Who: Harley, Helena and Asami What: Asami and Helena have a lunch date to talk about Asami's dating life, only for Harley to interrupt because she accidentally activated one of Helena's inventions When: Today Where: Out to lunch then casa de quinn status: complete Rating: PG-13
Asami was pushing her fork in her salad, a little distracted from eating. She smiled when Helena approached. “Morning!”
And she really was cheerful. Just distracted. And terrified. Why she should be terrified could be summed up pretty easily - every time she’d let herself get attached to someone they’d left.
And part of her was terrified of Kit hurting her.
Helena had a lot on her mind. She’d had another dream the night before. Artie had needed to be saved after an Artifact had somehow lodged itself in his heart. So what was her solution? Build a shrink ray, of course! Claudia and Steve had been shrunk and injected into Artie’s bloodstream so they could find the Artifact and neutralize it. Ingenious solution to a very odd problem. That certainly ranked in Helena’s top 10 strangest Artifact encounters in her time with the Warehouse.
When she’d woken up, she’d found her shrink ray had appeared. She’d left it where it was because she didn’t have the means to move it elsewhere. Plus she wanted to ask Asami first about moving it here.
But beyond the dream, she still had the residual emotions of her dream self bleeding over. This was one of the days where she felt more like that Helena. The latent anger and grief that would never quite go away. The part of her that would be forever broken after what she’d gone through.
Looking up at Asami, she smiled, though it wasn’t a completely genuine one. It was one that belonged to the mask she wore when she was trying to stuff her emotions down inside of her. “Good morning, Asami. How are you?”
“I’m good, thank you. Order whatever you want!” Asami gestured at the chair across from her. She liked days like this. Actually socializing with a friend. That such socialization led to brainy moments was a plus side. And before she and Kit had gone steady, sometimes other things. Once with Helena’s wife. Asami could check that off of her bucket list.
“You okay? You look like there’s something on your mind.”
Taking the offered seat, Helena took some moments to consult the menu before ordering what she wanted. Tea was a given, she wasn’t human in the morning until she had a cup of tea. (She’d already had four cups of tea that morning.) With her order in, she turned her attention back to Asami.
“I had another dream last night. It wasn’t a bad one. Simply...complicated.” As much as she hated the world of the Warehouse, she also loved it. It had been the one single constant in her life, the only thing that had never abandoned her, even when she’d turned her back on it. And yet she was tired of that life, which was why she’d retired, to try and live a normal life. And even then Artifacts found their way into her life and helped mess it up.
Complicated dreams were terrible. It was better to have a bad dream, because then at least you knew how you were supposed to feel. Asami nodded her head. “Why don’t you tell me about it. It doesn’t help to keep that kind of thing all locked up.”
“That, I fear, would require starting at the beginning for full context to be given. And that is not a tale to be told while eating.” Which was actually true. Helena’s life in her dreams was not for the faint of heart nor was it for anyone who was eating. “It is also a rather long tale to tell.” Helena didn’t want to take up too much of Asami’s time telling her of the things she’d done. They had other, lighter topics to discuss.
“I’ve got time,” Asami said. She knew that Helena had issues with her dreams and how she felt about herself there. But Asami felt like she knew the woman well enough to see the good in her. Whatever darkness there was, it had passed.
Sometimes Helena knew the darkness was far closer to the surface than she’d care to admit. Harley was the only one who really had seen it and who knew how prevalent it could be. She wondered if this bleedover from her dreams would be permanent. Unlike some people who dreamt, her scars were completely mental and emotional, not physical. Helena had no physical scars despite how many times she’d nearly died, or actually did die, in her dreams.
“As you already know, I was born in the Victorian era and eventually found my way to the 21st Century. I’ve told you about the Warehouse and Artifacts, though I have only told you to good side of them.” And considering some Artifacts she’d told Asami of were very very bad things, it was saying something that Helena grouped those in with the good side of the Warehouse. “Christina was my daughter in my dreams as well. I had her out of wedlock, much to the dismay and ire of my mother, and I refused to marry. I was a single mother, and Christina was the light of my life. However, my work with the Warehouse sometimes took me far away and for long periods of times. Travel wasn’t quite as easy as it is these days. One summer, I’d arranged for Christina to spend the summer with cousins in Paris.” Simply just mentioning Paris made Helena’s face tighten slightly, her eyes darken with both anger and untold grief and loss. She lifted a hand to fiddle with the locket around her neck, one of the gifts from her dreams. “On the fourteenth of July, I received a telegram informing me that Christina had been murdered.”
It hurt to say, and she felt that sense of a broken heart that her dream self had felt ever since she’d received that telegram. Tears started to well up in her eyes, but the British stiff upper lip kicked in hardcore and she held them back.
Asami listened carefully, frowning slightly and putting her hand over Helen’s when she told her about losing her child. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how that feels. It has to be a relief that she’s okay here.”
