Due to deep involvement in the war on terrorism, it had been some months since the World's most beloved superheroine found time to visit her island home. Landing her transparent Amazon plane near the palace, Diana hurried eagerly to the informal reception room, where her mother, the Queen of Paradise Island held morning court. As Diana entered the room, her mother's eyes lit up and she started to rise from her simple throne, but fell back with a little moan. Diana noticed that her mother's face was drawn and haggard.

"Oh Mama! What's the matter? Are you ill?" The Princess cried in alarm, rushing to her Mother 's side.

"I'll be all right in just a moment!"  The Queen whispered. "It's nothing serious, Darling! Just a little touch of malaria!  I caught it as a girl during the Amazon Spartan War, and it flares up now and again, but I'll be all right in a few days!"

"Oh Mama, let me send for my own physician? She's such a compassionate, competent woman, I'm sure she'd have you well in no time!"

"Thank you, Dear, but it wouldn't be fitting for the Queen of This Isle to abandon the old ways! I'll stick to the traditional Amazon remedies!"

Diana nodded in mute acceptance, thinking: "Dear Hera sometimes she's so stubborn, I could just shake her!"

Recovering her composure, Queen Hippolyta looked searchingly at her daughter, Diana's safety in the brutal world of men, never far from her mind.

"Oh, My Dear! You've changed your hair style! It's most becoming, and I'm sure, much more practical for your active lifestyle!"

"Why thank you, Mama!"  Diana replied, thinking: "She HATES it! I KNEW she would!"

Diana was about to recount her latest adventures to her mother, who was normally eager to hear all her daughter's gossip of that male world, Hippolyta so rarely visited.

Today, Hippolyta, spoke first, as though under considerable strain. "Oh My Dear! This illness couldn't have come at a more inopportune time! That vile, little viper, Sinestria, becomes more brazen in her demands every day! She openly flouts Amazon Custom and laughs at those of us who honor it! She's the center of the faction calling for greater contact with the outside! I'm sure its all that satellite television our people watch now that make them so discontented! Sinestria's kind are still in the minority, but seem intent on imposing their will on all, by whatever means available! I suppose it will come one day! I know one can't hold back the tide of change forever, but Sinestria is not willing to wait until she can command a majority of our democratically elected Council to her view!  I fear her real motive is the hunger for personal power!"

"But if her followers are a minority on the Council, what can she do?" Diana asked concerned by her mother's obvious distress over the situation.

"It has come to my ears, that Sinestria has been reminding her followers that by ancient custom any Amazon may challenge the Queen to combat, and that the Queen must meet her and prevail over her, or lose the Throne!"

"Oh Mama, I know such was once the custom, but no one has taken it seriously in a thousand years. It's barbaric! It's certainly not the way Our Lady Hera meant Amazons to settle such questions! Her ways are the ways of love and reason!"

"True enough in these days of peace and plenty on our beautiful Island, Diana, but in those evil days when we were beset on every side by barbaric men whose one desire was to rape and enslave us, it was crucial that our Queen be a Warrior among Warriors! We could not afford that a weakling lead us, and thanks to that custom, such did not remain Queen for long! The purpose of the custom may be long dead, but how can I, who defend the old ways, pick and choose. I cannot tell my sisters to follow only those venerable customs that will not inconvenience me!"

Diana knew it was useless to argue with her Mother on this subject. "Surely Mother, not even Sinestria would challenge you when you are ill?"

"Sinestria is a vicious bully; she has often been suspected of cheating at our Sacred Games and she is eager for power! She would achieve it any way she can! I suspect that my illness is just the reason she WILL issue the challenge tonight! It isn't that I mind surrendering the cares of rule, Hera knows, but not to Sinestria; she would make a bad queen. Then too, according to our law, the victor in such a contest may claim her defeated foe as her slave. Of course no true Amazon could enslave one of her sisters, but I fear Sinestria is no true Amazon!"

"Oh Mama, if that beast does challenge you, you have the right to designate a champion to fight in your place! Let me be that champion?"

"No Dear! This is my fight!" the Queen replied in that tone of voice that meant she had made up her mind, and the issue was closed.

Diana shook her head in wearily in resignation. There was no point arguing once the strong willed Queen had spoken. "Well maybe where there's a will there's away"  Diana pondered in silence.

That evening as Hippolyta feared, the Council Meeting had scarce begun, when Sinestria jumped to her feet, rudely interrupting the first speaker. In arrogant tones she brazenly challenged the ailing Queen to combat.

"Your time is over old woman! It's time for new blood!" Sinestria concluded with a near snarl.

Sinestria's mocking, disrespectful tone to their beloved Queen shocked the members of the Council nearly as much as the challenge itself.

Queen Hippolyta listened in dignified silence until Sinestria sat down, then prepared to rise to reply.

