Knicker Knight
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MCU/DCU Crossover Chapter 1 (Commission)
🕑 Added 2025-05-13 03:00:05 +0000 UTCUgly black smoke formed a thick stream in Steve’s peripheral vision. That entire wing of his airplane was being ripped apart slowly, one screw and scrap of metal at a time. The plane’s nose was struggling to stay level. Eventually, no matter how hard Steve’s enhanced arms dragged and fought, he was unable to keep his trajectory stable. As the cockpit window turned toward the glittering Mediterranean Ocean beneath him, Steve let out a rough chuckle.
“Peggy was right,” he said. “Shouldn’t have done this without her.”
He’d lost the planes that were pursuing him for now, but what did that matter now? He prepared for the worst.
Steve checked himself over. He was still wearing a stolen S.S. guard uniform. Just seeing the fabric on his body made him feel sick to his stomach, but if that was what it took to save lives, so be it. The fruit of his labor was tucked against his chest: the notebook of Isabel Maru, one of the Nazi’s foremost scientific researchers. Steve had to get it back to the Allies. Unfortunately, flying back the easy way was off of the table now.
The whole plane was shaking violently. The landing wouldn’t be pretty. Steve didn’t want to be around to see it. He wrenched a circular shield free from behind the seat. It was red and white and blue with a star in the middle. Keeping it hidden while going undercover had been a serious challenge, but he was glad he brought it. It was about to save his life.
There were no parachutes in the plane, but Steve didn’t need anything like that. He wound up as much as he could, put the shield in front of his face, and smashed out the side of the glass.
Steve fell face first toward the water from hundreds of feet up. His powerful legs let him get a decent distance away from the doomed plane. The wind blasted his clothes and hair as Steve huddled behind his shield. The impact with the water should have broken every bone in his body. Instead, the shield took the fall for him, and his body was fine. He slipped under the waves with a large splash.
Steve took a second to secure the shield onto his back. Despite the shield’s many great uses, swimming wasn’t an area it could help in.
Treading water under the surface, Steve looked around to orient himself toward the shore. He’d seen that there was an island nearby. He had to get to the beach and hope Hydra forces weren't still on his tail.
However, Steve saw something he wasn’t expecting. From the shore, a beautiful woman with a wonderful physique dove in, swimming with even more skill than a fish. She approached the sinking wreck of Steve’s plane and quickly began circling around, searching for survivors.
Touched by this gesture, Steve first swam towards her, trying to show her that he already escaped.
She was so focused on her task that she didn’t notice him coming over until he touched her back. When he did, it activated a reflex on her part. She tried to throw him over her shoulder, heedless of the fact that they were both underwater. Steve was generally familiar with the technique, but he was shocked by the strength she exerted, and was still tossed forward.
It didn’t really do anything to him other than moving him around in front of her. He held up his hands, using just his feet to swim, as he tried to show her that he was friendly and unthreatening. The woman looked at him and was so surprised that she forgot to keep her mouth open for a brief moment.
Water rushed in, and she was forced to swim up to the surface. Just as when she threw him, her prowess shocked Steve. She was a far faster swimmer than he was.
They broke the surface of the water near each other.
“You are a—” the woman said.
“Later!” Steve nodded his head toward the shore. “Land, first!”
They both swam with strong strokes over to a picturesque beach with huge limestone cliffs rising above it.
When they pulled themselves out of the water, Steve shook himself like a dog to rid his clothes and body of excess water.
The woman just watched him. She was on her knees, although Steve didn’t think she actually felt tired at all, even though she’d just swum enough to exhaust a normal person. Instead, it was like she was mesmerized, just looking at him.
“You’re a man!” she said.
Steve presumed that was what she had been trying to say before.
“That’s right,” Steve said, shielding his eyes and looking out to sea. “Just a man who’s trying his best. Unfortunately, that can make some enemies.”
The woman caught on to the fact that he was looking at something. She spun around. On the horizon, dark menacing ships were inbound, framed against the sun.
“Who is that?” she asked, scrambling up.
“The bad guys,” Steve said. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to fight them, so I guess you could call me a good guy. Do you have a name?”
“Diana,” said the woman.
Steve took his shield off his back. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Diana. I wish it could’ve been under better circumstances. Now, you aren’t armed, and those men definitely will be. I want you to get away from here. I want you to gather everyone from your home, and I want you to hide with them. Because these men? Whether it’s men, women, children or the elderly… They don’t care. They’ll kill anything.”
“And what will you do?” Diana asked.
“I’ll fight them.” Steve rechecked the bindings on his shield; tight enough not to slide off, loose enough to throw it if he had to. “Because that’s what I swore to do, and I’m going to follow through.”
