Work Text:
"I'm ready to be cursed any time now." Barbara Ann Minerva declared aloud, as if that would make a difference.
"I can worrrk with this." A feminine voice didn't so much whisper as purr the words in Barbara's ear.
Then the curse struck.
XXX XXX XXX
The next thing the archeologist knew, she was… somewhere that was very much not the house that she and Diana Prince shared. Instead, she was a "place" that by all rights shouldn't exist. Everything was colored some variation of red, orange, or yellow, and wherever she looked, there were more "vague suggestions" of objects than anything she could give a name to. Honestly, it reminded her of a child's drawing of a desert, but there was none of the oppressive heat that she'd grown irritatingly familiar with during her recent expedition to Egypt. To be perfectly honest, the temperature was as close to ideally warm as it made no difference.
"How do you like my home?"
The words were almost disturbingly mundane… given that they were being spoken by a figure that had to be at least seven feet tall and looked like a mix of human and feline. She was dressed in what Barbara would hazard to guess was some manner of ancient Egyptian outfit, combined with numerous pieces of gold jewelry.
"Who are you?" Barbara couldn't help but ask, even though she had a sinking sensation that she already knew the answer.
"Bastet." Responded her theoretically divine conversation partner.
There was a time not so long ago when Barbara Ann Minerva would have concluded that she must be suffering some sort of hallucination. That was the explanation her mind would have jumped to before she'd learned that not only had she been right about there being an entire civilization of Amazons, but that said Amazons were nigh immortal, and the Greek Pantheon was real as well.
When judging her current situation through that particular lens, especially combined with the fact that Barbara had just recently (accidentally!) cut herself with a magical blade bearing the feline goddess' name, the odds were surprisingly high that this was exactly what it looked and felt like.
The only aspect of her current situation that made it feel especially unbelievable was that it was happening to her. Barbara Ann Minerva had felt fairly certain that the mythological world had given her an extremely definitive thumbs down several years ago, determining that she would only interact with it through the medium of other, luckier, people, like her girlfriend Diana Prince. Why should that change now?
"Do you mind if I ask why you decided to bring me… wherever exactly here is?" The archeologist didn't exactly plead with the goddess, but her words did carry a minor tone of worry.
"I'm herrre to make your wildest drrreams come trrrue," Bastet answered, her voice carrying a faint, yet undeniably pleasant feline trill to it.
"Like the one where there are two Diannas?" Barbara blurted out, only to slap a hand over her mouth a moment later.
"Love the enthusiasm, but you may need to lowerrr yourrr expectations just a touch. Though I suppose I could grrrant that particularrr wish, in a metaphorrrical sense…." Bastet offered.
Barbara's reaction was instantaneous; this was too important for her to keep her mouth covered.
"No, no, no! I have read more than enough mythology to know that nothing good ever comes from accepting an offer to make someone's deepest desire come true 'in a metaphorical sense'! You are going to explain exactly what you mean before I agree to anything!" The archeologist insisted, feeling like right now she'd settle for a wish that would make Bastet stop effortlessly towering over her "guest".
The cat goddess seemingly took not even a single ounce of offense at this reaction; she even broke into a half-purr, half-laugh!
"Oh, don't worrrry, I always planned to, in fact, I'm going to do so in song!" Bastet promised with an almost worrying degree of eagerness.
She snapped her fingers, and then there was music. No instruments or electronic devices, just music, which was an appropriately divine way to handle the matter, admittedly.
The fact that the music came from nowhere wasn't nearly as big a surprise as its composition, though...
"Wait, I recognize that rhythm, isn't this 'Wouldn't you Like' from EPIC: The Musical?" Once again, there seemed to be something about Bastet's presence that was short-circuiting any attempt Barbara made to refrain from voicing her thoughts aloud the moment they popped into her head.
"You don't spend a lot of time listening to ancient Egyptian hymns, and I like to meet morrrtals where they'rrre at, I find it makes them morrre comforrrtable." The feline goddess turned DJ answered with a shrug of her shoulders.
