::---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------::

(Aden's P.O.V)

The passing of time seemed slow yet I'd been meditating in the film separating the void from reality for upwards of 1 month now.

My breath was measured and calm, my thoughts tranquil like a gentle pool. I was in sync with the very breath of the world. The very essence of life, twisting and twirling across the lush plains of gigantic islands the size of continents, the tall mountains bigger than 10 mount Everests stacked together.

I could feel the pulse of the world. A true universal component of what was the result of my unbridled power. At the start, I had been shocked and almost overwhelmed by it all. I had never realized just how much I had. Everything under these heavens was mine. And no one could take it away.

I admit, I spent the first week just reveling in the motion of everything. Spark of Enlightenment opened my mind and spirit to what I couldn't normally perceive. A connection that went beyond the physical and mental. It was intrusive and just like it's name, enlightening.

It was that comprehension that showed me how shallow my thinking had initially been. The path I trudged on was not completely wrong yet it was restrictive.

My second week I tried to touch upon what I thought was a result of my out of the box thinking. The denial of air was a vacuum. That was my running theme and so taking the principle of the non-existence of matter in the chaos rift to my right, I could also deny air traction in a chosen zone.

So I tried to do so.

The zone occupied by my hand immediately felt cold. I waved it through the vacant and frowned. The pressure was much lower and colder but despite that, there was nothing else particularly noteworthy about the feat. A few particles too small for my detection moved about lazily, making the vacuum only an imperfect vacuum. It would be good for choking someone out or putting out flames but both had been things I could already do.

However, an instinct buried deep within me told me I was on the right track. It was in the minute flares that occasionally occured in the vacuum. What would happen if i completely stripped the zone of all matter, molecular or sub-atomic?

I used my will. The will ingrained in me to intuitively command the forces of nature and they answered. And so I denied matter existence. The Zone collapsed upon it self, twisting and twirling into a miniature black hole that was growing bigger and bigger and bigger...I found that I was screaming hoarsely trying to contain it by pressing its boundaries with an opposing swirl of air and inner energy...

I blinked and opened my eyes, letting go of the Course, an hypothetical function of Spark of Enlightenment that showed me where my conjectures would most likely lead to. I shuddered. I almost created a black hole in the middle of my main dimension...That was something i was clearly not ready for.

For my third week I decided to change tactics. Mostly because of my fear of destroying my dimension from within. This fear underwhelmed my efforts because I was now at the start of another path. A path set dynamically in opposition to what I had been following. I pictured my elements as the main branches of a massive tree. All having the same source. Pure energy.

The main branches broke off into smaller branches which were my subskills and expanded out in a network. At the ends of the branches were twigs that led to leaves. These were the simplest or rather basic functions of the subskills I had access to. For example air constructs, flame constructs and such.

But I was wrong.

Not completely. But I was still wrong. The third week as stated before was spent trying to go the very opposite of what I had been trying before. And the contrast of absence is presence.

And so I increased pressure in a zone. Now I knew middle and high school physics. Increase of pressure leads to a decrease in the volume of a gas, hence changing it into a liquid and later on, a solid. None of that happened here.

The air in the zone grew more compact into the familiar air constructs I used. I couldn't compress it even more. And though they gained a pale green shade and uniformity to the point where they were indistinguishable from solid structures, it was still air currents compressed together that would unravel noisily if I lost concentration for even a split second.

It would have been a massive cheat if I could freely and permanently shift air into the rest of the states of matter. Who knows, maybe I could have done it if I tried hard enough. But my abilities while unrestrictive and not following conventional physics still seemed to have basic rules. Each element was it's own.

But even that was wrong. It was all so contradictory and my enhanced comprehension didn't make it easier. It only added to the headache as I received more questions than answers.

You see, green fire expressed itself into a viscous state which was liquid and with sufficient training, a fire bender could bend steam. Roku showed this. Lava benders demonstrated it as well. So what was I missing? And why was this possible from a different element other than air?

And just like that I found my answer just before I gave up on that line of thinking.

Let's go back to the tree imagery...it was wrong. Completely debunked. Instead of a tree, I started thinking of the representation of my abilities as a spider web. The web in its entirety was energy. And the nodes or rather the points where a string connected with another was...each of my abilities.

An element was like the package carrying everything and hence was closer to the middle of the web. The middle of the web was the very source of the energy making up the web. In my case it was processed from outside and funneled to within.

Each string that departed from the four elements found itself connected to other strings into an almost infinitely expanding network of abilities or rather different ways the energy could express the four elements out to the world. Take Fire for example, combustion, lightning and Myriad Colored Flames. All subskills I had unlocked.

