Xaviers!

Charles watched as Nailah confronted the laughing/vibrating bush. Now feeling even more embarrassed that perhaps he should have done what Nailah was doing.

Might be that heroes probably need a bit more backbone, eh?

Parting the bushes, Nailah would see what could only be described as...a pixie of some sort. Floating about on tender, gossamer wings, the fairy-creature pointed at Nailah and laughed.

"What the... Fairies?" Nailah blinks, too flabbergasted by the tiny person to wonder if this might just be a fellow mutant.

The...creature...reached into a little bag she kept by her side, and shook a small amount of dust onto her hand, still giggling.

"No way, is that pixie dust to help them fly?" Nailah gasps.

The pixie nodded, and waved her finger in a "come hither" motion.

"For reals? You guys, come over here!"

"What the hell, Nailah?" Sam asks, the distraction being too much, and resulting in a faceplant in the grass.

"Sorry!" she says, wincing. "But there's an actual, for-reals fairy here."

"...Viv lives down the hall, Nailah." She grunts as she gets up.

"No, not like her. Like Tinkerbell!"

"Faerie?" Charles said walking over towards Nailah to take a look.

The small thing smiled and did a twirl.

Then, she blew some of her fairy dust in the face of Sam and Charles. Helpful!


...Except for the fact that they found themselves falling upwards rapidly, as if gravity was reversed for them. Perhaps less helpful.

Sam breaks out coughing at the sudden pixie dust, and is largely oblivious at her starting to drift off as she spasms.

"Well, this is nice," Charles said before realizing he wasn't just floating but continuing to fall upwards. "N-never mind this is the opposite of nice."

He tried beating his wings to get back to the earth, which to him was highly surreal.

"Hey, it's totally working!" Nailah shouts excitedly, not yet realizing the problem. With a running start she takes to the air as well, flying a curve around her ascending friends.

"What the bloody hell was that stuff?" Sam asks, rubbing her eyes and coughing one last time.

Then she looks down.

"...ah crap."

Their rate of acceleration would start to notably, and worriyingly, increase.

"Pixie dust! Duh!" Nailah laughs, flapping her wings to keep up with them.

"Er... Nailah? How do we... get back down?"

"Uhm..." she says, glancing down towards the pixie. "I'm... not entirely sure."

The rate of "falling" up continued to increase--they were now, well, significantly above the buildings.

"I'm not wanting a detour to the second star on the right, Nailah."

Now they were a good 100 feet above the ground, and showed no signs of stopping.

"Okay, okay, just... try to fly the other way. Beat your wings. Here, lemme get you in the right position..." Nailah is getting a little frantic now. This is her fault and they were falling pretty fast now. She grabs a hold of Sam's leg and pulls her around until her feet are pointing up. "Just flap them now, try to slow down!"

"Just try to flap downwards," Charles said quietly to himself as he flapped his wings harder. Trying to think of another solution to they're little conundrum.

grappling hooks? Anchors? Maybe making myself really big?

As if in response his body began shifting until it had chitinous arrows protruding from his stomach, which he was now trying to figure out how to use. After a moment he fired one such arrow with a fleshy rope like attachment at a tree, which he hoped might arrest his ascent. However, reversed gravity is a trick thing, eh?

Sam grits her teeth and tries to flap her wings, hoping to make progress towards the ground.

Charles Franklin wrote:"Just try to flap downwards," Charles said quietly to himself as he flapped his wings harder. Trying to think of another solution to they're little conundrum.

grappling hooks? Anchors? Maybe making myself really big?

As if in response his body began shifting until it had chitinous arrows protruding from his stomach, which he was now trying to figure out how to use. After a moment he fired one such arrow with a fleshy rope like attachment at a tree, which he hoped might arrest his ascent. However, reversed gravity is a trick thing, eh?

It did! I mean, he was still falling upwards, but at least he had a firm grip on a tree at this point. Surely, the force wouldn't become great enough to uproot the tree, right?

Seeing that Charles seems okay (at least for the time being), Nailah holds on to Sam and stops flapping her wings, trying to help her by dragging her towards the ground with her own body-weight.

"I'm not sure this is working, Nailah..."

"Dangit... maybe we can get the dust off somehow." she says, trying to think. Her water bottle is sitting somewhere several hundred feet down and if she leaves Sam up here she'll only fall faster. And she's not sure if she could get up this far this fast. Step one, twist to the right. "Do you trust me?" she suddenly asks, nervous about following her own hunch and looking for some vague affirmation.

"Not like I've got much choice, aye? It's not as if you could make things much worse."

"Right..." she says and suddenly yanks Sam over to the side, flapping her wings once to put her in the right position to wrap her arms around Sam from behind, trapping her black wings between them as they plummet higher into the sky, only vaguely guided by Nailah's wings.

The pixie, meanwhile, had buggered the heck off, her work here done.

What the hell are they doing?

Since it was working Charles shot a couple more little spikes with fleshy rope things, lets just call them flesh hooks, into another tree.

"Uh, guys?" Charles asked as he watched the two flying further up into the sky.

"Er... there's... a next step, isn't there?" Sam asks uncertainly, as Nailah performs a mid-air power-hug.

"I wish I could tell you I knew what I'm doing, but I kinda don't." she says, sounding increasingly nervous as she follows her internal set of instructions. For a couple of stomach-lurching moments they just plummet through the air with Nailah occasionally adjusting their trajectory until they're suddenly engulfed in dense fog. Or rather, they hit a cloud which is less fluffy and more like being drenched in icy water. The good news is, the water seems to actually wash off the pixie dust and they begin to slow down. The bad news is, they soon begin to fall back down towards the ground!

Charles looks at the two mouth maybe agape it's sometimes hard to tell. Then he looks down at his flesh hooks or maybe flesh anchor things.

DamnitDamnitDamnit

That moment of panic is followed by well a moment of bravery as Charles releases his anchors and flies to try and save the two. As he flies his body shifts larger and more monstrous to accommodate the weight of two passengers.

"Um... Nailah?" Sam asks nervously. "Do you... know what to do here? Because you're kind of... bad at carrying people as I remember..."

"Yeah, but at least we're falling the proper way now, right?" she tries to put on a grin to cover up the fact that her heart is rapidly trying to punch it's way through her throat. She unfolds her wings and starts flapping them to get the moisture out of them but they're not drying nearly as quick as she'd like as the wings whiffs past the clumpy feathers. "Try to aim for that big... whatever that is!" she yells over the wind, letting go of Sam a little bit, only clutching a handful of fabric on her shoulder so the two won't drift too far apart. "And now would be a great time to figure out how to use your wings! Just saying!"