| BOP 2.0 |
[Sep. 1st, 2008|03:48 am] |
It was 3:50 am when I started this. It's 5:04am now. My only excuses are (a) sleep deprivation, and (b) maybe like Iron Man the 1.0's are just too quaint to appeal to me as they do with other cripples. So, in that vein, without spell checking...
Helena Bertinelli flipped her phone open and thumbed through its menus until the display showed a slightly relayed copy of where the camera was pointing. Her battery was still half-charged, even after a day of texting her friends and Twittering various updates about her social life. It wouldn't hurt her plans to leave the camera running as she quietly crept into position.
Following her prey had not been hard. Barbara Gordon and Zinda Blake didn't exactly blend in to the student populace. Gordon in her wheelchair and Blake with her stupid pilot's hat, which looked like it had been purchased from a Military Surplus store, might as well have been baby elephants walking through the halls as easy as they were to follow, and follow them Helena was.
In fact, she had been following them since a week ago, when she caught them sneaking out of school after everyone else left. Of course Helena had an excuse for staying late: cheerleading practice. A nerd like Gordon and a gearhead like Blake, both of them social pariahs, had no excuse, at least in her eyes. She wasn't sure what they could have been doing...making out maybe, building bombs more likely...but after a week of watching them, she was ready to make her move.
They were both in the science labs, which was fine by her. The science labs were actually two separate rooms divided by a half wall with windows on top. No mater which lab they were in, it would be a cinch to get in the other lab and take a photo from the other. It was just a matter of watching and waiting for both of their backs to turn to her.
When the moment arrived, Helena slipped through the door and carefully duck-walked across the floor, keeping her head below the partition. Only when she was next to the wall did she risk raising her phone just high enough to periscope over the half-wall.
"I knew it," Helena whispered. She watched the phone and witnessed Gordon pulling off her sweatshirt. They were going to make out! Gordon and Blake were lesbians. Now she knew, and soon so would the whole school. Her finger was about to press the green button to snap a photo when a hand snapped her phone shut, pulling it out of Helena's grasp. "How dare you?" Helena snapped, whirling around as she stood up, her surveillance forgotten. "Who do yo think...Dinah!"
Dinah Lance glared at Helena as she stuffed the phone in the hip pocket of her blue jeans. "How dare I?" Dinah as, putting a hand to her chest, "How dare you?" Dinah Lance was the only student Helena feared. She was a senior. Captain of the cheer squad. Homecoming queen. As powerful as Helena knew she was, it would be nothing if Dinah turned her forces against her.
"I was going to let the principle know," Helena explained. "Those two," she whispered, "lesbians are making out on school property."
Dinah shook her head. "Come with me." It wasn't a request. Dinah grabbed Helena's arm and pulled her into the room where the other two girls were. As they entered, Barbara and Zinda looked up, their faces smiling as they saw Dinah and then falling when they saw Helena.
"What's she doing here?" Barbara asked.
"Helena wants to watch you two," Dinah paused to look at Helena. Then she turned back to Barbara and Zinda to whisper, "Lesbians," returned to her normal volume, "make out."
"Make out?" Zinda asked. She was crouched on the ground, assembling some kind of frame. She stopped long enough to look between Barbara and Helena. "You didn't say anything about that, Skipper."
Barbara's lips quirked. "I'm willing to go so far as a hug if this works, but past that..." She shot daggers at Helena. "Maybe Helena was give you a little tongue. I heard she gets lots of practice, kissing up to teachers." Barbara made a couple of smooching sounds, to which Zinda shook her head before getting back to her work on the frame.
Helena jerked her arm free of Dinah's grasp. "Laugh now, Gordon," Helena shot back, "but when I tell..."
"Tell who?" Barbara asked. "The science teachers? The principle? My dad? Please, go on. Tell them you caught Zinda and I working on our fully authorized, completely approved science fair project. Just promise I can be there to watch when you do."
