Days and nights had long since blurred together for Gwynt.

He flew as often as he had credit enough saved up for it, and during the day if he wasn't flying he did lineboy work in the Airstation Hangar. In the evenings he took courses for degrees in aerospace engineering and electronics. And at night he did night watchman duty, again in the Hangar. On those days when weather shut down all flights he worked with the mechanics as a voluntary helper - he didn't get paid for it, but he did learn a great deal about the innards of aircraft.

It was all geared to one thing - flying. If he could fly, he did. And all the rest of his time was spent either working for cash to pay for lessons, or studying the principles of flight so he could design his own planes. He practically lived in the Hangar now, catching the few hours of sleep he needed on any handy couch or chair in the lounges and generally choosing to beat the snack machines for nutrobars (supplemented by doughnuts and any other takeout that might appear at the front counter) rather than spend any of his income on stupidities like food. Coffee was free and plentiful, and at least more interesting than water, and became one of the staples of his diet. Sodas, too, were often available to the working folk of the Airstation.

He'd never been happier in his life. In its way, it was a test - of his endurance, of his desire to fly. Very few non-nobles ever managed to get the time and money together to fly without being independently wealthy. Gwynt didn't just want to fly, though. He wanted to own the sky, lay claim to as much of it as he could. Which rather meant he'd have to be in it as much as possible. The sky had currents, just like the sea, and his shifted eyes could see them. He wanted to know them, not just with his eyes but with his body. He couldn't do that with his power - his power pre-empted the natural currents.

He did live in the Hangar, mainly because no one had ever considered that someone could survive on two to four hours of sleep in a day. He knew everyone here, and everyone here at least knew of him, at least enough to recognize him. It helped that he didn't look the least bit Esthari, even if he was about the right height to be. Esthari tended to be very pale, with light straight hair and pale eyes, the population regarding the silver or white haired nobles as the epitome of beauty. Gwynt, with his coffee-brown curls and eyes so dark brown as to almost be black, was about as far from that ideal of coloring as it was possible to be. Given that most of the nobles of the Airstation were credited with more money than sense - people who flew for the rush, and were not in general responsible flyers - Gwynt was quite satisfied to know he looked nothing like them. After particularly harrowing encounters with nobles who thought that money could buy anything, Gwynt often found himself wondering how his grandfather Laguna had allowed any of them to live.

In the Hangar, inherited wealth didn't matter. Only one thing mattered there - flying, and how good you were at it. Though Gwynt had found that being inventive with insults helped. But the Hangar wasn't everywhere, and occasionally on rainy days Gwynt did venture out into the moronic outer world. For the most part he frequented bars where pilots were known to gather - he might not be one of them yet but he would be, and they knew that as well as he did. But he couldn't go out of the Hangar in the heavily stained and much-abused coveralls he typically wore, so after a great deal of wrestling with himself over the necessity (the money was much better spent on flying lessons after all) he did buy street clothes. Not shoes, though. His steel-toed workboots were all he really needed, and if he ever went somewhere they weren't appropriate, he'd give whoever told him so a damn good stomp on his way back out. Offhand he couldn't think of anywhere he might want to go that would object though. When he went out it was still part of his desire to fly, and his only interest was in hearing the stories of other pilots.

Well. Not quite his only interest. After a particularly good day in the air, he occasionally would splurge and buy the company of a woman for a night. Too many pilots had woman trouble for Gwynt to want to join them - almost all the pilots he knew who admitted to having sex lives invariably admitted to having troubled sex lives - divorced, separated, adulterous, whatever it was described as it came down to the same simple fact. A pilot's first love was the sky, and therefore women came in a very distant second - and eventually any woman realized it. Pilots in general lived like shooting stars; daring in the sky, and vaguely suicidal on the ground. Gwynt chose to pay for company when he wanted it, because then he very clearly set the terms - you are here for so long, for this reason, and then you are gone. It cost money, but not nearly as much money as weddings and divorces did, and the various forms of counseling (ranging from genuine psychological help to a fifth of scotch) that pilots ended up indulging in between the two.

