| DC/Marvel: Age of Infinite Heroes | ||||||||||
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Nothing really beats the view of Metropolis city at sunset - especially from the top of the Daily Planet building.
Buffeted a little by the breeze stands a lone figure on the northeastern corner of the roof - dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a shirt. Every time a gust of wind hits the young man (who appears to be in his early twenties), flecks of sand blow off his body - carried aloft into the empty expanse between sky-scrapers.
The pedestrians and motorists below have no idea the solitary daredevil is peering down at them, a grin on his face. He lets out a short laugh, and steps back from the edge. "Wish that mob back 'ome could see this!" he exclaims to the world about him. Then he sets his feet, braces himself and takes a run at the edge, leaping out into empty air.
"G'bye, cruel wo-ah...!"
One second, he's falling to his not-death. The next he's held by a blonde girl who's flying. She looks at the would-be jumper that she's carrying in her arms. "Please tell me you didn't jump to get my phone number or a picture with me, because that's happened three times this month already with guys." she says as she flies towards a lower building.
"I - hey! What the - ?! Ya wally!"
The young fellow looses a number of other exclamations, but in his own native language, as he cranes his head to look down... Why is the ground not getting any bigger? And then turns to blink at the girl carrying him in her arms.
Flying.
He stares at the girl. "Bloody h - erm, heck! I been nabbed by a sheila!" Half a laugh escapes the fellow's lips and he takes another shot and looking around. "Uhm... 'Sall good, y'know - no, really. You c'n let me off - right here is good." And he points a caramel-hued finger straight down at the pavement far below.
Kara Zor-El looks at the ground, far below. Then at the guy she 'saved.' "Er... yeah.. no." She instead flies down to the ground with her passenger and places him down on the ground, then holds him by his wrist. "Kara, not Shiela by the way." She pauses - not really used to dealing with suicide people. Usually after she saves them, they realize they don't want to die. Usually suicide jumpers realize it about 3 seconds AFTER they've jumped, in fact.
Now she has to talk to him. "Er... Could you tell me why you're so anxious to become a red spot on the pavement?"
Once again on the ground, the young suicidee-apparent looks to the left, then the right - flashes a grin at some passing pedestrians, and jerks a thumb at Kara as HE had just rescued HER -
- or he's just really, really happy to have caught such a woman's attention. Raising his free hand to ruffle at his hair, sending more sand down onto the ground, he shrugs his shoulders and tries to lean back against a streetlamp post.
He halts part-way, still held by a surprisingly strong, iron grip on his wrist. He gives Kara a puzzled, slightly affronted frown.
"I - hey! What gives - ?" He gives up a second later, at trying to pull himself free. "Ah... No worries, Sh - ah. Kara? Kara. Not used t'bein' yanked outta me stunt half way DOWN, yeah... Most 'gubbas' try the whole 'talk ya down' thing instead. Some of 'em 're... not half bad at it. Oh! 'Sall good - the fall wouldn'ta killed me."
He thins his lips and looks like he just might pout. "Can I... 'ave me 'and back? I'm kinda attached to it - 'n so're you."
Kara Zor-El watches him try to remove his hand from her grip. It doesn't happen, obviously. She puts her free hand on her hip. "Pretty hard to talk you out of jumping after you've already jumped, you know Mr.... um... what's your name? Plus unless you can fly or are invulnerable, pretty sure a 50 story drop would kill you." She watches as he continued to try to pull her hand until he goes into his pouting phase. "If I let go, you won't try something stupid like jumping in front of a car or truck, right? Because one guy once did that too."
The fellow tugs at his arm again - just testing this... super girl's grip. Just a little. Just to be sure - and his mouth pinches at the corner of his lips as he glares at her.
He TRIES to glare, rather. There is something undeniably boyish about his expression, like a kid who has just met his hero and tries to hide his elation. And fails. "Cripes, ya've gotta helluva grip on ya... oh. Name. Call me Dust-Devil - or... just Dusty - and..." he slows down his speech a bit, to emphasise each word. "I promise I won't do anythin' stupid like jumpin' in front of a car. Or truck.."
He lets out a breath, and waits.
"So... can I have me hand back? ... Please?"
Kara Zor-El pauses. "Okaaay." Then slowly removes her grip on his wrist. "So... Dust-Devil. Sort of like Daredevil, but Dust because your name is Dusty?" She looks around. "If this was some sort of show, could you explain the hook to it? Because to me, it still looked like you were trying to kill yourself. No parachute hidden on you, no glider under your clothes, no air-matress to catch you, no wires on you."
