Intro: Here we have chapter 10. That being a big number and all, I wanted to make this one different, so I was going to do a whole big genera shift and try my hand a little tongue-in-cheek fantasy for a little while. I got a little of that, but then I began really writing, and I realized that this chapter was going to be huge, just enormous. It has actually come to the point where you can consider this whole section as its own little story, which means you may get a little tired of it before it's done, but please, persevere. It really is rather good, and we'll be back to new stuff before you know it. Just not that soon.
Chapter 10: The Journey—Part I
Edited by: Attara
NOTE: If Starfire seems more articulate than usual, it's because this chapter's dialogue is in Tamaranean, which she speaks very well.
Titan's Tower Med-bay
Starfire's disembodied spirit was surprised when a force of medical personnel rushed into the room, forked Robin's limp body onto a gurney, and promptly broke the now faded euphoric connection between her and her love. As she felt herself falling back into her body, getting ready to flip back into that terrible plane of loneliness, the thought occurred to her that, just maybe, Robin would survive. After that kiss, nothing, not death nor fate nor an armada of Gordanian warships, would keep her away from Robin one instant longer than she could possibly manage.
That promise settling into her mind even as she floated on the afterglow of the kiss, Starfire was swallowed by blackness once more.
Really, I Don't Know Where This Is
Starfire was rudely awakened by a sudden flash of pain and subsequent burning ache in her ribs. As the force of the surprise unwarranted blow bowled her over through cutting and poking plants, Starfire's eyes snapped open just in time to see a snip of blue sky before she rolled to a stop face down in some grass. Dismay competed with pain in her mind as she noted that it was the same wavering color grass as before, and that she could feel that she was still wearing the overly confining dress.
"Rise and Shine little princess," came an all too familiar, arrogant, female voice speaking Tamaranean. Her surprise at hearing this particularly unwelcome and unexpected voice almost made Starfire happy to hear it for the first time in a long time... almost.
"Sister?" she asked dazedly, gripping her aching chest as she came to her knees. When she turned to look at where the familiar voice of Blackfire had come from, the sight that greeted her was far from expected. Standing a few feet away from her was indeed a Tamaranean woman that looked exactly like her sister, long black hair (intricately braided here) and all. Unlike her sister, this woman was wearing ornate jet-black plate mail with silver chains reminiscent of a highly stylized medieval knight. She looked, to the best of Starfire's knowledge, exactly like the magical knights always looked in the animated 'historical documentaries' (what she thought they were) of Middle Ages human culture that Beast Boy and the others often watched. She thought, as her armored sister advanced, that they came from a place called Japan and had titles like "Magic Knight Rayearth" and "Record of Lodoss War."
"You have an awful lot of nerve princess, calling me sister after running away like that. You're lucky I don't slay you where you sit. I told you that if you wanted to live, you would cooperate with me," said Blackfire, her voice dripping with menace. Starfire was rather confused by Blackfire's dress and speech, she knew that she and her sister were on bad terms, but she had no idea what her sibling was talking about now.
"Sister, I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm curious why you are here. Have you also died and arrived to join our ancestors?" Starfire asked with sincere curiosity and apprehension.
Sporting a confused look on her perfect face, heavy braids of black hair bundled on top of her head flailing as she shook them from her eyes, Blackfire reached down and picked up Starfire by the front of her purple dress.
"Did I hit you harder than I thought?" she asked, almost to herself. "You're talking nonsense. I'm not your sister, I'm Dame Blackfire, Dark Knight of Chaos, and I kidnapped you three days ago from the armed escort transporting you to the wedding ceremony. Neither of us is dead... yet. Does any of that clear things up little girl?"
"Sister," Starfire began menacingly, her blood suddenly growing hot with the memory of her vow to rejoin Robin, "I don't know why you persist in this masquerade, but I will not be handled in such a manner, so please release me before I am regrettably forced to hurt you!"
"What?" Blackfire snapped, rage and utter surprise mixing freely as her grip on Starfire's dress tightened painfully, causing the unarmored girl to gasp. "I must have truly have knocked you senseless for you to say that. If you think for one moment that I'm going to listen to your threats as anything other than the TOTAL SH--" Blackfire was interrupted suddenly by the very persuasive argument offered by two flares of burning green energy smacking forcefully into her chest plate and flinging her backwards, blasting her grip from Starfire as the younger woman pulled away and hovered slightly off the ground, eyes glowing green with anger and star-energy.
"I am sorry, but I warned you sister, I have more important things to do than play dress up with you right now." The green glow faded and her eyes became visible from behind it before she continued, "I wish you luck for the rest of your afterlife here," almost cheerfully, waving quickly before turning to fly away. As soon as her back was turned, two beams of purple light flickered out and smacked into her back, the impact knocking the breath from her and sending her to the ground.
"I don't know where you learned star magic little princess," said Blackfire, voice dripping with deadly menace, "but attacking me was a big mistake. I am far better than you will ever be at star magic and the battle arts, and I can get nearly as much bounty money for your smoking corpse as I could for you alive." As she spoke, Blackfire advanced slowly, walking rather than flying as she normally would. Puzzling over this, Starfire almost missed the next attack. Dodging the first beam of purple burning energy from her sister's outstretched hand, Starfire launched a fistful of green distraction back as she tried to fly away. She simply didn't have any patience for her sister's strange behavior and refused to fight her without reason anyway.
Starfire managed to get a good head start before a loud laughing prompted her to look back. A quick glace over he shoulder granted her the sight of Blackfire riding up behind her on a huge horse covered in armor as jet black as her own. Its glowing red eyes flashed rhythmically as it galloped up faster than any horse she'd ever seen, even managing to gain on her steadily as she flew at top speed a few feet off the ground. Starfire watched in apprehension as Blackfire's eyes glowed a deep and vicious violet all the way through as she got ready to strike again.
"PREPARE TO DIE!" Blackfire shouted over the din of clattering hooves as she launched another powerful purple laser directly at Starfire's retreating form. Starfire managed to dodge the first one with a quick left barrel roll that brought her to Blackfire's other side just in time for the purple beam in her sister's left hand to flash out. Vision blocked by the billowing of her hated skirt, Starfire was nearly gutted by this one, only just launching a blast of her own in time to intercept it.
Giving no quarter, Blackfire kept up the assault without pause, forcing Starfire though a series of graceful but fervently rushed acrobatic maneuvers. As she desperately searched for some opening to strike back, her attention entirely claimed by dodging and intercepting her sister's attacks, Starfire never noticed the trap she was flying into. After one final pirouette in midair from Starfire, Blackfire shouted in elation and lashed out with a different attack.
With a wild swing of her right arm, Blackfire sent out a twirling and flickering rope of purple lighting that latched faithfully onto Starfire's right leg. The instant it touched her, purple lighting zipped up Starfire's whole body and began to torture her with nails of hot pain through every inch of her flesh. As waves of burning electrical agony ripped through Starfire's body, she had the final fading presence of mind to charge a huge starbolt and whip it toward the ground in front of Blackfire's speeding horse. The gelatinous-looking bulb of green melting annihilation slaged an eleven-foot crater in the wispy-grassed plains literally the same instant the horse's hooves touched it, sending the beast toppling forward with a resounding crushing sound.
