-'*'-

Diana threw down a bundle of clothes onto her bed in exasperation. This was her room in the house the college had provided for them. Her mother had confounded and frustrated her in the same moment. For her lifetime, which to her felt like forever - even if she knew that wasn't true, there had been no father in her life.

Then Hippolyta Queen of the Amazon's had told her it was all a lie, she had given her his name; Zeus King of the gods and ruler of Olympus, and in the same breath her mother told Diana that they had to run away from their home. "Like common thieves!" She said to herself, throwing themselves on the mercy of their patron Hermes, fleeing paradise for the Patriarch's world.

Back on the island Diana was a teenager growing up alone among adults, and she could be angry at her mother in six different ways before breakfast, but it was impossible for Diana to deny the love that existed between them.

More than that, as she looked out of the window across the Bard campus she couldn't deny that leaving Themyscira was very exciting; sure, she felt conflicted about her relationship with Hippolyta and she hated being forced to run and hide, but at the same time Diana was really very pleased to be somewhere different. This was America; the kind of adventure she had only ever dreamed of taking while living on Themyscira.

Diana found her thoughts interrupted. Her acute senses, given by the goddess of the hunt, alerted her to the sounds of conflict, some distance across the College grounds. Diana filtered from the background hum and chatter, cries of alarm and surprise. Focusing her attention further, focusing as she had been trained to do through the sounds; the shouts and drumming of running feet, Diana heard her mother's cry, and deeper still the beating of her heart, fast and strong. This was the music of the warrior. Diana for a brief moment, stared at her reflection in the surface of her bracelets, the ever present symbol of her Amazon heritage. Outside the house Diana wore long sleeved tops, so she could wear these without attracting attention to them. Here and now they spoke to her as potent symbols. She didn't think about hiding who she was, only the sound of her mother's battle-cry.

Focusing on her Amazon training Diana ran. Years of practise had honed her muscles, and she had worked hard matching herself against her much older and more powerful adult sisters, but she was always the smaller, always the slower, always the weaker. She had heard the laughter, caught the names some of her sisters called her when they thought their Queen wasn't listening. Today she felt sorry for them, they too had believed Hippolyta's story about her birth. Then with adolescence had come growing strength and stamina. So fate had conspired, just when Diana felt able compete as an equal, to deny her that challenge, and taken her to a far more dangerous place. This certain knowledge propelled her to her mother's side.

Locating the Amazon Queen, having taken the name of Lyta Themis was as simple as listening for her voice. Carried over the wind, Diana leapt high over obstacles and moved, a blur in a red t shirt and jeans, and a mane of long vivid black hair.

She dropped into a crouch finding a vantage point behind cover, a large black SUV shielded her from view. It was perhaps fitting and coincidental that this Federal Vehicle carried the SHIELD logo. Diana had no time to process what that might mean.

Across the parking lot was the History Department smoke was rising from the second floor, then a wall exploded outwards, and among the bricks mortar through the dust and smoke a figure was propelled backwards through the air, there was a soft wet squelch as the body met the pavement, it bounced over and over again. Everything Diana knew about men told her this one should be dead, but there followed different sounds, scratching, scraping biting, of metal dragging over, on, and into concrete.

Diana saw the man rise defiant, his bare arms bloodied, but not broken. He wore black and brown leathers with a striped camouflage pattern. As she watched his flesh knitted together and his hands rose from the floor, revealing long metallic claws that grew out of his fists, they gleamed with an artificial luminescent silver, as if moon kissed, ethereal, her Amazon senses saw something otherworldly, godly, and yet alien. The long blades had sunk into the pavement arresting his backward fall. Now he brought them up unscathed from broken ground. Staring upwards the short stocky man, by her standards at least, growled, but it was not the dignified sound of a beast enraged. Diana could have reached out to a wild animal, she had a gift with living things, but this was a driven man with all man's cruel intelligence.

She followed his gaze back to the History Department, emerging from the wrecked wall jumped a man, no she corrected herself, it was a god. An Amazon knew the difference, and this golden haired warrior's leap carried him to the broken ground in front of those clawed fists of the angry man. He carried a war hammer in his hand, and it spun lightly around in his fingers as if it carried no weight. His cloak was torn, his chest plate bore deep scratches.

"Thor." Diana recognised the Aesir, Prince of Asgard. She knew the reality of his cursed existence, or at least the story Hermes had told her mother. Thor had been disciplined by his father, sent to Earth, and bound in the weak human form of Donald Blake, but Odin had not left him entirely powerless, in moments of crisis Thor could emerge from the Blake persona, the symbol of his weakness a twisted ash cane became the Mjollnir – the hammer in the hands of broad tall muscular god.

