fandomhighdorms | The Roof, Wednesday evening

A little bit of rain ~~could hardly hurt her now~~ had never bothered Gabrielle, so why would the vague threat of it stop her from trekking up to the roof?

"Evening, Dinah," she said, not having noticed the hovering yet as she perched herself on the edge, booted feet kicking against the wall and her hands clasped in her lap.

~~It might wash away what's past!~~ Dinah split her concentration a bit, so was a little slow in greeting Gabrielle. "Hey," she said, arms out in front of her, eyes distant. "How's it going?"

~~And yet Gabrielle has no particular desire to sleep in Dinah's embrace at last. Sorry!~~

"Not bad at all, thank you," she said cheerfully. "Aside from learning I need practice at fighting with a string of fish, if I don't want to end up with a faceful of scales. If they were real fish, that is. What are you doing?"

~~That never ends well, yeah.~~

"I saw you doing that," Dinah said, carefully raising one foot again. In the zone. Feeling the lift. "I wondered where Arthur got those. He worries me, some days." She grinned, a little wildly. "Walking on air. I think. I don't want to look down and find out I'm wrong."

"Xena's done it," Gabrielle mused, peering at Dinah's feet. "Maybe I should ask for pointers next time I go home. Do you want me to tell you if you're wrong?"

Dinah teetered, one foot slightly higher than the other, and tried to add that consideration into everything else, TK, cold feet, rain in her hair. "Yeah. If I'm kidding myself, I should know, I just can't mess with my balance right now. So, tell me?"

"Well," Gabrielle began in a considering tone, "either you're pulling it off, or someone is dangling you from an invisible rope that I . . . don't know . . . where it would be tied from."

"Yes!" Dinah jumped up from air, and then landed on the roof with a thud. "Crap!" She tried again, then sighed, and breathed in deep. "Xena's done this too? Does she have telekinesis, or...?" She wriggled her toes, and focused on the horizon again, and power sliding under her feet like a tiny invisible plane of power.

"Oh, no, I meant the string of fish, although I'm starting to think she's really a Jedi and she's not telling me that," Gabrielle informed her. "It would explain a lot . . ."

Dinah started laughing, which shot her efforts at concentration again. "She used fish as a weapon? Really? How long has she been doing the warrior things?" she asked, curious. "And she could be a Jedi. Or your world's version of a Jedi, somehow."

Concentrate. Concentraaaate....

"Just about forever, or at least it seems like. Ten winters, at the very least. Believe me, she can use anything as a weapon if she wants to." Did you really want to get Gabrielle started on this topic, Dinah? She could go on forever. And it would be years yet before Xena managed to turn a wet piece of cloth into a staff. "I'd never seen anyone else who could do things like that before I came here. Sense you were attacking before they saw or heard you, intercept shots right out of the air . . . I'm telling you, it would explain a lot!"

Pity Xena the next time Gabrielle goes home.

"Tahiri says it's this thing called the Force. That they can sense everything that's around them, and it gives them way better reflexes," Dinah said, carefully working her way to her extra-awareness state again. "And after that, it kind of varies. She said some can heal, and some can move things with their mind... And I think Master Skywalker's supposed to be really really kickass with a light saber." She smiled at Gabrielle, eyebrows going up. "Maybe? Maybe she is?"

Yeah, Dinah's no help.

"I have to ask her," Gabrielle declared with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for someone vowing to make a drastic life change for the better. "She's never mentioned anything like that before, but that could be part of her mystique."

Oh, Gabrielle. Never get ideas. Please. You're like a demented koala when you do.

"How are you walking on air, then? Or . . . were."

"Mystique is awesome," Dinah had to admit, pushing a little more at the area through her feet. "I can move things with my mind, right? So I've never managed moving myself before because it's like patting your head and rubbing your tummy and doing the hula and crossing your eyes at the same time." She took a breath, and another step, just a little higher.

"Anyway. Karla showed me the trick of it, it's just.... kinda... dividing my focus, and concentrating on sensing the roof with my feet, all the way up my spine... and pushing." That was the best she could explain it without losing her focus again.

"Jaina did something like that," Gabrielle remembered. "Moving things, I mean. I've never seen Xena do that, though. Maybe she's just keeping it a secret from me."

If Gabrielle decided to pry that out of a certain tall leatherclad warrior her next trip home she was going to be so disappointed.

"Oh, so it's a coordination trick . . . I don't think I can help you there," she added, as if she'd have been any help whatsoever in the first place. "That's not really my strong point."

"Me. Neither." Dinah said, then paused. "Well, physically, I'm a lot better than I was last year. Mentally, still shaky." She took another wobbly step. "TK is tricky anyway. Distract me? Tell me something else, so I can concentrate and not get too focused on my power?"*

*A past master at flying and walking on air said that the trick was to throw yourself at the ground and miss-- and the trick was to distract yourself at the critical moment.

"I could tell you a story," Gabrielle said eagerly. RUN FOR THE HILLS, DINAH. RUN FOR THE HILLS.

"Go. For it," Dinah said, maintaining her balance with a major effort.

No, Gabrielle did not squee. But she really, really looked like she could have.

"What kind of story? Are you thinking more action, or romance, or -- or comedy, I could do that too, although I'd really recommend one of the other categories."

Mostly because the comedy tended to come at her own expense. Hush.

Dinah snickered, and she could've *sworn* that her view of the horizon was a little higher now. "Um. Action! Yeah, I love that." After a long minute's hold-out, she admitted, "I like romance too, but you don't have to include that, I swear."