Diana didn’t listen. Steve was sure that this was a lot. Looking at her, she was dressed in sandals and simple clothes. This was a remote island where the war hadn’t reached, and everything was happening fast. Landing craft floated toward them, packed with mean men wielding automatic rifles.
Steve decided to cover Diana’s retreat for as long as she hesitated, then find a good place to ambush the men. He counted fifty to a hundred just in the first batch, with more on the ships behind them.
“Stay behind me now,” Steve said, lifting his shield and stepping in front of Diana.
As he did so, someone yelled, “GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!”
It came from up on the cliffs. Steve took the risk and looked up.
It was a strange thing to see. Apparently, these women weren’t strangers to war… But they hadn’t seen it for a few thousand years. They wore armor and held bows and rode horses. There wasn’t a tank or even a sidearm in sight. He really wasn’t sure what to make of it.
There was no time to think, though. The landing crafts in front opened fire, pelting the beach with bullets. Steve used his shield to block a few, and Diana broke out of her shock, allowing him to shepherd her behind some nearby rocks.
The battle started for real after that, and Steve was shocked by how well it went.
The women up on the cliff lit fire arrows and shot with the range and accuracy of snipers. German soldiers died in droves. Unfortunately, more were already coming from the boats, launching new landing crafts. It wasn’t long before many reached the beach.
The women on the cliffs jumped off. They shot arrows with cords attached to them and swung, shooting arrows the whole time. Their shots were no less accurate as they did this, and many more soldiers died.
“Who are those warriors?” Steve asked, impressed in a way he didn’t often find himself these days.
“They are my people!” said Diana. “They’re the amazons!”
“They’re damn good fighters,” Steve said with appreciation.
Unfortunately, things didn’t continue going so well for long. Now that the soldiers were on the beach, their accuracy improved significantly, and the amazons started getting hit back. A bullet whizzed between Steve and Diana, striking a woman behind them. She fell limp against the cord holding her up and didn’t move again. Diana dropped to her knees, her eyes wide. Briefly, Steve dropped down beside her and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Listen to me,” he said. “This is a real battle. I don’t know what kind of training you’ve gotten, but this is going to be something completely different. You have to be able to move without hesitating. And if you can’t, run away. There’s no shame in that. It doesn’t make you crazy, or cowardly. It makes you sane and reasonable. But whether you fight or run, you need to make your decision fast and stick to it.”
He squeezed her shoulder. Diana reached up, touching his fingers, and squeezed them back. Steve wasn’t sure she knew what she was doing. It just comforted her.
He pulled his fingers away. Then, Steve dove back into the second home he never wanted: the battlefield.
The amazons had turned the battle into an ugly melee. They rode out on big white horses, cutting men down. They weren’t familiar with modern weaponry, and it was costing them. Steve’s eyes darted over the battlefield, doing a fast kind of math. By his calculations, the amazons were going to win the way things were going, but they would suffer heavy losses doing it.
It was his job to avert that.
He threw his shield the way he’d done so many times before. It struck three different men in a short space, taking each one out of the fight. Steve sprinted into his shield’s path as it flew past, catching it and using it to hammer another soldier out cold.
He was still wearing a stolen uniform rather than his Captain America outfit, which had been understandably left at home while he went undercover. Compared to the armored warriors and horseback cavalry running around, it was easy to miss him. Steve used that to his advantage.
He ducked in front of amazons the moment a soldier aimed at their back. He stopped bullets and darted around knocking men out. The first ten times he did this, he got there in time, averting a casualty. When he went for an eleventh, he wasn’t so lucky.
The woman in question, who had black skin and a braided ponytail, was too far away. A soldier who had been stabbed and left in the sand had drawn a pistol from his hip, aiming at her head. The amazon didn’t see him. Steve did, but he was too far away to get there. The soldier pulled the trigger.
Instead of killing the warrior, the bullet was deflected away. Diana stood next to the warrior, breathing a little bit heavily. One of her wristbands was raised, having stopped the bullet. What Cap thought was a piece of jewelry was really a kind of armor nearly on par with his shield.
Even in the middle of the battle, Diana looked over at him. Steve realized that she’d been watching him. That’s where she got the idea to block bullets: by seeing what he was doing with his shield. As the warrior who nearly died spun around and finished off the downed soldier, Steve nodded at Diana, a real smile on his face. Her confidence rising, she threw herself into the battle with abandon.
Just like Steve encountered underwater, she was superhumanly fast and strong. In fact, she completely blew out of the water anyone Cap had ever seen, himself included. She was a blur as she fought. As soon as she got past her nerves about seeing real battle for the first time, she became a complete force to be reckoned with. She was as fast as a plane, as tough as a tank, and adapted as easily on the fly as a lone soldier. That combination was practically cheating.