The Mighty Thor brings the Hammer down on the angry man with lightning speed, it crashes into his crossed claws that form a cage above him, the ground shakes, along with flesh on his bones, rippling with the force wave, but the man does not bend, neither do his claws break, instead lightening like electrical discharge crackles outwards from the combatants as if they were a living telsa coil, it strikes and snatches at the parked cars, setting off explosions as the fuel in their tanks ignites, sending tons of metal twisting and burning into the air, creating a fiery hell rain of burning oils and plastics, hot metal and flame.

"Thou hast the spirit of the Wolverine indeed!" Thor boomed, his voice as thunder. "Verily Weasel you reach too high, you will fall."

"Say's you bub." The Wolverine growled, unleashing his claws in a viscous frontal assault cutting up and under at Thor's underbelly.

Thor roars in pain and swings his hammer down between them, bowling the smaller man back once again. "What manner of metal cuts through Asgardian Armour?" Thor gasps. Falling to one knee the Thunder god rests his hammer on the ground as high above him dark clouds roar inwards across the sky and lightning bolts flash followed by deafening crashes.

The Wolverine emerges from a wrecked car, he bounds back. Thor rises, one hand clasped tight to his midsection. Blood runs through his fingers.

Diana sees that Thor is forced to hold back his entrails. The Berserker had almost eviscerated him.

Diana leaps forward, her thought is to assist, but she is met by a figure in black, then another, then another, and then more. Each emerging from the shadows, as if birthed from the wreckage, slipping out of the smoke and carnage. They move in unison as if directed by a common mind. In that moment Diana's training asserts itself, her mind remembers the dance of defence, the ballet of battle, and she counters.

Even while this happens a second figure emerges fast from the building. This great leap lands Hippolyta in-between the wounded Aseir, and the berserker Wolverine.

Her mother shouts. "Catch your breath Prince of Asgard." The Warrior Woman stands, her armour shines with mystic energy, shield and sword in hand, around her waist is her Golden Girdle conferring upon her godly strength.

"Come on Babe, I'm an equal opportunities scrapper." The Wolverine snarled as he came at the Amazon Queen, his claws struck but found only her shield.

Diana leapt across her attackers, driving one down to the ground while springing from atop the second black clad and masked ninja, feet forward into the face of two more, catching them with both with a flying double kick, with her remaining hand she drags a fourth attacker up and into the first who collapsed beneath the young Amazon as she vaulted over them.

Landing on a parked cars roof, the brief respite let Diana see how the Wolverine's claws had done the impossible. The berserker's blades dug deep scratches across the god made adamant surface of her mother's shield. Wolverines claws glowed bright like hot metal as they did struck again. Even from across the parking lot the smell of burning leather, then hair and flesh, caught in her nostrils. The berserker's claws burned him, and all the while Wolverine screamed in pain filled rage his assault was unflinching. The berserker tore at her mother's god-made shield, the adamant surface buckled and broke, but Hippolyta's strength held the Wolverine back long enough. The Amazon's Queen's sword slipped through past her opponents red hot claws.

Diana watched as her mother cut deep, the sword grated against what what should have been bone, exiting between the Wolverine's ribs, blood flowed, flesh sliced, exposing something else metallic and bright just like his claws, his very skeleton appeared to be cast out of this strange brilliant alloy.

More ninja attackers circled, fresh soldiers to the fray. How many men followed this berserker's lead she wondered – and what is his purpose, and why does Thor and my mother risk exposing themselves to stand in his way?

Hippolyta wasted no time, with the berserker fallen, there were no words on her lips, only determination as the sharpest of swords, forged with magic to cut through all and anything swept down in a killing blow.

Only her mother was shoved back before her sword could strike. Lightning from above made ground, crashing between her mother and the fallen Wolverine. A fiery ball, the lighting crackled a sphere of energy bright like a tiny sun, burning for a brief moment, then it was gone, and in it's place another player literally appeared on the field of battle. Crackling into reality.

Crouched low as if wrapped into a ball himself, the man bellowed a muffled cry in an old tongue. Diana understood him none the less. The man had cried out in ancient Greek "Free at last."

"Great Hera." Hippolyta said.

Diana saw her mother recover her footing. The Amazon Queen had been driven away from the Wolverine, by the force of the lightning. Hippolyta had been flung tens of yards back to the broken wall of the History building, the fallen berserker as far again in the opposite direction.

"Great Hera indeed." The figure in the midst of this continued to speak in ancient Greek as he rose to his feet, half naked except for a loin cloth and a lion skin, he shook himself like a dog.

