Lucid dreaming, or what I had assumed to be lucid dreaming, a whirling realm of every kind of LSD trip rolled into one doesn't normally clue one into the reality of the situation.
How often would I get to taste the colour nine or hear the softness of greed? Not like I did drugs. Though I definitely knew people who did, and psychedelic rock was the foundation of my favoured musical tastes.
Did you know that Corporal Clegg had a wooden leg? He had a medal too. In orange, red, and blue.
But, as a player of White Wolf's Exalted game, when an incredibly beautiful silver person started speaking in what should be gibberish at me, I start to wonder. Like wonder if I had been playing too much recently if I was seeing a being who was presumably Luna, speaking in a language I couldn't understand yet understood fully.
Silly conceptual languages.
I don't remember, later, what she said. Except for 'good luck, have fun' before she/he/it (I wasn't sure in the first place and Luna is what Luna feels like) kisses me on the forehead, laughs when I cop a feel, and pushes me deeper into synesthesia and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Tumbling through the smell of the feeling purple isn't really what one would call healthy, so I throw up.
Probably not the best way to end the day but fuck you, Giant White Tree Person Alien Thing I'm floating past. Eat puke. Yeah, that's right, look offended scrub. Motherfucking hashtag rekt. All over your face like you're some dirty bukkake ladyboy asian porn star. Neener fucking neen-
Don't let anyone fool you, but the white light of life? Hurts like a bitch. I ain't proud. I'll admit I passed the fuck out.
Of course, I remember this… fever dream in bits and pieces, as I start to wake up, so comfy in my bed. I roll over to get the sun out of my eyes.
There is some polite coughing.
"G'way, sleepy Mei," I mumble into my pillow.
"There are better places to sleep than the roof of the Themysciran Embassy, young lady," came a strong female voice. Far too loudly. My response is a raised middle finger in her general direction.
She sighed, and then my covers were stolen.
"You evil bitch!" I hiss as I scramble to the end of my bed, hiding behind my pillow, eyes bleary. I usually slept naked, so. Yeah. Then I fell over because there was no wall where there should be a wall.
"Ow," I groan, idly noting that my ass cheeks were not cold, because I was wearing PJs. Blinking the bleariness from my eyes, I looked upon my purple, blue, and silver moon and rabbit (holy fuck these things were bitchin') flannel pajamas.
There was no return to sleep at this point, so I rub the final bit of drowsiness from my eyes and look at the evil, terrible person who stole my covers.
She had the gall, the gall, to look amused. In a chiton? Was that what they were called? The classical Greek sheet clothes with a belt. She rocked the look.
"You are a terrible person."
"You were sleeping on my roof," she counters.
"Touché," I say as I stand and stretch, "Though I didn't go to sleep on your roof, whoever you are."
I trail off as I look down at my breasts. Breasts. MY breasts. Huh. I pull open my pj bottoms, to make sure I got the whole package, rather that I was short a package. Sure as the sun rises.
Maybe that was why the white light hurt.
Giant White Alien Tree Person Thing, you are going to get dick punched so hard the universe is going to feel it. Not that being female now was a bad thing, but it certainly was done without my permission, and that is far more important. I can always freak out later, if I was going to have a freak out. Perhaps the up/down side of an active imagination, a high IQ, and ADD is wondering, actively, what it would be like to be the opposite gender or sex.
"Well, that's a thing. Anyways, introductions. I'm Mei," I stick my hand out for a shake, and give the (rather beautiful in a very classical sense. Statuesque, I think is the word. Like there have to be Greek and Roman statues floating around that this lady looks like or vice versa.) woman a friendly smile, falling back onto my female persona, born from my first Exalted campaign.
"Diana of Themyscira, a pleasure," she takes my hand, she's got quite the good grip, "If you would come with me and we can get this all settled."
She hasn't let go of my hand, and there is a tightness around her eyes, a bit of force to her smile.