As the combined thunderclaps of vaporized earth and tumbling, bending, cracking metal plates reverberated out of the pit, there was a respite from Blackfire's purple electrocution, allowing the forcefully suspended woman to fall gracelessly to the ground. Stunned from the pain, Starfire watched detachedly as a single armor plate slowly spun on its end like a top next to the crater, noting that the whip was still attached to her leg and the slack was pulling up...above her? The implication dawned on her just in time for the ground to shake with another enormous impact. The vibration caused the spinning metal plate to hop the small distance separating it from the lip of the pit, and with a pronounced sound of tumbling and clanging, it made a slow procession down a hidden pile of debris, the variety of sequential impact sounds telling the tale. Starfire's fear-fueled mind clearing at last, she turned from her sprawl on the ground to look at where the impact had originated.
The sight that greeted her at the end of the purple energy whip was Blackfire, bent on one knee in a deep crouch; her eyes closed and face down. As Starfire gazed at her armored form, she clearly having made a spectacular flip off the falling horse to keep in the fight, Blackfire's glowing purple eyes opened and she slowly looked up to stare at her younger sister. With a grin like the devil's own, she stood sedately to full height, holding the purple whip's base up in her right hand. A moment of quiet understanding passed between the two as a cool wind swept through the tall grass around them. There was the sound of that metal plate, which had been banging all along down the junk heap behind Starfire, whirring now as if it was spinning out its last vestige of momentum on its side. It stopped.
Simultaneously, Starfire flung a starbolt and Blackfire gave a huge sweeping yank on the whip, and in a blur of movement, the elder sister showed her edge, the flash of green destruction flying wide as Starfire's legs were jerked around above her, her whole body coming after in a faster-than-the-eye arc over Blackfire's head as she followed through on her jerk. With another resounding thud, this one of bones rather than metal plates jarring, Starfire hit the ground hard enough to leave a small crater, the force of her fall fueled by Blackfire's Tamaranean strength, the leverage from the whip, and gravity itself. When the dust settled, Starfire was within spitting distance of oblivion, and Blackfire wasn't done yet.
"So, little princess, do you see your mistake now?" she asked as she approached and stood over the fallen woman. "You are weak, I am strong. I will always win out over kind, sniveling, soft-hearted little wimps like you. Now it's time for you to pay for defying me. HA! Once you're gone, I can get my bounty, the treaty between the countries will be broken, and I will revel in the bloody battles to follow. I should have done this from the start... Now you will die, and I will be victorious-HA HA HA HA HA HA!"
"WOULD YOU SHUT UP!" came a male voice from the right of the nemesis siblings.
"What?" Blackfire managed to query as she turned to look over her shoulder in stunned annoyance. She couldn't believe that anyone would be foolish enough to try and intercede on behalf of her prisoner. Her concentration was so badly broken by the interruption that she didn't even notice Starfire's eyes gain a renewed green glow. Not that it mattered, since in the next instant, Blackfire was out of the picture.
Without warning, bars of silver light came flying in from the direction the voice had been in, striking Blackfire a dozen times before she even got herself all the way turned around. The instant the bars struck, they emitted an ear-splitting clang of impact and coiled like snakes around her armor, gripping her tighter than bent steel beams over and over again all over her body until she was entirely encased in silver loops from the neck down. The sound of the high-speed impacts was like a Caribbean steel drum in the hands of a demented, speed-hyped heavy metal drummer.
"AAGGH! WHAT?-HOW?-I'm going to KILL YOU!" Blackfire screamed incoherently as her eyes nearly exploded with purple death rays toward the figure that had ambushed her.
"I think not," was the calm voice's response, as another, smaller bar intercepted the lasers like they weren't there, reflecting the spray of death back into the landscape as it closed in with her face and effectively blindfolded her with a wet cracking sound of impact and a quick wrap around her head.
Letters of the English alphabet won't describe the sound that Blackfire emitted when the latest band of silver had strapped her eyes shut. I'll suffice to say that it was somewhere between a jet engine taking off and the tortured screams of a thousand souls wailing in frustrated agony and leave it at that. The piercing banshee's shriek of pain and anger cut to the bone, and it was all the stimulus Starfire needed to finish pulling herself together after the shock of her intimate meeting with the ground and subsequent unexpected rescue.
"He said to -SHUT- -UP- !" screamed an enraged Starfire loud enough to drown out Blackfire's wail, punctuating the statement with a full power bitch slap to the side of her sister's head. With all the strength in her taught Tamaranean body behind that one single blow, a spectacular impact was only to be expected—and boy was it ever delivered.
With the sound of a wet rag hitting concrete at 50 mph, Blackfire's silver-encased head whipped to the side, her scream died faster than that extra crewman on a Star Trek away team, and a huge pink handprint bloomed on her chin. Starfire stood stock still in full extension as her sister's head bobbed around on her neck, Blackfire's whole bound up body wobbling back and forth as it threatened to tip over. The immense (truly huge--it had kept her from flying after Starfire before) weight of her sister's armor and the new bars of silver stuff around her had prevented her from taking flight from the blow, meaning every drop of destructive force was concentrated on her head and neck. With a gentle gust, the wind added its opinion, and Blackfire fell ignobly to the ground with a clang.
Breathing heavily, Starfire fell to her knees, wide-eyed and ignorant of the world around her. As she panted after the spontaneous release of all that pent up aggression onto the most immediate thing threatening her, she only slowly came back to realization of exactly what she had just done.
"Oh! Sister!" she cried out finally, scrambling forward on her hands and knees to check on her older sibling's health. Arriving over the neatly packaged and completely unconscious form of her sister, she began to try and rouse some sense into her still form, hoping against hope that she hadn't managed to destroy her sister in a fit of escaping repressed anger.
"You really needn't worry about that thing too much Miss Starfire," said that same mysterious voice from before. The excitement of the situation having gotten to her, Starfire's rescuer had completely fled her mind, and now she turned quickly to see exactly who had saved her.
The figure that greeted her sight was tall young man dressed in much the same fanciful clothing as she and her sister were sporting. His pale skin was set off by the incredible depth of his midnight-black robes, which fell around him in sweeping cascades of velvet. Silver thread traced scribbly triangular patterns around his wrists and all along the trim of his sweeping robe, giving him a constant shimmer as he strode toward her. Odd arcane symbols were inscribed down either side of his robe's chest in the same silver embroidery, and these seemed to waver and twist impossibly as he moved, as though they were writhing upon his chest, trying to wiggle off to his shoulders and back. By far the most prominent thing about him though, was the huge, floppy, tanned leather hat he wore. At one point it had probably come to a point, but now the long tip was bent over and the whole thing drooped rather dramatically, casting his eyes in constant shadow so deep that she couldn't see them.
"Um, excuse me stranger," Starfire asked as she kneeled over her lain-out sister, cradling her limp head, "but who are you and why did you interfere with the fight between me and my sister? Such matters of family trouble are not the business of outsiders, not that I am not grateful for your timely intervention."
