She loved to watch him fly.

Thrust had wide wings and a tall tail and those huge engines that spit out so much power that it blew her mind. And if she were close enough, rattled her straight down to her struts, settling in her core in such a way that caused her to run hotter for hours.

Orbit had friends that loved jets, specifically of the fighter variety. They swooned hard for the harshly backswept wings and predator's angles and the roaring flames of the afterburners. These were also the women who loved men who smelled of danger, and any aerial fighter to see combat absolutely reeked of it. Swagger, too, they had lots of swagger. Orbit gladly gave credit where it was due; nothing accelerated, decelerated, turned or rolled like a combat jet, and they could execute maneuvers that would rip the wings straight off other craft. It was certainly exciting to watch, but not anything for her to lose her mind over. Different strokes, she supposed.

Her appreciation of the entire jet type rested firmly on hefty airliners. They were all big, lumbering folk on the ground; it could be argued that the surface world was not made for them, since they were limited by their size in their interaction with other people. Orbit was rather modestly sized for a plane, and even she had issues fitting inside some structures. There were places she'd been that Thrust had never even seen. This often led to the big jets being rather clique-ish, since most of their relationships were with those that lived and worked in the large airstrips that were able to house their massive frames. They were different planes in the air, though. Once they touched off and stored their landing gear, they became confident and graceful, weight class be damned. Everyone of the jet liner lineage was a powerful, stately flier; nothing soared like them. Wind currents and weather that grounded other craft were a minor annoyance for their ilk, and as long as they had at least one engine functional they could operate just fine (relatively; landing was another issue entirely). Even with no engines, they could glide like no one else; Orbit had watched Thrust shut his engines off for the fun of it, his wingspan (greater than his own overall length) easily bearing his weight aloft; he kicked them back on only when gravity and air friction began to pull him slowly back to earth.

She wasn't going to touch on his range. Thrust could pick up out of San Francisco and head across the continental US to London, with another seven hundred miles of fuel to spare. If she was truly jealous of anything, it was that.

Something pinged her radar, high above. Three broad white jet trails, at least forty thousand feet up. A trio of liners, in a rather lazy formation, passing her at speeds she could only dream of, well above the point at which her propellers stopped grabbing the thin air. These three were clearly headed in the same direction, since most planes sharing an airspace were content to chat with their neighbors over the frequencies instead of face to face. Large craft, in particular, rarely flew this close together. Few things were more uncomfortable than getting a face full of flaming-hot jet wash from someone else, never mind the turbulence created by your neighbor's wake.

Someone pinged her radio, and her HUD offered up a familiar number for the signal. She grinned and sent a reply, watching one of the craft break off from the other two and fall behind. In a group, he was always easy to spot; he was the one that was never content to fly in a steady, straight line for too long. Her radar blipped again. He was losing altitude at a speed that in anyone else could be described as falling. He liked to call it a dive, which implied much more control than the reckless plummet towards the ground he frequently engaged in. Nose-first or not, this was not a dive. She watched the miles between them fly away, his speed constantly tickling at Mach 1. He'd never quite reach it, but he certainly got an 'A' for effort.

At ten thousand feet from her he began to slow his descent, engines roaring as he goaded his momentum into swinging a wide, easy loop around her. How he managed to end his ballistic, breakneck swoop in such an elegant maneuver blew Orbit's mind. The apex of his turn included a beautiful radial G that could make a flight instructor drool. It was a testament to the strength of his wings; how he succeeded in not snapping off one of those huge turbofans was not worth the headache of puzzling it out.

He pulled up at her side, his wingtip a mere dozen feet over her canopy. He grinned that smarmy, devil-may-care grin at her, practically wiggling from his adrenaline-soaked race towards the ground.

Or maybe he was just impatient with her relatively low speed. It was hard to tell.

She gave a quick glance below her. There was a canyon slowly winding its way through ruddy stone hills, a narrow river lazily cutting across the dry landscape. He wanted speed, huh? Let's see what he had. Waggling her wings to ensure she had his attention, Orbit put power to her engines, dropping swiftly into the gorge below. He fell behind on her radar, but she didn't give it much thought. Thrust could never resist a good-natured race—or a chance to watch his life flash before his eyes—and she fully expected to hear him thundering into the canyon in short order.

He loved to watch her fly.

Orbit was built lean and sleek, with gracefully tapered wings (complete with those adorable winglets at the end!) and that high, beautiful t-tail. She had such a fine control over what her propellers did that she could turn a lazy, routine flight into a work of art. Her engines also made a deep, smooth purring sound when she threw power into them that Thrust could listen to all day.

Thrust had always had a taste for all flavors of women, but there had forever been a special fondness for turboprop girls. They tended more towards cleverness than bravado, even those that enjoyed brisk, adrenaline-fueled careers (hardly the rule, but the stereotype still held often enough). Although most were more serious than brash, Thrust had long ago observed that a comfortable, happy turboprop would start to show her spunky side, and they all had one. He had discovered several marks on choice parts of his belly after many a rousing night that was a testament to the sheer amounts of freak that could come out. Good times.

Orbit dropped away beneath him (but not before wagging her wings at him in such a way that was so cute he just wanted to bite them), diving into a steep canyon that carved its way below them. Her ailerons flipped just so, merely enough to send her pitching the direction she wanted to go. She made him feel like such a bumbling, clumsy oaf; slower than him, yeah, but she could execute turns that he couldn't even fathom doing with any degree of success. Any rolls she made were slow, tight, controlled, and she made it look damned easy. Thrust had always thought that she could race. She might be a bit towards the larger end of that class of plane, but she had the heart for it. She just needed to lighten up and not be so rigid all the time.

Hm, somewhat too strong a word. Cautious, she needed to be less cautious.

Like what was happening right now. He could do with more of this. She was plummeting into the canyon, her wingtips just narrowly inside the riverbank at the bottom. She hugged her belly to the water, her wake creating whirls of spray at her tail. She rolled with the winding river, just barely avoiding scraping a winglet against the smooth rock faces. The river widened briefly, and Orbit pulled up just enough to make a leisurely, deliberate aileron roll, touching her wingtips to the water long enough to drag them for a bit. She made it look as easy at breathing. Which he should do more of right now, if he wished to live a long life.

Once she was right side up again, she shot him a look. Her face fell a bit. What? What did he do? Or not do? Orbit eased off her throttle a bit, and made a face that Thrust would duly describe as a pout, even though she was decades too old to admit any action of the sort. He smirked, causing her to frown in return, giving another, more vigorous, wave of her wings.

Oh. Oh. Well, he was just a clumsy oaf, now wasn't he?

Thrust gave the canyon walls only the smallest of consideration before dropping, port wing first, into the gorge. Orbit grinned, pushed more into her engines again, and took off. The lower depths were far too small for him to enter (hardly the width of one of his wings, and no matter what she said, he had no desire to die yet), but the upper edges had just enough space for him to roll and change his bearings. He could see her up ahead, barely, as her tail rounded another turn. Thrust was not going to dissuade her playfulness for the sack of being on time to anywhere. Were people dying? No? Then they could wait. He opened his own throttle and bolted after, regarding his speed as he navigated the stone cliffs. It would be a total mood-killer to snap a wing off out in the wilderness. He wasn't too worried, though.

After all, four hundred seemed a nice, safe pace.

AN:

More fluffy nonsense. Because that's what they do best.