| Hang-Gliding at the Beach | |||||
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| What: Cir-El tries out her new cape | |||||
The cape's ready. Valeria, of course, suggested testing before she hands it over. And what better place to test it than...the beach. A nice, pretty, open beach - and they can always hang out on said beach afterward. Now she's settled at the top of said beach, the cape folded neatly next to her. Eating chocolate ice cream. It's a rather incongruous picture, really.
Cir-El had to explain it to Bruce, "I can fly, but it is clumsy, especially at slow speed. I thought about it a bit and asked some advice and came up with the idea of a Deployable Aerofoil to help me with my low speed flight. Now it s ready to test, so I want you to come along, so I can pay for it if it works well."
Bruce Banner gets out of the car listening as Cir talk nodding. Since its warm out and they are on the beach he is in khaki shorts and sandals with a loose fitting t shirt. "Alright." he tells her walking along the sand not really sure who they are looking for.
Valeria Von Doom lifts a hand and waves. Wait. Is that... For some reason, the blue-eyed girl just, well, PEERS at Bruce as he approaches with Cir-El. Peerpeer. She seems oddly surprised to see him.
Cir-El can locate Valeria by her heartbeat at almost a hundred yards, but since Valeria waves, she does not have to. She leads Bruce over and says, "Valeria von Doom, this is my Guardian, Bruce Banner. Bruce, Valeria is from another universe too."
Bruce Banner looks back a moment to be sure Minoke is walking with them along the sand. Looking back at Valeria, "Hi. Seems I meet a lot from other places. Von Doom.. " yes there is a question there but he doesn't ask it.
"Different universe." The girl tilts her head, finishes her ice cream, and then adds, "You're a little bit different there too, Dr. Banner." Not so different she doesn't recognize his face. Or she's been checking the news.
Minoke Zavia smiles. She doesn't mention the mystery of the missing tea. Bruce hasn't mentioned it either, that all that powdered bagged sawdust that Americans call 'tea' mysteriously disappeared from Bruce's house after him and Jen made up. Cir-El comments, "As far as I know, Bruce does not even exist where I started from. He is nice, most of the time...but he has quite the temper when he loses it."
Bruce Banner has not discovered the tea of dust. "Yeah." he says to them with a shrug. "So anyway. We are here about a cape or something."
Valeria Von Doom nods. "And this is the costume we're going to be attaching it to?" She stands up and picks up the cape. Bruce may or may not notice how much she looks like Sue Storm. Then she glances at Minoke. "Who's this?" she asks, but with a cheerful grin.
Minoke Zavia nods. "I am Minoke Zavia. Cir-El's sister by almost-marriage. And this will be my Daddy soon," she states, gesturing to Bruce. "By the way, Daddy... ummm..." She blushes. "There was an accident and I... incinerated that... powdered dried ancient pathetic Americanized excuse of tea. You should be ashamed of yourself for drinking such things. It can't be good for you."
Cir-El has already taken the boots an gloves from her blue costume to try with the new look. She steps forward and says, "I think this will work well together
Bruce Banner puts an arm around Minoke listening to her, "Tea is tea. That is the same others drink just pre bagged." he tells her lightly. "But its alright." he glances back at the other pair a lot going through his mind.
Valeria Von Doom nods. "Okay. Turn around?" She walks up behind Cir-El with the cape in hand. "I'll hook it up and then we can make sure it works, somewhere where you won't leave a crater in anything important."
Minoke Zavia snorts. "No it's not," she states, snorting. "That stuff is not tea. But you're American. All you know what to do with tea is throw it into a harbor." She shrugs, smiling and winking. She has a thick British accent. "So you're a tailor? I'm surprised they still have tailors in this day - I thought everyone was premanufactured and sold at stores like Wal-Mart."
Cir-El follows instructions, Kneeling down to give Valeria better access. When it is in place she will stand and ask, "How do I look?"
Bruce Banner chuckles lightly, "I had nothing to do with dumping tea into the harbor. You know about Wal Mart?" he blinks rather scared of that before looking at Cir, "Looks nice."
"This isn't tailoring," Valeria says, dryly. "This is a bit more than that." She steps back. "How does it feel? Not too heavy?" Tailor, indeed.
Minoke Zavia blinks. "Well, let's see. There are Wal-mart ads in the newspaper. On buses. On benches. On the radio - remember I have all the radio stations in my head. And sometimes on TV. Not to mention there's a Wal-Mart in a shopping center between your home and the Baxter Building. Why wouldn't I have heard of Wal-Mart?" She blinkblinks.
Cir-El laughs, "If it weighed say half a ton, I might notice the weight. As it is, I can barely tell the difference between a feather and a pound." When you can lift more TONS than most people your height and build can pounds, it is pretty hard to tell the difference between say one pound and ten. She inquires, "How does it work?"
Bruce Banner takes a seat upon the sand to watch them with the cape. "No reason you shouldn't know, Minoke. How will that help you fly better?" he asks Cir.
Seeing there is more under the cape, Cir-El picks them up. Realizing the are something that adds to her boots, she removes her boots and starts figuring out how to attach them.
Valeria Von Doom moves over to help Cir-El with the boots. "Basically? The cape is an aerofoil. It's designed to increase her time in the air by acting as a glider. The boot attachments should give her at least some maneuverability. Given her method of flying is straight thrust." She hasn't even registered what Minoke's saying about Wal-Mart yet. Engineer. At. Work.
Minoke Zavia blinks. "Yeah. That cape doesn't look as heavy as me," she muses as she leans against Bruce. She ponders. "So is this lady more tailor or engineer?" she asks, curiously.