The stranger stopped walking and crossed his arms over his chest. When his long sleeves fell back, she could see elegant silver-mesh gloves covering his hands, each seat with a huge ruby on the back of the palm. He seemed about to answer her, but a few things occurred to Starfire quite suddenly, and she's never been one to hold back in a moment of revelation.
Beginning with a spectacular little intake of breath, she asked, "And how did you know my name?" Before he could even think about answering, another sharp inhalation introduced her second realization, along with "And how did you learn to speak Tamaranean?" Her third gasp sounded long and deep enough to test the lung capacity of a whale, also containing multiple adjoining irregularities that would have taken a tape recording and three hours to fully analyze, introducing what was clearly a shocking question, "And what is a non-Tamaranean doing in the realm of my ancestors? I did not think I had any other species in my family tree..." It was clear that Starfire was rambling to herself at this point, and the Stranger lost his patience rather quickly.
"Listen," he began irritably, "first off, you are not dead."
"I'm not? (stunned pause) OH JOYFULL NEWS!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, leapt up from her suddenly forgotten sister, and grabbed up the stranger into a huge Starfire-hug. The stranger was helpless to avoid the lightning-quick movement, and found himself being crushed by a woman easily capable of juggling cars. Air pressed from his lungs and taken by complete surprise, he could neither shout out nor use his powers to stop her, and found himself in for the duration. She finally let him down and he slowly recovered as she flashed up into the air and flew through complicated aerobatics in glee.
"HEY!" he shouted, when he had regained enough breath to shout, "I WASN"T DONE YET!" Starfire reluctantly returned to the ground then, and still too happy to land, she floated a few feet off the grass near the stranger's head.
"So, what's the bad news?" Starfire asked blithely, using an ancient Tamaranean expression that more accurately translates to: 'what information is going to bring me down from this happiness so fast that I'll have to hurt the messenger when I land to make up for it.' Stiffening visibly, the stranger continued anyway.
"As I was saying, you're not dead... you're in a coma. This is one of an endless number of dream worlds the mind retreats to when it can't occupy the body." This the stranger said in a calm deadpan tone, as if daring Starfire to blame the messenger as her question had implied. Rather than getting angry though (it really wasn't in her to get ticked at him over this kind of thing) Starfire merely sank to the ground, her body dropping much as her heart did, her expression shattering from joy to blank concern with near-mystical speed.
"I don't know if I believe you," Starfire whispered as she knelt hopelessly on the ground. It was unusual for her to not take someone on their word alone, but these were unusual times.
"Think about it for a moment. When you first arrived you were coasting on the brink of life and death, thus you were granted an out of body experience, and not a bad one by any reckoning."
"How did you—" she began, but the stranger waved her into silence.
"Afterward, you awoke to being accosted by your 'sister' here, who I assume denied being your sister and instead proposed some preposterous and cliché story about kingdoms and magic."
"Uh, yes, but—"she managed, before once again being overridden.
"Then consider your dress, which I truly can't imagine any self-respecting Tamaranean girl wearing willingly. Even me—I'm not wearing my usual cloths either, I mean, it's a neat look and all, but I'm more of a plain synthnar (high-tech cloth) three-piece kind of guy—comfort y'know?"
"That's right—"she tried once more, only to once again be cut off.
"And if that's not enough to convince you, consider that we're both speaking Tamaranean. You've been talking English long enough to do it out of habit, but this world is based off the core of your mind and memories, so it goes by your native tongue, the one you still think in deep down. I know a little Tamaranean, but I'm no expert, and I've been throwing out words I never knew while living there all those years ago. Heh, I'll bet everyone you meet here speaks it just as well as you do."
"I believe you now!" she cried out, the pain in her tone cutting through his rant quite efficiently. She had her head bowed under the pressure of the strong emotions she was feeling, and the stranger wasn't as tactless as to ignore that kind of signal. Her bent form was a rather heartbreaking sight, and the stranger finally shut up and let her say her piece from the ground.
"Will I never see my friends again?" she asked, tears welling in her eyes as sadness steamrolled her determination momentarily. A pause stretched out before he answered, and she used the time to catch herself, her back stiffening and determination hardening her broken face, her promise to rejoin Robin and her friends overcoming the moment of despair that was only her gentle nature shining through. She was willing to do whatever it would take to get back, and nothing, not even whatever bad news this stranger could convey, would shake her from that certainty.
"Now there's the interesting thing," began the stranger at last, in an inappropriately jaunty conversational tone. "You see, the type of coma you have here is called an Epic Narrative Type. Basically, you're knocked out of your body and into some particular piece of the dimension where dream energy and the subconscious mind manifest freely, the realm is populated with beings and entities based on your memories as modified to fit the rules of the realm you fall into, and the road back to your body is presented as the goal of some quest or another."
"Do you mean there's a way for me to get back?" Starfire asked, her eyes going wide with the force of hope burgeoning in her chest.
"Now you've reached the really interesting part!" the stranger said with a smile, as if all of Starfire's consternation and fear came down to a few trivialities of academic interest. It was pretty clear that he didn't feel all this was at all something to be concerned about, and this simultaneously reassured and annoyed Starfire, who felt that the workings of her mind should be treated with a bit more reverence than this.
"As one can tell by the cloths you were type-casted into so unscrupulously by the rules that govern this particularly unoriginal corner of the dream world, you are a bit player rather than a main character," he continued, putting a silver-clad hand to his chin as he spoke. At her look of confusion, he began to elaborate. "The goal of someone trapped in an Epic Narrative coma is never the same for two different people. In a world as predictable as this one, it's liable to be some kind of adventure to slay a monster or defeat some great evil. The problem I spot right away is that you're not in the role of someone who would do that kind of thing, not even in much of the more liberal work done in this genre of fiction recently. You've been given a passive role, that of a captive, and though you did a great job of giving that manifestation over there a good chase, the rules of this world would never have allowed you to escape, that's just not how it works. As long as you're a princess, you won't be able to wake from your coma."
"What are you saying?" Starfire asked, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice as her emotions took another flip from hopeful to crushed. For Tamaraneans, emotional stress like this did a particularly bad number on the mind, and Starfire had had more than enough to be disoriented for months. Only her unbreakable will was keeping her going at this point.
"Sorry, I just meant to say..." he began to apologize, stepping up very close and helping her to stand, allowing her to wipe the start of tears from her eyes, "...that if you want to see your friends again, we'll have to change your role."
Without elaborating further, the stranger stepped back one stride, held out his right hand, and snapped once (snapping with metal gloves on is quite a feat, no?). Rather than the tiny sound of a snap, the motion caused a veritable explosion, a crackling boom that nearly pushed Starfire back, and easily managed to blow over an increasingly large area of grass in an ever-expanding circle around the two. After a the explosion had died down to a distant crackling, the wind finished dashing around, and the grass returned to its normal wavering self, a surreal silence prevailed. Starfire was about to inquire as to just what was going on when just what was going on became all too apparent.
