tightened my back muscles while turning to face the direction of New Orleans. Here goes nothing…top speed from the get go. I felt a fast moving object pull up to my position through my air sense but paid them no mind. What the fuck was Batman"s Batwing doing here? I shook my head as it neared my position and waved at him. Then I blurred and disappeared.
(General P.O.V)
A camera had caught sight of someone who matched Aden's identity a couple of hours ago in Washington DC. Bruce had wanted to make things right. Whether that meant bringing him in or talking to him…he felt the need. So he had made the trip from Gotham to DC in hopes of locating Aden. And he had. The boy was not subtle at all.
Batman flew the Batwing closer to him, hoping to direct him to the ground where they could talk. But one second the boy was there, then the next, the Batwing buckled and flipped as a huge wind pressure exploded out, pushing everything away. Batman hurried to control his aircraft and luckily managed to do so before he could crash. The hull of The Batwing along with the windshield had sustained heavy damage. Batman narrowed his eyes at the direction Aden had taken and started reevaluating his risk factor. Aden was growing stronger. Time to overhaul the initial danger assessment countermeasures and come up with new plans.
(Aden's P.O.V)
I blasted through the air going at a speed where everything was blurry to me. My eyes flashed with an electric blue as I increased my perception and reaction speed so as to not crash against something. The speeds I was clocking reminded me that airbending was still my most versatile element. I really needed to come up with a new Subskill. The theory I had, that it was possible to have multiple for each element made a lot of sense now that I was more familiar with my powers. And given the fact that Spark of Enlightenment worked once for each element…it meant I had a chance to master another Subskill in the air category. What had me stumped was…what Subskill should I go for?
I thought about it as I enjoyed the sights. Now that I could atleast see where I was going…the trip turned out to be awesome but very short. I reached the skyline above New Orleans in seemingly no time. Further on in the distance, a blue stretch of water told me I had arrived close to the coast. I looked at the time on the minimized display box at the corner of my eyes and blinked again.
"Is this real?"
I muttered.
"52 seconds?!"
The mutter turned into a sharp whisper. 'That's…that's like 70000 mph. Or Mach 100 more or less. Jesus, that's fast for flight speed. But still, nowhere close to the speed people like The Flash or Superman could reach. Oh wow…that put things in perspective. I shook my head and flew down.
Yes there was a risk to people seeing me but what was I going to do? Shield myself by taking a principle of air, applying it to my form to turn invisible? I paused in place. Holy shit! Was it that easy? It couldn't right? I mean that was more of a Light Bending thing right? Then again…the Sub-skills I had access to were not as clear cut as one might think. I mean water could heal…where's the science in that. In canon, Airbenders could spirit bend or something akin to spirituality… I didn't know…I was mostly into utility.
Well, there is no reason not to try at least. Trying never hurt anyone. My heart hammered inside me as I thought it over. Air is not visible because it sends very little light to our eyes. It's a transparent medium, meaning it's emittance and reflectance is zero, meaning it transmits all the light. Gah! Thinking of it like that..there was no way it was going to work. The guideline mechanics were not backed by logic.
So I tried again, this time doing away with the physics view point and instead tried to adopt the feature itself onto my person. To blend in. The element had shown how much it favored me. You can't explain that away with science. So I took a deep breath and just did it. It was like something just clicked and I felt…melded into the fabric of space itself. I don't know what I did. I couldn't really understand it. But that was a turning point for me and my understanding of how my abilities worked. As I flew down, invisible to the naked eye while landing on an alley…I wondered how much remained undiscovered about the enigma that is my powers.
I pulled up my display box in anticipation to see the description of my new Subskill and frowned. That's weird. There was nothing. And given that the system never lags...maybe invisibility didn't really count as a sub-skill. Just like how wind constructs were just a facet of my wind control. That's a bummer. I killed the disappointment off quickly as I got back on track. I knew Madame Xanadu had a fortune-telling gig somewhere in the city. The question is where.
Where the heck am I going to find Nimue?
(General P.O.V)
What went unseen and unnoticed by Aden was the golden glow that the air element tab briefly pulsed with before the display box was neatly minimized to the corner of his eyes.