The dreams felt real. She knew the grief and pain of losing her father but somehow that seemed like it couldn’t compare to losing a child, especially such a young child. But Asami’s sympathy was genuine. If nothing else, she could feel as strongly as the people she talked to. Take their pain or happiness and turn it around in her head until she understood it. It was ironic. She was a logical, mechanical mind, and yet…
Helena gave Asami a little, sad smile. “The grief I felt went too deep and was too potent that I couldn’t embrace. So instead, I buried it and embraced anger instead. One of the murderers had been caught by the police, and he’d described that the housekeeper, Sophie, had been the only other person home at the time. Christina had had a fever that morning, so she had stayed behind while the others went out. But he said that Sophie fought using the martial art style of kenpo, which is what I was trained in. In that moment I knew that somehow I had traveled through time and become Sophie. I simply did not know how yet.” And thus was born the line of questioning that eventually gave birth to her time machine.
“But with that, I was so angry, and I was not one to sit by and hope that the French police would catch all the men responsible for my daughter’s death, so I took matters into my own hands.” At this point, the tone of her voice grew colder, as did the look on her face. Her dark eyes grew hard, the look that only a cold-blooded killer could get. “Let us simply say that when I tracked them down, what I did to those men is the most pain a person can go through.”
“Self-fulfilling paradox,” Asami said. But it didn’t seem like she’d saved Christine. Maybe some things were always mean to be.
She couldn’t have done what Helena had. Maybe if something happened to Korra, she would track someone down. Beat them. But she’d bring them in, let Chief Beifong handle it. At least that’s what she told herself she would. But she also knew Korra, and she knew that Korra wouldn’t want Asami to kill anyone.
Christine was just a girl. Asami couldn’t relate. “I… see.”
“Indeed.” Time could not be rewritten, no matter how hard one tried. Helena took a breath. “After I had my vengeance, I became obsessed with time travel. I searched for any Artifacts known to have time travel effects. I was caught and brought before the Regents for abusing the use of Artifacts, but I was given a reprieve, no doubt because I had lost my daughter. After that, I grew more careful and instead of Artifacts, I turned to my mind. It took years and several attempts before I found a way to bend time to my will. Physical time travel, as I discovered, is an impossibility in my dream world. So instead, I based my time machine based on the theory of Gestalt and the collective unconscious. What if one could connect with the mind of a person living in the past? My time machine is more accurately described as a consciousness transfer engine, as it takes your consciousness and sends it to a point of time in the past and you inhabit the body of someone living there. That is how I traveled back and ‘became’ Sophie.”
Helena paused again, steeling herself. “I had believed that this time I could change what happened, that I could save my daughter. But the ink with which our lives are inscribed is indelible. All I managed to do was to live that horrendous day for a second time, only this time I bore witness to Christina’s death. I watched her die, unable to do anything about it.” After that, Helena had been plagued with thoughts in the back of her mind that she’d failed as a mother. A mother was supposed to protect her children, not to watch them die.
“That’s...actually really clever.” If you couldn’t go back to the same period physically… it made sense actually. But consciousness was energy, and energy wasn’t necessarily linear.
But like many other clever things, it could backfire. Asami reached over and squeezed Helena’s hand. “You shouldn’t have had to witness that.”
It was very clever, and if it had been about any other invention, Helena would’ve revelled in the praise, even gone into more detail about it. But when it came to her time machine, she never took the praise, never spoke about the details of it. She didn’t want anyone else to ever potentially experience what she had seen.
“No, but what was done was done, and I lost myself. I went mad from the anger and repressed grief and I went back to trying to find a time travel Artifact that could undo it. Ultimately, this resulted in the loss of a fellow Agent, a very good and dear friend of mine. I was brought before the Regents again, and I knew I had become a danger to myself and all those around me. So I asked them to bronze me.” She drew in a steadying breath.
“Bronzing is a process that the Regents use as a last resort, if you will, to subdue and contain Agents who have become dangers and were arrested instead of killed. If you have seen the Star Wars movies, the process is not unlike when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite. I had believed that this would allow me to sleep and perhaps, if things went in a certain way, I could wake in a better world. However, once I was bronzed, I realized I had sentenced myself to the worst fate a person could ever endure. I was not unconscious as everyone believed people who were bronzed to be. I was, in essence, a conscious statue for one hundred years.”
Asami only squeezed Helena’s hand tighter. For all her outward calm, she was affected by Helena’s words. By what she’d experienced. Sure, she’d never know what it was like, but she could imagine it. And she’d seen, more than once, what extremism in the name of a good cause could bring. “In my dreams, there was a man named Amon. He wanted equality, between benders and non benders. His methods were vile, but the original idea wasn’t. There was another man who wanted to tear down government and let the people control themselves, but again he took it too far, and then there was a woman who wanted to restore order, only for it to turn to fascism. Grief, anger, these things are all normal feelings, but taken too far…”
A hundred years, conscious? How had Helena stayed sane? “I’d say you’ve been punished enough.”