Bruce Banner thinks on this a moment, "Well.. By her last name it makes me wonder if she is...never mind." they don't need a female Victor. "Engineer I think but she can probably do both. I was thinking about seeing if special pants can be made that when I dehulk will remain on."
"I mean...well how do I spread it into a glider, and then return it to a cape? Do the boot attachments deploy at the same time or are they always on fins?" Cir-El asks with eager curiosity.
"The entire system should deploy when you fire your burst to take off." A pause. "Should. I may need to tweak it some. This is pretty much the first live test." Val grins. "Unfortunately, there was no way to do a full test without you.
Minoke Zavia nods. "Perhaps she can give me some tips on what I could change into..." she muses softly. "Think I can trust her with... knowing more about me?" she asks as she continues to snuggle against Bruce.
Bruce Banner gives Minoke a kiss to her cheek, "I don't know yet. Depends really.." he looks at Valeria. "You are Victor's daughter?"
Cir-El asks, "How do I get it to undeploy so I can go supersonic? I think it would slow down my flight at high speed. Is it dependent on thrush, or does it fold down when it has too much resistance?"
"It's not thrust dependent. You won't always have thrust. In theory it should furl down at a certain resistance point. That's another thing that's easier to test live than in a wind tunnel." Poor Reed. She's probably broken into his lab to use his test beds. Or sweet talked.
Valeria Von Doom then glances at Banner. "Yes. But my Victor and this world's Victor are *not* the same."
Minoke Zavia shrugs as she decides to just change herself as her body turns into red goo, and lowers and flattens, and changes into a hovercar. From the speakers come Minoke's voice - "I will catch you if you fall." the rotors whir as the now-hovercar starts floating up. "Daddy, wanna come?"
Cir-El elects to try her usual start...jumping up before starting the thrust. She almost flips over when the parasail and steering vanes deploy, and stops her thrust to experiment with just the two. It is different, the way it balances is not at all what she is used to. She soon winds up low enough that the tip of one wing hits the waves and she splashes down.
Bruce Banner nods his head to Valeria watching Cir and Minoke both now. "Both of you be careful." is told to the girls. Getting to his feet as Cir splashes into the water he waits to see if she is ok or if he should go in after her.
"System deployed fine. Pilot needs practice," is Valeria's verdict as she watches. "Only to be expected." Hey, even birds don't come out of the egg knowing exactly how to fly, after all.
Minoke Zavia's headlights blink as she watches - she was barley to the water when Cir-El falls in. "Ummmm.... swimming is... not... my strong suit..." she muses as she floats there over the water.
The cape is a cape again when Cir-El surfaces. It will take a bit more than hitting the water at slow speed to hurt her...and she can hold her breath for like half an hour. She yells to Minoke to back away as she wants to try taking off from the water.
Minoke Zavia beeeeps as she backs off, and then since her services aren't needed, lands by Valeria and shifts back into human form. "Not like she can really hurt herself," she muses.
"She's part alien," Val says, nodding. "Also, she can swim." Val would have gone in to help, but there's already good evidence that Cir-El can, indeed, swim.
Bruce Banner nods his head, "Alright." just a habit to want to be protective.
Cir-El creates a pretty big circular wave as she blasts her way out of the water. It takes her a minute to figure out how to hold her legs to bend ther flight path so she levels out, rather than staying flying upwards. She actually has two steering options, since she can control the intensity and direction of her thrust with her hands as well as using the vanes...but she has already practiced using only thrust so using the vanes is what she needs to learn.
Minoke Zavia nods slowly. " What do you know of nanotechnology?" she asks Val slowly, stumbling a bit over that long word - still getting used to it. "And who's Victor?" she asks.
"I know a bit, but I haven't got into the study of it in depth yet." She IS just a kid, after all. "I know what it's about, though." She keeps one eye on Cir-El. Just in case she needs help. " "And Victor's just...my dad."
The reason for the glider cape is to give her improved low speed maneuverability and better aerodynamics so she can stay aloft with less thrust. At least in theory. Fortunately Cir-El is a fast learner...her mind and reflexes being twenty-five times as fast as human kind of assures that. She gets the hang of gliding fairly quick.
Minoke Zavia nods slowly. "Do you know someone who might know a lot about nanotechnology?" she asks. "Because... well... it's a subject near and dear to my heart."
"I haven't been here long enough to track down who all the specialists are," the young engineer admits. She's still keeping one eye on Cir-El's testing.
Cir-El has two more things to test. First is how this handles high speeds, and then how it handles landings. She heads out to sea a bit and pours on the acceleration to see how fast she needs to be going before the parasail reverts to a cape.
Cir-El has a hard time judging her speed as of yet. It does revert to a cape and boots sometime before she hits the speed of sound, but how far before she can not really tell. It does not, she notes, automatically redeploy...she has to fire a thrust-burst to deploy it. Then comes the last question...how does it handle on landings? She finds out there is a "stall speed" a point at which the lift is insufficient and the cape reverts to normal. She estimates that speed is a human jogging speed, about twice a normal walk.
After a somewhat clumsy landing, it will take a few tries to get used to the change in drag and lift as the cape reforms, Cir-El asks, "What do we owe you?"
Minoke Zavia blinks as she looks at Valerie then back to her sister, tilting her head and beeping curiously.
Valeria Von Doom gives a figure, glancing at the silent Bruce. She's keeping it pretty low...and of course, if Cir-El can't afford it, she's sure they can make some kind of arrangements. She'd rather she had it than didn't, after all.