The boat slowed down, and Steve rowed until they came alongside the vessel. There, Bucky and Logan tossed him a rope that they used to haul the boat up to the side, where they tossed a rope ladder down.
"Steve!" Bucky greeted him with a hug at the top of the ladder. "Where the hell have you been?" Then, he noticed Diana ascending the ladder. "And who's this?" He asked, eyes widening.
Steve turned to Diana, who said nothing, and then back to Bucky and Logan. "This is Diana, Princes-" he cut himself off, remembering his promise. "Diana Prince. She found me when Schmidt's plane crashed."
Bucky looked her up and down. "Well, Ms. Prince," he said, extending a hand in greeting. "Sergeant James Barnes at your service. I think I speak for the people of the United States of America when I extend our most sincere thanks!"
Bucky was laying it on thick, but Diana merely took his hand and shook it.
"I did no less than what I felt was necessary." Bucky was clearly surprised by the strength in her grip.
Logan merely nodded at her. "Name's Logan." He pulled out a packet with three cigars, and handed one to Bucky, one to Steve, and kept one for himself. "So, you want to explain where you were, what you were doing, and how you came back on a boat that looks older than I am with a beautiful woman in tow?"
Steve and Diana exchanged glances.
"I'll try." Steve replied.
"So let me get this straight," Fury said. He'd taken up residence in Zola's office, since Schmidt's windows were still broken. "You crash-landed on a tropical island where a foxy broad nursed you back to health. Then, said hot mama decides to join you, because she wants to help defeat the Axis?"
Steve nodded. "That's the gist, yes."
Fury sighed. "To hell with it, my life's been getting stranger every year since I met you, Rogers. What's one more weirdo in our gaggle of goofs?" He slid a packet of papers and a pen across his desk to where Diana sat. "Fill this out, and you're in."
Diana took them, and began to write. Shortly after, she handed the sheet back to Fury, who looked it over briefly, then gave her a puzzled look.
"Under date of birth, you put 'Twenty-second day of the third month, Prostatḗrios, year four billion, five-hundred and twenty million, eight-hundred and seventy two thousand, four hundred and twenty five."
"Yes."
"And what does that translate to in terms of B.C. and A.D.?"
Diana pondered the question. "Well, what year do you call this one?"
Fury stared at Diana with a look halfway between puzzlement and suspicion. "Nineteen forty-five."
Diana nodded. "In my terms, that would be two thousand, seven-hundred and eighty-five years before this date."
Fury turned to Steve. "Where, exactly, did you find this chick?"
Steve shook his head. "You'll have to ask her that."
Fury turned back to Diana. "And you expect me to believe that you're..." He trailed off as he put on a pair of glasses, then took them off because they clearly weren't helping him. "Nearly three-thousand years old?"
Diana nodded.
Fury rolled his eyes. "Would you happen to have any proof of that?" He asked. "A birth certificate, or..."
He trailed off as Diana wrapped the golden rope around her arm. "I do not have documents, but what I say is true."
Fury looked down at the glowing cord. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
Diana nodded. "The lasso of Hestia compels the speaker to tell the truth."
Fury cocked his head at the rope. "Fine, let's see." He said, gesturing to the tightly-woven rope. Diana handed him the other end. "Alright." He said. "Ask me something."
Diana pondered the question she would ask, then alit upon one. "Do you have any family, Colonel?" F
ury smirked. "None of you-Gah!" His eyes went wide with pain. "My mother Katherine, my father Jack, my brother Jacob, my sister Dawn, and my wife Monica." He said, straining with effort, but failing to resist. "How the hell did you do that?" He asked as he dropped the rope. When he examined his palm, it was unmarked.
"The lasso of Hestia compels the speaker to tell the truth." She repeated, frankly.
"Huh." Was Fury's only response. "Alright, report to medical for a physical and we'll have you on active duty by tomorrow."
