"Perspective"
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The sensation of waking up in a bedroom which was not his own was not unusual for Roy Harper. The procedure was always the same. You slid out of bed, grabbed your clothes, and slipped them on soundlessly as you left. All of which was fairly easy if you had CBI and superhero training He could hear someone in the next room, stirring. Damn, he thought. The girl was awake. He didn't remember meeting someone, but he had had a lot to drink. It was Gar's fault, he hadn't intended to drink that much when they had gone out, but Gar had goaded him into a few to many. But he didn't remember the girl. Maybe it was the red head he had seen earlier. She had been looking him over. Oh, well, there was no avoiding her, no way to sneak out. So he slowly walked across the room and opened the door, assuming his best smile. "Hi, Allison!" ------------------------------------------------------ The girl was very pretty in an unconventional way. Not her face, which was lovely, but her body. She had to be nearly six feet tall and Roy had little doubt she could seriously kick his ass, as she was much more muscular than he was. He looked over to a mirror which was standing alone in the living room and was surprised to find that the image staring back at him was that of a beautiful blonde girl. He looked down at himself and realized that somehow, the image was him. He looked at the mirror again, giving himself a once over. "If you fondle yourself, I will find a way to do serious damage to your real body " A somewhat forced English accent told him in his head. He assumed that the voice belonged to the real owner of the body, whom the girl had called Allison. Roy got the message. The girl who had addressed him, and who was not privy to this internal dialogue, was looking at him oddly. "Are you OK, Allison?" "The girl's name is Suzy, she's 17 and my closest friend and is certainly not ready for her friend Allison to be checking her out. If you harm her in anyway, I'll tell this Donna Troy person I am speaking to exactly how you feel about her." Allison's voice sounded inside his head. Roy took Allison's threat seriously as the small part of him that was in her head could see that Allison, in Roy's body was indeed speaking to Donna Troy , Roy's Titan teammate. "Have I got a story for you, Suzy." Roy told Suzy. "We need to talk." Roy thought. |
She should not have had the headache that she did. She had only had one glass of wine with dinner. Then she and Suzy had gone to the movies and had stayed up chatting. The girl was currently asleep on Allison's couch. But why did she feel so hung over? She had been raised on wine at dinner and certainly one glass would not affect her. She could hear Suzy stirring in the next room. She looked over at the clock beside her bed and it read 6:30. Damn Suzy for being an early riser, Allison thought as she crawled out of bed. I might as well get up at this point, she thought with a bit of regret. She had been up early the day before to receive a shipment at the restaurant and had looked forward to sleeping in on her day off. But the best laid plans and whatnot. She walks out the door and into the other room. "Daddy!" ------------------------------------------------------ The little girl was an adorable child who a voice in her head said was named Lian. The voice was a decidedly male voice and spoke of the child with obvious affection. Without responding to the child, Allison walked back into the bedroom, and into an adjoining bathroom. She was not prepared for what she saw in the mirror. Because quite frankly, it would be difficult for any woman to look into a mirror and see a male face (a handsome one, Allison thought, if in a bit of a need of shaving). Her musing was interrupted by Lian's arrival in the bathroom with a fairly statuesque brunette, whom the male voice, which Allison assumed was the actual owner of the body, Roy Harper, recognized. "Her name is Donna Troy." Roy's voice in her head said. Roy didn't add anything else, but from the tone of the thought and her limited access to his memories she could clearly tell that Roy had feelings for the woman. "See, Auntie Donna, it's not my daddy." Lian told the newcomer. Donna looked at "Roy." After such a long friendship with Roy Harper, she knew most of his mannerisms, and she could see small things that were different in his stance and such. "No, I am not Roy Harper, Miss Troy. At least not in mind. My name is Allison Crestmere, and somehow your friend and I have switched places." Surprisingly, the woman smiled. "Does that mean Roy is a woman right now?" "I'm afraid so." "We need to talk." Allison thought. |
THE ASTRAL PLANE
After voicing the same thought, they both ended up in what appeared to be an empty space. Allison, who'd been there before, recognized it.*
In Av2000's All Winner's Squad #3 - DT
"Any ideas where we are?" Roy asked her.
"Actually, yes. We're on what's called the astral plane. The easiest way to explain it is that it's where telepaths interact. Basically, since we've somehow become switched and connected, we're able to connect to it."
She concentrated and a second later a comfortable armchair appeared next to her. She knew enough telepaths that she knew you could shape the environment to suit yourself. Roy picked this up quickly and created his own chair and, to add his own detail, had a version of Allison dressed in a French maid's outfit hand him a beer. Taking the beer, he smirked at her.
"Are you always this annoying?" she asked.
"Pretty much." He laughed. "Seriously, do you have any ideas as to how to handle this?"
