In a tiny video store in midtown, an alien was devouring the entire snack aisle. In spite of everything that had happened to her, and in spite of the fact that the Gordanian army was still looking for her, now that she had food in her belly and two free hands, Koriand'r was feeling more optimistic about her future than she had in a long, long time. She hadn't been sure this planet would be habitable for her kind; the discovery of sustenance was a welcome and unexpected surprise. She would eat her fill, take the rest with her in one of the translucent bags she had found underneath a long table, and disappear into this planet's wilds with no one the wiser.
"[Who are you and why did you kiss me?]"
"Eep!" In a flash of light and motion, Koriand'r had whipped around and aimed two glowing fists at the speaker.
"[Oh. It is you.]" The starbolts in her palms went out, and she eyed the strange blue girl curiously. "[We do not have this word, "kiss," on my planet.]"
"[You. put. your. mouth. on. my. mouth.]" She growled.
"[I see. Well then, I am] Koriand'r, Stella Ignis [in your tongue, and I put my mouth on your mouth that I might speak your language.]"
Raven was about to snap, 'well next time ask!', logic be damned, when the boys finally caught up with her.
"Yo, Raven! Are you in here?"
The three earthlings raced around a corner, and then drew up short. Instantly, defensive stances were assumed and the alien girl was alight with her strange green fire again. The two parties eyed each other wearily.
"Her name is Starfire," Raven said shortly.
"Ooh, ooh, you should introduce us," said Beast Boy. "So she knows we're friendly!"
Raven sighed, and said, "Hoc est Beast Boy, Cyborg, et Robin" pointing out each one in turn, "et sum Raven."
Starfire gave no indication that she'd heard their names, and she didn't stand down.
"Why does Troggar want her prisoner? What did she do?" Robin demanded.
Raven translated.
If it was possible, Starfire only shone more ferociously. ["Not prisoner, prize,"] she spat. "[I have done nothing! The Gordanians take me to their citadel to live out the rest of my days as their slave.]"
Raven's eyes widened, briefly, before her expression became steely. "She says the Gordanians planned to enslave her," she repeated.
"Aw, man," Cyborg said heavily. "Well, tell her that around here, we don't tolerate that shit, and she's not going back to them."
"Not on my watch," Robin agreed, nodding.
"Uh, don't you mean our watches?" Beast Boy asked.
Starfire was watching this exchange with growing confusion. Before Raven could translate what was being said, she asked "[Why can I not understand them?]"
"[Maybe because they're speaking] English [and we're speaking Ancient Latin.]"
Starfire's brow was still furrowed. "[Is more than one-?]" And then the wall exploded.
The blast nearly knocked Koriand'r off her feet. She took to the air and shot through the dust and rubble out of the very opening they'd created, flying right over their cruel spiky heads.
The Gordanians unfurled their wings and followed her, but at least she wasn't trapped.
Koriand'r twisted and darted through the open air, throwing starbolts and dodging claws. She heard the four bothersome youths run into the street, but she was unprepared for the green monstrosity that suddenly joined the fray. She nearly sent a starbolt through its leathery wing, mistaking it for a Gordanian, before it morphed into something big and heavy, crushing several of her would-be captors under its weight. The green beast turned back into the green grinning boy.
"[Choose your forms with greater care] clorbag!" She shouted angrily.
"What?" the boy shouted back at her.
"[I said, choose you - eek!]
A thick scaly hand had closed around her ankle, and the owner of that hand slammed her down into the pavement. No sooner had she hit the ground, than she was flying through the air again and slamming the pavement a second time, and a third. Koriand'r lay there, dazed. The Gordanian yanked her arms back. She felt the cool metal of a cuff close around her wrist.
"Oh no you don't!"
The weight of the monstrous Gordanian suddenly disappeared.
Koriand'r hauled herself up, cradling her head. She was stronger than 10 Gordanian soldiers. That one had caught her off guard, however, and resentment - at the soldier, at her self - boiled in her chest.
The metal man was wrestling with the Gordanian on the ground. He kept aiming his fists at the Gordanian's upper body - a mistake. The Gordanians' torsos were too well armored, their helmet holes too narrow for fists.
"[Go for the wings!]" Koriand'r shouted. But of course, he didn't understand her. The two kept grappling. Nearby, the blue girl was using her magic to snap the Gordanians' weapons in two, one electrospear at a time.
