Chapter 0 - The Odds of Getting Struck By Lightning

Author's Note: ... are 1 in 3,000. Unrelated, there's very little smut in this first chapter, save a paragraph toward the end. Skip to chapter two if you're looking for the action!



It had been a pretty impressive burger, he would admit that. Sam had just been trying to decide whether or not it had been worth the eleven dollars he had paid for it or if it had been simply overpriced convention food when the first of the rain started falling. Bad luck, probably; there hadn’t been any rain in the forecast for the weekend, but it was hardly the first time the weather man had gotten it wrong. In fact, he wouldn’t really have minded it except that there seemed to have been almost no forethought when the convention had been planning the layout of the food vendors outside, so while getting to the burger truck he had purchased his dinner from had been pretty easy, the maze of stalls and convention-goers that now obstructed his return trip to the hotel was a nightmare.

Still, it wasn’t much of an issue, or at least he hadn’t thought it would be. Sam had prepared for GraphiCon with an almost obsessive thoroughness, and he tugged the hood of his coat over his shaggy black hair to protect it from the rain. He had been planning this weekend for months, packing and repacking his suitcase, making sure he could get the time off work, preparing an exhaustive budget for it along with plenty of extra money for souvenirs and trinkets, and he wasn’t about to let an evening shower ruin his time at one of the biggest media conventions in the country. Already he’d bought a trio of limited edition Batman figurines, and he’d even managed to get a shirt autographed by—

The flash of lightning was blinding as it arced across the sky, and the curse that ripped itself from Sam’s mouth was from his surprise as much as the pain in his eyes. He lurched to the side, going for the nearest cover he could find, which turned out to be a maple tree that towered over a carefully-manicured patch of grass a stone’s throw away from the food vendors. It wasn’t much, but in his mind, it was definitely better than the cluster of steel trucks and aluminum tent poles that made up the stalls and were certainly directing the chorus of a siren’s song that was likely prepared to call down every lightning strike for miles in any direction.

Sam leaned against the tree, watching the rain come down on the bustling stalls for a few minutes and flinching at the brilliant red-orange electricity that burned its way through the clouds above. It was beautiful, he thought, at least in that way extremely dangerous things that were entirely out of your control could be beautiful. He was so focused on the light show nature was putting on, in fact, that he didn’t even notice the lithe figure barreling through the night until it slammed into him. The figure was powerful, too—had to be, in order to knock Sam’s not-inconsiderable frame back into the tree trunk behind him.

“Shit, man, are you okay?”

The voice was female and confident and… somehow familiar. Sam looked up from where he’d braced himself against the tree, taking in a woman in a stylish black coat and blonde hair plastered to her face by the rain. She carried herself with an easy grace, and it actually took him a moment to realize she was a couple of inches shorter him, though she seemed to make up for it with her presence.

“Seriously, are you alright?” The woman asked again, waving a slender hand in front of his face. “Should I call someone over? I’m sure the con has medics…”

“I’m okay,” Sam answered, steadying himself again. “You just caught me by surprise. Are you alright?”

The woman snorted, shaking her hands out. “Takes more than that to set me off, don’t worry about that.”

Sam shrugged, and the two fell into silence for a moment with nowhere obvious to take the conversation. “Oh, uh, I’m Sam, by the way,” Sam said, thrusting his hand out awkwardly.

“Char— uh, Charlie,” she replied, cutting off in the middle of her own name in a way that made Sam cock his eyebrow as she shook his hand, but she kept talking before he could really question it. “So are you just like, a big fan of trees, or what?”

“I’m sorry?” 

“Why are you hanging out under this tree?”

“Oh, that,” Sam said with a laugh, reaching out to pat the bark of the massive maple for reassurance, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he recognized the woman in front of him. “No, I’m here for the convention, I’m just getting out of the rain. I’m sorry, do I know you? You look really familiar.”

