Chicago, IL
gardy720
Featuring Xena and Gabrielle, Bart Allen / Impulse
Episode 1: Rebirth
Some things are simply beyond our current understanding. We can only prove so much by our limited technology, and scientific research. We thought we knew everything about our little world. We were wrong. - Marcus Worthington.
Somewhere just off the coast of Greece, near the Peloponnesian Straights, two young men sail their small pleasure boat back to shore. Their two young companions, both female, had fallen overboard and presumably drowned.
The youngsters had been drinking. The best rescue team divers in Greece were in the water in minutes flat, but it was too late. There was no sign of the girls. "Perhaps a shark got them?"One depressed rescuer said in his native Greek tongue.
A frantic search and rescue effort ensued. Now they had called it a recovery. It's not as if they could dredge the entire Mediterranean Sea. A half hour had passed since the girls had gone missing. The rescue teams wouldn't give up just yet, but it appeared to be hopeless.
The youths were gone forever, or were they? Moments later on an unimportant Greek island without a name, two young women lay face down on a wet sandy beach. Their bodies were in perfect physical condition, highly unusual in a drowning accident. One would assume that their bodies were lifeless, yet some unknown hand of fate had intervened.
One of the girls began to stir. They were alive! The first one to awaken had long black hair that had been twisted into knots by the relentless waves. She coughed and spit out the salty seawater. She sat up and waited for the nausea to subside. She rolled toward her friend.
"Gabrielle!" The dark haired woman yelled as she roughly flipped the other girl on her back. The second girl had long shoulder length blonde hair encrusted with sand. The dark haired one quickly performed CPR on her friend.
In seconds, the blonde coughed to life as the air entered her lungs. "Xena? Thank the gods!" Gabrielle said, though she realized that the face staring down at her was unfamiliar. Her words sounded wrong. She said what she thought yet it wasn't Greek.
"What happened? Why do you look like that? What language am I speaking?" Gabrielle carefully sat up and glanced around. "Gabrielle, relax. I'm not sure what's going on. You don't look like yourself either." Gabrielle's heart raced.
"I can't identify the language, though I can understand you." Xena began brushing the knots out of her hair with her hands. "I'm not sure. The words sound like a mixture of Gaelic, Eyre, and something we heard in Britannia."
"Have we moved on?" Gabrielle speculated. "This doesn't really look like the Elysian Fields, nor is it that odd place we ended up after the crucifixions." Xena continued to untangle the stranger's hair. "These obviously aren't our bodies." She pointed out.
"Ugh! Whose are they?" Gabrielle wanted to cry, but she was too scared. "I don't know. Somehow I knew it was you." Xena admitted."This isn't the first time we've been in this situation."
Gabrielle followed Xena's lead and straightened the girl's hair. "Is this a trick of the gods?" She asked, not really expecting an answer. "Could be." Xena replied. "Remember when i was trapped in Callisto's body, or Autolycus's?"
"I bet you Denars to doughnuts that this has something to do with The Karmic Circle." Xena guessed. "I don't believe that Ares and Aphrodite have enough godhood power left to affect us in any way."
A sleek red and blue speedboat roared past the nearly deserted isle just beyond the breakwater. Xena and Gabrielle stared in amazement. "That's no Greek sailing ship, nor is it Egyptian or Roman," the ex-warrior princess observed.
"Remember that world of the future we saw when the gods tricked us?" Gabrielle was grasping at straws. "That's certainly possible." Xena affirmed.
Xena quickly felt the new body. "She's kind of soft." The ancient superhero complained. "Mine, too." Gabrielle checked all parts. "These are nice." She joked as she felt below the girl's breasts. Xena smirked. "We can't keep them, Gabrielle. They belong to some other unfortunate young girls."
Gabrielle nodded, though the movement made her dizzy. "How old do you think these girls are?" Xena forced the body to shrug. She was already beginning to control its motor functions.
"They can't be more than nineteen or twenty full growth seasons. Can you stand?" Xena asked her lifelong friend. Gabrielle forced control of the body's arms and reluctantly pushed herself up. She wobbled for a moment. "Whoa!" This girl is at least two hand's-breadths taller than me."
Xena struggled a bit as well. "She's all legs." Gabrielle glanced down at her body's tan legs. "Nice!" She praised, adding: "She could use some muscle power build up." Xena warily took a few steps with the strange body.
