Team Blonde's European Vacation

[Haley Crusek]

Haley had packed as light as she could, squeezing a lot of outfits into a backpack that she'd have to wear on her front while flying. They'd buy a bunch of clothes at the various destinations, of course, and doing laundry would just be a chore to do while nursing a hangover.

She avoided the temptation to burst into Nailah's dorm room on the day of their departure like Kramer and knocked, practically giddy with excitement.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Coming!" Nailah shouts in response and a moment later the door opens. She's wearing denim shorts that suspiciously look like used to be regular pants at one point and a t-shirt with cuts for her wings that look a lot more meticulously done and thus were probably put in my her mom. She's wearing a small backpack as low as it gets, secured from slipping above her waist with a fanny-pack. "Heck yeah, it's go time!" she grins. "Oh! Make sure you download a bunch of map data on your phone and then take out the thingie, the phone-connecty chip, or it'll kill your battery trying to get signal. GPS works great but cell-phone towers don't go that high."

[Haley Crusek]

Haley squealed in excitement at the sight of her friend, and she gave her an awkward hug due to the backpack she was wearing on her front. "Yes! I did all of that last night while I was trying to fall asleep but couldn't because HYPE. Fully charged, got the big-ass battery pack....I think everything,. And you know what, who cares about anything else? We can buy what we need when we're there. Those plane tickets were astronomical so Daddy gave me a ton of money, plus another grand on top of it."

"...I'm a spoiled princess and I know it, yes," she grinned.

[Nailah Weaver]

"We'll see how spoiled you'll feel after a day of flying." she chuckles as she steps out of the room and pulls the door closed behind her, making her way outside with Haley and while she's not as obviously bouncy as her friend, it's hard to hide the lion tail swishing back and forth behind her. "Let's take off from the cliffs. Much easier than flapping against the extra backpack weight and we get to start off with one heck of a swoop!" she says, making an elongated U shape in the air with her flat hand. "Come on, last one in the air's a dweebus!" she adds with a grin and takes off running.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley would be lying if she said she wasn't nervous about this. Running off of a cliff was something that people with hang gliders or wings that weren't just a random addition to her body made recently, and one that she wasn't completely sure were actually functional.

But you know what, she was gonna do this, because there wasn't another alternative worth considering!

She took a deep breath and sprinted towards the cliffs. Haley focused on using their muscles that were still somewhat new to her and unfolding her wings as much as she could while starting to flutter them. With every step they beat faster, finally buzzing not unlike a dragonfly's wings. Her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest, and she leapt over the edge of the cliff.

And promptly plummeted.

She let out a terrified shriek as her TK and her wings fought each other to control her descent--hopefully into more of a swooping dive that she could come out of instead of a swan dive into the cold water below.

[Nailah Weaver]

Nailah had done this leap dozens of times and her wings were a lot more suited to go into dives and glides. That didn't make it any less fun to fall and let air catch her and lift her up. With a beat of her wings at the right moment she even gives herself a little boost on top as if she's jumping out of the upward arc. She's at the top of her jump, almost back to the height of the cliff itself when Haley plummets past her, shrieking and more slowing her descent than actually flying. She flips in the air and folds her wings in, diving and letting what little air rushes between her and her wings lock her into her descent. Grey waters and jagged rocks rush towards her until she manages to, seemingly by blind luck, grab Haley's wrist.

Her wings snap open and catch the air, stopping their fall with a sudden jerk before carrying on into a slow glide. "Don't panic!" she shouts over the crashing of the waves beneath them. "Feel the air and find the groove that'll carry you up. You're not beating against it, only giving it something to catch onto!" That said, Nailah's wings are beating pretty firmly to try and make up for the additional weight.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley's breaths came in panicked gulps after she was snatched by her friend before she plummeted into the water. "Okay..." she finally managed to get out, shouting over the wind rushing past them. She hesitated and restarted beating her wings, focusing her TK a bit differently to help supplement the air currents she was trying to ride. It took a few exhausting moments for Nailah, but Haley was finally starting to feel less like dead weight. Probably enough to let go even.

[Nailah Weaver]

"There you go!" she grins. "Go on gain some height. It's easier higher up, less turbulence and stuff." she says and keeps hold of Haley's hand just a little while longer to make sure her friend isn't going to plummet on her again. Once they're high enough that the waves are looking less like hands trying to slap them against the cliffs if they can and more like patterns slowly rolling across the grey sea she lets go.

