To Save the World, Part 1: Teaser

Author's Note: Okay, everyone, I hope you're ready for this! I took my holiday break, and now I am going to be posting the last two episodes without any interruptions, so by the end of this month, the adventure will CONCLUDE. I am so happy that everyone's been so riveted, and sorry I had to pause at such a Star Trek-esque cliffhanger, but I promise it's all coming together now. Thank you so much for all your support and love!

Attend and walk with me, my children, and I shall tell you a Tale.

It is a tale of a woman, born of a great love, hewn by a mighty strength, forged into a divine instrument of truth.

It is a tale of a man, born of a great strength, hewn by a mighty truth, forged into a divine instrument of love.

It is a tale of the great falsehood that time rots all things.

It is a tale of Wonder.

Attend and walk with me, my children, and I shall impart to you my Divine Wisdom.

For I am Pallas Athena. I am she who is now Queen of the Gods in place of my father.

And I have seen the greatness of Diana.

I have seen her courage, her capacity for love, her divine truth, her compassion.

I have also seen her sorrow. I have seen her heart bleed for the great riddle of man: for creatures with lives so small, they love as great as she.

Zeus believed that mortals were blessed by their years: to see the finality of their lives allowed them to appreciate their gifts in a way we gods never could. The great ages of man passed to him as mere seasons. But, one does not mourn the wilting of a flower. For the flower possesses no wisdom, no soul.

I could never be as callous as my father. One mourns the death of a good Man.

Long before Diana left Man's World, after she woke me from the great slumber of dead gods, I knew that she would be different from her fellow Olympians.

As I walked the halls of Olympus, she walked the streets of her people. She breathed the same air, shared in the same suffering, the same joys. She challenged Man's greatest enemy: himself. And yet, she still loved them.

However, none could she love such as she did the first Man. The man born to simple times, to simple people, who had seen horrors to rival Tartarus. In an already short life, she experienced the great sorrow of a love cut shorter.

But, she will be timeless, eternal in a way even I am not.

Even as she prayed to me in her temple, watching the waves lap the shores of Themyscira, I could see that the thread of her life would never be cut. But, while she looked to the stars in mourning for a world she had left, she could not bring herself to leave her people.

For a time, I saw the wisdom in this. She grew. She learned to rule as her mother did, but not to fear as her mother had.

But, Man in all his forms, be it human or Klingon or Romulan, knows War, knows destruction. Man needs Diana.

Yet, just as the sun and moon were ever bound and thus made the night and day, Diana needed an equal.

This is the Tale of the Champion of the Gods and the Champion of Themyscira.

This is the Tale of one man, forged by two lives, who becomes the Champion that my sister needs.

Attend and walk with me, my children, and we shall raise a glass to the man who was…

James Tiberius Kirk.

Stardate 2264.109

Jim didn't particularly like feeling as if another Federation ship was somehow enemy territory, but he didn't know how else to feel. The Farragut, sleek and refined as she was, had carried Admiral Kent from Starfleet Headquarters to the Neutral Zone with timing that was all too convenient. For the ship to have left spacedock and made it to the border suggested that they had been on that course while Jim was rifling through the Tal Shiar's dirty laundry.

Everything kept coming up Kent.

He knew Diana didn't believe him, but he didn't have any other alternatives. The evidence kept stacking up. As far as he was concerned, he had enough.

It was the only reason that Jim had agreed to beam over to the Farragut with Diana in the first place. He barely spared enough time to change into a new uniform and have Bones patch up his ears and shoulder before he was transporting over. Either way, he would confront the Admiral with what they found. If it wasn't enough, then he was looking at more than a demotion. He was looking at a court martial.

But, he had a feeling that with Diana there, it wouldn't come to that.

It had taken too long to at least convince the captain of the ship to set course to San Francisco along with the Enterprise. Warnings of a bomb were heeded, but Jim didn't know if the threat would be taken seriously. Until the evidence was presented, he couldn't guarantee Kent would even pass the message on.

They had had no time to breathe since leaving the Romulan warbird. Even now, as they marched down the corridors to the briefing room on the Farragut with her captain, he and Diana had never had a chance to speak.

He had told her to trust the Federation, and they had let them both down. He didn't even know where to begin, but he just wanted to hold her, to give her a single moment to be vulnerable, to let down her guard.

He wanted to drink himself under the table for a night, to forget that he'd have another face and name to add to his list of mistakes. Didn't matter the lifetime, he still seemed to solve that particular problem with the same vice.

