"How am I supposed to do that if you don't even know what the threat is?"
He shrugged drinking from his bottle once more. I decided to join him and have a drink while I thought about my next move.
"This world is not what it appears to be little amazon." He stood with me at the window. "Look at them down there. They go about their lives and very few know of the wonders around them." He held a small rectangular object in his hand. It was like the window before me only much smaller. He touched the tiny window with his hand and it changed to an image of a man lifting one of the larger vehicles the people on the street road in.
"What is this?"
"He is as strong as Hercules and as fast as Hermes."
"Is he a demi-god?"
"Not much is known about him. Apparently photos of him are very rare."
"Well, he certainly is no son of Zeus." He seemed to notice my small jab at his heritage. "What is this?"
"It's a phone." He sighed and sat down once again. "You have a lot to learn little amazon." He spent the rest of the night teaching me about man's world. Being raised on an island closed off from the rest of the world seriously limits your knowledge of technology.
Griffith allowed me to "crash" at his apartment for a while. Sleep did not come easy to me that night, from the paranoid fear that he might murder me in my sleep to my curiosity of man's world. I spent time on his laptop searching the internet to discover more about this world until nearly dawn.
I was awakened at noon by a strange woman screaming. "Oh my god I'm sorry!"
I quickly covered my naked self with the blanket Griffith had given me. "Who are you?"
"I'm Caroline, I'm 's maid. You are?"
"They call me prince. I'm a...Griffith let me stay the night."
"Mr. Griffith is a very kind man." I have never heard of his kind being kind, but then they were supposed to live on an island similar to themyscira so maybe he was cast out or a runaway like me. Caroline was a beautiful woman with long black hair off setting her copper skin.
"Would you like some help?"
"Oh no, I'll be fine."
"Really, it's no trouble. Back home, I used to clean stables, I'm sure I can handle whatever Griffith leaves behind." She laughed and flashed her beautiful smile.
"Okay."
I spent the next hour mopping the floor, making up his bed, and scrubbing Griffith's toilets while Caroline washed clothes and dishes and vacuumed. We met again at the big window where we washed the window and spoke about our lives. She was a tsalagi woman who was working her way through college to become a chef. "You know, I think we are finished." she sighed happily. "Thank you, this would have taken me hours to do without your help. I actually have time to relax."
"I'm glad I could help."
"Since I have some free time would you, maybe, like to get some coffee or an ice mocha?"
"I don't know."
"Please? I really would like to pay you back for helping me out, but I don't have any money."
At the coffee shop she bought me an iced coffee, apparently they do not sell root beer. "Hmm, delicious!" I shouted excitedly. My shout drew the attention of the gathered customers, reminding me of who I am once more.
"I know right?" she giggled.
"So..why do you want to be a chef?"
"I've always loved cooking, You take a bunch of ingredients that are just fine on their own and put them together in a big pot and mix them up with love and you've got something better than before." She sipped at her vente , "What about you? What do you want to be when you get out of school?"
School? But before I could bother to think about pushing further the glass behind me shattered. Not knowing what it was I dove forward covering Caroline, shielding her with my body.
I was okay, Caroline was okay though scared out of her mind. I stood and ran through the now open window to find the man Griffith had shown me earlier fighting a pale white man. He didn't seem like much of a fighter. When the pale man threw the other into yet another window and laughed, I decided to finish it before anyone else got hurt.
"You think you can stop the main man?!" the pale man laughed at the other who he had thrown. He was enjoying inflicting pain on people and he didn't care who else got in the way. "What in-" He shouted as I lifted the main man into the air and suplexed him into the road with a satisfying crunch. I made quick work of crippling his leg.
By the time I had finished with the main man, the thrown man stood up, dusting the glass from his hair. "Stay back." He shouted.
"Don't worry, I took care of him."
"No you don't-" Before he could, finished the main man picked me up by my throat.
"You think you can frag lobo? THE MAIN MAN?!"
"Let him go lobo!"
"Make me!" he shouted like a gravelly voiced child.
A quick elbow crushed lobo's nose loosening his grip around my neck. I spun around and kicked him in the face before flipping backwards, landing next to the unnamed man. I don't know how he was still standing, I once laid out a charging Minotaur with that kick. "Any ideas?"
"I have one, but not with all these innocent people about."
Lobo began swinging a large hook on a chain and threw the chain at us. Before he could land his strike, we jumped out of the way. On his next swing, he caught my arm, the chain wrapping around it. Trapped in a tug of war against a man with ungodly strength was not what I expected when I woke up this afternoon. Neither did he expect me to allow him to pull me forward. The momentum carried me to him, my uppercut launched him high into the sky. Whatever the other man's move was I hope he was a good shot.
In the next moment the sky was scorched by fire that struck lobo straight through him and beyond. I see now why he didn't want to use it with innocents behind lobo. The man collapsed next to me. I don't know who he was but I felt he did not want these strangers to know either.
He awoke back at Griffith's apartment, the only place I knew was safe for sure. The irony did not escape me. "Where?"
"You're safe." I informed him. "After we beat the lobo you passed out."
"Yeah, heat vision leaves me drained." He straightened his hair as he sat up. "Thanks."
"I got the feeling you did not want anyone examining you too closely."
