Wonder Woman - Gibson Girl

They had dressed Cassie for the ceremony in a kind of full-bodied golden armor which shone like the sun but which was only good against the blunted, practice blades which they would use for her final tests. It had the telltale overpolish and slight warp of having been reshaped a hundred times, gold didn't well weather even the blunt strikes of ceremonial striking, but it served for ceremony in a way that nothing else really did. Cassie wondered if the amazons had ever heard of diamonds. If they ever did, they would probably make something even more spectacular, and more impractical.

Of course, an amazon with her mind set to it could probably have split proper armor with a twig, let alone denting it. Cassie remembered learning about the Celts back when she was in school, how they would charge into battle fully nude. There was an that grasped at, a waste-not want-not principle that the amazons were usually more than happy to follow. The notion that if the armor wasn't going to actually protect you, all it was to you was weight. But this was regalia and ceremony she was draped in, and though she didn't feel the weight of it as much as she might have a month ago, she could feel it restricting her movements. It made her have to move almost like a crab.

This would be her final series of trials. This was her coronation so long as she performed well. Cassie had trained like an amazon for little over a month now. The hard ache and the weak-limbed soreness of the early days had given way to ignorable stiffness, dull throbs of discomfort which just became the background noise, same as the waves crashing on the shores of Themyscira. Once she had asked for bigger portions of her food and started eating like an amazon, things had gotten easier. She couldn't recall ever having this kind of appetite before, but none of it was able to stay around long and plumpen her. Cassie was lean, genuinely muscular for the first time in her life. She wasn't as bulky as somebody like Nubia or the venerated guards, but when she caught herself in the mirror, when she flexed, there was almost no fat to hide the ropey sinews under her skin. More importantly than how she looked, perhaps, was the fact that when asked for more wood to throw on the fire, she had simply torn it with her hands instead of taking up the ax, almost without thinking. When you've only ever known power through a workaround, grasping a magical amulet or wearing a ring from space, to suddenly feel it churning inside of you, bursting from your fingertips, was a heady feeling.

One of the ceremonial women came in and took Cassie by the hands, giving her a nod. Ever since they had given her the date for this final trial, everything had become very soft. They were kinder, gentler. Even Nubia seemed to be holding back. They were trying to save her energy, certainly, but Cassie also suspected they wanted to ease the blow if she should fail. That was a hanging question, how real was the risk of her failure? Would she even be allowed to fail, given the circumstances?

She didn't particularly enjoy being in uncharted waters, doing what no human had done before, but that had been her past month.

The woman led her out from the preparation room and Cassie sucked in her breath through her teeth. She had expected a crowd, they were making a great ceremony and performance out of her test, but she maybe hadn't let the magnitude of it hit her. As she was guided into the center of a colosseum, the eyes of near enough to the whole of Themyscira on her, Cassie suddenly felt the weight of the situation, and her armor. Di, Nubia and several of her other, more specialized and less friendly tutors stood around waiting for her, but it didn't shrink the stage. Or the stage fright.

As she stepped on the platform, Cassie felt Diana set a hand on her shoulder. Di's way had always been gentle, low-pressure. Despite growing up seeing her as the hero of all heroes, Cass had come to understand that Di's real preference was to avoid conflict whenever she could. She was always trying to solve problems that hadn't started being one yet. Setting out ginger before a meal which might upset the stomach, lighten practice at tightness instead of pain. Nubia, on the other hand, stood standing straight. She would simply not eat the offending meal, end practice when pain appeared or when it was scheduled to end and not a second before.

Hippolyta came to the upper platform where she had likely watched hundreds of trials before, though possibly for the last time. She smiled to the women on either side of her then sat down, making no speeches or gestures.

"I kinda expected her to give a speech," Cassie whispered to Di.

"She is no longer queen," Nubia answered.

"Then why aren't you making a speech?"

"Because I'm down here," Nubia gestured apathetically, "And I'm holding off on big speeches until I feel I'm better at them."

"I always thought you were one of those people who was just good at everything," Cassie teased.

