Wonder Woman Prologue

[Foley]

In the middle of a mystically endless ocean, in a dimension a sidestep away from the one that was home to Humanity, there is an island. A tropical paradise filled with lush trees, amazing wildlife of all types known and unknown to man, and a tribe of women warriors know only in legend and myth. These are the Amazons of Themyscira.

These women, each and immortal beauty stronger then the strongest moral man, were gathered and granted their gifts by the goddesses of ancient Greek myth led by Athena. The Goddess of Wisdom gathered the souls of women slain by men since the days of the caveman and used them to create her perfect Amazons. She then charged them with a certain task. A task as dark and ugly as the other dimensional Themyscira was bright and beautiful.

For located at the center of the island was a doorway thats shape, size, and ultimate design and manufactor had no place anywhere a place that was based on ancient Greece. This doorway, sealed by its massive iron vault, lead to a place that contain the vilest, darkest, most depraved monsters and demons that the Gods of Olympus, along with other pantheons, banished and locked away from the dimension of mortal man. It was the task of the Amazons, overseen by Queen Hippolyta, to make sure that nothing ever managed to escape through that doorway and into the mortal world...

"...and that's what they have done from the day of their creation til today," Professor Julia Kapatelis said, her face painted with the glow of the firelight as she finished telling her story to the ring of girls as they all sat around the campfire they had built on ther own. The ring included her teen daughter Vanessa.

"That's just a fairytale though isn't it?" one girl asked sticking a marshmellow on her stick to toast.

"Yes, Susan," Kapatelis answered, "But the thing about legends and fairytales is that they are almost always based on some tiny kernal of truth. That's why all of your parents and myself are out here in the Grecian wilderness to see if we can find some proof that the Amazons were real once upon a time and if we find that maybe we can find out just where they went after that.


Unbeknownst to Professor Kapatelis, the girls were not the only ones watching and listening to her that summer Greek night. In the other realm of Olympus, Athena watched the women through a mystic pool and wondered, not for the first time, if she was the one the Fates had said would bring forth the new champion of the Amazons to lead mortal man to peace at last. If so, then there was much to get ready for, much indeed.

[Miss Cord]

Athena sighed as her hand reached out to touch the water. Her fingers slowly grazed the surface, sending out ripples and settling back into a clear blue. She pursed her lips for a moment, pausing as she stood over the mystic pool. After a few seconds had passed, she turned on her heel swiftly and began walking through the lush forests. The tall grass brushed up against her ankles as she took each strong step, noticing but ignoring the dozens of animals flocking toward her, and the nymphs who stared at her as she walked past. It was night now, and the moon hung high in the sky, shining it's light on Athena's fair skin.

After a few more minutes of walking, she arrived at her temple. She walked up the marble steps and into the center of the open building, breathing in the fresh air as a sense of unease grew within her. Her dark eyes moved its gaze to the floor as she felt another presence behind her. Without looking back, she suppressed a tremble in her voice and spoke.

"Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos."

Slowly, she turned to face the three Fates. They were still and unsmiling as they looked at Athena. One by one, a sneer formed on their lips. The Fates spoke together in hushed, whispered tones as their gaze never left the Goddess before them.

"You have a question for us, Athena. Now would be wise to ask."

[Foley]

Athena took a deep breath and then squared her shoulders back as she stood a full height and looked the three members of Fate directly in the single eye they passed between them. "Is the Gateway still in danger?" she asked in a firm voice that carried her father, Zeus's, timber.

"Yes, O Goddess of Wisdom," came the hissed reply.

"Ares is still the source of this danger?"

"Yes, O Daughter of Mighty Zeus."

"And do you know what his plan is?"

"Yes," was the answer.

"But..." Athena prompted.

"But we cannot tell you," Clotho, who held the eye at that moment, "by order of Zeus himself. No child of Olympus can use the knowledge we possess to interfere with the plans of another god or the fate of mortal man. As you yourself know, great Athena since, after all, it was you that advised the Skyfather to make this proclamation."

"I am more then aware of my hand in that!" Athena spat as she stomped the ground of the Fates cave domicile. "What can you tell me that isn't bound by the edict?"

"Only that the Amazons Champion will possess the ability to defeat the plans of the God of War and that the Amazons Champion will be sent to Hades' Kingdom for her efforts."

[Foley]

Athena sighed. The Fates were never wrong in their proclamtions, after all it was their job to know the future and how events of the present shaped it. Athena just wished that they did not enjoy being so deliberately cryptic when issueing them out. She turned from the three blind women and exited the cave going over what they said in her mind. She knew, being the forementioned Goddess of Wisdom, that while the Fates would not tell her outright what they knew, they always choose their words carefully. Maybe, just maybe, their wording that the amazon champion would defeat her mad brother and that the champion would then go to the Underworld was not as foreboading as it seems. That indeed there was a clue, or at least a speck of a clue, that could tell Athena just how to proceed.

Opening the mystic portal, Athena stepped through and returned to Olympus. Part of what she must do was clear. She would have to have her beloved Amazons choose a champion to venture out into the world and seek out, then defeat Ares before he could reach the Gateway on Themyscira and open it, thus condeming the human race to the eternal warfare that would give him the power needed to take control of the Gods.

A thought occured to Athena as she prepared to contact Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. It would take time and a lot of manuvering of a lot of things, but prehaps there was something more that she could do then send one woman to her appearently certain doom. Even the wisest of beings knew that sometimes clutching at straws was the best way not to fall off the cliff.