To add to that, different strings could interconnect and give rise to different expressions. For example, Fire and Earth...Lava. Or a string could add on to a different element's string and simply precipitate a change of expression without changing it's core self. For example, fire and water for steam.

That line of thinking opened up new ventures and also supported my first conjecture that I was completely unrestricted in what I could access. Or rather, how I could express my elements out into the world.

Nodes or points of interconnecting elements that were closer to the center of the whole thing were more apparent and I could even think of what other air subskills I could unlock.

There was cloud bending, disintegration bending and lots more. However with the simple action of simply using my abilities to turn invisible...I had opened myself up to a node connected to so many ambiguous threads that it had taken changing my way of thinking to even understand what it was.

(New Subskill Unlocked!)

Space.

(General P.O.V)

It was a bustling day in Metropolis. The city had faced more than it's share of devastation over decades since flying people became a thing. Infact, wide spread destruction almost every other month had sort of become the norm.

Yet despite the danger, The City of Tomorrow still remained beautiful and very attractive to non locals. In part due to Luthor's influence on the development of the city but mostly due to the efforts of Superman or recently Superion. Some might argue that the younger Kryptonian who was no doubt related to Superman was more aggressive, less willing to pull back his punches and the inflastructure suffered for it. On the flip side crime in the city went down by 12%!

On this particular day, the bank alarm sounded out just as a shirtless figure blasted through it's two double doors. 4 police cars were parked under the steps of the bank and the captain with a huge megaphone stepped up fearlessly.

"Freeze! Get down on the ground Corben Now!"

The Captain of the Metropolis Police Department ordered. The now named Corben laughed, 2 bags slung over his shoulder. It wasn't a mystery what was inside.

"You shoulda said please. And...it's Metallo!"

He stated and then took a running leap.

"Out of the way!!"

The Captain shouted and every cop scrambled to move away from where Metallo's trajectory was bringing him down. At the peak of his jump however, a figure swooped in, a red coat of energy engulfing his body. He pulled back an arm and punched Metallo out of the air.

The villain spiralled through the air and slammed into one of the pillars of the city bank, then rebounded off and struck a sedan parked on the sideway, collapsing it under his weight.

Superion floated down unsteadily, already feeling the effects of the Kryptonite inside Metallo's chest.

"Captain, make sure you evacuate any civilians from the area. Set your blockade down the block as well. Metallo isn't someone to go down easy."

The Captain nodded.

"Ok son. Kick his ass."

Superion gave a curt nod and flew towards Metallo, his eyes blazing red.

"Stay down Metallo."

Superion warned as Metallo extracted himself from the totalled green car, ripped off it's door and threw it like a discuss towards Superion. The door impacted Superion and crumbled before falling to the ground.

That brief moment allowed Metallo to jump and launch an attack that seemed to stop mere inches from Superion's face. The Kryptonite fueled villain frowned in shock as Superion blinked in surprise as well.

"Kick him on the mouth!"

A small voice whispered close to Superion's ears.

"What...?"

"No, throw him through him another car and let it explode like that movie!!! Pretty please!!"

"Breeze?..."

Superion wondered, finally connecting the voice with the fact that Metallo was floating in the air even more surprised than Connor was.

Connor's eyes widened as he looked around him wildly.

"You followed me!!? Star will kill me!"

Kai popped out into materialization beside him. She was wearing a shopping bag with eyeholes cut in the shape of eyes on her head.

"No silly, we didn't follow you. We were following Captain Krypto!!"

"Captain Krypto...??"

In that instant, his younger brother popped out before him from the spiritual shroud cast on him by Sai. He was dressed in a vest with a red cloth slung offer his neck in a makeshift cape, long blue shots that reached close to his ankles and a surprisingly decent domino mask.

"Stay back big bro...Captain Krypto will save you now!" He said innocently before turning to Metallo, faster than Superion could stop him. Posing, with his hands spread out loud, Captain Krypto debuted his ultimate move.

"Justiiiiiiicceeeee beams of ultra mega super duper awesomeness superpower blast!!"

Breeze popped out from Connor's shoulder.

"No!!" She protested, dressed in a long flowing fairy godmother gown and holding a shining straight green rod with a super sized star at the end.

"Ughh!! You messed up the line, dummy! It was ultra mega awesomeness super duper power blast!!!"

"Hey leave him alone you green mean meanie or I'm telling on you!"

Then Sai of course popped out to defend his younger bro. Sai was the most normal of all of them. Relatively. He had on ripped jeans, a bandana across his forehead, a jeans sleeveless jacket and black sunglasses with black cowboy boots.

Superion and Metallo shared a glance. Yeah...they were both regretting coming out today.