CURRENT DATE CORRELATION: 1919 AD
LOCATION: THE NORTH ATLANTIC AXIS / THEMYSCIRAN BARRIER
MISSION PROFILE: ANOMALOUS DIPLOMATIC CONTACT
The ocean mist did not part naturally; it resisted the vessel.
Four miles beneath the grey chop of the Atlantic, David's sub-oceanic craft had already concluded its retrieval operation. The mangled skeleton of Captain Steven Trevor's experimental biplane had been systematically salvaged from a jagged trench, its scorched canvas and alloy struts disassembled and stored in the cargo bay for atomic analysis. The pilot himself lay sealed within a pristine stasis capsule on the lower deck, his uniform cleaned of brine, his dog tags resting against his chest, his mortal vessel preserved from decay.
Now, breaching the surface three hundred yards off the coordinates Trevor had broadcasted, the craft's automated cloaking hull held its position.
David stood on the upper airlock platform as the hydraulic seals hissed open. He had not assumed his human disguise. Respecting the unknown variables of divine metallurgy, he was fully sealed within the **midnight-violet Vibranium-T-O-Symbiote matrix**. The non-reflective alloy moved fluidly over his massive seven-foot frame, swallowing the ambient light and sound of the ocean wind. His internal diagnostic arrays ran silent, monitoring the foreign kinetic and mystical resonance vibrating through the sea mist.
Beside him, Selene stepped out onto the damp platform, radiating the effortless, regal arrogance of an ancient Mediterranean queen. She wore a sweeping gown of dark, starlight-black silk bound with a silver collar, her pale skin completely indifferent to the Atlantic cold. In her left hand, she carried a polished obsidian slate containing Trevor's recovered flight logs and military credentials.
Ahead of them, the heavy fog suddenly snapped like a broken cord.
The grey ocean gave way to an impossible expanse of turquoise water, white sand beaches, and towering marble cliffs crowned with Grecian colonnades that caught the brilliant warmth of an artificial sun. It was a pristine relic of an unfallen classical antiquity, breathing in total isolation.
"The spatial veil is anchored to a divine emotional frequency," David calculated softly, his level voice absorbed by the dampening collar at his throat. "It mimics a localized confusion barrier to standard human radar, but its foundation is absolute. A mortal aircraft had a zero percent statistical probability of surviving entry."
"And yet the boy tried," Selene murmured, her crimson lips curving as she caught the rapid movement along the high cliff paths. "Look to the ridges, David. The huntresses are waking up."
David did not deploy his thrusters or weaponize his nanite vanguard.
Remembering the ancient laws governing the island, he willed his molecular density to shift, rising silently off the deck plates. He drifted forward across the open water, stopping precisely thirty paces short of the surf. He consciously refused to let his boots make contact with the sand. Instead, he sank into a relaxed, cross-legged hover two feet above the breaking tide, his heavy violet-clad hands resting loosely on his knees in an unmistakable, universal posture of seated meditation. He was an immovable, armored titan who chose to sit.
Selene glided silently beside him, landing gracefully on the wet stone of a sea-tide rock just beyond the beach line.
Within moments, the sand dunes exploded into motion.
A vanguard of thirty Amazon warriors swarmed the shore, their bronze-and-gold armor gleaming in the sun. They carried fire-hardened spears, round shields etched with ancient heraldry, and composite bows drawn to full, lethal tension. Every arrow was tipped with a strange, glowing alloy that David's internal HUD instantly flagged as high-density kinetic-piercing metal.
Riding at the center of the line on a white charger was Queen Hippolyta. She was breathtaking, regal, and fiercely protective, her golden hair bound beneath a polished war helm, a broadsword sheathed at her hip. Flanking her closely was a younger woman whose presence immediately spiked David's passive sensory grid.
`TARGET ISOLATED: PROTO-DIVINE HYBRID CLASS`
`BIOLOGICAL PROFILE: ZEUS DEIFIC SEED / MERGED VESSEL MATRIX`
`DESIGNATION: PRINCESS DIANA`
Diana rode with the natural grace of a predator, her dark hair catching the wind, her bright blue eyes wide with a mixture of disciplined focus and intense, burning curiosity. She did not raise her spear. Her gaze swept past the armed warriors, locking directly onto the massive, midnight-violet giant hovering peacefully over the waves, then shifting to the elegant, dark-haired woman standing upon the sea rock.
"Hold your lines!" Hippolyta's voice cut across the beach like iron. She reined in her horse at the edge of the dry sand, her eyes blazing as she looked out over the water. "Speak, sorceress! What creature of iron have you brought to the sovereign shores of Themyscira? What god dares send a man to hover at our gates?"
