Once Upon a Time...

[morethanmyth]

They likely felt the world shift, a fragmentation of all they thought they knew. It was the way a fictional character might feel if they could feel every page turn in the book they lived in. It was the beginning of a new story and that meant an end to an old one and they would each feel that.

To some it would feel like they had just died. To others, it would feel like they had just been born. To many, it would feel like both at the same time. It all really depended on who they were and what they were leaving behind.

In any case, this world had something New appear in it. After lightning crackled in the evening sky without any storm fueling it, they would find themselves waking up in the streets of a small town called Burgess. It was a perfectly ordinary Pennsylvania town, a place where the modern mixed with the old, American suburbia at its finest, making it all the stranger that something extraordinary would happen somewhere so ordinary.

[ooc: Make a subthread for each character and those of you that would like to toss your character at someone else before Bunny and Jack show up, tag a subthread already there.]

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[amazing_amazon]

That stunned Diana.

The Amazon Princess turned and reached out to touch another young woman, this one carrying an armload of books from the local library, and her hand went right through her. Not only was Diana seemingly invisible, but she was also intangible.

At least to the living.

She looked down as a squirrel darted past her and asked, "What in Athena's name is going on here?"

[letskicksomeice]

There was a cool breeze and then all of a sudden, a voice came from behind her.

"You're Wonder Woman."

Apparently, she wasn't invisible to everyone.

A skinny teenage boy with white hair was perched on a telephone wire like an over-sized bird. His eyes were wide and his expression was gobsmacked.

Manny had shown her in the crystal but that was different from seeing her standing there, in all her super-heroic glory.

He wasn't the biggest comics fan, but she was an icon. Of course he was a little starstruck.

[amazing_amazon]

Diana turned at the sound of the voice, startled. She took up a posture that seemed to be open, welcoming, but which could just as easily turn to one of either defense or offense. The thin, chain-like coils of her lasso still glittered warmly in her hands.

He was young. Barefoot. Staring at her with, of all things, wonderment.

It was an expression that Diana had long since grown accustomed to. Sensing no danger from him, Diana rose up to meet him. "To my enemies, yes," she stated simply. "To my friends, I am Diana." She studied the young man carefully. There was, she realized, something otherworldly about him. "You can see me," she stated simply, "while the others cannot. Why?" She was remaining calm, cool, but cautious. Jumping directly to anger, fear, and war never truly solved anything.

[letskicksomeice]

"When you got pulled over, you got turned into the same thing I am. A myth. A spirit."

Realizing that he'd let on that he knew what was going on, he was quick to follow up with, "Me and my team-mate were told people had been taken away from their homes and brought here. We wanted to find you all, explain what's going on, and help you as best as we can."

Jack leapt off the telephone wire and landed gracefully, his descent slowed by his flying as he came closer to the ground.

"I'm Jack Frost."

[amazing_amazon]

She let that sink in for a moment. "Jack Frost. I've heard of you. Or, perhaps, a version of you." The fact that he'd said pulled over certainly meant that she hadn't just been shunted across the globe.

She'd been shunted across realities.

A good-humoured smile graced Diana's face, though. "Funny. Most already say that I am a woman born of myth and magic. Here I am once more, another world, and a myth again." She took her lasso and gracefully reattached it to her golden girdle. "I suppose you'll want further questions to wait until the rest of us who have been brought here are gathered together?" She understood how these things worked, for the most part.

[letskicksomeice]

Jack perked up at her saying she'd heard of him, but then he liked attention.

"Actually, we figured it'd work best if everyone got their own personal explanation. Anyone else I've found already got the rundown. We figured we'd work on the 'Where do we go from here?' once we have you all gathered together. So I guess what I need to know is what you want explained first: the why or the how?"

[amazing_amazon]

"The why, first, I believe," Diana replied after a moment's thought. "The how seems a little less pressing," she said. And then, "Out of the others brought here, are any of them anyone from my own world?" It was as reasonable a question as any.

[letskicksomeice]

"I don't really know. Hopefully when we take you to the others, you'll see a familiar face."

