Can we pretend the airplanes in the sky

[actually112]

Who| Aang and YOU
What| Aang found a lot of looseleaf paper in the bookstore from people destroying biographies. He's turning it all into paper airplanes and letting them fly.
Where| Throughout the arena
When| The first half of week one.
Warnings/Notes| Maybe violence? Will add if more come.

Aang found a lot of pages fluttering on the bookstore floor. Pages he had no way of attaching to faces, sometimes not even names--pages with secrets and sadness and violence and joy. Delicately, uniformly printed, clearly by a master scribe. It's too bad to see them all alone and destroyed.

So he piled them in his backpack, regularly pulling pages out, folding them, and setting them free into the air. They looked a little like young flying airbenders, hidden by gliders too big for their bodies.

He threw them everywhere. On the moving stairs. From the banisters. Into stores. Through the ice rink.

Let the inked papers fly.

Comments

[twelvepercentofaplan]

One of those airplanes will find its way back to Aang, albeit with some...adjustments - a little wide flare around the nose, the tips of the wings folded up. Once it gets close to Aang, however, it takes a sharp turn through the air and crashes into the ground.

"Aw, man...!"

The voice came from the direction of the airplane, and belonged to a disappointed-looking man in really new-looking clothes from the nearby department store.

[actually112]

Aang grins before leaning down and picking the paper up, looking at the new design.

"You'd need to fold it differently. The wind will keep making it fall."

Paper, after all, was not the best building material and a shape that works for actual planes and rockets won't work for paper.

"Or maybe you could try throwing it differently. It could probably float."

[twelvepercentofaplan]

"Well, I'm twenty-something years out of practice," Quill answers as he steps forward with a shrug, then shoves his hands in his pockets. "Though I never was that good at it in the first place. Teachers kind of frowned on that kind of thing at school, so not much practice got put in." And it just wasn't as fun to do it at home where there wasn't the chance of getting in trouble.

[actually112]

"You did it in lessons too? I thought that was only Air Nomads." The little Air Nomads would sometimes be given folding materials to learn what shapes work best in the wind. It helps with their understanding.

He approaches the man, looking very nonchalant about approaching a far larger person during a death match.

"I can show you how we do it at home. We make the best paper gliders."

[twelvepercentofaplan]

"I don't know anything about any air nomads, but it was something we did in class to avoid doing work and pass the time. And annoy the teachers..." He looks a bit sheepish, 'cause hey, he's supposed to be fighting people but here he is talking to some bald kid about paper airplanes.

"Don't know if that's the best idea with what's going on, though..."

[mortuaria]

Demigods get a lot of projectiles launched their way: arrows, ballistae, greek fire, hydra venom, the occasional pile of monster poop. You learn to dodge quick if you value your life.

Nico can honestly say he has never dodged a....projectile paper air plane? He picks it up and stares at it incredulously, realizing that it's a page from one of those stupid books (not his, thankfully). He turns and shoots an irritated look at the source. "Seriously? You're throwing paper airplanes?"

[actually112]

"You don't have Air Nomads where you come from?" (They don't have Air Nomads where Aang comes from either. Not anymore.) "That's okay. We don't really have people like you where I come from, either." And by that, he means people with super pale pink skin, light hair, and round eyes.

He smiles and drops his bag to the ground. "Are you kidding? This is the best time. We need to remember the good things." Aang sits down right there, pulling out a fluttering page of a biography. "Let me show you how to do it! We actually had to learn how to make good gliders when I was little."

[actually112]

"Is that what you call them where you come from?"

Aang already has another page out, folding it against his stomach.

"We call them paper gliders."

[iflipmyhair]

One of those airplanes will not get far. A mere few yards away, it would be caught with one hand, which Homura brought down to look at it. One of the books. She had no idea which one - just that it wasn't hers, and she didn't care.

"Thank you for the kindling," She said casually, as she put the paper in her pocket. "Newcomer."

Because he was clearly a newcomer. Someone she'd never seen, until now.

[actually112]

Kindling?

Well, that's one way to use the paper, he guesses. "Isn't that a waste? A scribe probably worked really hard on that."

Then again, everyone had already ruined the scribe's work, through destroying the books and folding them up, so a fire is as good a use as any.

[iflipmyhair]

"No." She flipped her hair. "I can assure you no one worked hard on these books. If you read them, you would understand how such a conclusion could be reached."

[actually112]

"No matter what they say, the scribe was really good. Every letter looks completely the same!"

Admittedly, the printing could use more flair and creativity, but it takes extreme time and skill to make it so careful and uniform.

[cassidykept]

Tom doesn't sleep deeply, and he can't imagine he will until he's either won this ridiculous game or is dead. Every sound could be someone approaching to slit his throat with a knife. His eyes snap open when he hears someone not far from him, across the store, perhaps. He holds the knife he's gotten from the sporting goods store close and listens.

