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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 187: Brown 351
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 141
“All right,” Derek said to Vashti, “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I should at least see what I can do. One problem is that my weapons are all going to be very small, and I don’t know whether the belt on the suit will hold them. There aren’t weapons suitable for the Avenging Angel.”
“What about your psionic powers?”
He shrugged. “There’s not actually that much. I mean, there are quite a few things I learned how to do and never did again--heating and cooling water, changing object hardness. I’m pretty decent at a couple of, I guess you’d call them clairsentient skills, but other than the panoramic sight they won’t help much in a fight.”
“So maybe you need to find some new powers? You’ve done that before, right?”
He nodded. “I suppose, though, that the first thing I need to do is see whether Michael can fly.”
“What do you mean? He has wings; why couldn’t he fly?”
“Ferris has wings; he can’t fly, he can only glide. Michael’s wings are large, but his body is huge. Unless he weighs a lot less than it appears, it’s going to be very difficult achieving liftoff. Well, that’s the place to start.”
There was a cemetery behind the church alongside the manse. A wall around it made it a secluded location, so they decided to work there. Thinking of Michael Gabriel, Derek became the ten-foot tall angelic persona. “Stand back,” he said, and stretched out his wings. Extended, they were larger than he expected. He shifted them tentatively a few times, to get the feel of them, but they were very like Morach’s in most ways. Then as he had learned to do as a young sprite, he raised them up and back, and pushed down forcefully.
He lifted into the air, and came down again.
“That’s promising,” he said. He could see doubt on Vashti’s face. “Hey, that’s how I started flying as a sprite. The first step is getting off the ground. Let me try again.”
Repeating the sequence, he rose, and then flapped again to rise higher, and gradually rose to the height of the steeple. Shifting his weight he flew toward it, and around it, and came down to land on the roof. He looked around, then leapt off into a glide, curving around the perimeter of the cemetery.
Just how much could he do? He did a backloop, and a corkscrew, and then a deadfall and catch--what he learned to do as Morach transferred easily to Michael. He wanted to try a powerdive and powerstop, but that was something he generally did over water, and he did not want to fly out to the river at this point. He did try fast stops and turns and starts, but then circled down to return to Vashti on the ground.
“O.K., I’ve been thinking. My best bet, I think, is to take the knives with me, and maybe the chain. I’m going to need a belt, and that means I’ve got to measure my waist and figure out what kind of belt would fit around it and hold the knives and maybe the darts. I might drape the chain over my neck, like Lauren does with two of her kau sin kes--it will limit my flying a bit, that is, I’ll have to be careful not to drop it, but I’m thinking that I’ll have to learn to use the weapons telekinetically, throwing them and controlling them with my mind. Also, whatever I get for a belt I’ll want to drape over my shoulders when I’m Derek, so I’ll want it to look good. I’m open to suggestions.”
Vashti smiled. “Let me run inside and find something--a piece of string or something, to measure your waist.” He nodded, and she jogged toward the house.
While waiting, he tried to think of what else he could do. The King had let him do several magical things, but he had never done a lot--mostly the healing prayer. Lauren did a lot of magic, and a lot of psionics, but he had learned very little from her. Still, Vashti was right. The first time he prayed for her healing was effectively something he had never done before, and all the little psionic skills he had taught himself had been trial and error. He should think about what he might be able to do, and maybe try a few things. This week--don’t put it off.
He realized that Vashti was taking quite a while, but then she appeared carrying a cloth measuring tape, the sort used by tailors. “There’s a box of sewing supplies in a closet in the office. It took a while to find it.”
“No rush,” he replied.
Getting the measurement was tricky, and they had to work together. The tape had to pass under the wings and behind his back, and Vashti couldn’t wrap her arms around him so he had to hold one end while she walked around him and threaded it between the wings and his back. Ultimately his waistline measured fifty-eight inches.
“So something between sixty and maybe sixty-six inches long that clasped would work,” he suggested, and she concurred. “I suppose we could do some window shopping. We’ll have a little bit of money next weekend, and between now and then we can see what’s out there, and I can practice a few skills that might be useful.”
He returned to being Derek, and they went back inside.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