Besides, bars were fun. Living long days of manual labor on nutrobars meant that Gwynt's frame was bone and solid muscle, which meant that under the loose, billowy shirts he tended to prefer people assumed he was a featherweight. And of course he was fairly short and lean, and didn't eat much, which should have meant any alcohol hit him like a large truck at high speed. He would join any drinking contest if money was bet against him and someone else was paying for the drinks, and his altered blood made sure he always walked away from those contests with more money than he'd walked in with. So began his interest in and taste for alcohol. He generally didn't know what something was called as he drank it, but if the taste was good he'd ask later. He deliberately developed a taste for hard liquors simply because those contests were easiest to win, and it won him grudging admiration from older flyers that he held his drink so well - not least because Gwynt was scrupulously careful never to drink if it was known he would be flying the next day. Although alcohol didn't affect him, he wasn't quite ready for other pilots to know that.

There were other games he could play and win, ranging from darts to poker, and it supplemented his income well - though again he was careful not to win too much or too often. Pilots in general weren't highly paid, and Gwynt found respect more valuable than cash. Respect from another pilot was a rock-hard currency Gwynt had no intention of squandering, no matter what the grounds were.

That he could hold his own in the free-for-alls that sometimes occurred after such contests was another point of pride, but more personal. Gwynt simply enjoyed competition, and being the last man standing after a brawl was victory of a sort. On bad days he'd seek out the roughest bars in town, and wait for the fists to start flying - as they always would. At least it gave him another topic of conversation besides flying, which did occasionally come in handy, though it earned him a reputation as being no one to screw around with around the Hangar.

The days all blurred together, and he only kept track of which day of the week it was so he could keep his overall schedule straight. He was killing time waiting for his Instructor one day when Steve came running up to him, panting for breath. "Message for you. Kakeru's handed you off to a new Instructor."

Gwynt looked up sharply from the textbook he was studying on aerodynamic principles. "And here I thought Tabichi liked me," he commented. "My cash pays half his mortgage, after all. What happened, he get a real job?"

Steve caught his breath. "More like got grounded. Busted his leg under somebody's maypole and there's no way he can fly with it. His wife bent Kakeru's ear for an hour and a half about not even talkin' to Tabichi about working for at least six weeks. But you got a new Instructor 'cos Tabichi said you were ready for the spin test. He doesn't handle the unusual attitudes and recovery techniques."

Gwynt's laugh was a short, harsh bark. "He's the one that swore he could handle being married. Shit, after three wives and three divorces you'd think he'd learn. So who'm I flyin' with, then?"

Steve grinned. "Iigeru."

Gwynt blinked. "Iigeru," he repeated. "Sounds noble. Tell me I'm not flying with a noble."

Steve backed off at that tone in Gwynt's voice. Gwynt had not as yet thrown any punches while in the Airstation or the Hangar, but there was always a first time and word got around. Steve knew Gwynt well enough by now to know that size didn't mean a damn thing if Gwynt was angry, unless it was that larger people make easier targets to hit. "She's a pilot first," he ventured, but quickly gave up, going silent.

Gwynt had long mastered the sort of stare that rooted people to the spot, bugs under glass. "Right. She earn her license, or did her daddy buy it for her?" he growled.

Steve's head turned at the sound of an engine, and pointed up at a plane flying overhead. "That'd be her. I gotta go. Bye!" And he got out of range as fast as he could - so quickly, in fact, that if there had been any witnesses besides Gwynt to see it, Steve would've been teased for weeks.

A new instructor. Who was noble, and that sent warning bells of 'spoiled rich girl' off in Gwynt's mind - and the instructor for the unusual attitudes and recovery techniques section of his curriculum. He'd been working toward this for weeks - ground classes, simulations, the whole deal.

The Cessna Steve had pointed to came in for a neat, perfect landing, and Gwynt was surprised. Cessnas weren't sexy or trendy. Surely a noble could afford a fancier plane. It was also immaculate. It wasn't just the mirror-finish on the red-checked paint job - that was just external cosmetics. As it taxied closer Gwynt could see there were no oil drips or splatters on the cowling. The nose strut was immaculate. The windshield and windows were clear - unyellowed, unclouded, unscratched. This plane had to be at least 30 years old - that's when the last of that model had rolled off the assembly line - but it looked mint. Someone cared for this plane and loved it dearly.