A sudden golden sparkle enveloped Starfire's feet, covering the short-heeled dress shoes she'd been wearing since Blue had lain that crusher to her back and head. With a weird sensation (there is simply nothing else like it to compare it to) it traveled up her body until it had covered her from toe to head. As it had been traveling up her cloths, the stranger turned away when it reached somewhere around her knees, taking a sudden interest in the clouds that still floated serenely by.
This behavior confused Starfire until she looked down at herself, when she realized that the light was making her cloths disappear! She shrieked slightly the instant she noticed, trying in vain to keep the golden sparkles from traveling above her waist. As these efforts proved futile, she threw an arm over the important areas and blushed deeply, even though there was no one looking as far as she knew. When it reached her head, she was left quite naked other than the golden sparkles that still haloed her hair. Starfire didn't know what to do, there was nothing to hide behind as far as she could see, only the all too short (now that she needed it, it seemed much shorter) grass that covered the hills.
Fortunately for the panicking beauty, this extremely undesirable situation remedied itself quickly when the sparkles turned from gold to metallic and began to travel back down her body, replacing her cloths only moments before she tried to fling herself into the grass for cover. The new outfit that slowly coated her body was such a huge improvement over what she had arrived in that Starfire nearly forgot her embarrassment over the method in which it had arrived.
"Are you decent?" asked the stranger politely, when there had been no sound for a long moment.
"These cloths are WONDERFUL!" shrieked Starfire happily, more to herself than as an answer to the stranger's question. Taking that as his cue, the stranger turned to appraise his work.
"I had a feeling that would do the trick," he said cryptically as he caught his breath slightly at the vision before him. Starfire's dress had been replaced by an outfit far more her style, though still adhering to the rather quaint manner of all clothing in this odd place.
She was now wearing a leather and metal two-piece that covered just about the same areas as her Titans uniform, with the top being purple-dyed leather with shaped golden metal plate mail over her breasts and metal links stitching everything together in an ultimately sturdy but scintillatingly form-fitting manner. As was her wont, an enormous polished emerald was set into the metal just below her throat. Her skirt was done in the same violet leather, with metal-linked and studded strips falling just above her knees much like ancient Roman Legionary armor. For modesty's sake, there was a chain mail skirt under the leather straps and a layer of lavender padding under that, so even while the individual strips of leather jostled around, it was only about as revealing as her old uniform was. She wore sandals of a sturdy build, with thin strips of bracing leather twining up her legs, holding on leather shin and knee pads. Her arms were encased in two elegant bracers of a composite leather and metal design, with the metal plates along the back of the arms beautifully engraved with intricate floral etchings, the ends of the gauntlets leaving her hands free. To cap the spectacular ensemble, her hair was bound by a golden tiara with long golden streamers threaded through her crimson locks, which were intricately woven into a thick bundle of braids that fell luxuriously down her back.
"Thank you so much!" Starfire shouted as she appraised her new outfit over and over again. She was floating a short distance off the ground as she twirled in the air and attempted to look at every part of herself, taking in the magnificent bracers and gilded breastplate. A look into her shiny armguard granted her a peek at the gorgeous tiara she now donned, and her eyes slid from that to the elegant engraving on the metal itself. Overcome with happiness, she turned to look once more at the complete stranger that had helped her so.
"Come my new friend, I must thank you for this glorious gift!" she shouted, flashing toward him though the air and trying to sweep him up into another hug. There was a slight problem this time however, because instead of impacting with him and wrapping her death-grip of love and gratitude around him, she flew directly through his figure and came out the other side. Mystified, she turned to look back at the stranger only to find that he was now looking directly at her as he'd been doing before, seeming to have turned around faster than Starfire thought possible. Just when she was about to voice the confusion written all over her face, the stranger began to talk, speaking with an oddly detached voice, like an answering machine or some other electronic device was speaking back a recorded message.
"Miss Starfire, I regret to have to leave you in such an abrupt and rude fashion, but there are a number of good reasons for my hasty departure. One, I had overstrained my abilities by changing your title in this realm from merely "princess" to "warrior princess," and was no longer able to maintain a meaningful presence there. Two, my intervention on your behalf broke many important interdimensional rules, and staying one moment longer would have meant my being caught and slowly tortured to death by the beings that govern those dream dimensions. Third and final, I don't think I would have survived your gratitude a second time, my spirit form being rather frail compared to your powerful vital energy in that place. Don't worry though, I have a strong feeling we'll have a much more lasting introduction in the not too distant future. I leave you with a final token of aid that you will no doubt find extremely useful."
With that closing remark, the illusionary double of the stranger dissolved slowly into a fine white mist, the transformation gradually consuming his image from either side until the last swirling vestiges had sublimed into the air. Rather than dissipating as the still confused woman expected, the cloud proceeded to come straight for her. Before she could even begin to react, the cloud had enveloped her right arm, causing a disconcerting burning and pinching sensation to spread through the whole limb. Squealing in discomfort, Starfire tried to shake and rub the stuff off of her, falling over herself in midair as she flailed, but the sensation persisted despite her efforts, and yet another transformation took place.
Like stop motion photography of a vine growing, a white tattoo bloomed and twined up Starfire's arm, seeming to crawl like a living thing out of her palm and wrap itself oh so slowly around her. Coming in jerky gasps of movement, a thin, snakelike image of perfectly even white scales carouseled around her forearm and up over her elbow, spreading even further then to twirl a few times around her upper arm and creep past the back of her shoulder, along her shoulder blade, then up to her throat. Freaking out now, Starfire emitted a scream of terror as she gripped her neck, nearly able to feel the thing under her hands as it came up on her right side, twisted around her neck twice, then came around from the back of her neck and slithered onto her cheek, finally stopping just inches from her right eye. The sensation died instantly, leaving no trace or memory of it in her body, its sudden absence causing her scream to die just as abruptly. Left oddly devoid of feeling, Starfire slowly turned her gaze toward the stark white mark now covering her arm.
As she examined the snake tattoo, for that was what it was, its silver-white scales traced with supernatural intricacy that no human hand could ever produce, she followed its looping path up her arms until it disappeared over her shoulder. Feeling dazedly at her throat once more, she finally finished by rubbing the spot on her right cheek, somehow knowing exactly where it was, though it had no texture and left no sensation in her skin. Curiosity consuming her, she brought the reflective surface of her bracer close to her face, searching eagerly in the milky image it returned.
When she caught sight of the image pressed into her face, her heart nearly skipped a beat, so much was her visage altered by the incredibly simple yet undeniably elegant marking at the serpent's head. It was oval, and the eyes were mere circles of silver-white within the scaled pattern, but none the less it projected a sense of refinement and taste rather than barbaric disfigurement. Breathtaking swirls of spider's silk-thin markings filled in the rest of the head, so intricately woven around one another that it looked as if it would take a microscope and a map to unravel their secrets. Its forked tongue lay permanently flicked out in a slight silver streak that arced near the bridge of her nose and up to the edge of her eye, so that it looked almost as if the entire mark was a mystical tear that had overflowed out of her jade pools and trickled down her side in a twisting maze of eddying silver brilliance.
"What the winplifl (no English translation)...?" Starfire asked herself slowly at last, mesmerized by this unexpectedly regal mark.
