"Who did this belong to?" Diana asked, as she and Prometheus made their way through the twisting hallways of LexCorp.
"I'm not really sure," he told her, looking at the 'NM' insignia that had been engraved on the front. "All I know is that it's from one of Luthor's old projects that failed miserably."
Suddenly, he stopped, right in the middle of the hallway.
"Charles?"
"The cameras are back online." Prometheus's helmet allowed him to observe and hijack every piece of electronic equipment in the building, and he could even see the exact camera Luthor was watching them from.
"There." He pointed up to a camera mounted on the ceiling, before showing it his middle finger.
"Well, this is unexpected," said a voice from nowhere, but Prometheus recognized it right away. "I didn't expect you to betray me, Charles."
"Maybe you don't know people as well as you think?"
Screens dropped from the ceiling, and Luthor's face appeared all around the two of them.
"I assume you're on your way to the camp. Unfortunately, I can't let you go back to there."
"You want to stop us?" The queen asked, with Prometheus acting as translator between the two of them. "How can you sleep at night while my people are starving?"
"Don't act high and mighty. We both know that there were more than a few starving slaves living on your island, but you were too busy practicing with your sword to ever notice that."
Diana looked down at the floor, ashamed.
"Just so you know," Luthor told them, "I'm not a villain, I'm not evil and I don't want to hurt your people. In fact, I'd be a philanthropist, if it paid better. Stealing your island is going to make me a lot of money, and putting your people in camps was the most profitable long-term option. If I could have made more money by building houses for them and feeding them five course meals, I would have, and if there was no money to be made by keeping them alive, I would have put them on a cargo ship and sunk it to the bottom of the ocean. It's not me you should be angry at, sweetie; it's capitalism."
She ran her sword through the screen and kept walking.
"I'm tired of listening to him."
Luthor stood silently for a long time, until Mercy finally worked up the guts to ask him, "Lex, are you ok?"
"I want soldiers on the street."
"How many?"
"All of them!" he shouted. "Get every drone and soldier we have down there, now!"
"How are you going to spin that? It'll look like we're declaring martial law."
"I don't care. Tell the Prime Minister it's a training exercise, or something. I want those two stopped, immediately," he said, watching them exit the building through the cameras by the front door. "No one makes a fool of Lex Luthor!"
In minutes, the last three blocks separating Diana and Prometheus from the camp were filled with LexCorp guards and drones.
"We need to be smart about this," he told her, as they took shelter in an alleyway. "I think we can sneak past them, and launch a surprise attack once we get closer to the camp."
He began spelling out his intricate plan for getting past Luthor's guards, but Diana wasn't even listening.
"Where the hell did she go?" he said, once he realized that she was gone. Prometheus barged through the nearest door in the alleyway, which happened to be a paint store that had been abandoned once the soldiers had crowded the streets.
"What are you doing?"
She ripped open a can of red paint and started writing over the 'NM' on her chest. "I'm making a statement, and I need your help to do it."
After telling him her plan, the warrior walked out into the street, where tanks, soldiers and flying drones were already waiting for her. Her expression couldn't be seen behind her helmet, but the 'WW' painted across her breast plate was clearly visible.
"She's going to get herself killed," said Prometheus, as he grappled up to the nearest rooftop.
However, the queen wasn't afraid, and the whole world knew that as news choppers showed her stepping slowly toward the line of soldiers and guns.
"Do not come any closer!" they shouted, but she continued, step by step.
The entire world held its breath as international news crews scrambled to wrap their heads around the events currently happening in Athens.
Things became much easier for them, once an anonymous email came in, courtesy of Prometheus.
"This just in. A source inside of Athens has just informed us that the mysterious figure opposing LexCorp security is actually the queen of Themiscyra, Diana Prince. Though, now she goes by a different name..."
The humanitarians as well as the Themiscyrans chanted in full force, when they heard her name, and didn't stop until the moment the battle started.
"Get back!" shouted the soldiers, though they knew it was futile. They realized they were going to lose as the chanting continued and the world held its breath.
"Wonder Woman."
She landed on one of the tanks after a single enormous leap, and with a few accurate punches managed to break off the barrel of its gun. She hurled it like a spear at the treads of another tank, bringing the monstrosity to a grinding halt, and turned her attention to the soldiers.
She kicked one into a nearby car before picking up one of the nearby barricades and swinging it like a baseball bat, sending the other two flying.
A shot from a tank flew over her head, but, before it could reload, she had already used her sword to hack through its armor and shoved the wooden post through its mechanical innards.