He doesn't expect to hear laughter. He peers across the sales floor.

It's a boy who can't be older than thirteen, perhaps even younger. Something in Tom finds this whole thing a bit wretched, knowing that his competitors range from musclebound superheroes (his typical foes) to children younger than Theresa was before he sent her to boarding school. It's crass. It's, to use a word that Tom doesn't have much taste for, morally reprehensible.

So he sees his next action as some sort of benevolent fatherliness. As charity. He emerges from the cove of books and shelves he's made a home in and talks to the boy.

"You're going to attract attention doing that."

[actually112]

Aang looks to the sound of Tom's voice, seeming completely relaxed as he threw another airplane through the air. He's good at making them--they get very good mileage.

"That means more people to make gliders with me, right?" He's not stupid. He knows that this place is dangerous. He's just decided that he's not going to give their jailers what they want; instead, he would enjoy himself and try his best to get others to do so as well. "Do you want to fly some paper gliders?"

[iflipmyhair]

"There was no scribe. It was printed by machine."

She looked at Aang.

"I assume you are from a time or place where printing presses aren't common?"

[cassidykept]

Tom raises an eyebrow and rubs his hand over his goatee (he's sure that, by the end of this Arena, it will be a completely unkempt disaster). Aang may not be stupid, but Tom's already under the impression that he's either a bit slow or delusionally optimistic.

"I'd rather not be around to witness your bloody demise, honestly." It's not as if Tom would step in to intervene, but it's just a bit distasteful. "And at the very least, I'd rather you not get killed so close to where I'm shacking up."

[actually112]

"Printing presses?"

He frowned in confusion and interest. He'd never heard of them. Clearly, this girl had something in her world that he didn't have in his, and that was fascinating.

"What are those?"

[actually112]

"I don't think I'll die just yet. Not a lot of people here seem to really want to fight at all, especially not with kids." Probably the first time his age has actually worked for him, honestly. His age has never stopped people from trying to hurt him before, but he has seen a clear trend of people specifically avoiding a fight because he looks so young. The girl with the yellow hair had been right about that, at least.

And, well... the people who are ready to fight him? Will find that he's a little more slippery than they give him credit for.

He estimates about a week before he has to actually be worried about people attacking him without provocation. Until then, he'll just show the Capitol that he's not scared.

"But if you want me to go, I can do that."

[mortuaria]

Nico stoops to pick up the page and unfolds it to check it out. Thankfully it's not from "his" book, but the letters make his head ache.

"Yes," he says, crumpling it up and going over to toss it in a garbage can. "But whatever you call them, you're making yourself an easy target."

[actually112]

"Sure, I am. But just because I'm a target doesn't mean people will target me."

He readjusts his backpack, giving the new person a friendly smile.

"They don't like hurting young people here. They don't really like fighting at all, actually. I haven't seen anyone really fight yet." Body checking, skirmishes, sure. But the only death he'd seen was from the explosions that the people in charge of the arena made.

[revvinguptheharley]

A squeal of delight could be heard from one of the lower levels as the paper airplane took flight.

Down on the first floor a woman dressed like some kind of fancy clown was dancing as the plane fluttered through the air. She had a belt made up of plush dolls and her skirt was flowing around her as she chased the airplane. When she saw who had thrown it she waved cheerfully. Her face was caked in white with black lipstick and a mask of some sort.

She seemed nice enough. Clearly she wanted more airplanes.

[iflipmyhair]

"Machines," Homura replied. "Machines that are capable of mass-producing multiple pages in very quick time. A printing press can print many hundreds of books and thousands of papers in a few hours."

[keep_surviving]

"Nice tats."

A beautiful older teen stands not too far away from him, holding one of his planes in her hands. She flashes him a pretty smile and with a flick of her wrist she sends that paper flying back towards him.

"I'm guessing you didn't have to get parental permission for those?"

[actually112]

Aang looked down over the banister, giving her a big smile and a wave before throwing another paper glider into the air, then another and another. He's good at making them--they get good mileage and arc down gracefully.

He'd never seen anyone dressed like this woman, but he hadn't seen a lot of things before coming here. It was interesting, and she seemed to like his gliders.

[actually112]

"Thanks!"

He has to jump to catch the airplane again. He hasn't quite hit puberty yet, so he's still pretty short.

"My people don't have parents. I just needed my masters' approval before I got them." He throws the plan back towards the mystery lady. It honestly doesn't occur to him how odd it might sound to say that a people don't have parents--to an Air Nomad, parents and family units are just curious structures that other cultures have. "They mean that I've mastered airbending."