Growing Pains

“So who are you anyway?” Angry Amazon asked once we had both woken up, bandaged ourselves, and settled around a small fire. It felt nice to be warm even if I really wanted something softer than a broken tree to lean against. My everything still felt bruised.

“Califa, I’m a Saiyan from planet Vegeta.”

“A what from where?” Ah right, ancient amazon trapped in a mirror long enough that she managed to confuse me for Wonder Woman. Good thing I had experience explaining this to the more secluded Amazons on Themyscira.

“So you’re from beyond the stars then.” Angry Amazon said in a suitably awed voice. Which was wrong but close enough I wasn’t going to correct her.

“Yep!”

“...wow, I beat a warrior from the stars. I bet Diana’s never done something like that before.” She mused, and I was instantly pissed at her again. She didn’t beat me! She just won round one! “Oh, I’m Donna of Troy by the way.” She added, almost as an afterthought.

Which…wasn’t all that surprising to be honest.

I was expecting something like that when I saw a younger looking Wonder Woman. And Donna Troy was known for being her younger sister/clone/playmate. Made sense she was who she was…even if it didn’t explain how she still looked like a teenager when Wonder Woman was an adult and had been one for decades. Yet, Donna thought it had only been ‘years’.

Thoughts for later, I needed to put someone back in their place right now.

“Wonder Woman helped fight off an alien invasion two years ago. Pretty sure she fought a bunch of aliens before then too.” I said smugly, only for Donna to just look confused.

“Who’s Wonder Woman?”

Right, totally out of touch Amazon.

“That’s Diana’s superhero name. A bunch of soldiers started calling her that during the last big war Earth had and she kept it. She’s world famous now.”

“Wait, Diana left the island? She was in a WAR?! WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!”

I sighed. This was going to take a while.

-o-

A few hours later I finally had Donna mostly up to speed about things outside Themyscira, even if I didn’t go super into detail about most things - she could look them up herself later if she wanted.

Although during my little history storytime we did find out something pretty weird. The time difference between where we were and the outside world was all kinds of messed up – Oh, and I also found out I was sucked into some sort of pocket dimension inside the mirror instead of being teleported or something similar. Not the important part. – according to Donna there shouldn’t have been any difference between the two or the mirror dimension should have been a bit faster.

Which did put a bit of urgency on getting out of here because if years passed outside while I was stuck in a mirror…I would miss so many things!

Invasions, new heroes, teamups, global takeover plots, I wouldn’t be there for any of them!

So priority one. Figure out how to get out of here.

Which raised another problem.

“There is no way out from the inside. Did you think I’d have waited here for years alone if there was a way out?”

“There has to be something.” I demanded. “Wonder Woman apparently left and came back, so how did she do it?”

“I don’t know! She would just vanish from her bedroom and appear randomly!”

“Well then I know where to start looking…”

-o-

“See? Nothing here.” Donna said grumpily as she leaned against one of the less destroyed parts of the room.

And holy cow was the room trashed. I don’t think there were more than like two things in it that hadn’t been smashed or thrown against a wall.

“There has to be something.” I argued. “It doesn’t make sense that this is the only room Wonder Woman could leave through and there not be something special about it.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re wrong. I’ve looked this room over hundreds of times. There’s nothing in here.”

Well that wasn’t good. I was kinda banking on a secret portal under the floor or something but I guess it wasn’t going to be that easy. I wasn’t giving up just yet though.

“Okay, you were right. There’s nothing here. How big is this place anyway? Any spots you weren’t allowed to go or couldn’t reach?” Hopefully comic book logic applied here and there’d be a way out somewhere else.

“Diana said it’s about half the size of Themyscira and no not really. I’ve looked over every part of the island…except for the inside of the monster den.”

I perked up. Monster den? That sounded super suspicious and definitely the kind of place someone would hide a portal out of the mirror if they didn’t want it to be found. And even if it wasn’t, it sounded like an adventure by itself.

It was still kinda odd Donna hadn’t been inside though. “Why not go inside? You had to have wanted to look or been curious at some point.”

She glared at a piece of rubble. “Of course I wanted to, but it’s where all of the monsters Diana and I were supposed to train against come from. Both of us working together couldn’t get all the way inside. Once she abandoned me in here there was no way I could do it by myself.”

Oof, not touching that.

“Well I’m here now so let’s go check it out! Between the two of us we should be able to blow through all of them!”