“Indeed, that was a lesson that took me over a century to learn. My emotions, both positive and negative, run deep within me, more than I tend to really let show. Though a quote from Frankenstein describes me perfectly: I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I shall indulge the other.” It was almost frightening how well that quote described her.
“Oh, believe me, I am nowhere near done.” Helena tended to argue that she hadn’t been punished enough. “I was unbronzed in 2010 by a man who was a former Agent turned evil. He had a plan and he needed my help to locate something from my home in London. Though a century being awake and having no distraction beyond my own thoughts and memories, my anger grew beyond what I thought a human capable of feeling. If I was mad before I had been bronzed, now I was something that had been broken, twisted and forged into a being who wanted nothing more than to end everything. Inwardly, I wanted my pain to end, but I am not the type to take my own life. So I was going to make the world feel my anger, hate and pain. I was going to kill every single living thing on the planet, but the Artifact that could do that had been broken into pieces centuries before. As I was no longer an Agent, I needed to work my way back into the Warehouse and be reinstated so I could gain access to Warehouse 2, where part of the Minion Trident was hidden. The other part I had located before I was bronzed and I...hid it on Christina’s coffin.”
It was a good quote, and seemed to suit Helena. Asami thought Helena was more the lover, though. The way she looked at Harley, or Christina…
Asami just had two questions. They were important ones, at least to her. She was keeping her cool, though inside she was filled with turmoil at this revelation. “Did you succeed? Or did you realize what you were becoming?”
Those were two good questions. “No. And that one is both yes and no. Part of me realized what I was doing was wrong and I did little things to let myself be stopped. Even so, I still betrayed the people who had become my friends. I had manipulated them. In retrospect, I fell in love with Myka along the way, though I didn’t know it until she put a gun in my hand, pointed it to her forehead and told me to kill her.” Of all the things Helena regretted, she regretted nothing more than what she’d done to Myka.
“In that moment, I realized how I felt about her and I couldn’t kill her. I had only needed to strike the ground with the Trident one more time and an ice age would be ushered in. But Myka didn’t want to die like that, she dared me to shoot her instead. Sometimes I wonder if she expected me to pull the trigger when she did that.” Love was a sneaky thing, and it had saved her in the end. She had sacrificed her life for love. A sacrifice Artie had undone when he had used the Astrolabe.
“But you didn’t,” Asami whispered. Whether she meant end the world or kill Myka, or both. Helena hadn’t. Sometimes, it took something shocking to snap a person out of the path they were on. At least, she hoped so. She wasn’t sure she could look at Helena the same way if she had. Though they were dreams and this was the real world. One could look at them as separate and Asami thought she might have to.
“No,” Helena responded. Honestly, Helena wouldn’t blame Asami if she did want to be around her after this revelation. It wasn’t easy to take, and it had been even harder to have experienced first-hand. “Myka saved the day, and I was taken into custody by the Regents to receive punishment for what I had done.” Which had been deserved, she had killed the man who had unbronzed her, but he would have killed everyone in the Warehouse when he’d gotten the chance, so really she’d just saved the Warehouse the trouble of dealing with him. And then given the Warehouse a new set of problems involving her.
“What happened then? What was the punishment? I can’t imagine any of this is easy for you to dream.” Helena and HG Wells were two different, similar people. Asami segmented them in her head, it was the only way to deal with it.
“There is an Artifact called the Janus Coin. It can store a person’s consciousness on it. As they decided not to kill me and that bronzing was too inhumane, they took my consciousness and put it on that Coin, then gave my body a new identity and a life for her to live. Helena Wells no longer existed, save as a hologram for whenever my expertise was needed to solve a case.” There was bitterness behind Helena’s tone. Being a hologram had been almost worse than having been bronzed. She really wished they’d just killed her, it would’ve been easier. Than the Astrolabe never would have needed to have been used.
Asami swallowed. “Why did they just...put you in a cell somewhere? That has to be more humane.” She thought of her father. He’d gotten thinner, wearier, but she didn’t think that was entirely being in jail. It still had to be better than being given a holographic form, or being made into a living statue.
“It would have been better for them to simply have killed me. It is what I wished them to do. If they had, then certain events I lived through would never have happened. And perhaps everyone would be the better for not having experienced them.” For one, Leena would still be alive. Artie wouldn’t have had to carry the burden of knowing he’d killed her while under the influence of the Astrolabe. Steve wouldn’t have died.
“Okay.” Asami nodded her head. She didn’t quite agree. She felt like almost anyone could get better. Be rehabilitated. Even her dad. She took Helena’s hands refusing to give up on her. “What happened after that.”
