Chapter One

Steve Trevor had known the risks when he flew the plane up into the air. He was about to save thousands of lives while losing his own in the process. Though it terrified him right to his core, he knew that he had to be a hero. Diana was his motivation. She was willing to do what no one else was. He couldn't let her down. He remembered the tears stinging his eyes, blurring his vision before he swiveled slightly in his seat. His reflection was refracted on the heads of the multitude of gas bombs awaiting to be dropped on their London target. He turned back around, facing the smoky blue night before steeling himself to pull the trigger.

He knew it had worked. He felt the fiery inferno of a thousand gas bombs consume him limb from limb. He felt the plane crumble apart all around him, and the sensation of falling. To him, it felt like an endless fall; a fall that would continue until his body gave up on him. Even when he did hit the rocky shore, his back slamming forcefully onto the rocks, he felt as if he were still falling. His blue eyes, blurred by tears from the pain and the smoke all around him, stared up at the starless night above him. The sky was now a dark midnight blue; shards of the plane falling down around him like twisted confetti.

"Diana..."

Her name passed his bloody lips, wafting up into the night air. His eyelids grew heavy as he felt a tear slip down his cheek. His eyes snapped shut; the night fading.

Here came the death. A death of a hero.

"Hello, Steven."

His eyes shot open then; his throat feeling constricted as he lay on the ground. He couldn't breathe.

"Humans….So dramatic. So weak."

Ares. That was Ares. Steve turned his gaze gently from side to side, looking out of the corner of his vision for him. All he could see were the fiery remains of the planes surrounding him, and the sheen of dusty orange gas sweeping over the rocks into the water. No Ares. Then where…

The inability to breathe grew worse. He convulsed this time; a choked cry leaving his mouth.

"You will thank me for this someday, I'm sure. You'll be thankful to be rid of this pathetically weak body. Now it'll be my burden to bare, sadly."

Burden to bare? Steve was confused by Ares. He was confused by it all, and in an excruciating amount of pain on top of all it. As the pain reached its climax, he felt his breathing stop completely for a moment. He was slightly arching his back off the rocks, now curled onto his side. His scorched cheek was kissing the slicked rocks before everything seemed to become suspended and still. The pain was gone completely. It took him a moment to realize that that was because he was no longer in his body. No, he was staring right at it.

"What the -"

His sentence died prematurely as he watched his body sit up as if it didn't sport a multitude of injuries at the moment. He watched his body as a sly smile came onto his face, stretching out his arms before looking at his hands.

"It's going to take some getting used to for sure, but I'll make it work," his body said before it shifted his gaze to look right at him.

"What's going on? Am I dead? I must be dead, but if I'm dead, why am I…"

"You're not dead, Steven. Not yet of course. It would be relatively easy to just let you die, but I want you around for this."

That was when it all clicked for Steve. Technically he was dead right now. He was disconnected from his body, and he knew who was now inhabiting it.

He watched as his body rose; the sick smile still on his face. His body brought up a hand, moving the now glowing palm over a bloody cheek to heal it completely.

"Mortal flesh is so weak. Be lucky that a god has decided to bless it."

"Ares, what did you do to Diana?"

"Foolish boy, if you should be asking anything, it should be what she has done to me..." Ares shook his head, moving his hand to heal his new body's nearly severed arm. "She saw you become immersed in flame, and lashed out with equal passion. Oh what a fight it was. The gods would be proud...Yes, indeed..."

Ares seemed to be lost in his own musings for a moment as he wandered closer to where Steven seemed to be stuck in suspended animation.

"Her only flaw is you," said Ares as he stood mere feet away, "And that's a flaw I intend on exploiting. She'll see that she was wrong in trying to kill me. You can't kill a god that lives off killing. That's just sad...that's wrong."

"I won't let you."

Ares stumbled back then, reaching up a hand to his throat as Steve tried to make a move to reclaim his body. It was a move that was easily swayed though, and soon Ares was standing up straight again. He released a chortle of amusement.

"Yes, I can't dispense of you. I want you to have a front row seat as I destroy Diana; as I make her lose hope in you and mankind all together. I'll give her one more chance to show her she's wrong."

"You underestimate her."

"And she overestimates you. How's that for irony?"

He watched as Ares moved to stick a hand up into the air. Lightning soon came funnel down from the dark above, shooting right through his hand. As the light died away, Steve was able to see that Ares was now holding a golden hand mirror in his hands. Before Steve could even try to move, Ares came closer with the mirror. He slapped at Steve as if he were a fly, soon catching him in the mirror.

"Hello. Comfy?"

Steve looked towards Ares'; what felt like a fogged up glass between them. He now had some mobility again, but everything about him felt like it was tightly constrained. He pressed his hands against the fogged glass pounding on it and shouting.

"What's that? I can't hear you."

It was true. In the mirror prison that Steve now found himself, he was completely mute to the outside world.

"You'll probably go mad in the next month or so, I'd figure," said Ares with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders. "Wonder what you'll be like after a few decades?"

Ares moved a palm over the mirror glass then, temporarily hiding Steve and his pounding from view. Instead Ares was staring at his new Steve Trevor self.

"I think it's time to prepare for a new war," he said before tucking the mirror away.

He turned to walk through the still burning rubble around him; whistling a tune as he did. Soon he was swallowed up by the night; the burning carnage of a hero all that was left in his wake.