However, she still lacked experience in this kind of battle. Her success made her reckless, so Steve made a call. He started following just Diana, letting her handle most of the soldiers while he picked off the ones that snuck up on her. He got a taste of what it was like to be Bucky, always watching someone else’s back.
At the same time, other than the two of them, there was one other fighter who was dominating the battlefield. With a faint resemblance to Diana, Steve assumed that she was family of some kind. This woman had blond hair, and the other soldiers clearly listened to her. She put down soldiers in heaps. Steve greatly admired his skill as a warrior. The crowning achievement came when she boosted off of an allies shield, vaulted a rock that was being used as cover, and put down three soldiers by shooting three arrows at the same time.
Even Diana stopped to pay attention to that one. Her eyes glittered as she looked at the other warrior, clearly admiring her greatly. Diana never saw the soldier sneaking up behind her and aiming his rifle, but the woman she was looking at did.
“NO!” screamed the blond woman.
In an unhesitating show of valor, she hurled herself between Diana and the soldier. The soldier took the shot. His gun fired straight into the air as he fell backwards, a red and white shield slamming into his head with crunching force in the nick of time.
The shield bounced off and spun back to Cap, who put it back on his arm. The woman who tried to sacrifice herself landed on the beach, completely unharmed. She blinked a couple of times, beginning to blush, and stood up as quickly as she could.
The last germans were being defeated around them, picked off with arrows and swords. There were plenty of amazons dead on the ground, which made Steve’s heart ache. They were outnumbered at least thirty to one by fallen Germans, though.
“You, man!” said another blond woman who looked a lot like Diana. “Declare yourself! Give a reason I should not remove your head!”
She walked up to him quickly, putting a sword at his throat. Steve had noticed that although the other amazons were tough, they lacked the absurd abilities Diana showed. Speaking of Diana, if this woman had a daughter…
“I guess you mean Diana?” Steve said. “She tried to save me.” He looked around at all the men who had been beaten, something that would have been grueling or impossible for him without help. “Actually, I guess she did save me, in the end.”
“Calm, sister.” The woman who tried to sacrifice herself stepped forward. A circle had formed around Steve, with these two and Diana and him in the middle.
The woman he saved looked him over.
“I am Antiope,” she announced. “General of the amazons. This beside me is my sister, Hippolyta, and her daughter, Diana. You fight well for a mortal man.”
“I’ve got more practice than I ever hoped for growing up,” Steve said.
Hippolyta pressed her sword forward, poking him in the throat, and Steve held back the urge to disarm her.
“You wear their uniform!” she said. “I do not trust you!”
“Mother, he fought with us!” Diana said. “They were bad men, and he is good! He said that to me!”
“Men lie, Diana,” Hippolyta said. “The only way to get the truth is when they feel true fear.”
“There is another way,” Antiope said.
“You would use THAT on him?” Hippolyta asked.
“Does it not seem appropriate?” Antiope asked. “If anything, this seems like the perfect use for it.”
“If you’ve got a way for me to prove myself, I’ll do it,” Steve said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Hippolyta looked at him, then wrenched her sword away.
“If you intend to lie even the slightest amount, you will regret saying that,” she swore.
LINE BREAK
Steve had seen a whole lot of incredible things since he joined the war. Most of them were man made horrors. Every once in a while, though, he got to see something beautiful like this.
The amazons took him to their throne room. It was an enormous cave that let in lots of golden light. Built into the cave was a huge white pathway culminating in a throne. Hippolyta stood in front of the throne with Diana on her left and Antiope on her right. Steve was kneeling in front of them, surrounded by warriors, many of whom still looked hostile. A glowing lasso was brought out.
“The Lasso of Truth!” Hippolyta said. “Under its influence, lying is impossible. The very will of the gods demands nothing but the truth. Are you still willing to take our trial, Steve Rogers, or shall we skip to when you admit you are an enemy and we put you down?”
Steve was more than willing. He looked at the strange crackling whip. Steve stood up, making many of the warriors grab their weapons, but he did nothing threatening. He grabbed the lasso—finding it warm to the touch but not enough to burn him—and put it around his own neck, staring Hippolyta in the eyes.
“I am not your enemy,” he said. “My name is Steve Rogers. I was born in Brooklyn. That’s a long way from here, but I found that to really make a difference, you have to get out there in the world.”
He paused to assess the reaction, noticing that he had everyone’s rapt attention.
“Those men you fought are Nazis,” Steve said. “I’d love to tell you that they were some race of monsters… But the truth is, they’re men like me, which makes the evil they’ve done just that much worse. The world outside of this island is enveloped in a war the kind of which has never been seen before. No one is safe. Women and children are put down once the soldiers protecting them fall. A plague has swept Europe.”
