Without Wings, I Still Fly

[notabirdcostume]

WHO: Sam Wilson & Open
WHERE: Around the Village -- Cliff Walls
WHEN: March 19 - March 21
OPEN TO: Anyone
WARNINGS: Bugs (but only in one thread)
STATUS: Open

---

1. Discovering Abilities: March 19 AM
Sam didn't even want to know how the goat had gotten on top of the roof of the police station. Was it a mountain goat? It was possible? What did he really know about goats, anyway? The frustrating thing was that there didn't look to be a clear way to climb up there and get the goat. It was true that he could potentially wait the goat out, but with the recent bug epidemic, the previous lightning strikes, and other unpredictable disasters he just didn't trust the goat on his own.

No, he was going to have to find a way up there and this frustrated him to no end.

Sam rolled his shoulders, mentally preparing himself while simultaneously looking for a way up. There was no obvious clear way up to the roof, though maybe if he could run and jump he could get a grip on a ledge and climb. It wasn't like it was a tall building after all. Sam stood a few minutes longer, planning his trajectory, and then decided he was just wasting time.

"All right. Here we go," Sam took a few steps back and made a run at the building.

If you asked him later how he did it, he wouldn't be able to explain. He was running toward the building, and he knew he wasn't going to make it to the roof, probably not even going to make it up the side of the building. But, when he jumped, there was a tugging sensation. It was like something being released or unhooked from inside. He pushed off the ground and didn't even have to grab at the wall. He had jumped and somehow he'd arrived on the roof.

To verify, he looked over his shoulder and sure enough he was on the roof. The goat was watching him with interest, but otherwise hadn't moved from his spot on the roof. "What the hell just happened," he muttered.


2. Test Flight: March 19 PM - 21 AM
Sam had been thinking over his morning and he was fairly certain he had finally acquired one of those 'powers' that seemed to pop up from time to time. This was a new on though, as far as he could tell, and as far as he was concerned it was pretty appropriate. He didn't fell different, mind you, but there was no reason to pass this opportunity up.

So, Sam had made his way out to the edge of the village, not deep in the woods because he didn't know what might happen. If he got hurt he wanted to still be close enough that it wouldn't take days to find him. On the other hand, he also didn't want to be so close to the village that he might hurt others. He set a bag on the ground and looked around, it wasn't that he was afraid of others coming across him but he would rather have some time to himself--time to think and try out what this ability was exactly.

In the next few hours and even during the next day, Sam would come back to this spot. He would try jumping like he did before -- going higher and higher -- but never quite really flying. He would get good distance and height though. He would perch on tree branches that shouldn't have born his weight -- and also fall out of trees because this was new and he didn't know what he was doing.

In fact, it might be the sound of someone crashing to the forest floor that alerts you to check out the clearing. Although it depends on your timing whether or not you will get there to see him sprawled on the floor wincing and laughing or making another jump attempt.


3. Cliffs of Danger - March 21 PM
The cliffs loomed over him and Sam couldn't help but wonder if this was a really bad idea. He had only been testing the ability for a few days -- enough to get better at landing and manipulating the ability. However, that didn't mean he was an expert and it certainly didn't mean he was really ready to try this out. The cliffs were still mostly an unknown. No one had actually made it to the top and most of the attempts had ended in disaster. However, they hadn't had his ability. An ability, he reminded himself, that had been given to him out of the blue most likely by whoever was in charge of all of this. It could go out or something else could go wrong.

But...didn't he still have to risk it? Didn't he still need to find out if there was a way out up there and a way to get them all home? It had been nearly a year, and he was still determined for that to happen it seemed.

Sam took a few steps back, gauging the height and distance just as he had with the goat on the roof a few days ago. He wasn't going to just let these powers go to waste and always wonder if he could have found them a way. Sam took a running start and jumped. He was high --- several feet up the cliff wall. He grabbed a ledge and pushed off again, gravity only a distant memory. It was looking like such a clear shot, but of course things couldn't go as planned. He had forgot to account for one thing: the bugs.

He wasn't sure where they came from. Just one minute the sky was clear and the next there was a swarm of insects. They buzzed in the swarm, wings and legs brushing over his skin. Sam started to fall backwards, smacking at the bugs on him, but there were far too many to smack them all. He felt them bite him, pincers or stingers or whatever it was. It was all over his skin.

Sam was just lucky there was a tree there. He crashed into its branches, birds cawing and flying off as he snapped and broke branch after branch. If he hadn't hit the tree the fall probably would have killed him. Still the fall was hard and he landed rough on the ground. He groaned, everything hurt and he was burning up. Lights flickered above him as the firefly swarm started to dissipate. They flew off -- leaving him on the ground staring at them before blacking out entirely.

So much for that plan.

Comments

[womanofvalue]

Higher? How can they possibly go higher without the technology? Peggy's frustrations are beginning to mount again and that will do no one any good, so she has to talk herself down, attempting to calm herself before she can grow snappish with Sam. She wonders if the jumping is restricted as well, but it does seem like he could probably do a great deal if they were to go to the canyon.

