Mercy "Experiments" on Herself
The locker room was quiet, the white and occasionally red tiles lined the floor in a repeated pattern from one end of the locker bank to the other. The green lockers of the changing room combined with the tiles in what looked to be an attempt at continuing the motif of the College's school colors. Such a sparse layout of a room would normally be quite loud, be it from the mass of people using it, or even so much as one person causing enough noise that the echoes would make it seem like ten, but that was not the case for today. There was no special reason for the absence of pedestrians in the Locker room at this hour. It was mid-day in the middle of the week. Sports teams and other casual patrons of the facility were simply too busy to use it at this time of day, but that didn't mean it was empty.
Sitting on the bench that lined the center of the hall, a young, blonde woman was waiting in silence, collecting her thoughts. Her hair was tied back in a high ponytail, and her form was covered up with a plain white bathrobe, and to be sure not to spread fungal infections over standing water, she wore a pair of sandals on her feet. Although she was alone, and had even taken the precautions to minimize exposure to random passersby in the changing room, she could not shake the uneasy feeling that she had.
Her possessions were safely in storage, and she herself had changed into garments appropriate for the task at hand, but she still needed a bit of time to prepare herself. She pondered the feeling that she had, and decided that the thing she was wearing was to blame. Clinging tightly against her chest and groin was a two piece swimsuit, she grabbed it thinking that it would be fitting for what she had planned today, but having actually put it on she had the revelation that she had never actually worn the swimsuit before. The way it squished certain areas and rode and rubbed in other made her feel exposed while wearing it, and while that may have been the case, she was lying to herself that the bikini was all to blame for her unease.
"Well, no use keeping them waiting…" she thought to herself, and with that she stood up and walked out of the changing room.
After she exited out of the door, she found herself standing at the far end of the complex's natatorium, or, to the common man, a pool.
The aquatics complex had a standard issue competition pool, with twelve diving blocks down the shorter end of the rectangular side as well as a length of fifty meters. At the deeper end of the complex were two long diving boards which flanked on each side of tall diving platform. The air in the facility was quite humid, almost making it feel like she was walking through the Amazon rainforest in summer, but the snowy landscape outside the windows on the opposite side of the pool confirmed that it was still January.
Two rows of bleachers lined the perimeter of the pool, one at pool level and one at the raised spectator level above it. Waiting at the poolside seats near the deep end of the pool was the rest of her party. The group was currently talking to themselves, waiting for her appearance, and upon hearing the door open, quieted down and watched her as she approached.
She took a moment to pause, hoping that they couldn't see her nerves from this distance, and then took a deep breath and smiled as she walked the perimeter of the water towards them. As she closed in, she took a brief headcount to see who all was there. Immediately, she saw Dr. Winston resting on the bleachers, his large 800 pound blue gorilla body almost completely impossible to miss. Standing near him were her superiors, Commander Jack Morrison, wearing a casual black t shirt and cargo pants and his second in Command, the Egyptian Captain Amari, beside him. Lastly, sitting a several paces away from them all was a recruit, a young man in a seston hat by the name of Jesse McCree. His distance from the other members of the team was an act of courtesy, as he was currently ignoring the signs that the building was a smoke free environment as he was currently puffing on his cigar.
They all perked up as she finally approached, and as she did she came to the realization that someone was missing. When she finally reached her audience, Captain Amari was the first to speak. From beneath her coat and scarf (the woman still not accustomed to the European winters) she said, "Good afternoon, Doctor. Commander Reyes said he was busy and didn't know if he would be able to attend."
"hmm…" she thought, "oh well."
Having to regret that she didn't have all of her guests, Dr. Angela Ziegler gave a sigh and then addressed her awaiting party. "Hello, I am glad that you were able to make time for my demonstration today." She said. Although her statement was genuine, she had a feeling that her audience was more looking forward to the promise of dinner afterwards. Still, it was rather odd to know that, not including the janitorial staff, Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Ziegler had almost a fifth of their organization standing in this room.
She continued, "After some exercises and field work with our organization, it has come to my attention that in order to effectively perform our services, a quicker means to mobilize aid and medical personnel in the field needs to be found. With Doctor Winston's expertise, we have developed an effective prototype to do just that and are currently ready for preliminary testing."
Winston, still sitting across many seats and rows of the bleachers, raised an eyebrow at the proclamation.
"So…" Captain Amari asked to the much younger woman, "What are you thinking of?"