Before her mother could stand, Princess Diana leaped to her feet. "As you all know, my Mother is not well! She has designated me to be her champion in any contest, and I gladly accept your challenge, Sinestria!"

Sinestria glared at the tall princess with unmasked hatred. "Why did that damned bitch have to come home today?" She fumed silently as Diana met her glare with a confident smile.

Hippolyta walked back to the palace from the meeting in silence. The strain of the meeting had taken tits toll on the ailing queen, and she was gallingly forced to lean on her disobedient daughter's arm for support. Finally she blurted.  "Really Diana that was the most brazen act of daughterly disobedience it was ever my to displeasure to observe! Not at all the sort of low scheme one would expect from an Amazon Princess!"

In the darkness Diana smiled. It wasn't often anyone successfully defied Mighty Hippolyta.

Despite her momentary pique at her daughter's unprecedented defiance, Hippolyta could not help feel relief that a terrible burden was shifted to younger shoulders.  Diana's martial skills were unequaled in all the world. Yet the Queen felt a sense of unease and foreboding.  Her tone softening she went on. "My Dear, I was terribly proud of you, and what's done is done; I can't change that, but I really didn't want you to do this! I worry about you every day!  You face such terrible dangers out there, but you do so from your own choice, and I don't interfere! Yet, if you were to be hurt to preserve this bauble I wear on my brow, I could never forgive myself! Sinestria may be no true Amazon, but her prowess in combat, of late, is unequaled among our Warriors, and she will stoop to any means, no matter how vile, to win!"

"Don't worry Mama! I know the type! I meet up with her kind every day, and I'm still doing okay!"
Diana smiled confidently in the darkness. Who could doubt her confidence was well justified? No Amazon had ever defeated Diana in tournament, just as no criminal of the outer world had ever prevailed over her.

"I hope so Dear!" Hippolyta replied, shaking her head, sadly. She couldn't forget that having accepted the challenge on her Mother's behalf, Diana would be subject to the same penalties, if the unthinkable happened.

The next day, as the sun reached its zenith, a great throng of Amazons gathered in the Arena to watch the first challenge to their Queen in living memory. As was the classical Hellenic custom of the Amazons, all athletic contests were conducted in the nude.  Sinestria and Diana strode to the center of the Arena wearing nothing but their Amazon bracelets, their shapely forms glistening in the noon sun.

Before the contest began, Hippolyta came down from her place in the stand and gave her kneeling  daughter and champion a filial blessing, while Sinestria looked on with a sneer.

No matter how bitter the dispute, it was always customary to begin these contests with a sisterly embrace, demonstrating the bonds of Amazon affection. When Hippolyta returned to her place of observation, Princess Diana extended her arms to thus embrace her foe. Diana had been warned of Sinestria's crafty wiles, but even armed with the cynicism of long years in the man's world, she couldn't believe a sister Amazon would dishonor this of all customs.

Diana had underestimated her cold-blooded foe's savagery, and contempt for custom. The basely underhanded Sinestria met Diana's sisterly gesture of courtesy with a sneak attack with her fists.

The brutal, sneak attack knocked Diana to one knee, but she twisted around arms extended in readiness before her crafty foe could strike again.

Seeing the Princess was ready for her, Sinestria warily backed off, as Diana rose.

Sinestria didn't back off far enough, though, and the Princess struck back with the martial skill that had made her a legend.

As Sinestria fell to the ground, Diana paused warily, chivalrously unwilling to strike a fallen foe.

Sinestria, on the other hand, was not hampered by chivalrous feelings, and twisting around, she drove her extended hand, stiffened by long years of Karate training, and tipped by long deadly black talons, directly into Diana's genitalia. The Princess reared back with a scream of pain.

As she rose, Sinestria's hand twisted into a terrible claw, tearing at Diana's most vulnerable treasure.

The pain was so intense it blotted all else from Diana's mind. Before she could think to retaliate, Sinestria rose to her feet. As she rose, she tore her hand away without relaxing her grip an iota.

Diana was transfixed by pain, and Sinestria drove her sharp talons like daggers into the Princess's exquisite bosom.

Intently watching the contest, Queen Hippolyta shared her daughter's pain, appalled by Sinestria's foul tactics that brought dishonor to every Amazon.

With a cry of awful distress, the gallant Princess twisted away, still nursing the terrible damage to her genitalia, throbbing even more painfully, than the newer wounds to her breasts. As she half turned, Sinestria struck again.

Staggered by the shock of the deadly kick, the Princess stumbled a step forward, and fell to one knee, as Sinestria gracefully landed behind her.

Solidly planted on the ground, Sinestria launched another kick to the same spot.

Nearly forgetting the unbearable pain in crotch and bosom, Diana clutched her back. Sinestria grabbed her arm, wheeled her around, and rammed a stony fist into the pit of her stomach.

Diana's arms dangled limply at her sides, and Sinestria drove her other fist into her undefended solar plexus.