"[This is ridiculous!]" Koriand'r exclaimed, and so saying, she grabbed the girl by her cloak and kissed her smack on the lips. Again.
It was the Terrestris girl who pushed Koriand'r away this time. Her face was flushed, and her hair stuck out in all directions, like she'd been shocked by a rorphian zopgar.
"Stop doing that!" she yelled.
Koriand'r understood. That is, she recognized the individual words that were spoken and the meanings associated with each of those words, and she could have, in theory, strung the words together to understand the sentence in its entirety. But she had other priorities.
"Target their wings!" Koriand'r shouted, charging back into the battle.
Raven made a sound of disgust and walked away.
When the battle was over and the Gordanians had fled, Beast Boy exchanged high fives with everybody, even with a bemused Starfire.
"Haha! We totally kicked lizard butt! Wait… where's Raven?"
"She left," Starfire said. In English.
Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy all stared at her, and then at each other. It wasn't hard to connect the dots.
"FOOLS!" A massive hologram of Lord Troggar, leader of the Gordanians, suddenly filled the night sky. "The Earth scum were warned. Your insolence will be punished. Your city shall be destroyed."
The hologram dissipated. A bleak wind wound through the city streets.
"So after trashing a pizza place and a perfectly good video store, now we're one woman down, and we've managed to make a humongous space gecko mad enough to vaporize our entire town?" Beast Boy asked.
"Go team," Cyborg muttered.
Koriand'r rounded on them. "All the fault is yours! I commanded you to leave me alone, but you instead have followed me all the way around!"
"Our fault?" Robin exclaimed. "We're trying to help you! We freed you, we listened to you, and we helped defend you from the Gordanians, and you've done nothing but threaten and attack us!"
"Why? For what purpose do you help me!?"
"Because no one deserves what the Gordanians are trying to do to you." even if you are a rufflian wufflernelk went implied but unstated.
Koriand'r looked at her feet. The tidal wave of guilt that suddenly swept over her made her feel like she might never fly again.
"... you are right. And now your city is imperiled," she said. "I bring you a pology. If I could make it so I never accepted your aid, I would."
"Well, you can't," said Cyborg, "but you could always help us take down Old Trogey."
"He has an army," Koriand'r reminded him.
"And we have each other," he replied. "Plus the power of surprise."
Koriand'r looked assessingly at the three boys; at the clever shape changer, at the metal man with his bravery and his strength, and at the agile caped boy with a small arsenal of weaponry hidden on his person. And then she considered herself: a proud Princess of Tamaran. Her people were warrior people through and through; on an inhospitable planet, they thrived. Surrounded by hateful neighbors, they prevailed.
"Perhaps we will be enough," she said. For the first time, Starfire smiled at the odd assortment of earthlings before her. The caped one smiled back.
"C'mon," he said, "we've got a city to save."
.
.
.
"...Uhh, I don't suppose any of you can magically teleport us onto the ship?"
No one could magically teleport anywhere, so the four teens flew across the bay, timing their flight with a cloud that briefly covered the full moon.
From there, they found the rear maintenance hatchway, melted a few screws, and snuck in. Twice, they ran into squadrons of Gordanian soldiers before they finally reached the bridge, where Lord Troggar was preparing to fire.
"The earth scum will learn, it takes more than four juvenile heroes to defy the mighty Lord Trogaar!"
"We're not four heroes; we're one team!"
In the time it took Robin to make that inspirational declaration, Koriand'r spotted her objective. The boys launched themselves into battle with the nearest soldiers, but they were the distraction. Her role in this mission was to disable the particle weapon.
She made it about halfway to the control panel before Gordanians blocked her path.
"Troq," said one of the reptilian clorbags blocking her path.
"Gota," she flung back.
The first Gordanian that got in arms length of her was bodily thrown at the second two to get too close. Koriand'r rammed her way forward, throwing starbolts and punches and at times her whole body into the attack.
Just when they were about to overwhelm her, she flew up and over them. A few Gordanian soldiers tried to fly after her, but their wings banged into each other, and they all went barreling down.
Her wingless flight was an invaluable advantage in the tight quarters of the bridge. All she had to do was avoid-
ZZZZZZT!
-their electrospears.
ZZZT! ZZZZT! ZZZZZT!
A full-on volley of hot plasma blasts ricocheted off the ship's ceiling, like the upside-down acid rains of the Blatrivek Moons. Koriand'r couldn't avoid them all. They burned her where they scraped past her armor, but she would not be deterred.