"I am glad you asked that." Angela added, taking ahold of both laces of her bathrobe. She began to unwrap it, and when the knot was undone, she paused. She had an odd feeling in that moment, deep within her, something was wrong, and indecent, like she was about to prance aroudn half undressed in front of the two men, gorilla and woman. For being so hot in the room, Doctor Ziegler suddenly felt ice cold.
"Uh… Doc, you feelin' al-right?" asked Jesse in his western- American drawl.
The young Swiss woman shook her head clear, freeing her from the stage-frightened stupor and continued on her confident façade. "Oh, yes… Sorry. Where was I?" she returned to her bathrobe and pulled it down from her shoulders, collecting it and tossing it to the dry safety of the bleachers and then hitting the plunger on a remote that had been hidden in her palm the entire time.
Her audience watched in awe, and her anxiety poked itself into her mind once more.
There was no doubt that they were staring at her, but there was more to it than met the eye. She was indeed hiding a two piece swimsuit beneath the robe, but that was not the only thing. Besides her sandals, her legs were completely exposed. Spending almost two hours of effort earlier in the morning had made her legs look long and smooth. Although pale from the long winter, they were not what grabbed the attention of her guests, nor was the tight swimsuit that had bothered her so much. The old bikini that she had nearly forgotten that she owned was only acting as an improvised pair of underwear, of which a black one piece covered her form from groin to shoulder. Above said swimwear was another set of clothes, hanging from her hips was a set of jean cutoffs and a black tanktop, both of which aligned together to overlap in their coverage of her body.
No, although she was more worried of what her fellow organization members thought of her body, they were completely distracted by the true secret of what hid underneath the white robe, not three layers of clothing, but instead a metallic skeleton of wings on her back.
The doctor waited for her coworkers to pause in their shock before turning to allow them to get a better look at her back, revealing more of her winged assembly. A parachute harness was hanging around her body, connected to a small cushion on her back which attached the eight branches of the wings to the main assembly, the control, and the battery.
"So…" Commander Morrison eventually said, "What exactly are you going to do with…" he paused for a moment, "That?"
The doctor turned back to her commander and smiled, "Well, there is more to what I have in mind, but I felt that it would be prudent for a field demonstration to show what I have planned. Now, if you will excuse me, I will be back in a moment."
She released the plunger, causing the wings to retract once more and then about-faced and walked down the line of the pool. The spectators gathered around to watch her as she went, eventually turning at the corner and climbing up the first ladder to the high-dive.
The crew stood and approached the edge of the pool, without looking away from the doctor, Captain Amari asked the primate beside her, "Dr. Winston, that contraption is safe… right?"
Scratching the back of his head, the Blue Gorilla said, "Yeah… when we were working on it, she gave me parameters to follow, but she never told me exactly what she was planning."
The older woman pried once more, "So she never shared what she was doing?"
Although trying to hide his body language, the large gorilla had to shrug and add, "What can I say? Her enthusiasm is... well, infectious. "
Jesse McCree stood beside Jack Morrison and took a long pull off his cigar, slyly mentioning, "That one's got the looks that could set a stray man straight."
The Commander, not breaking contact with the young woman as she climbed higher and higher, gave a chuckle and challenged, "sounds like you know." Commander Morrison stepped away as the much younger man exhaled a large cloud of black smoke in his direction, trying get him far enough away to not see the sweat on his brow.
Across the pool, Angela reached the top of the first platform. She looked down, and had a chill go down her spine as she had to admit that five meters looked much smaller on ground level than when she was standing up here. But, no matter, she approached the next ladder and climbed, and without hesitation, climbed the final one up to the top.
When she reached the apex of the assembly, she checked herself over, adjusting the parachute harness to make sure that it was comfortably hanging off her body as well that the control remote was still in her hand.
She approached the edge of the platform, and once she got to the very precipice of the square, felt her heart flutter at what she saw.
She was really high up.
What was she thinking when she planned this? She'd never jumped off anything this high, if anything, the most daredevil stunt she had ever done was jumping off the one meter diving board at her Boarding School before the lifeguard gave her permission? What in her mind thought that this was a good idea?
She took a step back, exhaling in the event that it would counteract any breeze that may push her over the edge. Maybe just a little lower. 7.5 meters was more than enough to properly test it out. There was no shame in trying at only 2.5 meters less.
