“So these crystals lead to the other fragments?”
“According to the magician.” Wonder Woman mumbled as she followed the glowing rock in her hand with me and Donna following close behind her.
We were back in North America for the moment, heading towards a random museum that supposedly had the first relic fragment. After the incident with Donna’s mirror, I wasn’t exactly surprised that another dangerous ancient Greek relic was just laying around out in the open. There seemed to be a lot of people that liked donating potentially magical items to them. It was actually a bit surprising more of them weren’t constantly being raided by magicians looking for a macguffin to give them a bit more power.
But funnily enough, the first speedbump in our improvised heist was a single skylight by a simple padlock.
“I don’t suppose you guys have a set of lockpicks on you, do you? I left mine in my other outfit.” I asked rhetorically. I didn’t think either Amazon even had pockets in their outfits, let alone tools like that. Not when they had other options.
“No, but I can break the lock easily enough.” Wonder Woman said, proving my point. “We can find the relic quickly and be gone before anyone can respond even if we do set off an alarm.”
I gave her a deadpan look and looked over to Donna only to see her nodding along like that was a perfectly acceptable plan.
And I realised both of them were heroes with very little reason to learn how to sneak into buildings, but I’d been trained by Batman. I had standards.
“Okay, before we do that, let me see the lock.”
“I thought you didn’t have any lockpicks?” Donna asked.
“Yeah, not on me. But rooftops tend to have cheaper locks because anyone that is going that far to break in usually isn’t going to be discouraged by a lock at that point.” I explained as I checked the padlock for a brand. I actually scoffed out loud when I found it too. The museum really cheaped out on these if they went with that brand of all things. “Take this one for example. All you need to do to is put a little tension on the shackle – like so – and then give it a solid hit here–” I jabbed the side of the lock with a finger hard enough that it mimicked a normal human hitting it with a hammer, and just as I expected the cheap lock popped open. “–and voila! One open lock and no tripped alarms.”
“Remind me to ask why you have so much practice picking locks later.” Wonder Woman frowned before slipping into the museum through the now open skylight.
The inside wasn’t anything special. Just the normal collection of old junk and artwork that could be found in any other museum. Maybe that was why these places weren’t getting constantly raided. For every magical object on display, a thief would need to go through hundreds of exhibits with nothing to show for it.
The only exception was a giant stone statue next to a particularly fancy display of an amphora. One that just so happened to be pulsing red in time with the crystal Wonder Woman was carrying around.
“How much you want to bet the statue comes alive the second we grab the relic?” I asked no one in particular.
“Why would it do that? It’s not even an actual Greek statue, just a modern decoration.” Donna asked. “You can tell by the color of the stone and the lack of real weathering or carving marks.”
“Because Faust chose to attack an island full of warriors instead of just grabbing this thing by himself. And I don’t think his whole ‘turn his opponents to stone’ trick works on something already made of stone.” I replied, which got me surprised looks from the two Amazons.
“What?”
“Nothing, that was just well thought out. You’ve grown a lot since we first met, Califa.” Wonder Woman assured me, but I couldn’t help but feel I’d been insulted a bit.
“Right… then you grab the thing inside the jar and I get ready to blast that thing the second it starts moving.” I muttered, pointing a hand at the statue’s head and gathering a bit of ki into a ball.
Wonder Woman just nodded and jumped up to the display before carefully removing the lid off the amphora and removing something from inside.
Almost the second she did that, the giant statue jerked to life and looked down at her. Even with my warning, the thing coming alive clearly shocked her a bit – at least until my ki blast took the thing’s head off and blew a hole through the ceiling.
… whoops.
Still, not my fault. How was I supposed to know the magical living statue wasn’t any tougher than a normal stone statue? I’d just assumed it could take more punishment than–
My internal thoughts were cut off as the now headless statue continued to move as if nothing had happened, raising its sword high enough that it started cutting through the ceiling before slamming it down where Wonder Woman had been standing. Destroying the display and bringing it down all around her.
“Diana!”
“She’s fine! Focus on the statue!” I shouted at Donna. Wonder Woman had dealt with worse than being buried under a bunch of rock.
I fired off another ki blast but the statue managed to deflect it with its sword… somehow. Was the magic around the sword different or something?
Either way, the statue itself wasn’t so lucky when my angry friend slammed into its leg and shattered it from the knee down. The statue toppled over until it caught itself with one hand and swiped at her with its sword, but that just meant it was wide open when I flew around to attack it from above.
If the stupid thing could still fight while missing its head and a leg, then the only thing to do was smash it until the pieces were too small to actually do anything. Something Donna and I did with enthusiasm considering by the time the two of us stopped dogpiling on the thing all that was left was a pile of rubble.
