Keira Corazzo / Desert Storm

Everyone else has had their story told for them. Every avenger got someone who loved them so much that their story was documented. Well... not me. This is written by me, edited by me and kept for... I don't even know. Myself? Someone who... finally sees me as 'worthy' of remembrance. My name is Keira Corazzo, also known as Desert Storm. I have been the avatar of Sekhmet for as long as I can remember. I'm not sure why, but I've never felt the need to part ways with her. I am getting ahead of myself, as I often do, so I'll start from the very beginning.

As I stated before, my name is Keira Corazzo. Alternatively, you could call me Dr. Corazzo if you'd like to suck up. Please, do. I was born into a long line of wealthy historians, on my fathers side. The other side? Well... schizophrenia, bipolar, OCD. The whole lot. My father, Theodore Ackland, was a classicist. Specifically for Roman history. Gods, everything in our house has to include some part of Roman history. It's probably the only reason he loved my mother. You see, my father was painfully British while my mother was painfully Italian. From what I remember, he was a distant man. He never really showed me any love, nor my mother. At that point, though, she was already getting worse with her mental illnesses. The most I remember from him was that he'd always be calling her crazy. My mother, Bianca Corazzo, on the other hand, was loving. I think I was the only thing she cared about after I was born, and I am grateful for that. When I was 6, my house exploded! Formally, it was classed as an application error. They said that our oven exploded due to a gas leak, but I was there at the rubble and I know for a fact that it wasn't some freak accident caused by gas. It was intentional. It's not hard to assume, considering my father kept ancient relics, that a lot of black market sellers wanted, inside of our house. I've never forgotten the way I felt when I got home and saw the rubble, the police tape and the reporters. My nanny was horrified, too. Lovely woman. She's probably dead now.

I went to an orphanage but I hardly spent my time there. It's ironic, isn't it? Most of the avengers parents are dead. We're basically ALL orphans. My orphanage was dingy, for some reason they didn't think to put a child born of wealth into a decent orphanage. I often scrounged for pennies thrown into fountains to get myself a bit of food and back then, it worked. I'm not sure it would work today and so I thank the gods that I am well off now. When I was 14, I noticed this one man almost everywhere. When I left school, when I walked to the store to shoplift my next meal, when I walked to the orphanage. He finally approached me and told me that he could change my life and of course at first I wondered why a fully grown man was following a child around and telling her what he could do for her. I wasn't an idiot, but I was desperate. So I asked what he meant and he explained to me that he had noticed I had a certain.. 'fire' in my eyes, that I would make an incredible mercenary. I hadn't considered the life of a mercenary to be one that I wanted to take on, but it paid very well. I know what you're thinking, mercenaries are often self employed and while you're correct, I technically wasn't a mercenary in the traditional sense because this man often got requested jobs and sent a few of us who were well suited to it to go on said jobs. We got all the money. He was honestly just doing it for fun, I think.

I agreed. Of course I agreed, I didn't want to stay in that stupid orphanage any longer and he could provide me a home. Besides, I knew I was strong enough to get away if it was all a trick. Luckily for me, it wasn't a trick. He truly did intend on training me up to become a mercenary. I'm a fast learner, and I always have been, so it wasn't hard to get the hang of combat training. I basically went on jobs straight away and I.. I wasn't sure how to take the idea of having to kill people sometimes. It scared me, yeah, but it was also... freeing. I know that's... not good, and trust me, since then I've worked on it. But I was good at it, and I could finally afford easy cheese without needing to hide it in a baggy hoodie. I still went to school and I ended up passing all my GCSE's with flying colours. Not having to live on the streets half the time and find the hours in a day to rob a Tesco's really gave me a lot more time to study! During the Summer of 2004, I was sent off to Egypt for my first big job and I was so excited. I'd always wanted to go to Egypt and while my job was to rob a tomb with 3 other mercenaries, I was excited to explore the surroundings. Of course, when I got to the tomb with the 3 men, they attempted to kill me and DAMN they got close. I mean, I was knocking right on deaths door. It was my own fault, really. I realised halfway through about how immoral it was to rob from a tomb that was guarded by a Goddess, and I refused to go any further. They did not like that and I get it, it's your job to complete the task and I was a kid holding them back. Fortunately, the Goddess saw me. Really saw me.