I don't like it. I have done nothing wrong, and I will not be treated as if I have until there is proof that I have. I jerk myself to her, I can't pull her. I scrunch my face up, and 'get in her face.' She's tall, probably as tall as I had been, but I'm shorter now. I really only come up to about her chest.
"I hate," I hiss, "when people assume the worst about me. I like to think I'm a good person. Actions speak louder than words, and here you made the first truly hostile move."
She opens her mouth to retort and I spit into it. Her eyes widen and she gags. I have no idea how I'm going to ge- A flash of silver and a twisting sensation, and I'm much smaller and no longer in her grip. I scamper away and over the roof's edge. Instinctively, I know I am now a rabbit, and that I can survive whatever height I just jumped from.
I honestly think I left a crater, a small one, in the pavement.
I don't really look back, that would only slow me, I just look for a large bush or something. The larger peripheral view is weird, but how to properly use it comes to me as naturally as breathing. It's a nice neighborhood in a city somewhere. East coast, United States, seems likely given the architecture. There's also a lot of vegetation stuffed into corners in order to beautify the neighborhood.
Diana flies down off the roof, fury and thunder marring her face. She spots my white hide easily enough, and darts in after me. I almost don't make it into the bushes. It's certainly not a perfect hiding spot, given my colouration, but it does stop her from just reaching in and grabbing me.
There is a snapping of twigs and she does just reach in. I manage to wiggle away.
"Fuck off, you crazy fuck! I woulda co-operated, but nooooo!" I screech as she keeps reaching for me, "You had to assume that a person randomly appearing on your roof asleep in a bed is nefarious!"
"And how am I supposed to know that you are not?"
It's a good point, but I'm not feeling very generous.
"Did your mother teach you to treat guests and refugees like assassins? Or are you just too stupid a cunt to learn?"
She reaches again, much faster this time and nearly nabs me, there is another flicker of silver and shadow. Now, I see her reaching into the bush from a vantage
point above her on the wall. This is… this is too much.
Fever dream, gender-swapping, shapeshifting, and teleportation? Oh, and talking while I'm a fucking rabbit. Then I had to 'fight' Diana of Themyscira, otherwise known as Wonder Woman. What in the Nine Realms is going on? I'm in the DC multi-verse? As a Lunar Exalt.
I swallow, my little rabbit throat bobbing. More twisting, and I sit on the wall with a thump, staring at my hands. The noise draws her attention, and boy doesn't Diana look ridiculous with twigs in her hair.
I look up/down at her. Her hands are on her hips, I'm honestly a little surprised she hasn't attacked me.
I am so fucking lost right now.
"I think I might need some help. Truce?" I ask in a small voice.
Her face softens considerably, though more hardness is there than I'd like. Probably shouldn't have spit in her mouth.
She sticks her hand out, palm up.
Shakily I stand. I wobble down to actual upright, worried that I might fall. I take her hand, and Diana pulls me along, considerably gentler than I expected.
XXXXX
"No, absolutely not. How do I know you won't use it to get me to answer questions I don't want to answer?"
The room is… nice. Well furnished. An 'interview room' in the Themysciran Embassy. But there are hints of it being not so nice.
"The lasso only compels you to tell the truth, not answer," Diana lies, golden rope in her hands. I've figured out generally where I am, and it's really only added to my frustration, and to my level of freaked out-ness. This is one of the DC universes. I know the Lasso of Truth does a lot more than compel simple truth to come from my lips when I want to answer a question in most universes.
"And I'm supposed to believe you? Can't we do this the old fashioned way, and build mutual trust, extending beyond a first little bit?"
"I swear to you," she says solemnly, "upon the Lasso of Truth, that I will only ask you questions that pertain to my security and the security of those under me."
I give her the most skeptical look I can manage. There were things I thought fictional that apparently aren't that I know are more bullshit than that Lasso, and I'd trust in them, before I'd trust Diana with that thing.
