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In the air, the suit of armor kept her stable. Jennel exhaled, and thousands of tiny wires arched, responding to her will in the shift of her body. The rockets tilted, and diving down, gravity opened to accelerate her fall. Pulling up abruptly, she flipped back in a loop.

Breathing harshly, she screamed. “Woo—whoop!” 

Air rushed against her and wind whipped as her heart pounded in her ears. Turning vertical, the slam of g-forces pressed in on her with the boast of her rocket’s speed. Ascent slowing, her flaring suit sputtered, and for a moment, the girl lost momentum. Full lips parting, Jennel uttered a quiet command.

“Release.” 

Splicing from the unit, blocked sections of the suit disengaged. In sharp scissored puffs, the metal chunks broke off and fell away. Parting from the rocket suit in cracked fragmentation, large pieces splintered into smaller divides like glass, wholly shattered from the original form. Beneath the rupture, her almond complexion bathed in the sunlight as thick curls waved in the wind. Snatching a breath, the girl eased a smile at forty-thousand feet. 

Cold flooded her lungs in a gasp that filled her in the fight to breathe in the thinning air. Fear gripped tight, and panic surged with the drop of her stomach. A daredevil no more, Jennel broke towards the earth at an alarming speed. Limbs flailing, in the twisting tumble of a free fall, her voice was forced down her throat for lack of air. 

Scattered about, her metallic suit hung, sprayed in a dash of pieces through the crystal sky. Without a parachute, there was no fighting it. The beckon of gravity dragged, throwing her into the crib of death—she was out of control. Wind whipped about her threatening to flip her body in a summersault of terror.

Thirty. 

Twenty-five. 

Twenty.

Ten-thousand feet. 

Jennel could see the meter of her gauge in the lensed implant of her left eye; as a red warning flashed, she pulled her hands together. Palms smacked, and the embedded chips in her thumbs activated. The blue aura of a broadcast signal shot out to encircle her body in slivers of light. Metal contracted, attracted together by the emitted command–her fragmented suit responded to the emergency beacon. Lacing in an interlocked net, the magnetic pulse drew the remains back as one. Preliminary armor layered over her thumbs, glowing in reaction to their planted transmitters. Arcing down upon her in the windswept sky, the metallic pieces fell across her skin, lining her body like sprinkled rain. 

Gilded in the plated suit, a helm slipped over Jennel’s face just as the ocean spray came up to greet her. The roar of boasters caught her body and in a turning lift, rocketed her along the curve of a crashing wave. Smiling with a laugh, the girl threw her head back and cleared the water, rising for the sky. Lights twinkled below her soar as the city lit in the evening cast of the slowly setting sun.