Laura was burning up in her fluffy cloud-like robe as she stood just behind the cameras, watching as Ross as he kicked Godfrey's butt to the ground. The scene was intense, just like the entire movie was. It was the scene where Rory took things into his own hands and fought against Revon's army to get back to Magellan; no matter what it took. Rory was resorting to the violence his character hated. Ross' face was stern and he was driven at the moment, not bringing his eyes up for a moment from Godfrey's. Any distractions and he'd kill the scene for sure. Her hands in the pockets of the robe, she listened in carefully for the dialogue before Alex bought over some headphones for her.

"Thanks," she whispered, putting them on quickly to tune in.

"You did all of this," Ross' voice dominated the fight scene in front of her eyes. "All of it!"

Godfrey and Ross scuffled into the grassland while heading towards the river just ahead. Yaya and Mark followed the two, trying to get Ross, as Rory, under control from Godfrey, who played Malloy, Revon's right hand man and prisoner. Malloy was a tricky character to comprehend, as far as she read. He was a prisoner, who had escaped the future Earth's only jail and after he was captured again, was put under lock and key and Revon's stern eyes. His story was secretive and no one knew his true intentions.

"Give me a reason not to kill you!" Ross screamed at him, the river bank just a step away now as he pulled out the sword he had captured from Godrey's wardrobe and pressed it to the thin skin of his neck.

"Don't do this Rory," Yaya, as Danielle, warned him. "Don't do this. She wouldn't forgive you."

"Yes, she would," Ross said confidently.

"Think about that," she told him. "This girl, who believes in all the good in your heart, would forgive you for killing a possibly innocent man?"

"He's not innocent!" Ross whipped his head back at Yaya and that's where the scene changed again. Godfrey pulled the sword from Ross' hands and flipped it on him, pressing the sharp blade into his shoulder.

An all-knowing smile emerged on Godfrey's lips then, "Got that right."

"And cut!" Stevenson shouted and headed out to chat with the actors in the scene. "Okay, that was great. Godfrey, can you do a little less innocent when Ross is kicking your ass. A bit more scared to what he would actually do to you."

"Got it."

"And Ross. Just a bit more roughness. This isn't just Magellan he took away from you. Think of it as..." Stevenson tried to think before he looked straight at Laura with her headphones still on. "Think of it like Laura was dying. On her death bed, barely breathing. This guy," Stevenson pulled Godfrey next to him, "poisoned her and he's glad he did it."

Ross nodded and that's all Laura could see. She knew Stevenson knew she was listening in and watching but was still just as shocked as he said that to get Ross motivated even more.

"Rolling...and action."

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now! Give it to me...now!" Ross leaned into the piece of metal extending from his hand and Laura knew Godfrey felt it, the blade eerily close to actually cutting him. "You have no idea what you did. She, she was everything."

Yaya started to pull him back, but Ross stood his ground, eyes slanting and grief becoming more evident in his face. "...She wouldn't forgive you, Rory. Think about that. This girl, who believes in all the good in your heart, all of us, would forgive you for killing a possibly innocent man?"

"He's not innocent!" Ross looked back at Yaya again on cue, a cry coming out of him as Godfrey flipped the blade onto him once again.

"Got that right."

"Cut! That was perfect!"

Laura's hands covered her mouth and she almost jumped out of her shoes as an crew assistant tapped her on the shoulder.

"Sorry, miss," the young boy apologized.

Laura quickly apologized to him and followed him towards wardrobe once again. Looking back behind her once more, she knew really knew why Ross was Rory.

The week went by fairly fast for them both. Scenes were shot and by the end of it all, they had a full sequence to be proud of. Now, there were only 16 more weeks to go. Falling back on his bed, Ross just wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep until Monday came and he was going to do just that...until knocks on the wall came from you know who's room and a groan came from him in return.

"Please!" he heard her voice through the wall.

"No!"

"Come on!"

"No!"

"Please, please, please, please, please," she begged some more. "You can't say no!"

