Ingrid sat in the forward of the two seats, with Glenice sitting behind her. The canopy came down and was locked in place with the pull of a heavy lever. In front of Ingrid the inside of the bubble-like canopy was lined with a support with three mirrors nailed onto it. Through these mirrors Ingrid could see behind the aircraft.

"I will take off by myself," Glenice said. "Pay attention to what is different."

Unlike the high-wing trainer with the propeller, the fighter had a nose-wheel that could turn, and did not rely exclusively on the brakes while on the ground. Glenice skillfully drove the craft out of its parked position and lined it up along the white line on the runway.

"Flaps down one notch," Glenice said. Ingrid could not see the flaps drop, but she saw the lever drop one notch. "Up we go."

The throttle went forward to full, but the brakes kept them in place for a second. When the brakes were released, the craft lurched forward. The rudder kicked in, and the nose stayed straight on the line. The grass of the field began to rush past in a blur. The nose pitched up and the ground dropped away. The ground rotated away below and the cloudy sky drifted into view.

"Gear up," Glenice said. A large lever went up and there was a low rumble for a bit. The altimeter was spinning wildly, and the ground was dropping away fast in the mirrors. The parked airship soon appeared in the mirror, and shrank rapidly until it could fit entirely in a single mirror. In just a few breaths they had flown vertically ten-thousand feet into the sky. Even then the altimeter was accelerating upwards. Ingrid was pressed back into her seat.

With some effort, Ingrid twisted her neck and looked out at the ocean. The hemisphere of her vision was rapidly expanding out over the water, and the town had become an indistinct carpet of grayish squares. The great battleships looked like toys. Even the mighty mountains looked like small ripples in a blanket after being kicked away at dawn. The engine hummed and hissed and a long trail of smoke was left in the wake of the craft, dominating the mirror above Ingrid's head.

Twenty-thousand feet. The nose began to pull down slightly, and they entered into a long arc over the mountains. By thirty-thousand feet the nose was almost at the horizon, however they were not level until thirty-five thousand feet. Beyond the mountains below there was a vast snowfield in the highlands between Taisia and Ayaru. The clouds were wispy and far apart.

"Alright, grab the stick and turn left." Glenice said.

Ingrid tilted the craft to the left. It just kept going mostly straight, even with the wings slightly tilted. "It won't turn," Ingrid said.

"Keep going until we are completely sideways, then pull up on the stick gently."

Indeed, as Ingrid pulled the stick to the left side, the craft went completely sideways on edge but went straight ahead without turning. This was completely unexpected given that rolling the smaller airplane even slightly caused it to begin changing direction. When Ingrid pulled the nose up, then the craft began to change direction towards the sun. She continued the turn until the sun was hidden below the body of the aircraft.

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"Level off, then it's my airplane."

With Glenice in control, the airplane flipped upside down rapidly and then the nose came up and pointed straight at the ground. They were descending fast, with the gauge reading tens of thousands of feet per minute. Then she pushed down on the stick, causing the airplane to return to a level position but still inverted. With a jerk of the stick the craft flipped over and they were flying straight again.

The motions were very fast, however Ingrid saw the pattern right away. Rolling the craft only rolled the craft, it did not change direction. Directional changes came from pitching the nose while rotated in some way. This property applied no matter which way the nose was facing, even straight up or down.

"Still my airplane," Glenice said. As they leveled off, she said "I am going to use the rudder."

The pedal at Ingrid's left foot shifted forward, and the nose drifted to the left rapidly before the world went mad. The wings rolled hard and the nose dropped up towards the ground as they almost inverted.

"What happened!?" Ingrid asked.

"Rudders are very strange," Glenice said as she recovered to face the horizon again. "The reason is because when changing direction using the rudder like that, one wing moves forward faster than the other. Moving faster means more airspeed, which means more lift, which causes the craft to roll. As the craft rolls, the rudder starts acting like an elevator which causes the nose to drop, but the roll will overshoot and the nose drops towards the ground."

Ingrid imagined the sequence of events in her mind. Indeed, it made perfect sense. Pushing hard enough on the rudder could flip the aircraft upside down and face the ground at an angle.

"The lesson that I want you to take away," Glenice said, "is that you probably should not kick the rudder unless it's an emergency. The rudder causes a lot of non-linear interactions and it takes a lot of practice before you know when and how to use it."

With that small lesson, Glenice had Ingrid practice a variety of motions. The fighter jet could easily roll all the way around so that the ground was the sky and then the ground once again, all in a near instant. At any point during that roll, the pitch could be moved up or down to move in almost any direction or orientation.

When Glenice was satisfied with Ingrid's understanding, they began to descend and return to the airfield. They had strayed very far away, out over the snowfields of the borderlands. As they descended, the airspeed began to increase dramatically. As they came closer to the ground, Glenice pulled up on the stick and they skimmed the air. The mountains, while still below them, were not so far as to seem small, but they rushed past in a blur. Small alpine lakes, snow fields filled with tiny copses of trees, a farmhouse with puffs of smoke escaping the chimney...

"I am going to deploy the air brakes," Glenice said near the ground. "They are designed to dump airspeed as you approach for landing."

Still the airspeed was extremely high, and it took the entire trip back to line up towards the airfield to dump the airspeed from descending thirty-thousand feet. Even with the flaps fully deployed they were traveling faster than the top speed of the smaller propeller-driven craft, and the air brake was still deployed. Just before the threshold to the airfield, they were flying faster than the top speed of the propeller aircraft, and they did not land so much as skip like a stone across water while simultaneously stalling the aircraft so the nose dropped. The metal of the craft rattled as they ground to a halt.

"Alright," Glenice said. "Your airplane. Drive us back to the line, takeoff and land on your own. Good luck."