Body Double
Part 1 PG-13 Serenity Sea(Serenity_Sea@yahoo.com)
Author's notes: I was bored while waiting for inspiration to strike me on my other stories and this is just something that hit me after extreme jet lag and being awake for 22 hours. Enjoy.
Summary: Post-Reunion. When a freak Meta-human accident/explosion occurs, Helena and Dinah switch bodies. Hijinks insue.
* * * * *
"Everything going smoothly?" Oracle questioned from their linked comms.
Helena rolled her eyes at Dinah. "Everything's juuuuuuust peachy." A loud explosion went off in the distance and she shook her head.
Dinah smothered a grin and barely had time to question, "Oracle?" Before the details started pouring in.
"Okay, the black and whites have all gone either MIA or injured on scene. There was some sort of explosion and I think that may have caused the radio silence—"
The air 'whooshed' behind her and Dinah sighed. "Um, Oracle, I think we need a location before Huntress goes off to the wrong crime scene."
"Right, sorry. I'm triangulating the signal now… okay, it's on Morrison and 5th. And Dinah, be careful. We have no idea what we're walking into here."
"Right."
* * *
When she didn't see Reese at Oracle's location, she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It could be good, because maybe he hadn't gotten injured… or it could be bad, because maybe he had and now was out of view. The whole train of thought was starting to freak her out, so she raced to the ledge and peered over.
"Huntress? What do you see?"
"Not much, though it smells like someone was manufacturing stink bombs. I'm going in for a closer look." She jumped off the ledge and landed next to a particularly charred set of bones. "Oh, gross."
"What is it?"
"Looks like a bunch of people got toasted. Where's Dinah?"
Footsteps sounded behind her and Dinah appeared. "Right here. What's up?"
"Can you do that touchy-thing to dead people?"
She looked a little weirded out. "I don't know. Oracle?"
"Hey, don't look at me for this one. We know that we have no idea what your limits really are. But if Huntress is asking you to do what I think she's asking you to do… make sure you're okay with it first. It could be some pretty gruesome stuff."
Dinah looked at Huntress in askance. She sighed, "I just want you to touch the remains of charbroiled Bob here and see what you get. I don't think a human with a blow-torch did this, but it's not out of the question. Some people have a lot of rage…"
She looked at her dubiously. "Okay, but I'm not making any promises." Then she crouched down to the pile in question and gently laid her hand atop it. There was nothing for a long couple of seconds and she was about to give up when—
Everything suddenly went monochromatic shades of black and white and every color gray in between and she saw someone standing in front of her. To her right was a tall man with light hair and soft colored eyes, Helena's Bob, she assumed, and it appeared to be a woman's face from in front of her. From very far away, she thought she could hear Helena's voice but before she could do anything about it, there was a bright flash as she was suddenly thrown out of 'Bob's' mind.
"That was freaky."
"What did you see?" Huntress and Oracle asked, almost simultaneously.
She rubbed her temples wearily. By the time they got back to the Clocktower, she was going to have a massive headache. "A person… a woman," she corrected herself, remembering the need for correct details.
"Did she have long black hair that stuck out from every angle?" Huntress asked, sounding a little strange.
Dinah thought back to the image. "Actually, she did," she stumbled, trying to get up. "And these weird looking eyes. They were purple."
"And these eyes," Huntress continued, sounding strained, "were they—I don't know—" she chuckled nervously, "—sparking, almost?"
She had a really bad feeling about this. Dinah slowly looked up and met the description of her vision and Huntress' questioning—in the flesh. "Yeah," she gulped.
"I thought so."
The woman looked at them and purple sparks flew from her skin.
Huntress reached up and touched her earpiece. "Oracle, I'm going to say this is a Meta, specializing in all things electric."
"Hold on. Stall her for as long as you can, I'm accessing the Meta-database now."
Dinah and Huntress continued to keep an eye on their company, albeit warily, and ready to move at any second.
"Oh no," they heard Oracle say.
"It's never a good thing when she says that," Huntress looked at Dinah.
"I hate it when she says that." Dinah said at the same time.
They had just enough time to react when the woman flipped and two bolts of lightning flew their way.
Huntress back-handspringed gracefully, landing on the sidewalk to the left. "Just when you thought you'd seen it all," she murmured, waiting to see where she'd strike next. "You find one with foot-powers. That's sick, in a strange way."
Across the street, she heard Dinah yelling, "Hey, you think you could have warned us about that?"
"I tried," their red-headed friend replied, "that was what the 'oh no' was for."
"Next time," Dinah rolled over, dodging a bolt of lightning, "try faster."
"Hey Zeusette!" Huntress called, tapping her foot. She heard Oracle choking on something and felt Dinah's look of shock. "What? So I picked up a little Greek mythology in High school, is that a crime? I was only there because Mr. Mythology was a major hottie." The raven-haired female was glaring at her. "Oh, sorry. What am I, designer leather-clad for nothing?"
The woman altered her course and starting coming towards her instead.
Oracle had an idea and privately commed Dinah. "When she gets in the middle of the street, tackle her. You and Huntress can double-ambush her that way."
"Gotcha," Dinah got up from the ground and stealthily made her way back to the fray.
"Do you talk?" Huntress asked, ducking another punch and keeping an eye on her opponent's feet. The punches came faster and one almost gained purchase on her shoulder. "Guess not," she switched eyesight and started to fight back. From the corner of her eye, she saw a blonde head inching her way towards them.
Then it disappeared and before she knew it, Dinah'd tackled her instead of the bad guy. "I'm sorry!" Was all her partner had time to get out before a bright light went off in their faces. Helena had just enough time to cover her eyes before it all went black.
