Marvelous Martial Arts (A Marvel Story)

After Doom left, Mason waited for a while in his apartment before he finally received a response from his sister, telling him she was in Stark Tower. She proposed that she meet him somewhere in town, but he told her to just wait for him on top of the tower.

Mason unfortunately remained unable to fly. One of his hopes for this breakthrough had been that he would gain the ability to fly, something that was commonly associated with the Foundation Establishment Realm, but he had not magically learned to fly.

However, Mason could come close using his innate abilities, as well as the Gravity Dao.

Mason most often used the ‘heavy’ side of the Gravity Dao, through the Concept of Pull, but he was just as capable with the Concept of Push. Using it, Mason could reduce his personal gravity just as he could increase it.

This allowed Mason to vastly increase his leaping distances, as well as lower the dragging effect of gravity.

To make a proper jump, though, Mason needed proper friction, so to reach his top speed, Mason had to switch between lowering and increasing his gravity. Thankfully, even something this complex came to him naturally with his Gravity Intent. That Intent had truly become part of him, so it was somewhat like using a limb.

In any case, adding his immense physical strength to his Gravity Dao, Mason could not only come close to the speed of sound, but he could also jump across kilometers at his top speeds with every leap.

Walking out of his dojo, Mason easily spotted Stark Tower in the skyline and took off.

A few people on the street exclaimed and pointed up at the soaring figure, but he was too fast for a second person to see, as Mason quickly covered the distance towards Stark Tower.

Lowering his gravity so as not to shatter the stone, Mason landed on the tower’s side, and rapidly ran vertically, climbing with only a few jumps.

And there, at the very top, right at the level of the giant ‘STARK’ letters, Mason landed on the large helipad jutting out. Inside, sitting at the bar, was Elena.

She had changed her haircut since the last time they saw each other, cutting her long auburn hair into wispy bangs. Her blue eyes were shot wide open as she stared, a straw still in her mouth.

Mason approached with a grin, calling out, ”Hey, big sis, missed me?”

She closed her mouth, putting down her cocktail as she said very serenely, ”You better not have damaged the tower climbing it. We’ve already announced the opening ceremony.”

Mason took a seat next to her, rolling his eyes. ”No, I didn’t damage your precious tower. What are you doing here anyway? You’re no architect, and even less a bricklayer.”

Elena understood he was asking about her presence today, but why she worked on the project at all, so she asked, ”Do you know why Tony made this tower? What is its purpose?”

”To satisfy his every-hungry ego?” Mason had to admit he had not been following this very closely. The project itself had started while he was in New York, but he had missed most of the construction process.

Elena shot him a look, though she let out a small smile herself. ”No- well, maybe a little. But the goal is for this tower to become New York’s first clean-energy-powered skyscraper, serving as a beacon for the city’s future and bridging the distance between Stark Industries and New York City.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Mason gave her a derisive glance before looking through the drinks at the bar as he remarked, ”Congratulations, dear sister. You’ve officially climbed the social ladder. You sound like a corpo robot.”

She smiled, knowing that would be his reaction. ”Alright, this was actually Pepper’s idea- you remember Pepper, right? From the Hearing. They’re together now. Well, Tony passed down the position of CEO to her, and this is her big bang. And what I said might be corpo talk, it is true. This whole building will be powered by an Arc Reactor.” he turned around, and she gave him a smug look. ”Do you even know what an Arc Reactor is, you ape?”

Mason tapped his chest with a bland look, and she continued, ”Well, I suppose you could say that this is a project that serves both our interests and those of the world.”

”Our?”

”Of course. I’ve contributed my fair share to this project. Not that I could tell you, it’s confidential, but what I can tell you is that Stark Industries believes this could revolutionize the world, and given time, the whole world could run on clean energy, if people were not so stubborn.”

Mason, to his dismay, did not find a single non-alcoholic drink other than water and a few syrups, so he let it go and warned, ”Careful there. Changing the world are big words, and quite the responsibility.”

Elena did not need Mason to go into the details to understand where he was going at, she had thought about the problem plenty of times herself, not to mention Pepper and Tony. Any source of energy could be turned into a weapon. For the Arc Reactor, the Iron Man armors were a good example.

So she said, ”Obviously we wouldn’t be handing out Arc Reactors to just anyone. I said it was a future perspective already, but this will serve as a blueprint for what is possible.”

Mason nodded, and she continued, ”But since you asked, for my personal involvement, the tower isn’t just eye-candy. The top ten floors are all Research and Development, with means beyond nearly any laboratory on Earth thanks to the Arc Reactor. It will be where I will be leading my research into the future, so I was involved in the construction.”

Mason stopped, looking at the well-earned pride on his sister’s face, and eventually complimented, ”Good for you. You deserve it.”

She smiled, raised her glass, and took a sip, as if to toast herself. Then, she asked, ”What about you? What did my little brother disappear to? What place was so unreachable that he could not regularly keep up with his family? That you could not even send a text for your own birthday?”

Mason gave her the same summary as he had his parents, to which she listened silently. She did not quite keep the same poker face as his parents had, though, regularly reacting to what he said. Only when he was finished, though, did she ask, ”So what’s the plan now? You’re Mister Incredible-” Mason cut her off. ”The Honored One.”

She rolled her eyes. ”Sure, Honored One. But you did what you left for. There’s no more danger dangling over our heads. So what are you going to do? What do you want to do?”

Mason shrugged, now sitting next to her on the couch in the middle of the floor. ”The same as before, I suppose, just with new means. Fundamentally, I believe that my purpose on this Earth is to help my fellow man, so that is exactly what I will do. But right now, I do actually have an idea. Something that has been gnawing at me since my journey.”

”What is it?” she asked, eager.

Mason leaned back into the sofa, asking wistfully, ”Do you remember what Audrey said the last time we saw each other? About the killing of people. How she did not want to be my excuse for killing people.”

Elena nodded, and Mason continued, ”As naive as she can be, she had a point. I hunted down the Hand to protect you, don’t get me wrong, but it’s true that I would have killed them anyway, had they crossed my path. As I told you, they were already dead, possessed by a demon, so there was no redemption for them. But that got me thinking about my own willingness to kill or not. And I realized that it was all about redemption. I like to believe in people, that they can do good, no matter their past. But I’m not perfect, and sometimes, I fail to uphold my own beliefs. Like when Minx was attacked, there were a couple among them who were not controlled by that demon, and that didn’t stop me from killing them.”

Elena listened silently, and Mason smiled, looking up, as he remembered his time around the world. ”I’ve met more people than I could count during my journey. Than I cared to count anyway. At first, I did not make a difference between good and bad, because I figured I was only a passerby, someone destined to only know a fraction of their life, and thus ill-suited for judging them.

”But as I passed through one village after the other, I started seeing things. People who had been on the very edge of death, begging for me to save them, swearing to any and all gods that they would cherish this new life. Those very same people, starting to oppress their fellow people at the mere sight of power. And there were others, for whom I barely did anything and who stood up for others on their own, even when they did not know I was watching. People known as good in their communities stabbing others in the back to access my power, and pariahs who saw their chance for a change in life.”

Elena asked, ”So what did you do?”

Mason shrugged, ”Nothing, for the most part. I did discipline a few of the worst ones, introduced them to the fist of love, but I wasn’t meant to be an arbiter of life and death. If anything, it reinforced what I already believed: that life is beautiful because it has potential. And who has more potential than children? That’s why I’m going to be clearing out the Pediatric Palliative Care Units around the city first.”