"Freedom!" He chortled and then roared, "Freedom!" The savage man raised a mace above his head, little more than an iron club, but Diana saw straight away that it bore the mark of Olympus. That this weapon had been forged in the great fires of Mountain by the lame god.

Diana was then forced from her vantage point. The black clad soldiers returned, they struck out again and again, pirouetting into flying kicks, revisiting their lethal dance.

Diana recognised their manner and their method. Her studies in the Great Library of Themyscira had included the Guild of Assassins signature style.

That this ancient order of killers had remained active into modern times did not surprise the young Amazon, rather it reinforced her understanding of the nature of the Patriarch's World.

They paid no heed to their fallen, as this new wave of fighters flung themselves forward at her again with deadly intent.

Diana struggled with her morals, her blows struck hard, incapacitating, but the sheer numbers of assailants made her decision to hold back from mortal blows harder to keep, harder for her to be sure of her targets, and methods. Diana was pushed back – away from her mother, and away from the savage man.

The young Amazon was angry at herself. Diana had been caught off guard, the Assassin's had regrouped while she had been distracted. Diana recognised the savage man. It was another impossible thing. Diana knew him from his clothing, his bearing, and his choice of weapon. As she struck back through the ninja's who thronged around her, his name crossed her lips. "Herakles."

The demi-god strode toward her mother his face a wide smile of recognition. "Hippolyta my love,it has been a long time, I see you have regained your girdle."

"Monster." Hippolyta responded.

"I know not what tongue you speak, but your voice is lovely to my ears. All I have heard for these centuries is the screams of the beasts held back by Doom Gate. The only touch I felt was their sharp claws, scratching at me, a living statue cursed to be a pillar supporting your island."

"How is it you walk free?" Hippolyta responded using his Greek dialect, while placing her sword point between them.

"So you knew of my fate." Herakles concluded as he shook his head in disdain. "Did you not see me ride here on a lightning bolt?"

"I did, but I can't believe Zeus himself would do such a thing."

"Aye, tis a sorry tale when a son falls short of his father's expectations. Still it was not Zeus who cast me down, there are others who are granted the honour of using my father's thunderbolt, and my dearest Queen can you guess, let me help, it was not Athena who made me a stone pillar beneath Themyscira on the wrong side of Dooms Gate. Rather it is my gaoler who has released me."

"Hera – but she would never..."

"Wouldn't she?" Herakles asked. "What better revenge on a bastard of Zeus, and the child's mother, than to use another bastard of Zeus, and one who knows you and your kind intimately?"

"Neither you nor Hera understand what is at stake here."

"I care not." Herakles snapped. "My task is to sate Hera's wrath, she wants blood, yours and your whelp, and nothing less will win me my freedom from her curse."

"Nay brute, ye shall not offend!" Thorstepped forward, his flesh had knit together in the short moments that had passed, saying to Hippolyta in English. "Let us play to our strengths, and their weaknesses."

Diana free of the assassins, the young Amazon moved quickly leaping to right, diving over bushes and springing across a line of broken burning cars fighting back to where the combatants closed on each other.

As the same time the Wolverine was also moving, but the berserker ignored them, instead he took advantage of the Olympian. Herakles was a distraction, Diana grasped this, as she saw the Wolverine run back towards the broken History department, for all the man's savagery his purpose wasn't to fight her mother or Thor, but something else, something inside the broken building.

Thor met Herakles in clash of mace and hammer. Brute strength to strong brute, Asgardian to Olympian. The ground shook.

Hipolyta leapt in the air and somersaulted onto her feet directly in the path of the sprinting Wolverine.

The Amazon Queen hurled her broken shield, at the berserker, and with her free left hand drew a long dirk from her belt. She met the Wolverine ready with sword and dagger, and caught the claws of the berserker with her baldes. The Amazon's Queen's magically forged weapons met his, Hippolyta's knives forged by Hepheastus, sparked with Olympian lightning as they clashed, and reacting the Wolverine's claws glowed red again.

Diana ran towards her mother, confident she had beaten her way through the Berserker's allies, she wasn't intending to give the Assassins time to regroup again.

The smoke from the broken History building ahead changed direction, as something more powerful than the wind whipped the air around them. Diana heard the dull thump of rotor blades above as an aircraft dropped from the sky, too silently for it's vast size, Diana did not pretend to be an expert in the technologies of the Patriarch's World, but she saw this airship as something unusual nonetheless. Troops fell from opening doors, falling the thirty to forty feet to the ground unassisted. As soon as they had disembarked the large vehicles engines groaned and the huge black craft moved upwards back towards the clouds, but not before a volley of missile tore down towards Thor and Herakles smashing into them both. The airship thankfully did not target her mother. Then Diana reconsidered, her second thought was the airship hadn't targeted Hippolyta because of the Wolverine.