"Yes, I can," he yelled back, burying his face into the soft, heavenly pillows.

"But it's food. You never say no to food," she reasoned and for the most part she was right. But at the moment, sleep was trumping food.

The cast, sans Summer Glau and Brian D'Arcy who were filming another scene in a hotel across the way, had made plans to get 'their local on' - whatever that meant. He had heard food, bars, everything was in the plans for tonight and the day afterwards. The way he saw it was that he could join tomorrow, if (and it was a big if) he emerged from his bed at all. He didn't know when she stopped trying to convince him or when he fell asleep, but he did and as his eyes opened from the deep hibernation, it was past two in the morning.

Noticing that he was still in the clothes he dressed in this morning, Ross sat up and rubbed his hands over his face before pulling his shirt and jeans off, leaving him in just his boxer briefs. Looking out from his bed towards the balcony, his eyes sprang wide open when he saw the stars blinking back at him from the night sky. They were stunning. The ones he frequently, or sort of saw in Los Angeles, were dim and the only constellations he could pick out where the normal ones - Big Dipper, Orion's Belt. Here they were different and they were fantastic. A yawn escaping his body, Ross crashed back onto his bed and vowed to save the star gazing for another day.

His mind drifted into dreamland once again and before he knew it, the sun was streaming into the open balcony and beckoning him to wake up once more. He wanted to pull the blankets over his head and succumb to even further dreams, but that wasn't going to happen. Not as long as his stomach kept talking to him. Glancing at the clock on the dresser, 8:34 blinked in red back at him. Eight a.m. He hadn't been up this early on his own in a while, except the "Ross Conquers LA Traffic Day", of course. Pulling himself out of bed, he jumped in the shower and made it out of his room in a record time. He wasn't sure what he was doing up this early, as all of them had the day off, but he was ready to explore.

The moment he shut his door however, another person zoomed behind him, running towards the elevators. A soft honey hued hair color and much shorter than him, he knew it was Laura.

"Hey, wait up!" he called to her.

"Run, Ross. I can't be late."

"Woah, white rabbit. Why the rush?" He stepped into the elevator and such frantically pushed the lobby button on the panel.

"I have flight lessons in an hour and they're waiting for me downstairs," she told him, not looking up from her phone and quickly answering any and almost every message on it. "Wanna come?"

"I'll pass," he laughed at her invitation. "There's food here and a city to explore."

"You missed out last night," she teased him. "We got Gale to karaoke."

"What? Seriously?"

"You're going to become The Blitz if you say no again tonight," Laura finally looked up at him, her rich eyes burning back into his. She wore no makeup, not an ounce and he just now remembered how breathtaking she was. "You remember that episode, right?"

"Yea, I remember it. My favorite one," he offered her a smile before she bolted from the dumbwaiter they were on and headed straight for the lobby.

"Tonight, 6 o'clock," she yelled back. "You're not getting out of it."

And he wasn't going to.

This airport wasn't like Cape Town International at all. There were no terminals, the roads leading up to the buildings were all dirt and there was only one plane waiting on the abandoned air strip. It was the plane. The one she'd be taking up into the air finally and floating around the area. Nervous didn't even begin to describe how she felt right now. Apprehensive, anxious, excited - they were all over the place.

"Hi Laura," Ellie greeted her as soon as she stepped out of the open air Jeep she and a few others had taken out to the airport.

"Hi, Ellie."

"Good morning, Miss Marano," Peter Madsen, a lieutenant in South Africa's Air Force greeted her in his full uniform. "Are you ready for today?"

"As I'll ever be," she confessed, walking beside him into one of the twelve separated buildings on the site. Laura had had two training sessions before this and they were both in a simulator in one of the adjacent buildings, and she had also gone up in the air with Peter earlier in the week too. This would be the first time she'd be doing it alone - or so she thought.

"You'll do great," he assured her as she placed her bag onto a vacant table next to Ellie.

"Can I run the simulator one more time?"

"If you feel you need to, of course. You know where it is."

