Shortly after sunset, Perfect… now in costume… went out with Dani into the city, heading south and east… east towards the harbor, south away from the more recently developed parts of the city.
“What are we doing out here?” Dani asked her as they slipped into an alley. “I thought you were supposed to be meeting someone.”
“On the Dock Shadow’s recommendation,” Perfect said. “But he didn’t give me a time and a place, or flight information… I’m not sitting at home waiting for him to jump out of a dark corner and surprise me. If he wants to do that, he can come and find me.”
Dani looked around, as if she expected him to do just that… which she did, though he did not oblige her.
“So that’s why we’re not back at your… back home,” Dani said. “What are we doing? Got a new lead on the churches?”
“No,” Perfect said. “No new developments on that front. I just thought it might be a good idea to get a little practice in, working together… I don’t have a very clear idea of the limits of your powers. I’d like to rectify that. It could be the difference between, uh… success and failure.”
“I don’t really know them, either,” Dani said.
“That’s an even better reason for some practice,” Perfect said. “We do know you’re bulletproof, but we don’t know the limits of that… I don’t really fancy trying to figure that out in the field. I suppose I could rig up some sort of mass driver in the basement and get it firing across the edge of your field… you’d have to be very still, though. Unless I could calibrate it to adjust for minute…”
“Uh… you want to stay with me, Perfect?” Dani said.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Perfect said. “You can fly by conjuring wings, though there’s no way you could actually sustain flight in an upright position with a pair of three-foot wings flapping every few seconds.”
“Uh… hollow bones?” Dani suggested.
“Your bones would have to be filled with something of negative mass,” Perfect said. “No, the obvious answer is that the ring is levitating you and the wings are just… a special effect. Have you tried flying without using them?”
“It was one of the first things I tried,” Dani said. “Well, after making a big blue force hand.”
“How’d that work?” Perfect asked.
“The flying didn’t,” Dani said. “The hand? I just made a hand… but not like I meant to. I was thinking, you know, like an arm stretching out from my ring… like in the comics. I ended up with like a statue of a hand. Um, I don’t know how to explain it in scientific terms… but if this were a comic, I’d say I make force objects, not force constructs.”
“I think I understand the distinction you’re making,” Perfect said. “Would you like to try flying again, keeping the knowledge in your head that the wings are meaningless?”
“Why?”
“Well, as small and ornamental as your wings are, there will still be situations were you’ll want to be even more compact and stealthy,” Perfect said. “And if you can’t fly without wings, what happens if somebody gets the idea to target them?”
“I get your point,” Dani said. “You want me to do it here?”
“Yeah, why not?” Perfect said. “We’re out of sight, and we’re both in costume anyway… go for it. Spread your, uh, lack-of-wings and fly.”
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