"We need ledges," she says to herself, but shakes the idea. "You're sure you feel safe?" she calls up to him. "You'd best not fall suddenly, Sam!"

[notabirdcostume]

Sam can practically feel the disappointment from up here. He knows it isn't his fault, but it does elicit from fresh frustrations of his own. If only he could actually fly---wouldn't THAT be nice. But things never work out that easily and Sam is beginning to understand how Buzz Lightyear might have felt in Toy Story.

"Yeah. But I'm going to come back down. If I wait too long the power starts to lose its effectiveness and it makes it harder to land," he calls back, pulling himself from his mini-pity party.

A second later he's drifting back to the ground like a leaf on the wind. He can control the speed of his descent thanks to, as best he can guess, a manipulation of gravity. The reason he'd been falling before is he'd been pushing his limits on how long he could remain in the air, but now he is able to land without completely crashing.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy's grateful that he's going to come back down. She can't help thinking that something is going to go awfully wrong and her worry is that it happens when he's up there in the sky. Still, as she watches him descend, he does seem to have it all under control, which is more than she can say for her panicked, erratic heartbeat.

Once he's back on firm ground, she wonders what on earth this place is doing to them. "How do you suppose we get these abilities? Do they mean something? Have you harboured a desire to fly, ever?"

[notabirdcostume]

He flashes her a reassuring smile. He can tell by the look on her face that she's still worried, but he doesn't think she should be.

As for the abilities' origins, Sam's been wondering THAT for awhile now. He's kept a log, so he'd have to look over his notes. But, he's read over them enough that he has parts memories, "Not sure. There's no pattern to who gets them or when. Some people have exhibited similar abilities to one another -- like we had a few reported cases of people wielding fire. It could be anything from the food to the water to something they're slipping us just like the gifts that arrive. The only problem is that if it was food or water you would think there would be more occurrences of it." The feasts were spread out enough, but this was Sam's first time with an ability despite being here for nearly a year now. Peggy had exhibited two abilities in the time he'd known her and some of the others were at one or two, and many of them had arrived after Sam had.

As for her second question, "I was Air Force and I had a proto-type flight suit I used to help the Avengers. So...it is strangely fitting I guess."

[womanofvalue]

"I just can't understand why," is what Peggy says, because that's what gets her at the end of the day. "Why would anyone care for me to have the ability to detect lies or wield icy powers? Why would they want you to be able to soar to such heights and control the descent. What I keep going back to," she says, "is not pleasant."

"The only thing I can truly figure is that perhaps we're guinea pigs," she says. "That there's some sort of testing happening and we're the control subjects in a controlled environment." It's yet another theory to stack up with the rest, all sitting on a board until she can prove one of them to be happening.

[notabirdcostume]

Sam stretches and then leans against one of the trees. He listens, but he doesn't look happy about it. Not because he thinks she's wrong, but because he thinks she's right. "Yeah...I'd sort of reached the same conclusion. It all has felt like some kind of experiment for some time. You could even argue sending random gifts, random feasts, and even some of the things like the earthquakes and storms are part of the test as well. I just wish we could figure out why they were testing these things and why we were selected."

[womanofvalue]

That's the part that scares Peggy, just a little. "If someone has the power to reach across time and the universe and select us, it implies that there was a selection process before. And yet, people vanish," she says, not understanding that part. "Were they successful in their experiments? Or the opposite." The one thing she keeps telling herself is that the lack of bodies should bode well.

"What's worse is when I catch myself being happy," she admits. "I should be upset or angry. We're in a prison, after all, yet, I've made friends here I never would have had at home. People come back to me, even if they've already left again."

[notabirdcostume]

"There's a reason we don't have meetings about this stuff anymore...all we're going to accomplish is talking ourselves into circles," Sam adds. He gets where Peggy is coming from and he's had plenty of similar thoughts. However, it always leads to no where. "We just don't have enough of the puzzle pieces yet," he says, the thought occurring to him as he says it aloud.

He nods, feeling much the same way. Sometimes he honestly feels guilty or conflicted about those moments of happiness. "There's a bright side to everything I guess...that or you can look at it as human beings just are naturally that adaptable to whatever conditions they are in." He knew Peggy had been a part of the war effort, she had to understand it from that side as well. Even soldiers in the heart of enemy territory found some way to cope, some way to get through it. There were bad days, way more than good, but still you survived.

[womanofvalue]

"I don't know if we ever will, when it feels like they're being stolen from under our nose," she complains, pinning her hands to her hips in irritation at this village, though not at Sam. "I suppose the good of it here is that while it's dangerous, it's not the sort of dangerous that keeps me up at night. I have allies, friends, I'm not starving," she lists. "It just feels as if I've put things on hold because I keep expecting to go home at some point."

After all, would she be acting the same way if she were in Los Angeles, still? She doesn't think so. "Now, look at you," she says, shaking her head. "Able to leap over buildings and canyons. Lucky we don't have an Olympics here, you'd clean up."