fandomhighdorms | The Roof, after Reserves, Tuesday afternoon

Karla flew up to the roof, more than a bit out of breath. Her clothing was covered in soot and grime. "Sorry!" she panted. "Common room...cookies...Merlin...explosion."

Dinah's eyes got huge. "Explosion? Are you okay? Is he?" She held out her hand in case Karla needed it. "What happened?!"

"We're fine!" Karla assured her. "No one got hurt. Well...except the kitchen." She looked a little guilty. "But I think some of the cookies survived...? We'll be serving some at the Reserves. You should try one!"

No. No you shouldn't.

Dinah started laughing, falling off the air to land on her feet, and grinned at Karla. "Which kitchen looks like a disaster area? Just so I can see the carnage and mourn the fallen cookies."

"The second floor common room," Karla admitted with a guilty grin. "We cleaned it up pretty well, though. Though not all of the burn marks would come out."

"Oh, I am so sad I missed it. But how did you make cookies explode?" Dinah bounced on her toes, already ready to fly, but still curious about that part. "What'd you use? And are those my wings to use?"

"I don't know," Karla wailed. "We followed the instructions...most of the time...when they were legible...And we used normal ingredients: flour, chocolate, marshmallows, pine nuts, honey..." She trailed off and her guilty look intensified. "Craft."

"Yup, these are your wings," she said, handing them over to Dinah. Look! A conversation change!

Dinah kind of winced at the combination of marshmallows and pine nuts, then stopped. "Craft? Oh, Karla." And there would be more sympathy if there was not more laughing. "This is why they never let you cook, wasn't it?"

Yay wings! Dinah was totally good with that subject change. "They're goooorgeous," she gushed, swooping them through the air on their own for a second. "Thank you so, so much for this!" Which would hopefully not end in explosions or broken bones, but she trusted Karla with this kind of magic more than the cooking.

"Not the only reason!" Karla protested, not actually helping her case at all. "I get distracted and confused sometimes. And sometimes things just...catch fire! I don't know why it does that. It just happens!"

Her only consolation was that Jaenelle was worse than Karla at cooking. Jaenelle once boiled a dozen eggs and had the whites come out fully cooked and the yolks completely raw.

"It isn't that funny," she muttered sulkily even though, yes, it really was.

Dinah's trust in Karla's Crft as it didn't extend to cooking was well-placed. "Since they're a loaner pair, it doesn't come with it's own body-stocking, which means you'll be less aerodynamite-ish," she said, struggling with the word the boyos had used. "Instead, you can strap the wings around you--" she pointed to the leather straps meant to encircle Dinah's arms, chest, waist, and hips, "--so they'll attack properly and will distribute the weight of any kind of impact across your body." She showed Dinah where the straps went and the proper orientation for the wings, then pulled up a sight shield around herself so she could change into her suit.

"That Iron Chef guy on TV would so declare you a hazard." Dinah snickered and shook her head. "Extra points for completing a dish with Karla in the vicinity!"

She stripped down to her tank-top and shorts, then carefully put the harnesses on-- not so different from a rappelling rig, really-- nearly dancing with excitement when finished. "Any time you're good to go!"

There were another few moments of colorful and creative cursing--Karla had an impressive vocabulary and no real fondness for the material--before she released the sight shield.

The bodysuit covered her from collar-bone to ankles and all the way down to her wrists. It was also tight enough to leave little to the imagination. Karla was privately trying to figure out if the crazy fashion teacher had gained access to Kaeleer somehow and shared the secrets of super-clingy fabric.

"I would use Craft to pinch this iron man if he did," Karla said, flaring her wings a bit. "We'll see how well he cooks then."

Karla. You are proving Dinah's point.

"Flying takes Craft, but Jaenelle fixed it so that it shouldn't be a problem. There's a Yellow chip on the back that will provide the power, you'll just have to do the rest." Karla quickly cut her finger and smeared it on the chip. The Jewel glowed with power and the yellow fabric began shimmering.

