Time Compression spits him out into water. Chlorinated, lukewarm water, at that-- Seifer slams through the surface tension, hits the bottom, and comes back up sputtering like a drowning cat.
At least he can swim, instinctively pulling himself to the edge, Hyperion dropped on the fancy tile surrounding the pool before it takes on any more fucking water, and hauls himself out as well. Hiss coat tangles around his boots, sending him ungracefully stumbling forward, coming face first with the barrel of a gun, and then the blonde on the other end of it.
He's an idiot sometimes, but he's not stupid-- his hands come up. -burntchild
Helga Sinclair does not expect the small clock above the mantelpiece to chime Two. It wakes her from a nap she never intended to take over a desk that she never wanted to be seated at... in a house she never wanted to work in.
Life after Whitmore was not the life she had wanted. If anyone asked her years ago, she would never have dreamed of leaving the Military, even if it was with honors. She would never have thought she would be out of action, away from the battlefield and the strategy tables that she had grown to love and respect. To prove the men who sneered at her and rolled their eyes and said she couldn't make a career of military life to be proven right.
This was 1912. Surely, she had believed, this modern world was one she could make her own.
Sitting at a small mahogany desk, papers skewed about her like shrapnel talking about military expenditures on a minute scale, was not how she wanted to live her life.
But Lyle knew that. He knew that she hated this... but that she would hate leaving the whole lifestyle behind out of modern sensibilities of mourning and womanhood. He gave her three years of mourning. Three years of going crazy in her own mind with boredom and sadness and regret. He scooped her up, patted her back, and showed her that this was not the end for her. She could rise from the ashes of tragedy. All she needed was a foothold back in. A chance to prove she was still her old self. And then he introduced her to Preston Whitmore.
Helga brushed her bangs from her face and reoriented herself by focusing on numbers and charts. Iceland. A wealthy man's pet project to find something that didn't exist. They called it Archaeology. She called it a fool's dream.
How desperately she wished to dream, too.
A loud splash caught her attention, and blue eyes shot to the window of her tiny office. The room afforded her a magnificent view of Whitmore Manor's extensive grounds. Shrubberies, a French-style garden, statues, and a rectangular pool surrounded by ornate tiles in a fashion the house's owner called Turkish, and she called garish. She stood and walked to the window, peering out through the glass for the source of the sound. They were too far from the Potomac for her to hear anything from there. And so, her gaze fell to the pool, and the choppy waters, and a figure within.
Helga snatched her Mauser off of the desk where it had been acting as a makeshift paperweight, and bolted down the stairs. Taking them two at a time, she thanked her stars that Whitmore had no opinion on her wearing pants.
"All the better for your job, don'tcha think?"
He was not the worst boss she had ever had.
She sprinted through the house, avoiding most house staff by virtue of the hour and ignoring those she did cross. The kitchen door took her onto the cobbled patio, and here she saw a welcome sight: another house guard, and a very alert German Shepherd straining at his leash.
"Follow me." As if she needed to give the order. With a wave of her hand, she instructed the guard towards the pool. Approaching, she caught sight of something bladed and shiny coming from the agitated surface, landing with a graceless metal clunk on the tile. Her run slowed just in time for a hand to come out of the water.
Helga pointed her pistol down into the water, aimed where the intruder's head would surely raise. At her side, the Shepherd sniffed inquisitively at the metal whatever.
"Get out of the water. You have thirty seconds. And keep your hands where I can see them."
