Chiron Academy

Chapter 31.999999: Happy Landings

The ground was coming towards Wyatt very fast.  

Which was faster than he generally liked. He preferred to have the ground approach him very slowly when he had the choice. 

He would have to complain to someone in management, he thought to himself.

His outstretched wings slowed their descent more than he had expected, fortunately. The wind seemed to have changed slightly. But it still didn't give anywhere near the lift they would need. 

This was why he hated blind drops. People always assumed that flying was a peaceful sedate affair. They were wrong. It was a vicious, frantic affair where you had to contest of wills with the air itself for every foot of elevation. Sometimes the air let you feel like you were winning. It gave you some easy wins to fool you into a false state of confidence. But for every leisurely glide and casual updraft, there was another time when you had to fly into a strong wind to get somewhere. Flying was easy in the way that Olympic ice skating was easy. People only saw the nice parts. And it only looked easy if you were very, very good.

He angled his wings upwards, the same shape that plane wings take when the plane is taking off. Hopefully, he could squeeze a bit of altitude out of it. 

Unfortunately, since he had no jet engines to push him, it would also eat up their momentum, slowing them down and sending them down to the ground where any number of Omniclones could be waiting to pounce on them. They would have to-  no, he would have to keep them airborne long enough that they could outrun their pursuers but also slow enough not to break every bone in their bodies. It was a hard balance to maintain.

Physics is picky like that, Wyatt thought to himself.

Their descent seemed to slow, but so did their momentum forward. He tried to listen for any telltale footfall from Omnis giving chase, but the wind pouring through his ears blocked made it impossible.

The ground was getting closer but he had to risk it; he tilted his wings down into the closest thing to a dive that he dared. 

This sped them up, but unfortunately, brought the ground even closer. He'd have to see how long he could milk this.

He beat his wings hard once, twice, anything to give them a bit more clearance. They were going to need it.

"I don't suppose you have any super resilience you haven't told me about," he said absently into Mariah's ear. He had to almost yell to make it over the wind and even then he wasn't sure if she'd heard it.

"Oh, uh, no," came her simple reply.

"Figures."

This never happened when Todd was there. The Diver Ring made his body denser than normal. If Wyatt was carrying Todd, he could have just dropped him by now.

The ground was closer now. They were just five feet from the ground, staring face-first into the frosty concrete of the sidewalk. He had hoped at first to transition into a dive, swinging upward when he'd gotten enough speed and using that momentum to climb up into the sky, getting them up and away from here. But they had neither the inertia nor the elevation to pull that off. 

For a second, he caught a brief moment of an updraft and tried to capitalize on it the best he could, pushing his great wings down as hard as he could. But it wasn't enough.

The pocket of warm air that he had been hoping to ride upwards disappeared just as quickly as it had come along with any hope that Wyatt had felt. Their faces were a mere foot or two from the ground. They were going to crash.

Mariah's face would hit the pavement first. But she was just an ordinary person. Hopefully, with the Flyersword, Wyatt would fair better.

He pulled his wings in, wrapping their glowing blue length tightly around his and Mariah's bodies. He doubted it would be any tighter than he was squeezing his arms around her midsection. Ideally, the wings would help absorb any shock.