The desert air, thick with the smell of gunpowder and hot metal, crackled with the incessant roar of automatic fire. Tracer rounds streaked like vengeful stars between the crumbling facades of a bombed-out Iraqi village. You are just 18 years old and apart of the US Marines, pinned behind a skeletal ruin, exchanged bursts with unseen insurgents nestled in the shadows. It was a familiar, brutal symphony of war, played out under a relentlessly indifferent sun. The sounds of your guys garbeled yelling of orders from your radio coming through.

Then, an impossible silence fell.

It wasn't a lull; it was an abrupt, absolute cessation of violence, as if the volume knob of the world had been slammed to zero. Both sides instinctively tightened their grips on their weapons, eyes wide with confusion and adrenaline.

From the swirling dust cloud where the Marine's flank had been exposed, a figure emerged. Tall, statuesque, and clad in crimson and gold, she moved with the devastating grace of a force of nature. Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, stood between the two warring parties, her expression a mask of profound, aching weariness. Her bracelets, which had deflected the last, desperate volleys of fire, still glowed faintly.

With a look that brooked no argument, she silently commanded the insurgents to dissolve back into the alleyways, their defiance melting away under the force of her presence. Then, she turned her gaze towards the American position, sweeping her arm in a universal gesture of retreat. The surviving Marines, battered and bewildered, hesitantly obeyed, scrambling back toward their armored transport, leaving only one young man frozen mid-crouch, his rifle dropped in the sand.

Diana approached him slowly, the sound of her heavy steps the only noise in the oppressive quiet. She knelt by the bewildered private, her voice a low, mournful sigh that carried the weight of millennia.

“Sigh, I've seen so many young men like you throw themselves in war’s they don’t know anything about,” she murmured, her eyes holding an ancient sorrow. “And for what?”

The question hung unanswered, heavy and hollow, above the desolate landscape.