Well, the plane was cared for, and she couldn't be too incompetent if she was an aerobatic pilot. Stunt flying was too unforgiving. The laws of physics don't care how much money your family has.

Female pilots were rare; not through any laws or strictures, but through lack of income and lack of general interest. But a noble's daughter - she'd have money and time to kill. He hadn't anticipated she would be pretty. In general the ghost pale looks of Esthari nobility didn't attract Gwynt at all - but the girl who came out of the Cessna wasn't a pureblood, apparently. Her skin had a gold hue, just as his did - and her eyes had the tilt of Galbadian highborns, rather like Rinoa. But where Rinoa's eyes were almost as dark as his own, this girl had pale blue-green eyes worthy of any Esthari noble - and the white hair to complement it. The contrast between the burnished gold of her skin and the paleness of her hair and eyes was...quite exotic, really. Had she been standing anywhere but right in front of a plane Gwynt would probably have whistled. As it was, there were more important things to think about.

"Cho Iigeru," she said with a confident smile, holding out her hand. "You're Gwynt? Kakeru gave me your description."

Gwynt was tempted, very briefly, to ask what Kakeru had said. It quickly passed - he didn't need to know. He simply nodded, and Cho tossed him a headset. "Well, are you going to fly the plane or just ogle it all morning?"

He had to be sure. "Are we using that airplane?" he asked.

Cho nodded. "Yes. You have an objection to my Aerobat?"

Gwynt blinked. "Aren't Cessnas underpowered?"

"Unusual attitudes aren't about using a big engine to blast your way out of trouble," Cho returned confidently, "it's about controlling your aircraft. About really knowing how it flies and how to make it do what you want. You might need power to get into some maneuvers but you better not need power to get out of them. You need to know how to perform your emergency recovery techniques equally well with or without power. So why waste money and gas on a bigger engine than you need to get the job done? I'm not teaching you how to fly for an airshow, I'm teaching you have to save your butt when everything goes wrong, including such niceties as being upside down with a complete engine failure. And by that definition my Aerobat is overpowered."

Gwynt put the headset on and pulled out his sunglasses - one of the few expensive items he owned. Genuine aviator sunglasses, designed for use by pilots, and heavily tinted with a mirror finish. And perfect for hiding eyeshifts behind, as well. He didn't call his power to the planes - the whole point of doing all these lessons was to learn to fly without his power, after all, but he couldn't help the eyeshifts that came as a result of his moods, and those still had to be hidden. Once both sunglasses and headset were properly settled, he grinned. "For the money you Instructors suck outta my pocket, we'd better get flying. I'd never pay this kinda cash just for company."

"You couldn't afford company like me anyway," the Instructor flippantly returned, then grew serious. "Where's your 'chute? We'd better get you suited up."

Parachutes? Gwynt blinked. Of all the nuisancy pains! He didn't need a parachute. Of course he also couldn't afford for Cho to know he didn't need one either, and it made sense to have to wear them for emergency training. The straps were uncomfortable to say the least, and the sheer annoyance of having to put up with it kept him from any desire to make flippant comments about noble's daughters double checking some very unpleasant strap placings. She was at least coolly clinical about it all, which somewhat mitigated his desire to snap.

"No need to pre-flight, unless you want to," Cho said when she was satisfied. "You're paying me for flight time, not to review what you should already know before you get to this point. Get in and we'll get you familiar with the plane."

Gwynt just moved to get into the plane. Enough talk; the sky was clear and there was flying to do. He climbed into the left seat; even for a lean fellow like himself the cockpit was a little tight. The interior was, if anything, in better shape than the exterior. True, some of the instrument knobs and dials showed wear, but there was no dust anywhere. The panel was solid, no repaired cracks, the upholstery clean to the point of being antiseptic with no loose threads. Parts might be old but everything was well kept.