* * *
The next time Helena opened her eyes, she wished she hadn't. There was a big white light above her and judging from the slight padding underneath her, she was in the lab in the Clocktower. It wasn't like she hadn't been here enough times to remember what it was like. The question was—
"How did I get here?"
Well that was weird. She and Dinah were close, to be sure, but close enough where they were reading each other's mind—oh wait. That was fully possible. She pushed up from the table, carelessly knocking aside the slight cover Barbara insisted on using.
"Oracle?" Dinah called, though Helena couldn't see her. "Where are you? And where's Dinah?"
Okay now it was annoying. That kid better get a grip on her powers, because the next thing Helena started thinking was going to involve pain and lots of it. That was just weird. Why would Dinah be asking for herself? Helena turned around to see if she was resting next to her on the other bed—it sure sounded like it—and gasped when she saw herself. Or, more accurately, her body.
Now she didn't know what was worse. She was either dead or having an out of body experience. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she flinched.
"Jeez, Barbara, don't do that. You scared the hell out of me."
Barbara frowned. "How's your head?"
Helena was about to ask her what the heck she was talking about when she became aware of a dull throbbing pain in the back of her consciousness. "Fine until you asked about it," she mumbled under her breath. "How's Dinah? Is she okay?"
The redhead's expression was extremely wary. "Dinah, is there any reason why you've been talking about yourself in third person?"
Helena put her hands up slowly, "Whoa, whoa, WHOA. I'm not Dinah. I'm Helena. Barbara, you feeling okay?" She tried switching her eyesight, to see if anything was off. That wasn't right. It wasn't working. "Barbara, my eyes aren't changing. Something is seriously wrong here."
She leaned forward and brushed a hand against her forehead. "You don't feel warm."
"That's because I'm not. I'm not the one with the mental powers. And why are you calling me Dinah?"
Barbara wordlessly handed her a silver tray normally used for holding her chemicals.
Helena's eyebrows rose, but she held it up to her face just the same. She'd been through this routine before, when Oracle was trying to impress on her that not all scrapes were fixable via Clocktower. What she saw made her do something she hadn't done in a very long time.
She screamed.
* * *
Dinah woke up to the sound of screaming, which wasn't too strange, considering her new line of work. What was strange, however, was that it sounded familiar. Eerily familiar.
"Okay, can we please cut the sound here? My head is killing me," she said automatically, remembering how she'd used her powers before. Her voice sounded odd; deeper than usual and with a sort of lilt to it. She sat up and looked around, her eyes settling on the empty bed next to her. "So much for that idea," she muttered, sliding off the bed.
Her legs felt more stable than they usually did after straining her powers like she had just done. Maybe she was healing faster. It wasn't unheard of, Helena did. Helena. Speaking of… "Helena? Oracle? Alfred? Anyone?" When she had made it around the two large tables covered with varied looking but scary chemicals, she saw Barbara.
And herself.
"What the hell?" She asked, her voice suddenly sounding a little more recognizable.
Her double turned around with fire in her eyes and she reflexively put her hands up in classic surrender pose, backing away. "Don't kill me. I just want to know what's going on." The 'her' came closer and she tensed. "Hey. Back off."
Suddenly, her world changed from normal colors to green and varying shades of red. The red represented the warmth in the room, almost like an infrared scan. It reminded her of the time when she used the funny looking glasses at the dockyards. She didn't like it very much, and blinked, trying to get it away. When she opened her eyes again, the view was normal.
Barbara, who seemed to be watching her with an almost disrespectful curiosity, suddenly smiled. "Aha. Dinah, Helena, come with me into the Clocktower. I have an idea."
Helena? Where was Helena? Dinah shrugged, moving into the familiar path with an almost sinful ease. If her body healed and moved like this from now, she could definitely get used to it. The person who, for all intents and purposes, could have been her twin, shoved her aside, following Barbara almost on the heels of her chair.
When they got into the main area of the lair, Barbara had her sit in the same chair she'd been put in when she first arrived at the Clocktower, when they'd checked her brain. She reached to move her hair aside and her fingers grasped air. Puzzled, she ran a hand over the top of her scalp, only to be met with thick, short hair.
"Hey guys? My hair's gone."
Barbara smothered a grin. "Not quite. Sit still for a minute while I scan you, okay?"
Wondering why she wasn't freaking out in a situation when she ordinarily would have didn't leave much time for thinking about anything else and the process, which took less than a minute, was over before she knew it. Barbara made noises that would have meant progress, in normal situations. She didn't know why it felt so weird this time, but she knew it wasn't normal.
"Dinah?" Barbara asked, moving things around on her desk until she found her bag, whereupon she reached inside and withdrew what looked like a makeup compact.
"Hey, Barbara, I know I was just in a fight and everything, but don't you think now is maybe not the time to be refreshing my makeup?"
That all-knowing half smile was back. "Just take a look in it—Helena, why don't you go take a seat where Dinah just was."
"I don't know why I have to do this," her twin muttered, answering, for some reason to Helena's name, "I can tell you've already figured this out."
"The chair please," Barbara ordered gently in her no-nonsense tone she usually reserved for occasions when Huntress was being especially stubborn. This time, when she scanned, actual words formed. "Just as I suspected."
By now, Dinah had opened the compact and was currently staring in shock at the face on the other side. "Hey, Barbara, I think your compact is defective. Either that, or you pasted a picture on here. Otherwise why is Helena looking back at me?"
"Because," Barbara settled in her chair comfortably as she turned it around to face the two of them, "You've switched bodies."
* * *
Dun DUN DUN!!!! Am I a horrible person or what? You know the drill. Review. Review. Review. Do I need to say it one more time? Okay. I will. Review. I'd like at least 15-20 to continue onto part two.