Waving her on, Laura headed straight for the building next door and took her seat in front of the machine that was almost an exact replica of the plane she'd fly later in the day. She was more confident today than she had been a few days ago when she was here, but today was different. Today was the day she was going to take an Atlas Cheetah D up into the air. That was 14,550 pounds of weight with a wing span of almost 27 feet. It wasn't a large plane, but it was a fierce one, especially since, with an experienced pilot with her, could go to Mach 2. She wouldn't be doing that, but it was good to know that she possibly could. Taking the simulator's plane for a ride over the Cape Town satellite images was easy now and she was ready...she hoped. The thing that always got her though, was landing, as she was sure was the case for any beginner pilot. Laura was just glad Magellan wasn't at sea and she didn't have to the land a plane on an actual ship. That, she would never get right. Steering the nose down just slightly, Laura breathed out her tight breaths and brought the body of the plane down to the tarmac as softly as she could. The thing about the simulator was that everything was made to seem real. So, if you made one tiny little error, you felt it and she had definitely felt it in her previous lessons and...she was feeling it now. A shake there, a shake there and then her chair was going insane, the steering jingling in her hands.

"Steady Laura, steady," she told herself, regaining her composition and bringing the plane back up again for another try. This was only her first go-around and she prayed she wouldn't have to do that in the air today. One more time around, she angled the plane just so again and flipped the controls for the landing gear. Five, four, three, two, one, she slowly counted in her head, feeling a soft landing onto the simulator's tarmac. Internally she was screaming in delight that her landing was near perfect but on the outside she couldn't show her delight - not just yet. To do that, she'd have to be in the actual plane.

Heading back out of the flight simulator building and back to where Ellie and Peter were, she was surprised to see Stevenson and a couple of camera crews waiting on her. "Hey guys," she greeted them.

"My Magellan," Stevenson greeted her, as he did every time, by her character and gave her a hug. "I know you weren't planning on this, but we going to film a bit of you today."

"You are?"

"Just some quick shots that will be included in Magellan's backstory," he informed her, pulling out some papers with the scenes he was planning.

"Okay," she took them and paused. "Wait, is that really why Ellie's here?" Stevenson sheepishly smiled at her.

"Honestly, Laura. I only came with Peter this morning because we have a date tonight," Ellie admitted. Laura had found out earlier in the week that he lieutenant and hair stylist had been a couple for quick some time and just had welcomed a baby girl together named Xandra and from the pictures she had seen on Ellie's phone, she was adorable and the happiest baby she'd ever seen. "I got the call from Stevenson just before you got here."

Laura nodded, going back to the scene in her hands as she sat down and Ellie worked her magic. Laura had thrown her hair up into a ponytail this morning and was planning to fix it up nice for later tonight but with Ellie here, maybe she wouldn't have to. She ran her eyes over the scene they were going to be filming and Stevenson was right, of course. It was just a bit of backstory and there weren't many lines to actually memorize. It was more about the motions and lucky for her, Peter was going to be put in the film for it. He would be her commanding officer and giving her Magellan's first plane from the Air Force for her next expedition.

"Can we change this?" Peter asked, holding up the paper before sitting down next to her and Stevenson. "Instead of mayday, she should say pan pan."

"Isn't mayday the accepted one though?" she questioned.

"It is, so is pan pan. I might be wrong, but isn't Magellan an experienced pilot in this movie and very self-reliant? She'd be more trying to fix the problem before calling a mayday."

Laura looked over to Stevenson and he nodded. "Okay. So, can you give me the new line?"

"How about something like, 'Snow to Ground. Snow to Ground. Frosty AF9124 has found gold. Frosty AF9124 has found gold'? What this tells the ground is your plane's name and tail number, plus gives them the heads up you found whatever treasure this is."

"Switch it up," Stevenson approved it right then. "What else is there?"

"You're going to want to use any and all phonetics that you can. In this instance, phonetics are going to help you a lot, at least in the air."

