Saint Joseph School

Oby sat anxiously waiting for Lena, and the rest to get out of the dorms. He didn't want to honk the horn...again. The beat up Dodge still ran fairly well, but the AC was shot, and "4x60" AC didn't work if you were doing 0 mph. It was warm, and the car was starting to heat up.

He ratcheted up the music, and Disturbed blasted out of the stereo system, that even he had to admit, cost way more than he should have spent. He leaned back in the seat with a smile, enjoying the sound.

"Whoathat'sawesome!Whatkindofstereoisthat?!" The voice came right next to his ear at the driver's side window. Oby started, knees crashing up into the steering column with a solid thump.

"OW! Son of a... Mike, don't do that!" He turned to see Mike Evans, Tornado Force, standing by the door, where he hadn't been a second ago. He just gave Oby an apologetic grin and shrug, and Oby couldn't help but laugh. "Alright, Mike, get in the..." Oby heard the door open and shut, and looked in the rearview to see Mike sitting there, "car."

Soon enough the rest of the group assembled, and started to pile in. After something resembling a Chinese Fire Drill, it wound up with Oby driving, Michell Iluna in the passenger seat, after much fussing when she tried to squeeze into the back seat with Mike, and her wings caused a general smothering of people. That left Garrison, Mike, Ekaterina, and Lena in the back. A little cramped, but not too uncomfortable.

"Youbetternotsneeze,Garrison" Mike looked at the other boy, sitting next to him, nervous about Garrison's spines.

"Is it too late to back out?" Kat asked, sheepishly grinning.

"YES!!" Came the chorus from the rest of them, laughing at the running joke.

They got underway, and after getting lost only a few times, Oby spotted a sign. "Murtry's indoor jump trainer". In bright bold letters on the sign. The building just looked like a large wharehouse building with a cloudscape motif painted on it, complete with smiling skydivers.

"There it is!" The six of them got visibly more anxious as they pulled in.

They walked in and could immediately tell where the trainer was. A large, blue cylindrical structure, that looked like a grain silo with its top cut off stood smack in the middle of the wharehouse. There were a few door, on the bottom, and the top had a deck surrounding the open portion, like an observation area. It was complete with a few wooden picnic tables, so you could drink overpriced drinks, and eat equally expensive, heartburn inducing snacks, while watching your friends try to fly.

Missy immediately drew attention from the instructors, and the few customers who were there. Her wings got envious stares, and more than a few comments. A few others notices Oby, but overall they kept their distance.

Everyone pitched in their money, and they rented the trainer, gear, and instruction for an hour and a half. More than ten minutes of air time, each.

All of the teens geared up, with huge grins on their faces. They were all excited and maybe a little nervous about the trainer, but all of them had to admit, it also looked like a lot of fun.

Mike was, of course, excited. Ever since he'd come to Paragon City, he'd felt like a puppy must feel: run at a thousand miles and hour, and keep running until you collapse unconscious. Sometimes he thought his head would explode with all the new things and people.

And now this! Some of the new class and Oby had made plans to do some kind of skydiving workshop. Mike had never gone skydiving before, though sometimes he'd daydreamed about it during class.

He'd wanted to sit next to Michelle, but physics sort of stopped THAT from happening. So he did the next best thing: he practiced his powers.

Most people at the school were used to him talking and moving in a sped-up manner, but few if any of them really understood what that meant for Mike. He had been studying Einstein's theory of relativity, and there were lots of applications for a guy like Mike. The biggest one dealt with time: when Mike was sped up, the rest of the world appeared to slow down. He hadn't understood it at first, and certainly hadn't learned to control it at all until he'd come to Paragon. But now...now it was second nature to him.

Mike concentrated, and the world sort of fell away. He didn't speed up all the way, so he didn't notice a shift in the light or anything, but he sped up pretty fast. The car, in his eyes, crept along. He could easily have gotten out and walked alongside. Practice allowed him to follow the conversation, but for the most part people weren't really talking to him; they assumed that he was distracted. And he was.

But he wasn't staring out the window. He was distracted by Michelle. Shelly, he called her. Her wings were folded up behind her, the soft feathers blending in with her blonde hair. Mike took the opportunity to gently touch one of the feathers, marveling at the feel of it. He didn't understand why she was so self-conscious about them, but then he didn't understand a lot of things about the people around him. Shelly had agreed to go to the prom with him, and he was still reeling in shock about THAT. It hadn't worked out QUITE the way they'd hoped, but things had ended surprisingly well.

He moved his hands and allowed time to reclaim him, relishing the wind in his face and the pounding beat of the music (now that it wasn't slower than a funeral dirge to his ears, he enjoyed it).

Another fun thing about relativity, he'd found, was that it worked in his head, too. Even though he'd spent most of the trip sped up, and it had taken around three subjective hours for him...it had felt like only seconds. He was surprised to see the car turning into the drive for the skydiving trainer.

After gearing up, he stood waiting for his turn. Shelly was able to stretch her wings, and he took her hand while people stared at her. They'd gone flying together several times, and he was looking forward to seeing how this would stack up. He was betting that it would come in as a distant second.