But then she saw the group watching her, looking almost like ants from her perspective on the other side of the pool. She couldn't give up now. She had carted them all out here to this local college pool on a whim, so she had to at least give them something to see. If they saw her cower and retreat now, then they would never be able to trust her in the midst of a crisis.
She took a step forward, slightly closing her eyes and taking a slow breath, mentally talking herself through it.
"It's not that bad, Angela. Only a ten meter fall into still water at worst. Ten meters… that's all… The acceleration of gravity is 9.8 meters per second, so that will make it the descent last only 1.4 seconds. That's all… Its not that far, you'll only be hitting the water at 14 meters per seconds, and that's only like…5,600 jules…"
She opened her eyes, seeing the school's logo in the tile at the very bottom of the deep end. With one last moment of hesitation, she said, "I hope Winston actually made this thing waterproof…"
Then she jumped.
For what felt like three whole seconds, she fell, soaring through the air as the wind pulled her bangs back to see the ever approaching waters below. Her body tensed, straining at the cruel grip of Mother Earth's gravity as she pulled her out of the air. Her toes wrapped around her sandals, jaw slammed shut, eyes closed so tight that it burned, and her hands squeezed together and crushed the air in her fingers.
Then there was a jolt, and a quick pain and pressure in her crotch and the crooks of her arms, and then a gentle nothingness.
She opened her eyes, and defying all of her expectations, she was slowly drifting over the deep blue waters of the pool. She looked up, seeing the bright golden blades of her wings extend and catch the winds of her descent and slow like a great bird. Just above her head was the bottom of the ten meter platform, slowly drifting away from her.
The fear that weighed heavy in her body evaporated, turning to weightless excitement as she cried out in glee at what was happening. Completely destroying the façade over the fact that she was just eighteen years old, Doctor Ziegler shot her arms out and cried, "Wa-a-ha! It Vorked! It Vorks!"
An applause filled the room, as if she were a trapeze artist at the circus that had just released one bar and grabbed the other than was swinging freely in the wind, Angela felt as if the entire room was cheering for her. But there was no mass of thousands watching her, instead, all there was in the empty room were four colleagues cheering and whistling in admiration for what she had done for them.
With hand firmly pressing down on the plunger, Angela drifted over the watery moat, slowly descending from her initial height and soaring across her watery safety net. She drifted more and more, the applause from her colleagues died down as she descended to them, but then Angela noticed a problem.
She was drifting much further and with much less descent than she had anticipated, and if she were to keep this up, she would still be six meters in the air when she reached the opposite end of the pool. She began to sweat once more, a drop from six meters onto wet tiles was anything but safe. But just as quickly as she realized the danger, she figured out a solution.
Although she would have preferred the spectacle of drifting and landing right before them, she would be more than satisfied with landing safely in the first place, so even if she had to overshoot the landing, that would be fine.
As she looked back up to her trajectory, it looked like she was heading towards the second story of spectator seats, and even at that, she noticed that the large window was open on the far end.
So, without any worries, she happily drifted on her newfound wings towards safety and a gentle –albeit cold- landing outside.
She was about two seconds away from impacting with the open windows that she realized that they were plate glass.
"Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein!"
Gabriel was walking with the hood of his sweatshirt up and hands in his pocket towards the athletic center of the college. Jack had been nagging him to come, and although he didn't want to, he supposed that Morrison did have a point. He was the Commander of Blackwatch now, so that meant he had to deal with stuff like this.
Disregarding his organizational duties, his mind switched over to how a day this bright could be so unbearably cold at midday, nor why that doctor was summoning him here of all places, but whatever. He didn't care, he just wanted to get it over with so he could go home.
He smirked, maybe if he was lucky, she was going to be prancing around in a bikini or something like that.
As Gabriel stepped into the shadow of the building, he looked up, letting his eyes get some relief of the bright winter's sun and watch where he was going.
No sooner had his eyes adjusted to being able to see without a bright light had he looked up into the glass window of the aquatics center, and smacked against it like a bug on a windshield was doctor Angela Ziegler, trying to block the impact with her hands, and her face was smushed against the clear glass.
He stopped, watching as she was held there for a second, and then slowly began to descend down the pane while making a "Squeeee-" sound like a window washer on a dry glass.
Without any further incident, Gabriel turned around and walked back to whence he came.
A/N:
Why are you reading this? What did you honestly expect? Read this story, its better. A better story