Wonder Woman's No-Power Conundrum

"I don't know why you're bothering with that," said Steve, my best friend and fellow superhero. "You know those guys are gonna recognize you for who you really are."

"We'll see about that," I replied. Despite the confidence in my voice, I was a little nervous. I'd already tried out a few outfits in the mirror, but none of them were working. All of them made me look like Wonder Woman. And while I didn't mind being Wonder Woman - something I could never explain to anyone - I wanted to be an ordinary woman today. Just to see how it felt. Steve was right: I had no idea what somebody might think when they saw me dressed up in my Amazonian armor. But with my lasso and shield... it just looked too much like Wonder Woman.

"Okay, let's try this again," I said, going back into the bedroom to change. This time, I left the tiara and boots behind, stripping down to what might otherwise be a normal outfit for a suburban housewife. Jogging pants, sneakers, a t-shirt and a hoodie: no shield or golden lasso in sight. Still, the moment I put on my mask - Wonder Woman's mask - the whole thing transformed into something else. Too tight around my neck, too short in length... obviously not a good fit at all.

"It's no use," I told Steve, taking off the sweatshirt hoodie and pulling off the mask as well. "I don't know why this is so hard!"

"Maybe we should just go?" he suggested. It was Saturday morning and there was another comic convention in town today... one that we'd missed two weeks ago because of other commitments. Now that we weren't needed to save the city from a meteor shower or something, we could finally check it out! Except... there was just something weird about seeing my face everywhere we went today: ads for costumes based on me, signs welcoming our arrival at various hotels and even some billboards promoting upcoming movies about me. The only way to avoid it all was to disguise myself as someone else; and yet here I was still struggling with that simple task!

"It's not fair," I muttered under my breath. "Normally these things come naturally to me." Stepping over to the window, I pulled back the curtains to reveal an average suburban street below: cars parked outside houses, kids playing in their yards... an ordinary Saturday morning in suburbia! "That's exactly what I want!" A moment later, the ground beneath us disappeared; Steve and I were suddenly floating above the clouds, looking down on Earth from high above!

"Oh man!" he exclaimed at once. "This is so awesome!" At first he seemed worried by his sudden elevation (as most people would), but after doing some somersaults in midair he quickly grew accustomed to it as well. "It feels almost like flying!" he told me excitedly.

"Almost," I agreed with him wistfully. When he asked if we could stay up here forever instead of going down to the convention hall, however... that gave me an idea! What if there was a way to make him fly? He certainly had more experience than most regular mortals with abilities such as these... maybe he could fly on his own? "Let's go see if we can find anything useful." Following my lead through the sky towards Earth again (the clouds below having magically vanished), we continued onward until we found ourselves approaching an old abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere: its doors wide open but nobody inside except for a few chickens pecking about on the ground outside it!