"I'm not quite sure. I know several telepaths, But they are mostly on the East Coast. You could contact them, but it would be several hours before they could render any real help. But I'm guessing that this is not a psychic phenomenon, but a magical or scientific one."
"I know a couple of scientists, so maybe you should check with my friends at STAR Labs."
"OK, I will. Shall we try to go back to our bodies?" she asked him.
"Yeah."
And they faded out.
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"So there's no way you can get here in less than that time?" Roy said into a telephone. "No, Mr. Harper, I am very sorry, I cannot. You have to understand the time which my position requires." The person on the other line told him. "But I did take the initiative of contacting a much more local telepath who may be able to help you. She should be there within the few hours." "Thank you for your help, Professor." Roy hung up the phone. He spent the couple of hours or so telling Suzy, who had refused to leave, about his daughter and his life as a Titan. The doorbell rang and Roy answered it. He was not prepared for the woman at the door. The girl was beautiful, especially to Roy who had a certain leaning towards Asian women, even if her pink hair was rather jarring. Xian Coy Mahn could not help but be amused by the expression on "Allison's" face. She knew the appraising look came from the man whose mind was occupying the body, but having her friend check her out was amusing. Especially since her friend would know Xian's sexual preference. Suddenly "Allison's" face fell for a second (Allison must have just given him the information about Xian) and then the glint returned to "her" eyes. "Don't even think about it, Mr. Harper. I will not indulge some insipid lesbian fantasy, especially at the expense of a friend's body." Xian told him. Surprisingly, Roy smiled. "I know, but I was just trying to irritate the girl sharing my mind. She seemed to take a great deal of joy in telling me about you, so I had to let her feel a few, umm... impure thoughts." Despite herself, Xian had to laugh. "Are you quite done?" "Yeah. She got the point. Do you think you can help, Miss..." "Call me Xian. And to be honest, I'm not quite sure. My telepathy is fairly new to me. I may have an understanding of the process imprinting of a consciousness over another, since the ability to do that was the first of my mental abilities to manifest, but my command of my telepathy is not as strong as the Professor or other telepaths," she replied. "Well, give it a shot." He smiled. "But be gentle, its my first time." "Very funny." Xian closed her eyes and concentrated and, for a few moments, both were silent. After a couple of minutes, she opened her eyes. "Well?" "Actually, the whole experience was odd. Your mind was not present in Allison's. The only psychic presence I could find was hers. I'm sorry, Mr. Harper." "Hey, at least you tried." |
The woman nodded and Allison took the helmet off her head. "I'm sorry, Roy, I mean, Allison, but there seems to be no discernable scientific explanation for you being here, so to speak. Your brainwaves and such seem to be completely normal. Moreover, they are completely normal for Roy Harper, not someone else." Sarah Charles, the STAR Labs scientist who often had helped the Titans in the past, told her. "Well, thank you for the effort. I'm sorry to have wasted your time." "No problem. Roy is a friend." A few minutes later, Allison was sitting on a park bench with Donna Troy, watching Lian play with a few other children. "Your group sounds fairly similar to what we were like as kids." Donna told her. "Only on the surface, Ms....." "Call me Donna." "Only on the surface, Donna. You were all Teen Titans by choice. You were kid sidekicks who banded together as friends and as a support group. We were children drafted for a war. There is a huge difference." "Was it so bad? Didn't you ever get away from everything and be normal kids?" "We tried. Occasionally we did, but even our socializing ended up being part of the war in some form. We were paranoid of everyone. Even in public, we had to fear almost everyone, since you never knew who was a mutant hater. You never knew who was a threat." "Aren't you being a bit excessive?" "In retrospect, yes. We were insanely paranoid. But we were away from our families and our new 'family' taught us that we were protecting a world that hated and feared us. It was a very cruel thing to do to a group of children." "But didn't you help each other? There had to be some support there?" "There was some, but even helping one another, we were still children in an adult world. I actually died before my 16th birthday, killed by an omnipotent being who then resurrected me and my friends before the heroes finally beat him. In New Mutants #35 and Secret Wars II #12 - DT "My life has not been exactly as Pollyana as you think. I've spent most of my adult life trying to figure out who I am." "Who is Donna Troy?" Allison said, laughing. Donna bristled at her tone. "I'm sorry, Donna. But I've gone through the exact same thing, finding out that I'm an entirely different person than the girl I was raised as. So if I laughed, it was because of that similarity, nothing more." |
THE ASTRAL PLANE
"That was a seriously cheap shot, Allison," Roy told her, having used the link between them to drag Allison back onto the Astral Plane.
"I apologized, I really meant nothing by it," she replieed.
Roy seemed ready to retort, but thought better of it.