Welcome to Gaia! ::

Phaethon was getting used to the fact that he could do fancier jumps when in costume, and he might have been enjoying that a bit more than he probably should have as he moved between buildings. Did he trust himself to jump from rooftops? No, because he was still half-convinced he would fall to the ground and die. Nor did he do a lot of ledge-walking, because he would probably slip off of the ledge and die. He couldn't even bring himself to sit with his legs dangling off of a roof, as much as he wanted to, because he knew the view would be amazing. But he would probably get engrossed in the view.

And die.

So Phaethon was playing it safe, a good ten feet away from the edge of the three-story building's roof on which he was currently perched. It didn't give him much vantage to see anything, but he was alright enough with that for now.

When he got that brain-tickly feeling, his head snapped up from studying ants on the roof tiles. At least, that was the closest thing he could think of to describe how it felt when he realised there were others around. He'd first felt it before, when there had been a whole bunch of them. In retrospect, he sort of wished he'd introduced himself to at least one them. But the brain-ticklishness overrode his fascination with the ants, and Phaethon instinctively sought it out. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was attention-grabbing enough that he at least wanted to see what was causing it.

The shadow from someone up above him was what stopped him wandering across low roofs and climbing fire escapes. Looking up, he could see someone... doing handstands? On? The edge of the building?

He could do that?

Well, probably with practice, right? He bet the other person practiced that a lot.

Should... he wave? Shout a hello? Would that make the other person fall? ... Best not, then. Instead, Phaethon looked around for a way to get up there.

Phaethon's heart did a little unpleasant thud in the direction of his stomach when the other senshi stood on one hand and then jumped back out of sight. Seeing him reappear and come down let Phaethon's breathing start back up from the breath he'd been holding. The amount of casualness in that movement was enviable, and Phaethon found himself wondering again how much practice that must have taken, and if it was something he could look forward to being able to do in the future.

With sufficient practice, obviously.

But if he were honest, he wouldn't find it any kind of chore to practice being able to do handstands on buildings. The main issue was convincing every fiber of his being that he was not fixing to die doing so.

"Hello." A moment, then once he realized how flat he'd sounded, a purposefully more jovial, "Phaethon--nice to meet you!" Smile, smile. Don't be weird about it. Okay that was probably too much smiling. Dial it back a little. Okay actually y'know what just... go back to normal... Before the smiling could turn creepy, or something.

Had it at least reached his eyes?

He hoped so.

There was a flash of a grin, despite his inner monologue, at the compliment to his outfit. "Pretty" wasn't usually his thing, but his uniform was starting to grow on him. "I'm... new, yeah. And I could use less excitement sometimes." He should be honest, right? Nix didn't seem like a bad dude. "You?" The guy probably wasn't new. He didn't seem new. But it was worth a shot to ask. Maybe the learning curve wasn't as steep as Phaethon had a feeling it might be.

Phaethon listened attentively to what the froggy senshi was telling him, even pulling out his own fancy phone reflexively when the other pulled out his. Better with friends? "Oh, yeah, probably!" He paused to consider for a moment. "I... think it's been about since Christmas for me?" Well, at least he wasn't the only person relatively new at all of this, but, by the same token, he could apparently have probably been a bit more accomplished with getting connected to the other people like him. "Oh! Do you want my number?" Sure, they'd just met, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

He took a step back so that he could look at the tops of the surrounding buildings without feeling like he was going to fall backwards. "And you're really not afraid of falling off?" That was... really cool, actually. Training... "I don't think I've actually ever trained." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't get out much. Most of my time is taken up with college stuff." That wasn't to say he didn't want to, but when it came to patrolling and a term paper, he had to prioritize the latter. His family probably wouldn't accept "I was trying to save the world" as an excuse if he flunked a class. His grades had already taken enough of a hit with the occasional sleepless night spent wandering around.

He also didn't do much because he wasn't sure how secure he felt by himself, with no kind of offensive ability.