The woman’s eyebrows rose, and she shrugged, clear blue eyes dipping toward the plush grass beneath her feet. “Just one of those faces, I guess…”

Then it hit him. His eyes widened as realization slammed into him with the force of a steel chair. How could he have been so blind? So many long years spent relaxing in front of the television, kicking back to watch some admittedly-exaggerated showman’s violence. First her father, then her—he had half a dozen t-shirts with her surname on them.

“Holy shit, you’re—you’re Charlotte Flair!”

“Hey, hey, keep it down, man,” Charlotte said, stepping forward as if to silence him herself. “Seriously, draw a crowd and I’ll deck you right here.”

“I’m sorry, I just, holy crap,” Sam gushed, looking her over and kicking himself for not noticing it sooner. “I’m such a big fan, I’ve seen dozens of your matches, I even own Second Nature!”

Charlotte laughed, sweeping her damp hair back off her face and shaking her head. “Relax, man, don’t nerd out on me or I’ll find another tree. Have you got a pen or something? I’ll sign your shirt or whatever.”

Sam searched his pockets frantically, practically dumping their contents out on the ground, which drew another sound of amusement from the wrestler in front of him. He couldn’t help but feel his heart begin to sink as he realized he had left all of his real convention stuff up in his hotel room. Sam kicked himself internally—he’d heard dozens of stories of convention-goers heading out to buy mouthwash or whatever only to run into a famous voice actor or celebrity attending the event.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I do,” he replied after a couple long minutes of turning his clothes inside out, though whether he was apologizing to her or to himself he couldn’t tell.

“No worries,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe next time, huh?”

As she turned to walk away, Sam’s stomach dropped into a pit. Nobody would ever believe he had met her if he let her walk away now, but what else could he do? Sam sighed, gripping his smartphone as he leaned against the tree—

“A picture!” Sam called out suddenly, though his voice was almost drowned out by a rumbling of thunder. “Could we maybe take a picture together?”

Charlotte cocked a smile and shrugged. “You really are a fan, huh? Alright, man, but I look like crap, so if this ends up on the internet, the lawsuits will hit fast and hard.”

As Sam prepared his phone for the picture, Charlotte did her best to make herself presentable, raking her fingers through her hair until it was less a damp mess and lying flat on her skull. Then Sam raised his arm, angling the camera to capture their smiles, and clicked the button.

And then the world exploded.

Sam’s vision whited out as his body went rigid, a sudden spasm of his muscles throwing him into Charlotte and tossing them both a couple of yards away. As he fell, time slowed down, and Sam felt a wave of force pass through him, like water through a sieve, and the whole universe seemed to shift from his perspective and he felt himself being torn apart and put back together again. 

A high pitched noise took up in his ears, sucking the sound from the rest of the world as every atom of his being seemed to be shoved and cajoled back into place. He felt fundamentally changed, not quite wrong but different, and nausea and disorientation washed over him in a dizzying embrace that made him want to vomit. He realized then that the keening he heard was a woman’s scream, and that it was coming from his mouth, and then he hit the ground.
 
                                        ***
 
Sam saw the Light.

No, wait. It was buzzing faintly. Lowercase L, then.

“Oh, you’re awake,” an older woman’s voice said from somewhere off to the side. Sam managed to move his eyes far enough over to find a dark-skinned woman in her fifties checking the read-out on an EKG monitor. “I’ll page your doctor.”

Sam heard the words, but failed to connect them with any real meaning. The woman wore light blue scrubs that swished faintly as she stepped over to a phone on the wall and made a quick call, presumably to his doctor. A hospital, then.

“Excuse me,” Sam murmured, but what came out was mostly a scratchy noise like a growling cat. He raised a hand to bring it to his throat, but stopped short at the thin layer of gauze covering it. The nurse looked up as she set the phone back in its cradle, and raised her hand to stop him.

“You’ll want to leave that on for now,” she explained, gently pressing his arm back down to his side. “The lightning strike left a pattern on your skin. It’ll go away after a couple of weeks, but the ointment will help it heal faster.”

Lightning strike. That was what had happened to him. Right when he’d gone to take a picture with…

“Charlotte Flair,” he said, and it came out more properly now, but his voice still sounded strange to him; maybe he had some sort of hearing damage? 

