9956/On New Wings - Learning to Fly

On New Wings - Learning to Fly
Date of Scene:	03 February 2022
Location:	Tower Storm Aquafer, NYC
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Phoebe Beacon, Lydia Dietrich, Jonathan Sims

---

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Sometimes the most amazing places are discovered by accident. So was this place found when Phoebe had taken a wrong turn in a subway tunnel, gone down a wrong ladder, and ended up finding an oasis of both engineering and the sound of falling water.

    Man-sized tunnels errupt from different directions, dripping cool water from the runoff, cleaner than it normally would be due to the lack of habitation in Manhattan at just this moment. The water run-offs all trickle down into a pool, kept cleaner than normal for the area by the constant intrudction of new water, leaving its reserve to drain out to another grate, and off to the sea. It's a good fifty foot drop to the water's skin.

    As Phoebe, who no longer seems bothered by the cold, leads the others through a tunnel, her voice is echoing against the corrogated metal tube.

    "Here we are --" she states, and steps aside. There's about fifty feet, wall to wall, fifty feet in a drop, with smaller pipes running along the sides. Some are steaming.

    "It's connected to a boiler system in one of the older buildings, so it's always around fifty degrees warmer once it hits freezing. It stops any ice from damming up the place.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
"This is quite a find, Phoebe!" Lydia says, peering over the edge of the pipe into the reservoir below. "How deep do you think the water is?" Fireflies collect around her and lift her out of the mouth and into the air. "Do you want to try to make it down on your own and start there? I can lift both of you down. Or do you just want to make the plunge?"

She looks down beneath her feet to the water. "So to speak."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon really /ought/ to be doing about two dozen things, mostly related to the fact that there are two major battles planned in the next three days, but the looming threat of what might come /after/ those battles is enough to warrant taking an hour or two off. Also, learning to do the flying thing better will help with the battles, so technically it's work. Sort of.

    Look, flying's /fun/, okay? He's looking for excuses.

    Jon is very much bothered by the cold, but flying seems like a thing better done without bundling up, so he's wearing fatigues and a jacket and heating the air in his pockets to keep his hands warm. Hopefully the exertion will help once they're moving. He steps to the edge of the pipe and peers down, thoughtfully. "The first time I did this I just sort of... it was instinctual, almost." He frowns thoughtfully. He glances back and forth across the pipe. Not enough room for the wings he's been manifesting.

    So he shrugs, and says, "Like falling off a bike, right?" Then he backs up a few steps and takes a running jump at the edge of the pipe.

    Fortunately for discovering just how deep the water is, he manages to conjure the multi-colored wings about halfway through the arc of his jump, and flaps them a little wildly as he orients himself in the air.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "About twenty feet to the bottom, I think. And even better, there's no alligators -- pretty sure any wa--ohgodJon!" what started as a tired, but satisfied little smile (because she needed to feel good for something!) got turned into a moment of panic as Jon takes off, running out of the tunnel and sailing through the air!

    She looks at his wings, and then she gives a muttered oath under her breath, touches the silver locket around her neck, and then steps forward, one step, two steps -- and she too takes off, tumbling through the air before she concentrates on the tattoo on her back, between her shoulders, and her wings errupt, feathers tipped with rose-cold, orichilum shards catching the light along the spines of astral feathers, and the rest of the wings looking like metallic shards of glass, see-through. in a rosy tone.

    She gives a whoop -- until she has to tuck and ends up tumbling into a tunnel on the other side!

    WHUMP!

    "I'm okay!"

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
"Wait Jo-" Lydia reaches out for her friend as he leaps out of the pipe, hand outstretched and ready to catch him should he end up falling. There's a look of visible relief when he manages to manifest his wings just in time. "Geez, Jon! Don't scare me lik- WAIT PHOEBE!"

Lydia's fists go up to her mouth as she watches Phoebe use her wings for the first time. She's about to dash after her when it looks like she's about to crash but somehow Phoebe manages to end up in a tunnel. "You guys are going to be the death of me!"

"Okay. So. First rule of Flight Club is that we don't talk about Flight Club." She can't help but grin at that. "Not really. I'll get to the first rule in a second. First let's meet up where Phoebe is and start /on the ground/, and I'll cover some basics."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon watches Phoebe fly by him, blinking. Then--once she's confirmed she's okay--he laughs and calls, "This should make rooftop parkour easier, hmm? You'll outstrip Red Robin every time now."

    His own wings look like what one might see on a statue of an Egyptian goddess like Isis or Ma'at, gold and blue and teal-green feathers, but springing from his shoulders instead of attached to his arms like a cape. They also reach out further than his fingertips, so they're easily six and a half or seven feet in width. He flexes his wings and peers at the tunnel.

    "That'll be a tight fit," he mutters, flexing his wings. That's precisely why he /jumped/. But he sighs and goes to follow Phoebe to the tunnel. Once he lands, he tries to make himself smaller so they can all fit, pulling in the wings. Oof.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Nice reference, Lydia. Second rule should probably be 'learning to fly in sewers is a odd thing, Phoebe's not allowed to choose courses because of course she'd pick an obsticle course'." Phoebe grumps a little bit from where she was laying, face-down in some of the flotsam that New York produces. She spits out a stick, and pushes herself back up as she looks over to Jon, and gives a wry smile.

    "Nice plumage."

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia leaves a trail of golden sparkles as she floats on down to the tunnel where Jon and Phoebe are at, her own wings yet to manifest. She chuckles good naturedly at Phoebe and shakes her head.

