I suppose I should start at the beginning. Of course, I didn't know it what was beginning at all. You see, I am not the sort of person you expect to be making these sorts of movies. Not at all. But then again, it wasn't my choice that I ended up here. I guess you could say it was my nature that lead me here, and that my own education is now under way. This is ironic, because I am a teacher, their teacher. The boys and girls who instruct me now, the ones who are making these movies. I am told that they will be able to afford college with no problem at all with the revenue of the movies they are making, so I am proud as their teacher that I am helping them achieve the higher education these bright young immigrants deserve. I never thought I would be helping them in this way. I am told the films are only being circulated for Hindi language groups right now, but if a copy of it ever got to the school, my career would be over. Why you ask. Ah.
I am Mrs Diana Rigg, History and Geography teacher at St Mary's Preparatory School, and when Mr Lau retired, I took over as the sponsor of the Audio Visual club. It was a club which had been kept alive by Aaloka Bakshi, a bright eyed Hindu girl with the sort of drive that I found equal parts endearing and frightening. She was a young woman who was going places. She took a club that had been shut down from lack of resources and use and soon it had four Hindu boys, Vihaan, Arjun, Sai and Arnav (call my Navi). They began fundraising and working with, of all groups, some of the cheerleaders. Soon all of them were seen looking doe eyed at the intense Hindu AV club members about one project or another.
I had a separate social media file for my Cosplay, because as a teacher, there are strict rules about social media. If you are a man, you can get away with anything, but if you are a woman, no pictures that wouldn't pass an 1800 puritan meeting were permitted. I had been a competitive basketball player in college, standing just over six feet, and still as active in the gym as when I was younger, I had rebounded from child birth by rediscovering the gym and was justifiably proud of a body that was as toned as in University. The boobs were better. Child number two had left my hair curly and my boobs no longer the DD that I knew and loved, but a rather more generous G. I was not "cut" or defined as I was in university, but a more generous set of curves that resisted diet, and didn't seem to care how toned or fit I got, the padding stayed. My husband was happy, but I wasn't.
It was Cosplay that got me back into loving my body. I used to love cosplay, and when my girls got into dance I got back into Cosplay because...well I was making costumes for their dance troupe, why not for myself. I treated myself to going to the conventions again, the meetings, the forums, and yes, the shows. I cosplayed Wonder Woman. I was very proud of my Cosplay, as when you are a bit of an Amazon, women's fashion doesn't exactly make you feel feminine. Shoe shopping makes you aware of the fact that women are not supposed to be as tall as you, and dress shopping lets you know that your shoulders are too broad and your boobs too big. The long legs and muscular ass make it impossible to be "proper" as skirts are short, tight, and pants cling and display whether you want to or not. It is also super expensive, as nothing is designed for you, everything must be altered or fit badly.
Cosplaying Wonder Woman made me feel strong, sexy, and COMFORTABLE with my new body. I shouldn't have posted the pictures, and truthfully I didn't. I did pose for many pictures at Victoria Comicon and Vancouver Fan Expo. Many of those who were in the Cosplay track knew me through my Cosplay profile and tagged me or posted my pictures to that timeline. I didn't think anything of it, it was something I did far from home, under a different name. I was wrong. I was out of touch with modern technology, naive and quite repressed sexually, unprepared for Aaloka Bakshi and the confrontation to come.
My world was scheduled to unravel on October 7, 2019. It began innocently enough, with a request from Aaloka Bakshi for a meeting about an AV club project they needed my help with.
"Mrs Rigg" Aaloka Bakshi asked, sweeping her long raven hair behind her ear, highlighting the golden stud in her nose, and ring in her ear. "We are making a film for the Parvati Hindu Language channel, the one that you helped us form. I know we have been making films since school began, four so far have raised about twelve thousand dollars for our educational funds, but the latest one we signed a contract for requires something else, something we can't get from the students here. It is something bigger than we have done before, a superhero movie and we need a very particular hero, or heroine"
Aaloka Bakshi was staring at me, her tawny liquid eyes should have been soft and warm as a doe, but their depths were whirlpools of dark intensity that made me feel naked and helpless. She was so driven, so focused, so passionate I envied her. I looked down at her, from almost a foot of height difference (even flats left me towering) and asked.
"How can I help, I am your sponsor so feel I should do what I can. Did you need help with costuming, because I do have some skill there?"
Aaloka Bakshi rolled her eyes and slid her Ipad across my desk to me. On it were pictures of my Cosplay. The ones the clever fellows at the conventions loved to circulate, the ones showing the most skin or cleavage, the ones where I looked, honestly, better than when I was in college. She flipped through them, flicking across the screen to change them.