"Well put my dear," answered a strange new voice from out of nowhere. The response startled Starfire so much that she jerked away from her reflection and fell backward onto the ground, head swinging frantically from side to side as she searched for the source of this new voice.
"Who is there?" she asked nervously, embarrassed to be caught off guard because she was admiring her own reflection.
"Another good question. I shall answer it by telling you that I am Caspar," spoke that voice once again, the repetition startling Starfire nearly as much, even as it cemented the fact that she wasn't imagining it.
"I do not understand, where are you strange new voice—err... Caspar?" and there were the undertones of panic in Starfire's voice now as she flew off the ground and began to search around from a few feet in the air.
"My dear, if it's me you seek, you need look no further than your own right arm," was the voice's impeccably polite response.
At this news, Starfire's eyes nearly popped out of her head as she glared in shock at her own arm and the spectacular white markings there. With a tiny gasp, her right hand flashed up to touch the mark she knew lay on her face as well. Floating there in the air, Starfire was left totally speechless. Caspar was content to wait quietly while she recovered.
"What did that stranger do to me?" Starfire asked at last, voicing the shock and confusion in her heart without really meaning to. She continued to stare blankly beyond the wavering landscape before her, marked hand clasped thoughtlessly over her marked face. Caspar, as was his habit, answered this question too.
"Master Skye asked me to guide you and answer any questions you have. His specific instructions where to 'make sure you get out of here as quickly as possible.'"
Absorbing this information, Starfire slowly brought her hand away from her face and once again looked at her reflection in her bracer. This time, as she looked at the snake's eyes, she thought she could seem some tiny sparkle or flicker of movement. Adapting rather quickly to the concept of having a living, thinking, thing etched onto her body, she allowed herself a slow, bemused smile and once again brought her right hand up to her right cheek, turning to look at the horizon.
"So... you will be my guide in this strange place?" she said at last, eyes locked on the distant meeting of earth and sky.
"That is what I just said, yes," came the voice, the annoyance in its words not reflected in the absolutely prim tone.
"I am sorry," began a red-faced Starfire, making the tattoo stand out even more prominently as her golden skin flushed crimson, "I have been very confused by this terrible place I found myself in."
"Don't worry," was Caspar's response, a new paternal note in his rigid tone, "It would be my great pleasure to ensure you a quick and safe journey back to your true body and the loved ones that wait for you."
Starfire was heartened in spite of herself, and a true tear dripped slowly from the eye Caspar's tongue brushed against. As it rolled down her cheek, she choked back a sob, the certainty in Caspar's 'voice' relieving a terrible burden in her heart that she'd been denying since she first realized that she might never see her friends again. A second tear followed the first, but by then the burst of emotion was already fading to calm and confident determination (replacing the desperate determination that had been barely sustaining her).
"I really am going to see my friends again," she stated, as if realizing it for the first time.
"That's the general idea anyway."
With that, a long silence stretched out, and out, and out, Starfire slowly rubbing the new mark on her right arm with her left as she basked in relief from the terrible anxiety that had gripped her so mercilessly. The pure sensations running through Starfire's body proved quite an attraction for Caspar, who wasted no time tasting the bouquet of psychic emissions and siphoning off an inconsequential amount for his own sustenance. In this way both were occupied in deeply fulfilling ways. Eventually however, the moment began fade, so Caspar took the opportunity to break in before it went completely stale.
"As much as I enjoy being stroked by a beautiful woman and bathed in semi-euphoric empathic energy, I can't help but feel that we should get a move on," he said with an impeccably polite tone that was completely miss-matched with his words.
"OH!" Starfire yanked her hand away from her arm, blushing more deeply than before and looking around reflexively to see if anyone had noticed. Seeing nothing but the unbroken plains and the quiet form of her 'sister,' a new question occurred to her and would serve to displace her embarrassment quite nicely.
"Uh... get a move on where?" she asked, rotating slowly in the air as she searched more carefully for some kind of landmark or other indication that there was SOMETHING other than featureless wavering hills in this 'dream world.'
"Ah, and so we'll see now just how much help I can be. Fly up to a decent height and we can try a little psychic divining."
Curious as well to see just what her unwillingly admitted passenger could do for her, Starfire did as he said, putting on altitude at a good clip until the landscape below her looked like little more than one huge green blob, stretching out to some huge distance in every direction before the mists of the horizon blocked off her view. It seemed that no matter how high she got, the landscape was still identically featureless, and when she realized that this wasn't going to change, she began to slow her accent to a stop. Before she could get below 20 mph, her progress was rudely interrupted by something unexpectedly solid (after all, who expects something solid at that height?).
"OWW! AGGG! OH DRINGLE! PISTAR FLABAGAN BIGRA! ASPLAP NIGELSNASTER!" (This does have a rough English translation, but I'm trying to keep it PG-13 for now)
"My, my, my, the lady has a tongue on her," Caspar sniped snidely, not the slightest hint of his joke in his tone.
Starfire's hands, which had flashed up to grip at the searing pain in her skull, flashed down again to cover her mouth as her face went red with embarrassment. The shock of pain had taken her so completely by surprise that those words had sort of slipped out, even though it hadn't hurt all that terribly much. She floated now a few feet below whatever her head had hit, face down as she winced at the ache of pain and shame.
"And Nigelsnaster?" Caspar continued mercilessly, "Where did a pretty young woman like you learn a word like that? From what I know, only dockworkers, military NCOs, and professional athletes ever use that one."
"I am sorry... it hurt and... I was surprised and..." Starfire seemed almost on the verge of tears now, her emotional stability still rather shot from recent trauma, which, along with the sudden blow to the head, left her a little hypersensitive. Caspar, realizing he'd put his tail in his mouth in a big way, scrambled to cheer the teen before she could go critical-mass on him.
He began by sucking the underlying energy of her distress directly out of her body, taking it into himself and beginning to digest it as he would any kind of spiritual energy. With the rug pulled out from under her fit, her emotions went through a cartwheel that landed her on the near side of sunny humor, prompting a sudden fit of giggling on her part, cleansing what was left of that whole episode from her mind in a few jolts of pure mirth.
"Umm, what just happened?" Starfire asked, placing her marked hand on the side of her head as she came down from the emotional high (though she still couldn't stop smiling) and wondered at the freaky flip she'd just gone through. The distress was completely gone, and being left clear minded was almost as bad as before, requiring her to consider what the fuck had just happened. In review, she remembered hitting her head, loosing her composure quite badly in surprise, freaking out over some harmless needling from her snide passenger, then going through some kind of breakdown. That's where things got weird.
"Allow me to apologize. I was grievously insensitive to your emotional state, being used to the relationship I had with Skye while I was riding his spirit. Realizing my mistake and hardly feeling it necessary to subject you to the snit I started you off on, I took the liberty of equalizing your emotions--"
"You did WHAT!?"
"Oh, well, it's really very interesting. I used my integration with your spirit force to--"
"My question did NOT indicate confusion. Rather, it indicated OUTRAGE!" and now Starfire's eyes were two pits of green fire as she glared murderously at her own arm. Caspar isn't dumb, and he picked up on his error pretty damn quick. However, though he isn't stupid, and though he'd been doing an admirable job of hiding it, in the end, he is a bit of an asshole.