“My expertise was needed when they were tracking an Artifact that I had been on the trail of, but failed to acquire in 1893. It had surfaced again and several people died. Many more would have died if we had not tracked down the man who was using it. The rocket that I built with a colleague in 1893 had no power source, a fellow Warehouse Agent turned rogue, using this Artifact as the power source. He was aiming it for the Reichstag in an attempt to assert English dominance for another century. I stopped him from doing that by aiming the rocket for the stars. Then, in the 1960s, the rocket came crashing back down to Earth. A man died when it did. This man turned out to be the father of the man in the modern day who was using it to try and signal the aliens who had sent it and killed his father. I told him that I was the one who sent it, who was responsible for those people’s deaths. I managed to talk him down from using the Artifact on a stadium full of people, and the Artifact was taken back to the Warehouse.” Helena took a deep breath. No matter what anyone said, she was responsible for those deaths.
“That wasn’t your fault.” Asami would be yet another person to tell Helena this. Especially in light of everything else she was just told. “It’s no different than if someone took one of my cars and ran someone over with it.”
Sure, she’d feel guilty, but you couldn’t control the behavior of other people. But Asami was being hypocritical. After all, what her father’s company had done had made her feel guilty, and there’d been an extra degree of separation there.
“Perhaps not completely, but if I had done my job correctly to begin with, none of those people would have died and that poor man never would have lost his father like that.” Helena countered. Regardless of anything, Helena’s actions had set those events in motion. Without her hand, none of it would have come to pass.
“What was the alternative? The rocket exploding in London and dozens of people dying?” Asami shook her head. “I’ve learned that...sometimes there’s no good choice. There’s just the least bad choice.”
“There was no alternative. Innocents would die regardless of what I did. Though I had hoped that by sending the rocket to space, it would stay there. I did not know that it would eventually crash back down to Earth.” After all, discoveries about orbital decay and so forth would not be made for decades yet. “Regardless of any rationale or attempt to accept the situation, they are deaths I will carry with me for the rest of my life.” And that right there was the difference between Helena and other cold blooded killers. Sure she technically qualified as a serial killer, but she still had a heart and a conscience. She could recognize when she was doing something wrong, even stop herself from doing it.
But she did have berserk buttons, and when they were hit, she would stop at nothing to take down the person who pushed them.
“How many people would still feel that sort of guilt, if they were truly irredeemable,” Asami said. She squeezed Helena’s hands again. “You’ve still got a conscience, and a heart. And now you have insight into another world, and mistakes you don’t have to repeat.”
“No, I don’t have to repeat them. But I do know if something happened to Christina here, I would. It is one of my berserk buttons, as some would say.” Helena’s genius could be used for immense good, but it could also be used for intense evil if she wished it. And yet Helena was still leaving a good chunk of her story unsaid, but she wasn’t in a hurry to divulge that yet.
"I couldn't really blame you." Asami just prayed that nothing would happen to Christina, ever. "After you stopped this artifact. What then? Did they lock you up again? Put you in the hologram?”
“I was a hologram the entire time, actually. When they were done with me, I went dormant, I suppose you could say? The Coin could be inserted into a round device that projected my image. When they didn’t need me, they simply didn’t put the Coin into that device. I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually Myka, Pete and Claudia activated me and told me I was in danger. A man who wished to bring the Warehouse down was after me. My body, now living under the name Emily Lake, was no longer safe. After that discussion, another one happened in which Pete and I agreed that they should destroy the Janus Coin to keep Sykes from getting his hands on me and use me against the Warehouse. Myka was dead set against it. She didn’t want me to die, but I knew it was better that way. If the Coin was destroyed, Emily Lake would’ve been useless to Sykes. But, of course, Pete was not able to destroy the Coin in time. He was stopped and the Coin was brought back to Sykes, who had also kidnapped Emily Lake.”
Helena brushed a hand through her hair. “He put me back in my body, then carted me off to China. He had an Artifact in his possession which allowed him to control my body, so I was powerless to kill him, which I did attempt to do, or otherwise resist what he wanted. As it turns out, he needed me to open a lock to a vault of some sort. The lock had been designed by Caturanga, my teacher and mentor when I was recruited to Warehouse 12 in 1889. The lock was a game of chess. The player started the game in check, and the player had to win the game in three moves, otherwise they would be killed by a blade descending from the ceiling and into their head. The first attempt, I got a young man killed because I had no knowledge of this lock and no idea how to unlock it. I played by the rules of chess, but to no avail. Pete and Myka arrived and Sykes, controlling my body with his Artifact, made me put Myka in the chair so it was her life on the line. The first two moves were wrong and the blade was one move away from falling. I was too emotional and apologizing to Myka. She told me to take a breath and that I was going to save her life. Which triggered a memory of something Caturanga told me once. Shortly after I became an Agent, I took offense to having to carry a handgun, believing such things were unfit for civilized society. He agreed and that’s when he demonstrated the Tesla gun, which was a stun gun, using a Tesla Coil. When I said that that wasn’t standard issue, he said that when the rules do not agree with one, it is necessary to change them. So, I told Myka to move her pawn to put the King in checkmate, a very illegal move as the pawn was no where near that side of the board, but it was the correct move. The lock was opened, and it revealed that it was actually the back door to the Warehouse. It’s difficult to describe how the backdoor of the Warehouse, which at this time was located in the Badlands of South Dakota, was in China, but I’ve seen more impossible things happened because of Artifacts. Sykes entered the Warehouse, but not before rendering Myka and I unconscious by controlling Pete’s body and having him shoot us with his Tesla gun.”