The scene they were going over centered on Magellan right when she was greeted back by the Air Force and a team of special forces to discuss excavation of the site.

Laura nodded, glancing at Stevenson who was flipping back through his master copy of the script and pulling it closer to Peter. "Can you take a look at this part too? We had a few officers in the States look at it for accuracy, but I want to make sure."

"Of course," Peter nodded while Laura was being transformed into her alter ego for the day.

A few curls and a bit of makeup later, Peter was taking Laura out to the plane.

"Okay, this is Cheetah," he patted the metal as they walked along the side of it. "It's different from the plane we went up earlier. She's got two seats, so I'll actually be in the seat behind you the first time up and then this guy over here will be with you on the second for filming. She has two 30mm DEFA cannons and four rockets on her. We made some fake missiles for her too. Under no circumstances you are to touch those switches. Got it?"

"Definitely not."

"Good. So, if you are ready, let's get you in the air."

Her helmet was on top of the hair Ellie had just fixed up, safety glasses over her eyes and she pulled herself up into the cockpit for the ride. This was it. She was really going to fly a plane...

...and it was fantastic. The smile on her face just would not go away as she double checked the engine and secured the switches on the control panel. She had circled around the area for twenty minutes, listening to Peter over her earpiece giving her simple instructions about going a bit slower or gliding instead of powering through. The windshield pulled back and fresh air hit her face and she looked over to her side to see Peter heading down and Stevenson coming up by the plane.

"What was that?!" Stevenson shouted, her smile still so big and his almost mimicking hers.

"Magellan Snow was just born!" she shouted back. Laura waited patiently, pulling the scene from inside her airman wardrobe and running it back through her mind as a stunt man, suited up in all green, made his way inside. Cameramen followed him, making sure the cameras they had set up inside were working properly and anchored down. In just under ten minutes, Magellan would come to life again; and she couldn't wait. If acting didn't work out beyond this, becoming a pilot was now on her to-do list.

His feet were up, he was surrounded by beautiful women and Ross didn't really think his day could get any better...until Laura walked in, that is. After her flight this afternoon, something she insisted on not talking about until everyone was around so she didn't have to answer the same questions over and over again, Ross had waited patiently for her to get ready for what she had promised him would be one of the best nights of his life. It was almost six now and he was still waiting, but looking at her now as she walked over to the group, it was well worth it.

Laura wasn't overdressed, but she wasn't a complete slob either. Her hair was pulled into a funky braid that looped in and out in places he hadn't seen done before (not that he was an expert on women's hair or anything, even though it was something that Rydel had been obsessed over for the past year or so since she cut her her own), and her nude lips and smokey eyes reeled him and a few other guys around the hotel's bar in. But that wasn't what they were really looking at. No, they were looking at the black sheer top she wore that showed off the lacy bra underneath. Ross knew Laura was beautiful, but as a friend, he didn't think 'hot' was something he could refer to her as...until now, that is. Suddenly Milo's words came back to him: Like sex on heels hot.

Not only was her bra on full display, but her legs were as well, as they jutted out from ripped jean cut offs. She was 5'2", there should not be that much leg to show - but there was and he didn't think he remembered how to blink or wipe his drool away before the other Laura, who the cast had been calling Lala like she asked them too, snapped him out of his trance with her fingers.

"You know your face will stay like that if you don't blink, right?"

He snapped out of it then, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at her as she went to greet Laura. Turning back around in his chair by the fire pit, Ross poured the rest of his drink into his mouth, quickly swallowing before the burn of the bourbon came.

"So, someone told me you're already drunk," her voice came before he knew it and he turned to see her pretty face. "That wasn't the deal. The deal was that we get drunk together, at the bars, which are not in this hotel."

"Not drunk, I swear," he held his hands up before his arm went around her shoulders and they walked towards the others waiting in the lobby for them. "Who told you that?"

"I'm not giving anyone up," she laughed at him, escaping from under his arm and tugging on his hand to hurry up. "Now, come on. We have about ten bars to hit tonight."

"Ten?!"