"This girl's too thin. She's got no muscle tone. Her hands are soft. She's definitely not of a warrior caste." Xena criticized. "Why do you think we're here?" Gabrielle began. She was a natural analyst and philosopher. "I have no idea." Xena responded.
She forced a few more steps from the body. Gabrielle tried to follow, wavering a bit. "I haven't felt like this since the last Solstice party we went to." She held the strange girl's head. "Maybe the girls were drunk and fell overboard?" Xena offered.
She didn't know how accurate her guess was. "I like your undergarments." Gabrielle chuckled. Xena was wearing a pink two-piece bikini. "I feel like a slave girl." Xena grumbled. "I might as well be naked."
"My girl has an unusual taste in colors. It reminds me of an Amazon outfit." Gabrielle critiqued the leopard skin bikini with a beige skirt wrap. Xena still managed to grow about two handbreadths taller than me, Gabrielle's spirit grumbled.
"Do you know where we are?" She asked using the strange girl's voice, which was a pitch or two higher than hers, as she remembered it. Xena shaded her eyes and tried to guess using the relative position of the sun. "I can't truly tell until the stars come out." She analyzed.
"It's almost three lengths up on the sundial. That puts us at about mid-afternoon. The air smells salty enough, but there seems to be a number of unusual smells within it." Gabrielle adjusted her bikini top.
"These are a bit more than I'm used to." She joked. "It doesn't feel like wet animal skin." Xena felt the material in the bikini bottom. "This fabric is very light, like it was built specifically for swimming." Xena added.
"It was likely handmade in India." Gabrielle stiffened. "Do you think that's where we are?" Xena shrugged, though the motion felt odd. "Who else would do this?" Gabrielle had no answer for Xena's rhetorical question.
"I never understood the motivations of the gods." She followed Xena's line of thought. Xena urged her new body forward step after step, gaining some control of balance. Gabrielle mimicked her actions, training her body to move quietly and quickly like a true Amazon.
"Gabrielle, we must have been meant to inhabit these bodies. If it was a simple switch, our true bodies would be nearby." Gabrielle skirted a rocky outcropping near the base of a small hill across from the beach. She slowed to rest and gulped. "Xena, what's the last thing you remember?"
The ancient warrior princess plodded through the deep sand to Gabrielle's side. Every step made her head pound. "We were on the isle of Japa. You and I were fighting their evil god, and some Samurai warriors. We got separated. Those warriors were tough, the best I'd ever seen." Xena recalled.
Gabrielle clumsily brought her body to a stop. She faced the new Xena. "I don't know how to put this…" Gabrielle hesitated before speaking. "Xena, you lost your battle to one or more of the Samurai…" The warrior princess took a moment to gather her thoughts. "I lost?" Gabrielle nodded confirmation.
She steeled herself for the memory. "Yes. Xena, you were stripped naked, beaten, and beheaded. You were hung up in a village as an example…" Tears fell down the strange girl's face. Xena swallowed hard. "Oh."
"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Gabrielle." Xena rubbed the strange girl's back. "When I took up the sword long ago, I knew that one day someone better at war would likely defeat me. I guess I assumed that it would be someone like Ares, Athena, or even Zeus, himself. I recall defeating Lucifer, Mephistopheles, and Michael the Arc Angel in battle, and it's ironic that a swordsman that I didn't know at all finally ended my life. Yet, here we are again."
"Xena, that was the single most horrible thing that I have ever seen." Gabrielle confided as she wiped the foreign girl's tears from her face. "It felt worse than the crucifixion, worse than watching Callisto skewer my husband, and worse than watching that evil Hope die." Xena put her thin arm around the unfamiliar girl's shoulder. "What happened after I died?"
"I challenged a samurai to win your head back. He was going to keep it as a prize. I had a theory that I could magically put you back together. The battle took too much time. It was too late. I barely escaped Japa with my own skin intact." She mournfully remembered.
"For years after that I saw your spirit. "You were like…" Xena raised the strange girl's eyebrows. "Like an angel?" Gabrielle frowned. "Possibly. Do you think that Michael and his God are behind all this?"
"My memories of Michael are sketchy at best. This doesn't seem like something his God would do. Of course, there was the time when they gave Eve Callisto's spirit through me." Xena recalled. "What happened to Eve, anyway?"