Dust-Devil retrieves his hand, checks it over - eyes Kara - then crosses his arms over his chest and grins. "Never tried jumpin' onto a mattress before... Tried a parachute once - but the 'thing' that usually happens... happened when the cords jerked on me. Lost a good parachute - wait."
He blinks at her, then at himself, then back at her again, then his eyes narrow. "How would you know what I got under me clothes? Wait. That sounded less-wrong in me head." He blushes. Bright red. "That was... bl - imey. Ah. Aha." He reaches up with a hand to the back of his neck and rubs it, looking thoroughly uncomfortable. "What were y'askin'? Oh. The 'thing'. Uhh... Hmm. Plant one on me an' I'll show ya."
And he points a finger at the side of his jaw.
Kara Zor-El points to her eyes. "X-ray vision. Don't worry, I didn't do anything pervy when I looked." She crosses her arms. "Um... no, I'm not going to punch you in your face. Or anywhere. No Death by Supergirl happening." She just looks at him curiously, waiting for an explanation.
Dusty's jaw falls open.
"X-ray - ?! Supergirl - ?! I, uh... Didn't hear much about ya until movin' here. Wasn't sure it really WAS you, but... oh." He pauses as if belatedly remembering the Kryptonian girl's other comments. "Heh - nah, actually I was asking for a kiss, but I didn't really think that'd be happenin' either. Awright. Demo time." He looks around, then raises a hand, closed into a fist - as if he were about to punch himself in the face. He stops.
"Screw that. Look like a womble tryin' to - aha."
Flashing another grin, the young man butts the back of his head against the lamp-post behind him - which then appears to... 'burst' straight through his skull as his body vanishes in a writhing cloud of dust and sand (which almost catches Kara in the face). The instant Dusty's body is gone, a face (more or less like his) appears in the centre of the mini-sandstorm, grinning inanely at Kara. A second image appears - a hand giving a 'thumbs-up' sign - which then jerks toward the face as if to say, 'Hey, look at me!'
Kara Zor-El watches as he starts with the reference about asking for a kiss. So not going to happen. Then watches as he looks like he's about to punch himself. Which she doesnt look like she's going to stop. And that doesnt happen either. She doesnt even stop him from headbutting himself against the lamppost, because by this point, she figures he's just crazy.
Then he turns into a living body of sand.
Okay, wasnt expecting that, Kara. Kara takes a step back, definitely surprised. She blinks. "Oh." She waits a second, then says, "Wait, so you're a ..." She pauses again to peer at the swirling dust-storm closely. Hard to tell if that's DNA or not to tell if he's a mutant or if this was magic or something else, actually. "Okay actually what are you?"
The sandstorm... draws some attention.
Fortunately, not enough from motorists to cause any accidents on the nearby street. A few of the passers-by blink, gasp - a couple of tourists stop for photos with their smartphones - and then the storm coalesces into a young, Aboriginal man... grinning his head off.
Then he grimaces.
Dusty quickly turns around and starts spitting tiny grains of sand out of his mouth. "Ugh... Too distracted ta - oh. Yeah." He swivels about to look at Kara and gives a shallow shrug. "Depends who y'ask. Friends say 'mutant'. Elders say - well, heh. 'Dust-Devil'... 'demon', 'bunyip'... Me? I generally go for 'freakin' deadly'! Oh. That means 'awesome'."
He grins at another pedestrian, then back at Kara. "Not as deadly as bein' 'Supergirl' - I could never pull that brand o' awesome off! 'Specially... me bein' a bloke 'n all..."
Kara Zor-El peers at him again, and sees the familiar chromosomal markings of mutant DNA. "Okay then..." She rubs the bridge of her nose as people are staring at Supergirl AND a sand elemental type of being. Supergirl alone? Not as astounding - this is Metropolis, after all. "I'm going with mutant. Could you tell me why you were going to jump off a building though? Plus... I do have a cousin who's a 'bloke.'" she makes air quotes, then looks at him. "I mean.... I don't see any cameras even."
"Fair dinkum," Dusty replies, nodding his head in some sort of agreement. "Yeah... your cousin. 'Superbloke' just don't have the same ring to it. Or 'Supersheila'." He smirks, then offers another shrug of his shoulders.
"The building? Well..." he blushes. "Just the fun of it, y'know? So far I don't anythin' can, y'know, kill me - and the city back home... No buildings there that qualify as sky-scrapers. More like... chin-scrapers. I just wanted to see what a REAL jump felt like - hey!"
The youth's eyes light up.
"You... you COULD... y'know, take me..." and he looks meaningfully upward, uncurling just one finger from his hand to point surreptitiously at the sky for added emphasis. "How high can YOU go? Now THAT'd be one deadly stunt!"