"Calm down." Starfire was given little choice as he sucked the fury out of her, the emotional swingback leaving her with an overwhelming desire to forgive and forget his trespasses into her emotional state. The green bled from her eyes and one would almost have expected smoke to vent from her ears as the fire died, supplanted by a nearly tearful urge to understand his side of the story and grant him all the lenience in her boundlessly kind soul. The urge was understandably brief, and next she knew, she was once again at an emotional neutral with a clear mind. That didn't last long.
"STOP THAT AT ONCE!" she screamed at the open air. Feeling unaccountably as though she should append some reason, she added, "If you continue to... to... mess about with my emotions—why, we might fall right out of the air should the joy of flight leave!"
"Don't sell yourself short." he snapped back tonelessly, "I can tell from here that you're more skilled than that. This very fact is what makes it so hard to understand why you're acting so childish."
"Why you... you... PIZELSNOR!" her tone just as childishly spiteful as you'd imagine. At his answering sigh, she realized sourly that he'd had a point, and proceeded to frown deeply and cross her arms in huff.
"Pouting now are we? Listen, are you going to calm down and discuss this like the mature young woman I know you are, or am I going to have to equalize you again?"
At this threat, which she for some inexplicable reason knew was completely serious, Starfire clenched her eyes shut in exasperation, then calmed herself, breathed deeply, said a small prayer to her ancestors for patience, and made a true and concentrated effort to control herself. Reining in her overzealous emotions, she pulled herself into a state of calm reason that she rarely occupied, being more of a fan of happy buzz and similar highs. When he sensed that she was ready, Caspar began explaining the plain facts to her.
"Miss Starfire, I realize the stress you've been through recently, it's quite plain from the state of your energy, so I'm going to be as understanding and patient as I've ever been here. First of all, you must realize that my task as assigned by my close friend and long time host, Skye—you know, that nice young gentleman that helped you out a few moments ago—was to get you out of here and back into a functioning state, which I fully intend to do to the best of my ability, whether or not you are willing to cooperate with my efforts. Second, I understand that your powers are based on your emotions and they are very sacred and personal to you, but I am symbiote, and your emotions also have an effect on me, an effect that can sometimes be destructive. Basically, when you get upset, it hurts me too, a lot, so I'm going to do what I have to do to minimize your pain, minimizing my own in turn. Similarly, when you get ticked at me like that, the psychic feedback into me is also quite spectacularly painful, so I'd appreciate an effort on your part to direct your anger outward, at things that aren't me. In turn, now that I know about your personal space preferences, I will refrain from 'messing about' with your emotions as long as it isn't some kind of dire emergency. If you find any other faults with me, I'll be more than happy to accommodate you on anything that won't compromise my task or my health. Are we clear on this?"
Starfire weighed his words carefully before responding. In the light of his change of tone, her review of her own behavior, and her utter certainty that he was her only hope of getting back to her friends any time soon, she decided to give this whole thing another chance.
"Fine. If you leave my emotions alone and behave in a respectable manner, I will follow any advice you have as far as getting out of here is concerned."
"Good. We're in this together now, for better or for worse, so working together is really our best hope for surviving. And don't worry, I'm only asinine when I'm frustrated or in pain, so hopefully I'll be able to get back to my normal, polite self soon. In any case, now that that whole episode is behind us, I believe we had issue with some kind of flying object getting in the way of us and scrying out where we want to go next."
Having completely forgotten about the bump on her head with all the drama of moments ago, Starfire blinked a few times in surprise before turning her gaze upward slowly. She was forced to catch her breath at what she saw at last.
"Oooohh, Caspar... what's that?" she asked, not daring to take her eyes off the spectacular view above her. The crosscutting streamers of wavering auroras that hung a few feet above her head and continued to some spectacular depth in the sky above her where the only things she could possibly have run into, and the question of how a billion different colors of misty brilliance could be solid was sadly submerged under abject wonder at what lay before her stunned eyes.
"My dear, my 'eyes' don't work the same way yours do. If you'd be so kind as to raise your right hand up and point your palm at whatever you see up there, I'll give you my best guess as to what's filling you with that exquisite awe right now."
Obeying without really thinking about it, Starfire sedately raised her hand upward, looking as if she was trying to touch the endless wall of swirling colors above her. When her palm was open and facing the wall, Caspar was able to focus his ESP on it, channeling the energy emanating from it through his body until he had fully analyzed it.
"Ah... simple. It would seem that we've found the upper border of this dimension. Pocket dimensions like this one tend not to be that big, and here we have its top boundary, currently manifesting as an impassable transverse energy form with multiple subharmonics and tansdimensional oscillations. As well, there seems to be... seems to be... uh... Miss Starfire?"
Caspar realized that he'd been talking to himself since somewhere around "Ah" and stopped, examining his host to find out just what was wrong. A quick taste of her mind told him she'd been submerged to a semi-subluminal state, willful neural activity brought to a complete standstill, freezing her body in the exact position and state of the moment the submergence took place: flying thousands of feet in the air, arm stretched toward an ethereal barrier. Caspar felt lucky that his host was skilled enough to fly in her sleep (or semi-hypnotic state, whatever). If Caspar had had legs, or any kind of a physical form, he'd have kicked himself.
"DAMNIT! She would have an optically based sensory system. I've been riding with Skye too long, I must be loosing my touch. Oh well... lets try and get this show on the road."
With that Caspar broke down the barriers between his spiritual force and Starfire's allowing various connections that he'd been blocking out of habit to slide back into place. In the next moment, he was connected to her nervous system as well as her soul, giving him a two way connection rather than the one way (from her to him) hookup that would allow him to do what was necessary to snap her out of something like this. Girding himself, he gave himself the psychic equivalent of a hard pinch, shuddering as the pulses of pain traveled through him, fed into her, then fed back into him again in an echoing cycle of sting and ache.
As the burn of spiritual discord and plain old pain flashed through Starfire's body, a flinch shook her statue still posture, enticing a wince and a gasp, but not quite shaking her from her blank stare. Caspar sighed in resignation when he realized it hadn't worked, girding himself for a second try. He really hated to think about what he was about to do was going result in, but he'd screwed up, and now he didn't have the option of pulling his punch.
One sensitive to such things would have "heard" the sickening snapping disturbance in the telepathic ether left by Caspar giving himself the psychic equivalent of a strong blow to the jiblies. The reaction was instantaneous and spectacular.
"EEAAAKKK!" screeched Starfire, simultaneously doubling over in agony and writhing in midair, completely blown out of her trance by the searing burning in her intestines. The shock was so complete that this time her flight concentration was destroyed, causing her to drop like a stone. A disorienting freefall of mixed agony and confusion reined for a long heart-stopping minute, Starfire tumbling through the air like a bird shattered by buckshot.
