Series: World of Wings||Title: In Exchange
Characters: Sora, Chizuru
Chapters: 1-1||Words: 1,216
Genre: Friendship||Rated: G
Prompt: Takenouchi Sora Week 2022, day #5, sports
Notes: This takes place in a wing-verse. It might or might not be the same as Take To The Skies. It's also set before their first trip to the Digital World.
Summary: Those who have wings have to learn how to use them. Which means boring lessons instead of getting to play soccer and having fun with everyone else.

"Takenouchi Sora?" The teacher looked down at her clipboard, then nodded over to the small group gathering a short distance away. "Over there, please."

Sora held back the sigh she wanted to sigh as she headed over. She'd expected this from the beginning. The rules were firm – no one who had wings could participate in sports with those who didn't. She knew all of the other Fliers here, of course. Fliers almost always knew one another.

She waved a little towards Yamato, who jerked his head in a way that she guessed was supposed to be a greeting. There were a few benches there and she settled on one of them, the weight of her wings dragging down a little. As far as she knew, most Fliers felt like that too until they achieved their full growth. Wings and bodies didn't grow quite at the same rate.

Inoue Chizuru nodded towards her a few moments later when she joined the group. Sora had known of her for a couple of years, as they'd shared classes, but they'd never spent more than a few minutes talking to one another. Sora knew that she had one older sister, one older brother, and a younger sister, and that was about it.

"Flying classes," Chizuru murmured, leaning back, her dark brown wings spreading out. "Sounds pretty boring."

Sora wrinkled her nose. "I wanted to play soccer." She really had; she hadn't been able to properly play unless it was against other Fliers, and there weren't enough of those who were of the right age to really play against each other. "Volleyball would have been good too."

Chizuru flashed a quick, knowing smile at her. "I was sort of hoping to swim, myself." She tossed a quick glance to her wings. "I hear it's really nice."

Sora winced; there wasn't a healthy Flier who could swim. Wings and water didn't mix. To want to swim and never be able to – well, she'd felt that herself, more than once. But she got used to it. Not everyone did.

"At least we can fly?" Sora suggested, trying to sound as encouraging as she could. Everyone always told her how lucky she was to have been born a Flier, and how lucky she'd be once she grew up and was able to get her license. She'd be able to fly anywhere she needed to go and there would be oh so many opportunities open to her.

Even her mother had mentioned something like that, and there hadn't been Fliers in the Takenouchi family for a good four generations. Her mother kept up the usual requirements on their home, of course, mostly because Sora would need them one day, but she'd never needed them herself.

Chizuru nodded in agreement. "And there is a Flier Soccer League. Maybe you can get on that one day."

Sora stretched out her wings carefully. They weren't in the right proportions yet to carry her in flight, but everyone promised her that it wouldn't be that much longer. "Maybe," she replied. She'd watched the Fliers who were allowed to play against one another, and it looked like some of the most fun she'd ever seen.

Sometimes she wasn't sure if being a Flier came with too many restrictions or not enough. There were so many things she could do that non-Fliers couldn't and so much that she wasn't allowed to do that anyone who didn't have wings couldn't. It made sense, kind of. Fliers tended to be faster, even before their wings and bodies were in perfect proportion to one another.

But while Fliers existed, they weren't so many of them that they would all enjoy the same sports or just about anything else. The one thing that they had in common was that they all flew – and that meant they had to learn how to fly.

The teacher strode over there, wings folded neatly over her shoulders, clipboard in hand, and started to read out the names. One by one, those who were named indicated their presence, and the teacher nodded, ticking it off on her list. Finally done, she cleared her throat and regarded them all.

"We're going to start with exercising your wings. It will take years for you to be ready to apply for your license and some of you might not make it on your first attempt. But you are Fliers – you will make it, sooner or later."

Sora hesitated for a few seconds before she raised her hand and when the teacher nodded at her, asked, "How are we going to exercise them? What are we going to do?"

"I'll demonstrate," the teacher told them. "Like this." She spread out her wings – her wingspan was quite impressive, more than enough to take her up into the air – and flexed them in and out, folding them gently. "You should do this at least once or twice a day," she instructed. "Now, all of you, work on this."

Sora had hoped that she'd be able to worm her way into them playing a little soccer or even visiting the beach – but that didn't seem quite so likely now.

Maybe later, she told herself. When they'd done enough so that the teacher would listen to them. Maybe they could make a special trip to the beach or even visit one of the larger cities.

For now, though, the teacher made certain that they had enough space between them, and everyone started to stretch their wings out. These were some of the most basic exercises available to Fliers and Sora could tell Yamato wasn't impressed by them very much. But just about everyone in his family line had been a Flier, to the point they automatically got apartments with balconies so they could take off from there if necessary.

Sora envied that. Her home wasn't that well set up, with little more than the basic landing pads and perches. But that was better than some places she'd heard about.

The teacher put them through the first exercise at least ten or twelve times. Sora was pretty sure that everyone she saw looked about as bored as she felt. It might be necessary but just opening and closing one's wings over and over again was so boring.

"All right, that's enough for now," they were told at last. "Ten minute break, then we're going to do the next exercise."

Chizuru made a face as she settled back on the bench. "We better do something more interesting sooner or later. This is not what I wanted out of this class." The look she threw her wings made Sora suspect that she wasn't very fond of having them in the first place.

She herself wasn't sure about what she thought about her wings. They set her apart from everyone else in her family. She couldn't always play the games she wanted to play. One of her wings twinged just at the thought – she'd tried to play soccer once a few months earlier. That hadn't gone very well at all.

But maybe they'd be able to figure something out. She'd heard that come summer vacation they might go up to the mountains and she'd never been there before. It might be fun. It would at least be different.

Only time would tell.

The End

Notes: I am growing more attached to the idea that Inoue Chizuru has been in Sora's classes since they were vey little, but they just never interacted most of the time. But I'm going to change that. I have something much longer planned for them that I'd originally wanted to do for this prompt, but it became too long, so I wrote this instead.