"OK," said Cho, "You're used to a control wheel and the standard six pack of instruments are in the usual place. I have instrumentation for instrument flying but we won't worry about that today - that's more advanced lessons. Here's the tachnometer, the com radios, the nav radios, hour meter, engine gauges, circuit breakers, and the electrical swtiches. This baby has electric flaps, here's the switch and indicator although with this being a high-wing you can also look out the window. Fuel shut off, parking brake, panel lights, nav lights, ammeter. Got it?"

"Yeah," Gwynt replied shortly. Ego was for outside the cockpit. The lessons cost too damn much, and were far too important for what he wanted to do, to take them lightly.

Cho was entirely businesslike. "Please note the red, D-shaped ring next to the doorframe. Do you know what that is?"

No, of course not, Gwynt thought. At least not yet. "A D-ring?"

"Very good," Cho replied, taking the sarcasm in stride. "Do you know what it does?"

Gwynt looked at the ring, noting the wire cable leading from it into the paneling. He looked just outside the window next to him. A wire cable emerged from the glossy skin of the airplane and connected to an oversized hinge-pin for the door hinges. "You pull the ring you pull the door's hinge pins... the door falls off."

"Right. If we break the plane pull the D-ring, push the door away, and exit. As soon as you're clear of the plane pull your ripcord. Have to warn you, though, you need at least 400 feet to open the 'chute so don't screw up at low altitude. And Gwynt - "

"Yes?" Gwynt was privately glad of his sunglasses. He wasn't going to be jumping out of any planes. If it came down to that he'd use his power, because the things were hellishly expensive to replace. Sheer impatience was making his eyes shift.

Cho's voice took on a threatening note "If you break my airplane you'd better run when you hit the ground. Because I'll kill you if I catch you." She suddenly brightened up again "But I've never had a student break a plane, so don't worry about it. I won't let it happen, understand?"

"Got it." Well, the girl had an authentic pilot ego, that was for sure.

"Ok, here's a list of your important V-speeds. Not too different from what you're used to, but we'll be on the edge of the envelope so precision counts. Checklists in the sidepocket to your left. Use 'em. I want you to start the plane, take off, turn to a heading of 190 and climb to 5500 feet. We'll be practicing by Odine's laboratory and we'll probably get there before you get to 5500 feet - my Aerobat does not have a spectacular rate of climb - so if you do I expect a precision ascending turn around a point over the landmark until we hit the assigned altitude. I like perfection. Try not to disappoint me."

"Are you making this a challenge?" Gwynt asked, forcing himself not to grin.

"I'll make it as challenging as I think you can handle," the Instructor returned confidently.

Gwynt's eyebrows went up. Proud little noble, this one. "I can handle anything you dish out."

"We'll see," was all Cho said in reply.

* * * * * *

'Aerodynamic stall', the phenomenon was called. Or just 'stall' for short. Fly too slowly, and the wings didn't generate enough lift to keep the plane flying. What resulted was a nosedive - or if the plane was unevenly balanced, a spin, which was a great deal worse because it was a violent maneuver that would whip the plane around on the long axis. With less than full fuel tanks it could pull the fuel away from the intake ports for the fuel lines, adding engine stoppage to the pilot's list of woes. And, oh yes, failure to regain control in time would result in impact with the ground, making for a very literal Game Over. The ailerons - the wing flaps normally used to control movement around the long axis - did not work reliably in a spin. In fact they could make the situation worse, if they worked at all. The only flight control you could really trust to work during a spin was the rudder - standard procedure was to jam the rudder pedal opposite to whichever way the plane was rotating right up to the stops until the rotation stopped. At which point you merely appeared to be falling straight down towards the ground.. And then came the hard part - to get lift back into the wings you had to turn almost straight down into even more straight down, until you could hear the shift in the wind over the wings, feel the plane catch the air and start flying again, the moment the sky went from being a great nothingness to once more being a solid thing you could push against.. At that point you'd be going very very fast, and the last part of not dying was to gently pull back out of the dive - quickly enough so that sheer falling didn't push the plane into overspeed and lethal structural damage, but slowly enough so that the change in direction didn't snap the wings off. Once you had the plane level and flying at a proper speed you could, in theory, continue on your merry way. In practice that generally meant a landing and a change of underwear - at least until you got used to the ride. Once you knew what you were doing you might start doing them for the fun of it all, for the whirl and the drop and the joy of flying a little closer to the edge than usual. A safe enough maneuver - if you knew what you were doing. This was Instructor Iigeru's specialty, and Gwynt was definitely starting to re-think his assessment of her in a big way.

