Driving required an expanded awareness of the world. It was a mode that I presumed could be switched on, and it was a mode that I’d never really mastered. I’d read that the reason cell phones were so bad for driving was that they pulled the driver out of that mode, into the five-by-three inch world of the glowing screen.

Flying was another mode-shift, especially when it came to aerial encounters. To be aware of the above, the below, left, right, forward, back. Flying typically saw a person flying with their body parallel to the ground, because the ground was worth paying attention to, and because the shape of a human body meant either the ground or sky were faced. To fly facing forward with the body upright meant flying against the air resistance.

I was too slow to flip over and look up. I felt contact on my back, pressing against the bag I wore. My breastplate was in two pieces in the bag, and I felt one piece slide against the other, catching me in one shoulder blade.

Then the pressure, the steady push downward. If I were a plane, it would have been forcing me into a nosedive.

I flipped around, grabbed Crystal’s ankle, and used the rotation of my body with a yank of my arm to fling her off. She created a forcefield to ‘land’ on, her back, hands and feet pressing against it, then launched herself at me, breaking the field in the process of the launch.

Experience told me that she’d go for something she could grab, and I hauled my knees in toward my chest to pull my ankles out of the way of her grip. She passed close behind me, while I somersaulted once in the air.

The weight of my bag meant I had to be careful about getting back to a proper flying posture.

“You’re playing rough today,” I called out.

“I’ve always had to play rough to make a dent,” she said. “Did that change somehow?”

“Somehow,” I said. “Catch my bag?”

She held out her hands. I let my bag slide down my arm and caught the strap, then slung it at her. She caught it.

“Oof. That’s heavy. Somehow? Bullet in the arm somehow?”

I tried to use my fingers to get my hair sorted out, but it was caught in clothing and tangled around my costume top, hood, and neck.

No, Crystal, not bullet in the arm somehow.

“Yeah,” was all I said. I flipped upside down, using gravity to help get my hair to a better position, leaving me to just pluck at it where it had looped around things and let it fall ‘up’.

“Remember when my mom would make us do the flying in formation thing? You, me, Eric, sometimes her?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that was my mom’s idea.”

“Really? Damn it, Aunt Carol.”