Not at all relieved by that choice, no matter what her facial expression might suggest, Gabrielle tapped a finger against her lips. "Action and romance . . . hmm. Wow, so many choices. What to pick?"

She fidgeted while she thought this over -- it was serious business, okay? "Oh! The Black Wolf!"

"Oooo." Diverted, Dinah concentrated on the feel of the roof moving through her body up to her mind, through her spine, and keeping that in mind while sensing the roof through her feet. "Was the Black Wolf a real wolf, or a person?"

"A person. But more importantly, an idea. An icon." Gabrielle's demeanor had shifted suddenly, and while the eagerness was still there it was different, less spazzy and more evocative. "You see, there was a village whose government was oppressive, and taxing the villagers too heavily. Most of the adults stayed quiet and just took it, but the younger ones started to form a resistance. The leader of the group was never identified by name, only known as the Black Wolf. Whoever the Black Wolf was, they inspired intense loyalty. Even when the authorities began throwing the rebels in prison, no one would betray their leader."

Dinah's concentration leveled off as Gabrielle's story developed. It was an outside point to count on, like the horizon, that helped her orient herself and keep herself inside her skin, while she let the TK flow outward in one direction. "Cool. So they were liberating the taxes, or taking on the soldiers?" she wondered, her eyes going unfocused.

"Stealing the money and giving it back to the people, actually," Gabrielle replied, staring off into the darkness and lost in the story now. "Things might have kept just going on that way if an old friend of Xena's hadn't been one of the people arrested."

Dinah giggled, then nodded in concern, imagining it from Gabrielle's words. "So what did she do?"

Step. Step. Step.

"Well, it's Xena." How Gabrielle got that much hero worship and genuine affection into that statement at the same time was anyone's guess. "She's never one to let a friend suffer if there's anything she can do about it, so she went to the tax collector and told him she'd be his spy and find out the Black Wolf's identity for him, just so she could get into the prison and get everyone out. But of course it's never that easy, is it? Oh, no no no, not with her."

A break, just floating there. Standing there? Not moving. Dinah nodded, then chanced a look at Gabrielle. "She's your best friend ever, isn't she?" She grinned. "Nothing else makes people talk like that about someone's wild and crazy ideas."

"Is it that obvious?" Gabrielle laughed. "That wasn't the crazy idea. The crazy idea was me getting myself arrested so I could get her weapons to her."

"Liiiittle bit," Dinah said, holding up her fingers thismuch apart. "And oh my god. Yes, that is the crazy part." She grinned. "Were their rats in the cells? I always wonder about that."

"No rats. Not that time. Just a pit cage where they'd occasionally drop prisoners in and fill it with water." Somewhere, Archie Kennedy twitched. Gabrielle smoothed out her skirt for no reason other than to have something to do with her hands, swinging her feet so her heels bumped gently against the wall in an irregular rhythm. "It actually took me a few tries, and I got someone else arrested in the process -- which wouldn't have happened if he'd kept his hands off my tomatoes, by the way, but I got in with her whip and chakram at least."

"Um..." Dinah paused, unbalanced at the mention of tomatoes there for a second, then had to say, "Okay, I'm getting weird mental images."

Which helped with the walking around on air, but didn't get her any idea of how that worked.

"How so?" asked a completely oblivious-to-the-innuendo (not to mention oblivious to the fact that WTF, GABRIELLE, TOMATOES SHOULDN'T EXIST FOR YOU) Gabrielle, although she didn't wait for a response before she went on with the rest of the story (http://whoosh.org/epguide/wolf.html#syn) ~~and crashed to sleep like whoa~~.

And Dinah had the fun of getting a Xena story while mastering floating 4" off the ground. Wheee!

Jack decided to take a jog up to the roof, to see if he could find anything out of Shilo's books from earlier, and...saw...HoverDinah.

"Whoa," he said, softly.

Dinah cracked an eye open, and waved to Jack with her fingers, biting her lip as she sloooowly lifted another foot to rise just that much higher. "Hey. Hi."

"How're you doing that?" he asked, not making any sudden moves. Wouldn't want her to fall.

"Verrrry carefully. With. Telekinesis," Dinah said, looking like she was walking an invisible tight-rope. Okay, one only four or five inches off the ground. But still.

"That is great! So...can anyone use this telekiveses or are you a superhero?" he asked, teasingly.

Dinah gave him a wary look, then smiled in apparent amusement. "Just gotta be born with it," she said lightly, then started to wobble. "Oh, oh--" And tumbled four inches to the roof. "Nuts!" She sighed, then cracked her neck.

"Shit! You okay?" he said, racing over. Because she could have sustained massive injuries falling half a foot.

Dinah backed up a step, holding up her hands. "Yeah, I'm okay, Jack. Thanks." She sighed, put her hands on her hips and walked in a circle, trying to get her concentration back. "This is just hard to pull off, that's all."

"Well, duh," he said, glad she was okay. "You're flying."

"More floating. I can't make myself-- zooooom," she said pointing to the sky and thinking of how Peter Petrelli did it with a smile. "I don't know if it'll ever work like that. But at least it's something? Something I couldn't do before."

"Something I can't do, either. I jump, I come right back down." He smiled. "So...first is floating, and then comes zooming?"

"Noooo idea. Might just stay at floating," Dinah admitted. "Which, still. Even if it never does anything but keep me from falling off a cliff while rock-climbing, that's pretty cool, right?"

"That's awesome! I wish I could do that. Just...walk off a desk like in those cartoons. Just...don't look down," he said, looking down reflexively. Oh, yeah. Still on the roof. No floaty for Jack.

The Roof, Wednesday evening

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