I opened my mouth to object. She rolled her eyes again, clearly tired with the protests and not willing to wait to hear them before dismissing them.
"Yes yes, no one at school can know about this, its your job, what would people think? Hello! Hindu language production, the entire AV club knows about this, I mean facial recognition software is such old hat you should know every Hindu and Mandarin speaker in this school already has an extensive album of you. You've got a body like Parvati, yet the look like some sort of death pale vision of Kali in this Wonder Woman. We need a Wonder Woman, who do you think can play it? Me?" Aaloka Bakshi said, gesturing at all five foot three of her, and stomped her little gold sandaled foot in impatience.
"No one who isn't a Hindi speaker is going to see it, at least until we get our Mandarin translation working, do you really think anyone in this white-bread Bible thumping down is bothering to learn any little brown people languages?" Aaloka stated coldly. I blushed and looked down in embarrassment. One of the reasons I undertook the AV club patronage was the rather open racism of the school administration and board towards the minorities of Asian, Indian and Native ancestry.
I agreed, and when she smiled at me, I felt the blush right down to my chest. Her eyes softened and those pouting lips curved in a smile of approval that for some reason I reacted to like a sip of really good scotch or brandy.
The script was fairly cheesy. What I was given was the outline. There were white slavers kidnapping cheerleaders, and Wonder Woman was to stop them.
They had borrowed the starter pistol from Mr Tan, the track coach. I was to pose reflecting them from my steel vambraces like the comics or movies. They assured me they could put in the flash of deflecting bullets in after production.
I was to bind the two thugs, then the super villain would come and make their speech. I was to be given an ear bug, which would provide me a real time translation of the spoken Hindi. I would reply in English, and later be taught how to say the Hindi for my lines to make sure my own voice was constant throughout. Two of the cheerleaders would be the victims, Courtney and Anna, twin blondes more renowned in the school for their immense beauty and sense of entitlement than cooperative nature as their father was VP of a local investment firm, and their mother was Crown Attorney for the region.
I took my time and did my makeup as I did for the convention. Makeup for film or stage is different from conventional makeup, due to the intensity of the light that is on you. Darker and bolder makeup was required, especially when you are as pale as I am. I was excited, this was not quite forbidden, but a grey area. Aaloka Bakshi assuring me that all the Indian and Chinese students already circulated pictures of me in Cosplay had made me feel an odd sort of forbidden excitement. I mean, all those smiling dark eyes were not seeing me in proper school clothing, but in the bold and revealing Wonder Woman cosplay, not the prim and proper public self, but the secret bold sexy self I only showed at conventions, among strangers.
I climbed onto the basketball timekeepers tower above the gym floor, the lights set up turned the gym into something far brighter than the noon sun. Vihaan, and Arjun dragged a cutely screaming Courney and Anna, in cheerleader outfits, although from the bouncing of their overdone struggles, clearly without sports bra as they bounced visibly beneath their cheerleader tunics. Those tarts. They really knew better than to dress that way, it was not quite obscene but in this light the white of their cheerleader tunics displayed their charms to a degree their parents would kill me for.
The dialogue was bad. Taking you sluts to serve in dockside brothels where Indian sailors could enjoy their blonde bodies in shifts by the dozens. That was my queue. I jumped down from the high chair, the gym floor echoing as I stuck the classic superhero landing, and struck my pose as Wonder Woman.
I towered over both the boys and the cheerleaders, they responded to my landing by moving in classic bad martial arts movie attacks. I really was stronger than either of them, and in short order hand them bound back to back, the cheerleaders positioned to either side bouncing like they missed their pom poms and cheering inanely.
Cue the villain. This time, Aaloka Bakshi stalked in in a green and gold Sari. She was covered in henna tatoos on her arms, and her perfect feet bound in golden sandals. She had gold at wrists, neck and even a golden chain woven like a circlet into her glossy black tresses. She moved like a dancer, so smooth and gracious a ballerina or tea ceremony master would weep. Beside her loomed Sai and Arnav.
I heard her voice in my ear, the liquid Hindi falling from her live voice sounded seductive and menacing, she brandished the starter pistol like a cobra flaring its hood. Full of menace, but her words in my ear were strange, and confusing.
"You are so strong, so proud, so clueless. You have no idea why you are here, why any of you are here. You are drawn here to be taught what you are, who you are, and yet you want to resist. See how you resist the violence your kind understand so easily" Aaloka Bakshi's voice in my ear sounded as she struck a pose with the starter pistol and I matched with my guarding vambraces. She fired a shot, and I mimed blocking it with a karate hard block.