"Not yet. Right now it's best if I just stay hidden." I could not stop myself from laughing, apparently neither could he. This was what I had dreamed of since I was a child, laughing with a fellow warrior after the battle. Something I would never get with the amazons I feared. "I'm Clark Kent." He finally said when we both calmed down.
"I'm...they call me prince."
"If you don't mind, I'll be heading out now."
"Sure thing."
"Hey, can I get your number?"
"My number?"
"Yeah, in case I need backup again."
"I do not have a phone."
"Oh." With speed like Hermes he stood up and tore a piece of paper off of the refrigerator and wrote his number on it. "Whenever you get one call me or shoot me a text. We can hang out."
"Thank you. I will." He nodded and left, preferring to leap out of the window to the next building rather than use the door.
Griffith returned hours later. "How was your day?" He asked coyly.
"Fine. Fought a very strange looking man along side the warrior you showed me yesterday."
"You really can't be so cavalier about this."
"Why not? Does man's world not have heroes?"
Griffith sighed, pinching his nose. "Look, just try to stay low. In the meantime, my seer got in contact with me. There seems to be some trouble you're supposed to fix."
"I need a phone."
"What?" He seemed taken aback by my sudden demand.
"I need a phone with which to communicate across long distances to people who are not in the room with me."
"I know how a phone works." He sighed again before handing me a piece of paper, "Alright, I'll get you a phone before you get back."
"Thank you, Griffith. You are not as my mother told me your kind would be."
"Thanks, I think."
"Is this the world ending threat?"
"No, just a monster. Shouldn't take you more than five minutes, ten tops."
"Hah! I will vanquish it in one!"
Below the city I had to ride the subway. I enjoyed watching the people enjoying their lives, some laughing and smiling, some going to and from work. I found myself staring at this beautiful girl around my age on her phone, she tried to hide her beautiful laughing smile. I wondered what she was looking at, the way her eyes lit up I imagine it must have been someone she loved had sent her a funny "text". I thought of Clark and smiled. I thought of my mother and my heart grew heavy, how she must be worried about me. Or was she happy to be rid of me?
A voice came over the P.A. The station where so many had been taken from was coming up. I shook my head to clear my thoughts, focus on the battle ahead. I took the bag that Griffith had given me and walked to the final car, save for a few sleeping men it was empty. I opened the door and let in the howling wind before I leapt off of the train. I used the flashlight from my bag and searched around me for the entrance. Some monster had dug itself a nest in the tunnels and lured humans in, never to be seen or heard from again. "Life comes at you fast" I read aloud, wondering what the painted words meant as I entered.
The cave-like floor were littered with bones that had been chewed clean by whatever creature was doing this. I wish the seer had given more details so I could have prepared better. Whatever this was, it believed itself to have caught me unawares as it moved behind me. Slowly I reached into my duffle bag. Only to be thrown by whatever was behind me. I crashed into the wall breaking it against my strong body. It was fast before I could stand I was knocked to my feet again, the broken chunks of wall cutting into my body. "Hera!" I shouted as I dug a glass like piece of rock out of my stomach.
The beast hissed. "She's not here to help you child!" The female voice echoed around me. Before I could react her claws cut my chest like a knife. "She has never cared for you!" Another cut to the back of my shin dropped me. "She hates you!" I dove to my duffle bag and ripped the sword from it's sheath. Before I could swing it, she had shattered it into pieces. "She wishes to kill you!"
She was fast, strong, and had the home field advantage, I had to change something or I would wind up with the other bones. I raced to the entrance as fast as I could. Before I could make it out into the tunnel I felt her hand around my shirt as she threw me back into the cave. I slid to a stop when I crashed into a podium and a large shield landed on my head. I could hear the skittering of her feet on the ground. Thinking quickly I grabbed the shield slamming it into her with all my might. That's when I saw her for the first time. She had the face of a Goddess. It was then I realized she was a Goddess. "Aletheia? What are you doing here of all places?" She hissed again, her forked tongue flicked at the air. "What has happened to you?" She ran at me again, but my blow must have stunned her because she was now much slower. I easily sidestepped her, tripping her with my foot. Quickly I wrapped my arms around her, trapping her. "What has happened to the Goddess of truth?!" I demanded. She broke free, slicing my arm and pushing me across the room where I crashed through what must have been her bed chambers. Inside I found a weapon that may destroy her covered in a shroud. As she came in I tore the shroud from the mirror and she was forced to face the truth in her mirror stopping her cold in her tracks.
Her fabled mirror never lied, it showed the unabashed truth inside for all the good and bad that it was. Very few could take the naked truth. I saw her body shift and change, gone was the angelic face she showed the world leaving only the twisted monster beneath. Her body had become hard and sharp, her angelic face a distorted mess of what it once was. She fell to her knees weeping. She had hidden the truth for so long even she had begun to believe the lie. Through her tears she looked at me, for once without rage. "Thank you." And her body simply faded away.
I stood over her where her body had been. "You are welcome." They had stopped believing. The mortals. They stopped believing in her, stopped worshipping the truth and she was forced to survive in the only way she could. I turned to pick up the shield and in doing so my eyes saw the mirror. Standing there, holding my shield, was a woman.