"Did you tell him to bring her in alive?" Mercy asked her boss, as they took an elevator down into the bowels of LexCorp.
"Of course not. This makes things much more complicated."
"I don't think even you can turn this mess around."
"Mercy, that's something you have yet to fully grasp. I can always turn things in my favor."
The two of them entered a room, where a private cell had been set up for the queen, with specialized reinforcements that had been built to contain superhumans. However, armed guards still stood in every corner, ready to open fire at a moment's notice.
"So, this is the queen of Themiscyra," Luthor said, pompous as always.
Prometheus sat on top of a nearby desk, meditating, without his helmet, armor or even his coat. "She can't understand you, Luthor."
At the mention of his name, the queen jumped to her feet, ran to the transparent wall of the cage and began shouting in a language he couldn't comprehend.
"I can't tell what she's saying."
"She's speaking Greek," Prometheus told him, "But it's a very old dialect."
"Can you still understand her?"
"Well enough."
Luthor looked at the woman. The beauty of her face and the long dark hair that hung around her shoulders stood in contrast to the burns and bruises on her hands, and the still bleeding wounds on her body.
"Ask her why she came here."
"I already know. She wanted to know why her people were taken off the island."
"You've already interrogated her?"
"I asked a few basic questions. That's all."
Through the whole conversation, Prometheus never opened his eyes, nor did he move at all. Luthor found it unsettling.
The queen approached once again, and Luthor didn't need to understand her to feel the anger in her voice.
"What is she saying now?"
"She's just a ranting about men. It's nothing important."
"Tell me anyway."
The male warrior listened to the queen for a few more moments before speaking. "Here's the rough translation. She actually thought Mercy was Lex Luthor when you walked in, because men shouldn't be rulers. They lie halfway between humans and animals. That is why they are so awkwardly large, with extra hair and small minds. Without a woman guiding them, their thoughts would become scattered and they wouldn't be able to function."
"Interesting."
"Yes," Mercy said, smiling. "Very interesting."
"Well, I supposed we can deal with this in the morning. Can you keep her contained?"
"It won't be a problem," Prometheus assured him.
Luthor left without another word, ignoring the cries of the woman in the cage.
"Why did you let him go?" the queen screamed to Prometheus, at the top of her lungs.
"Because you had nothing important to say."
"How dare you! I am-"
"What you are no longer matters," he said, finally rising and moving over to her. "All the titles and bravado in the world won't get you out of that cage. Do yourself a favor and get that through your thick head."
He returned to the desk, where he began meditating once again, in order to speed the healing of his wounds.
The queen, however, found herself unable to relax or clear her mind.
"Why do you hate me so much?"
"I was paid to stop you from destroying LexCorp."
"There is more to it than that. I know it. You're not just a simple mercenary."
Prometheus opened his eyes.
"I hate royalty. I hate entitlement. I hate monarchies. I hate power being in the hands of people who don't deserve it."
"And yet you work for a wealthy man."
"At least Luthor earned every dollar he has. He might be sleazy and underhanded, but he gained his fortune through intelligence, not inheritance, and I respect him for that."
"Are you saying that I didn't earn the right to be queen?"
"That's the exact definition of a monarchy."
The queen turned her back to him and lifted the bloodied linen shirt she had been wearing underneath her armor. Beneath it, from her left shoulder to her right thigh, stretched a long and ugly scar, where the skin of her back had been opened like the pages of a book.
"In the battle circle, anyone can challenge the queen's right to rule. I earned my throne every single day."
Prometheus approached her, and placed his hand on the glass.
"My mother was old when she gave birth to me," the queen told him. "Some even called me a miracle child, but it took a toll on her, and she wasn't able to fight after that. She trained me to be her surrogate, defending the throne as she grew older."
"How old were you when you got that scar?"