Jack seemed to be the type to have trouble standing still. As he spoke, he started walking along the top of a fence on his tippy-toes, much like a child would challenge themselves to balance on something. While he seemed capable of carrying himself with a measure of authority, as if he was confident in his actions, he seemed to find it just as easy to act like a child.

"As for the why, it's because there's something horrible threatening this world. An enemy of ours, Pitch Black, tried to open a door to what he tought was an army of nightmares he could control, but it really led to something even worse: a being that lives outside the universe, one that's been trying to worm its way in since the beginning of time. We call it Kuk after the Egyptian god of darkness, but my team-mate thinks that people have been worshiping facets of it as dark gods and evil goddesses throughout history. It's captured all the myths of this world it thinks is a threat - including some of our team-mates - and it has them imprisoned in its realm, where it's been feeding on the belief humanity has in them."

[amazing_amazon]

Diana gracefully followed him, hovering in mid-air and listening intently. There was something in him that reminded Diana of Kon-El, the teen hero known as Superboy. There was something else in him that reminded Diana of far older heroes. It was an odd mix.

"Dark gods stealing others so that they may ingest beliefs and stay relevant somehow," Diana said. "Unsurprising that some things never change, regardless of what world one is in. Who are your teammates? And what other myths have they imprisoned?" Was she wondering about the Olympian pantheon?

Possibly.

[letskicksomeice]

"My team-mates are the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, Nicholas St. North - also known as Santa, and Anansi the Spider. The only ones left are me and Bunny. As for the others they've kidnapped...there are too many to count. Anyone who was remotely powerful and possibly on the side of good. The only ones walking free are either evil spirits or the kind of myths that cause chaos, like the tricksters."

He turned to face her again, stopping his impromptu balance beam act.

"That leads me to the how: the more Kuk creeps into the world, the more he's changing the way the world works, making it so things like fear can shape the world more than before. But that also means belief is stronger, too. We think the kids are subconsciously reaching out for heroes and pulling people like you through to our world by accident, changing what you are so you can be what you need to be to fight against the things threatening them. We're going to trying to get you all back home, but it might take freeing some of the captured myths to find someone that can get you back home and back to the right form."

[amazing_amazon]

"Belief is a strong force indeed," Diana replied. "It does well explain the change I feel within me, though. I am myself, but different." She thought silently for a long moment, staring up at the sky, wondering if her own gods were here in some form, if they were still gracing her with their love and their blessing. "Home can wait for the time being," she said, finally. "If the future of the world needs saving, well, that is why I donned this armour in the first place. Let us concentrate on that now, and leave the rest until later, when things have settled back to their normative state."

[letskicksomeice]

"So you just got pulled into a situation you don't know, in a world that isn't yours, to fight against a threat that's absolutely horrible and you're willing to drop everything - including getting home and changing back to the way you're supposed to be - to help, just because it's the right thing to do?" Jack asked slowly.

[amazing_amazon]

"Yes," Diana said simply, as though there wasn't any other option. To her, there wasn't. "No matter how subconscious their pull on me may have been, I was summoned by children to help protect them from the evil and darkness encroaching on their world. I was not raised to be a selfish woman, Mr. Frost. To think of myself and my home when there are people in need of protection, in need of hope, that goes against every grain of who I am. What sort of person would I be to turn my back on those in need of help?" They weren't pompous, her words. She meant every syllable she spoke.

[letskicksomeice]

Silence reigned for a few seconds and his eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline.

Then he broke the silence by enthusing, "You are so cool."

Congratulations, Diana. You may have just supplanted the Big Red Cheese as his favorite superhero.

[amazing_amazon]

Diana smiled beatifically down at Jack. "Thank you," she said before raising her arms and crossing them in front of her. Her sparkling silver vambraces gently clanged as she did so. "I vow to you, Jack Frost, on my honour as Princess of the Amazons, to help you in any way I can to fight back the evil encroaching your land and to help you get your teammates back." She lowered her arms, then, and nodded at him. "Shall we join the others?"