Gwynt could fly under his own power. In general he got down by letting himself fall most of the way, then using his power to brake him until the landing was safe. A spin didn't sound much different. He'd been in free fall before, and hadn't anticipated having any problems at all with the spin training. So he dutifully took off and flew to Odine's laboratory - and why they kept that name, when he'd been dead twenty years and he hadn't been much liked anyway, baffled him. But it could wait. He'd show this noble how a real pilot flew! He handled the plane by the book: airspeed dead on, maximum rate of climb to 2000 feet then cruise climb to baby the engine and keep it happy, a precise rising turn over the point while constantly adjusting the radius to compensate for the wind aloft. He could see in her eyes she was impressed but he didn't let that distract him - doing all this without use of his power did take concentration.

"Very good," said Cho as he leveled off at 5500. "We'll make a pilot of you yet. This first time around I'll do the spin. I want you to sit there and observe, behave, and don't touch the controls. When we're in level flight again I want you to tell me three things - the altitude we started at, which direction we were spinning, and the altitude at which we resumed level flight. Got that?"

"I can handle the controls," Gwynt growled. Hadn't he just proven that?

"You may have done the book-learning on this maneuver, Gwynt, but you haven't actually been in a spin yet. Some folks are OK with them from the first time, some aren't. I've had too many first-timers panic - scream, pass-out, throw up, whatever - to trust anyone the first time. If you want the controls on the next spin you'll earn them by doing what I say on this one. Got it?"

"Got it." Sometimes it did rather suck to still be a student.

The initial part of the maneuver was nothing unusual - Cho pulled back the power and slowed down the airplane. It hung in the air, quivering, hanging onto the bare edge of a power-off stall. But instead of leveling all the controls, Cho had the ailerons all the way over to the right, the rudder all the way over to the left - the exact opposite of what you did to control a stall. The airplane bucked a little, and Gwynt's power let him see the smooth airflow over the wings - the flow that made the lift that held them up - curdle and burble along the back edge of the wings. There was the familiar moment of "float", just before the stall. In the blink of an eye the turbulent, liftless air swept up and out from the rear base of the left wing, the higher wing. The lift vanished and a ton of aluminum and flesh answered the call of gravity. Even as Gwynt realized that, the turbulent rush shot three-quarters up the right wing - which was now higher, the left having fallen. The nose had already dropped. It looked like they were pointing straight down. The minuscule amount of lift still generated by the right wing was nowhere near enough to support them, but it was more than sufficient to pull them around and around.

A loose pen slammed against the ceiling, held there by centrifugal force. Cho's hair swept right, Gwynt's left. They were not only spinning, they were falling. This was not the familiar rush of vertical wind from Gwynt's own flying. This was not the solid, forceful bands of the whirlwinds he called to lift him up. He was trapped in a metal cage falling through air that had no order and no force, that resembled nothing so much as the water gurgling down a backed-up, bubbling drain.

Gwynt screamed. This wasn't just falling, this was having a madly spinning anchor drag him right to the ground! This was worse than Daear in a temper tantrum!

Instructor Iigeru wasn't particularly worried, though - this was her skill, teaching survival in these circumstances, and her hands were confident on the wheel as her feet worked the rudder, full right to get them out of spin.

Gwynt didn't react as other people did, though. He couldn't weep with shifted eyes, though he uttered a steady stream of curses that didn't seem to require pause for breath and the useless controls bent under his grip. Cho got the plane out of spin and into dive (for Gwynt had completely forgotten about the rudder), but seeing and feeling the ground rushing to embrace this anchor he was sitting in was just too much - he reached out with his power and called the winds to the wings and tail of the plane, slowing their fall and re-creating the airflow that meant lift and life, forcing the plane's movement to bend to his will even as Cho struggled to force her wheel to move, held fast by his own superior strength.

