Sixty Flights of Stairs(OPEN)

[arie]

Sixty flippin’ flights of stairs… She had climbed up sixty flippin’ flights of stairs. That was the thought that was running through Sephara Kyle’s mind as she flopped into a beach chair. It had been a lazy day and when she had remembered the Roof, she had been all for sunbathing. Until she had also remembered that it took 60 flights of stairs to get there.

Ten minutes after adamantly refusing to walk up 60 flights of stairs, her mind had convinced her that it would be exercise to build up her leg muscles, and she had put on her bathing suit and went.

And build up her leg muscles it did. She could feel them burning as she relaxed happily on the chair, slightly out of breath… And why was she out of breath … because she hadn’t been running lately. She had been too busy caring for her sick and dying mother to even think about breathing… even though she had kept on doing it… And she could have sworn she had stopped a couple of times- her and not her mom. Dragging a rough hand through her hair, Seph let the sun wash over her.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t even seen the sun in a week.

The only time she had left her Mum’s apartment was in the nighttime and that was to get necessary supplies, not to come stay at Titan Headquarters. Sighing happily, she turned her thoughts away from her mother’s current condition. Was it so bad that she needed a day to herself?

She couldn’t help but feel guilty as she soaked up sun rays. Ehhh, it was not like anyone was going to notice her. After all, they were too busy with their own lives. Leaning her head back, Sapphire closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax.

It wouldn’t do to let go a ray in the middle of the day when people could see, now would it?

[q]

Like so many things, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. All Chris had wanted to do was try and get struck by lightning. Back when he had lived with his parents, the roof was off-limits. He had tried getting up there once, anyway, but the only way was through a window. He had been too short, too weak, and slightly too attached to life to give it a try. By the time he had learned to walk on walls, he was already living on his own. Too busy with other things, he had shunted that particular experiment to one side.

Now, he had a whole skyscraper. It was the closest to the sky he was going to get without a helicopter. It was perfect. So the night before, armed with various metal antennae and dead batteries, he had climbed the stairs. He made it about halfway up before giving up for the day. And anyway, he needed something to sleep on while he waited for the weather to get ugly enough. He could be up on the roof for a while, with nothing but a concrete cushion.

It turned out that the process was more gradual than he had first thought. The thing about skyscrapers was that they were freaking tall. He was definitely going to fix that old elevator when he got enough parts. If this worked, lightning would be a great way to get power outside of anyone else's control. Emergency power. It was a good idea, definitely.

It still took him almost a week before he and his paraphenalia made it onto the roof. The weather looked like it was going to cooperate. He sat huddled in his sleeping bag all night.

When Chris woke up, his face was stuck to the concrete. It was the sun, obnoxiously shining in his face that had done it. Why couldn't it just bugger off and give him a good storm instead? Gingerly, he peeled himself off the concrete, rubbed the residual drool off the side of his face. Why did it have to be so freaking bright? He considered this while untangling himself from the sleeping bag, adjusting his glasses, attempting to shake the bleariness of sleep out of his mind. Leaving the pile of stuff, he started to wander around the roof. The next storm could come at any time, but at least he would be prepared. He'd have to walk up all those fucking stairs again, but he wouldn't have to lug anything but himself up them this time.

And then he spotted someone sunbathing. He couldn't quite tell who, since his glasses were getting pretty grimy. So he walked closer, wiping them on his slightly less grubby t-shirt.

What he saw didn't exactly improve his mood. "Oh, it's you," he said, and sighed. A less logical person would have blamed her for the good weather. He knew Sephara didn't have any powers like that, or at least he was pretty sure. It didn't stop him being annoyed. "What exactly are you doing here?"

[arie]

Footsteps alerted Sephara to Chris’s presence. Opening her eyes slightly, she gazed at him through her eyelids.“Oh, it’s you” she repeated bluntly, before prompting herself up on her elbows.

“Well, it’s nice to see you too, Chris and if it isn’t so obvious: I climbed up sixty flights of stairs to sunbathe.” She didn’t really know much about Chris, all she knew that he was a technological person- and that she, herself, wasn’t.

She knew that she didn’t know him but basically those were the facts except for this one: He liked to test his experiments on people and he had approached her twice with something to try out and she had outright refused.And she was so not in the mood to be experimented on today.