Bastet had a point; having the beat of a familiar song in her ears did relax Barbara slightly despite how absurd her situation was. Still, why had the cat goddess selected a song about Hermes helping Odysseus prepare for a confrontation to save his transformed soldiers? Wouldn't "Warrior of the Mind" be more appropriate?
Before the archaeologist inevitably ended up accidentally asking that question aloud, Bastet started singing.
"Wouldn't you like a taste of the powerrr?
Wouldn't you like to use morrre than worrrds?
Deep in the night the fight lasts for hourrrs,
You can be hurrrt or you can be herrr?!"
The feline goddess's playful words arrived with a divine majesty to them; with the change of a single word, they conveyed more information than an entire monologue. Barbara instantly knew exactly who Bastet had in mind to play the role of the archaeologist's "Circe".
"Why do you want me to fight Diana?" Barbara snapped, furious at the idea that she could ever be seduced into hurting the woman she loved.
"I'm not the one who wants you to fight herrr, you arrre," Bastet replied, not unkindly, not mockingly, just matter-of-factly.
Barbara was about to launch another protest… when the lie died on her lips. Faced with only silence, Bastet went right back to singing.
"Wouldn't you like to have some of the magic?
Wouldn't you like yourrr outcome prrreferrrred?
Deep in the night fights can be ecstatic,
I'll help you equal herrr..."
Barbara Ann Minerva might as well be naked and flayed for how effortlessly Bastet had read her deepest, darkest desire. That moment at the press conference, the day she and Diana had first met, how the Amazon Princess had reacted when she'd realized that Barbara was most likely the only person in the entire World of Men who spoke Wonder Woman's native tongue...
It had been, 'exhilarating' was too tame a word for it, briefly having Diana's complete and undivided attention, to be treated as an equal by a woman who could toss a tank further than most people could a discus. If that had been how it felt for the Amazon Princess to have appraised Barbara as only her mental equal, what would it be like to just once experience Diana thinking of Barbara Ann Minerva as a match for her physically as well?
It… it wasn't like she wanted to actually hurt Diana, she loved her, loved her more than she could ever imagine loving anyone else (especially herself). Barbara just wanted a chance to be something more than one more mortal clinging desperately to Wonder Woman's side in need of rescue. Was that really so wrong?
"She's got the speed of Herrrmes, moves so fast she's nothing but a blurrr!
Lovely as Aphrrrodite, could make a girrrl blush strrraight thrrrough her furrr!
Got that strrrength from Demeterrr, herrr muscles just neverrr quit,
Up against a foe like herrr, a morrrtal body is the pits!"
Which was exactly why Barbara had never let that particular urge get the better of her before. It had always been easy to push aside every time it had arisen, because it didn't even qualify as simply "impossible", only flat-out insane. The archeologist might as well have wanted to leap straight into orbit as hold her own in a fight against someone who could support Barbara's entire body weight with a single finger (something Diana had done once for charity).
So, every time such an intrusive thought had wormed its way into her head, she'd shoved it back out by reminding herself that it simply couldn't be done and moved on. It was only now that she was abruptly realizing that perhaps it was a mistake not to have more fully debated that particular inclination, because finding herself in a situation where it was now a genuine possibility… she was utterly bereft of counterarguments.
The archeologist had been so completely certain that she wouldn't need them, that Barbara Ann Minerva could never hope to be Diana Prince's equal... Instead, she'd simply focused on finding a way to be happy at the prospect of being given pride of place as the foremost supplicant at the Amazon Princess' feet, which, in all honesty, was probably a greater honor than Barbara deserved. Bastet had other ideas though, other ideas, and enough divine power of her own that those ideas might make the leap from dream to reality.
"Wouldn't you like a taste of the powerrr?
Wouldn't you like to use morrre than worrrds?
Deep in the night the fight lasts for hourrrs,
You can be hurrrt or you can be herrr?!"