"It's not speeches specifically." Nubia seemed unphased, "I can lead troops without any issue."

"It just doesn't matter if she's talking about the birth of puppies, most people come away ready for war," Diana lamented.

"Could be worse," Cassie shrugged, "Could be trying to get them ready for war and have them excited for the puppies."

"Now is not the time for jokes," Diana nodded, "Look."

Most of the crowd had settled as Cassie's archery tutor stepped from the stage and turned to face her. Cassie didn't expect to be doing all that much archery, but she had found it fun. Fun enough that when she had surpassed both Di and Nubia's relatively high levels of prowess, they had specifically reached out to another. Iro was said to have been blessed with the gifts of Artemis, but there was a bit of a flattening when it came to Amazons and their skills. Diana was just very good at archery, and Nubia just average by amazon standards. That still meant that both of them were far better than the majority of humans would ever be. Iro wasn't so good that she would split any arrows that hit a bullseye before hers, but she was good enough that she seemingly always found just a bit more room, no matter how crowded the bullseye became. It wasn't the difference between the fiftieth and seventy-fifth percentile, instead the difference between the ninety-ninth and ninety-ninth point nine nine nine nine...

Cassie hadn't ever beat Iro, per se, but at a certain point it became a battle of how long you could draw out a stalemate. If Iro wanted to, and they had enough arrows, she could outlast Cassie.

Two quivers were brought out, each with five arrows. Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. She wondered how seriously Iro would take it. If they wanted to measure distance from the center down to the millimeters, Cassie would lose. None of her trainers seemed the type to humiliate her or hold her back out of spite, but the amazons as a whole believed strongly in intense heat being needed for good metal.

Iro bowed to Cassie and shook her hand as each girl took their quivers. There were a couple of dummies, the limbs made of straw so that arrows would rip but pass through and the torsos and heads made of cork so one could measure one's accuracy more precisely. Iro turned and drew her first arrow, then released it. The bow was stout enough that drawing it back took an almost inhuman amount of force, so the arrow flicked through the arrow almost too fast to follow with the eye, burying in the left shoulder of her target.

If Iro wanted to, it could have been the heart, she had intentionally left a single point on the board. The message was clear, you'll be allowed to win, but you do need to be at least close to perfect. Put on enough of a show that I don't have to sandbag for you.

Cassie drew back and grimaced almost instantly. It wasn't the weight of the bow, which would have been impossible before she began her training, but rather her armor. The elbows were too tight, not the right shape. She couldn't pull the bow fully taut, the more she tried the tighter she made the leather strap which held everything below the shoulders in place. She could adjust, drawing only as tight as the armor allowed her, then aiming lower than she might have otherwise to compensate.

The arrow popped out of the bow violently, but she could tell from the second it loosed that it wasn't going true. It buried itself near the target's solar plexus. The amazons favored headshots and heartshots, strikes which could kill the target with minimal suffering. Hers wasn't a true gutshot, but it was close enough that she was down two points on Iro already.

Iro cleared her throat loudly and drew her bow, then feigned as if her arm was cramping and loosed her second arrow. Even her misfires weren't that far off target. She caught the dummy in the left shoulder just above the arm, but low enough that she sheared the straps holding the straw arm in place completely off, crippling her opponent non-fatally. It was still technically a body shot, but it was two points below a prize instead of just one. The crowd began to murmur.

Cassie flushed and tried not to look at the crowd, every time she glanced up she could see a mixture of concern and disappointment. She didn't want to lose, obviously, but she didn't want this to turn into a total work, either. The amazons probably would have been less accepting of that than a fair loss. She could probably retry if the loss was fair, but winning or losing a sham would always be a black mark against her.

She gave a glance to Iro, who seemed to be asking what was wrong with her eyes. Cassie gestured at her armor, but it was hard to convey exactly what she meant by gestures alone. Iro gestured back with a motion like she was pulling back a hood. Cassie shrugged, Iro shrugged. Then Cassie gestured toward her own heart, hoping that Iro would pick up the message to stop throwing.

