My name is Jade. My mother named me that after my gorgeous green eyes, which she claims I got from my father, an Irishman who came to Vietnam for vacation and fell in love with the country.
The first ten years of my life were very quaint and peaceful. We got our food from the land, drank from the river, and made our own clothes. My only access to the outside world was a small battery-powered television. My favorite thing to watch was news stories on superheroes, and being a girl, my favorite was Wonder Woman.
But, then there came the day when my village went up in flames. It was a normal sunny day, when suddenly houses started exploding, one after the other as though in a line. My mother grabbed me and ran into the house with me, only for the mud wall to explode and collapse on top of us. I screamed for help for what seemed like forever, until my father frantically dug us out. After pulling me into his arms, he squeezed my mother's wrist, begging for her to "come on" before running away with me in tears.
As he found a hiding space, I begged for us to get mommy, but daddy placed his hand over my moth and whispered:
"Sorry, Jade. Mommy is gone."
I didn't really understand what that meant, but father reminded me to be quiet as three helicopters landed in the middle of our village. About eight soldiers came out of each, and they all had an American flag on their right shoulder. They slowly walked through village, shooting dead any survivors they could find.
About twenty feet from us, two soldiers pulled out our village leader and brought him to their commander, who knelt and yanked off his necklace. This prized ornament was a golden snake wrapped around a blue rock, and then seemed to rise and show off its fangs. Many men in my village had the same pendant, and they said it stood for the great snake god.
The US commander looked down at our village leader and scoffed, "You try to crash planes into Metropolis and Coast City, then go hide away in a jungle. How very much like Kobra."
Our leader could only snark back. "You slaughter innocents in the name of freedom. How very much like America."
"Hold on, what's that you're always saying in your video messages? Oh, right – 'anger a snake, and you will get stung'. Consider yourself stung."
Then he shot the leader dead. "OK, boys. Let's finish getting the others the drone missed."
A few seconds later, my own father was shot in the back by a soldier, and then hugged me against his chest as he turned to face his attacker. He begged for my life to be spared and was answered with a bullet to the face. He fell to the ground dead, leaving me exposed to be shot in the right shoulder.
As a writhed to be spared, I saw the nozzle of his rifle line up to my face .. and then he fell down screaming in agony. There were soon three snakes slithering all over him, biting through his uniform until the collapsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth until he died. The same thing happened to the rest of the soldiers that had destroyed my village. Then I felt a snake slither up me and bite around my gunshot wound.
It was very painful, as it felt like the snake was sucking my blood like a leech. But after it swallowed the bullet, I felt venom squeeze from its fangs, and the wound quickly patched itself up. Then the snake let go of me and slithered away with its friends.
I followed the snakes to the edge of the village, where they all came to a man dressed in orange-and-green hooded garments. Upon seeing me, he ran to me, knelt, and placed his hands on my shoulders.
"Are you alright, little girl? Where is your mom and dad?"
It was then that I realized they were truly gone. As I cried, the snake-man took me into his arms.
/
The snake-man called himself Lord Naga. He took good care of me, waiting on me hand and foot until I was ready to speak again. When that day came, he led me to a table in front of a television screen, and on the table was a baby bird in a small nest. Out of childish instinct, I cupped the bird in my hands and started petting it. Looking down, I saw Naga pick up and show me a US flag badge, torn off from a soldier's uniform.
"Do you know what this stands for?" he asked.
"America."
"Very good. You know what America believes in Freedom; democracy; truth; justice."
He turned on the TV and showed a string of news clips from US news outlets, all congratulating their cursed military for their heroism around, all wearing the same uniforms of the monsters who had stolen my life away. And standing among them was my idol, Wonder Woman, preaching about bringing peace and equality to the whole world.
I was so angry I started squeezing the baby bird in my hands.
"Unfortunately, you've experienced the sad truth."
A push on the remote, and the TV was showing war crimes done by the US military over the decades.
"But do you want to know what is truly sad? None of this is secret. The whole world knows all about these great evils, and they do nothing about it. The soldiers and the politicians and the corporations all pulling each other's strings – none of them will ever have to pay for what they've done … for what they did to you. How does that make you feel?"
I was shaking with anger but trying to keep myself from hurting the bird in my hand.
