Issue #11: "Who is Wonder Woman?" Part 1

Wonder Woman flew high in the air above Gateway City, the freedom of the simple act still invigorating her every time she did it. She lowered her flight path to fly among the rooftops, the sun beating down on her with warmth like it did on Themyscira. She closed her eyes and rolled mid-flight, possibly one of the most relaxing sensations she had ever felt, and allowed herself to glide forward slowly.

Suddenly the sound of a burglar alarm from a nearby shop of some kind roused her from her reverie and she swooped down to street level.

“Drop your weapons and your loot and I will not kill you,” she stated simply, hovering in the air in front of the robbers. They had, she noticed, been robbing a jewelry store.

The robbers all took one look at the brown-haired super-heroine in front of them, then a shared look of defeat was passed amongst them before they all slowly put down their weapons and put their hands in the air. They didn’t want to cross paths with Wonder Woman; word was that she’d come across a weirdo called the Film Freak, and broken sixty-five percent of the bones in his body. Because he had started a drunken bar-fight in her newly adopted home of Gateway.

“Good choice. You are smart men, something I have yet to see many of in your world.” She glided down smoothly and stepped up to the quivering group of robbers, before they knew what was even happening their leader was on his knees crying in pain. She held his hand in hers, crushing the bones within it until they were almost powder. “Be glad you did not resist.” She added as she let go of his hand and turned towards the next man in the group.

“Enough!” the waitress shouted, after her buttocks were pinched for what seemed the thousandth time that day. She turned on the grinning trucker whose hand had yet to move and grabbed him by the wrist, “Yours, I believe?” she asked rhetorically before twisting his arm around and using it to shove him through the window of the diner.

“Holy… Diana!” the diner’s owner shouted at the top of his voice, “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Quitting. Take my last paycheck and use it to pay for the window,” Diana replied, throwing down the apron and paper hat she’d worn for almost ten months in the employ of this disgusting man. She had endured as much, and more than, she could take. Being normal was hard.

“Well,” the manager stuttered for his words, “Good riddance! You better not come crawling back, you’ll never work in this town again!”

“Thank the gods.” Diana muttered under her breath as she left.

Steve Trevor’s cell-phone rang, the sudden noise making him jump out of his seat. He still sat in his car, in the same position as before with his back to the driver’s door. This time though the car was parked outside of the apartment of one Diana Prince. Not the most original of secret identities, but it did the job. It had taken Steve a long time to find her, and he knew who he was looking for. If he hadn’t had the spot of luck to buy the nametag photo from a private detective he’d hired (a strange, stoic man called John Jones), it probably would have taken him an awful lot longer.

And now, he was on the verge. He was going to see Diana for the first time since she’d announced her betrothal to that damned Hippolytus. Steve had been a fool for storming off and not hearing her out, and it had gotten him nowhere but stuck in this horrible situation. He gathered together his resolve and prepared to leave the car.

“I’ll buzz you in.” Diana’s voice, permeated with static, said over the intercom.

Steve sat and thought for a few moments, then closed his eyes and lowered his head.

“No, I…” Steve started before changing tack, “I can’t let you see me right now. Not yet.”

“What? Steve?” Diana said through the intercom, her voice full of concern.

“The world needs you Diana. She’s not you.” Steve removed his hand from the intercom button, “I need you.”

“Steve? Come on up Steve,” Diana’s voice said through the intercom, but Steve ignored them, “Steve, are you still there?”

Steve Trevor felt the sadness of this time last year creep back inside of him before he put his hands to the wheels of the chair and slowly turned himself around, slowly and methodically wheeling himself to his car, every single tiny movement causing burning pain across his nerve endings. This was how he’d lived for a year, ever since she’d attacked him, in constant pain, without the use of his legs, despondent at the loss of the only woman he’d ever loved and powerless to do anything about it.

Washington D.C. , around 3 AM in the morning, a woman climbed silently through a window and into the Themysciran Embassy. She sat perched on the window and pulled two foot-shaped electrical device from her equipment pack that she stuck to the soles of her shoes before dropping to the floor. The outer-soles were created by LexCorp, one of their military contracts, and they negated all sensors in the feet below her. She delved into her pack again to bring out an aerosol can and sprayed it empty, showing her six different laser beams crossing the room. She stepped over and under the lasers and up to a special display case on the far wall.