When she pulled back again she felt the oppressive armor again, trying to force her way through it until the straps cut into her arms. Cassie powered through the pain, grinding her teeth as she got her arrow off. It wasn't true, but it was truer than before. It landed a point off of prize, which put her only three back of Iro.

Iro had apparently picked up that this wasn't a work any more, because she huffed approvingly and then in one quick motion buried her arrow within a centimeter of her first. Still avoiding true shots, but within reason. The only problem was there was a good chance Cassie was running out of time, and each successive shot was going to hurt like shit.

As she drew back, she felt the pain again and forced through it. Pushing even farther than before, getting as close as she could to her true form. If she could just push an inch farther, just reach true form properly, she was certain she could send a prize shot and make up ground.

The straps around her elbows gave out with a pair of loud snaps and suddenly Cassie felt her elbows slide to where they were supposed to go without resistance. The various pieces of her armor from the shoulder-down started to fall off around her like pieces of broken, shining pottery. She didn't let herself worry about it, letting off her shot before anything else and burying it right in the target's heart. Iro grunted in approval. Only one point ahead now.

Cassie hoped that Iro would give her time to pick up the pieces and reassemble the armor at least a little, but the second she bent down she heard the thud of another arrow. When she looked up she saw Iro's fourth buried close enough to her first and third that the feathers touched. Cassie gave a couple of desperate gestures down at the pieces of armor on the ground, Iro rolled her eyes and gave a gesture as if to suggest that Cassie was wasting time.

Certainly nobody in the crowd seemed scandalized or horrified by the armor having malfunctioned. They were simply looking on, expectantly, some of them likely joking about how Iro was taking it easy on her. Cassie straightened, ready to carry on with it until somebody stopped her. Her fourth arrow hit the other prize point, right between a pair of crudely drawn eyes, with enough force for the head of the dummy to snap backwards and hang by a cluster of straw behind it.

Iro smiled as she put her fifth right in the dummy's heart, then watched Cassie do the same to her own to end the game with Cassie a point ahead. The crowd cheered measuredly.

"You had me worried," Iro shook Cassie's hand and gave her a skeptical look.

"It was this dumb armor," Cassie apologized, "I couldn't fire right until it broke."

Iro looked like she wanted to protest Cassie's apology, but Nubia seemed to give both of them a look. Cassie picked up the broken pieces and brought them to Diana, who waved her off.

"Leave it, armor breaks, as do weapons. It will not ruin the ceremony. You are the only thing that must withstand."

Further down the oval ring of the arena, there was a set of obstacles which Nubia was making her way to. By Cassie's estimation, it would be those and then a proper fight, likely with Diana. All of the other specialized tutors covered fields that you either couldn't test well in or that wouldn't be especially important to her duty. At least she hoped. If they made her write a poem and read it to the crowd, that might literally kill her.

It was funny, because if it was a race with Nubia and then a fight with Diana, it was the opposite way it should have been. Nubia was the far better fighter and Diana the faster and stronger, at least in a vacuum. Perhaps they were just so confident in her archery that they had let Iro compete against type, or perhaps they were going to put emphasis on the intimacy of one-on-one combat, and Nubia had simply drawn the short straw in terms of what event to compete. If there was some sort of debate event, Nubia would have wiped the floor with her.

Cassie gave an honorary bow that Nubia exchanged, then went in for a more personal handshake but Nubia waved it away. She gave Cassie a look which seemed to spell clearly that she was here as Cassie's teacher and not her friend.

The obstacle course was designed in such a way that an amazon could very easily blast through it, and one with flight could blast through even easier, but like with so much of amazon society the challenge was in playing by the little rules it imposed. Cassie could have hurdled most of the rings without effort, but going through them was more impressive. She could have leapt across the water, or even ran fast enough to skitter along the surface, but it was a better show to swim.