And that, oddly enough, caused the Instructor to lose poise. She knew how spin was supposed to go, how it was supposed to feel, and this wasn't it. With the ground rushing towards them she tried to take control of the airplane back - a move Gwynt strongly suspected would be lethal given that she couldn't see or sense the winds he was calling. "My plane! My plane! Let go!" she cried. "Gwynt, give me the plane!"

He didn't let go of the controls - he could see what he was doing, she couldn't and this was not the time to argue. Trying to keep control of both the wind and the plane at the same time was incredibly difficult. "Shut up and let me fly the goddamn airplane!" he roared.

"You're out of control!" she cried, and tried to break his grip on the controls by chopping at his elbows. When that didn't work she quickly unhooked the fire extinguisher between their seats and clubbed him on the side of the head with it. It didn't knock him out, which seemed to surprise her, but it did break his sunglasses.

He snarled at her, surprising himself with an almost beastlike growl. "Do that again and when we're on the ground I will pound you."

She might have continued, he thought later. She might have kept fighting for control of the plane until the very last second - but she'd knocked away his sunglasses, and seen glowing purple-yellow whirling swirls where eyes should be, and it sent her into a numb shock.

Just long enough for him to finish doing what he was doing - using his wind power to brake the plane, pulling it gently out of dive and into sane and level flight. A few more seconds, and even with all the wind he could call he might not have been able to pull out of dive.

The Instructor's voice was completely calm and level. "You are going to land this plane, right now." She pointed below them - they were above the Great Salt Flats. "The salt flats will do fine. We need to talk."

It didn't take Gwynt long to agree. She knew his secret now, and that meant he had to deal with her. Convince her to keep quiet, or if circumstances forced it, kill her. He didn't like that idea much at all - she might've been wrong but she was still a pilot, and he didn't want to kill her. It was better to just make sure she couldn't go running off until he knew where she stood - so he took the plane down for a landing on the salt flats, calling a headwind strong enough to make the landing almost vertical to spare the landing gear. Once the plane was down he shut the engine off, taking deep breaths. He'd never used his power on something as overtly massive as an airplane before, and this was twice in one day. He lived on nutrobars; he didn't have the energy reserves to call that much power without cost, and was currently feeling a bit lightheaded. Coming down from the adrenaline rush wasn't helping, and he didn't feel like moving until he was sure his legs wouldn't shake.

The Instructor's voice was steady when she spoke, but still tense. "I don't suppose you want to tell me what the hell that was all about?"

Gwynt blinked. He'd gotten them down safely and without damage to themselves or the plane, she'd been the one to punch him and break his 300 Gil sunglasses, and now she felt like getting pissy? "Which all would that be, noble? The 'all' where you tried to punch my lights out in three gees? Or some other 'all'?"

"You can drop the 'noble' and try 'instructor' instead," she snapped, "as in, the instructor you decided you suddenly didn't seem to need. That 'all'."

Gwynt glared, his eyes shifting again in his temper. "You felt like letting the Planet give you an uppercut?" he demanded. "Fuck this. You can't take the plane up from here, not on this ground. Damn long walk home, Instructor. You're welcome for continued breathing."

Cho didn't back down, her whole body stiff as a board. "And if you'd done what you were supposed to there wouldn't have been a problem." She moved a hand to indicate his eyes. "Now, what the hell is this?"

Gwynt's face set, as he was reminded of how much this Instructor now knew. Taran had been very clear that no one was to know about their powers, it was far too easy for word to get back to Seifer. But maybe if he could convince her not to say anything, he wouldn't have to find out how long it took for nobles to start missing silent family members. "That is something you'd better not mention to anyone else if you would like to continue breathing," he stated flatly.

Cho's response was equally flat, and unimpressed. "Threats?" She flicked her hair back, folding her arms over her chest. "Keep your secrets if you want them. Who would I tell? Who would believe me? But if you want me to take you back up in that air and get you certified, then you damn well tell me what I'm working with."