Now, for a little context, I'm aware that I am very much more prone to becoming very mentally ill than most people thanks to my mum and her side of the family. This thought genuinely scares the shit out of me. The idea that I could be going crazy and I wouldn't even know it. So, when I started hearing whispers, I initially ignored it. I told myself it was just my inner montage, but they started getting louder and louder as time went on. It was only one voice, though. It sounded like a woman, calling out to me, begging for me to locate her. I was shitting myself but I wasn't going to admit I was crazy. Around this time, I also began having dreams about lions. It never really mattered what they were doing, but every dream always included a lion in some way. It turned out that the voice and those dreams were actually a Goddesses desperate cries for an avatar. So, when I was knocking on deaths door, a beautiful lioness woman materialised beside me and said these exact words: "I am the Goddess Sekhmet. I guard this tomb. I know why you're here, and I know why you're in such a state. I give you two options. You can die before you were able become something great... or, you can become my avatar and carry out my will." I, obviously, shit myself even more because I thought that of course, right before I die, I finally hallucinate. But I realised that I wasn't hallucinating, and she was really there, offering me a second chance at life. So I took it. From that moment on, I became the voice of Sekhmet, and carried out her will as Desert Storm.

I became a lot more religious, specifically towards the Ancient Egyptian Gods. I offered to them as much as possible and had set routines for when I would pray and offer. I was good at the work Sekhmet gave me because I already knew how to fight, so all I really was doing was taking out criminals but now with superpowers! I was also still working as a mercenary, so I was still making incredible money. When I turned 18, I inherited all the money from my parents death and I was a billionaire. Easy enough, right? It's probably the only lucky thing I've had happen to me. My boss had to lay low between clients, so I was allowed some free time when I wasn't doing work for Sekhmet. My goddess allowed me to move to Italy in hopes to reconnect with my Italian side and find more out about my mother. The problem was that there wasn't many records stating anything about a woman named Bianca Corazzo besides some medical reports. I did manage to track down the nurse that had known my mother when she still lived in Italy, by this point she was an elderly woman who... she was one of the sweetest people I have ever met. Her name was Catena Martinelli. She mistook me for my mother, and I had to explain to her that I was certainly not my mother. It was nice to hear, though, that I look like her. She was a beautiful woman. I found out that my mother didn't often talk about my father unless it was her flaunting her obsessive love for him. It, naturally, worried me but I am... learning to live with the things I have inherited from her.

At this point, I needed to blow off my steam from learning about how crazy my mother actually was, so I found myself going to clubs and bars and parties. I soon met the man who I believed to be the love of my life, and I was happier than I had ever been. For two years, we were inseparable. We were truly the picture perfect couple. We lived together after a few months and we were always talking about our future. Gods, we even got cats together. But happiness doesn't always last forever; it certainly didn't in this case. One night, he took everything in our apartment and left. The only thing he allowed me to keep? Those damn cats. Those cats that were attached to him but hated me. I was a mess, I didn't understand what I could have possibly done to warrant this but I couldn't come to any reasonable conclusion. I tried to track him down, but everything he had told me about himself was a lie. You know, one of the worst parts about that situation was that I claimed to be so smart and he must have been sitting there, thinking about how stupid I was to be believing him and his lies. The only thing I had to find him was his face. The cats, overtime, realised that he was not coming back, and so they started acting out. I had never really disciplined them because they were more his cats than mine, and so they knew they could get away with scratching me and biting me. So... lets recap! What I got out of this situation was: commitment issues and a fear of cats. On top of never having parents, killing people at a young age and almost dying at 16. I eventually gave the cats to Catena and made my way back to London.

