Fantasy So Night Follows Day by TMaskedWriter

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"The same way Susan would have known if she'd been there, Julie. Between The Thing and your daddy teaching you how to kill a man with your bare hands, you've never been physically assaulted." She paused, and her eyes moved to look at mine again. I nodded again and hers moved back to Julie's. "Or worse. There are things you think you get; you can certainly empathize with them, but you can't really get them. I'd rather die than let you get them, Julie."

"Dad taught me to defend myself." Julie replied, a little offended, but also seeing Helen's point and backing down.

Helen gave a laugh that turned into a cough because she'd been inhaling at that moment. As she was coughing, she turned to me.

"The Colonel didn't teach... his little girl 'self-defense.' The man was... Army Intelligence. What he taught her..." She reached for a bottled water, took a drink, and recovered. "Was something called the Fairbairn Fighting System! The mixed martial art developed for undercover OSS agents in World War II! It's also known as 'Gutter Fighting' and 'The Art of Silent Killing!'" She looked back to Julie. "Which he always refused to teach me, for some reason..."

Julie turned to me.

"Dad felt it'd be safer if I just looked out for Helena, rather than teaching her how to do a chin-slam takedown."

Helen gave a little smile at that and spoke to me.

"It's really cool to see, too. If you've got the fingers for it like Julie, you can nail the prick in the eyes with the same move. Even if you don't have her reach, go for the balls AFTER that move. You have to have met the Colonel when you came to Anchorage for the wedding. You'll have a guy his size on his knees and you'll still have hold of the fucker by the nose." She tried to show the move while sitting down, then turned back to Julie. "So yes, I can assure you that those pricks in the warehouse deserved far worse than anything you'll see on the video, but I had other shit to take care of in the morning."

Julie nodded in agreement. The discussion had been settled. Whatever Helen did to those fuckers, they had it coming.

"Well," I said. "It's a martial art, right? That means it's art, so of course Julie's going to be great at it."

Helen patted Julie's knee. Julie smiled.

"One of the great tragedies of this world, Susan, is that this woman has focused her efforts on the physical and graphic arts, and has never picked up a musical instrument or tried to sit down and write a poem. Because there's no way she wouldn't be brilliant at either of those as well. Your logic is infallible, Mr. Spock."

I think I gave Helen the biggest smile I'd ever given her at that.

"Thanks for that." I said. "I'm wondering, though: Why hasn't Whyte struck back yet?"

"You guys are here." Helen replied, taking another drink, and putting out her cigarette. "He still hasn't mentioned you, Susan, but he's already figured out that Troy and Julie know The Thing, too. He tried to play it off this morning as 'it just now hit me,' but he had to have come to that conclusion long before now. Between that and knowing I'd have some kind of protection on you all, I think that maybe he's seen or heard your name, but hasn't dug into their lives enough to connect you to them. If he'd sent any private eyes to watch your house or follow you, Roberto and Enrique would have immediately dealt with them and reported it to me."

Julie nodded in agreement and spoke before I could ask what "dealt with them" might entail.

"If he came across the name Susan Bailey while snooping into Troy's business." Julie added. "She'd just be another one on a list of all the people Troy invests for. I'd think he'd at least notice that you've got the same address as us, though. Troy would either file away anything with the potential for identity theft, or shred it and hand-deliver it to the recycling plant; so he wouldn't get much out of going through our garbage. A lot of paint and lube on his hands, maybe."

"It's something I'll have to ask him about." Helen replied, lighting a new cigarette as the limo rounded the corner where Neighbours was located.

I'd been to the place before. An all-inclusive dance club which, more importantly for our purposes than being a tolerant and friendly environment for all genders and preferences, was open and doing solid business on a Tuesday night. It wasn't usually the sort of place where they employed red carpets and velvet rope barriers, but we were driving around for a little while before arriving, so that by the time we got there, it would be packed like someone world-famous had announced to Twitter that she was going to be there a couple of hours before. She might have also confessed to be a filthy little slut who loved it up the ass before Julie's tweet got deleted and another was posted, with a winky-face "PSA from La Contessa" warning of the evils of handing your phone to your friends when you're all hammered.

"You command the waitresses at restaurants and bars to bring you the mocktail version of any drink you order or someone in the place buys for you. Or you do apple juice in a whiskey glass, like Dean Martin." I told Helen. "You haven't had a drop since this morning at the summit. None of us have; we've all been staying sharp for whatever Whyte throws at us next. Why would you tell Twitter that you're wasted?"