Their talent makes them unstoppable. Their dedication makes them untouchable. Add Shelby Corcoran into the mix, and you get an unthinkable team. You get Vocal Adrenaline.

I would say I own Glee, but Shelby might overhear me lying...and Shelby scares me...

Warm was not likely an adjective you would traditionally use to describe Shelby Corcoran. Hot-tempered as magma or as cold as dry ice, sure, but warm? Never.

Contrary to popular belief, Shelby Corcoran was not always this way. She wasn't born with the talent of being able to make the toughest man tremble by a simple look. It was an art, a dangerous art developed from years of mistakes.

But with years of mistakes, broken promises, and failed attempts, Shelby carried only one regret with her. And trust her, that one regret was more than enough. Each day it hurt just a little worse, got a little more difficult because she knew the time was growing limited. Every day she missed something, each second a step in her life that she would never get back, all because of a mistake. The mistakes grew into the regret, the cancerous price of screwing up.

Shelby Corcoran has trust issues. She trusts no one, and that stems from trusting too much. She doesn't even trust herself anymore, in fact that's who she puts the least amount of faith in, for she knows at the end of the day it was her decision. She thought it was right, but it was a selfish decision on many levels. A little girl growing up without her mother and a mother trying to get through life without her daughter. An ink pen and a piece of paper ruined her life, and she would never get past it again.

She thought that was what she wanted, she never thought she'd grow attached, but she was wrong. Oh so very wrong. And it cost her the present, and it cost her her future.

She shook her head as if to shake all of the depressing thoughts away. She needed to focus. She needed this to work out, because she wouldn't tolerate failure anymore. Not after twelve long, miserable years. Not from herself and certainly not from her students.

She was going to be tough. She would be hard-core, no nonsense, no funny business whatsoever. Funny business could mean the difference between achieving dreams and being stuck in this town. But before we begin, let's make something perfectly clear.

Shelby Corcoran was not stuck in this town. She was here by choice. Period. No matter what anyone told you, that was the truth.

Sure, she failed as an actress. But to an extent, it was by choice.

No, she wasn't the most talented (not that she'd ever tell you or anyone else that), but she still had talent. A lot of it, too. But her talent was raw and young and pure. And that talent thrived…before.

Before all the stresses of life and that pesky little regret. That regret that was the blip on her stardom radar. The blip made her realize thing she'd never realized before. It made her grow up in painful ways.

And while her supposed failure made her harder it undoubtedly made her better too. She was more alert now and more determined. She was more cautious, but looser too, with herself. She didn't have everything figured out anymore, and she kind of liked it. Like throwing some caution to the wind and surprising herself. Being open to a life other that with Broadway, because deep down she knew that was never really her dream to begin with, it just took some little bumps to realize it.

The day she gave up that baby was the day she knew she wanted to be around them. Well, maybe not actual babies, but young people. She wanted to help them achieve their dreams, and she knew in order to help them, she would have to make them realize how bad they really wanted it.

If only someone else were there to tell her that. Before she wasted what she thought she wanted and gave up the only thing that had ever really mattered in the first place.

Shelby Corcoran was about to become a human version of a strainer, figuring out whom really wanted this dream there were all convinced was theirs. They wouldn't see it now, and chances are many were never going to thank her for these practices and the coaching style she had planned, but she just hoped that it would work. She didn't want them to feel like she did. No one deserved that.

She'd never wanted to work around teenagers or children, hell; she'd barely ever even been one herself, always striving to grow up way too fast and living life like the sprint instead of the marathon. But she owed it to herself to make sure that others didn't live with regrets, because she knows one could be the straw that broke the camel's back, no matter how tough that camel may be. She owed it to herself. She owed it to her daughter.

Walking through the doors of the familiar high school armed with experience, this knowledge, and a slight sense of cynicism, she stepped in what would turn out to be the best, the worst, the most natural, the most challenging, and the years with the most twist and turns of her entire life, little did she know it now.

It was the beginning of the school year at Carmel High, and she would be coming in to replace Mr. Thomas Stein. He was tough, she knew he was, but she was going to be better. She was determined to be better.

He had been coaching for years and years his track record acceptable but nothing extremely impressive, winning his fair share of Sectional titles, a handful of Regional ones, and a couple State ones. They'd made it to Nationals only once. They didn't place. But they made it nonetheless. The kids were rather confident. It was better than most Ohio teams did. It was actually rather impressive.

But Shelby Corcoran was going to show that it was actually quite unacceptable. If they wanted it bad enough, they'd give more than one hundred percent. There would be no more free rides. They'd not stop at making it; they wouldn't even stop at winning. They were there not to injure, but to kill. To demolish. To absolutely squash without exception. She could be their best friend and help them win. The sky was the limit. But she could also be their worst nightmare. And she was perfectly okay with that. She wasn't here to make friends, she wasn't here to please, and she was here to win and to help in her own harsh, unique, relentless, special way.

She was a fresh face, adrenaline absolutely pulsing through her urging, musical veins. It was teeming under her skin. The need to sing, the need to succeed, the need to move and push and mentor. She had the adrenaline. The Vocal Adrenaline.

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