The very instant Caspar was able to think about anything but pain, he forced the feedback connections shut like slamming a window in a windstorm, then proceeded to locate every iota of pain in Starfire and suck it down like a starving man at an all you can eat pasta buffet. Starfire was equalized yet again, the pain leaving a snapback of ecstasy, causing her to shudder in pleasure. For an instant, her whole body felt the way her mouth does right after that first bite of mint chocolate chip and spicy pickled plum ice cream, and it was good. The utter fulfillment caused her to regain flight capability instantly, and she floated languidly, her back to the ground, eyes closed softly, reveling in the afterglow. It had been so wonderful that she didn't even remember her previous circumstances until the voice in her head next spoke.
"I'm glad... to see... that someone... is enjoying herself," Caspar ground out, as though struggling against vicious pain. The sudden voice startled her out of her reverie of pleasure and plunged her back into the present, much to her dismay. Admirably, dismay was displaced by concern the instant she realized that it was him the faint throbbing in her arm was coming from (pain that intense doesn't need connections to transmit, it jumps through the ether by itself).
"Are you okay?" she asked, concern dripping from her voice as she rubbed her left hand gently over the phantom burning in her right arm. Just because she didn't like Caspar that much didn't mean she could sit by idly while he suffered, and she wished desperately for some way to comfort his obvious pain. Caspar would have nothing of it, of course, and told her as much when she asked if she could help.
"I'm used to this kind of thing," he snapped back at her, patience worn by pain and self-reproach. Even though he'd regained a modicum of stability and was able to speak clearly again, he still hadn't forgiven himself for slipping up so stupidly, and now he rejected any thought of sharing out some of the pain to her as he would have with Skye, forcing himself to take it all as punishment for fucking up in such an amateurish way. "Seriously, I'm fine, so let's stop screwing around do what we came up here to do. We've already lost too much time to goofing off and arguing, and Skye'll never forgive me if we're not out of here within the month."
"Are you sure you will be alright?" Starfire could still feel a dull heat in her arm and on her neck and face, and it worried her more than a little.
"I'm FINE so drop it and let's get on with this!"
With a sigh, Starfire let it go, reluctant to give up on trying to help him but equally reluctant to deal with machismo, knowing from experience with Robin and Cyborg that he wasn't going to give on the point. Deciding that if he wanted to suffer in silence, he could go right ahead and do it, she asked simply, "What do you require me to do?"
"Great, get ready to engage in what I'll assume is your first use of telepathic energies."
"What? You mean I'm going to do it? What about you?" and her voice was heavily tinged by the force of her incredulity. After a long telepathic sigh, Caspar got ready for yet another round of explanation. Orientation was always a bitch.
"I guess I'll have to take this from the top too. Okay no problem, I'll start by letting you in on a little secret: we symbiotes aren't born with any powers of our own, at least none like the kind I have right now. We pick up our abilities from our hosts during the course of our binding, meaning each of us is as individual as the person we're attached to. In exchange for food and these powers, we provide a number of services to the host, among which are cleaning out the spiritual junk and energy buildup as well as optimizing energy organization to increase efficiency. Among other things anyway. Whatever, the point is, I got the capability to scry from years of being integrated into Skye's spirit, but there's a little bit of a complication with actually using the power myself. Through some kind of great cosmic joke against my race, you need to have a physical body to initiate the power, lord only know why the hell for. Anyway, here's what's going to happen: I'm going to provide the power and talk you through it, you're going to provide the corporeal husk and do all the real work—M'kay"
"Please, hold on a moment here...what? I... you... WHAT?" The final question was almost pained, Starfire's whole face bunching up as she struggled to absorb yet another new wave of information. Starfire was suffering badly from the toll of emotional flip flops, constant flailing from one surprise unfamiliar situation to another, and incessant barrages of new and off the wall information. If it hadn't been for the recent equalization, she'd have probably passed out from stress some time ago. As it was, a single thought made itself heard through the miasma of confusion gripping her dazed mind, and in so doing gave her a focus that helped her weather the rest of it. When she gad gotten her grip back after the stress attack (Caspar refrained from ending it for her, he didn't need a repeat performance of earlier) she voice the question she'd latched onto like a life raft, seeing it as only fit after the way it helped her out.
"Please correct me if I'm wrong Caspar," she began, holding her hands against her head as she recovered, "but am I not also a spiritual being in this dream realm?"
"Give me a little credit boss. You've got a physical body somewhere, right?"
"I certainly hope so."
"Well then, that's all it takes beautiful, we're good to go."
Her last feeble complaint smacked mercilessly out of relevance, Starfire gave in and decided to just go with the flow. Closing her eyes and gathering herself, she steeled herself against the oddities to come, then opened her eyes and asked Caspar to start.
"Okay, this is going to be easy, trust me. Just do as I say and we'll have to tracking stuff down like a champ in no time. First of all, hold out your right hand, open, palm up, muscles relaxed. Good, now, clear your mind, empty it of everything but the sound of my voice. I said everything. Yes, that means the desire to rejoin your friends too. And the commercial jingle that's been stuck in your head for the past two weeks. NOT the joy of flight—damn, are you trying to kill us? KIDDING! And don't forget to clear out this... whoa, now that's a pretty interesting thing to think about Robin. Hey, hey, don't get mad at me, you were thinking about that in the front of your mind, you might as well shout it in my ear, sheesh. ...Okay, that's pretty good. Now, picture what you want to find, concentrate on it, let your mind flow out to surround it and encompass every part of it. What do you mean what? Last time I checked you wanted to know which way you needed to go to get out of here. You don't have to know what it looks like, you just need to consider the idea of what it is, the power has a lot of leeway to read the energies inherent in our environment and track it down bit by bit that way. I agree, it is a weird way of doing things, but hey, I don't make the rules, I don't break the rules, and those are definitely the rules. ...Wow... that's a damn good job, and on your first try too. Incredible. You can open your eyes now."
Starfire had been getting more than a little tired of him answering her questions before she could voice them, and was glad to finally have some sensory input other than his admittedly pleasant but far too cynical and condescending voice. When she opened her eyes, she looked at her hand. Then she closed her eyes again quickly and tightly, opened them again, and REALLY looked at her hand.
"I did that?"
"Technically speaking, WE did it, but yeah, you were a huge part of it."
The object of Starfire's surprise was the glowing scrying sphere that now enveloped her hand. Caspar's body fed into the globe of orange and green light that now encompassed her hand down past the wrist, reaching out in a perfect sphere of iridescent energy to project in every direction. The globe was marked off with measurements that Starfire was sure she recognized from her lessons in stellar navigation back on Tamaran, the evenly marked notches coordinated to denote cosmic location. There were even more marks however, and she had no idea what those ones had to do with anything. Finally, a dozen pinpricks of twinkling light surrounded the globe and orbited it in slow, ever-changing loops that made them look like dancing green and orange fireflies or will'o'wisps of unnatural energy (take your pick).
"It's beautiful," she said simply, careful not to shake or tilt it as she tried to examine its intricacies from as many angles as possible. Her face was lit with a smile of wonder and happiness as she found that even when she did move, the globe maintained its coordination with her surroundings perfectly, moving with her to make sure all its points remained lined up the universe correctly.
"What did you expect? It was created from your spirit, so how could it not have been beautiful?"
"Oh...uh... thank you very much," Starfire ventured after a moment of stunned silence at his compliment. She was flattered of course, but she wasn't too thrilled about being host to a distinctly masculine entity that found her beautiful and could read her thoughts and alter her emotions.
