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#15
APR 12 |
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HATE Diana, Part One
“Culpable”
“Culpable”
“Diana?” Brion asked. He walked with quick anxiety into his personal chambers. It had been six hours since she had been whisked from their battle with the other potential elements in the Melt into the ‘real world’. Six hours since the only good thing in her life since she had been disowned by her family, her Gods and her world was taken from her. Diana was elemental no more. Her body sat in silence, hunched and motionless, like the statute it resembled.
“Diana?!” he asked again. She did not respond or even move. He understood that she was falling on an even more difficult time than he could imagine and perhaps even she could imagine. She had been wrested from her family, her life, by a mistake that anyone could have made in her position and with her history. Why the Gods were so unforgiving was beyond him, as Diana had saved their world and their followers’ lives time and time again…perhaps even their own immortal lives…and yet they cast her out with a callousness that he could barely comprehend.
Now, finally given a purpose by the Earth Soul and a chance at happiness with him, she had been set back once again. The Parliament of Stone now spurred into action after the death of that same Earth Soul had cut her loose. Choosing to remove a large portion of her abilities and taking away the only status that she knew beyond being Wonder Woman. She was no longer a Wonder Woman, nor was she an Earth Elemental. She was barely anything at all, a husk of a woman he had taken in and cared for. A stone covered shell.
“Diana,” he said softly, putting his hand on shoulder gently. She barely moved to look up at him, the remote control of the large, flat screen TV before her shattered into electronics and plastic in her granite hand.
“Look,” she said, her voice barely more than a rasp.
“She's been watching it unravel for nearly three hours now, Sire,” the Servant who had introduced her to the TV said softly. He stood a few feet behind his King, head bowed in shame.
Brion turned, his eyes full of anger. “Why would you do this?” he raged, throwing his hands into the air. “Could you not see that she had already taken a physical beating, cretin? You would add this to her mind as well?”
The Servant bowed his head more and Diana tugged on Brions shirt gently. “Not his fault,” she rasped again. Her voice was out of sorts, barely competent at speech, fumbling over words with fatigue. “He informed me and I watched.” She looked up at him, lava staining the edges of her eyes. “I watched it all,” she let her head lull forwards again as the TV began to blare.
Brion knelt at her side, taking her hand into his and cupping it against his chest. “I will make this right, Diana,” he said, whispering to her, “I am a King. They have offended my consort.”
“I don't think even you can cure this, Brion,” Diana said. “This is a den of my own making, dear Brion. This is my bed, and I am forced to lay in it. I have run from my responsibilities for too long.”
“...Susan Kung reporting for CNTN, we're in the Red Wood Forests of San Francisco where hundreds of thousands of supposed mystics, naturalists and sensitives have gathered to pay homage to what they're saying is the Spirit of the Earth.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Yes?”
“Can you explain to me, exactly, why you're all here at the same time.”
“She died, love. The Spirit of the Earth died. We all felt it. Things have been a bit wafty for a while but this was it.”
“Wafty? Where are you from, sir?”
“I'm from New Zealand, love. The North Island.”
“Why have you come all this way? Surely you could have mourned...whatever it is you feel from elsewhere?”
“No, I couldn't. I get you don't understand what we're saying here. I get that you're thinking we're all mad, and to a certain extent we are mad. But we're just not bonkers, we're bloody livid.”
“Livid?”
“Believe what you want about the Earth soul. Most of the people watching this are going to be concerned with the fact that we're all mentalists, but this...We know who killed the Earth Soul, who led to her death and made her die.”
“Who killed the Earth?”
“Diana Prince. Used to be Wonder Woman, isn't any more. But she's out there, a tad grayer than before, but she's there.”
“You're saying that Wonder Woman murdered the Earth?”
“That's exactly what I am saying.”
“...More breaking news on the fall of Diana Prince AKA Wonder Woman.”
“Live from Gateway City, our Reporter Andrew Deacon is interviewing a resident thrown into turmoil by the former Wonder Woman's activities.”
“Hi, Ku. Andrew Deacon reporting for CNTN. We have with us Melissa Lightman. Melissa, how has Wonder Woman's activities affected you?”
“Well, we know it's her before you even ask, because we saw it. We all heard it from these monsters. Wasn't just one, you know, was a whole bunch.”
“Saying what, exactly?”
“Saying it was her that made them come out. That released them onto us.”
“This is simply amazing. You're saying that Wonder Woman directed the Monsters here?”
“I dunno if she directed them, but I tell you she let them loose from where-ever they were. Now you can't move for all these monsters...whatever they are. Things flying in the air, things knocking over the garbage at night. They're a pest.”
“So what you're saying is that they're pests? Wonder Woman has released Monsters and they're pests? Doesn't that seem strange?”
“They're pests to me anyway. I know they add to the crime and problems in the poorer areas, but they're mostly just in my garbage.”
“Well, there you have it, Ku. Astonishingly, Wonder Woman released Monsters on to this city, and they're invading peoples’ garbage.”
“This is hardly news worthy, Diana,” Brion said, pulling himself to his feet. “They're trying to smear your name. They can't actually link you to these things. Nobody believes the TV any more.”
“Sire?” a shorter, blonde servant appeared, a smart suit clinging to her fragile frame. It was clear she was very tired and very run down. Her clothes didn't fit properly and she was leaning against the doorframe.