Inside the case was an alternate Wonder Woman armor, created for times of great strife. It was better protected, with a leather skirt and a stronger enchanted silver breastplate. It hadn’t been worn in hundreds, if not thousands of years, before the Amazons had even settled on Themyscira. It was being displayed at the Embassy as part of a small museum-style exhibit on Amazonian culture. Black-painted lips smiled wickedly before turning to find her true target, the Kronus Tablet. The tiny piece of stone, around the same size and shape as a calculator, was completely and utterly priceless. And one of the most powerful items on this planet. Fortunately for her it hadn’t been used for its true purpose in so long that there was no living Amazon who knew if its value, and because of this it wasn’t alarmed. She picked it up quickly and silently before replacing it with a duplicate she had held in her pack. Now it was time for her fun.

She walked over to the Wonder Woman war armor and took a quick look at it before smashing the case. She pulled the armor and its boots and wristbands out of the case as the wailing of the alarm began. With her free hand she dropped some locks of black hair in the case and on the floor.

Diana had slept that night, for the first time in a long time. Even just hearing Steve’s voice had soothed her, he’d always had that effect; he helped her sort the mess that was her thoughts out. So Diana got her first good night’s sleep in weeks and because she didn’t have work she’d resolved to sleep in late. Very late if she had the choice--- man’s world was a bad influence.

All of which contributed to her being more than a little cranky when somebody knocked very loudly on her door at 8 AM. She dozily lifted her head from her bed to listen.

“Miss Diana Prince,” a muffled voice shouted, “This is the Department of Extranormal Operations. Please open your door or we will break it down. We do not want to use excessive force, but we have been licensed to by a court of law.”

Diana sat bolt upright, all the drowsiness lingering from the night before gone in a very sobering instant. She stood up, wrapped in her blanket, and walked over to her clothing bag.

“Just a minute,” she called, “I’m not dressed.”

“You have sixty seconds to open the door or we’re coming in, dressed or not.”

She unzipped the bag that, until she could afford some drawers or a wardrobe, contained all of her clothes. Only it didn’t anymore, it contained the stolen Wonder Woman War Armor. Diana furrowed her brow and after taking a cursory sweep of the apartment and seeing no other clothes she quickly slipped the costume on.

“You have fifteen seconds to comply or we will enter by force.” The D.E.O. operative’s voice called from behind the door. He began a countdown.

Diana finished putting the costume on, including the boots and bracelets, before he got to ten. When he was down to five she was pulling all her cash from her kitty jar and stuffing it under the top of the breastplate. When he got to three she was turning on the TV and turning the volume up a few notches. When he got to zero he kicked in the door to a very small and very empty apartment. The small group of agents took a cursory look around the room, the first thing they noticed was the curtains flapping in the wind from the wide-open window. One agent turned off the television and they could then hear footsteps on metal, quickly making their way away from the apartment and the open window. The open window that led on to a fire escape.

Diana had reached the roof. Unfortunately in Gateway City all the buildings are shorter to help combat earthquakes and the roof was only two floors above her apartment. She was trapped. The nearest building had at least a twenty foot gap between it and her building. The sounds of rapid footsteps on metal and the click of a gun being cocked reached her ears and she decided to go for it.

“Diana Prince, stop!” The lead D.E.O. agent who’d given her the countdown but a few seconds ago shouted after her.

She broke into a run.

“Shoot her!” The agent shouted, “Don’t let her get away!”

Suddenly a ridiculously loud cracking noise filled the ears of the surrounding people, the glass in the window of Diana’s apartment shattered. For a split second Diana thought it was the sound of the guns firing, of her life ending, but then she remembered she’d heard the sound before. Made the sound before. It was a sonic boom.

The agents fired their guns. In front of them a bluish-red blur weaved in and out, sparks flying from it and hiding Diana’s escape from view.

Everything happened at once. Diana reached the edge of the building, not slowing down. Steve Trevor turned his chair around to look for the gunshots and the origin of the sonic boom. Bullets, stunted as though they’d bounced off of a solid steel wall, landed on the rooftop with the jingling sound that only bullets and spent casings can ever make.

Then Diana jumped.