Barbara wanted what Bastet was offering the way that Odysseus had wanted to get home from the Trojan War, the way that Zeus wanted to have sex with whatever woman had drawn his attention this week, the way that Psyche had wanted a chance to be reunited with her husband.
She wanted it with an ugly, all-consuming desire that swallowed logic as effortlessly as the Flood of Deucalion had swallowed Phthia.
How was she supposed to refuse this? Refuse a chance to not just study Greek mythology, but be a part of it! She didn't even want it for the sake of leaving a mark on history, she didn't care if future students ended up learning about her alongside Orpheus or Oedipus, all that mattered was that Greek mythology felt like where she always belonged more than a world of yachts, fancy parties (not forgetting fancy parties on yachts) fast cars and everything else that had accompanied being lower upper class.
If the gods of the Greek pantheon had slammed the door in her face… here was Bastet opening a window for her to squeeze through.
"Wouldn't you like to have some of the magic?
Wouldn't you like yourrr outcome prrreferrrred?
Deep in the night fights can be ecstatic,
I'll help you equal herrr..."
That was how Bastet was going to "metaphorically" make Barbara's wish for there to be "two Dianas" come true… but transforming the archeologist into someone more like Diana Prince. Someone who had the divine blessings of a god. Someone who could do things that no ordinary human being possibly could. Someone who could even outperform other Amazons!
She'd have powers worthy of Heracles, probably more than that, honestly, since Barbara wouldn't have been surprised if Wonder Woman could defeat the most famous mortalish son of Zeus. So now, the only question that mattered was how exactly feline diety planned to do it. Conveniently, since the song's next lines were about Hermes offering Odysseus Moly, that should translate to Bastet...
"Soon you'll blossom like a flower,
Give you divine powerrr to take herrr on!
Trrrust me Kitten this ain't no hex,
Soon enough you'll be a morrre exotic creation,
Give you a reimagination!
The change only takes a moment,
You'll be her purrrfect opponent..."
From out of nowhere, Bastet produced a large circular mirror and held it up for Barbara to look into. As befitting an object belonging to a goddess, this mirror proved to be magical; it showed the archeologist not as she was, but as she could be.
Barbara didn't hate what she saw in the reflection. It was a slightly taller, slightly more muscular version of herself with crimson hair, instead of brown, and orange eyes instead of blue. Also, her reflection was covered by tawny golden fur broken up by black spots, and she had a tail.
That seemed like a surprisingly small detail to her for some reason. Maybe it was because she'd always known deep down that she simply wasn't Amazon material, and those particular suspicions had only been reinforced by her inability to access Themyscira. So, if the entire universe had decreed that Barbara Ann Minerva would never be an Amazon… what grander destiny could she hope for than being a monster that Amazons fought?
On top of that, what she was seeing in the mirror was a "good" monster for her. She'd never really wanted to be strong that badly; instead, what had interested her more was speed. As a young girl, she'd imagined she'd be fast enough to evade a swing from the Minotaur's axe. As a teenager, the only sport that had even come close to drawing her attention was track races. As a twenty-something, she'd preferred motorcycles since they let her more fully experience exactly how fast her vehicle was going. Which was why Bastet, evidently keenly aware of Barbara's fascination with celerity, had concluded, what better feline to transform her into than a cheetah?
"To make things extra fun, I'll even let you switch back and forth at the drop of a hat. Divine feline in the streets, Barbara Minerva in the sheets." Bastet pledged a very helpful gift via an extremely unhelpful analogy.
"And I call this you 'Cheetah Athena'!" She added, returning to the song.
"I'm not calling myself 'Cheetah Athena'." Barbara insisted without missing a beat.
The music stopped so suddenly that it almost felt like there should have been a divine "record scratch" sound accompanying its departure.
"But it rrrhymes..." Bastet pouted, putting down the mirror and clutching her hands together, in the process somehow making her irises grow absolutely massive to the point that her eyes were roughly 1% green and 99% black.
"Really?" Barbara groaned; she might be far too soft a sell on Bastet's pitch overall, but a woman had to draw the line somewhere.