“Nikia, why are you here? I was told you have the flu.”
“I do,” she said quietly, throwing her phone, weakly, at Brion, “but you need to see this.”
“What?” Brion looked at the device in his hand. “Tweeter?”
“Yes, Social Media. I wouldn't expect you to be quite up on this sort of thing. The country isn't quite as enthused with your connections to Diana as you appear to be.”
“What...is this?” Brion said, scrolling down the pages of short text, detailing peoples’ outrage, apathy, hatred and frustration that their King would set up a relationship with an outsider who had brought so much damage to the world. In between his observations, he heard snippets from the News behind him.
“...ostracised from her people, the Amazons, due to her repeated failures to bring their views and desires into the fore of mankind, instead intent on playing hero...”
“...killed a number of people when a volcano erupted and directed the Lava flow through a number of villages until it entered the sea, increasing damage, and loss of life...”
“...beat me nearly to death....took it all away from me. It should have been mine! I should have been the Elemental not that new child....”
“Diana,” Brion said, lowering the phone to look at the woman he had shared so little time with but so much of his heart. He found, however, that Diana was not there. She had left moments after Nikia had entered the room.
“How do we make this work?” Brion asked, looking at Nikia, who shrugged gently.
“I don't know right now, Sire. I've got the flu.”
The TV broke the tension, once again, with another announcement of Diana's indiscretions.
“Now we continue our breaking news coverage with an interview of the Markovian Business woman, Clea Queen....”
“Diana,” a voice came from behind the stone woman. She ignored it and continued her fast paced march down the paths of the gardens around the palace. “Diana!” the voice yelled again.
“I cannot...stop…” she said, realizing that her ambling and almost geological speech patterns were returning. She hated that. The gift of speedier speech had made communication with the world, especially Brion, less frustrating. Now if she were to take a large step back in both her power and development as well as her place...she wouldn't know how to cope.
She didn't know how to cope. So she walked.
“Diana!” the voice was finally revealed to belong to the blonde, short-cropped head of the woman known as Fury. “Slow down!”
“I...cannot,” she said, withdrawn. Her voice was almost entirely disconnected from her body.
“Diana, please...I need to talk to you...”
“I...cannot,” she said, quietly, continuing her march. Fury stopped and sighed, defeated. From her demeanour and her actions, it was clear that Diana wasn't going to stop and she wasn't going to converse.
“Don't mind her,” Brion said quietly, standing in the Garden behind her. “She's had something of a shock over the last few hours.”
“How?” the Fury asked, rubbing the shaved back of her neck.
“She's been stripped of everything she had worked to attain, once again.” He sighed and stared down at the ground before him. “She is no longer the Elemental of the Earth.”
“She isn't? How can she not be? Maya gave her the title herself.”
“Maya is apparently dead,” Brion said.
Fury nodded solemnly. “We know. That's why I am here, but why has she lost her title?”
“With Maya gone, it appears as though the Parliaments are going to war and their Elemental's becoming Soldiers in their cause. They want to pick them this time instead of letting the Wisdom of the Earth choose for them.” Brion continued, crossing his arms slowly. “Diana hasn't mentioned you.”
“You can call me Fury,” she said, offering a hand to Brion, who refused it.
“You seem to know a lot about Diana and all of these events, but I'm not greatly enthused with the idea of you appearing in my gardens to accost my girlfriend.”
“Hrm,” Fury crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. “I guess I'll come back later, but, you seem awfully forthcoming initially to do such a massive back turn, Brion. Make sure Diana knows I still want to talk to her.”
Fury turned her back to the man and seemingly disappeared into nothingness, leaving Brion wondering what exactly was happening and why he was so resistant to her after initially revealing so much.
There was just something about her. The way she moved, and her speech. Surely someone who knew what was happening would truly know why Diana was in such a state. Someone who knew her would not attempt to distract her from the course of emotional devastation on which she now walked. It struck Brion as odd but he resigned himself to never truly understanding. He was not the detective he would consider himself to be, and he never really would be. He would have to ask Diana when she was more conversationally inclined.
Modo sat in silence with a pair of woman bound at her feet. Crude oil, sticky and thick, clung to their bodies, slowly rising toward their noses. Within hours they would be smothered in the thick, black liquid were it not for Modo continuously changing the levels at which the oil moved, how thick it was or their location within it.
She admitted freely that it was beginning to get boring, but what was she to do? She couldn't torment Maya any more and her agents were out and about trying to locate the other members of Maya's consciousness and the final Elemental. Her collection was damn near complete.
Now all she needed was the Wind Elemental and the Rock.
“You won't get away with this,” the young Indian woman said from Modo's feet.
The villain offered a swift kick to the cheek, pushing her face under the sea of ink. “Please. Are you going to produce another cliché to work with that one, like say, a talking dog, or a detective dressed as a rodent? “Oh, Woe is me! It's Flying Gerbil man!” Modo grinned, pearly white teeth shining through pure black, liquid skin. “You're going to die horrifically and I am going to eat up ever last inch of your powers while my servants here decimate and desecrate your pathetic pointless corpse, you waste of flesh and ovaries.”
“Now...someone PLEASE get me some contact with my little Media Fairy. I want to know if the world hates Diana yet or if we have to pull out something big...”
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To Be Continued...
Next: In Wonder Woman #16: HATE Diana Continues.
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