But the nurse just nodded. “Yes, we know who you are, Miss Flair, we found your ID in your pocket. We’re keeping the press outside until you feel ready to accept visitors.”

Sam frowned, and tried to sit up, but as he glanced down at his body, he noticed something was very wrong. Two things, actually.

Sam had tits.

He tossed the cover off his body, eliciting a startled gasp from the nurse, but he barely noticed. Instead, he focused on the fact that though it was attached to his head, he was definitely looking down at a woman’s body. Two soft, full breasts rose up from his chest, looming over a stomach that he could tell was muscled and toned even through the gown they’d given him that flared out into gently curving hips. The lack of a bulge between the powerful thighs that extended out past the hem of the gown told him all he needed to know.

Sam had, somehow, become a woman, and not just any woman: he’d swapped bodies with Charlotte Flair.

He struggled to fight down the panic rising in his chest. How had this happened? Was it the lightning strike? And if so, did that mean that the real Charlotte was in his body?

“Um, the man I was with when this happened,” Sam said to the nurse, working hard to keep a nervous edge out of his voice. 
“Where is he? Is he hurt?”

“Sam Gregory, right? He’s fine, no need to worry. He was put in the room right next door. He actually woke up this morning, I think he has a visitor right now.”

Sam nodded, planning ahead in his mind. He worked through a mental checklist of his—Charlotte’s—body, flexing each of the muscle groups in turn. He was surprised to feel that he didn’t feel bad; in fact, outside of a little stiffness, he felt powerful, likely owed to the toned athleticism of this body. As the minutes dragged on, the nurse stepped out to see what was taking the attending physician so long, and Sam made his move.

Quickly unclipping the EKG from his hand, Sam turned slowly until he could sit up. It was strange, moving in Charlotte’s body, requiring an unusual amount of focus to coordinate the muscles required, but he achieved it after a moment. Leaning on the IV stand beside his bed, Sam lurched to his feet and made his way over to the door that led into the hallway.

The corridor outside was blessedly empty, and most of the nurses seemed gathered at a large station a few doors away. Doing his best to be quick and quiet in a body that he was unfamiliar with, Sam turned to the door beside his own and carefully pushed it open. It swung open soundlessly, and he leaned in.

Inside, he could see his girlfriend, Whitney. They’d been seeing each other for a couple of months, but were keeping things fairly casual, mostly hanging out together and having pretty regular sex. It was this last that came to his mind, the memory of long nights intertwined in each other’s arms, because there she was on the hospital bed with his body. 

And she wasn’t just laying beside him, either. Whitney had one leg cocked up and over his hip, her dress bunched around her pale hips, and Sam was treated to the truly bizarre sensation of watching somebody else fuck his girlfriend using his body. She groaned softly, arms wrapped around his shoulders as their hips met with a soft clapping noise, rigid cock sliding easily into Whitney with deep, powerful strokes.

It was too much. Sam stumbled backward, letting the door close behind him, and made his way back into his room. The doctor came in and asked a bevy of questions, explaining the treatment they’d given his new body after the lightning strike while he answered mechanically and thought hard. Right now, he needed to… what? Figure out what had happened? Make a plan? Do research on how to live his life as a man trapped in a woman’s body?

A few minutes later, the doctor left, and Sam was alone with his thoughts. He wished he could just go home, but the doctor had explained it was best for him—her, Sam thought bitterly—to stay overnight, at least until they figured out whether the lightning had done any long-term damage to Charlotte’s lungs. At least he was clear for visitors now, though he had no idea what he would say to anyone coming to visit Charlotte Flair in the hospital.

He couldn’t have planned for his first visitor, though, not even as the door opened. His jaw dropped, and his mind scrambled for words to say as he took in the stunning redhead in the doorway. It made sense, a voice in the back of his mind told him, since the two women were supposedly best friends.


For standing in the doorway was Becky Lynch, with a relieved smile on her face. “Guess it’d take more than a little lightning to deal with you, huh?”