“Europe?” Diana asked curiously.
Steve stopped briefly. He could tell there was something strange about this island. They had temples to ancient pantheons and fought with extreme skill using outdated weapons. That was why he explained World War Two the way he did, assuming it hadn’t touched their island yet. Still, the idea that they didn’t know what Europe was? Just what was this place, which he’d heard called Themyscira on his way here?
“Europe is a continent,” he said. “That’s where half of this horrible war is taking place. Me? I’m from across the ocean, in a place called America. I came all this way to fight, and I’m nowhere near stopping yet. Under my shirt is a notebook from one of the villains’ top scientists. They’ve been killing innocent people with gas for years, testing different kinds, and they’re close to something really big. I slowed them down by sneaking in and stealing their work. That’s not enough, though. Unless I get this back to the allies, the war will keep going, and people will keep dying. Please, let me do what I have to.”
Hippolyta looked at the lasso around his neck, then up at Steve’s impassioned blue eyes. She didn’t look as hostile as she did before.
“Can I ask… how many have died so far?” she said.
“No one knows,” Steve told her frankly. “But it’s more than 50 million at least. And by the time the war ends… if it ever ends… it’ll be much higher still.”
The queen was silent. Only she and her sister seemed to grasp just how big of a number that was. Even Diana’s eyes had just sort of glazed over as she tried to comprehend what so many people would look like, let alone the idea of that many being killed.
“You will be sent on your way in the morning!” Hippolyta announced. “We will lend you a boat, and you will leave our shores on your mission.” She paused, almost hesitating. “I wish you luck.”
Steve said: “Thank you, Hippolyta.”
He made sure to say it before removing the lasso, to prove he meant it. The queen of the amazons looked away at the floor, stewing on the news he had brought to her shores.
“Come,” Antiope said to Steve, stepping forward. “You have been through much. I will take you to a place that you can rest.”
LINE BREAK
Steve had his eyes shut, feeling warm water lap against his nude body. Bruises and ancient aches he’d thought would never fade had already disappeared. The place Antiope brought him was the Themyscira infirmary, which was built into a cave like the throne room, this one a whole lot smaller. The entire place smelled of flowers, and they had the best herbal baths Steve had ever experienced. He was 80% certain it was magic.
Steve had already been soaking for about an hour. Maybe that was too long, but he felt so good he couldn’t bring himself to leave any earlier. He was going to be on the island until tomorrow anyway, so there was no reason he couldn’t relax a little bit.
He heard a noise behind him that sounded like someone was entering. Sighing, Steve finally stood up from the water, moving to towel himself off and get dressed.
However, the person entering did so too fast.
“STEVE!” Diana said, running into the room without asking first or knocking or anything. “I have decided—!”
She stopped short, her eyes getting wide as Steve tried to cover himself up between the legs. Even though he was soft down there, his hand barely covered it. The super soldier process had changed his entire body proportionately, after all.
“Let me get decent, Diana,” he said.
“Of course!” With a bright blush on both her cheeks, Diana spun around so that her back was to him, covering her eyes with both hands.
“Are you dressed yet?” she asked no more than a few seconds later.
“Not yet. Getting there,” Steve said.
Unable to wait any longer, Diana began delivering the news she brought.
“I am going to go with you,” she said.
“Have you told your mother that?” he asked.
“I… have yet to convince her,” Diana said. “But I can. And I will! I want to leave this place, and do good. Like you! You said that you crossed an ocean to fight and save people! Now, I’ll do the same!”
“It’s not a decision to be made lightly,” Steve warned her as he got dressed. “This island is like a paradise. The rest of the world isn’t so nice.”
“Do you think I can’t handle it?” Diana said, her voice halfway between a challenge and disappointment.
“No,” Steve said. “I saw you down at the beach. You’re more than strong enough. The question is… will it make you happy?”
“Whether I’m happy or not, I must!” Diana said, spinning around to face him as her emotions won out. Steve wasn’t dressed again, but he had pants on this time and was just missing his shirt fortunately, so it didn’t interrupt their conversation.
“I have been thinking of them nonstop,” Diana said. “All the women and children who are dying. And good men, too, fighting a good fight! If I stay here, perhaps I will be safe and warm. But every time I shut my eyes, I’ll know what’s out there. I cannot live with that!”
Steve shrugged his shirt on. He looked at Diana, deciding he really liked what he saw from her.
“Then fight with me,” Steve said, extending his hand. “Join the Allies.”
Diana took his hand with fire in his eyes.
“I will fight with everything I have,” she promised.
“I know that you will,” Steve said.
