Chapter 4

Chapter 4

                When they were certain that they had been hidden well enough, Matthew, Ben, and Lauren finally sat down under some trees in the forest. Ben’s deliria seemed to fade away as they traveled, but it was replaced by something much worse, headaches. Lauren formed the idea of creating a block of ice, and Ben gladly pressed it against his head.

“Even after all that’s happened, I’m still having a hard time believing who we are.” Matthew pointed out.

“I guess you have a point, since elemental manipulation is extremely uncommon. Even though that kind of topic is regarded as science fiction, it’s truthfully based off of real details. I found a book years ago that explained us pretty well, although even I still have trouble understanding some of it. One thing that I do remember reading is that only 0.1836% of any birth can lead to some kind of elemental manipulation.” Lauren explained.

“I’m not too happy about being stuck with a stupid chance of odds those low.” Matthew complained. “I’m sure you both can tell; I’m not the personification of some kind of superpowered hero.”

“Yo Lauren,” Ben spoke up. “Since you’re going to be hanging with us for a while, how about you tell us some more about yourself? When did your icy powers show up anyway?”

“So far I’ve kept so much to myself my whole life. You two are the first to ever truly know that I have Cryokinesis. I had to be around seven years old when I had enough awareness over my element to control it. One of my favorite things to do is make my own frozen snacks. I even brought a few ingredients for us to make something while we’re out here, by the way.”

“That’s really cool how you’ve been able to practice with Ice so long. I was maybe ten or eleven when I realized I had strange talents with Water. Also Matthew and I have been bros since the second grade. We’re happy to have you as our lady bro.” Ben replied.

“O-okay then. It’s already turning into night time, and I need you two to help me set up the tent in my pack.” Lauren said.

Pitching the tent didn’t take too long as the group of three. They set their packs inside and settled in the corners of the tent. Exhausted from the day’s events, they soon realized how tired they were. Lauren was already asleep on the other side of the tent, and Matthew was about to be too.

“Matt, don’t sleep yet! I just realized I have service on my smartphone!” Ben whisper-shouted.

“That’s great, do me a favor and find out if we’re already all over the news by now.”

Ben searched various news sites, and he was surprised to see nothing.

“Nothing showed up at all man, and I even searched up Jefferson High too.”

“That’s a little weight off my shoulders. I’m sure some people have found out what happened, but they must be keeping it from the public to prevent any panic. I just can’t wait for this to all blow over so we can get back to our more sensible lives.”

Matthew fell asleep, followed by Ben for a hopefully peaceful night.

The next morning, rays of sunlight seeped through the tent’s windows. As soon as they hit him, Matthew immediately woke up, feeling much more refreshed than the previous night. He realized Ben was resting his head on his stomach.

“I’m not a pillow, Ben!” He shoved his friend off, waking him up in the process.

“No kidding dude, I can still feel where your ribs were jabbing into my head. Speaking of my head, the headaches are much less painful than earlier now.”

“That’s good; you had me pretty worried after the impact yesterday. Anyway, let’s wake up Lauren. I haven’t had anything to eat since the cafeteria slop yesterday.”

Breakfast ended up being homemade ice cream, courtesy of Lauren.

“I don’t care if this isn’t a nutritious breakfast, it tastes great!” Ben said.

“I’m glad you like it, but we won’t stay healthy eating off of ice cream and snow-cones alone.” Lauren said.

“This forest isn’t too far from the neighborhoods, so I already know we’re not going to be eating any land animals out here.” Matthew pointed out.

“Let’s think of what else we saw on our way here, I know there’s something to eat out here.”

“I think I remember seeing a creek some ways away, I guess we could give fishing a shot.”

“Fish or no fish, let’s get to that creek!” Ben said.

They packed up the tent, and continued back to where Matthew believed he saw the creek. The forest was refreshingly peaceful to travel through, with small birds and various insects being the only animal life around. Around thirty minutes later, the signs of the creek came into view. Ben led the way directly to it, as he wouldn’t have been swayed anywhere else.

“I’ve been expecting you!” Ben exclaimed as he approached the creek. He decided to swing his head underwater from the surface, apparently completely thrilled to be able to. He pulled his head back out with a large smile.