"Captain Kirk, I know you have a reputation as a bit of a maverick, but I didn't think I'd literally have to pluck you out of an undercover operation." Captain Garrovick said as he led them down the corridors of deck two. "You look like hell, Jim."

In spite of the severity of the situation, he couldn't help but send a sideways smile his way. "You know, I've always wondered: is that above or below 'death warmed over' on the scale of how bad a mission can go?"

Garrovick grinned, shaking his head. "I try to never let it get that far. I just hope you're ready to face the music. Admiral Kent is pissed."

"He will have a lot to explain himself," Diana spoke up beside Jim. When he glanced over at her, her expression was still dark, brow knit with concern. If she didn't agree with Jim, she was staying true to her word: they'd present a united front until the answers were made plain.

He was asking her to believe that her nephew was capable of treason, mass murder, and torture...

He wasn't even sure he could believe it.

"I look forward to hearing about all of this." Captain Garrovick said, a bit sardonically, before the doors to the briefing room opened and the trio filed in.

Admiral Kent sat at the end of the table, leaned back a bit with a deep frown etched into his features. The guy had certainly perfected the same kind of technique Chris Pike had used over the years to take whatever lines were on his face and use them as an entirely different level of chastisement.

"Admiral," Jim began, although he wasn't sure where to go from there.

"Kirk, I don't want to hear a word out of your mouth until I hear from the Ambassador." Kent snapped. "I just found out you crossed the Neutral Zone, infiltrated a Tal Shiar vessel without the consent of anyone in Starfleet, stole sensitive intelligence, and created one hell of a diplomatic incident, so unless the next words out of your mouth are going to be 'I'm sorry', then - "

"Your father would be ashamed of you." Diana cut him off so abruptly that Jim whipped his head around to look at her.

The silence was so profound, they could have heard a pin drop.

Conner Kent's very rough, foreboding appearance slowly crumbled in the face of Diana's impending anger and disappointment.

"Do you remember when you were Superboy?" Diana asked, stepping past Jim and moving closer to Conner's side of the room. "Do you remember when you were convinced that Deathstroke was working for Lex Luthor, and none of us felt that you had the evidence? You went off on your own, you took out Luthor's facility, and you came back with all of the intelligence in hand. And your father pulled the exact same stunt that you just did. Do you remember what I told him?"

When Conner didn't reply, Jim could tell it wasn't because he didn't recall; he didn't want to have to admit it.

So, Diana obliged for the rest of the room.

"A general leads their soldiers, they fight with their soldiers, they die with their soldiers. A soldier is family." She said emphatically, striking an arrow close to the heart, one even Jim could see. "You do not send anyone into battle that you cannot trust to do the right thing without guidance. You demand an apology from him when you have no idea why we were even in the Neutral Zone. That is not how we taught you to lead. That may be Starfleet, but that is not a member of the Justice League." Diana stood straighter, her hand moving to her hip as she continued. "Now, you will treat him with more respect and with honesty or so help me, I will use the lasso to ensure that you do. Is that clear, Conner?"

In the past, Jim had found witnessing interactions with Admiral Kent and Diana to be uncomfortable and awkward. Not this time, however. The shame that flickered across Conner's face for just a moment suggested that Diana had hit home and that he had needed to hear it.

Jim wasn't sure how that would help or hurt the case for his innocence or guilt in all of this.

Only one way to find out.

"Unless, of course, Admiral, you have a reason not to be honest with us." Naturally, Jim decided to just dive right into the shark tank sans archaic cage.

Diana caught Jim's eye. He masked his obvious relief that there was no hesitation or silent request to go easy. Apparently, Kent's attitude had given her more reason to suspect him than to trust him.

"I have a feeling you know precisely why we were in the Neutral Zone," Jim continued, turning a bit to fully face Conner. "The fact is, someone in Starfleet has been feeding every bit of the Enterprise's databanks regarding tactical advantages to the Romulan Empire. We've had warbirds watching our moves, casting my crewmembers adrift into the Orion slave trade, and they've been trying to erase anything that we could use to connect back to the Admiral in question."

"You think a Starfleet Admiral is colluding with the Romulans?" Captain Garrovick spoke up.

Jim hesitated for a moment, sympathetic to the captain's plight. It was the first time he'd heard any of it. He needed to give him a moment to breathe it in.