Dinah snickered at Karla, then gulped, only feeling a tiny bit of trepidation. "So we just jump? And flap our arms and legs?" She glanced at Karla's outfit, then grinned. "SuperKarla! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bounce! You so should wear this for the next costume party. Be a superhero or a giant butterfly!"

Karla gaped at Dinah. "I have no idea what you're talking about. SuperKarla?" Though with a pair of antennae, she could totally rock the butterfly thing.

"Whoa, whoa, no leaping, not yet," Karla cautioned, reaching out as if she could prevent Dinah from leaping off the roof. "There are a few things you have to learn first."

She ~~copy-pasted~~ reiterated the explanation she'd given to the boyos about how the wings worked. " "I don't know if you can feel the Craft or not, Dinah, but it's there. As long as you wear the wings, they're part of you. You'll be able to control them as if you actually had wings. The Craft has triggered a tangled web that will, if you let it, convince part of your mind that they are just another part of your body. You won't believe it--you know that you weren't born with wings--but it will let you make the appropriate muscle adjustments without having to consciously think of them. It's an illusion that affects a part of your brain that controls motor functions. But the illusion ends whenever you take your wings off."

"Tell you later. No, show you later," Dinah decided, having maybe one or two magazine photos of Kal-el of Krypton tucked away somewhere. Maybe. Ahem!

"Okay," Dinah said, paying close attention. Wings! Wings that worked! "Sooo, feel it out as if they're mine, and let my reflexes work on it, and..." She wanted this so badly, it was totally okay that they were hooked up to part of her brain with magic. "So if I have an impulse to control it, go with it, it's probably right?"

"Exactly!" Karla said, pleased with Dinah's perceptiveness. Her own enthusiasm for flying had her bouncing around, too. "Get a feel for them, make sure you can ignore your brain long enough for you to become convinced that the wings are part of your body. Open and close your wings, move them around, all that stuff. Once you think you've got it, flap you wings and rise up to me," she commanded, flying about ten feet in the air.

"When you can get to my height, we can throw ourselves off the roof," she promised.

Those antennaes were just going to have to happen.

Dinah bounced a little, then kicked off her shoes again, and closed her eyes. Open, close. Open... close. Illusion of muscles working along her back and arms hips, straining to lift her, almost. She took an air-step upward, then another.

Hop. Hop. Probably looked silly, but didn't care as she could feel the stretching along her spine to lift her body. Leap!

The wings automatically fluttered, lifting her up, stuttering, flailing, caught her; then another effort and she was rising up to meet Karla.

"EEeeeee!"

It wasn't like Jack was taking up smoking, but still, the roof seemed like the best place to be alone for a smoke break. Or a 'get away from people' break.

Jack wasn't known for having the best ideas.

"Uh. Hi." So much for the alone.

"Hey!" Dinah didn't notice the mood much, way too buzzed with anticipation about being about to fly. "How's it going, Jack?"

"It's going good. I'm...not interrupting anything, am I?"

Shaking her head, Dinah took another step up in the air, nearly dancing. "Just practicing. Karla's going to be here soon, we're flying!" Yes!

"You're...flying. Um. Right." Please excuse the quizzical look. He'd be doing the same to Karla as soon as she was here, just to balance things out.

"You'll see," Dinah promised. "Well, I'm guessing you will. I don't know how it works yet either, really."

"I'll stick around for this," he said with a nod. "If you don't mind."

"Not at all!" Dinah grinned, and did a little time-step on the air. Getting better at that, yay! Okay, only a foot off the surface of the roof. Still!

Jack stared at her. "How are you doing that?"

"I told you, telekinesis," Dinah said, smiling at him. "Remember? Last time we were up here?" She hopped, and said, "Mostly I'm creating, hmm, a layer? Of TK pushing up under my feet. It's not easy to keep it constant, that's the hard part."

"Right. Telekawhatses. You're doing a heck of a job at it," he said, still staring. She was floating.

"Lemme know when you can zoom in and deliver pizza with this," he joked.

Jack waved at Karla when she arrived.

Karla cheered, holding out her hands to clasp Dinah's. "You did it!" she crowed. "I knew you'd be good at it. We'll have you soaring around like an Eyrien in no time!"