"I thought you would like it, it's Grrreek mythology, I brrring the feline ferrrocity, you the wisdom of a woman who had two PhDs beforrre she turrrned twenty-seven, it's the best of both." The deity's explanation was yet more proof that she seemed worryingly familiar with the archeologist's life, given that the two had only just met.
"None of that changes the fact that my last name is Minerva. Cheetah Athena is an alias so obvious that a first-year college student could see through it, let alone Diana." Barbara pointed out.
Bastet sighed and shook her head, strangely distraught over this minor rebuff from her prospective partner in crime.
"Just Cheetah then?" She eventually offered.
"I guess 'Cheetah' works." Barbara reluctantly admitted, unable to find anything especially objectionable about the prospect of renaming herself after the animal she might soon resemble.
"It's not like I'm trying to come up with some sort of grandiose title to impress people with, I've already got 'Wonder Woman's girlfriend' and 'Doctor' for that. Since the point of this entire thing is to preserve my identity, I'd much rather go by just 'Cheetah' than something as dramatic as, say, 'Ailuros'." The archaeologist pointed out.
A moment later, Bastet's green eyes went wide with excitement.
"You should totally call yourrrself that!" She giggled while clasping her hands together in a manner more befitting a schoolgirl than an immortal goddess.
"Do I have to repeat the part about selecting a title unrelated to my life outside of being Diana's newest nemesis? Besides, wouldn't it be outright blasphemous for me to use that name?" The archaeologist protested.
"The only deity it could be considerrred blasphemy against is me, and I'm the one cheerrring forrr you to use it. So by all rrrights, it is actually morrre blasphemous if you don't do it." Bastet riposted with a smirk.
"It's gonna be 'Cheetah'." Barbara huffed, and to her surprise, the feline deity refrained from raising further complaints, instead choosing to raise the mirror back up for Barbara to get another now unnecessary look at the future self...
"Well then, welcome to the clowderrr." The cat goddess intomed solemnly... or at least it qualified as "solemnly" for her.
Without further ado, Bastet smashed the mirror over Barbara's head. Except there was no sensation of sudden impact, or the stabbing pain of countless glass shards digging into her flesh. Instead, it was as if the mirror was no longer an object of mundane glass but instead a magical portal, one that pulled Barbara Ann Minerva into it.
As Barbara traveled through the mirror, she came out the other side exactly where she'd started, except (of course) she was Cheetah now.
It felt wonderful.
"Wouldn't you like a taste of the powerrr?
Wouldn't you like to use morrre than worrrds?
Deep in the night the fight lasts for hourrrs,
You can be hurrrt or you can be herrr?!"
Before she knew it, Barbara's newly gained tail had begun to swing back and forth in time with the music's beat. She didn't even try to stop it; she had much more important things to worry about, like trying to come to grips with the new sensations her body was giving her.
She felt like a coiled spring, not like one that was under pressure and about to snap, but simply one that had been gently depressed by a human hand. Her entire body felt suddenly like every single part of it had stored a near bottomless reservoir of power in preparation for whatever came next. Was this how Diana felt all the time? Where had she gotten the self-restraint not to run around telling people about how fantastic she was feeling? No wonder she always had those upliftingly huge smiles on her face all the time!
Just to test if such sensations actually translated into physical capabilities, Barbara half-heartedly jumped straight up in the air. She went up what had to be at least ten feet before coming back down.
"Ohh..." The transformed archeologist muttered to herself softly as she tried to grapple with the implications of suddenly being able to do that, and what she might be able to accomplish if she was actually trying.
"Wouldn't you like to have some of the magic?
Wouldn't you like yourrr outcome prrreferrrred?
Deep in the night fights can be ecstatic,
I'll help you equal herrr..."
All of a sudden, Barbara wasn't stuck in whatever mystical realm that Bastet had transported her to. Instead, she was on a small island in the Black Sea that no one had ever bothered to name. The archeologist knew its exact geographic location, because with disturbing consistency, her memories of visiting this place refused to fade.