So instead of saying anything else(as if to encourage his behavior), Sephara let her elbows stopped holding herself up, leaned down and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her bag along with a bottle of water. But something made her pause before opening it. And that something was called sympathy.

“Have you had something to drink today” she quizzed, slipping the sunglasses over her eyes before handing him the water bottle. “Because you sure look like you need it” she added, as an afterthought.

[q]

Sunbathing? Strange. "For endorphins, melanin or vitamin D? Your sunbathing, I mean. The reason." He was still a little asleep, couldn't quite string a full sentence together. Plus, relaxing by doing nothing was a strange concept to Chris, like saying that you could walk on clouds or hold your breath for several hours. He couldn't relax unless he was in the middle of doing several things at the same time, or about to do them. Therefore, there had to be a purpose to sunbathing. Even if there were better ways of getting all three things he had listed.

"Seems like a long way to climb for that," he said. "And no. I only just woke up. There are no taps or anything up here." And maybe he had forgotten to bring a water bottle up with him. Everything else had seemed much more important at the time. Gingerly, he took the water bottle she was offering and took several large gulps. Maybe he had been a little more thirsty than he had first thought. "Thanks." He handed the water bottle, now much lighter, back to her. "Er... sorry." He could appreciate that running back down the stairs to get a refill wouldn't be how she wanted to spend her day. Even if she wouldn't let him test out her laser eye beam things, he could still show some courtesy. Although, actually, the thought of the lasers reminded him...

"Say. How far do your eye beams go? Until they're deflected or absorbed or are you a factor? This would be a perfect place to test them out," he added. He didn't think this would annoy her. Surely she wanted to know the extent of her abilities as much as he did.

[arie]

He was seriously asking her why she was sunbathing. Normally the answer would seem obvious... yet, Chris seemed a little drowsy. "For a tan" she replied shortly.

Sephara waved an airy hand and took the water bottle back from him and stared at it for a couple of minutes. "I don't mind... I brought another bottle" she handed it back to him. "Keep it."Sighing lightly, she listened unwillingly as he asked his question.

"For the record" she began. "This is the last time I will be answering any questions about the laser vision. You can ask about the Biokinesis but laser vision? Totally off-limits." Judging by the way he had added the afterthought, he wanted her to try it out. Building up her determination, she pulled off her shades, propped herself up on her elbows, and closed her eyes for a minute against the intense tingling.

Aiming towards a cloud-which she knew the beam wouldn't even come close to touching- Seph opened her eyes and let the beam shoot out. Wincing slightly at the leftover tingling sensation, she put her sunglasses back on and turned to face Chris.

"Does that answer your question" she quizzed, raising an eyebrow.

[q]

He watched with barely concealed excitement as she took off her sunglasses. He may have hoped, but he hadn't expected that she would actually do anything. At the most, a snippy answer. But a demonstration? It was no wonder he was thrilled. "Fantastic. Yes. It answers my question." He paused. "Well, actually, it only answers a bit of my question. And it'd be fantastic if we could work out what your maximum energy output is..." All he needed to do was calibrate the energy reader! It wouldn't take long. The only problem was getting her to agree to volunteer herself again. He'd find a way, he definitely would. But it would take a while, he suspected.

"And for the record, I don't ask about the biokinesis because I don't know how to quantify the aspects. Or I don't know how I'd want to." He paused.

"Come to think of it... Can't you just biokinesify yourself a tan? Why climb all this way?"

[arie]

Yep. He was a-for lack of a better term- geek. Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair and let herself flop back down on the chair. "Just becuase I can get a tan from biokinesis" she paused and yawned lightly. "Doesn't mean that I don't like doing things the normal way" she finished, sending him an irritated frown.

Then, she remembered a look that he had had on his face early. The I-want-to-build-something-so-I-can-test-it-on-Seph look. Oh, she really did not like that look. "No more tests'
she told him, sending him a stern glare from beneath her sunglasses. Oh wait, it wasn't like he could see through the sunglasses.

"So what are you doing up here" she quizzed, tilting her head to the side.

[q]

"You say that now, but you'll come 'round. It's really very interesting, that aspect of what you can do." He was convinced that she really would decide further testing was the best course of action. Sooner or later.

