It wasn't unusual for Story to be up past midnight. With her job causing her to have to pull all nighters on red eye flights as she traveled to different time zones, her body clock was never consistent. So, when midnight rolled around that particular night, she found herself in her living room reading a book. Her eyes were droopy, but she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep yet even if she tried. It was probably for the best because then she was awake when she shifted for the first time. It was like a current of energy ran up and down her body, something she'd never felt or experienced before - at least not as Story.
Except the other persona, the one that instantly began to take over her brain, she knew very well what it felt like to have energy and power coursing through her veins. The electric jolt brought back to life a woman who had been dormant for far too long.
Koriand'r blinked. She looked around the homey room that seemed foreign yet familiar with its filled bookshelves and artistic decor. She didn't panic, not at first, because she felt as if she was in a fog. Confusion overtook her. And her head was throbbing in a way that she'd never experienced before. She was trying to decipher what was and wasn't real in her mind, but she didn't get very far before she decided to explore and search her surroundings. It was a very strange sense of belonging that she felt in that home - her home? But she couldn't help also feeling like she was the furthest away from home that she had ever been in her life - and that was saying a lot.
It was when she got a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror upon the wall that she began to get emotionally worked up. She ran up to the image, her palms clapping against her face, pulling at her skin as if it was merely a mask that she was wearing. Fear and confusion were pumping through her thoughts, heightened further by the strange voice inside her mind. She did everything she could to ignore this pesky voice as it screamed at her - screaming because it, too, was frightened and confused. What happened to her? She looked human. Her skin was pale unlike her Tamaranean bronzed skin. Her eyes no longer shined bright green; they had been dulled to blue irises, outlined with pupils and sclera. And her hair, which was once gloriously thick and long, now looked flat and thin and positively boring, but at least it was still a vibrant red. At least there was something that looked somewhat the same.
"Who are you?" She asked the woman she was staring at in the mirror, her expression horrified yet curious. Koriand'r had often wondered what it might be like to look like a human, but she hadn't ever given it serious thought or consideration because she had been wholly content and confident with herself - even if she had to sometimes disguise her Starfire identity by covering up her alien features.
She took a step back from the mirror, her hands scaling down her torso to see what her body shape was. This, too, was different, but before she could pay much attention to that, she was looking down and gasped at the frumpy t-shirt and loose pajama pants she was wearing. No, no, no. This wouldn't do. She felt so confined in all of this fabric. The voice in her head was yelling at her again, causing her head to ache all the more, but that didn't stop her from peeling out of the clothes, discarding them on the floor to be forgotten and ignored. Her arm reached behind her back, about to unclasp her bra to be completely free of the uncomfortable apparel, but her hand froze mid-way. The voice in her mind - which she knew was distinct and different from her own thoughts - was very upset and very angry. She was strong, willing to put up a fight because she certainly didn't approve of Kori taking over and choosing what to do. It was quite literally an alien invasion. And it caused for the first internal battle to begin as each woman fought to be in control of body and mind.
In the end, however, Koriand'r prevailed - though she chose to respect this other woman's wishes (she recalled her name was Story) by not being in the nude. It was the least she could do, she supposed, though she wasn't very happy with it.
She wasn't happy with any of it! She felt so human and frail without her powers. No flight, no superhuman strength, no nothing. She knew - or at least believed - that once she could sunbathe to soak up the solar rays and transform them into power that she would be back to normal. She would have her abilities back and she would be better prepared to seek out what was going on. But until then, she had nothing to do - no where to go, no one to talk to, and so much to sort out in her mind and heart. For it wasn't just a battle of the thoughts and memories, it was also a war of the emotions. One second she was wanting to cry and scream about how unfair this was, the next she was wanting to punch the wall, and still the next she felt almost at peace because she had to believe that everything was going to be okay. She felt like a complete mad woman!
In this flurry of emotions and not knowing what to do with herself, Kori decided to overturn the other woman's house. She was so curious and she needed to see if she could find any answers. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be found. Rifling through objects and papers that she could faintly remember seeing before did her absolutely no good - because she knew those memories weren't really her memories, but she had no idea why. And it became very clear that Astoria Bellingham didn't have any idea what was going on either; she was positively raging inside Kori's mind, which only caused the redhead to be all the more emotionally fraught, getting more and more worried and angry by the second.
Her only conclusion was that this was a dream. A freak show of a dream. And with that thought, over thirty minutes past the moment of 'revival', she collapsed back onto the sofa that she had initially been lying on when the shift happened. If this was a dream then she wanted to sleep in order to wake up and be herself again. She couldn't recall where she had been when this dream state took over, but she imagined that anywhere would be better than this hell hole.
As she tried to calm herself down long enough to sleep, Kori would have convinced herself of this theory had it not been for a certain man reaching out to her who was prominent in her life (er, both their lives). After putting out a few feelers, trying to assess the situation and whether or not she had shifted, Dick Grayson began to explain to her what was going on. She was both Story and Kori. All of the superhero and villain tales Story had grown up with were true. Starfire existed just as much as Astoria, but they inhabited the same body. This was real, all of it was real. While it would take her a long time to fully grasp the ins and outs of this new phenomenon, Dick was quickly able to help her start to come to terms with this being her reality. A confusing, chaotic reality, but one that she needed to accept nonetheless. It was hugely helpful that he was one of the few that she would wholeheartedly trust to help guide her in this matter. There was a history there that was stronger than she cared to admit. And now it was interwoven with new memories of and new feelings for Daniel Grayson, Story's ex-fiance. Well, wasn't that cruel irony at its finest. Even this alter-ego was tied to the man; she couldn't get away from him even in an alternate universe. So how could she deny the other voice in her head? The woman wasn't as strong as Kori, but she was a fighter and she didn't like her space being trampled upon, that much was certain. But if anything could make them begin to try to work together rather than fight for control, it was perhaps some of the shared experiences that they had.
Still, that would be a while yet before they would fully be able to integrate within the same brain peacefully. Which meant that the throbbing, nearly agonizing headache would remain as her brain tried to keep up with the back and forth tug-of-war. Thankfully it did lesson when Koriand'r told her strange human reflection that she wasn't going to do anything rash. Story didn't have anything to worry about, she promised - they were going to figure this out and she wouldn't need to worry about Kori being there because she was going to find her own body, her Tamaranean body. Then they could both go on their merry ways and someday laugh about this whole confusing mess. ...if only it were that easy. Neither woman could ever prepare themselves for how their lives were forever going to be changed and intersected after that night.
I can feel it inside.
Something's not right