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The Roof of the Dorms, Wednesday Evening

Warren paced the roof, occasionally giving his wings a stretch as he waited for Angelica. They'd made plans over the weekend to practice flying together, and since he was sort of starved for excuses to just get out and fly at the best of times, it was entirely possible that he'd headed up to the roof a little early. Could anyone blame him?

Warren smiled faintly as he looked up at the clouds overhead. They were going to swallow up the moon, he imagined, but at least there were a few lights from the town to fly by, and the dorms themselves...

Yeah, they wouldn't have to worry about flying headfirst into any trees or anything.

Probably.

[Expecting one, but it's an open roof, of course!]

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Fortunately, Angelica also provided her very own light source! Of course, it made stealthily flying at night a problem, but that wasn't an issue tonight.

"Hi!" she said, bouncing up to the roof. She'd put on the uniform Emma had created for her, so she was all decked out in red and yellow spandex. She hadn't bothered with the mask, though.

"Hey!" Warren greeted with her in a grin and a wave, and an only slightly curious look at the tights. Was he the only mutant on the island who didn't have some? Really? "Suddenly, I feel underdressed, you know."

Said the guy whose jeans probably cost him at least half a grand.

"Ms. Frost had this made for me," Angelica grinned, turning in a circle. "It's way better than the pink outfits the other Hellions wear, but I have one of those, too." Pink was terrible for redheads! Then again, looking like a giant splash of mustard and ketchup wasn't all that much better.

And suddenly, Emma's fashion sense was that much more suspect. Pink? Really?

This was why Warren had resisted the siren call of the superhero uniform thus far.

"It definitely looks aerodynamic," he allowed, nodding a little at her showing off. "I mean, I can't imagine there being much wind resistance on something like that at all. Is it easier to fly in that than normal clothes?"

Perhaps it has been part of Emma's cunning plan to make her Hellions hate the X-Men by making the X-Men laugh at their snazzy pink uniforms?

"Oh, yeah," Angelica said. "There's a lot less drag than if I was wearing anything bulkier. And it's fire resistant so I won't accidentally set my clothes on fire or anything." Which would be super embarrassing.

"Ooooh." Yeah, that was a problem that Warren didn't have, so much. "... People keep mentioning that. About there being less drag, I mean. And that's almost got me tempted to invest in something more skintight than a t-shirt and jeans. Almost."

ALMOST. But not quite! Ha!

"So, let's see you put that outfit to use, huh?"

"OK, just promise not to laugh," Angelica said. She took a few steps back to give herself a bit of space so she wouldn't accidentally burn Warren, then closed her eyes and concentrated on superheating the air around her (while not melting the roof). She wobbled unsteadily as she rose a few feet into the air.

Warren tilted his head a little as he watched, intrigued. He never really could get his head around how anybody managed to fly without wings, but at least Angelica's way of doing it made sense compared to those people who just managed to say 'screw you' to gravity.

And he nodded a little.

"I'm not laughing," he shared. "Actually I'd have a hell of a time hovering like that, so close to the ground."

His wings would keep smacking the hell out of the roof. It wouldn't be pretty. He'd probably break something.

"Once I get going it gets a little easier," Angelica admitted, keeping her arms outstretched to help her with her balance. "But I really suck at landing." More like controlled flight into terrain.

"Ms. Frost has robots and lasers attacking me while I practice flying, too," she said. "It's a lot easier when I don't have to concentrate on trying to avoid them or blow them up at the same time."

Warren was going to take a moment to mentally recalibrate his brain so that 'Emma' and 'robots and lasers' could peacefully coexist in there.

...

That was the most terrifying thought ever.

"Yeah, we... won't have robots, while you learn to fly here," he promised, a little wide-eyed. "Maybe when you're confident enough to not smack into a tree or crash-land or anything, I'll try to chase you or something. But... No robots."

Unless he could get Tony to rig up somethi-- No.

Now just picture Emma with robots and lasers and walking around in a white corset, thigh high boots, and nothing else, Warren.

"I guess once flying comes more naturally then it would be easier to deal with someone trying to shoot me down," Angelica said, floating herself a little higher up in the air. She was glowing enough now to light up the whole roof. "But it's a lot more fun to fly when you don't have to worry about anything like that. Ms. Frost says she knows she's really hard on me but it's for my own good."

Warren was biting the inside of his cheek and forcing a smile. That seemed to be the nicest way to keep from saying that he thought Emma was somewhere between cruel and unusual.

... He still had issues with something she'd snapped at him, once upon a time.

"I think the lasers might be kind of overkill," he noted, wrinkling his nose a bit. "So... how fast can you go? And are you any good at slowing down?"

"I can go really fast!" Angelica said, swooping down a little lower, but not too close because of the heat she was generating. "Slowing down is harder. I slowed down too quickly once and fell."

She grinned down at him. "You going to come up here and join me?" she said.

Warren laughed at the invitation, and then shrugged his shoulders and made a running leap off the roof, wings spreading and catching him with ease.