“Well done, girls. I think you got it.” Wonder Woman complimented, having freed herself from the destroyed display at some point and not bothered to join in since we obviously had things handled.
I grinned. “Yeah, we did. So what’s next?”
“How about you explain what’s going on?” A voice said from above us, and when we all turned I was unsurprised to see Superman floating there looking around at the ruined museum.
“It’s not your concern.” Wonder Woman tried to argue. But that only got a raised eyebrow from the Man of Steel.
“When my friends start tearing up museums it becomes my concern.” He countered. “I’ve already alerted the others. When they get here, they’re going to want an explanation.”
-o-
When Superman had said ‘the others’ I had been expecting more of the League to be coming.
At the very least I expected Batman. But instead all we got were the Flash and Martian Manhunter while the Hawks were apparently busy in the Watchtower and Green Lantern was out somewhere else.
Catching the three of them up on what happened during my initial encounter with Faust, what we found at Themyscira, and then the deal we had taken in order to free the rest of the Amazons didn’t take a whole lot of time since we stuck to the broad strokes, but by the end of our explanation Flash had one question.
“And you actually trust this guy?”
“No, of course not.” She denied. “But we don’t exactly have many other choices.”
“Why don’t we just go back there and whup this wizard’s butt?”
“Besides men being forbidden from entering?” Wonder Woman said with a tired smirk before growing serious again. “Without Faust, we have no way of undoing the spell imprisoning my sisters.”
“We could threaten to break his kneecaps if he doesn’t undo the spell.” I suggested again, only to get a light smack from Donna.
“I’m afraid that leaves us with one course of action.” Manhunter said, ignoring me. “We’ll have to help you.”
“Great! So what’s our first move?” I asked.
“We’re on a time limit and we still have two more pieces of the relic to find.” Superman said. “It would probably be best if Flash and Manhunter took the Javelin to go after one piece while Diana and I go after the other.”
“And what should we do?” Donna asked, stepping forward.
Both of us saw the looks being passed around by the adults. Their first reaction being to tell us it was too dangerous and to leave the whole thing to them. All of them were smart enough to know there was absolutely no chance of that happening though.
“We know that Faust isn’t working alone.” Wonder Woman said eventually. “What we don’t know is who they are or what exactly they are after. While we are collecting the relics, you two should keep an eye out for whatever they might be planning just in case Faust is a distraction.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. A distraction? Faust had only given us twenty four hours to collect the relics. Even if there was some kind of secondary plan, we just didn’t have enough time or information to dig it up before the adults were finished with everything else.
Which meant this was just something she came up with to keep us out of the way while she brought the other Justice League members to Themyscira to face Faust without us – which she had just said was against the laws and…
Oh.
That was a thing, wasn’t it?
Wonder Woman was going to ensure that the Amazons were rescued by bringing in the Justice League, even if that meant she ended up getting banished from the island afterward. And she was trying to keep me and Donna separate from it.
“We’ll do our best.” Donna said while I was distracted by my realization.
“I know you will.”
With that, the older heroes all left to find the other pieces.
Once they were gone, Donna turned to me. “Okay, Califa. You’re the one that has experience thinking like a villain. If you were the coward attacking Themyscira, what would be your next move?”
I glared at her for the wording, but understood what she was asking. “At this point, there’s nothing left. Faust needs to stay at Themyscira because that’s where his ‘ultimate knowledge’ or whatever is. Anything he or the guy he’s working with has planned after doesn’t matter if that part fails.”
“Why didn’t you tell Diana that then! We could be out helping them instead!”
It was times like this that made it obvious that being stuck in that mirror for who-knows how many years hadn’t really done much for Donna’s ability to spot basic manipulation. Between her, Superboy, and maybe Megan – someone was going to have to set up a class on ‘how to people correctly’.
Not me, obviously.
Because while I could do it, I knew I’d be more likely to teach them wrong on purpose. As a joke.
And since I liked Donna and Megan, that would be wrong.
Maybe with Superboy if he pissed me off again though.
Anyway…
“Because they know that already.” I explained. “They just don’t think we can add anything that they couldn’t do without us.”
“Wha– and that doesn’t make you angry!?” Donna shouted.
I shrugged. “Not really. Think about it, they are going off to find the last two artifact fragments. Anything that could keep those four from getting them could probably keep us from them too. And if something like that isn’t guarding them then we are just tagging along without adding anything, just like what they thought.”
“So what do we do then?”
“Simple!” I grinned sharply. “We head back to the island and wait for the others. Faust will inevitably backstab them once he has what he needs, and then we can swoop in and save the day while he is focused on them!”
Donna gave me a long look before giving me a smile of her own. “I was right, you really do think like a villain. Let’s do it.”
“Hey!” I protested, but she was already flying off, laughing at me.