At the sound of a horn Nubia took off, a little ungainly in a dead run as she had always been. As the other amazons told it, many had tried to tell Nubia how she might stride more cleanly to be faster over the years, and in each case she had simply responded that she was 'fast enough'. She had also never been proven wrong when it counted. Cassie caught up to her with relative ease, something that wouldn't have been thinkable a month ago, but immediately realized she couldn't push ahead. Just as her arms had been limited before, the armor clanked and clattered as it kept her from making her full strides. Cassie could mince a little and keep pace, but when she ran more freely she felt the same disconcerting tightness that meant the straps were either about to cause an injury or give way completely.

This time, she didn't let it bother her. She eased more steadily into longer and longer strides, waiting for the straps to snap and break as they had done for her arms so she could run unimpeded. But suddenly she was on the first ring and she had to make an awkward attempt to dive. Cassie heard the snap but didn't feel it, and for a moment worried that it had been the tendons in her legs and not the armor. The moment of panic passed as she felt the leg plates start to slide down and collect around her ankles, but they tripped her up as she dove.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway, she realized at the last second that the pauldrons of the armor were too big to fit through the ring any way but one, and she tried her best to twist through. While Nubia folded her arms above her head, dove, and caught herself with a roll and was right back up, Cassie banged and clambered through the ring. She was shrugging and kicking off armor as she went before landing on her face half-in and half-out of her armor, though through the ring at the very least.

Nubia was quickly taking a lead and Cassie forced herself to her feet, ignoring the protests of her scuffed knees and bruised pride. Her first few steps were slow, kicking and flailing the last pieces of her broken armor off until only the great chestpiece remained, missing its pauldrons. Cassie closed most of the distance all at once and came up on the other end of the second ring without issue, and out of the third ring with a fair lead.

And then the water. Cassie went in clean and immediately felt a shooting fear. The chestpiece suddenly seemed to weigh hundreds, if not thousands of pounds! She lost her concentration for a second and started to bark out a curse in frustration, water suddenly filling her mouth and flowing into her throat, making the weight seem to grow even greater. Nubia splashed down into the water beside her, sparing only a moment's glance back before darting through the water with the ease of a fish. Cassie wondered if anybody would come to help her if she spent enough time under the surface, if somebody would even bother checking. Technically, she couldn't hold her breath forever, she only had a few minutes.

Cassie finally unclasped the armor and flicked herself through the water, touching the other end of the pool before pushing her head up and breaking the surface with speed. Finally moving in just her leotard she blasted past Nubia, clearing the final three rings without so much as looking back, and had time to turn around and watch over the finish line as Nubia came dragging behind. A soft cheer went up in the crowd. Cassie could see one of the amazons down on the grounds poking a pole into the water and fishing out the chestplate, but they started carrying it off with the rest of it. Intended or not, they seemed completely unbothered to let her perform without it.

It finally came time for the duel, though it probably wasn't entirely accurate to call it that. Diana had shrugged out of the armored parts of her own outfit and had girded her loose ceremonial robes up into something that she could fight in. Cassie bowed to her and bent at the knees to get into stance, but then she saw Nubia come into the ring out of the corner of her eye. Cassie turned, dragging her heel to make a curved line in the sand, trying to keep both of them in sight at once. Then she saw Iro at the edge of the ring as well. Then Aleka, who had taught arts. Then Amara, who had handled the care and upkeep of her arms and armor. If every one of her teachers intended to fight her as well, it didn't matter if most of them were far below Nubia or Diana's level, it would be close to a dozen against her.

"What... is this?" Cassie gulped.

"It does not matter that you have lost your armor, it would not have helped you." Nubia huffed.

"Nor that we do this duel without weapons, for your blade would dull itself on the bulk of our shields." Iro followed.

"I can't win this fight outnumbered like this, no matter what I use," Cassie tried not to sound despairing. She hadn't expected a gang initiation, but if this fight actually started, it would be a beatdown.

"You doubt yourself, but in this case you are right to doubt." Di wasn't as good at reciting lines as the others, and Cassie immediately picked up on what was happening. It was a script of some kind. "No great women, only a great many."

"It doesn't really work when you flip the gender-" Cassie started, but Diana glared. This was not the time to flex her minor in English.