The archaeologist had been so sure that she'd understood the blind woman's message that she'd been "going the wrong way" because she'd been too fixated on trying to find where the Amazons had gone rather than their point of origin.
But the truth of the matter had been a far more bitter pill to swallow; she was "going the wrong way" because she was insisting on chasing a prize that had never existed anywhere but her own head. The Dead Tree she'd found waiting for her on the island had been all the proof she'd needed of that. So here she was again, alone on the island, face to face with a Dead Tree which seemed to grow taller every time she foolishly tried to measure it.
This… this had to just be a hallucination. Not the island, all of it. People in Christian churches claimed that they saw God or angels while they were having near-death experiences; it was just the brain defaulting to fill in the blanks with what it had been primed to expect. Barbara Ann Minerva had spent the last month of her life in Egypt studying its mythology as it related to certain artifacts she hoped to recover; her own mind was primed to think about Bastet.
In reality, she was probably lying unconscious on the floor while suffering from some kind of fever resulting from being cut by an ancient blade that she hadn't sterilized thoroughly enough. That was a much more sensible explanation for all this than an Egyptian goddess, serenading her with a personalized version of a song from a modern-day musical, recounting events from Greek mythology.
Then she heard the sound of footsteps in the dirt.
That wasn't right.
The owner of the small boat she'd paid to take her out to this island had stayed on his vessel the entire time; she was the only person who had decided to foolishly intrude on a place that should have been better left alone.
Somehow, Barbara found the strength of will to turn away from the Dead Tree and towards the sound of the footsteps. It was Bastet, still looking as radiant and divine as ever, if anything even more so due to the now mundane nature of her surroundings!
For the first time, the archeologist felt genuine rage at the cat goddess.
"Why did you bring me here? You seem to know so much about me, don't you know I hate this place? I hate that thing!" Barbara snarled, her newly grown fur standing on edge, her tail now moving with wild lashes instead of steady sways.
"Think of it as a gift forrr my newest champion, herrr verrry own, extrrra larrrge, scrrratching post," Bastet emphasized the final two words by extending a series of ten claws that seemed to glow with an inner golden light.
Barbara's former fingernails were lacking any sort of obvious mystical aura, but they did look sharp, so where was the harm in testing them out?
Slowly, the archeologist turned back around… and faced the Dead Tree.
As she did so, Bastet offered her own particular brand of encouragement.
"Wouldn't you like a taste of the powerrr?
Wouldn't you like to use morrre than worrrds?
Deep in the night the fight lasts for hourrrs,
You can be hurrrt or you can be herrr?!"
Barbara Ann Minerva lashed out at the Dead Tree. The thing looked as if it hadn't so much rotted as petrified in the wake of its demise, that, or maybe somehow, like a botanical zombie, the thing was dead and alive at the same time?
She attacked foolish optimism rather than any real expectation of success… and was shocked when her claws sliced through the Dead Tree's bark like Alexander's sword bisected the Gordian Knot. It was just, that, easy. Wherever Cheetah's claws struck, more pieces of the blighted behemoth were torn to shreds and or crushed to pulp. The Dead Tree was massive, but between the sharpness of her claws and the swiftness of her movements, Barbara Ann Minerva carved through it like a furry chainsaw.
She didn't care which way the Dead Tree fell, even if that direction was straight down on top of her, without its roots anchoring it to the ground; Barbara felt certain she'd be able to toss aside whatever was left of it by the time she was done tearing it to pieces.
Fairy tales are real.
Magic is real.
Myths are real.
Gods are real.
All of it is real, I was always right. I was always right.
So, you want to talk about what is and isn't real, you deceased daisy? How real do my claws feel as they tear you to pieces?
"Wouldn't you like to have some of the magic?
Wouldn't you like yourrr outcome prrreferrrred?
Deep in the night fights can be ecstatic,
I'll help you equal herrr..."