She glanced down and a sparkling net of Sapphire power winked into existence several feet below them. "Let's go higher," she said, eyes sparkling. "You wanted to leap off the roof, right? Show me you can break out of a dive and we will."

Karla shot up several more yards into the sky, then spun around and plummeted, her wings folded tightly against her. Just when it looked like she was about to crash into her net, she snapped open her wings and flew forward, nose just a few inches away from the strands of Sapphire power. In a moment, she arced back up, more slowly this time, and flew back to Dinah. "You're turn!"

Karla coughed out something that could have been a greeting and waved, her hands full of something made from metal, leather, and bright yellow fabric.

Jack just gawked. "Do you need help?" narrowly won out against "The heck are you doing?" as his response.

Totally buzzed on adrenaline, Dinah leaped out, arms and wings spread, and then folded her arms back like Karla had, hard against her back, and felt the wings tighten and fold back too. Wind in her face, faster and faster, plummeting down, her stomach roiling with it, almost like diving off the sandworm holograph in Zack's arms, and then--

She flung her arms out and the wings soared out from her back, catching a breeze, and Dinah hiccuped a laugh, shock and the thrill of rising upward catching her in her mid-section. "Karla! I'm doing it! Look look look!"

And she had to try a twirl in the air, and lost control for a second, tumbling head-over-heels, but managed to still glide above the sapphire protection net, giggling.

"Nope, I'm good," she answered cheerfully. "Oh, there are cookies downstairs in the second floor commonroom. Free for the eating--just don't mind the soot, okay?"

Karla and Merlin had been baking. There might have been a fire.

"Yaaaaaaaay!" Karla was almost as thrilled about Dinah flying as Dinah was. "You're doing wonderful!" she called. "Keep it up!" She even counted the near tumble as a win, as Dinah had proven she could recover from it without an issue.

"How do you feel?" she asked, falling into a flight pattern next to Dinah. "Not sore or tired?" She gave Dinah and impish grin. "Wanna keep going?"

"Of course I want to keep going! No, not sore, not tired." She might be tomorrow, with unfamiliar muscles trying to compensate across her spine, but for now, Dinah was far too drunk on the feel of floating and flying to even be really aware of that. "This is awesome! Astral! Wooooo!"

Another dive-and-soar, and Dinah came back up to hover next to Karla, giddy with glee.

Karla just laughed. "I thought as much," she said. "But I had to check. Still, I will be giving you some muscle lineament later on. You'll need it. The day after my first flying lesson was the one day I didn't mind staying in bed all day with the boyos fussing."

She did a few lazy loops. "Wanna fly down by the rooms and startle people though their windows?" she asked with a naughty grin.

Dinah chortled. "Even better than rappelling down and scaring them!" Grinning, she tried another loop, and found herself shooting upward even higher. "Let's do it!"

"Great!" Karla angled up towards the sun for a few moments, gaining altitude, then dove forward, almost throwing herself at the ground next to the dorms with a cackle of glee. This was what she loved most about flying: the wind, the air, the freedom...

She wooshed by windows, laughing merrily, levelling out only when she reached the second floor and flew by the rooms, extending her arm to tap on windows as she passed.

The glee of it, of flying down then up, following Karla's lead and trailing her fingers by those windows too, laughing; so much better than just hanging onto Peter, and looking around. "This is amazing!" How could anyone want to do anything else?

"What the hell did you do? Soot? Don't tell me you blew something up."

Cheese grater takes the burned spots off of cookies. Trufax.

"You're going to want to stop in a little bit," Karla promised, laughing. "Because you're going to hurt in places you never even knew you had. And unless you're better at this than I am, sleeping is going to be difficult mid-air. Though--as long as you use enough lineament, you won't have a problem with it tonight!"

"No," Karla lied, flushing a bit.

He stared. "Is everyone all right? Did you break anything?"

Overbearing and overprotective Jack was over(bearing/protective) and trying not to facepalm.

The Roof, after Reserves, Tuesday afternoon

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