Who: Starfire Where: Somewhere in deep space, Vega System When: A few years ago (Vague flashback is vague) What: Narrative/Intro. Dream within a dream flashback. Hi, my name is Kory. I have poor impulse control, anger issues, and zero body shame. My hobbies are having no sense of Earth morality when it comes to sex, long walks on the beach, and raining death and destruction upon my enemies. Rating: R for implied violence. Nothing graphic.
Darkness filled all like an inky chasm cut out of the Void itself. Hours passed, or was it days? Years, perhaps.
The darkness slowly dissolved into gradients of shadow. Slowly. Among the shadows, her body remembered hearing, processing auditory input to be interpreted by the brain in the form of sound. Hearing. Koriand'r thought she heard voices. Or the memory of voices. What were voices? Sounds. Sounds which held meaning.
Koriand'r. Princess! Your people need you!
She heard. Or she had heard. Yes, she once had ears that could pick up sounds. She had the knowledge of words, and the meanings of the sounds. Princess Koriand'r. That was her name. She knew, her name, the words. She knew ears.
Didn't she once have hands, arms, feet, legs as well as ears?
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Koriand'r. She had ears to hear, hands to touch, legs to run. But then the darkness came, shortly after the voices, and she was no more. Eyes, that was something else she'd once had. Why did she remember eyes? Was it because of that which banished the shadows, marking the indistinct edges of the void? Degrees of darkness, limned outlines, and then thunder.
Not thunder, but a weak and distant drum.
Princess, wake up. It's time to wake up. It was another voice, picking up on the urgency of the drum.
The vague drumming was familiar. It hummed rhythmically in Kory's ears. Something uncoiled deep inside her, and she remembered she had lungs. Degrees of darkness gave way to a dawning of brightness. All that was extinguished slowly sparked and flared. Air. Light. It was all coming back to her.
An aeon passed, or perhaps mere seconds. The vast array of solar batteries that were the cells of Koriand'r's body hummed a steady tone this time, a single note. Life. She was alive. Faint green eyes fluttered open, and the unused orbs screamed at the brightness that filled her corneas. The light was glorious.
She breathed deeply, like she was trying to drink in the light of the star itself. Once her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she blinked away the dust gathered on her eyelashes and tried to look around without moving her head. She could sense the pounding headache that wanted to come, and had a sense that it was waiting for her to move before exploding there, behind her eyes. Kory couldn't see very far past a small periphery, but everywhere she saw nothing but devastation.
Starfire was lying among ruins and debris. Then she remembered everything, and a throaty chuckle sent a puff of dust flying from her face. Right on cue, the headache lying in wait chose that moment to blow up. It felt like someone was stabbing her eyes from the inside. It didn't even dim the grim smile she wore.
A message had come for Koriand'r across the vastness of space. Someone who knew her story, clearly, had sent a distress call regarding a shipment of girls en route to a Psion outpost in the Vega system. Girls taken from their families against their will, bound to suffer an undoubtedly horrible fate. Starfire answered the call. She had lived through that same plight in the flesh. How could she not answer?
But when she arrived in the Vega system, she learned that the message had taken a long time to get to Earth. Almost too long. Even using the latest technology and subspace frequency emissions, going from relay point to relay point had delayed the message, and that wasn't counting her own travel time. Really, where were the New Gods and their highly convenient Boom Tubes when you needed one?
Months had passed when Kory and her companions arrived at the Psion outpost. She went in, starbolts blazing. A third of the girls were already dead. The rest looked to be halfway there. Shi'ar, Kree, Talokian, even a few Tamaraneans like herself, rare as the near extinct Sumatran tiger of Earth now that Tamaran was no more. Every single one torn from their families to be abused, raped, tortured, experimented on. X'Hal! Their little faces that didn't dare hope! They didn't break Kory's heart. They filled it with rage.
Starfire freed them and put them all in three small shuttles. She sent them away while she disabled the outpost's weapons and defenses with extreme prejudice. She then flew off into space to join the convoy with their precious cargo.
But the Psions were far from helpless, even after Starfire had destroyed all of their conventional weapons. The race of scientists did nothing if not innovate in the field of weaponry and ways to kill. Soon the fleeing shuttles were swerving madly, trying to avoid the miniature wormholes materializing in their projected path. It was one of the newest weapons the Psions had been field testing out here. Kory watched as one of the three shuttles swerved too late. It happened so fast. Half the shuttle was shredded instantly, disappearing from their position in time and space while the other half imploded in on itself. In outer space, Starfire couldn't even scream, but there was something else she could do. Something terrible.
The attack stopped once one of the shuttles was destroyed, and a mocking reptilian voice demanded the other two turn back lest they suffer the same fate. How many more girls dead? They had broken their spirits, scarred them for life, but that wasn't enough? Koriand'r herself was a survivor of the Psion's tender mercies. She opened herself up to her rage.
Seeing red, running so hot her tears fizzled and evaporated on her lashes, she bared her teeth and flew at the outpost. She flew so fast that for a moment she feared she might reach terminal velocity and be unable to stop. It wouldn't have mattered if she thought her body was strong enough to tear the planetoid that held the Psion outpost apart. But she couldn't be sure. So, instead, she did something she had only done once before. Something that almost cost her her life then. Kory was beyond the point of caring, so long as she took all of these sadistic Psion bastards with her. She descended upon them like the wrath of the Goddess X'Hal herself and with a mighty scream she let loose with an omnidirectional blast, like her most powerful starbolt gone supernova. The last thing she remembered was her own scream of rage while the Psions screamed and wept with terror.
And then she woke up. Kory had no idea how long she had been lying there as her body absorbed enough starlight to make her mobile again. The last time she had done this, she had been in a coma for days or weeks. She was too tired to remember. She simply lay there and listened, but there was only dead silence. It was a most beautiful sound, in this case. She wasn't sorry. The Psions were all monsters, not only sadistic but cruel and vindictive. She would never be sorry for killing them all.
When she was feeling a little stronger, she should fly closer to the white dwarf sun that lit this corner of the heavens, expose herself to more of its stellar radiation to replenish her reserves. She was too spent to even do that right now. With nothing to do but exercise patience, the princess lay back in the dust, in the middle of the open grave she had made of the lair of her enemies, and smiled.