She used the knowledge she had gained from fighting the first tank to take out several others, but was never able to see the snipers training their guns on her.
Luckily, Prometheus was watching her back, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, knocking out Luthor's troops with his bare hands.
He had to grapple across the street to deal with an especially troublesome group, who had fired several shots at the queen. He grabbed one and tore his rifle away, before bashing the soldier across the face. He ejected the magazine and struck one of his friends in the face with it, before breaking the weapon in half.
Two more tried to shoot him, but he was already on top of them. He grabbed one soldier by his hair and slammed his face into a metal railing, caught the next with a left hook that shattered his jaw and used the grapple to pull the last one over to him. The LexCorp trooper screamed as Prometheus hurled him off of the roof and through the window of a building next door.
Back on the ground, Wonder Woman still had one and a half blocks to make it through, and they weren't going to be easy.
Flying drones were everywhere, hitting her from all directions, and the queen was getting tired of it.
Luthor was running out of tanks, but she got an idea when she saw one that was still operational.
Wonder Woman jumped onto its deck and grabbed it at the base of the turret before screaming to the heavens, "Athena, give me strength!"
Both her concern for her people and her anger at Luthor served to increase her power, and, after ripping the turret off, she held it by the barrel and used the hunk of metal as an enormous flyswatter, taking down dozens of drones with each swing.
Prometheus, however, had found a special use for the drones, and grabbed several in his arms as he came back down to the ground.
It only took him a moment to quickly hotwire the machines, and even less time to throw a bomb and blow a hole in the armor of a nearby tank.
He clicked a few wires together, threw the drone through the hole, and, moments later, it began uncontrollably firing its 45mm cannons in all directions, shredding the inside of the tank.
He repeated this process until the last of the metal behemoths were dealt with, while Wonder Woman sprinted for the camp at top speed.
The rounds fired by the LexCorp troopers didn't even phase her anymore. She was too filled with determination and battle rage to even bother with them.
She grabbed two of them by their ankles and hurled them at the rest of the soldiers, before making one last leap onto the wooden walls the guards had erected and tearing them down.
Reporters snapped thousands of photos of the starving people of Themiscyra, and aid workers rushed forward to help them, but everyone stopped when they saw that the queen wasn't moving.
She stared at the barbed wire fences that housed her people, at the way their faces had sunken in and at the piles of rotting food that they were forced to eat from.
In that moment, her anger melted away.
She sliced through the women's cage, allowing the aid workers to enter, before cutting through the men's side and entering herself.
"I know that many of you don't like me, but I want you to know something. If the way you lived under my rule was anything close to this, then I'm sorry, and I'll do everything I possibly can to make it right."
She left before they could respond. Some had looked like they wanted to cheer, while others were about to throw rotting fruit.
'Wonder Woman! Wonder Woman!" shouted the crowd of reporters, as they fought to get near her.
"You've just uncovered the atrocities LexCorp was committing against your people. Can you give us your thoughts?"
"Yes. Give us a statement."
The queen thought for a moment, before telling them, "I don't have any thoughts beyond getting my people somewhere safe."
Mercy knew better than to give one of her usual sly comments. Despite his calm appearance, Lex was furious.
"The chopper is waiting for us, sir."
"Good. Have my men destroy all records and torch the labs. We're not coming back to Greece anytime soon."
In the weeks following the 'Battle of Athens', as the media had called it, the fences and walls had been torn away from the camps, and the refugees of Themiscyra were living much easier.
"They're still too weak to travel," Diana said, sitting on a nearby rooftop and watching her people from above. "But, when the time comes, they'll have the choice to either stay or go home."
"That's good to hear," Charles said, looking down below them, where a very confused looking pizza guy was wandering around. Suddenly, the box was pulled out of his hands by a grapple, giving him the shock of a lifetime.
"Dinner is served."
"I must say, I'm really starting to like the food here, and I don't relish the idea of not having electricity or indoor plumbing."
"So, you're going to stay?"
"Maybe. I should go back for a little while, when they start building. The Prime Minister is going to help create a real government and infrastructure on the island, in exchange for a few concessions."
"Like what?"
"We have to open up the island to tourists. I don't like the idea of doing that, but if that's the price I have to pay to give my people running water and modern medicine, then I'm willing to pay it."
"It sounds like you're a pretty damn good queen after all," he said, taking a bite out of his slice of pizza.
"I hope so, but I don't think I want to stay there forever."
"What will you do instead?"
She looked at him with curiosity and excitement in her eyes. "Travel the world, meet new people, fight new battles, and I especially want to see this place you described; the Amazon."
