Spare Parts

by Crack-Fic Casey

Choosing Who You Want to Be [Miss Martian]

Living on Earth had made deciding who to wear unbelievably complicated. Humans couldn't shapeshift, so you'd think they could just take things as they were. Instead, they were exacting. They had opinions about nose size and eye color and hair and on top of all that, there was a whole extra layer of rules about what things you could put on your face or the colors you put on something called nails. I don't know why dead skin is worth decorating, but they think it's important.

Back on Mars, if I didn't like how my arms had turned out or wanted to be shorter, I'd just make the change and move on. It's a little vain, to alter yourself in public, but I often found myself making a few tweaks throughout the day. My sibling Ma'elefa'ak teased me for it. They'd make fun of me for being so insecure when I already was so good at mindplay and flying-- what did I have to worry about?

I've always worried. I've never known why. I was the favored child of the Mars, and even the lower, jealous classes liked me. I did my work well, learned my lessons, did my best to make sure everyone was happy, and I was always sure that I'd missed something. A part of me had always been scared that there was people would turn on me, that I'd make a mistake and lose everything I had.

I'd been wrong. It wasn't a mistake that made me leave.

I'd been on Earth for a few years now, putting on different faces and talking to the humans that lived in Happy Harbor. I never used the same one twice, and I'd spent the whole time either hating Mars or wishing I could go back. But I was finally finishing my research on humans, and I felt ready to reveal myself to them. I was going to create a new identity, someone to be for the rest of my life. I was going to be a superhero, and then everyone would love me again.

Martians don’t have a true form. I don’t know why humans think all shape-shifters have one, but that’s not how we work. Martian babies are born as a blob, and learn to grow what they need to survive from their parents. They’re an adorable mass of tentacles, mouths, and eyes-- nothing like that eerily perfect symmetry that humans are born with. My point, though, is that I didn’t have a default ‘Martian’ form to use; a giant version of one of those creepy pets humans kept would be just as close to 'the real me' as a human with green skin.

I did pick a human with green skin, because dogs and cats freaked me out. It wasn't that different from my body back home, though I limited myself to two arms and legs like humans would. Picking the right shade of green was tricky and then there were my proportions-- height, weight, my nose, my chest for some reason-- It was incredibly frustrating. People were very upset and direct about if someone wasn’t attractive, or too even attractive. I tried to catalog as many opinions as I could, but even if I made it my life’s work I’d never find the end. It was maddening.

Real beauty-- what Martians think of as beauty, I mean-- is about adding little details. On Mars I usually wore four eyes, three on one side and one on the other. My brother had three eyes, one extra large on the left and the other two half as big on the right. Beauty was some nice, sleek spikes on your back or strong tentacles sprouting from your shoulder. Humans were so creepy-- they tried to smooth everything over and present this same-y blank mask. And then they complained about how ugly they felt, or how ugly they thought each other was, all the time!

I kept human number of eyes and ears, and included some shoulder-length human hair. I made sure to add freckles on my cheeks-- I needed something adorning my face. I also made my nose a bit flat and pointed a little to the side, to add some character. I kept my body short, but heavier than normal. I wanted extra mass to draw on if I got into a fight, and I thought it looked cute. I did not understand anything people wrote about chests. I just googled "Boobs that look good" and copied the first result I saw.

*A name that confused me, as the peace between the two world wars didn’t seem like it’d lasted long enough to them as separate. It was almost as fatal as the Grey Conflicts, though obviously none of humanities wars have lasted as long as our own. In their own way, I suppose they’re more advanced than we are.

My name was next. Ever since the Second World War* there’d been people with extraordinary powers and more people eager to judge them. In this area, humanity's vanity was enough to overcome their reluctance to write useful guides for things. There was a lot of information about how Supers picked their names; rules for how to make them cool or edgy, anecdotes from Supers themselves, and it wasn't nearly as frustrating as choosing a face had been.

I kept it simple. I picked Miss Martian because it was informative and direct. Miss because, for whatever reason, I liked being a girl. Martian, to let people know what that I was an alien up front. I didn't want to scare anybody and it seemed that people were more comfortable around alien superheroes than they were aliens that were just people.