She turned back to him. "Thirteen. I hate myself for the fact that I never learned diplomacy or leadership from her. Instead, I spent every moment either fighting, or training for when the next fight came. They called me the wonder child, when I was younger, because I could take down adults twice my size, but, to this day, I still feel as if..." For a moment, the words were stuck in her throat. "...As if, despite all the blood I lost in that arena, and all the suffering I went through, I still wasn't meant to rule. I still don't feel like I'm good enough."
Prometheus was thoroughly surprised by her story, and looked at her with both surprise and sympathy in his eyes.
"What about you?" she asked him. "I've hear stories about warriors from the mainland, who lost loved ones to criminals and devoted their lives to fighting crime, anywhere they found it."
Prometheus chuckled. "Yeah, there are a lot of heroes like that."
"Is that what happened to you?"
"Not exactly."
Silence hung over the two of them, until the queen's curiosity got the better of her.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"Well," he started, his words heavy and pained. "I don't like to talk about it, but let's just say that it wasn't criminals who took my family."
The queen put her hand on the glass, less than in inch away from his.
"My parents were bad people. They deserved to be punished, but they still raised me. SWAT teams kicked down our door and put both of them on their knees, before taking their lives, and the worst part of it was that, after it was done, the man who pulled the trigger, with their blood splattered on his vest, turned to me and said, 'It's ok, son. They're the bad guys.'"
"I'm sorry," she said to him.
"It happens." Prometheus looked up at her, and their tired eyes met. "In a world filled with warriors and superhumans, and where a badge is all you need to get away with murder, someone has to be around to keep the heroes in check, and I've spent my entire life training to do exactly that. If that makes me a villain, then so be it."
The two of them looked at each other for a very long time, contemplating the fact that they had just revealed their darkest secrets to a person they had tried to kill only a few hours earlier. It was a strange thought for both of them, but nothing about this day had been normal.
"I just realized that I don't know your name," she said to him.
"Charles Hampton. What's yours?"
The queen thought for a moment, and then laughed. "I guess you should call me Diana. Diana Prince. Although, I did have another name on the island."
"Are they actually getting along?"
"It would seem so," said Luthor, while sitting in his office, on the top floor of LexCorp. "That's certainly unexpected. His deep hatred of authority was half the reason I hired him."
"Well, we'll be fine as long as he doesn't let her go. We just need to keep her locked inside for a few days, and the plan won't be in jeopardy."
"He won't let her out."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know people. Just trust me."
As Mercy's phone went off, and she left to take the call, she turned to Luthor and told him, "I hope you're right about this."
The CEO went back to watching the screen, where he could see the two warriors speaking.
"You're not going to take this from me," he thought to himself, as he watched the queen. "That island could generate billions, in the right hands."
Instantly, his mind was filled with thoughts of bulldozing the slums for beachfronts homes and turning the temples and other stone buildings, which had been perfectly maintained for thousands of years, into museums and attractions for sunburned tourists.
All that revenue would go straight into his pocket, and all he had to do was keep those island peasants locked away, until the world forgot about them.
"We have a problem," Mercy said.
"What now?"
"The Prime Minister wants to meet with her."
"What? How did he find out that she escaped so soon?"
"Lex, people saw an armored woman walking down the streets of a major city. There were explosions in our building, one of which threw her out the front doors. It couldn't have been hard to figure out."
Luthor slammed his fist down onto his desk, horrified that his plan could end if the queen could convince the Prime Minister to allow her people to return home.
However, his anger soon abated, and Mercy saw her boss stand up and begin laughing uncontrollably.
"What's so funny?"
It took Luthor a moment before he could even speak. "I just thought of something. We need her to disappear, and do you know who would be perfect to carry out a job like that? A mercenary who hates royalty." He began laughing again. "Unfortunately, the one I bought seems to be defective."
He threw the screen off of his desk and stomped it into pieces.
"So, what's our next move?"
"The queen needs to die, but we can't be connected to it, which means that it needs to be a third-party assassin."
"I can have Wilson here in less than six hours."