"Height, approximately six feet." The nurse balked at Diana as she marked the Amazon's height from the measuring tape. "Weight, one-hundred and seventy-five pou-" The nurse cut herself off as she looked at the scales, then back to Diana's firm, muscular body, and curvy body, then back to the scales, then at herself in a mirror. "Taller and heavier than half the male soldiers and she'd still put Betty Grable to shame..." She muttered. "Alright, time for the fitness test." She said as she led Diana out of the exam room. "Twenty pullups from that bar." The nurse gestured to a bar eight feet off the ground. "You can chalk your hands with that." She said, pointing to a bag of powder.
Diana slapped the powder onto her hands, and took a running jump up to the bar, which she grabbed with one hand. She executed twenty pullups with her left arm in fifteen seconds, pulled herself up, then switched to the right, and repeated the process. Once she was done, she dropped to the ground.
Steve chuckled as he watched from the sidelines. Bucky gawped, as did many of the other men. Logan just sat with his feet up on a table, reading a comic-book.
"Uh, that's fine." The nurse said in dismay. "You uh... You could've done them with both hands."
Diana dusted her hands off. "Oh?" She asked, interested. "Where I come from, that's how we are taught to do them."
Bucky cackled. "Steve, did you maybe... Fly through a portal and land in Asgard?" He asked with a grin. "Because I think you brought us back a Valkyrie."
Barnes didn't know how close to true that was. Wrong pantheon, but definitely the right sentiment.
"Can it, boys." The nurse said. "We're not done yet. Give me eighty squat-thrusts. Both feet on the floor." She added, wryly.
Diana nodded, and performed the requested exercise in thirty seconds.
"Damn." Dugan said. "I was hoping to see something bounce, but she was moving too fast."
The nurse sneered at him. "Sixty pushups. I don't care how you do them."
"Do you have something to elevate my feet?" Diana asked.
The nurse walked over to the peanut gallery and pulled the desk out from under Logan's heels, much to his dismay.
Diana placed her feet on the edge of the desk, performed sixty pushups with one hand in thirty seconds, then repeated the process.
The nurse's face threatened to turn green with envy as the Howling Commandos and other soldiers cheered Diana on.
"You have two minutes to do one-hundred situps." The nurse said, coldly. "Legs flat on the floor, touch your knees with your elbows, alternating with each rep. You may pick any assistant to hold your legs that you'd like."
The assembled men all raised their hands and shouted for her to pick one of them except for Bucky, who grabbed Steve's hand and pushed it into the air.
"Steve!" She shouted over the din.
"Knock 'em dead, buddy." Bucky said with a laugh.
Steve pinned Diana's legs to the floor, and she performed one-hundred situps in just over a minute. The nurse rolled her eyes as she checked off another box on the physical report.
"Alright, three hundred yard run. Take five laps of the track, you have forty seconds to-" Diana took off down the track before the woman had even started talking. Steve pressed "Start" on the stopwatch as soon as he saw her take off. She completed one, two, three four, then five laps in thirty-one seconds.
The nurse's eyes were absolutely wide. "Okay, since we don't have a shuttle run here, do as many squat thrusts as you can in sixty seconds."
Diana moved faster than anyone but Steve could count. All in all, she performed eighty.
Diana passed every aspect of the physical with flying colors. "I swear," the nurse said. "You're in better shape than some of the men I've seen through here." She pulled out a syringe, and removed the protective sheath. "Now we just need a blood-sample for type, and we'll be done."
The nurse tied a tourniquet around Diana's arm to find the vein, and attempted to stick it with the needle. It snapped. She shrugged, and tried again with a different needle. Again, it broke. She examined the two needles closely, and then tried a much thicker needle. This one merely bent, instead of breaking. The nurse muttered to herself as she wrote. "Blood type... Inconclusive."
Fury looked at the medical file in dismay. "'Blood type: Inconclusive?' Really?" He asked, dropping the file onto his desk. "Rogers, I take it back. My life has gotten much stranger in the last two days."
Steve shrugged. "Is that gonna be a problem?" He asked.
Fury shot him a weary glance. "Not at the moment. For now, just pray nobody in Washington finds out about the magic rope, or she'll be running interrogations out of Guantanamo until they can figure out how to mass-produce it. Or try to destroy it so they can still say whatever the hell they want to."