Atlas | Avatar!OC x Bucky Barnes

21 - Bear Mountain

Sunday, June 21st, 12:00 pm

"Ready?" Sam asked as Atlas and they circled each other on the sparring mats. She had just gotten out of the wheelchair a few hours ago, and she was feeling better than ever.

"Are you?" she asked Sam, trying to psych him out, knowing that she had beaten him before while sparring.

Sam was the first to attack; he threw basic punches and kicks, which Atlas was easily able to dodge. When Sam went for a spinning kick, Atlas caught his foot and flipped him onto the ground. She let Sam get back up, and gave him a few seconds to recover before Atlas went on the offensive. Her fighting style was much more sophisticated than Sam's, and it wasn't long before he was overwhelmed and Atlas had him pinned beneath her.

"You got me," Sam mumbled. Atlas smirked before getting off of the man and helping him up. The two of them shook hands before stepping out of the ring together.

"She's back," Steve concluded, giving Atlas a pat on the back.

"I was never gone," she commented.

"Yeah, you were just physically unavailable," Tony interrupted. Atlas glared up at him, although she was glad her body was pain-free and she was ready to get going again.

"Right," she said sarcastically. "I'm gonna head to my room, but I'll see you guys at dinner?" she asked.

"I'll walk with you," Bucky said, smiling at her as he joined her at the gym exit.

When Atlas got back to her room and said bye to Bucky, she immediately collapsed onto her couch. Though she was physically back to normal, it felt like her mental state was worsening every minute. Joel had given her a lot to think about in the small talk they had.

Tell me; you've mastered air, and you've gotten started with fire and water...

But she hadn't even started with earthbending. Atlas realized that as she grew more powerful, the more she'd be wanted by HYDRA, but at the same time, she'd be able to better protect herself and her friends from HYDRA if she was stronger. And she was willing to bet that if she had gotten captured by HYDRA, the Avengers would come for her. To Atlas, protecting her friends would always be the most important thing, especially since she had a team now. She had to have the Avengers' back, just as they had hers in this fight.

Atlas started to think. She needed to learn how to earthbend. And not only that, she needed to become fluent with the two other elements that she hadn't mastered. Completely mastering water, fire and earth would be another challenge, but she could just feel a fight coming along, and she needed to be at her best with all the tools at her disposal. She needed to train herself like her grandfather had trained her when she was first starting out airbending.

Up until the age of fifteen, when her grandfather had died, he and Atlas used to take a trip every summer to Bear mountain, which was about fifty miles north of New York City. There, Atlas would spend days on end training with Li Wei, and even though he was tough on her, the results paid off as her grandfather decided that she had mastered the element at just fifteen years old. There was a small clearing on the south side of the mountain where Atlas and Li Wei worked together to build a small cabin and a training ground just outside. Every year when they went, it would always remain untouched; she wondered if in the three years she hadn't been there, it would still remain the same.

That's where she needed to go.

Atlas needed to spend some time up at her old training site. It would be perfect. There was a small stream that would supply Atlas with the source to waterbend, the clearing of the training grounds would give her enough space to practice her firebending, and the mountain itself was more than enough earth for Atlas to try her hand at earthbending. She knew everything about each type of bending through reading, she just needed to figure out how to actually bend the other elements.