"I was just trying to figure out where your limits are," he called as he circled around again. "Did you try just throwing your thrust in the opposite direction, and then right underneath you if you start to lose altitude?"

Slowing down for Warren was mostly a matter of flaring his wings and then flapping to stay in place, so it only made sense that it would carry over to other means of flying, too. Heck, he could just pay attention to how Iron Man did it, steering with his hands and the angle of his body... Since his flight was more about thrust and less about an impressive wingspan.

"Mostly I just kind of flail when it comes to trying to change direction or stop fast," Angelica sheepishly admitted. "I never even would've though of trying to fly except that Ms. Frost said I should. Going up came pretty easy, but getting even a little control took a lot of practice."

She pushed herself up higher, getting a little less wobbly as she got used to being in the air again. "You make it look so easy!" she said, giving his wings an admiring glance.

"Well, I can glide," Warren noted, smiling her way somewhat sheepishly. "I mean... I'm kind of built for it. So I don't really have to think so hard about it."

Hollow bones. Highly specialised chest muscles. Lungs and eyes adapted for thin air and fast speeds respectively... Feathers.

"But here, watch what direction I'm pushing the air with my wings to get going where I'm going, okay? I'll fly a lap around the dorms, and then come to a stop."

Edited 2011-10-27 04:01 (UTC)

"OK!" Angelica said cheerfully. She was high enough that she could see the entire roof now and easily follow his progress, though she had to make a small circle herself. It always felt exhilarating to fly, and she couldn't wait until she was better at it.

"Were you really shaky at first?" she called out as she watched him.

"A bit," he admitted as he flapped, pointing his hand behind-but-down to show which way he was pushing the air as he picked up speed. "I mean, there's a certain amount of it that was just intuitive. I can feel the air currents with my feathers and just kind of react by reflex if something is about to go horribly wrong. But when I thought about it too much..."

He flared his wings out and forward all at once, his hand shooting ahead of himself so that he'd know that he was pushing ahead, and then down almost directly after, flapping lazily to stay more or less in place, with a bit of rise and fall with each beat.

"When I thought about it too much, that's when I'd be really bad at it. I mean, just stopping and telling myself, 'What am I doing? People aren't made to fly,' you know?"

Angelica watched carefully, trying to get a feel for manipulating the air currents the way he was indicating. It wasn't the same as actually pushing against it, but some of the principles should be the same.

"Maybe that's my problem," she said. "Thinking about it too much. I was always so worried about pleasing Ms. Frost and showing her that I was learning that I'd start to panic if I screwed up a little."

"You should have seen some of my less stellar landings before I started to get the hang of it," Warren laughed, falling again into a small dive before swooping up with another wingstroke and circling around near her. "They were always, always way worse when there were people watching. It's too easy to get nervous, you know? So that totally could be part of your problem."

Angelica was distinctively radiating heat with her light, but it wasn't nearly as hot as she feared. Still, her fear of hurting someone with her powers made her keep a good amount of space between her and Warren. "So no robots or lasers, nobody watching except you ~~and the girlfriend who is undoubtedly tracking this thread~~, I should be fine, right?" she said.

She tried to put that to the test, rising up higher, quickly, then trying to reverse her direction and come straight back down. There was still some flailing about of her arms and legs though as she did so.

Warren watched, ready to stoop into a dive if she looked as though she was really going to fall. Nodding a bit, all the same, as he watched the flailing.

"When you give off heat, where does it come from?" He really didn't seem half as concerned about the heat she was giving off as she was. If nothing else, it meant some pretty wicked thermals he could drift on later, if he felt so inclined. "I mean, mostly? Your hands? Your feet? Wherever you give it off the most, that's where you get the most control, I should think..."

He circled around again, his lips pursed thoughtfully.

"I mean, what are you using to steer yourself, right now?"

"Mostly where I think about it, I guess," Angelica said. "All around me when I'm trying to fly. My hands come easiest, probably because that's where it feels most natural to shoot fire from when I'm supposed to blow something up. But it comes from all over me if I want or if I'm not careful about it. I was walking through snow and melting it without even realizing it at first when my powers first started manifesting."

And totally freaking her father out as a bonus.

"It's harder to control if I'm mad or scared," she added. "That Topher guy made me made in class and I started getting hot without meaning to." It was all Topher's fault, of course.

"Maybe..." Warren considered for a moment, and then nodded. "Try using your hands to steer," he offered. "I've seen other people who use thrust to fly do it, so maybe that would work for you? It would involve keeping your arms steady, and none of that flapping around that you do when you start to get anxious... That might help?"

Instead of flailing about like a manic chicken. There was a reason that poultry wasn't well-known for its majestic soaring.

"You mean flapping like I somehow think my arms will work like your wings?" Angelica said with a grin, knowing how silly she had to look when she started flailing about.

She straightened her arms out in front of her and tried to hold them steady, doing her best to clear her mind of worrying about embarrassing herself by crashing back on the roof in front of Warren or really hurting herself if she fell to the ground from this height. There weren't any robots or lasers here; this should be easy.

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The Roof of the Dorms, Wednesday Evening

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