Gabrielle's body shrugged. "We kept in contact for many years. She continued her religious movement started by Eli. Eventually the God of Eli won out. I vaguely remember going to a ceremony in the land of the Israelites. They announced some kind of a Savior had come to free them from the Romans. I never heard from Eve after that." She replied.
"Either way, we're here, wherever that is. Why? I guess we'll just have to find out." Xena said, as she waxed philosophical. Gabrielle saw something moving in the bright blue sky. "Is that a bird?" She pointed, and Xena followed her gaze. "Its wings aren't flapping." Xena observed.
"It's making some kind of whistling noise." Gabrielle added. "The sun reflects oddly off its feathers…wait a minute…what feathers?" Xena listened intently. Unfortunately, it seemed that this girl's hearing was impaired. "Gabrielle, I think it's metal!" Xena guessed as Gabrielle gasped.
"A metal thing that flies? What would the purpose of that be?" She questioned. "It's not shaped like my Chakram, Gabrielle. Maybe it's a weapon? We know that Hyphaestus could create metallic weapons." Xena recalled.
"It doesn't seem to be doing anything but flying." Gabrielle mused. "Maybe it doesn't view us as a threat." Xena reasoned. Suddenly a noise behind them startled the girls. A young man had mysteriously appeared.
Xena whirled and reached over her back, looking for her sword on instinct. Gabrielle stared at the young man in amazement. "No weapons!" Xena said.
"Hi girls! Speak English?" The guy asked. He was a bit shorter than the new Gabrielle, stocky, had long sandy brown hair, a youthful face, and he wore odd red clothing with a yellow lightning bolt emblazoned on the shirt.
The sign of Zeus! Gabrielle surmised. "What's ing-lash?" she asked. "Uh…the language you're speaking, albeit with a Greek accent." The boy answered. That told Xena a lot. She'd been trained to pick out key remarks and phrases to assess her enemies.
We're likely near Greece…perhaps Britannia had conquered it? She mused. A bluish blur kicked up sand before them. Instantly another guy was standing there. He was taller than the first, with thick dark hair, sky blue eyes, and in Gabrielle's opinion, very cute. "Are you gods?" Xena asked.
She glanced around for anything to use as a potential weapon. "Huh? No, but he thinks he is!" The new guy said with a bright grin as he nodded toward the shorter boy. "Just call me Impulse." He extended a hand towards new Xena. She moved a step closer and warily took it.
The boy with the strange name had soft hands, definitely not of the warrior caste, Xena observed, they look like a couple of big children. "Clark Kent." The taller one said in a deep voice as he extended his hand. "Gabrielle." She said as she shook his hand, her eyes sparkled.
"Nice firm handshake." She gushed. "I'm sorry if my impulsive friend is disturbing you ladies." Clark began as Gabrielle forgot to let go of his hand. "No problem." She cooed. Xena rolled her eyes.
This made her head hurt. "Are you ladies here with anyone?" Impulse asked hopefully."Uh…do you see anyone?" Xena countered. "Sarcasm! I like it!" Impulse chuckled. "Nope, it's just us." Gabrielle finally let go of Clark's hand.
"Maybe you can help us?" Xena started. "Sure, if we can." Clark said pleasantly. "Let's start with…how you two magically showed up here." She challenged. Clark gulped. "Um…it's kind of hard to explain." He faltered.
Xena's lips curled at the corners. "Try me." Impulse stepped in front of Gabrielle, blocking her view. "Actually, my name is Bart. Impulse is like a nickname." He began. "What about you, Clarkkent?"
Gabrielle's eyes met his and she almost melted into his arms. "Is that your real name?" Clark nodded. That depends on what you mean by real, he mused. "Well, Bart, let's try another one." Xena's new voice took on a menacing tone. "Where are we?" Clark looked puzzled. "Uh…near Greece, I think."
He confirmed that with Bart, who was still sizing up Gabrielle. For some reason, she reminded him of Chloe back in Metropolis. "That last sign I saw said Pylos." Bart replied. Now we're getting somewhere, Xena thought.
Gabrielle sighed. She hated to bring up this next question. "Um…what language is this again?" She began as Xena forced one eyebrow to rise. "English." Bart answered. "As in the Queen's English."
"Queen?" Xena parroted. "Who is the queen?" Clark smiled. Oliver Queen?
link to chapter 2: New Friends, Old Problems
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Chicago, IL
gardy720