"Think of it as when you got your hand out the window on a car ride, yeah?" she says, holding out her hand for Haley to see, palm parallel to the distant ground, fingers pointing forward she weaves her hand up and down through the air. "I looked it up. The buzzing wings don't just beat to make your own updraft. They create, like, a thingie... a swirly wind around them that forms the edge for catching the air just like this." she says, wriggling her hand up and down through the headwind again.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley nodded at her friend, processing what she was saying carefully. She adjusted how her wings were beating a few times until she could really feel the effect that Nai had described. A grin spread across her face. "Holy shit....I....I can feel it! I didn't think my wings even worked! Thought I was going to give myself a nosebleed trying to TK my way the entire there!"

Haley let out a celebratory whoop and flit around the airspace surrounding them cautiously.

"Maybe I need to lean into this after all. Slutty Tinkerbell costume for Halloween?" she laughed.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Wikipedia to the rescue!" Nailah cheers on Haley's zipping about. "Although... I do have one question. How's slutty Halloween Tinkerbell any different from Every-Other-Day Haley?" she grins and prepares to dive away from whatever deserved response Haley might have and lead her on a chase across the blue-grey ocean.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley cackled, "Oh you bitch! You're lucky I barely know what I'm doing otherwise I'd fucking tickle the shit out of you. You're gonna get it! Just you wait..."

"Okay. So we're gonna get food first. And then, after we pass the fuck out when we land...what's our first stop gonna be? We kinda kept it wide open in our planner"

[Nailah Weaver]

"I dunno!" said the precog, still laughing at successfully evading Haley's wrath and tucking in her wings for a quick spiral dive underneath her friend before catching the air again and settling into a glide.

"I figure we'll see how far we get before we get tired and see what we can spot from above. If we can make it all the way to Lyon... France is pretty shitty for mutants buuuut I did kind of stop Hazard from blowing up half the city that one time so we can probably get some free drinks out of that..." she grins.

[Haley Crusek]

"I'm from Texas. I'm used to intolerant shitheads. Two cuties PLUS a local motherfuckin' HERO connection? I like our odds. Though hopefully we don't like. Have to fly through a storm or get shit on my seagulls on our way to the ground and make us look like absolute ass before we even arrive."

[Nailah Weaver]

"If you let seagulls get above you that's your own dang fault." she grins as she pulls out her phone and scrolls through a map. "Alright, we'll cross at Dover and then head towards Paris. What do you think, lunch-break on top of the Eiffel Tower or that big arch thingie?"

[Haley Crusek]

"Oh, big arch thingy for sure. What the hell is it called....Arc du.....fromage? Eifel Tower seems like there'd be way too much work to not fall the fuck off. Arch probably has room to lay the fuck down and rest, or hell, take a nap after we eat."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Already getting tired, huh?" she grins.


As they fly and gain height the landscape slowly falls away beneath them, turning from discernible people to the small moving dots of cars and trucks. It's surprisingly disorienting, not being high enough to actually see all the way to the channel and, at least for the moment, heading away from the sea on their left. London is clearly visible in the distance to their right, it's skyscrapers standing out enough to be kind of a vantage point. Occasionally Nailah pulls out her phone to check the GPS like a compass and soon they fall into a calm flight. It's quiet safe for the wind and the beating of their wings and almost serene in it's aloof seclusion. Once one gets over the stomach-lurching fact of the ground slowly passing by so far below them.

Soon the landscape gives way to the sea in a neat cut of white cliffs and, thankfully, the coast of France is visible on the horizon. It's just a very broad river, really, and not the steel-gray waters of the North Sea. And then there's more countryside that looks no different than England safe for the fact that it stretches on and on as they soar above it. To the south the landscape gently begins to slope but long before they get anywhere near it the modest skyline of Paris takes shape on the horizon. For a while it looks like any old city they're slowly dropping towards until they're below the tops of the cluster of skyscrapers as Nailah leads them on a swooping, zig-zagging path through the steel and glass canyons of Paris. Until finally they round a corner and the city center falls away behind them and gives way to the much more open historic part of the city with it's signature brown, filigree tower in the distance and a much smaller Arch at the center of a ring of radiating parkways spread out before them.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley looked exhausted, but excited nonetheless, as they flew over the city. She'd never been to Paris, and most of her memories of the place, if she was honest, were from watching Ratatouille a lot as a kid.

Okay, she watched the movie a lot even now, because of course she likes Disney movies.

She sped ahead to land on top of the arch and did so...mostly gracefully. She shrugged off her pack, pulled out a blanket and promptly lay down on her stomach. "In retrospect....maybe flying all the way to France for my first big flight wasn't like. the best decision?"

[Nailah Weaver]

With Haley speeding ahead Nailah does a tightening circle around the arch before landing in a much more practiced run that quickly slows over a couple of steps.

"But you did it!" she grins as she plops herself down next to her friend, tail swishing excitedly. "Probably got some time till someone shows up to yell at us to come down." she chuckles and pulls out her phone to put on some music.

