One great thing about being able to fly is that it opened-up a world of possibilites when it came to eating lunch. For example, if a particular gargoyle had four hours between one class and the next, and the day wasn't particularly inclimate, she might find herself atop a certain bridge near campus. It was a good perch, and she'd yet to be spotted. Of course, the risk of dropping her sandwich was high, particularly given the wind that whipped around her. Out of stubbornness, however, she refused to move. This was her spot, damnit, and she wouldn't abandon it for a slight breeze.

It was damn cold, though. Damn cold. She couldn't feel her face anymore. Gina took a churlish bite of her sandwich, chewing stubbornly. No sir, this was her spot, and she shan't be moved. She leaned forward, watching the traffic zip by below her. She wondered, vaguely, if she could manage to hit one of the passing cars with a slice of sandwich meat. What a waste of good pastrami, though. Gina turned her attention back out towards the water, and continued munching. She'd have to fly back to campus, soon.

Something was up with her power and she had yet to figure out what it was.

Sometimes she was walking around on a ceiling just like she used to. No big deal. Sometimes she was left slipping on the brick wall outside someone's apartment window and hanging on for dear life like that cat in a poster. Why? Her power had been so nice and consistent before the universe split and then when the time issues started, that was when she had her first malfunction.

Grumbling at her lack of transport, Raine turned her shoulder against the wind and marched on through the pedestrian walkway of the bridge. Alas, her leopard print heels were gone, lost outside that window she'd dangled from. Now she had these nice high top sneakers "borrowed" from one Booker B. Bookman's sister. As if his real name really was Booker B. Bookman. She was glad to have given him a fake name and gotten out of there before things got weird.

The wind tried its best to fling her off balance. It was brutal out here over the water, now that she was almost halfway.

"Oh screw this!" There had to be better shelter on the bottom side of the bridge, right? Raine touched the ground with the flat of her palm and started the first part of a gravity tether. It wouldn't kick in until she placed the second half and since she wanted to be walking on the bottom of the bridge eventually... well, she expected a moment or two of freefall.

Raine climbed up on the handrail. The dang thing was slippery with its shiny paint coating.

Someone honked. She turned to give them the bird right as a strong gust tossed her back toward the open air.

Well, it wasn't how she'd planned to go, but she managed to raise a second middle finger as she fell.

The gargoyle was happily mid-chew when she chanced a glance to the bridge below. It was one of the perks of sitting so high up-- watching the world go by. Also, eating uninterrupted was another perk-- no weird dudes around that felt like a buxom lady eating by herself somehow invited unwelcomed advances. It was quiet, up here. Really nice. With a mouthful of shredded lettuce and pastrami, Gina watched as a fair-haired lady stalked by, came to a halt, and-- what the f***?

Nothing good could come of what she was doing. The blond had one foot on the handrail, and she was-- hooooooonk. Oh sh**. There she went. Gina was moving before her mind processed that she was moving. Her bag was still across her chest and firmly secured, but her sandwich-- well, that was fluttering in the breeze now, one particular slice of tomato doing graceful spins on its way towards the water. Gina's sandwich, much like Gina's caution, had been thrown to the wind, for the gargoyle was now diving after the other girl. Wings clasped tight to her body for maximum aerodynamics, eyes pinched tight.

At the last moment, Gina fanned her wings, slowing her descent. Taloned hands clasped around the other girl's forearms, and Gina beat her wings, hard, to try and prevent the two of them from crashing into the water. With momentum working against her, it took a few, stubborn flaps to stop the other girl's fall. At least she wasn't fat, though. Gina could almost hold the two of them aloft.

"What the f***?!" Gina demanded. There was no other sentiment upon her tongue. No introductions. Had she really just saved someone from going *ss over kettle off of a bridge, "Were you trying to die?!"

She needed to assess whether this was just an accident, or if she needed to call the ambulance to help some sort of whack-a-doo into a psych ward. First things first, though. Gina looked back up towards the bridge, now a good hundred feet or so above their head. They needed to be back on solid ground, or else this girl would be taking a rather unpleasant swim in the murky river below. "Up" would be the shortest and easiest place to go.

Raine would normally have engaged her power pretty early in the process. After all, the further down she fell, the further up she would have to fall back toward the bridge once she reversed her gravity.

Like usual, there was a glaringly fatal flaw in her plan...

She hadn't accounted for the GIANT GREY PIDGEON WOMAN.

Raine shouted, "What the f***?!"[/i] in near perfect unison with the bird-girl as talons wrapped around Raine's forearms. Her body flopped with the sudden shift in momentum. Her jaw clacked and the toes of her borrowed high tops skimmed the water just barely.