What must it be like to have one’s life dictated by others so thoroughly? Asami remembered, somewhat, from her father and the Equalists. But she’d always been independently minded. She supposed that was why she’d betrayed him. Because what was right was more important than family. “Myka had a lot of faith in you.”
Helena was highly independent minded herself, but she’d resigned herself to her punishment. It was the least she deserved for the things she’d done. “She did. Sometimes I think she had too much faith. Though there were also times she didn’t have enough faith in me.” Helena was referring to when they’d crossed paths after Helena had moved in with Nate and Adelaide. “I loved her, but I never told her how I felt. After how I manipulated and betrayed her, I neither had the chance nor did I think she’d be receptive to my feelings. She isn’t one to handle emotion well at all.”
“Sounds like some people I know.” Asami still had hold of Helena’s hands, and she had no intention of letting go just yet. “But if she did love you, she’d forgive you. That’s kind of how that works.”
“She did forgive me, eventually. I didn’t think she would since she values trust above most other things, and I broke that.” The fact that Myka had forgiven her was really telling, but Helena had known better than to put her heart out on the line. She never did so unless she had undeniable proof that the other person felt the same way about her. Myka had never quite given her that kind of proof, so she’d never taken that gamble.
“I think she loved you. I don’t know if that makes anything better.” Asami knew that anyone could love anyone, and that didn’t always mean anything. But she thought there were things about Helena worth loving.
“We will never know for certain. Besides, she deserves someone who won’t betray her the way I did. And she did find him. Apparently.” Helena was still completely baffled by how Myka had ended up with Pete. It had seemed to have come out of nowhere, but Helena wasn’t going to say anything negative about it to Myka. She wanted her to be happy, regardless of what that meant.
“Uhm. I ‘m sorry.” Asami finally let go of Helena’s hands. “But if you look at it, you’ve got a second chance here. With both Christine, and your love life. I mean how many people would put up with the dreams and also still be willing to, ah… share.”
Asami wouldn’t be able to share. Honestly, she’d had to pretend half the time that Helena was single and the other half of the time remind herself that she and Kit weren’t dating.
“I do, and I am not taking it for granted. The luck I lacked in my dreams I seem to have in this life. Thus far, anyway.” Helena probably just jinxed herself, but at least she had happiness here, and a family. “To be fair, I tended to share in my dreams as well. Moreso in Victorian times, but that was also the time. I never married, and was frequently the mistress. I had more male lovers in that time, but I still had my female ones as well.” A bit of a smirk came across her face, one of her favorite lovers having been Edith Ellis.
Asami’s cheeks flushed, and she ducked her head almost bashfully. “That must have been quite the scandal then. Was it really as prudish a time back then as people like to think?”
She made the mental note to look up Edith Ellis sometime. Long dead, but still.
“In a manner of speaking. It was one of those no one ever talked about it because it was impolite conversation, but everyone knew it was happening. What irritated me the most were the double standards.” Helena rolled her eyes. She’d had to deal with that at a time when women had very few, if any, rights and freedoms. She had been a woman born a century ahead of her time. “But it was made easier with friends like Oscar Wilde and lovers like Edith Ellis.” And she was more than happy to turn the conversation away from herself directly, even if the rest of her story had some heroics and redemption in it. She still didn’t find it easy to talk about her death.
“I’m sure they helped make it easier. Friends always do.” Not for the first time that day, that week, that month, Asami longed for hers. She had a few here. Too few, but she always had few. But Zelda had left, and Korra, Mako, Bolin and Opal were nowhere to be found. Not to mention all the lovers who’d skipped out on her. “I hope I can too.”
“When you let them, they do.” There had been a point where Helena had stopped letting them help. She’d been in too much pain and had too much anger to truly listen to them. “You already do.” Helena assured Asami. Helena didn’t have that many friends, at least not ones that she’d tell them everything she’d just told Asami.
“Though before it slips my mind, I received one of my inventions last night. I was wondering if I may move it to the lab where we work? I do not wish it to sit around my house where my daughter or my wife could get their hands on it.” Helena knew Harley was the curious type, and tended to push buttons she shouldn’t. So really, the shrink ray should be moved somewhere more secure.
“I’m glad I help. And I’m glad you let me.” It was one of the things about life that Asami liked. Helping people that mattered to her. And Helena mattered to her. “That’s a good idea. A lot of your work can be dangerous without the right safeguards.”
She wasn’t judging or anything, it was the truth.
