"They'll be waking up soon. Do you want to talk to them?" Diana gestured toward the other two companions still stirring on the ground.
"No. They're Desai's friends. Better they don't see me like this." Cassie's voice came through the armor slightly distorted.
"Then come with me for now. We'll see if we can sort out your situation." Diana's invisibility was passable at best; her teleportation was nothing special either — and she wasn't about to risk taking someone with her mid-warp. The two of them took off into the tree line on the far side.
The trees blurred past at dizzying speed. Air compressed ahead of her, building into resistance as she pushed through it. Running flat-out, Cassie felt a rush of pure exhilaration — until she thought about what her future might look like, and a hollow ache settled back in.
She had superpowers now, didn't she? Everyone wanted superpowers — the girl who loved to daydream was no exception. The cost had just been a little steep. She laughed at herself, quietly.
"Can I fly?" She watched Diana skimming along just above the ground and seized on the question to push the worry out of her head.
Diana didn't know the answer to that, but she walked Cassie through several approaches to flight — Thea's method, which relied on channeled magic, and Superman's, which drew on raw physical power. She covered both.
Cassie had sharp instincts. Running at full sprint, she turned the explanations over in her mind, working through each variation. At first she could only manage enormous leaps. But she kept at it, feeling for the rhythm in the moving air, letting her body grow lighter and lighter — until, with a stumble and a lurch, she was actually floating.
"I can fly! I can actually fly!" Pure joy swept through her. The cloud over her mood thinned for the first time.
Diana was genuinely surprised. This girl's aptitude was extraordinary. The armor had not chosen poorly.
A few more tests confirmed it. In the Silent Armor, Cassie outpaced baseline human performance in every category — strength, speed, endurance, reflexes, and flight. No weak points, no gaps. With proper training, she could become something remarkable. Diana felt her conviction solidify.
After the run, they found a stretch of forest well off the beaten path. Diana dropped into a cross-legged sit and waved for Cassie to do the same.
"You know who I am, don't you?" she began.
The breakneck sprint had done wonders for Cassie's spirits. She'd shaken off some of the low that Desai's departure left behind, and she was starting to look a little more like herself again. She nodded. "Wonder Woman. Diana Prince. I've seen coverage of you online." Then, as if she'd just remembered something, she added: "Aren't you the First Daughter's lover?"
Diana had to resist the urge to bury her face in her hands. You look like that — and you're still this nosy? That said, she found she liked this girl too much to scold her.
"You're not wrong, but let's stay on topic. I have no interest in your armor. The question is: can you take it off?"
Cassie's tone dropped. "The armor only gave me combat data. Nothing about how to remove it."
Diana asked to examine it. Cassie said sure, go ahead.
After a long inspection, Diana also shared several techniques for centering the mind — trying to help Cassie ease the armor off through inner calm.
It was no use. The armor had fully integrated with her body, as organic as a second skin. Serenity alone wouldn't peel it back.
Diana tried brute force next. All that accomplished was making Cassie thrash across the ground in pain. Completely pointless.
"I'm out of ideas," Diana admitted. "But if you're willing, my partner may be able to help. And if not, she can at least seal the armor off." She chose her words carefully.
Cassie — barely even a teenager, really — agreed without hesitation. But her voice carried a note of uncertainty. "Is that Miss Thea Queen? Do we have to go back to the States? In this condition, I'm not sure I can..."
Diana waved her off. No need. Stand back. Watch me summon.
The call ended. A flash of sky-blue light pulsed, and Thea stepped through in a single stride.
The phone call hadn't given much detail, so the two women settled down and walked through the whole sequence of events from beginning to end.
"You only sensed she was unusual — nothing more specific than that?" Thea asked, an amused glint in her eye.
The Valkyrie looked at her blankly. "Should I have?"
"Well." Thea's smile was knowing. "If I'm reading this right, she's a relative of yours. By bloodline — she's Zeus's granddaughter."
Thea had absorbed a considerable amount of Zeus's divine power over time. She was certain of this. It also explained, above everything else, why the armor had chosen Cassie and rejected Desai — their physical constitutions weren't in the same category.
Diana blinked. Then, after a moment's consideration: not that surprising, honestly. Zeus's family tree could fill a library. One more page or one less, you'd never notice. The man had too many children.
"Don't tell her that." Diana dropped her voice to a murmur, then turned to share her wish to take Cassie on as a student. Thea had no objection. The two women shifted quickly to the matter of Trigon.
"His projection was that formidable?" Thea chuckled softly — then gave a silent salute to Earth humanity's gift for self-destruction. You want to summon a demon for fun? Fine. But don't summon a low-tier one — go straight to the strongest one on the list. She said nothing aloud, then looked over at the armored girl. "Miss Cassie — does your armor have a name?"
Caught off-guard by this stunning woman suddenly addressing her directly, Cassie tensed up.
Thea hadn't expected a fight when Diana called, so she'd come in civilian clothes rather than armor. She was wearing an off-shoulder cream-colored dress paired with 5-centimeter (2-inch) open-toe heels — nothing too flashy, but effortlessly refined. Standing in the middle of this unremarkable stretch of woodland, she looked completely at ease. Cassie had no framework for what she was seeing — she couldn't place why the First Daughter seemed to emanate such an air of nobility, though it had something to do with wealth and power quietly at work.
"Um — it says its name is the Silent Armor." Cassie answered, then immediately reached up to scratch the back of her head, then felt ridiculous about doing it and dropped her arm like a lead weight.
Silent Armor. So this was Diana's student from the original timeline — Wonder Girl. Thea gave a small internal nod.
Diana explained the reason she'd called: get the armor off, retract it, or at minimum seal it so it stopped disrupting Cassie's daily life.
Thea ran a slow pass of magic along every surface of the armor, then stood still with her head bowed in thought. The armor had been forged in antiquity, specifically to counter Trigon — built entirely around the principle of sacrifice. In the ancient mind, putting on this armor meant fighting until death. There had never been any intention of taking it off.
That said, the problem wasn't beyond her. The defining trait of ancient magic was grandeur — massive, overwhelming, built for maximum impact. Where it fell short was refinement. For all its raw power, it lacked the precision of modern spellwork.
Even working outside the armor's original design, Thea found the exploit she was looking for. She spent half an hour inscribing a modern-format spell array over the armor's structure. Following Thea's instructions, Cassie channeled along the new pathways — and successfully retracted the armor. At least partially.