Diana saw the newly arrived armoured troops were unlike anything she had ever encountered. Her highly trained senses determined them to be inhuman, like a version of Frankenstein's monster from the book she had only just recently read. Like Victor's creation these men were not truly alive, they lacked the spark of life that her Amazon senses were attuned to. Diana heard no pulse, absent a natural rhythmic heartbeat, in it's place a steady hum of a mechanical pump. Even though clad in some kind of armour like clothing, she could see their limbs were augmented by metal, devices were bonded to their flesh visible on their face beneath their military issue helmets.

Despite the missile barrage, Thor and Herakles fought on, and the ground beneath her feet continued to tremble.

A gun rapped out to her right. Steady aimed shots at these man-machines. Bullets flew past her and hit the first of the cyborg warriors. A voice cried out. "Run!"

Then the same man was talking into some field radio. "Get me Director Fury!"

A response crackled. "Agent Camisa Roja?"

"No, dammit this is Coulson, she's dead,.. Guild of Assassins ."

"The new guy? Did you say Guild of Assassins."

"Yes - this is Agent Coulson, and that's not even half of what's going down."

Coulson let off more shots. The machine-men reacted to being targeted, bullets spewed from weapons indistinguishable from their fore arms.

Diana ignored the Shield Agent's instruction to run. The young Amazon kicked herself across the rain of bullets, leaping direct in the line of fire, calmly she moved her adamant bracer's into the path of the bullets, full metal jackets met with Amazon forged metal, sparks flew around her, Diana felt the sting of recoil, but slid to landing on her feet. Her wrists ached, and her bracelets were bruised with white distortions where metal had met metal.

Diana saw that Agent Coulson was a young man, only handful of years or so older than her, and he looked scared. He was bleeding from a wound to his leg, one that had just missed his femoral artery, an Assassin's cut, that had fallen short of being lethal. Coulson had got lucky. The Agent shouted into his sleeve. "Repeat. Dammit. I know I'm fresh out of the stable, but I can recognise the Deathlok Program when it's walking and shooting at me!"

Diana turned to face the things that Coulson had called Deathlok, but these machine-men were no longer interested in them, rather moving as a squad in mechanical unison, they broke into a run towards the History building.

"What is it." Diana asked Coulson. "What's in there that's so important?"

"Who are you?" Coulson responded, not answering her. "How did you do that?"

Diana replied by picking him up, placing her arm around his waist. A heart beat later she had leapt back across the lot, back to where she had started, only minutes ago. She grimaced in frustration, thinking how quickly the tide of battle can reverse hard won ground. The young Amazon placed the Agent behind his SUV. She figured it was special, armoured in some way, as it still stood relatively intact. She ripped her own red vest top, cropping it short, bearing her midrift, taking the strip of cotton fabric she made a tourniquet to stem the bleeding from Coulson's leg wound.

"Thanks." The young SHIELD Agent gasped. The concrete trembled beneath them, less so than before. Herakles and Thor wrestled and the ground shook, and their fight had carved a trench of destruction, punctuated by the missile created crater, but the Thunder god had carried the fight and the Olympian away from the college, into the open countryside. He was doing his part, but containing Herakles meant Hippolyta now stood alone against the assembled forces, the Assassins and their Deathlok man-machine allies. Led, Diana assumed, by the Wolverine,

Diana looked across to where her mother was fencing with the Berserker, matching her skill against his fury, her blades to his claws, it was both horrible and beautiful to behold at the same time, her elegant motion versus his brutal assault. However the machine-men were already tipping the balance. They began firing at the Amazon Queen as they charged across the parking lot from their drop zone.

"Stay here." Diana told Coulson. She ran, leaping over obstacles as she sprinted forward, putting herself between her mother and the Deathlok cyborgs.

Then another crash sounded, loud even over the sound of automatic gunfire.

"Now what?" Diana asked as she shielded her eyes from the fragmented pavement in flight around her. She turned to see a youth standing a few feet from her, the ground had broken under his feet. He wore a black leather jacket across broad shoulders, jeans and a pair of work boots. His hair was dark and windswept, and it settled back across his brow in a curl, he looked at her, his eyes were the brightest of blues, he could have been handsome if he weren't so very angry, then as the newcomer turned to where the Wolverine was fighting her mother, they glowed red.