Helena chuckled. “Only when testing the limits of physics and getting things to work. I do not build weapons.” That was one thing Helena never did. She never built anything that could hurt or kill someone. “My shrink ray isn’t exactly harmful, but having a child and a wife who likes pushing buttons she shouldn’t, it isn’t safe in my home. It is also a bit on the large side and my workroom isn’t big enough to support it.”
Stopping the building of weapons had been the first thing Asami had ordered as CEO. Even when it might help them turn a profit, she hadn’t built weapons. It had been hard times. But she’d been very, very careful. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally step on someone.”
Just then, Helena’s phone got a text. It was Christine.
>> I lost mom
Building weapons was a slippery slope, even if it started off as being for the betterment of humanity. Helena had never liked lethal weapons. Ones that stunned people? She could do that, but she’d never built such things. “Precisely. Do you have a truck that I may borrow to move it? It’s fine if you don’t, but thought I’d ask since we’re here.”
Hearing her phone ping, Helena pulled it out and her brow furrowed a bit in confusion.
>> What do you mean you ‘lost’ her?
“I’ll call up the office, have one of our trucks come pick it up,” Asami said. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had her people pick up something unusual and potentially dangerous.
>> She was shouting about some guy named Rick Moranis and then there was a flash of light.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh bugger me,” Helena said with a groan. Rick Moranis meant nothing to Helena, but the flash of light did.
>> I’ll be home shortly. Don’t go anywhere near that room. And keep the dogs and hyenas away from there until I get back
“It would seem Harley has already shrunk herself. Forgive my abrupt exit, but I must get home before one of the dogs steps on her.” Or worse, Christina could shrink herself as well, and then Helena would be left freaking out as only English people could freak out.
Harley would be so disappointed that Helena didn’t get the “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” reference. But she was a little busy trying to mount and ride an ant.
“Do you need some help?”
“I may, if you do not mind.” It could be difficult to find Harley, though luckily someone small enough to fit inside someone’s veins couldn’t cover a whole lot of ground. But magnifying glasses would be needed. “You wouldn’t happen to have any microscope-strength magnifying lenses would you? Or something similar?”
“Lets get a coffee to go, and we’ll swing by R&D and the way to your place. I should have some goggles for both of us that would help a great deal with finding your wife.” Asami felt like this had been inevitable.
“You may have the coffee, I’ll have a tea.” Helena really wasn’t a coffee drinker. She preferred tea. “Thank you, I do appreciate the help. It may take two of us to rectify the situation.” Really, Helena should’ve called Asami first thing when she’d found her shrink ray and stayed home to ensure no one got accidentally shrunk. This was what happened when she was too distracted by dream bleedover.
Asami put in the order, then quickly led Helena to her motorcycle. “Hold on tight, I’m going to take a short cut and it’s not exactly safe or legal.”
It was actually incredibly hairy and dangerous and Asami got them to FI R&D in record time. She emerged from her office with two pairs of goggles and handed them to Helena before she rocketed them to Helena’s house.
Luckily for Asami, Helena could hang on tightly when it counted. She held on for dear life, not minding the inherent danger in the shortcut that was taken. Time was of the essence, after all. The more time that passed, the harder it would be to track down Harley. Once at her house, Helena went to the door and went inside first.
“Christina, I’m home and my friend Asami is here as well.” Of course, the announcement came with the typical stampede of the four legged pets they had. Helena braced herself. Christina came rushing after them.
“Sorry, mummy, I tried to keep them with me like you’d asked.”
“It’s alright. But perhaps you could take them to your room while Asami and I look for Harley?” Helena said, giving each dog and hyena a pet.
“We should step carefully,” Asami murmured, putting the goggles on once they were at the workshop. The right lens was the one that zoomed. She was working on something a little more high tech for her suit, but for now this would do. She used it for very small machine-work.
“Indeed.” With the dogs and hyenas with Christina in her room, there was less chance of someone stepping on Harley. Helena put her pair of goggles on and got down on her hands and knees. “The shrink ray is this way. Starting in that direction might be the best option. Harley shouldn’t have gotten far unless she found some other means of travel.” By which she meant riding on insects and the like.
Asami crouched as well, zooming in with her goggles as she tried to find anything unusual. She felt a little silly, but this was also pretty exciting. “I wonder what we sound like talking.”
She spotted something moving along the ground, but it was just an ant, sans rider. “Ant. No Harley.”
Helena zoomed in as well, looking carefully at everything. She especially looked before she moved at all. “That I cannot say. In my dream when I shrunk two of my friends, we communicated via bluetooth communicators the entire time.”
“Handy.”
Something buzzed in Harley’s ear and she swatted at it, then paused and tried to zoom in on what was flying around. “I think I just …. “
A bumblebee darted through the room and then circled Helena’s head.
Helena heard the buzzing and turned her head. Seeing the bumblebee, she zoomed the lens in on it, trying to catch a better glimpse of it. Though resisting swatting at the thing was difficult. Still, she managed to catch a glimpse of something. “I think I found Harley,” she commented.