"So because you don't trust me, you expect me to trust you. Yeah, that makes sense. Especially when divine artifacts that are unknown to me are involved."
My arms get crossed under my bosom. Ha! There's a plus, I can actually use the word 'bosom' and it won't be half as weird as it would be if I were male.
Diana gives me that look of 'Do what you're told' that she must have learned from her mother, because I haven't seen any evidence of Troia or either Wonder Girl. I stare back, defiantly. Then Wonder Woman sighs.
"My colleagues will be here soon, they will get to the bottom of this."
"And I will likely never trust you or them because of it. All you have to do is simply ask, I will answer with honesty in the answers I give."
I open my arms in a welcoming gesture. I would, with some minor omissions.
If I'm running on Exalted mechanics, motic physics, or whatever, then Diana seems immune, or is because of the Lasso, to my charisma. Of course, her mental defense stats could be off the charts as far as I'm concerned. She is a demigod or supernatural 'creature' with something like eighty plus years of existence.
She frowns at me, and we wait in silence, until I break it.
"I'm... afraid, for lack of a better word, of the interaction between the Lasso of Truth and my Keter soul," I tell her, my face about as serious as I can make it.
"Your 'Keter soul?' What do you mean by that?"
Finally, she sits across from me, her frown changing to one of slight worry, her eyes betraying her curiosity.
"I," I pause here, gathering my thoughts, "know a lot more about the origin my powers, despite being so new to them, than I should. For one in my position. I wear a Moonlit Crown, made from the Moon's Silver, jeweled with evolution and impossibilities, and trimmed with the Jade of the Five Dragons."
I take a deep breath. And let the power flow.
"I don't think I'm ready to see beyond the veil. Into the realm of maybes, and unreal things. This is why I ask that you ask, and trust. It is no more than I did out in the street."
Her frown deepens, before she winds the Lasso all the way up. I slump, acting a teen again, my arms splayed along the table, my cheek resting on it. My eyes flick up to her face, and I give a cheeky grin.
"I still have to wait until your 'colleagues' interro- I mean, interview me don't I?"
Diana smirks and nods, her eyes dancing with amusement.
"I'll answer their questions then. But I'd better get a super sweet room here or something."
Her brow creases in confusion.
"You are to be returned to your parents."
I snort in reply.
"I didn't even know Themyscira existed outside of the Amazon mythos from over three thousand years ago. I'm not from," I wiggle my hands, "the local universe or whatever. You have an embassy, and I've always been pretty good at geo-politics and history. As far as I'm concerned you and this place shouldn't be real. Now, tell me that you are going to be able to send me across dimensions to the right one, and that my parents will continue to accept me despite how inhuman my powers make me."
My parents actually would, but it'd be a lot less smooth than than if I'd been coming out out of the closet. (That had been a particularly funny April Fool's Day for me.)
"Your powers don't make you inhu-" Diana starts as I change into a bunny. Twisting, flowing, into another 'right' shape.
"Really?" I arch my bunny eyebrows.
Her face cracks and she starts laughing from her belly. I sit there perturbed and a little confused. Eventually, she starts to calm down but it takes a few restarts, and me changing back to a human shape.
"Sorry, just," she breathes, "You were so cute and so-"
And she's lost to the giggles again. Where is the Goddamn Batman when you need him? Might as well roll with it.
"Fuckin' ay right I was cute. Cutest goddamn fluffy bunbun ever, and don't you fucking forget it."
That sends the both of us under, and it leads to the discovery of partial shapeshifting.
What? You try making a bunny scrunchy nose motion and having your nose actually move to the right shape for it. Then I got to have a surprised bunny face.
Then the Goddamn Batman shows up, with a male Zatara in tow.
XXXXX
A/N: Tryna get back in the saddle, though a little late to the party. Enjoy the adventures of Lunar Exalt SI Mei in YJ.