“And the headaches are gone!” he announced. “Since you two probably didn’t know, when I make contact with water, I get healed. It’ll definitely fix up the minor injuries, like headaches and scrapes, but I don’t know how good I can recover from worse conditions, and I have no desire to find out.”

“Ben, I fear that skill will come to your aid more than you will want it to. Wherever we are, we need to be careful. Defeating the falcon might have been beginner’s luck, and we’ll need to be much more prepared for whatever comes next.” Lauren said.

“Well said, sister. Anyway, it’s time to show you what else I can do with my “H2Bro” creek here.” Ben suddenly began to make the water currents form a fast whirlpool with his mind. Before Matthew and Lauren could comprehend, multiple fish were swept out of the water and tossed onto the land.

“It’s too bad we have to eat them, but they’re not going to be missing much of anything in their lives.” Ben commented. “Now who’s ready to eat?”

“Uh, I hope you didn’t forget something important, like maybe cooking the fish first! And this forest wasn’t nice to enough to provide an oven.” Matthew said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll go collect some sticks and wood to burn.” Lauren said.

She and Matthew went off to collect the materials needed for a fire, while Ben worked on cleaning the fish. They arrived back a bit later with everything they needed to burn.

“Guess what? No matches or lighters here. We don’t have any luck.” Matthew complained.

“Come on, people still made fires before those inventions. Instead of worrying about what you don’t have, try to work with what you do.”

Matthew decided to try out what Lauren suggested, especially with the encouragement of his hungry stomach. A thought shortly came to him.

“I remember lighting a fire once with a magnifying glass and strong sunlight”, he said as he reached into his pockets. “Even though I obviously don’t have a magnifying glass, I do have my camera on me. Its power has surprised me before, so I’ll see what it does again.”

Matthew pointed his camera at the base of the small twigs and leaves underneath the larger sticks. A flash just about as big as in the high school scuffle impacted the pile, but nothing happened.

“I guess it won’t hurt to try this too.”

Matthew took off his glasses, and held them between the camera and the stick pile. Once again, the flash went off; however, the beam caused a flame to catch and start to spread.

“No way.” Matthew commented.

“Nice job, man! That’s using your noggin!” Ben said.

The trio sat down and enjoyed their flame cooked fish meal. As Matthew ate, he studied his camera as best as he could. He came across camera modes that he had never seen before, and there were some ones that made no sense at all.

“There’s something on here called Illusion.” He said. “I think I’d better find out what it does. Matthew pointed the camera at his half-eaten fish, and took a photo like he normally would. The image of the fish showed up on his camera, but with a pop up message stating ''Use Illusion? As well as Yes and No ''options. Matthew decided to answer yes. The camera sent out a beam of light, which formed into the exact shape of the half eaten fish.

“Whoa, you can clone stuff! Let me see that fish!” Ben reached over to pick it up, but his hand passed right through. He let out a surprised grunt.

“According to the camera, it doesn’t clone stuff, but makes multiple illusions of them. Apparently I can specify how many I want to make.” Matthew said.

“Well, even though I told you not to use your camera on me, I want you make some copies of me!” Ben exclaimed.

“It shouldn’t cause any harm, so I’ll give it a try.”

Matthew snapped a picture of Ben, and then summoned four copies of him. They all looked the same, even down to similar excited facial expressions.

“These are some great looking copies! If only I could high-five all of them!”

Matthew turned his camera off, which caused the Ben copies to disappear, as well as the fish.

“This is an excellent gift; we’ll be able to trick anything we’d face with the illusions.” Lauren said.

Matthew put his camera back in his pocket, proud of it for being more useful than ever.

“It looks like we’ve adopted a temporary simple lifestyle.” He pointed out. “We’ll keep eating fish and prepare ourselves for what’s to come; of course unless this all somehow blows over and we can pretend it never happened, but who am I kidding.”

“This means I’ll have to power down my smartphone, since I’m not charging it anytime soon. We’ll check it later to see if there’s any news about us later.” Ben said.

“Let’s go pick another place to set up in.” Lauren said. “We’re going to be here a while.”

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Chapter 5