“Your wife is riding a bee.” Asami sounded amazed. She wondered how Harley had pulled that off, and done it without being likely fatally stung. At that size, if she survived being impaled, the venom would be fatal whether or not she was allergic.
Harley was just very good at making friends with things that could kill her.
“She’s rather impressive like that,” Helena praised. “Alright, we need something to capture them safely, and then separate Harley from the bee. I do not think anyone wants to deal with a giant bee.” Helena kept her eye on the bee, then just held her hand out, palm up, to see if Harley would leap off of the bee and onto her hand or not.
"No wonder you married her." Asami flipped the goggles up and looked around for something to capture the bee safely in. There was an empty container, so she grabbed that, flipped the goggles back down and tried to track Harley.
"She's coming back around!"
If Harley did say so herself, she had a 3-point landing on Helena's hand.
Asami, meanwhile, saved the bee.
Helena grinned at that. “That is one of the reasons, yes.” Helena felt a little tickle on her hand and focused the goggles on it. And sure enough, there was Harley. “Harley’s in the palm of my hand now.” She carefully started moving towards where her shrink ray was so she could get Harley back to normal size.
Harley jumped up and down and waved, though she was too small to actually be heard. Which was a shame because she had a great joke about what would happen if Helena blew too hard.
“How does it work?” Asami asked, hoping Helena would explain the science while she worked?
Helena waved the fingers of her free hand in return. She then set about explaining how exactly the shrink ray worked. It was relatively straight-forward with an ingenious way it worked, hallmarks of all of Helena’s inventions. Helena also explained how to change the machine’s configuration so it could return Harley to normal size. Asami had the hands to do that. Helena wasn’t going to set Harley down until they were ready to enlarge her.
The science was amazing, and Asami was already thinking of applications. What if they could shrink a series of engines and computers. Would they be able to increase power? A super computer ten thousand computers combined but covering a single table top.
“I think it’s ready, lets upsize your sexy wife.”
It undoubtedly would have many potential applications. Helena just hadn’t used it for much more than shrinking people before. But now? Perhaps they’d need to experiment with that and see what they could get out of it.
“Alright.” Helena bent down and set her hand on the ground for Harley to hop off. She pointed at a spot on the floor, hoping that Harley understood that was where she should stand.
Asami just liked to think ahead. Helena’s science could revolutionize so many things. Imagine a car engine with 500 horse power, the size of a lego? Without all that added weight, and potentially less polluting? It was something to think about.
Harley moved into position and planted her hands on her hips super-hero like while she waited.
Once Helena confirmed that Harley was in place, she stood up and moved over to the machine. “Okay, stay clear of the front of this machine otherwise we may have an Alice in Wonderland incident.” Well, she didn’t know that for a fact, but certainly with the machine set to increase someone’s size, Asami or Helena would end up growing larger if they were caught in the beam’s path. And without further ado, Helena pressed the button and the beam hit Harley. Once she was back to her normal height, Helena switched the machine off.
“Something tells me Kit might be into that,” Asami joked, but she moved well clear of the machine, in fact standing behind Helena. She had no desire to change size in any form or fashion.
“I just came from a microscopic wonderland,” Harley announced. She bounced and threw her arms around Helena, kissing her soundly. “Sorry dollface! I got curious and you know what they say about curiosity!”
“Perhaps an experiment later on may be necessary,” Helena teased back. She wrapped her arms around Harley and kissed her back, laughing. “At least you are not a cat, then. But I will be moving this out of the house. I’d rather not have Christina accidentally press a button. Though how did you manage to ride a bee?” She was curious about that story.
Asami just blushed. “Maybe.”
“That’s probably a good idea. There was an epic fight with an ant.” She stepped back, fully revealing the torn state of her clothing, her clownish makeup a mess on her face. But Harley had had a lot of fun and she’d totally do it all over again. “Then I found Ms. Bee.” She started to quote the Bee Movie script. Someone stop her.
Helena’s eyebrows rose at Harley’s description of events. And she noted the torn state of her clothing. Hot, but Helena was going to control herself in front of company. And then Harley was quoting a movie and she did cut her off. “Well, that certainly is quite the sequence of events. I am glad that you enjoyed your adventure, love.” She chuckled a bit, then looked back at Asami. “When may I get that truck so we can move this?” Regardless of the when, Helena was going to pull out the power source so that no accidents would happen between now and getting it to the lab.
“It should be on its way already,” asami said. She pulled out her phone to send a few text messages. “Another fifteen minutes. I should have just used a helicopter.”
“It pays to have friends in high business.” Harley’s hand slid down Helena’s back to her butt as she studied Asami like Asami was a particularly delicious looking pie.
Pie.
