Who: Asami and Helena What: Asami shows off a project that she's been working on to deal with stuff When: Early May Where: Future Industries Status: Complete Rating: PG
Asami wasn’t really in a good place. Oh, she dealt, but she dealt by burying herself in her work. She wasn’t even that much of a workaholic, but with precious few friends and her romantic life once again in shambles, she needed something to do.
The electric storm that had recently passed through hadn’t helped. The Aurora had reminded her of the Southern Water Tribe and that had reminded her of Korra, which only made her heart ache worse. It would happen that after she’d gotten her heart broken for the umpteenth time she’d get a reminder of the woman she couldn’t have. It was depressing.
She’d gotten too close to Kit and Kit had bolted when she’d gotten her first opportunity to do so. Asami was beginning to think something was wrong with her.
There were times that Helena tended to curse her day job. Forensic archaeology was a line of work she really enjoyed, but lately she’d been drawn more and more towards the inventing and engineering side of life, skills picked up from her dreams and encouraged by her friendship with Asami. A choice would eventually need to be made about her job, but that time wasn’t now.
Helena had actually been prepping for a trial. The evidence was overwhelming, and she didn’t expect it to actually make it to court, but the prosecution was prepping the witnesses regardless. It was a lot of gathering her reports, going over every detail of all the evidence she’d examined, refreshing her memory of the case in its entirety.
Today, however, she needed a break from focusing on death, and focus on creating something. So she went to see what Asami was up to, see if they could tinker on anything. She brought a box of parts, see what they could make out of it. In actuality, the box contained parts from her time machine, the one she’d pulverized. But some parts had survived enough that they could be used in other things.
“Asami?” She called out as she stepped into the lab, wondering if she was there.
It took a moment for Asami to respond, and she popped out from inside some kind of large engine. She only thing she was wearing above the waist was a sports bra, and despite the grease and dirt on her body and face, her hair was clean. A little mussier than usual, but clean. She wiped her brow. “Hey! Sorry, got a little lost in here.”
The grease and dirt paired with the sports bra was very becoming on Asami. However, Helena didn’t linger on that all that long. She was here as a friend, hoping to help Asami by working. If Helena had a guess, Asami was like her, throwing herself into work and projects at all hours of the day when she was upset. In a roundabout way, it allowed her to work through her feelings.
“Looks like you’ve got a large project that engine is going into. Is that the surprise project or one of the ones I can know about?” She asked. Helena walked over to a table and set her box down on it. It was on the heavy side and she didn’t need to hold it longer than was necessary.
In her dreams, Asami had never been that into the business side of things, or let working on a project distract her from the people she cared about. But then in her dreams she wasn’t on a constant string of heartbreak and she had kind of thrown herself into working herself half to death during the three years Korra had been gone.
So maybe that was a habit of hers.
“I’m trying to make a more efficient engine for the airship. So I’m tearing this one down. I think it’s kind of a dead end, especially if I want to go green.”
Helena walked over to the engine, looking it over as she walked around it, taking stock of how it was designed. “How green do you want to go? And what’s the maximum altitude the airship can fly at? Solar power would be an option, so long as enough of it is installed. Depending on altitude, wind power. Perhaps even a blend of the two. Or something entirely different.”
Sadly, none of the parts that Helena had brought would help in this matter. They hadn’t been designed to physically move anything. But they could easily work on smaller things.
“That’s… clever.” Asami rubbed at her chin. “Five thousand feet for the open air deck. Ten thousand enclosed. It could probably go higher but I wouldn’t want to risk it unless there was an emergency. My tests cap out at twenty thousand, but I’d rather be on the safe side.”
She climbed out of the engine, and grabbed a towel. “Lets move onto something else. What did you bring?”
“I’m known to be clever now and again,” Helena quipped with a bemused smile. At any rate, it was something for Asami to ponder. Helena would certainly help build it if she was asked, but only if she was asked. She didn’t like just throwing herself into other people’s projects without being invited. It was rather rude.
“I brought some parts I had shoved in a corner. Some of them are damaged, but are still functional. Perhaps you’d have some use for them? Or something could spark an idea for something new.” If Asami started sifting through the box, the parts would come off as old. Industrial Revolution old. They also had a steampunk feel to them, something clearly that had come from Helena’s dreams. There was also evidence that someone had taken a large mallet to whatever they had composed before. There were clear dents and other such blunt force trauma markers among them.
“Clever and beautiful.” Asami thought Harley was lucky. Helena was a gorgeous and smart woman, brilliant. She’d never known she had a thing for older women until Helena. And now she thought she had a thing for older women.
She reached into the box, sifting through them. “Oh I love these. These would fit on my airship, just like they belong. What happened to them? They look pretty damaged.”
“I’m not the only clever and beautiful one here,” Helena responded. Despite her words, she was definitely not going to make a move on Asami. She was here as a friend, and nothing more than that.
“I thought you might be able to use them somewhere.” Helena said, letting Asami sift through it. “I took a rather obscenely large mallet to what they’d initially been part of.” She was silent for some moments. “They came from my time machine.”
“I already have a few ideas,” Asami murmured. She looked up from the box, giving Helena a sharp look. “... are you sure about that? Of course you’re sure about that, you hated that thing. I just hope I don’t accidentally turn something into a time machine.”