"Honestly, there's no need to get all creeped out; beings with flesh, not even mentioning things like limbs and internal organs, really don't appeal to me. I was speaking of your spiritual beauty, which is as spectacular as it is irrefutable. Sorry for sounding like some kind of pervert spirit symbiote, I was just appreciating the difference between being integrated with a beauty like you and that utilitarian ice-king Skye. That guy's so cold his scry sphere has icicles dripping off of it. Or at least that's the way he acts anyway. Sometimes."
A long pause stretches out and Starfire wonders what the heck he's talking about, even as her curiosity is piqued by his snippets of information about her mysterious rescuer. Now that the wonder of her situation was wearing off, relevant questions were cropping up in her mind every minute. She was about to begin asking some when Caspar beat her out for conversational initiative.
"What was I talking about? DAMN! I don't know if it's the throbbing pain or some kind of weirdo effect of switching hosts, but I haven't been able to concentrate properly since I got here. Oh yeah."
Caspar's murmur of realization came as a direct result of the wisps of light around Starfire's scry sphere bursting with activity. Swirling further and further away from the sphere itself, they became a blur of motion, appearing to transform into solid rings of orange and green light as they zipped around her hand. With a last flash of light, the snapped back to her hand in the blink of an eye, wrapping into the center of the sphere before flashing out once more to form a single, three inch spike, floating freely an inch away from the sphere's surface. It was pointing at something.
"And there you have it. We began this escapade when you asked me 'get a move on where?' You can't get much more directed than that"
"But wait! That direction is the same as every other one!" Starfire complained, expecting something far more dramatic than an arrow considering all the stuff she just went through. There was almost a whine in her voice as the anticlimax really got to her.
"Oh, is it now? Take another look beautiful, I think you'll be impressed yet."
Not comprehending and still more than a little put out by just how little all her effort had resulted in, she cast her frustrated eyes toward the general area the arrow indicated. She had to look twice to be sure.
"I do not understand! That forest was NOT there before!" she was frustrated on the outside, not appreciating one bit this world's habit of being against her on every point. Deep down though, she was just glad that they'd made some real progress for once. Thus, she wasn't too annoyed when her passenger had an ass relapse, again.
"You're right, it wasn't there, but it's there now, so let's get moving alright? I have no desire to spend the rest of eternity in this backwater place. Even with a gourmet hostess like you, I truly have places I'd rather be."
"Why do you call me 'gourmet'?" She once again managed to latch onto the most thoughtlessly damaging part of his statement. "For that matter, what exactly did you mean when your host gives you food? I do not have any food for you, and I do not believe a spiritual symbiote would be interested in sharing any of what I eat anyway. The other Titans certainly never are." The last she said while remembering the way Beast Boy had looked at her when she'd put caramel on her taco salad. Or the time she'd asked Robin to get her a rocksalt, mustard, and tapioca sunday at the park. The list went on and on really.
"Great question. Or rather, great question for another time. Let's go now."
Starfire frowned annoyedly at his evasion. She may need the ethereal smart mouth's help to get out of here, but she knew for a fact that SHE was HIS hostess, and she didn't have to take crap like that from him. Deciding to take the initiative after a far too long period of being a helpless damsel (even after her change of clothing and rolls in this whacked out realm), she felt herself harden in determination, putting on her best mean face (she didn't have many, truly preferring a happy demeanor).
"Now listen you," she started calmly but implacably, keeping entirely cool in her anger so as to give him no excuse to equalize her, "'another time' had better be while were flying to our new destination, or there will be consequences, do you understand?"
Caspar was stunned, stupefied even. He thought he'd had this girl figured out, but apparently, there really was more to her than the insecure, out of place, just barely maturing waif of a girl he'd bound with when he first arrived. He contemplated the horror of the experience that had made the stalwart and unwavering figure attached to him right now seem the way she had even for a little while, then gave up on the impossible and let it go. It seemed that he was doomed to be the subordinate in this symbiosis too.
"Well?" she prompted him out of his contemplations ruthlessly.
"Hey, you're the boss, Miss Starfire." he responded quickly, deciding to quit while he was ahead and swallow his power bid for superiority, "As long as we're making progress toward Master Skye's orders, I'll do whatever you want."
"WONDERFULL! Caspar, I believe I'm ready to call you my newest friend!" Starfire's exclamation marked something: a change. Since she'd arrived, she'd been shunted around by forces beyond her understanding, manipulated, manhandled, and just plain violated by things she could neither combat nor control, and it had had a toll on her. The entire time she'd been here so far, she'd been freaking out on emotions that just weren't hers, either from an outside force or self-imposition in her overwhelming grim determination. With that familiar shout, Starfire had finally become Starfire again, her mind at last sliding into that glorious bubbling happiness that was the totally natural ground state of the energetic young woman's psyche. Feeling more calm, confident, warm, and just plain happy than she had since she'd arrived in her soul's prison, Starfire wrapped her arms up close against her metal breastplate and gave herself (and Caspar in the process) a huge hug.
The arrow on her scry sphere wobbled gently as it stayed pointing in the exact same direction and Starfire moved around, rocking slowly as she basked in happiness that was truly her own. The incredible force of the joy pressed on Caspar as much as the hug would have any physical being, proving that no one was immune to the rather painful extent to which Starfire was capable of loving others. Finally truly ready, she began to accelerate in the direction the arrow pointed, flight all the easier now that she was doing it from fresh feeling rather than by force of long practice. As she flashed though the air, a warrior princess on the way to complete her quest and rejoin her loved ones, the innate practicality of her deeper side took a moment to get even with Caspar for taking advantage of her earlier confusion.
"So, what exactly was it that you eat?"
Post Story Rant:
I truly didn't want to divide this chapter into two parts, it kind of defeats the purpose of having it as an interlude in the regular storyline, plus it just plain looks funny to have a multi-part interruption (which are supposed to be short, right?). Oh well, I just had too much fun with this to cut it short (I'm seriously considering an AU story with a theme like this now) and I didn't want to subject anyone to a 20,000 word chapter on the internet (my own eye-burn cap comes in at around 8-9 thousand per chapter), so here we have a break to rest the eyes before the next section. On an unrelated note, my own mental images of these characters (plus those to come in the next chapter) strike me as so neat that I wish, not for the first time, that I had even a single iota of artistic talent so I could draw them. My mental image of fantasy-based Titans just looks really damn cool to me, and so I'm left to lament my inability to grasp even the most elementary precepts of illustration once again. Oh well.
Preview: The next chapter shall bring (I promise this time) an amusingly shallow fantasy plot with all the gravy that genre is so famous for. Also, the butt kicking shall be spectacular. The butts will be kicked to the right, the butts will be kicked to the left, and just for a change, the butts will be kicked around in circles (both clockwise and counter). Best of all, it will be entirely Titan-centric, so anyone getting annoyed by OC-centricity will get a little respite. Caspar will have his moments, but his position promises sidekickism in a big way. In any case, the Journey continues (and probably ends) next, with: The Journey—Part II.