What. Not who, what, and Gwynt frowned. Taran had been right, hadn't he - the shifted eyes made them inhuman, made them less than human. Made them other. His eyes lost their whirl and then their shift, his vision returning to normal. Even among pilots, apparently, he would still be 'other' if they knew. Damn. He'd gotten to like them. Oh well. Not a damn thing he could do about it now. "Wish I knew," he shrugged.

Cho simply stared at him, blinking slowly, then leaned back in her seat to stare up at the cockpit ceiling. "You don't know?" she asked, her tone faintly disbelieving.

Gwynt wondered briefly if this was something he should've planned for - trying to explain what he was to someone. Someone who wasn't family, wasn't a SeeD, who never saw magic up close unless they were being attacked by monsters. Someone, in all probability, who thought that only monsters had magic. Which would be quite true, with the exception of his family. He sighed, and moved to get out of the plane now that he was fairly sure he could do so without ungraceful wobbling. If he had to kill this girl, he didn't want to have to do it in the plane. "No," he admitted. "Now, if you find me somebody who knows who my mother was, and happened to videotape her giving birth to me, maybe then I'd have an answer for you. I know what I can do. Why I can do it, haven't a clue."

The Instructor got up to follow him. "Then what is it you do?" she asked firmly.

Salt flats were not the best smelling places in the world. Gwynt let his eyes shift back into the purple-yellow swirls, and called a wind. He raised an arm to indicate it. "This. This is what I do. I can fly with just this, if I want to."

Cho simply watched, and then slowly sat down on the ground, her knees folding under her. Her voice when she spoke was faint. "...fly?"

Gwynt laughed at her surprise. Either he'd have to kill her or he wouldn't, but it was interesting to see how she took the information. He'd wondered occasionally how he had to look to people who weren't quite as different as he was. He called wind enough to raise him up off the ground, a narrow, tight whirlwind, and flew up about fifteen feet before letting it go and dropping back to the ground. Conversations with that kind of airflow were generally impossible, and he needed to know how she'd take all this information. He nodded to answer her question. "Fly," he agreed. "Only it takes...energy...to do it that way. I'd rather not depend on just that to get around." He cast a look back at the plane; hopefully he could get it off the ground again and back to the Airstation. "'Sides, those are a bit less...noticeable," he finished.

Cho was still staring and hadn't noticeably blinked - her eyes wide. "Sweet Hyne and Pandemona," she swore in a half-choked voice.

Gwynt didn't like the look at all. People didn't look at people that way - they looked at things that way. Things of awe and wonder maybe, but still things. And what was so awe-inspiring about the wind, anyway? It was there all the time. He frowned. He had to get her thinking of him as a person again. If she thought of him as a thing, she might hand him over to SeeD. "Look. Everybody panics, their first spin. You said so yourself." He paused a moment - he hated admitting to fear, but on the other hand there wasn't any real point in denying it. And it was at least human. He shrugged. "I just panic...differently."

She slowly blinked, her eyes still not quite focusing on him. She looked up at the sky, and then back to him. "You... could have brought it down by yourself, couldn't you? Without the engines, without anything... just..." One hand gestured a little weakly to indicate the whirlwind.

He knew she wasn't talking about simply making a landing without power using glide speeds. He blinked as he considered the plane. Easier than he'd feared, harder than he'd hoped. The things were designed to move in air, but they still weighed a lot more than he did and that took power to move. "Probably," he ventured. "I never tried lifting something so damn heavy before. I need to know how to do it without the power, so I know better how to do it with the power, you know?" He shrugged, remembering that he wasn't talking to someone who would really understand - as his brothers and sisters would. "You probably don't know. I didn't get in the plane today with the intention of handing you state secrets, Instructor. I just..." completely fucking lost it in midair, for the first and I devoutly hope last time. He took a deep breath, then thought better of it. With a shrug and a sigh he gave up trying to explain.

Cho gave herself a little shake. Her tone was quiet, but there was a hint of humor there. "You panicked," she finished for him, with a very small ghost of a grin. "Everybody does." The smile faded into a small sigh as she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. But her voice was soft and wondering. "But.... you can fly."