She fought her way to the airspace above the control panel.
Koriand'r couldn't learn written language systems through lip contact, but she was a princess, with a princess's education. The writing on the panel was familiar to her. It was clearly Numu-Boen in origin, which was unsurprising. The Numu-Boens were renowned for their ship-building prowess. It didn't surprise her to learn that the Gordanians were pirates as well as slavers.
There on the panel was a big blue button that said "disengage weapon." It was guarded by a knot of well armed soldiers.
Koriand'r feinted once, twice, then dive bombed the control panel.
The guards spread their wings, forming a living green wall. A wall with barbs; Koriand'r caught an electrospear inches from her face. She redirected it to the side and elbowed its holder in the face. More spears jabbed at her, forcing her back.
In the tussle, she saw the lever that pointed the forsaken thing was unguarded. She launched herself at it and pulled, aiming the giant particle weapon into the sky. Hands grabbed at her, yanking her away from the controls. Koriand'r fired more star bolts; the lever was welded in place. An electrospear jabbed her under the ribs. She crumpled. Soldiers grabbed at her limbs. The people of Earth were safe.
This was a very Tamaranean way to go, she thought, as she burnt the Gordanian soldiers restraining her hands until they let go, screaming, and were replaced by three more.
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!"
Koriand'r wasn't really sure what happened next. All she knew was that when the fire and the darkness receded, only one woman was left standing.
"Raven!" the earthlings cried in unison.
"You looked like you needed the help," she said, leaning heavily on a support pillar.
The floor around her was littered with fallen enemies. Koriand'r wondered, with an unexpected pang of squeamishness, if they were dead.
They were not.
Lord Troggar rose from the ashes. He loomed over Raven. The small girl didn't move. Koriand'r could see she had no more energy left to fight, only dignity. Lord Troggar raised his weapon—
Two separate blasts knocked him back down.
"Alright, I'm only gonna say this once," Cyborg said with a grin. "Booyah."
The highest-ranking Gordanian to regain consciousness chose to retreat rather than antagonize the Earth—or the five teenagers—any further. Their massive spaceship disappeared from sight just before dawn.
"That's quite a view," Raven said, gazing at the collection of blues and lavenders and greys spilling across the bay.
"Somebody oughta build a house out here," Cyborg agreed.
"Raven?"
It was the first time Starfire had addressed her by name. She turned to regard the alien girl. Starfire's expression was solemn and focused, and Raven had the scathing thought that she should prepare herself for more surprise unwanted lip contact. Just as quickly, she smothered the thought. The monks of Azerath were always chiding her for her temper; it was Raven's greatest personal flaw. If the monks were here now, they would remind her to be both reasonable and charitable in her judgement: Starfire had English now. She wasn't a desperate fugitive making desperate decisions anymore.
Raven was still frowning. Cyborg made a show of giving them some space and walked over to the west side of the island—which was bullshit. Raven knew he had cybernetically enhanced hearing.
"[What?]" she asked, choosing her language carefully.
Starfire took a deep breath. Raven could see her emotions were in a whirlwind again, though beyond that they remained as incomprehensible to the empath as they had all night.
"[I am sorry]," she said. "[It has been explained to me that "kissing" has different cultural implications on this planet than on my homeworld.]"
Raven swallowed her lingering—illogical—anger. "[It's alright. You couldn't have known.]"
"[I could not,]" Starfire agreed. "[Yet still, I must apologize. I used you, with no more thought than the Gordanians give when they use people, and that was most abominable of me.]"
How surprising. Raven's lips quirked, and her interpretation of the girl in front of her suddenly became a lot more charitable. "[...I forgive you.]"
Starfire's burst of joy was so bright, she lifted off the ground.
"[Wonderful!]"
"[But seriously? Ask the next time you kiss somebody.]"
A/N: I'm trying to learn to let sleeping oneshots lie. And I really liked this story as a oneshot - I liked where it began, and ended, and that it was a single scene, short and simple, like a painting in prose, or a mouth punching another mouth. I was going to leave it alone. Really. But y'all left so many nice reviews last chapter, I was really hoping I'd thing of a good enough idea to continue. Lucky for all of us, my friend got obsessed with this trope, and shared some more Starfire Kisses Raven First fics (there are several of them out there! :O) with the discord, and now I have so many ideas. Like, 2-3 more chapters worth, at least. Thanks Kunai. And thanks to all of you :)
Love, peace, and chicken grease,
Juniper