Kara Zor-El looks at him curiously. "Well, technically speaking, you just need to fall 1,880 feet before you reach terminal velocity. Anything more than that would just feel the same - you know, until you hit the ground, that is. And... Why do you keep calling me Sheila, I told you my name's Kara." Then he explains his reasoning. Not great reasoning, but reasoning. "Well I guss at least you didn't try jumping off the LexCorp Tower. He'd have probably kidnapped you and stuff." She looks uneasy when he starts asking how high she can fly. "Um... I can fly into space. Where there's no air." She takes an exasperated moment then says, "Annnnd no, I'm not going to fly up high, then intentionally drop you. That's just not right on so many levels. "
Kara peers at him. "You do know they have planes which do take you up about 12,000 feet then let you jump out. Skydiving? I mean... I'm from another planet and I've heard of that, Dusty."
Kara Zor-El adds, "By the way, for reference, even jumping from the top of the Daily Planet wouldnt get terminal velocity. You'd need to jump from...." Kara takes a few seconds to do the calculations in her head. "On an average building, the 96th floor. The Daily Planet is 50 floors high. So... you'd either have to jump from LexCorp, or Wayne Towers, or the Empire State Building, or the Freedom Tower, or the Sears Tower. At least on the East Coast."
Dusty gapes at Kara like a wide-eyed child.
"How... how do you know so much about jumpin' off buildings, when you can fly?" he asks in amazement. Then he adds, "Does... it happen that often - people jumping off roofs 'n stuff - and you gotta catch 'em? Oh. 'Sheila' ain't a name - just what we call girls. Back home."
For the next several moments, the Australian fellow stares up at the tops of the buildings above him, and beyond - perhaps imagining what it must be like to fly further than the atmosphere. "Must be... cripes. Must be deadly as HELL to fly like that..." he appears oblivious to Zor-El's discomfort when she first replied to him re flying. "Hey - "
Whatever he had been about to say, is interrupted by the sound of didgeridoo music - long mournful tones punctuated by simulated birdcalls - coming from his pocket. "Oh," he says as he pulls out his cellphone... and a handful of sand that had been lurking in his pocket as well.
"My dad..."
Kara Zor-El raises an eyebrow when he asks about her knowledge of building jumping. "Um... it's just basic math." For a genius, it's basic math. "Terminal velocity for a freefall is um.... about 54 meters per second, so just some quick calculations and you can find out pretty quickly how high you need to be to freefall into terminal velocity."
Kara then asks, "Then what do you call girls who are actually named Sheila? And yeah it's not really deadly for me - sorta invulnerable here, so I don't really think about-" She pauses when you get a call from your dad and nods. She waits patiently.
Dusty does very little talking, and a lot of listening and nodding.
And nodding.
And nodding.
To anyone with super-hearing, the man on the other end of the line (American) sounds like a typical 'businessman' - all 'go-go-go' and 'gotta get this done' - in his tone of voice, as he gives his son a very. detailed. lecture. on all the subjects Dusty is supposed to be studying. At home. Today.
Right now.
When the call finally ends several minutes later, Dusty deposits the phone back in his pocket and leans back against the streetlamp, bumping his head just a little. His whole body sort of 'shimmers' and sand particles practically rain down from his body, onto the sidewalk. He lets his eyes fall closed, and exhales in a sigh. "I gotta fly," he tells Kara without opening his eyes just yet. "Oh yeah. We call sheilas named Sheila, 'sheila' too. Heh." He snorts, shakes his head, and opens his eyes. "Really great bein' caught by you, Supersheila! Nah, just kiddin'. Supergirl. Kara. But my Dad..." he groans.
Kara Zor-El nods. "I heard." She pauses then points to her ears. "Superhearing. Probably a good idea to get home. And if possible, could you not jump off buildings anymore? It's going to freak people out."
Dusty grins.
"Sure, Aunty K!" he exclaims with a teasing chuckling following soon afterward. "Okay..." and he steps away from the streetlight, wriggling his arms and fingers at either side as if psyching himself up for something. A hand comes up and he slaps himself hard in the face, causing dust to billow out to the side... followed by the rest of him.
In the middle of the spinning 'dust-devil', the youth's face appears again - to be joined by a 'body' sporting a cape, posing with one arm stretched upward, with the other tucked in at the side. The image, formed of sand particles in constant motion, only lasts a few seconds as the sandy tornado elongates upward, and speeds away into the sky.
Kara Zor-El thinks about that. "Auntie K?" Then calls out to him after he is already leaving, "I'm probably younger than you, you know!" She watches as he flies off. "Somehow I think he gets practice getting slapped in the face." She smiles a bit before flying off herself.