"That bird in your hand right now," Naga continued, "is a baby bald eagle. It is a proud symbol of America, and they cherish them so much they nearly hunted them down to extinction, and that bird will grow up to be just another proud symbol of the oppression and injustice that you have suffered. You see, child, there are no innocent or guilty people in this world. There are victims and oppressors. Plenty may claim otherwise, but they will stand with either victims or oppressors, and that makes them one or the other. The same is true for symbols.
"You want to know how the oppressors thrive? By keeping the victims down, and they do this because they never see them as a threat. If you the oppressors to lose, you must first make them fear you, and there is nothing more than anger. Now, take all the rage inside of you and…"
Before he could finish, I screamed in rage as I crushed the symbol of oppression in my hands, my face stiffened into agony as I made a bloody mess on the table.
Naga clapped. "How do you feel now?"
I looked back at him with empty eyes. "I want more."
"I'm glad to hear it, sweetie. Welcome to Kobra."
/
I was so enrolled in the Junior HIVE Academy, Kobra's school for training young child recruits. Most of the other students had some type of bizarre mutation or magical power, and so normal kids like me were a frequent target of bullying. Still, I never went down without a fight.
That's how I got the attention of Talia Al-Guhl, who took me under her wing as my personal mentor. This relationship continued into HIVE Academy, where I became the top student in all of her martial arts, poison, and hand-to-hand combat classes.
Talia taught me all about the true history of the world. The great god Ares tried to punish the Athenians for threatening his beloved Spartans, but the wicked Amazons sealed him away. Many centuries later, the glorious Axis revived him to bring balance to the world, but the wicked Allies revived the Amazons to destroy him.
However, some Allies known as the Soviets saw hos destructive the other Allies were in bringing democracy and capitalism to the rest of the world. So, they teamed up with Middle Eastern oil tycoons to create Kobra, enabling the victims of the world to sting back at their Western oppressors.
Ever since it started, Kobra had one goal in mind: to initiate Kali Yuga, an age of chaos that would only be resolved by the true god of peace, the lord Ares. I was proud to play a part in this role.
Talia would also take about her adventures in Gotham city, and her vain attempts to recruit the one they called Batman. Personally, I was far more enthralled Joker, an individual who saw society for the mad joke it was and wanted nothing more than to bring it all down. He was a true role model.
She also taught me sex ed, teaching me how a woman can use her body to either get what she wants or to exert power over others. This best came for use when dealing with a boy – Ached, I think his name was – who refused to give me any respect in the classroom.
Casual sex was rampant throughout the Academy, but that's not what I had in mind. Using my skills, I suck into his room, struck him with paralyzing poison, tore off his clothes, and started stripping on top of him.
"No, please, I don't want this!" he begged.
"Oh really? Then what's that?" I responded, pointing to his erection.
My first time was a lot of fun and had the bonus of "Achmed" never badmouthing me again. I told Talia, and she rewarded me with a handful of white clay.
"Make this into a mask, and the wearer will become invisible".
I made my first mold, hardened it, and then painted on a creepy smiling face with green eyes and magenta eyebrows and whiskers. True, this was meant to be a tribute to Joker, but looking at it also reminded me of my favorite character from a book my father had read to me. To complete the illusion, I added a pair of cat ears.
The mask completed, I looked into the mirror and gazed at my true form – cat mask, tight green kimono, knee-length hair in twin tails, silver claws on each hand, and sexy black boots.
I was Cheshire.
/
After graduating HIVE, I was one of several students Talia chose to join the League of Assassins. Most of us had backgrounds like mine – victims whose lives had been ruined by oppressors. Because of this, I formed some strong relations with them that I would call friendship, and even got happily intimate with some of them.
One of my first assignments was to aid the theft of the Blue Scarab, a sacred artifact of immense power, from the history museum in the Star City. My team was intercepted by the sidekick duo of Speedy and Wonder Girl, and the sight of the ladder filled me with rage and delight. Her mother was the ultimate symbol of oppression and taking her out would be the perfect sting.
I would've completed said sting had Speedy not hit me with an arsenal of his annoying arrows. Talia rescued me and gave me a good beating for my failure.
The rest of my assignments were simple assassinations. The only other one worth mentioning is helping my old teacher, Brother Blood, take out Gorilla Grodd, who wasn't please that his kill-all-humans-to-save-the-earth ambitions didn't quite line up with Kobra. I only interfered when Blood seemed to be losing, and with that, Gorilla City was robbed of super-intellects, becoming a normal micronation.