"No, not him. If it looks like we can't stop a single assassin, then the government will pull our contracts on the camp. Not only will that cost us money, but we don't want them looking too closely at the measures we've taken to make that place profitable."
"So what do we do?"
Luthor thought for a very long time. The situation seemed hopeless at first, but, just as always, a sinister idea wormed its way into his mind.
"The Greek government can't condone us for not stopping one assassin, if that assassin killed one of their own. It'll also throw suspicion off of us, if her death is linked to a spree, rather than being an isolated incident."
He looked at the broken screen, lying on the ground, that flickered off and on with an image of Prometheus.
"When was the last death of a member of the Greek Parliament?"
Mercy looked up the information on her phone. "Two months ago. He was found dead in his home, after suffering a heart attack."
Luthor smiled. "Find the coroner who determined the cause of death, and start moving some funds around. We'll need to bribe him to come forward and announce something to the media for us."
"What's he going to say?"
"That the Prime Minister was poisoned, but he was threatened into not saying anything about it, by a man in a purple helmet and a trench coat."
"What was it like?"
"Brutal. I spent a year out in that jungle, but after that I became a pit fighter in a city called Rio."
"I think I'd like to see this place. You called it the Amazon, right?"
"Yeah. What about you? What is Themiscyra like?"
"It's beautiful. The sand on the beaches is pure white, and there is a quarry on the north side of the island that produces the most brilliant pink marble you'll ever see."
"I used to love the beach, when I was younger."
"So did I, but some parts were filled with these ugly shacks and pens where we kept the…"
Prometheus looked at her, and the queen froze, mid-sentence. As she looked at him, she realized the awful thing she was about to say, and she knew that he had realized it too.
The thought still rang in her head. "That was where we kept the men."
The moment was interrupted when both warriors noticed all of the LexCorp guards squirming simultaneously, as an unexpected voice spoke into their earpieces. When the message was done, all of them turned and left the room.
Well, all but one, who did something strange. He pulled a television from a nearby locker, sat in the queen's view and turned on the news.
"Humanitarian foundations are still fighting to be allowed inside the camp, where, according to sources inside of LexCorp, the refugees from Themiscyra are being starved and mistreated."
"What? How could this happen?"
Prometheus went back to meditating, as the queen watched the screen.
"No one is sure exactly what is going on inside, but the guards have erected wooden walls around the camp, keeping anyone from seeing inside. LexCorp claims that this extra security is necessary, since the queen of Themiscyra escaped the camp, while others say that LexCorp is simply trying to hide to atrocities they are committing, in an attempt to turn a profit."
"How dare they!"
"Don't start getting worked up."
"Shut up!" The queen shouted. "Don't you see what is happening? I need to get out and save my people."
She began punching the walls of her cage, trying desperately to escape.
"That won't work. The cage was designed to hold-"
The cage cracked before Prometheus could finish.
"I need to get out of here. You travelled the world, honing your skills, because you wanted to bring justice and fight oppressors. Tell me then, does that look like justice to you?"
She pointed to the television, where a cameraman zoomed in on the slim and hungry people of Themiscyra, before the guards tossed them away and continued putting up their wall.
"The Prometheus of old tried to liberate man from his cruel masters. Isn't that your goal, as well?"
The male warrior walked away from her, grabbed his helmet and left the room.
"I think things may finally be getting underway," said Luthor, as the security cameras lost their feed.
"You're very trusting."
"I know people, Mercy. Getting her worked up and angry was the push that he needed. He's just left to get his armor and he'll be returning to bash the queen's brains out very soon.
Prometheus did return in fact to the cell, with his armor and a duffle bag.
He opened up the door of the cage, where the queen was waiting for him, but, to her surprise, he didn't make a move against her. Instead, he tossed the duffel bag over to her, and inside she found gauze, her old armor, her sword and shield, all of her knives and even a brand new set of high-tech armor.
"It's time to bring down a god."