"And as for me... I'm waiting to be struck by lightning." He said this as other people might say there was a pigeon on the roof. For him, it wasn't strange to give such a thing a try. "I was waiting for a storm last night, but..." He gestured vaguely at their surroundings. "No such luck today. Or yesterday, either." He sighed. "At some point I must have fallen asleep." He sighed. "It's such a good place to catch lightning, too."

[arie]

And now he was officially crazy... What type of idiot would want to get struck by lightning for the sake of science(Which is naturally what she presumed his goal was... Unless he wanted to get struck by lightning to get struck by lightning- Hey, maybe he would develop another mutation)? Sephara snickered a bit at her own thoughts.

"You know you could get yourself killed right" she said, a hint of genuine concern sneaking into her voice. Yep, there it was. The thing that crept into her voice whenever somebody was attempting to put themselves in danger or they were the ones in danger.

"It's not like I care or anything" she said, shrugging nonchalantly.

[q]

"Sure you are," he said. "It's natural, if you think someone's going to die a horrible death. I'm pretty sure I'll be okay, though. I've done calculations," he said in what might have sounded to him like a reassurring tone. Really, he thought it was enough that all the preliminary work had been done. The calculations, the preliminary experiments... He couldn't know, of course, but he was pretty sure everything would work out and he wouldn't die.

"The worst that could happen is I'd kill the building's power. I should have enough storage space for that much charge, but getting it all at once is what I'm more interested in. And what happens after." And a few other things. A lot of other things, really. He could have talked at her for ages about it, but he had a feeling he would be wasting his breath. It would probably bore her now. It was all theory, after all. He'd wait until after he'd found out exactly what happened to explain how interesting the whole thing was and why.

"But maybe... Hey, could you come and sit with me next time? There is a chance I might be incapacitated. For a while. And, er, it could be bad if I'm hit with lightning twice. So..."

[arie]

"Calculations" her voice rose a little higher in pitch. Oh Dear Lord, he really was crazy. Placing a palm on her forehead, Sephara sighed. "Twice" her voice went even higher... Any higher and she would sound like a chipmunk.

She sighed unhappily and gave him a frown. "I think I'll stay here then" Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a tunic and slipped it over her head. "How did you get struck by lightning the first time?" she quizzed.

[q]

"Excellent!" he said, brightening up. "And I haven't been struck by lightning. Yet! I will be. Eventually. What I meant was, my body attracts charge when I think about it. But if I get struck by lightning and it turns out that all the electricity screws with my head, I might, er, attract a second bolt. By accident. Which would be, er, potentially bad."

He stopped talking, trailing off to his thoughts. He was forgetting something... "Oh! You may want to wear something insulating. If things don't go quite so well, and I can't quite, um, control all the charge my body's saturated, you might get, er... Electrocuted. Maybe," he added hastily. "I'm sure you'd be fine." Probably. The charge would most likely be dissipated everywhere, not just in her direction. "I'll put an emergency lightning rod up here, though. Just in case."

[arie]

Oh dear lord... She was not going to let him do this. She shot up abruptly, catching herself as she was about to fall. Grabbing her bag, she spun around and snatched her wrist up with her hand, pulling him along with her. "I am not letting you get yourself killed" she ground out as she moved towards the door.

Pulling it open, she gestured for him to go forward. "Down" she said, pointing.

[q]

"Hey!" he said as she grabbed his wrist. Still, better not to fight against her until she stopped. There was no way she would actually drag him down all those stairs. Right?

She ordered him to go down the stairs. He looked at her, nonplussed. "You know, I really wouldn't die. It'd be fine! And maybe we'd get a new power source out of it. Besides, does it look like there's a storm coming today? No one's getting electrocuted in the next few hours at least. Manhandling me is unnecessary, I promise. So if you don't mind, let me go. Please." He wasn't going to ask nicely again.

[arie]

She snorted disbelievingly. Yeah right. He was so going to get himself killed. Letting go of his wrist, she caught his eyes with her own. It was time to play the female card. "Please don't do this" she pleaded, blinking her eyes prettily. Then, her attitude changed abruptly.

"So you're probably going to die for the sake of a flippin' experiment" she asked, putting heavy emphasize on the word probably. He knew the risks but he was deliberately ignoring them. She sighed in frustration and looked into his eyes, searching for some sign of weakness.