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The revelation that Nova is Sam, and Lightwave is Christine, who both had just concluded a very sweet date night before heading out into the city in their heroic alter-ego guises, was a surprise, to say the very least. Sam was shocked, but couldn't help but laugh, and since they were already airborne, suggested they fly somewhere a little more private, and solid, so they could talk about what had just happened, who they really were, and, well, see where they should go from there. Obviously there were some things they hadn't let on about themselves that probably needed to be discussed.
Sam sets down first, atop a tall building. No other people in sight, and nothing showing on his helmet's sensors, so this seems like a good spot. Once landed, Sam removes his helmet, and quickly afterward the rest of the armour vanishes from his body, leaving him in his civilian clothing and scruffy hair. He can always put it back on quickly if he needs to, but it seems to Sam that being all 'armoured up' isn't exactly the best way to have an intimate talk with a girl. Maybe his girlfriend. That's still a bit fuzzy.
"So, when you said you didn't really have many hobbies, I guess stopping crooks didn't rate?" He doesn't say it like an accusation, his tone is much more lighthearted and joking. Sam wasn't exactly forthcoming about his extracurriculars either, and people in glass houses and all that.
*
It's still a shock to Christine, that the man she's had two, spectacular dates with is a superhero as well. She follows Sam as he finds a rooftop that's unoccupied and lands next to him. When he banishes his armor, Christine's eyes go rather wide in amazement. "That's incredible," she murmurs. "How does that work? Functioning matter to energy conversion and reversion…" And yes, Christine is walkign around Sam, examining him as she's science=babbling.
She realizes what she's doing and strightens back up, blushing. She takes off her domino mask, showing that she doesn't have a quick-change option. And Sam's joke gets her to smile. "Well, to be fair, this is only my second night doing this. So, I think you probably have more experience than I do. And clearly, that makes it all your fault for not telling me first." She smiles with her flawless logical victory.
*
"It's.. you know, I don't really know? It was my father's, he left it to me. It's.. not from Earth," he says after a moment, very hesitantly. And now, if she tells anyone, Sam will probably be arrested and dissected for science. How's that for trust? "I haven't determined if it's somehow transporting the armour onto my body, or creating it from ambient materials. It gives me access to a.. I don't really know how to describe it. Cosmic energy source?" He shrugs, and moves to step a little closer to the girl. "I haven't been doing this for very long, either. Couple of weeks? I've been training since my father died, but only started the whole 'hero' thing since coming to New York. If it weren't for the armour, I'd be /way/ out of my league.." he trails off a bit, staring at the girl through her mask. "So you can fly. You can make things out of light.. that's pretty amazing. Any other tricks I should be watching out for? How did you get your powers? Are you a mutant? Magical being?" Wouldn't be the first, so the question, while perhaps a bit strange, makes perfect sense to him. ".. or something else?" Sam's an alien, after all, though he hasn't outright said it.
*
Christine follows along with Sam's narriative. "Wait…" she says at the relevation that the helmet was his fathers and of alien origin. "Does that mean that your father found the helmet on Earth? Or…he brought it with him to Earth?" She doesn't look shocked or disgusted by the possibility of the latter option; just curious. "And I'm a mutant," she answers. "My powers started developing when I entered High School. And there's a few other things I can do. I'm strong enough to lift up a car. I can shoot blasts of energy from my eyes that can cut steel." Christine looks down at her shoulder that was hit by the stray bullet, wiggling her finger in the hole in the fabric and wincing a bit. "I'm not totaly bullet-proof. More like, bullet-resistant. It didn't break the skin, but I'm going to have a serious bruise there in the morning." She looks back at Sam. "But, I do heal pretty fast, so I'll be wearing sleveless dresses again in a day or so. And…" She pauses a bit, biting her lip and looking guilty. "I'm…an empath. I can feel people's emotions. And when they're lying." She doesn't outright mention that she's used that power on Sam a few times on the dates.
*
Sam might have been about to hide part of the truth about his father, but when she reveals that she can tell when someone is lying, he thinks better of it. "My father wasn't from Earth," he says after a moment. There it is. Sam's part alien. "But my mom was born and raised in Carefree," so at least there's that part of him that is human. He can't be /all/ alien, because that'd be weird. "And Xandarian is pretty close to human, really.. I'm pretty normal, it's just the helmet. With it, I can fly.. really fast. I can increase my strength, and I can project blasts of force. Oh, and I'm pretty much invincible with it on. Might be more, but I haven't figured everything out yet.. it feels like I'm being held back when I'm wearing it, a little bit." He pauses, and takes another step toward Christine, even moving to put his hand on her arm lightly, "You're the prettiest mutant I've ever seen," he says, smiling gently. If she's using her power to sense emotion, his would be pretty unmistakeable right now. Hell, even without her power.
*
Christine blushes a bit at the compliment. "Well, you're the handsomest half-alien I've met." She smirks and shrugs a bit. "That's not a huge sample pool, but it's still true." The hand on her arm is causing her to blush more, and she puts her other hand lighly on Sam's. "So. Where do we go from here? It looks like we don't have any big secrets between us anymore."
*
Sam takes yet another step closer, bringing the two within a few short inches of each other, and takes hold of Christine's hand with his own. "I guess not," he says quietly, smiling at her. "From here, I guess you're just a mutant crime-fighter with a half-alien boyfriend? We'll stop bad guys together, solve mysteries for a few years. You'll get that Nobel Prize, and eventually we'll settle down, get married, and have a couple part-mutant, part-Xanadarian kids?" He's joking. Well, mostly. It's a bit soon to talk about kids, right? I mean, they haven't even had a first kiss yet.