Donna’s glower faded a bit. “We probably could…I’ve gotten past the point Diana and I got stuck at by myself a while ago. But what if there’s still no way out?”

“But what if there is?” I pointed out. “Worst case, we go and beat up a bunch of monsters and keep looking. Sounds awesome to me!” I didn’t really need an excuse to have fun fighting a bunch of monsters.

She gave me an amused glance. “You’re pretty easy to please, aren’t you?”

I grinned at her. “Yep. Cool adventures, good fights, and great food and I’m a happy Saiyan.”

She snorted and pushed off the wall. “Well the good news is you’ll get a bit of the first two here, but not much of the last one. No real food except what someone from the outside brings in though unless you want to try eating monsters and they taste like crap. Don’t actually need to eat though which makes it bearable.”

I stared at her in horror.

Screw having fun fighting a bunch of monsters, I wanted out of here asap even more now. This was definitely some kind of hell dimension.

-o-

There wasn’t too much to say while we flew towards the entrance of the monster den Donna had talked about. It was a short flight and the sights weren’t all that interesting.

We did run into another flock of murder birds but neither of us really felt like dealing with them so I ended up just blasting them with ki attacks before they could get close.

So then it was just me, my new amazon friend, and a ruined temple looking thing with a hole in the ground. Well, more of a staircase, but still…

“So this is it?”

Donna nodded. “Yep, apparently it’s based off the Labyrinth of Crete. I wouldn’t know. Diana said we’d go explore the real one someday, but we saw how that turned out.” She finished darkly.

I sighed like I did every time she got like this. “Like I told you, the mirror wasn’t even on Themyscira anymore. It was stolen by some normal thieves after being who knows where. You don’t know if Wonder Woman left you alone on purpose.” and that wasn’t including the more out there situations like the mirror being from another dimension or something like that. The universe could be a weird place.

I existed after all.

Wait, no, that came out wrong. I wasn’t weird for existing!

“If we actually do find a way out of here maybe we’ll find out.” Donna groused, ignorant of the self-inflicted mental blow I gave myself. “But I don’t want to talk about her right now,” Then why did you bring her up? “Let’s just focus on getting through this.”

“What are we getting through then?” I asked, hopping lightly from foot to foot. I wanted to get going already!

“Mostly a simple maze. But occasionally there are larger rooms with an opponent we will need to defeat to move forward. If it gets too challenging we will have to run back through the rooms we already cleared and new monsters will appear in those eventually.”

So it was like a videogame dungeon. That was neat. “Are there hidden traps and chests filled with treasure too?”

Donna snorted. “No? Why would there be? This was a training tool for Diana to practice fighting against monsters. Not some kind of deathtrap or game…although she did mention that there was some sort of prize at the end of the labyrinth but we never found out what it was.”

That sounded about right. Mel would occasionally give me training like that, where I’d earn the right to own or wear something at the end. Like the time she and a bunch of her friends shot arrows at me I was only allowed to block with a pair of bracers without moving from a tiny circle. I think it was more an excuse to shoot at me than actual training, but I was allowed to wear a pair of bracers like the rest of the Amazons afterwards. I even got a pair of my own as a gift.

I just didn’t wear them because they felt weird.

“Right, well let’s get going.”

And then the two of us went down the staircase.

Donna didn’t seem impressed or excited, which made sense if she’d been down here a lot, but I was looking all over the place and nearly vibrating with excitement.

How could I not?! It was a fantasy dungeon filled with mythological creatures specifically placed here to help train a young Wonder Woman! I couldn't wait to see what we went up against first!

And luckily for me, I didn’t have to!

Since this wasn’t some kind of magical shifting maze, Donna already knew the way forward and we were outside the first challenge room in minutes.

The doors opened and I rushed inside.

On the other side were two Saiyaniod figures with furry legs, hooves, and horns poking out of their heads.

I recognized those! Satyrs!

In my excitement I skipped asking Donna which one of us would be going first and shot forward. Neither one moved much beyond tracking me as I rushed to one side, a yellow Ki orb appearing in my palm.

I stopped once I was far enough to the side that one of them would be forced to move around its partner and pointed my hand at them. The satyr closest to me hunched down in preparation to tank my attack as I fired off a Ki blast.

The satyr brought its arms up to block…and was instantly vaporized by the simple attack.

…so was the one behind it.

…

…

“...eh?”

Donna snorted behind me.

“The Labyrinth was designed for training me and Diana when we were little children. Did you really think that there would be something strong in the first room?”

Oh, I guess that made sense.