"Not a pilot yet," Gwynt commented dryly, but he knew that wasn't what she was referring to. He frowned again, serious. "Look. I need to know if you're gonna go calling the police the minute we get back." His fist clenched. "Godsdamnit," he swore to himself, "I've been in the air before, I've fallen before, I shouldn't have lost it like that. Nobody's supposed to fucking know. And 'scuse me but a noble ain't the safest person to hand secrets to. Not for shit like this." Not that he currently had much choice.

She blinked, looking back at him with her full attention again. "Sweet Pandemona, why in hell would I do that?" She blinked again, as a thought struck her. "Though you'll want to watch it with the other instructors. Too many panic attacks like that and word will get around."

Gwynt's expression turned wry. "You're the UA/ERT instructor. If the plane isn't dead and doing a damn good rock imitation, I don't do a thing."

Cho blinked again, quickly. "Well... all right, then. Though you ought to know what to do even if it is a dead rock, just in case." She sighed, let go of her knees and leaned back on her hands, her head cocked to one side. "I didn't just imagine all of this, did I?"

Lady, don't I just wish. "No," he replied regretfully, then looked down at the broken sunglasses in his hands. "Oughta make you pay for these, though. 300 Gil, right down the tubes." He tossed them to her. "There. Proof you're not dreamin', cos I damn sure wouldn't have busted those."

He sat down then, looking at the southwest horizon. Taran was down there, somewhere, down in Centra. Would he have handled this better? Taran had a soft heart, real soft sometimes, but he had a pragmatic streak a mile wide. Gwynt had the uncomfortable feeling that Taran would've killed Cho to keep the secret safe, and it worried him that he didn't want to. It wasn't that he wanted to put his brothers and sisters in danger - far from it. It was just a gut level feeling that Cho could probably keep his secrets better than he did himself, and if that were the case there wasn't any point to killing her.

She nudged at the sunglasses with a toe, oblivious to his worry. "Would have broken your damn head to get the controls back." She sighed, leaning forward again over her knees. "What... what's it like?" she asked quietly.

Gwynt was still trying to work out what he should be doing, so his response was a bit distant. "What, having someone try to bust your head open while your plane's trying to get to know gravity? Distracting."

"No, that's standard procedure when a student takes over in a critical situation," Cho returned dryly. "Ordinarily, if I don't regain control of the plane we both die. If I knock you out the concussion will be painful, but you'll live to recover." She gingerly pointed up towards the sky. "Up there. Without... without a plane. What's it like?"

Gwynt blinked, his expression clearly puzzled. "Why?" Cho couldn't fly without a plane, he was pretty sure of that. Why ask about something she couldn't do?

Cho's expression shifted to one of utter disbelief. "Why?" She spread her arms wide, gesturing. "Why? Up there, with nothing around you, just you and the sky and..." she faltered, looking upward with a rapt expression, clearly entranced. "Hyne... Just up and out and everything... I'd give anything..."

Well you're just a barrel of surprises, aren't you Instructor? Gwynt thought to himself. Not half an hour ago tryin' to beat my hands off the controls, and now you're all hyper. He got up, brushed the salt off his clothes, and commented in a dry tone, "Anything, huh?" He shrugged, affecting nonchalance, though he was being perfectly serious. "I'll settle for a new pair o' sunglasses, your word you won't tell anyone about this little trick o' mine, and you lettin' me do the flyin' back since I'm paying way-too-fucking-much-per-hour for this 'lesson'." He paused, considering her, then added, "I had the day off for the lesson today anyway. Once we're back, you can do all the askin' you want." And very quietly, not looking at her in case she threw another surprise at him, he made the offer formal. "An' after that, you want me to take you flyin' my way...we can do that."

He watched her jaw drop, stunned and wide eyed. Her voice was faint as she asked, "In exchange for...?" She gestured upwards, then shakily brushed her white hair back. Swallowing, she stood and brushed herself off briskly. "Done. You have my word on it. Get back in the plane - the controls are yours."

So quickly she decided things that were so important. Gwynt shook his head, laughing a little, though he wasn't thrilled about having to trust someone he'd only just met. "Damn. And here I thought noble company'd be expensive."

"What am I, a high class call girl?" Cho quipped, getting back into the plane.

Gwynt only grinned as he followed her.