Barbara stood there, amidst a huge pile of sawdust and severed tree limbs. You couldn't really kill something already dead, especially when you were only attacking your own memory of it… But she'd given it a damn good try all the same.
It was only after she had thoroughly demolished the arboreal abomination that Barbara suddenly realized she didn't feel the least bit winded. Clearly, unlike an actual cheetah, the transformed archeologist was unlikely to fall prey to a lack of stamina.
So, this was what it felt like to be Diana, at least to the extent that Barbara Ann Minerva now had one deity in her corner.
It was better than she'd imagined.
No more sullen thoughts about how much luckier her girlfriend was. Whatever happened next was on her. Her new feline friend had lifted the chains of a mundane existence from Barbara's legs and placed her beside Wonder Woman at the same superpowered starting line. So far as she was concerned, what came next wouldn't be a fight with Dana; only a race against her, a chance for the two to compare what they were capable of at their very best without any animus involved.
A contest where Barbara's body had been equalized with that of the Amazon Princess, and so now it would be up to the archaeologist's wits to determine what happened next. Instead of simply having to trudge along on the ground, it was finally time for her to either soar like Daedalus or crash like Icarus.
It was hard to imagine anything more fair than that.
"Bastet, thank you." Barbara was shocked to discover that she wasn't just saying those words because it was her "line" as Odysseus; she sincerely meant them.
"Don't thank me, Kitten, you very well may lose. Good luck..." The goddess answered in turn, and then everything went black.
The End.
AN: Bastet is, in some iteration of Egyptian Mythology (i.e., some sites I found as a result of doing some Google searches), considered a Goddess of Music, which is all the justification I need for her to do stuff like this.
When doing "soul to soul" talks, I'd rather have Bastet speak normally rather than the constant bolded italics she normally uses when talking to Barbara in "Changing Her Spots"; it shows this particular interaction is more important to Bastet.
"EPIC: The Musical" is a musical retelling of the story of the Odyssey, given her interest in Greek mythology there's exactly zero chance that Barbara Ann Minerva hasn't listened to it at least once (she hates how they separated Scylla and Charybdis but still considers it a VAST improvement over Disney's Hercules, which decided to use the Roman version of the title character's name for reasons she can't comprehend).
"Warrior of the Mind" is a song from EPIC that chiefly consists of showing Odysseus and Athena's first meeting and why the goddess chose to take one particular mortal under her wing.
Barbara thinking about when she and Diana first met is a reference to my story "The World Turned Right Side up" https://archiveofourown.org/works/80549371
Yes, I am cheating at one point in the non-Bastet version of "Wouldn't you Like", has the line "holy moly" which is four syllables, while "Cheetah Athena" is five. Sorry, I couldn't resist using it as Bastet's title for Barbara's transformed state. "Minerva" is the name for the Roman Goddess who is their equivalent of Athena, hence why Barbara refuses to accept "Athena" as part of her supervillainess title. A surgeon named "Dr. Acula" would be using a less obvious alias.
Ailuros is the name that the ancient Greeks used to worship Bastet when they eventually added her as a member of their pantheon rather than just considering her the Egyptian equivalent of Artemis. It's the kind of niche Greek mythology reference that would have Barbara Minerva's paw prints all over it, hence why she doesn't want to use it.
The small island in the Black Sea and the dead tree are a reference to Wonder Woman Vol 5 Issue 8, it's one of the most crushing moments in Barbara Minerva's life (well, before her being "wed" to Urzkartaga at least), to the point that I like to portray her as having comic-booky PTSD over it.
Daedalus and Icarus were a father and son who got trapped on an island, and had to escape by crafting wax wings to fly with. Daedalus pulled it off, but Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he plummeted to his death.
Also, please let's all give a round of applause to Bastet for showing an unexpected amount of restraint in deciding to rhyme "magic" with "ecstatic" even if the line had to lose a syllable elsewhere to make up for the fact that ecstatic has three while the original word ("tragic") only has two. I say this shows restraint because anyone with a rhyming dictionary would sooner or later realize that "sapphic" has two syllables.