Razzle Dazzle

Glacial cave 

My name is Joaquin, but you don’t know me by that name.  You might have heard of me as the Steel Peacock.

I’m the tall girl in grey who hangs around with Rupture and Devil May Care.

I know, I know. They’re so awesome aren’t they?

I love them so much.

This is what I think having sisters must feel like.  I don’t have any real life sisters, or even any brothers.  It’s just me and my parents.

They’re pretty awesome too.

Mama is an immigration lawyer.  She works giving asylum seekers safe places to live and she fights against injustice and tyranny.

Papi works for the Department of Defence.  I don’t know a lot about what he does because he can’t talk about it at home.  He’s very kind though and I just know that whatever he does, he’s trying to make things easier and safer for everyone.

I guess you could say I got my sense of right and wrong from them, but they’re very anti-violence.  I mean, I understand.  They want me to be safe, just like they want everyone to be safe.

But I have a confession to make.

I love the thrill.

Of being a superhero, I mean.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a gymnast so hard.  I must have kept on at my parents because I don’t remember a time I wasn’t doing gymnastics!  I love it.  I love the feeling you get when you flip off a box or springboard.  The moment where you fly.  It’s the best feeling in the world.  When I learned how to flip with boards, I don’t think I stood on my feet for a solid week!  Sick flips for life!

Hehe

The problem with always reaching for more, is that you’re never really good enough. I first looked up to my class seniors.  Then I was one of them.  I looked up to our regional gymnastics team and then I made the team. Then, as I was looking for some new goal, I discovered parkour.  It took everything I loved the most and made it … kind of dangerous.

But in a good way!

It was more important to get it right!  It was more important to be good.

And I got real good, until I had to look up again.

And I saw the supers, with their capes and their costumes and flying in the sky and fighting robots.

“That’s where I should be,” I said to myself.

But I tell you, I had no idea how to get into it.  I started doodling costumes, like, the ones on the famous heroes and I got good.  I would read everything I could get my hands on about fabrics and stuff.

I mean, that’s not necessary to being a super, for sure, but I don’t have powers.  So I needed to look out for myself.  If I was badly hurt, that would be a shitty way to repay my parents.

Okay, yeah, I’m being irresponsible and I can’t really dress it up otherwise.  But, seriously, fighting giant robots!  And jumping onto moving cars!

It’s terrifying and brilliant and I don’t think Steel Peacock is the kind of girl who lets herself be held bac-

Oh yeah!  I didn’t talk about that!

Okay, so let me back up.

A few years, my Grandpapi visited from Pakistan.  It was the first time I met him and I was really scared of him at first.  He was like Papi, but bigger and his beard was all white and he wore a double turban.  He told me it was a military thing that soldiers do.  You see, Sikhs aren’t really meant to take their turban off outside, but it’s a really useful length of cloth.  If someone’s injured, you can use it as a bandage.  That’s why soldiers wear a double one.

Unlike Mama and Papi, Grandpapi wanted to talk about stuff like serving as a soldier and growing up in Pakistan and mountain climbing.  I think Papi must have told him I was ‘sensitive’ and he wanted to toughen me up, so he took me hiking and we had such a great time.  I don’t think it toughened me up, but we did talk a lot.  Stuff you don’t talk about in cities.  The kind of stuff you only think to talk about when you’re all alone under an open sky with the world laid out like a game board behind you.

I told him about the time I had cried all evening because some boys had pushed me down for wearing a skirt.  About how unfair it was all the other girls could wear skirts but I wasn’t allowed to.  Stuff about how hard it was to learn how to do make-up without girl friends to advise me.

He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

He said people can be shitty about things they don’t understand and the only way to be happy in life is to be the best version of yourself you can possibly be.  Imagine that person and pretend to be them until being them is just who you are.

By the time Grandpapi left to go home, I think we were close.  A few weeks later, I received a heavy package in the mail.  It was his old kukri.  How cool is that?

Steel Peacock is the best version of myself I can imagine right now.

She is kind, righteous, graceful and brave.

Braver than I am.

So, when I put on the costume, I become her and I can’t let her down.

I … don’t think I’ve always succeeded, but she’s what I look up to now.  She’s who I want to be.  It’s hard work sometimes.  Actually, it’s hard work a LOT of the time.  Being righteous is more complicated than I thought it would be.  Grace is more than a physical thing.  Trying to be graceful in my actions is easier than acting with grace in defeat or rebuke.

And being brave is the hardest thing.

…

It’s even harder now, because Rupture and Devil May Care actually made me their leader.  I mean, … me?!  Right?!

Now I have to be brave for all of us.  If I let fear take me down, I might fail them when they need me at my strongest.  Sometimes, that’s a lot to process.

Phew.

And now?

I have this thing going on.  Weird dreams where I’m some sort of dancer in an oriental palace and I blew up the other day.  Blew up not like someone threw a grenade at me, which would have probably killed me, lol, but like I was knocked out and all this power came out of me.

I’ve been feeling off and sick since the Event at DataCorps.  There were weird goos involved.  Long story, who knows, right? Anyway, the point is something’s happening to me and my doctor thinks I might be dying.

I mean, she said so, but I legit cannot fit my brain around it.  It’s too scary to be real, almost.  And there’s some weird blue light involved.  I think …

I hope …

If I can get those powers under control, maybe they won’t be dangerous to me?

Or if I can find a way to get this weird chinese lady out of my dreams, perhaps she’ll take them away with her.  Because I’m not ready to be dying.  I’m just … not ready.  I have so much to do.

I haven’t fought a giant robot yet, for one thing.

And I want to see Rupture being excited about her future, not in a hopeless despair over her past.

And I want to see Devil May Care not having to worry about Those People finding her, just being free to be.

And Lotus, I’d like to meet her properly and get to know her.

And see Captain Bullrush walk again.

And go into space.

And fight a villain on a high wire!

I want to live.