"Okay, so," she begins, "first /actual/ rule of Flight Club is that you don't fly with your wings, you fly with your will. You can't get wrapped up in the physics of it because it just won't work." She lands lightly in the tunnel and her little fireflies go back to dancing around her normally. "You'd need something like a ten foot wingspan and weight a hundred pounds less in order for it to work, and you wouldn't be able to hover at all."

"'So why do we need wings at all?' you might ask. Well," she says, putting her hands on her hips, "technically you don't. But, it's harder to fly without them. Your wings are to help you focus your concentration. They're more like a /representation/ of flight that you can pour magic and willpower into in order to achieve it."

"Think of it like Peter Pan. You're able to fly because you /believe/ you can fly, and your wings are the fairy dust that allows you to do it." She looks out of the tunnel and into the cistern, "So flying becomes this balancing act of not believing /too much/ in the wings that you get bogged down by physics, but /just enough/ for you take and maintain flight."

"So," she says, taking a step backwards and unfurling her own glowing golden wings which take her backwards. "Let's give it another try, eh? If you lose control or fall, I'll catch you, so experiment and let yourself loose."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon chuckles. "I knew all of that already," he notes. "I studied aerodynamics and bird anatomy while I was considering learning to fly because the way my magic works I actually do /have/ to understand something, to some degree, in order to summon it forth--I cannot summon wings without knowing how they should work, anatomically. Humans would need hollow bones and air sacs to /actually/ be able to fly." He flexes his wings, just slightly. "I have to imagine an astral construct and then summon it forth, and I included 'somehow strong enough to support the weight of a human' when I made them. Unconsciously, I think. It's sort of like my water--how can wter heal? Because I imagine magic healing water."

    He peers out at the cistern. "Some of it's turning out to be instinctive, though, which is why I just... jumped. If I think about it too hard, it gets confusing." He frowns, and moves aside for Phoebe to take off first this time.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "I don't think that water's gonna heal you. Pretty sure it's Native New Yorker water. Just flips you off and tries to run you over." she jokes, and Phoebe brings herself to a stand. She's cut the power going to her wings, letting them fade as she breathes out, and stretches her arms a bit. She steps forward, and looks down to the cistern, and then looks up.

    "Makes sense though. Water heals. Fire purifies. Earth stabilizes and Wind--" Phoebe turns at that "Breaks."

     Yes. It was a fart joke. She's still a teenager.

    And she focuses power back to that tattoo between her shoulder blades, and she steps off the edge.

    Think Happy Thoughts.

    Cassandra (Dancing in the garden of her parents' brownstone, with Scout at her feet).
        Tim (In the Outsiders computer lab, rolling his eyes at an extremely awful joke Phoebe's made).

    Running full tilt across rooftops in Quito, leaping an alleyway.

    Phoebe's wings glitter, winter sunlight striking the pale rose-gold tips and the twinking orichilum shavings reflected, developing more, like a polaroid coming to fruition, the owl's wings spread as Phoebe hovers in place, and then gives a flap.

    And her expression changes.

    Think Happy Thoughts, know you can fly.

    Magic is just convincing the universe you're right. Anyone can do it.

    The wings flicker as Phoebe cuts power to them and drops, turning in the air and catching one hand against the tube.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia nods at Jon. "Right. Like I said, it's a balance. For me it works as a focus for my powers. I imagine my wings lift me up and they do. If I don't use them I can still fly, but I have to put some more concentration into it because it's more like lifting myself up with my own bootstraps. It works because that's how I imagine that they work."

She turns to watch Phoebe make her second attempt at flight, and true to her word, she's right there when it looks like she's going to drop. A hand flies out and the little glowing motes of ectoplasm swarm her, and gently lifts her back up and into the drain.

"What happened?" she asks, not unkindly.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon smirks at Phoebe. "At least it's not Gotham water, perpetually hanging off the tip of a gargoyle and brooding in the night."

    As Phoebe thinks happy thoughts, he looks to Lydia. "I don't think I could fly without wings, unless I was manipulating the air around me. That's just... not how my magic works. I can summon pretty much anything I can imagine, with a thought... and potentially that's a /lot/. But I do appear to have to... summon things, and concentrate on them. Although the wings are... different." He frowns, and shakes his head.

    Phoebe dropping makes him yelp, and then Lydia has her, and he sighs in relief. He stays where he is for the moment, so Lydia won't have to worry about him maybe plunging into the water. It's cold.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "I resemble that remark!" Phoebe calls to Jon, and she half pulls herself up, aided by the motes of light. She rubs the back of her neck embarrassedly, pulling down the hood of the midriff-baring hoodie she was wearing. She's got circles under her eyes. For someone who heals, that shouldn't *be*.

    "I'm just tired. My attention was caught by something else." she replies, and she flops against the side of the tunnel, looking down at the water. "I went to 'think happy thoughts', and I don't know if I touched something behind the emotional block Sandalphon put up by accident. It's like touching an exposed nerve when your tooth's rotted away... just like, this jolt. I just need to clear my head."

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Nodding to Jon Lydia says, "We're all a little bit different. What I can do with my mutant power is limited to my imagination, really, and now that I've got my magic back and can feed that into it, well, the sky's the limit."

She nods as Phoebe explains what happened. "Okay," she says, "I think you took the Peter Pan metaphor a little too literally. Close your eyes and try thinking of your wings as part of you. Imagine how it would feel with the wind catching underneath them and lifting you off your feet, how when you flap them it swims through the air, guiding you forward."