Helena's jaw dropped for a moment, but she snapped it shut. She scowled for a minute, trying to think of some comeback to cow Gordon's insubordination. She could take Dinah's treatment, that was the pecking order, but there was no way she'd take it from someone who couldn't even look her eye-to-eye.
Dinah seemed to realize what Helena was thinking, and interceded. "Since you're here, you might as well lend a hand, Helena. You need anything, Babs?"
Barbara smiled. "Yeah, actually." She spun her chair around, so her back was to Helena. "My laptop needs to be plugged in...there's a socket behind the big shelf, but it's out of my reach."
"You got it," Dinah said. She lifted the bag off of the back of Barbara's chair and unzipped the bag. "Hel, go plug this in," Dinah added as she handed Helena an orange extension cable. Helena looked at the wire for a moment before reluctantly accepting it. With her free hand once again free, Dinah pulled out the transformer-power-cable combo and began to setup Barbara's laptop on a table that was clearly the handicap accessible work station.
By the time Zinda said, "I'm almost done here," Barbara was working on her laptop. Dinah and Helena were sitting on a pair of lab stools, watching.
"You following me now?" Helena asked.
Dinah didn't reply at first. Instead she watched as Zinda pulled the frame, which bore a strange resemblance to a police chalk outline, in the same way a Visible Human science model resembles a game of Operation. Once Zinda plugged a handful of wires coming from Barbara's laptop into the frame, Dinah spoke.
"Babs' dad can't always pick her up, and since he knows my dad, and my dad knows me, sometimes I drive her home," she explained. "Today just happened to be one of those days." Dinah fell silent after that, and Helena didn't ask any more. That was all she needed to know: Gordon, and by extension Blake, had a protector. They were taboo for now. Off limits.
"Okay," Barbara said, just loud enough that everyone could hear, "we're ready. You know what to do Zinda?"
"Yup," Zinda nodded, "Start the macro. Terminate power if anything goes kaflooie. Run as fast as I can if anything starts flashing red." She grinned a broad, guileless grin after the last part, and Barbara returned her smile with a sour, friendly raspberry. "I made the last part up."
"You don't say," Barbara muttered. Despite her reply, the majority of her focus was dedicated to lowering herself from her chair to the floor.
Helena watched with morbid fascination as Gordon manipulated her legs with her hands. It was the first time, to her knowledge, that she'd seen the paralyzed girl out of her chair. Helena's attention was broken when she felt something hard and plastic knock against her chest. "Here," Dinah whispered, "take a picture, it'll last longer." Helena felt herself turn red as she took the phone back, and quickly slid it back into her pocket.
Barbara continued to position herself until she was lying inside the frame. Her legs and arms within its metallic outline. She nodded to Zinda, "Let'er rip!" Zinda tapped a couple of keys on the laptop and instantly the frame jumped into he air. It was only a couple of inches, but it was enough to make Helena startle.
The frame hovered a few inches from the ground, and it seemed to follow Barbara's movement. When she lifted her arms, it followed her. When she sat up, the frame sat up with he. When she stood up...Helena almost fainted. Almost but not quite. Instead, she blurted out, "But you can't walk!"
Dinah, Barbara, and Zinda all stared at Helena. Realizing her gaffe, Helena once again felt herself turn red. "You know what I mean," she told them.
"It's our science project. Nifty, huh?" Zinda, the first to recover, said to Helena. "Me and Skipper here figured out how to use one of the old Gravity Rods, donated by the Knight Foundation, to create a walking suit."
Barbara continued as the suit slowly began to walk forward. "Zinda built the exo-frame, I wrote operating code, and we're both going to take first place next week." Barbara walked towards Dinah and Helena. Hers steps...the suit's steps...were slow and awkward, but they were still steps. Once she reached Dinah, Barbara turned around and began to walk back toward Zinda.
When Barbara was standing next to Zinda, the blond gearhead looked up from the laptop to her friend. Barbara winked at Zinda. "You know, we wouldn't want to deprive Helena of her show. How about that hug, Zinda? She can take a picture and show it to everyone."
Zinda was more than happy to oblige with a hug, even though Helena didn't feel like snapping a picture. |
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