Helena gave Asami a small, tight smile. “I certain you will put them to better use. I lost my sanity to that machine. But you have nothing to fear. For starters, the time machine’s circuitry was completely fried when it showed up here. Secondly, all the parts that actually contributed to sending someone’s consciousness through time are not included in this box.”
“The pursuit of knowledge is its own kind of crazy,” Asami pointed out. As for revenge, it didn’t really exist in her bones. She was forgiving to a fault, rarely wanting more than to help others, even if there was no gain for herself. Though she appreciated new friends. “Are you sure?”
“Indeed it is, though sometimes we can become far too obsessed and become twisted by it.” Helena had learned that the hard way. These days, she tried to be careful to not cross the line into obsession with any of her projects. “Yes, I’m sure. I ensured to take out any circuitry and such out of the parts. They should all be powerless shells, more or less. There are some circuits in there, but they need to be repaired anyway. They are also 19th Century kinds of circuit boards so they would need to be rewired regardless.”
“Okay, I trust you.” Asami nodded, smiling at Helena. “Some of these might only be useful for decoration, but I’ll try to find functions for as much as possible.”
It seemed better that way to her. To use as much as possible to make Helena’s work actually be something, and be something good without all that heartache.
“At least they will used. They would simply collect dust in my house.” Helena didn’t want to try and repurpose them herself. While she was more stable than her dream self had been, she really didn’t want to chance it. Fate liked to burn her at all turns, so she was going to step away from this one.
Asami eyed her, thinking there was more to this than Helena was letting on. “... Come on, let me show you something awesome.” She grabbed her hand, and started to pull her through the workshop.
Helena was notorious for keeping some of her motivations to herself. Especially ones that were closely connected to the painful things in her dream self’s past. She took a breath, then smiled a bit as Asami took her hand and pulled her through the workshop. “Have you finished a project I didn’t know about?”
“Yes. Completely indulgent but a hell of a lot of fun.” Asami led Helena to a garage where a tarp was covering something. With a flourish, she pulled the tarp off, revealing a cherry red vehicle. It was sleek, three-wheeled with two up front and one in the back for steering. Unlike a motorcycle, it was enclosed, and two elegantly curved engines ending in exhaust pipes or like jets on either side.
“Rocket bike.”
Helena’s curiosity was piqued by Asami’s description. When they got to the bike, Helena looked it over in awe and fascination. She looked back at Asami. “Rocket bike? So it is able to travel into the upper levels of the atmosphere?” Helena doubted that such an invention could get them much farther than that.
“Ground rocket, for speed records.” Asami elaborated. “Though now I wonder if we could attach foldable wings... “ She took a step back, rubbing her chin and looking like she was suddenly a lot more ambitious. “Maybe with the right thrust to weight ratio we could even break atmosphere…”
Helena’s eyebrows lifted a bit and she looked at it. “Is it able to break the sound barrier?” She’d like to say that she’d never broken the sound barrier before, but her Imperceptor Vest probably did that. After all, wearing that, one moved faster than the eye could perceive. Though she had to smile as she got the gears in Asami’s mind turning. “It would still need some amount of fuel to help propel it once it broke the atmosphere. It would not be the best thing to suddenly be adrift in space with no way back down to Earth’s surface.”
“It should be able to aerodynamics-wise. It looks promising in the wind tunnel. The current world ground record is 1228 KPH. I want to match that, if not beat that.” She ran her hand along the cockpit. “It might need a bigger and better engine for that.”
As for space, Helena was right. It would need maneuvering thrusters. “That would add weight. I’d have to compensate for that.”
“I’m confident that you will be able to beat that record.” Helena said with a nod. Asami was a genius and would undoubtedly build an engine that would allow her to break the ground speed record.
“It’d also need to be reinforced to protect against the vacuum of space itself. Which is an entirely different animal than protecting against land speed.”
“So what you’re saying is I need to build a second model for going into space, if I want to still go for the land speed record.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and grinned. “It’s not like I’m low on time right now. No pesky being social to worry about.”
“You said it, not me,” Helena corrected with a chuckle. “And don’t get too smug about not being social. I will drag you out of here if you stay in here long enough. I know that’s kind of a pot meeting kettle moment, but sometimes it’s best to have someone around to get you out of your own head for a little while.” Helena spoke from personal experience on that. Her dream self had been more susceptible to such behavior. In this life, she’d had Christina that she needed to take care of, and she hadn’t been able to completely cut herself off the way she’d sometimes wanted to do.
“Can we?” Asami asked. She didn’t mean a date or anything, but suddenly the idea of going out was appealing to her. She never could turn herself into a recluse, no matter how tempting it might be and going out with a friend sounded like a good time.
“Of course we can. Is there anywhere in particular that you want to go?” Helena wasn’t certain just what, exactly, Asami was up for in regards to going out. There was going out for lunch, going shopping, going to a club, among many other things. So she’d simply let Asami choose, or at least give Helena enough information to choose a suitable place for them to go.
“Lets go dancing,” Asami decided. She took Helena’s hand. “It’s been way too long since the last time I went dancing.”