Selene smiled, stepping forward on the flat sea stone, her posture exuding an ancient, unbothered poise that matched the Queen's royal presence.
"Lower your spears, sister of the Nile and Aegean," Selene's voice projected effortlessly across the surf, rich with a subtle, melodic telepathic resonance that carried without aggression. "We do not come as the heralds of Olympus, nor do we bring the demands of petty kings. The Olympian thrones have long fallen silent, Hippolyta, and the men of the outer world are far too busy choking on their own poison gas to remember the way to your island."
Hippolyta's jaw tightened, though her eyes flicked warily toward the silent, hovers-seated giant behind Selene. "If you know our names, you know our laws. No man may tread upon this soil. His presence is an insult to the covenant."
"And his boots remain two feet above your saltwater," Selene countered smoothly, gesturing with an elegant, dismissive hand. "The Master of Iron knows your laws, Queen. He has no desire to claim your sand, nor has he drawn a weapon against your daughters. I am Selene, Black Queen of the continent you abandoned, and this is David. We are not gods seeking worship. We are the caretakers of a world you have closed your eyes to."
Diana nudged her horse forward half a pace, leaning toward her mother. "Mother... they carry no hostility. The giant is seated. He could have breached the mist with weapons, yet he waits."
"Caution, Diana," Hippolyta warned in a sharp whisper, though her defensive posture slightly yielded. She looked back at David. "If you have not come to conquer, why have you breached the veil?"
Slowly, without breaking his cross-legged hover, David raised his right hand. He didn't summon a blade.
With a subtle mental command to his vessel's automated conduits, the water between his platform and the beach parted. Rising smoothly from the surf on a stabilized kinetic cushion came the transparent stasis capsule containing the body of Steve Trevor.
The Amazons gasped, several archers stepping back in shock as the capsule came to rest precisely at the boundary line where the wet surf met the dry sand.
"Subject: Steven Trevor," David spoke for the first time. His voice was deep, level, and entirely devoid of theatrical bravado, carrying the calm authority of an unyielding researcher. "Captain, American Air Service, attached to British Royal Flying Corps. His aircraft was intercepted and destroyed by German pursuit squadrons forty-eight hours ago. He was attempting to navigate toward this geographic coordinate when his engines collapsed."
Diana dropped from her saddle instantly, her boots hitting the sand as she stepped toward the glass. Hippolyta reached out to stop her, but Diana gently shook her mother's hand away, kneeling before the transparent capsule. She looked down at Trevor's pale, peaceful face, her fingers hovering just above the glass.
"He was trying to reach us?" Diana whispered, her voice thick with a profound, sudden sorrow. "He died... in the dark?"
"His vessel disintegrated upon kinetic impact with your outer barrier," David explained clinically, his azure optics meeting Diana's gaze. "I retrieved his wreckage from the seabed to verify no anomalous munitions were deployed near your perimeter. I recovered his physical remains so they would not be consumed by the deep. When our discussions conclude, my network will return his vessel to a military facility on the continent, ensuring his family receives the honour and closure his sacrifice demands."
Hippolyta stared at the armoured giant, her defensive hostility completely unravelling into a stunned, breathless silence. In thousands of years of dealing with mortals, warlords, and petty gods, she had never witnessed an entity from Man's World treat an enemy combatant, or a dead soldier, with such cold, meticulous reverent dignity.
"You brought a dead warrior to our shore... simply to show us his fate?" Hippolyta asked, her voice losing its venom.
"I brought him because his death represents a massive systemic failure," David replied, his glowing eyes scanning the cliffs of Themyscira. "The Great War of the mortal world has claimed twenty million lives. It was fuelled by unoptimized hatred, primitive industry, and the invisible whispers of Ares manipulating the trenches from the shadows. This pilot died trying to bring a message to the only warriors capable of halting the god of war. And you remained behind your mist, entirely oblivious to the fire consuming your cradle."
Diana rose to her feet, her hands clenching into tight, trembling fists as she looked from Trevor's peaceful face up into David's unblinking violet visor.
"Ares walked the earth?" Diana demanded, her eyes blazing with an ancient, righteous fire. "And we stayed here... doing nothing?"
"The war of the mortals is over for now, child," Selene purred softly, stepping down from the sea rock and extending the obsidian data slate toward the Queen. "The world has brokered a fragile peace. But another storm is coming in twenty years, one that will make the Great War look like a skirmish. We did not come to ask for tribute, Hippolyta. We came to offer your daughter an education before the true battle begins."
Hippolyta reached out, her fingers trembling slightly as she accepted the obsidian slate, feeling the steady, rhythmic hum of David's network humming through the stone.
The board had shifted, the pilot was honoured, and the princess of the Amazons had just looked past the edge of the world for the very first time.