Chapter 5: The Weaponization of Truth

“You know,” Vex said, circling me slowly, “for a goddess, you’re quite sullen. Does your face always look like you sucked on a lemon?”

The question was a key turning a lock. The Lasso flared with cold power, compelling me to speak.

“No,” I answered, my voice a low growl. “This expression is reserved… for cowards who must use poison because they tremble at the thought of a fair fight. My face looks like this only when I am forced to gaze upon something truly… pathetic.”

He laughed, a sharp, unamused bark. “Oh, a spark of defiance. But the Lasso says it’s the truth, so I must be pathetic. And yet… I’m the one standing, and you’re the one on your knees. Funny how that works.” He held up the golden cord that bound me. “So, this makes you tell the truth?”

The Lasso forced me to explain its divine origins. I warned him that the truth could shatter a mind built on lies. He merely smiled. “Fascinating. So the champion of truth has secrets. Let’s peel back the layers, shall we? Who are you when you’re not playing goddess? Do you have a secret identity?”

The magic tore the name from me, a violation of a self I had built with such care. “Diana Prince.“

“Diana Prince…” he tasted the name, his voice dripping with condescension. “How pedestrian. How utterly, wonderfully normal. Tell me about her. What does little Diana Prince do when she’s not flying around in her gaudy bathing suit?”

The Lasso tightened, demanding more than a name. It demanded a life. It forced me to open the book of my quietest self for his profane reading. “She is… a curator,” I began, the words forced from me. “An antiquities scholar at the Gateway City Museum of Antiquities.”

“A curator. Of course. Surrounded by dead things. How fitting. Tell me about a normal day for Diana Prince. Spare no detail.”

The command was absolute. I had to describe the quiet mornings, the smell of coffee—a simple, bitter human ritual I had come to cherish. I spoke of the walk to the museum, of the academic debates with colleagues who were passionate and good. The Lasso forced me to detail the feeling of handling ancient pottery, the papyrus so fragile it might turn to dust. “I handle them with a reverence my colleagues mistake for professional care,” I said, my voice heavy with the forced confession. “They don’t know I am touching the echoes of civilizations I watched rise and fall.”

I spoke of the quiet satisfaction of a piece perfectly restored, the shared joke over lunch, the frustration of budget cuts. I was forced to paint a picture of a life that was small, and quiet, and precious. A life that was mine.

“And why?” Vex pressed, leaning in, his eyes gleaming. “Why pretend? Why this elaborate performance of being a mortal?”

“You must understand,” the Lasso forced the deepest truth from me, a truth so intimate it felt like he was flaying the skin from my soul. “I did not create her to hide. I created her to see. To see humanity not from the heights of Olympus, but from your own streets. To understand your capacity for small kindnesses, for art, for love… on your own terms. Diana Prince is my heart’s attempt to learn the language of your own.”

He leaned back, a look of triumphant discovery on his face. “How noble. How… sentimental. You built a whole life just to slum it with the mortals. To feel their pathetic little feelings. That is the most profound weakness I could have ever imagined. Thank you, Diana. You’ve been most… illuminating.” He then asked his next question, his voice a scalpel seeking the final nerve. “And love? Does this sentimental creature love anyone?”

The Lasso ripped the most sacred truth from the deepest chamber of my heart. A vision of his laughing eyes, the smell of his old leather jacket, the feel of his hand in mine—memories he was now stealing. The name was a prayer and a wound. “His name is Steve Trevor.“