Next came the outfit. With my outfit came a headache. Martians only wore clothes for special events, and only formed the sort of organs that clothes hid for other, more private special events. Superhero costumes were an extra-complicated version of something I getting tired of trying to understand. I still studied it very carefully; it was a human thing after all, and I wanted to understand my new home.

I started from the last Martian who’d lived on Earth; J’onn J’ozz. He’d clearly shared my opinions about how dumb clothes were; he only wore boxers, boots, a cape, and an odd red harness that ran crossed on his chest. I tried on the same thing, but it didn’t offer the same sort of coverage on a female body.

*I couldn’t be sure how they’d react until they saw it; I’d done some tests with what I thought was a more pleasing-- if less humanoid-- form. It hadn’t gone well, because the data I’d collected on the internet didn’t fairly represent how most humans felt about tentacles.

I started with the cape. I shrunk it down, giving it a normal, folded-over collar that was only a little bigger than a collar on a formal shirt. The cape flowed from under the collar, barely covering my shoulders, and it only went down as far as my lower back. I thought it was cheerful, instead of the big, dramatic capes most Supers wore. After that, I decided to try a black dress. Most superheroes eschewed dresses, but I thought they were pretty. It was sleeveless and relatively tight, but I could make it stretch with my powers and it wouldn't limit my movement. It went up to my neck but didn't cover my shoulders, and I assumed humans would like how it grabbed my hips.* I dropped the harness J'jonn had worn and instead wrote a 'M' across my chest, one large enough that is went across my sides and connected to another 'M' on my back.

Accessorizing was the easiest part. I wore jewels and other small decorations back home-- though I had to put up with teasing if I did it too often. I missed my old set; I earned each piece and I was proud of the work they represented. There hadn't been time to grab them on the way out. A part of me wondered who owned them now. I only kept one thing from Mars, a...

...It looks like a medallion. It's a gold, circular disk that I hang underneath my collar, with a circle divided into six pieces by three lines inscribed on one side. I don't think humans have an equivalent. When we get to be-- I think for humans it would be thirteen, but humans age weirdly-- we have a party and are presented with this medallion. The symbol can interpreted in a lot of different ways. Ma'el used, “Wanderer in Search of Value.” I very much preferred “Student Searching for Lessons.” We were to wear it until we decided what role in the community we would fill, then we would return the medallion and work that job for the rest of our lives.

I wondered if I should wear it-- after all, being a superhero was the rest of my life now. I couldn't go home again. But I also hadn't started it yet, and I didn't know if I'd be accepted. If I wasn't allowed to keep being a superhero, I'd have to put it back on again.

I kept it for the meantime. I still loved Mars, and I wasn't sure I loved Earth yet.

One spot of yellow looked out of place, so I made some fake jewelry to wear on my right arm. A mix of thin yellow and red bands, worn over short blue gloves. I also added a blue headband to my hair, and spent some time deciding if I should be blonde with rubies in my headband, or a redhead with topazes. Ultimately I decided to make myself a redhead, with a smattering of freckles on my cheeks. I also included yellow eyes-- I'd seen human eyes in almost every primary color, so I assumed yellow was an option. I almost forgot to choose boots, and kept it simple. They were blue and came up to my knees, with a red stripe around the rim and a single topaz in the middle.

Finishing Miss Martian should have filled me with confidence. Instead, I could still see M'gann staring at me through those eyes. I was the first Martian to leave Mars in almost a hundred years. I'd only spent five on Earth. Did I want to do this? Could I do this? It was a dangerous job. Was I going to risk my life just to fit in?

I thought about Mars, about the lies my Family had told everyone. About the truths I'd found, deep below the planet. About the Green Martians, and the Reds and the Blues and all the others that served my Family.

I wasn't going to do this just to fit in. I was going to do this because I couldn't fix my home, and I had to fix something.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Ah, the trials of an amorphous being trying to understand a decidedly morphous society. Fun little look at a stranger trying to make sense of this strange land, and her missteps along the way. Thank you for it.