(Alright. A little break from the comic book stuff. I've seen the movie and read the books and now I'm on a serious guardians kick. I have three stories planned. -Although I'm sure by now you all know how I am.- Pitch, Jack, and Bunny. This is for Jack. I considered waiting for his to be introduced in the books but that's not till September and I'm now waiting. Unless of course it takes until September for me to actually publish this in which case, Never mind. We're going to go ahead and start with a bit of an intro for my girl.
If any of my usual readers are still will me, I know I work slow! I don't have an abundance of time but I do still work on these from time to time. I do intend to write the Two-Face story you're all requesting. I'm just having trouble coming up with ideas, and I am also still working on the Daredevil story. So bear with me, please.)
It had to be... about 17 years ago her parents found her in that alleyway. A young child, no more then a year no less then 7 months, surrounded by rats and crying her poor, scared, infant lungs out. They were bewildered and appalled that anyone would leave a baby all alone in the midst of an alley downtown to be devoured by rats. Her, soon to be, adoptive father moved in to scatter the rats and picked up the small scrap of a child to, thankfully, find her completely unharmed if a little dirty and wrapped in thick fleece blanket so covered in grim that it appeared dark brown in the dim glow of the street lights.
At the hospital she was given a fairly clean bill of health aside from a slight cough she likely got for being in and alley at night. While the police record for missing children was checked they began discussing what they would do with her if no one stepped up to claim her. If perhaps she'd been left there on purpose or if, perhaps, something had happened to her parents. You see, the couple hadn't been able to have they're own child and this tragedy had the makings of a blessing in disguise. They actually found themselves morbidly hoping there was no one to claim her.
They're wishes came true. There had been nothing on the database, not that she matched, but it was still too soon. From the looks of her she couldn't have been left or taken long ago. So they volunteered to foster her while they waited for news of anyone who may be looking for her. She stayed in the foster care system for a year and the missing child's database for much longer. After that first year the couple decided none one was coming for and adopted her themselves.
Finally they had a happy, healthy child to call their own... With only one hitch. At the age of 10 she was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. What they thought had only been a child's over active imagination became worrisome when she became unnervingly insistent about the existence of giant rabbits and small otherworldly creatures living in the trees. She'd seen 20 foot bats and flickering lights in the night with no possible source. They let it go for three years, growing increasingly more frustrated with her insistence of these impossible things, though never once did they regret keeping her. They did, however, start to wish that they had access to her biological families medical records. It wasn't until one night when she ran as fast as she could from the dinner table to the window, crying out with excitement, little fingers pointing to the sky. "The lights!" She said, bouncing about as if to reach them. "Look at the lights! Look how pretty!" Try as they might the child would not be convinced that there was nothing there. The night sky was just as dark as it always was save the moon and stars. That was the first time they considered that there may be something wrong.
She was put on a regimen of regular medications prescribed by a psychiatrist. At first it seemed the means were worse then the end when she grew tired and lethargic but that soon faded and everything was back to normal except she no longer stopped to watch events that weren't happening when they went out, there was no mention of giant animals, and she never saw the lights again. At first she missed the creatures and magic. None of it had been scary or frightening for her, not usually though there were a few times before and after those lights and she had upset her but that had stopped along with everything else once her medication began.
Now at 17 she's a fairly happy teenager. The hardest thing she'd ever done in her life was moving to a new state because the schools were supposed to be better there. Her average day consists of school before retiring to work at Kewl Beans, a small Cafe about and hours bus ride from home. The Cafe was owned by a kind but sometimes frantic young woman who believed in using everyone to they're potential. The girl's potential had been discovered at the age of 12. She could sing. Not only could she sing but she appeared to draw others in with her voice. Milly, the owner of Kewl Beans, noticed this almost immediately. When the flow of customers was slower then they would like she would be sent outside to stand amongst the tables and fence and sing for potential costumers, on colder days she would be places at the stage in front of the shop where the live entertainment would usually perform. That would get business going at least for a while.
Humans weren't the only ones affected by her voice. When she would sing even then animals would scurry from their hiding places, though they wouldn't come close. They would hang back in the safety of their trees and crevices and simply watch. As she grew older they would come slightly close and she found that if she truly tried she could convince them to come right up to her and even follow her around. This is how she got her pet rat.
He isn't a sewer rat. No, Scamp came from a pet store that she passed everyday on her walk to work from the high school. One day she had been passing this very pet store and singing as she always did to make the walk seem fast. A sudden weight on her leg stopped her in her tracks. When she looked down, there, climbing her pants was a sizable gray rat and a few feet behind her was a grateful boy, no older then her, chasing it down. Feeling oddly attached to the critter she bought him and everything he would need then and there. Milly allowed her to keep him in the back with the inventory for until her shift ended on the grounds that she never, ever, bring him back. This was a promise easily kept. Her parents weren't happy to see him. He was, after all, a reminder of her tragic beginnings but they didn't have a reason to tell her to take him back.
Now every day she goes to school then goes to work, except on the weekends when she has no school, then she returned to her home and has dinner with her parents. Then every night, when her homework is done, she crawls into bed and curls up with the thick fleece blanket her parents found her with, the only thing that makes her wonder 'What if?' At first her parents had wanted to simply throw the dirty rag away but out of curiosity her mother had chosen instead to wash it. The dirt hadn't clung very hard. What she pulled out of the washing machine wasn't the grimy cloth she'd thrown in, though, admittedly it wasn't greatly attractive. In fact it was rather gaudy. A bright red and yellow large checkered cloth with equally bright green lettering, with a darker blue boarder to make it more legible, that simply read Crescendo.