Geez!

> "Were you trying to die?!"

"Are you trying to kill me!?"

Had she a moment to spare a brain cell, Raine would have noticed the wings were leathery and the skin was more stone-like rather than feathery. But her first assumption was that "OHMIGOD GIANT MAN-EATING FLYING RATS ARE REAL." and now she couldn't un-think or un-say it.

She wasn't hyperventilating, nooo. No. That was just the sound of her death marching ever faster onward to the beat of- oh eff that!

Raine's eyes popped open. She did not survive all she had thus far just to be kidnapped or eaten or...! Yeah! NO!

She readied a tether and touched the taloned... uh talon that had her in her grasp. The first object that looked good and steady, Raine did her best to yoink her arm free and throw that tether. That would connect her kidnapper to whatever that solid object was and make the side of it "down" as far as the winged lady was concerned.

One other small miscalculation?

She hadn't readied a tether for herself.

"I'm trying to save you!" the gargoyle retorted, over the wind that was howling in her pointed ears and the din of the bay. Cars roaring, ship-horns peeling through the air. All of this was very bizarre, but nothing was more bizarre than the stream of nonsense that left the blonde's mouth. Flying rats? The f*** was she talking about?

And if this whole mess wasn't freaky enough on its own, the girl was trying to pry free (or so it seemed to the gargoyle) of her hold. Well, o-kay, if she wanted to take a dip in the murky, polluted river-water, that was up to h-

It was as if a rubberband had been tied to her wrist, was suddenly retracting, jolting Gina away from the rescuee. First her sandwich, now this.

The sudden shift in gravitational pull took the wind out of her lungs and her wings, rocketing her back towards the bridge. Was she still clasped to the blond? Who knew. All Gina knew was that the bridge was drawing her in, and she'd be damned if she'd get run-over and lose her lunc all in the same day. Frantically, Gina beat her wings, but it only served to slow her... descent? Ascent?

She landed on the underside of the bridge with a resounding ~thunk~ the reverberations of the landing echoing up her legs and into her knees.

"Son of a b****," she breathed, kneeling. Beneath her feet, cars thundered by, and above her... below her?... waves lapped uncaringly, "What the... f*** is going on..."

It was becoming increasingly obvious that the woman Gina had tossed her sandwich to the wind for might not have actually needed her to intervene.

Raine had forgotten she was holding the tether she'd attached teh the bridge, so naturally when she touched the talon the talon girl's down was... the bridge. The surprise made the girl grab tighter onto Raine's arm and, though she'd wanted to get away at first, now Raine was glad to not hit the water that was skimming by at speed. The blonde readied another tether when something her kidnapper had said finally trickled down past her panic.

> "I'm trying to save you!"

O-oh. Raine set one end of her new tether on herself and once they got close to the bridge and the winged girl was focusing on powerful wing flaps to stop herself, Raine wriggled free enough to toss her own gravity down... which was up for everybody else in New York.

The winged grey girl landed hard. Raine knew how to absorb it a bit better and ended in a less noisy crouch just a few feet away. It was a little unnerving to hear the cars roaring overhead and the corresponding vibrations through the concrete and steel, but the wind was a whole lot better in the shelter of the concrete pillars.

Grey girl had herself a moment to say her bad words. That was understandable, really. Raine checked out her arm, which wasn't damaged. The sleeve of her sweater was a mess, but her actual arm wasn't anything more than a bit pink from the ordeal. Probably her own fault there.

"I. Uh." Well, she could start by standing up. Step one in taking control of a situation, right? Raine brushed her pants off. Her hair and jacket retained the normal appearance of gravity and everything felt the same except for the fact that up was now down and down was now up.

"I do gravity. I thought you were a kidnapper so.

Sorry.

About that." Her dad had tried to teach her to never apologize, but this seemed like a moment where she legitimately needed to.

"I appreciate that you're the kind of person who'd try to save a jumper, though." Girl rule #243. Always end with a compliment.

Her ears were still ringing from the landing, the roaring traffic did nothing to help, either. The other girl landed, too, but with a considerably lighter touch-down.

>> "I. Uh. I do gravity. I thought you were a kidnapper so. Sorry. About that."

Gina pressed her hands against her eyes, rubbing her face at the other girls pronouncement. She did gravity, of course she did gravity...

"I guess gravity-doers jumping off bridges makes sense," she murmured. She cracked a smile, even chuckled. It was the sort of smile and laugh that said, 'This is absurd enough. Might as well laugh about it, 'cuz what else can you do?'

