Wonder Warrior: Son of the Amazons
Prologue
Hippolyta pursed her lips, unable to tear her eyes away from where her daughter played with the three-year-old child that had somehow washed upon their shore with the wreckage of a ship.
When she became the Queen of the Amazons, she had taken a vow to never bow before any man. She had been forced to violate it once, and she swore she would never do it a second time, even if death was the only other alternative.
Themyscira, their home was founded on a single principle… an island cut off from the world of men, a sanctuary where women could live their lives free of oppression and abuse. A paradise of their own, where men could not set foot.
Yet the child on her daughter's arms violated the codes their nation had been founded on.
Many including her own sister, Antiope would prefer if she just let the oceans devour the boy once again… Yet that would be against everything they stood for. They were warriors, but they were also guardians and protectors, and caregivers and healers unlike the soldiers from the world of men… barbaric beasts, driven by their primal instincts, lusting for war and bloodshed.
The boy will grow up to a man.
Yet for now, he was hardly even a boy… just an infant… an orphan who had nowhere else to go… who had no one other than them.
If she left him to be butchered by the elements, was she any different from the men she and her sisters repulsed?
"What are you doing, sister?" Antiope hissed. "Why are you letting Diana near him?"
"He is a child, Antiope. Not a snake." She snapped.
"He is a monster, just like the rest of them." The battle-hardened soldier scoffed. "If you give him sanctuary, mark my words… he will raze our home to the ground. That is what all men do… they are harbingers of fire and ash. Destruction and chaos."
"Don't you think I know that?" She glared at her.
"Maybe the centuries of peace have made you forget the horrors of the past." Came the snide reply.
"Antiope!" She glared at her sister.
"I am sorry, my queen." Antiope lowered her gaze, yet her voice lacked remorse. "Just remember what happened the last time you trusted a man."
Hippolyta gulped, flashes of the past… of her being forced to her knees and watching her sisters share the same fate, bound in chains while he laughed at them, holding her girdle and his men approached her sisters menacingly. Memories that never ceased to haunt her despite the centuries that have gone by since that day…
"I could never forget." She said, her voice barely a whisper.
Antiope left her side, a smug smile on her face.
She had trusted a man once before and her sisters had suffered for it.
The Amazons had given her a second chance when they had crowned her the queen once more. They had believed in her even after she failed them.
She could not fail them again.
Hippolyta sighed.
"Hera, help me…" She prayed, though she knew she would not be getting any answers. The Olympians were long gone and the Amazons may be all that remained of the old world.
She looked once more where her daughter played with the child, finally happy to see someone her own age, not aware of the innate threat he posed to their nation, the dilemma that his arrival had put her in.
No, she could not just toss him to the sea again. Killing him would make them no better than the men who had killed their sisters in the world beyond.
Maybe she could give him sanctuary till he came of age… till he could navigate the seas and find his way back to his own world.
Many would oppose it.
Antiope would claim that he might come back with other men after their departure, to destroy their home, except that the island is hidden by magical enchantments. Once someone leaves the shores, there is very little chance that they might find their way back, unless the fates demand it.
That was all talk of the far future though.
She had enough on her plates with her present dilemma, though she had all but decided her verdict.
She could not know what the child would grow up to be, but she had to hope that growing up with their teachings, the child would be a noble and just individual and not a lecherous creature like other men.
Hippolyta smiled, making her way to the sandy beach where Diana laughed carefreely as the boy ran after her.
She could not determine the future but she could act out of love and compassion instead of fear and rage. She was choosing hope over hate.
This story is set in Earth 111.
Earth 111 is a world which has elements of both the prime DC universes and Earth 11 (the world with genderbent heroes), as well as other heroes, like those from typically Marvel, Miraculous and other universes.
I got the idea for this after reading a chapter of "Infinity Crisis: Glimpses" by Ben2Dartmouth, which gave a brief outline of the Earth 11 counterparts in ICverse.
The Earth 11 in the DC comics have a different explanation as to the origins of "Wonder Warrior" or "Wonder Man", but I wanted to play with the idea a bit. Instead of being a world where the socio-cultural dynamics of men and women were reversed totally, what if the reversal happened more subtly and over the course of history instead of from the start. So, the Amazons are from a time where the history of Earth 111 matched our own, but the current world is pretty much a utopian society where men, women and other genders got equal opportunities and no discrimination from mainstream society, similar to Earth 11.
This was originally supposed to be a one-shot story set in Earth 11 but I decided to make this a larger story that gives us glimpses of Wonder Warrior's journey over the years in a different universe similar to Earth 11, mainly because I started researching Earth 11 in comics and my version clashes a lot with it. Plus the more I read about it, the more I wanted to stay true to it and got ideas for stories in it, so it is better to set this particular story in a different universe.