*
Christine just listens to Sam and beams as he talks. Really, she starts glowing. And then, Sam's worries about getting ahead of thins are partially dispelled as Christine leans in and kisses him on the lips. It's a tender, light, affectionate kiss that confirms that she's wanting to join in on that adventure he just described. And after she leans her head back and dims down the light, Christine smiles with a corner of her lips raised up. "You forgot one thing in all that," she says. "You forgot the part about you joining NASA and becoming the head of the US Space Program, planning out colonies on the Moon and Mars."
*
The kiss takes Sam a little bit by surprise, but he manages to keep his cool. Mostly. He presses his lips back against Christine's, but doesn't try to do anything uncouth. When she breaks the kiss, he doesn't fight it, and gives her a gentle smile, and a squeeze of her hand. "That too," he says after she speaks about his NASA career. Totally forgot about that part. He doesn't let go of her hand though, and in fact his other arm slips down and around her waist, holding her lightly against him. Just a couple of kids, on a rooftop, hugging. "Your grandmother wouldn't approve," he says jokingly.
*
Christine smirks at Sam. "I'm a girl in the physics program of an Ivy League university; she already doesn't approve." But Christine still loks relieved and relaxed. "Still, we'll keep that meeting off for a few months. Or maybe a few years?" She squeezes Sam's hand and smiles happily. "Maybe instead, the first meeting should be with your family? In a couple months or whenever." She hurriedly adds the relaxed timeline so that Sam doesn't feel pressured. "And at least we'll save plenty of money on air travel to Arizona."
*
"You make an excellent point," he says with a laugh, "I'm sure my family would love to meet you. They're really, really nice. My mom married a man from another planet, so I think it's safe to say she's pretty progressive," he says. There's a slight pause, a moment in thought. "Hey, how fast can you fly? What kind of altitude can you reach?" Important things to know if they're planning a cross-country flight together. Sam can get going pretty damn fast, doesn't want to risk leaving his new girlfriend behind, after all.
*
"Sub-sonic," Christine replies with a smile. "About 500 mph. How about you? What speed to you top out at?" An idea hits her and she gets an excited look. "Can you fly out into space? I mean, if the helmet was your father's and he came here from another planet, that would make sense if you could fly through space…." And, she's babbling again, lost in the possibilities.
*
"Can't fly into space.. not yet, anyway. I can reach the upper-levels of the stratosphere if I really push myself," Sam says. That's about as high as any terrestrial aircraft has ever gone, orbit-bound rockets notwithstanding. "And I can get up to well over the speed of sound.. two or three times that, actually." Flying is one of the things the Nova Armour was built for, and one area it really excels. "I think it's possible to do more with it; go even faster, make it into orbit.. but there's something I'm missing. Could just be I need more experience," he says after a moment. "How do you cope with oxygen requirements at that speed? Do you need to breathe when you're flying?" Nova's armour takes care of that for him, and it's never been an issue, but Christine is just kinda out there, unprotected but for her own skin.
*
Now, that's a look Sam hasn't seen on Christine's face yet: genuine astonishment at the obvious. "I…I'm not sure," she says, slightly bewildered. "I never actually thought about it. I suppose, my body is just able to do it. I mean, I heal faster, my skin is tougher, I'm stronger…all of that more than a normal human. It makes sense that my respiration would work at those speeds, right?"
*
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," he says. "If you weren't meant to do it, your body wouldn't be able to do it. I've got an armoured suit that handles things like pressure, oxygen, temperature.. I guess you're just built for it naturally," he says with a smile. "Gotta admit, I'm a little bit jealous.. without the suit, I'm just a guy. You're special without relying on anything like that," he says. "I mean, if you wanted to, you could fly around naked in the clouds, I'd bet. I'd love that kind of freedom." And the visual, but that's the eighteen year old in him again.
*
Christine opens her mouth in shock at Sam's suggestion about how she could fly. "Now *that* truly is scandalous, Mr. Alexander," she says to him with a mixture of shock and amusement. "Entirely too scandalous. Maybe my grandmother would be right about you…" She's teasing him and gives him a slight wink to keep from panicing.
*
"I think most grandmothers have a good idea about men," Sam says with a laugh, "I mean, we try to be good. Really, we do. But there are biological forces at work beyond our control." Excuses, excuses. Sam's been /very/ well behaved, all told, so if one little racy comment is all a girl has to put up with, she should consider his efforts a success. Right? He grins, and squeezes her again. "But I promise, I'll keep the scandalous remarks to a minimum. You know, for your grandmother's sake," he says.
*
"And yourse," Christine adds with a smile. "You can't have that helmet on 24 hours a day, you know." She winks, then squeezes Sam's hands again. "But, I think that's enough revalations for one night. Maybe you can come by my apartment in the morning and we can get some breakfast? A proper New York breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, and smokes salmon, of course."
*
"You're right, of course," Sam replies. "I can't.. wouldn't want to. Gets in the way of some things," he says, almost oblivious to the fact that it could be taken as a bit of innuendo. "I'd love to," he says with an eager nod at the suggestion that he come visit her apartment in the morning. And the suggestion of food is even more welcome. You win a man's heart primarily in two ways; the first and easiest is to feed him.
*
"Alright," Christine says with a smile. She gets up on her tip-toes for a moment to give Sam a farewell kiss on the cheek. "See you in the morning. Eight a.m." She puts her mask back on and lifts up into the night sky. A final wave, and then she zips off on a course for her apartment, her heart singing and a smile on her face for the entire distance.
*