Maybe a group would help?

Phaethon was, admittedly, amused by the wide-eyed expression. He was less amused by the fact that the other senshi was still in high school. He had known--or, at least, guessed--in the back of his mind that some of the other were not adults yet, but it still bothered him to encounter an actual child doing these things. "I don't know, some high school courses can be rough, too," was what he chose to say instead.

"I wouldn't mind hanging out," he confessed, and he meant it even if part of the reason was because it unnerved him that a kid had to fight some of the things he'd seen. The rest of it was that he wouldn't complain about hanging out with someone who seemed to know more about all of this than he did. He was not opposed to learning by example, and if that involved some goofing around, well, then he was fine with that too. He was not allergic to fun, and having fun meant there wasn't any danger. Phaethon was just fine with fun.

"I don't know that it's very cool," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "I just... wave my hands around and people seem to feel a little better. I can't actually hurt anything."

He could jump on top of buildings? Like, just... jump up there? Phaethon squinted up towards the sky, eyes seeking out the tallest building he could see from his vantage point. It made sense that it was possible if Nix had been able to get up there, but he hadn't really connected the dots on that. He was pretty sure that Nix didn't mean Superman-leap-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound kinds of jumping on top of buildings, but... The idea of it was still really freaking cool. He knew he could jump better than before, but he also wasn't sure how much he wanted to test the limits of his new physical abilities...

And so he hadn't.

Last thing he wanted to do was like... faceplant the side of a building or something. That seemed painful. Not good.

He looked back towards the skyscraper for a moment.

"Being like Mario would be... really fun, probably," he confessed.

The key there was honestly "a senshi that knew they could". Phaethon was still duly impressed by the acrobatics Nix was showing, but he still wasn't really sure about his own ability to do them. Still, though, Nix seemed pretty confident that Phaethon would at least be able to get up to that fire escape, and Nix did know more than Phaethon did, so... Settling his weight between his feet and looking up at the fire escape, Phaethon tensed his legs and closed his eyes.

And then re-opened them in a hurry, as it occurred to him that he would want to have his eyes open for this kind of jumping. With his eyes open, Phaethon took a deep breath and jumped for the fire escape. He was gratified when his hands grabbed the railing, even though his feet sort of skidded on the stairs. But the important part was that his hands were on the railing, and he used that to pull himself the rest of the way up rather than risk slipping and falling down the stairs.

That would be really noisy.

Once on the fire escape and emboldened by his success, Phaethon gave the second jump a more confident try. His landing was considerably less graceful than Nix's, as he had started to lose his balance on the railing just as he's jumped, but it was better than he'd thought he'd do. He'd more or less made it, after all, and that was certainly something to write home about. Well, maybe not literally, but he was pretty proud of himself as he jumped after Nix. He wasn't able to--whether by skill or confidence--do all of the jumping he saw Nix doing, but he was able to keep up well enough as he followed Nix to the top of the building.

Only knocked over one- Phaethon coughed, clearly taken aback. One tree? "Only" one tree? Though Nix was right--the jumps hadn't been that bad. He was pretty sure he could do that himself, in the future. And, hey, maybe as he got more comfortable with it he could jump all over buildings like Nix seemed to be able to do. "Don't get noticed" was pretty solid advice, though. Maybe Phaethon could go to the park to practice there? He wasn't terribly keen on going all the way out to the woods. Heading to the park would be... a lot more familiar to him.

'Only one tree' holy mackerel.

"Is the park pretty safe for practicing in?" He was sure there were the typical ne'er-do-wells in the park at night, but... Of course, there was the one time he'd run into someone in the park, doing god only knew what to a person, but... Phaethon shivered a little just remembering it. At least the guy hadn't been killed, though maybe that wasn't a good thing... No, it wasn't his job to decide that sort of thing. He just had to keep people safe. What they paid for their crimes beyond that was up to someone other than him, he figured.

What was he going to be able to do about it, anyway?

He wasn't Batman.