Harley desperately needed pie, her mind in one of those states where it couldn’t stay on the same subject for very long. She recognized it when she got like this, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
“Excellent. I’ll pull out the power source so that there are no accidents while it is in transit.” Having a truck shrink suddenly while on the move would not be the best thing in the world to happen. When Harley’s hand moved to her butt, Helena looked at Harley, then noted the way she was looking at Asami. Helena slid her own hand to Harley’s butt and gave it a squeeze.
It was a good thing Helena thought of that. It had slipped Asami’s mind. That was a dangerous thing for her driver to possess. “Good idea.” She glanced at Harley and her skin flushed. “I’m taken now.”
Harley snapped her fingers. “Sucks to be me, but not to be you. Is it that Kit tiara princess person?”
“Never call her a princess, she’d probably stab you.”
“Oh, I like her.”
“I’m happy that things turned out well for you.” Helena may have been more than a little proud of herself for having helped give Asami the courage to have that talk with Kit. She then opened a panel on the shrink ray, grabbed a tool and went about extracting the power source.
“Thanks.” Asami tucked some hair behind her ear. “I should..let you two catch up while I go wait for the truck.” It was better than being embarrassed. Besides, she could text Kit. Not that she was infatuated or anything.
When she was gone, Harley gave Helena a smootch. “My hero. Sorry I touched your toy and everything. But it was kinda fun.”
She kissed Harley back, smiling. “I had a feeling you might press a button. Frankly, I’m more relieved you touched it and not Christina.” There would have been a lot more terse language and behavior used if that had been the case.
“I made sure she wasn’t in the room before I touched nothing.” If Harley took anything seriously, it was Christina’s safety. The girl was too young to be exposed to some of the things that the world offered. But her teenage years would probably be filled with a lot of enabling on Harley’s part. She would be the spoily mom.
“I am glad to hear that.” Helena knew Harley wouldn't put Christina in danger. Though she did loathe the teenage years. Helena didn't know how much of her Christina would have in her, but she'd do her best to not let her get out of control. Getting the power source out, Helena put the panel back on and checked a couple other things to make sure the machine was ready for transport.
“Any particular reason you invented Honey I Shrunk the Kids, or was it one of those ‘I had an idea and I had to do it’ kinda things?” Harley draped herself over Helena’s shoulder.
“The latter, mostly. Though it had a practical application when an Artifact became lodged in Artie’s heart. I don’t know how, but there was one small enough to travel through his bloodstream. So this came in handy in saving his life. I shrunk Claudia and Steve and injected them into Artie’s bloodstream so they could nullify the Artifact.” Helena said with pride. And why not? She was proud of her intellect and in being able to help a friend using one of her inventions.
“Oh my god.Oh my god!” Harley shrieked and bounced in place, clapping her hands. “Fantastic Voyage! You did Fantastic Voyage!” She patted Helena’s arm. “I just gotta say this, I gotta, but I am delighted at this development.”
“Fantastic Voyage?” That seemed to be another thing that escaped Helena’s realm of knowledge. “Clearly you are going to need to educate me on what that is.” She did enjoy when Harley taught her the things that she’d missed like that.
“It’s a movie where they shrink down to explore the human body through the bloodstream,” Harley explained. She squeezed Helena. “Baby, we’ve got to work on your pop culture!”
She laughed a bit, leaning into Harley. “Yes, we do. It’s a good thing I have you, otherwise I’d remain ignorant to these things.” Helena chuckled, then turned and slipped her arms around Harley.
“Mm. What say we …” Harley was interrupted when Asami entered, followed by a tall, broadshouldered woman who looked like she belonged in a wrestling ring.
“Okay Petunia, it’s right over there. It’s perfectly safe.”
Petunia nodded, and picked up the device like it was made of feathers and Asami led her out. “I’ll call you when it’s safe!”
Harley waited five more seconds then started to cackle. “PETUNIA!”
Helena watched as Petunia picked up the machine. Her eyebrows lifted a bit, but she’d seen far stranger things in her time, so she just accepted it. “Alright, thank you Asami.” She said, then looked over at Harley as she began to cackle and she shook her head in bemusement.
“PETUNIA!” Harley threw her arms out. “She’s a giantess and her name is Petunia, I LOVE IT!”
Clearly, this had made her day. Well, almost as much as the bee had.
Helena chuckled. “I rather enjoy the juxtaposition of her name to her appearance.” That was the sort of thing she tended to enjoy, playing around with words and such. It was an art she’d long mastered in both of her lives. She just wasn’t a published author in this one yet. Perhaps she really should put that English degree to some use as well.
She was hot, too. Harley liked big, strong women. Also small, dainty women. Women in general. Men too. And everything else. She climbed into Helena’s arms. “Riding a bee worked up an appetite. What’s for dinner?”
Helena wrapped her arms around Harley, holding her close. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. What do you feel like, love?” She could suggest something with honey, but that could be a tad insensitive to Harley’s new friend.
“Something sweet.” Harley was having the exact same thoughts. Besides, that was half the point of bees. All symbiotic relationship and all that. Harley was totally into that idea.