Being a nepo baby worked out very well for me as I got into Oxford without having to do any A-Levels. The second I provided proof that I was in fact Theodore Ackland's daughter, I was accepted immediately. Not to mention, I already knew everything they were teaching in the undergraduate Egyptology course thanks to Sekhmet, and my essay writing is a lot better than my book writing is. I finished the undergraduate course in a year instead of four, and I went straight onto a PhD which only took me two years. I didn't want to get a job, I didn't feel like I had really lived my life due to all the studies and working as a mercenary and working as an avatar. So, I went back to drinking. Clubbing. Partying. The drinking became a real problem but I didn't have anyone in my life to really be concerned about how much I was doing it besides Sekhmet but the most she can do is give me a sunburn, so it wasn't fixable. For the next year, I continued to be harassed by a man named Nick Fury, and while he seemed as if he had good intentions, I didn't really see myself as a 'superhero' type. You see, he asked me over and over again to be part of his 'Avengers Initiative' and my answer was always 'I am not a superhero'. Because I wasn't. I still don't really consider myself a superhero. I'd align more with vigilante. I mean, come on. Superhero is very... Captain America. It's someone who has powers but also does what is best for public interest, saving society no matter who is the person in danger. Honestly? If Nick Fury was in trouble and I was sent to go save him, I'd fake an injury and let him die. I have no problem with that. I try not to harm people who don't deserve it, though.

I was blessed with many powers when I became Sekhmet's avatar. I'm a lot stronger than the average human, I grew wings (which really hurt by the way), I have fire flowing through my veins, I can pull lava up from the core and I can summon sand and bend it to my will, I gained two khopesh that I could line with a bacterium named "yersinia pestis". In other words, I can coat the blade with the black plague. How it works is pretty simple, for example: When I choose to activate the bacterium, it only lasts for 30 seconds but it is deadly, and I don't often like doing it. When an enemy is sliced while the bacterium is on the Khopesh, the symptoms of the black plague is sped up into 7 seconds. 1st second consist of fever/chills, 2nd second consists of extreme weakness, 3rd second consists of abdominal pain/vomiting/diarrhoea, 4th second consists of blood exploding out of nose, mouth and rectum, 5th second consists of the person going into shock and growth of buboes, 6th second consists of tissue deterioration and the 7th second consists of death. You can see why I am pretty against using it, I'd only save it for people who truly deserve to be tortured in their last 7 seconds of living. Although it is fast, it is pretty brutal. The problem is, these upsides also came with downsides of course. Learning to fly is not an easy task, it took me a very long time to properly master it, I still can't really control the fire that is constantly coursing through me and the worst part of having so much fire constantly inside of you is that not only do I set my hair on fire when I do things such as sneeze, but I also am allergic to the sun! THE SUN! You'd think I'd have no problem with the sun but no! I sneeze every time I'm in direct sunlight. My hair sets on fire when I'm stressed, which stains my hair red overtime. I don't know why, because logically it should go blonde. It doesn't! The worst part of all? I get burnt in the cold. It's not silly little burns, it's like... proper burns. Whether it's cold air, cold water, ice... it'll burn the shit out of me. I really did used to love sneaking into ice skating rinks when I was younger.

That was all relevant because it leads me to when I finally agreed to become an avenger. Nick Fury basically tracked me down to a club that was nearby my apartment and showed up himself. Again. He was only asking me personally because Earth had been attacked by Loki Laufeyson, a Nordic God. I knew Loki. Very well, actually. We had been quite close for a while. Sekhmet often works with other gods when necessary, so I had the honour of going to Asgard and meeting both Thor and Loki. I still wasn't interested though, continuing to claim I was not a superhero. Besides, anything I did was for the will of Sekhmet. I assumed Sekhmet wouldn't really care for me joining the Avengers. This didn't please Fury, of course, so he kept asking and asking until eventually he threw cold water over me and told me to go with him so they could 'fix me up'. It hurt like shit so I just agreed in fear he would do it again... and that marks the beginning of my adventure to becoming an avenger. Well, it was hardly an adventure. More like a burden. I only lost more and more after becoming an avenger.