It's a shame that the League chased us out before we got Grodd's last invention – xenothium.
/
I believe I've had enough encounters with Wonder Girl for us to be considered archenemies, with her being the Batman to my Joker. Like my idol, I wanted to find some way to beak her down with one bad day, except ultimately succeed.
That day came when I got a transition over to the Brotherhood of Evil, a front of Kobra that performs cartoony world domination schemes mainly to serve as a distraction. I was hired to capture Speedy, and I did so with relative ease.
That's when it hit me. Some time earlier, Talia bragged about how she had seduced Batman and was now carrying his child. "There's no better victory over your enemies then raising their children against them," she taught me.
Well, I could never do that to Wonder Girl, but I could do that to the boy of her dreams. I had performed stealth around her many times, so I overheard her blabbing about him. Her true feelings were so obvious
I stabbed Speedy with a poison that had the same effect as a person being seriously drunk. The poison kicked in, I stripped him naked. Then I removed my clothes, put my hair into a pony tail, and got onto my bed.
"Oh, Speedy, darling," I said in my best imitation of her voice.
"Donna?" he asked as his stumbling around stopped in front of me.
"Yes. Please, show me how you really feel."
I pulled him onto the bed, and we latched our arms and legs together.
"Donna, your body feels so warm."
"You feel pretty good yourself," I replied, pulling his groin closer to mine. "Come into me".
He started doing so, and even while poisoned, he was better than I had expected.
"Oh, Speedy, you're so good!"
"Donna, I … I love you. Your body, your lips, your voice ... you're just too beautiful!"
"If that's how you feel, then go all the way in!"
He took a tight hold of me and went in as far as he could, further than anyone has ever gone with me. As we continued yelling out each other's name, I hugged him closer to me.
"Donna, I've never felt happier!"
"Good; now, let all of it out into me!"
He continued thrusting until my lady-parts were full of his seed, and then he fell over and off the bed.
"Donna, you're so amazing!"
"Thanks, darling! Now, time for night-night!"
A week later, a pregnancy test revealed that I had succeeded in my goals. Not only was I carrying the child of my enemy's lover, but I had stolen their first passionate night together. To top it all of, though the Brotherhood of Evil had failed, I was the only one to escape.
/
I would've been more than happy to become a mother, it's not really something you can do as a full-time assassin, especially during the first few months. So, I left my daughter at an orphanage, planning to pick her up once I would no longer have to worry about diapers.
I was called to Jump City, where a Tamaranean Red Lantern was planning to undo the Titans once and for all. While I did get to spend a lot of bedroom time with her, and with our new lover Scarecrow, and our new non-consenting boy toy Red X … I really didn't get to do much. I didn't even get to meet my idol before his amazing death that sent the world into a short-lived chaos. To top that all off, I got captured by a pregnant cripple.
I got sent up to Belle Reeve, which Killer Frost had made into her own playground, assuring that nobody would ever escape. Thanks to our common sadistic natures, we became friends/lovers and she made sure I was quite comfortable. So comfortable that I was able to do what I had been sent to do – assassinate warden Lyle Bolton, allowing Kobra to secretly take over.
/
My daughter doesn't know it, but I've been watching her grow up. Speedy and Wonder Girl both adopted her, named her Lian, and gave her a little brother Robert. It's cute that they think a little good parenting could remove the part of me in her.
Anyways, being the head of Kobra has its perks. After checking up on Lian, I closed my laptop and took a sip of my margarita, adjusting my sunglasses to block out the Middle Eastern sun beating down on my green-bikini-clad body. Then I checked my vibrating watch for a holographic message.
"Xenothium charges are in place and active. All operatives are outside of blast range." – Gizmo.
I put my phone and sunglasses down and put on my smiling cat mask, then walked over rope-fence at the edge of the roof of the hotel. In front of me was Dubai, capital city of Qurac. It was a buzzling metropolis of free trade, and made all the wealthier when Atlanteans and Tamaraneans decided to join in. The whole city was a true testament of the peaceful unity between three different species.
It was a symbol of how Kali Yuga would never happen, and Ares would never rise again.
I took out a stick of lipstick I had been saving between my breasts, unscrewed the bottom, and placed my thumb gently on the red button.
"Anger a snake, and you will get stung."
And then I stung the whole world.