But, Jim never took his eyes off of Conner. Unfortunately, if Jim had given him any cause for concern, it wasn't obvious. He continued on. "Yes, based on a number of factors. Our command codes were compromised months ago, but no one in Starfleet has given us new ones because our request for codes was mysteriously erased from our system logs. Along with other Admiralty-level clearance information. I was already suspicious of the fact that you asked me to purposely put blame on Diana in the Starfleet hearing, only to turn around and vote for my demotion. Then, I find a worm in our databanks that's mysteriously only wiping out the intelligence related to the cadet you and I took a mutual interest in, as well as anything related to the old Earth organization A.R.G.U.S.

"In addition, we have transponder signals that trace the Starfleet operative known as 'She-Wolf' back to the Federation. Lieutenant Uhura successfully decoded the signals and determined that all of the subspace relays used attribute the signal to yourself, Admiral. Between that and the fact that we have physical evidence suggesting that Starfleet Intelligence has been experimenting on Vanessa Katalepis, Admiral Hackett is dead, and that they've been using technology gleaned from the records of something called Watchtower and that sounds an awful lot like the only admiral to have his roots going back to Kandor. Or as you might know it, the Millennium Gate."

Jim took the data padd from his pocket and handed to his fellow captain so he could review it. "So, you want to tell me why I should believe for even a second that this act of the play isn't just to set me up for the fall?"

As the captain reviewed the datapadd beside him, he watched Conner intently, hoping to see a crack in the facade.

"Conner, I do not want to think that you could ever be capable of what we have seen, but you and I are the only ones alive who still know of the Kandorian storehouse." Diana took a few steps closer, resting her hands on the table and leaning forward to stare him down. "Someone in Starfleet Intelligence used Starro DNA and fused it with Vanessa. Please... tell me that wasn't you."

Conner slowly sat up, eyes still on the woman that Jim was fairly certain was the only reason he still had a career. For the first time since he'd put all the pieces together, Jim saw clear surprise on his face, and it made him wonder if the picture he'd made was the wrong one. Conner was honestly dismayed at her words. "Diana, I watched what that thing did to my father. I would never..."

"Then explain how all of this leads to you." She unhooked the lasso, setting it down in front of him. "Tell us."

Conner looked up at her for a long moment, then took the rope, winding it around his arm. It began to glow as he turned to look at Jim.

"I didn't vote to demote you because I thought you did anything wrong." Conner didn't seem to be in any sort of discomfort. When Jim cast a glance at Diana, her expression suggested the lasso was working as it should, that he wasn't lying. "And I already knew Hackett had died. It was covered up quickly. I've been aware that someone in Starfleet was watching your ship since you found Diana." Conner sighed, shaking his head. "I knew it was bad, but the Starro... I would never visit that horror on anyone."

"So, why did you try to demote me?" Jim asked. "Why cut me out? Why not tell me that you had suspicions? And why is your name all over this?"

Conner shook his head. "You're saying you honestly think I'd be smart enough to set you up, but not smart enough to cover my tracks. I only voted to demote you when I realized that Cale wanted to keep you on duty. I didn't trust her."

Jim frowned as he noticed the way Diana arched an eyebrow. Something in what he said had gotten her attention. So, he pressed the issue. "Why?"

"She doesn't like Diana. She had a grudge the moment we walked into that hearing. Veronica Cale is the head of Starfleet Intelligence, but she's not a warhawk like Marcus - "

"Veronica Cale?" Diana asked, shock plain on her face. Clearly, the name had meaning. "Did you just say Veronica Cale?" Oh, he had a bad feeling he had told her all the wrong details about his hearing...

Conner nodded, although he looked like was as much in the dark as Jim was on why that name meant anything.

"Of course..." Diana breathed, reaching over. In one smooth move, she unfurled the lasso and slipped it back on her hook, even as Jim opened his mouth to protest. He didn't get very far before she turned away, pacing across the room. "Anderson, Watchtower, watching Jim and the Enterprise, the She-Wolf... By the gods, it is her."

"What are you saying?" Jim asked, catching her eye. "You know her?"

"Yes." Diana paused mid-step, then pivoted to face them. "She was a pharmaceutical magnate in the 21st century. She was just as as insidious as Lex Luthor and three times as charismatic." She took a step closer to Jim. It was clear from her expression that pieces had fit into place in a wholly new way. "We've been working under the wrong assumption. We thought only one person in Starfleet knew about my time as Wonder Woman. Veronica Cale does."

"Is that possible?" Garrovick asked behind Jim.

"When you have a heart that dark," Diana said with a frown. "Anything is possible."