[Haley Crusek]

"We DID make it!" she beamed, "And I doubt anyone's going to bother us, unless the police have drones or some shit. What did we bring for snacks? I want to get some food in me ASAP, and then maybe find a spot to do a quick clean-up and go get something from a restaurant. I dunno. Do we do a fancy dinner tonight since we're in Paris and French cuisine is all .... uh. fancy? Good? I dunno words are hard right now, but I brought a cute dress so we could go out, or I bet we could go shopping for one or..."

Haley tended to word vomit when she was excited or tired, and she was clearly both.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Well, I got water, energy bars and an apple. Not very Parisian-fancy but it'll keep you from falling over." she chuckles and tosses Haley a bar, followed by a bottle of water. "And if you want fancy, I got an idea." she grins and points down one of the roads radiating out from the Arch. Some way down a hotel takes up most of the street corner. The exterior doesn't look that much different from the rest of central Paris, though that in and of itself is already kind of ornate for the two Americans. But right across from it a store is adorned with large golden letters reading 'Louis Vitton'.

"Let's blow the money we have till we look fancy enough to take the rest to a casino and roll the dice." she says, grin growing even wider.

[Haley Crusek]

"Fuck. Yes!" she grinned, the cartoon-y dollar signs practically visible in her eyes.

"God, we are going to look so hot! Daddy gave me a lot of money for plane tickets AND some spending money so we are gonna go all out. And we will totally make some of that cash back at the casino! I'm sure I could probably skim some thoughts off people....they gotta be thinking loud in there...and...would your thing work there?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"I dunno, could I?" she grins and fishes a coin from her pocket and balances it against her thumb for a moment, waiting for... something as her hand kind of wavers back and forth as if she's trying to feel something out. Then she flicks it a solid three feet into the air and watches it hit the ground, bounce once and land on it's side, standing perfectly still.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley squealed in delight as she watched the display, pushing herself up to crack open the water and guzzle half the bottle before tearing into the energy bar.

"Oh man. We'll just have to fail enough to not make them suspicious and then look like we have just dumb luck and come out ahead. Holy shit I knew we were going to have fun this trip but I didn't even think of THIS . It's like we're planning a heist!"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Yes! A legal heist! Well... I dunno what their mutant laws are like. A morally excusable heist!" she laughs.

[Nailah Weaver]

After wolfing down some travel food and stashing their backpacks in an inconspicuous spot on top of the Arc they take a running start and catch the air to swoop down the Champs-Élysées. Their approach and entrance to the Louis Vitton store make for bit of a spectacle. Paris is a bit better about Mutants but it's still rare to see two making an obvious display. Well, aside from the riots last week, but Nailah and Haley don't know about that. So it's with a mix of respect and apprehension that the store clerks watch them. Flashing a bundle of cash certainly helps. The store is as much tourist 'attraction' as it is for actually selling high-end clothes, so actually looking to spend money helps a lot. And soon enough the two find themselves trying on outfits.

The two of them draw enough attention, for better or worse, that flutes of (moderately decent) champagne materializes. Haley's wings in particular fit the glamorous vibe they try to cultivate. And so

they

try

on

a

bunch

of

outfits.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley practically devoured the attention that was being lavished upon them, and her phone was out nearly the entire time, photographing and video recording much of amateur mutant fashion show, likely for consumption on TikTok. She was quite taken by the last two outfits in particular, so she bought one, ostensibly to keep the champagne flowing and the stores' tolerance for their nonsense for a while longer, tried on even more outfits and shoes, before breaking down an making another purchase. Several hours later, Haley has gigglier than normal thanks to the champagne and the high of spending money, and she stood waiting for her bestie with her outfits wrapped in the designer-branded paper bag from the shop.

"Oh my god, we are going to look *amazing* "

[Nailah Weaver]

Nailah holds back a little more than Haley on account of not wanting to spend too much of her friend's money. Not that the clothes she ends up buying are particularly cheap but still. And she gets to skip the shoes. Regular ones tend to be a bit uncomfortable already; heels and the sizes they have here do not cooperate well with her paws. Not that she's one to let that bother her. Or the fact that there are definitely some people around who are decidedly unhappy about their presence. Especially with Haley's energy and a glass or two of champagne going around. Not that she's drunk, it's just bubbly wine. Hard alcohol is what makes people drunk. And hey, it seems to help her power, making her slide into the right grooves and switching 'tracks' so much more easily. It's definitely not her control slipping and even if it was, she's just steering it towards things she wants to happen!

The slight stumble that forces her to catch herself on her shorter friend as they leave the store must be important in some way. Heck if Nailah knows but that's just her power sometimes.

"I know right!? They forking loved your wings. Watch 'em have some fake ones on their next oht... cotuir... thing." she laughs.