>> "I appreciate that you're the kind of person who'd try to save a jumper, though."

"I've never been able to mind my own business," Gina confirmed with a wry smile, "Thanks, though."

Maybe it was the fact that she could fly, that made her more bold and... less concerned about being stuck to the underside of a bridge, once she realized the source was right in front of her. She bent at the knees and jumped. Still, she was gravitated to the underside of the bridge, and trying to jump free did nothing.

"How long does your gravity thing work?" Gina asked. Not that emulating a bat wasn't immensely exciting, but... Gina really didn't want to miss class... She still had time, of course, unless this gravity thing wouldn't wear-off until the better part of a day.

She was far less angry than Raine had anticipated. In fact, she was actually hella nice. Like, suspiciously so. Raine tried to stomp down her suspicion. She was brute force believing in the kindness of people. There was no sense in scaring herself without cause. Afterall, she was not kidnapped. Not even a little bit.

Raine grinned at the other woman and watched her experiment. Her hair and wings and clothes would all hang in a way that felt normal. Everything, in fact, was pulled toward whatever gravity was defined for them.

> "How long does your gravity thing work?"

"Forever." Was Raine's knee-jerk reaction, but then... that wasn't exactly ture. "I mean. I've run into some hiccups lately, but so long as I'm around it does't seem to run out... usually."

How had she ever thought that this woman was a pidgeonmorph? She looked to have horns poking out from her screw-like curls. Maybe pointy ears? Raine couldn't quite put her finger on the theme, assuming there was one. Sometime mutants were just orange, or whatever, with no apparent rhyme or reason.

"I'm Raine." She extended her hand for a proper, polite introduction. Despite their mutually inverted nature, this was a normal, everyday sort of meeting.

"I'm from across the rift and there's just not a ton of experimentation you can do over there in broad daylight, y'know? I can let us go, though. I do know at least that much." She just hadn't found the common theme between the times when her power pooped out unexpectedly.

>> "Forever. I mean. I've run into some hiccups lately, but so long as I'm around it does't seem to run out... usually."

A frown tugged at Gina's expression. Forever?! She was going to be stuck under a bridge forever?! It'd be so cold… how would she go to class? If she tried to step off, would she fall into the sky??

>> "I'm Raine."

”Gina,” the gargoyle replied, returning the handshake with a winsome smile. Honestly, it was the first normal part of their interaction so far, so she welcomed it.

>> "I'm from across the rift and there's just not a ton of experimentation you can do over there in broad daylight, y'know? I can let us go, though. I do know at least that much."

“I didn't know,” the gargoyle confessed. She knew about the Rift, of course-- everyone did-- but she wasn't familiar with mutant relations on the other side, “That's good, though. When you said ‘forever’, I thought…”

Gina shrugged. She thought Raine would leave there forever. Stranger things had happened.

She hadn't known? "Oh. Yeah. You just don't talk about it over there. It's all more under-the-table and cloak-and-dagger and you definitely don't let people know what you are, if you can." Obviously that wouldn't work for Gina, here with her grayish skin and awesome feet. Raine did her best not to stare, but...

"You might be the first mutant that I've talked to that has a physical component." Surely not. Hadn't she at least seen one passing through the hospital? Maybe? At some point? She'd definitely seen them in the lab the X-men liberated, but Raine hadn't talked to any of those. There hadn't been time and they hadn't been in a talking mood.

"I don't want to scare you, but, maybe don't go on vacation over there." How had this conversation gone so bad so fast? What a downer. They were all on what Raine's world was trying to call World B. This world had, of course, decided they were then going to call themselves World-01 or something equally nonsensical.

"This side's way better anyway." She said while hanging under a bridge like a bat which literally zero fear of repercussion. Yeah. Definitely better.

"Sounds miserable," the gargoyle asserted. She could only imagine how rough life would be having to live "under-the-table", so to speak. Her smile widened when Raine remarked that Gina had to be the first mutant she'd ever spoken to, but she said nothing in response. What could she say? You ever just met someone who was like, "You're the first redhead I've ever spoken to?" How did you... respond?

>> "I don't want to scare you, but, maybe don't go on vacation over there. This side's way better anyway."

"I don't think I'd get very far, you know, with mutations being all under-the-table over there," Gina assured her.

That settled, the gargoyle shrugged her shoulders and sighed, "So... uh... about that... releasing? Thing? I kinda, uh, threw my sandwich to get you... and want to get more lunch before I, like, go back to class."

This was said in the most casual and lighthearted of tones, as most of the tension between them had been released, at least from the gargoyle's side of things... Gina smiled endearingly at the other girl, her tail flicking idly.