I just hope this doesn't bore you. This chap and the next are relatively long and nothing but background. But they're necessary. And as soon as they're done I'm throwing you right into the action.

Disclaimer: Who in their right mind would write fanfiction for something they owned?

Chapter Two: Other

I wasn't normal.

I'd known it as far back as I could remember. That didn't necessarily mean I had always known exactly how I was different – just that I knew I was. The truth had simply occurred to me one day.

It was at a very young age – around four or five – that the epiphany hit: not everyone could do what I could. I had wandered into the living room to catch a glimpse of a news report my foster mother had been watching; a man had died in a car crash. Innocently I had asked my foster mother why the man hadn't just flown away before he crashed, out the window. She'd given me a confused, almost indignant face and said, "People can't just fly away. Why do you ask that?"

But something had gone off in the kitchen and she left before I could reply; the event was promptly forgotten by all but me.

Her statement had confused me. "Flying away" was something I had achieved on numerous occasions, with hardly any effort – right along with sneaking around the tiny garden on our front porch and climbing the fence out back. I had recalled the expression on my foster mother's face, and I found myself wondering if she would make that face at me if she were to know that I could "just fly away."

This concept set in, and I became filled with nervous fear. I soon realised that I didn't want her to know what I could do. I didn't want anyone to know. It became my secret.

That was when I began to close up. My fear of discovery had affected my social behaviour – unconsciously I isolated myself from other people. I talked very little and became less and less interested in having friends or playing outside. I developed no attachment to anyone or anything, except the birds outside and the necklace that was ever-present around my neck. Not even for my foster parents – not any of my foster parents.

The only thing that seemed to have remained unaffected was my appetite. I never gained an ounce, yet I was always hungry or eating. And cold. I was constantly cold – and I hated being cold. Several times my foster parents tried to fatten me up a bit by giving me meat – they were strictly vegetarian, and I'd been eating their food since I was old enough to consume it – but it always, always made me sick. Any meat I ate took three minutes flat to come right back up. A vegetarian without a choice, I remained stringy-limbed and short.

By my seventh birthday it seemed my foster parents had decided that I was not simply going through a "phase." But instead of pursuing any form of possible treatment – say, therapy – I was handed away. Everyone seemed to have reached the conclusion that my foster parents' environment, the edge of the city, was simply not conducive to raising an orphaned child. But by then I didn't care. I'd become too comfortable with living inside myself; my home was mobile. It didn't matter where they put me, because I would always have my shelter. They couldn't take me away from myself. That fact was one of the few constants in what would become a constantly inconstant life: I would move from place to place, but the routine would always be the same.

And because I had raised myself with the notion that my safety came from physical and mental isolation, I became labelled a Lost Cause. Not even the therapists, later hired by my second foster parents, could crack my case. To everyone I was simply stoic and empty – not empty-headed, but devoid of emotion. My grades proved that I was intelligent, but my teachers' comments proved I was not "socially adept." Well, my kindergarten teacher said "shy." My first and second grade teachers were just a little closer to conceiving the truth. But not by much.

They were all wrong, for the most part. I did have emotions. I was simply adept at hiding them. But I wasn't about to prove that to anyone anytime soon.

Later on, however, when I was around eight, I discovered there was one emotion I had very little control over. At that age, I was still short and nothing but bony limbs, a wicked-sharp nose, green eyes and a frightening mass of dark red hair. It happened at the playground.

I had been examining a flower from the school landscaping during lunch. A sudden shout had drawn my attention – some chunk of a kid had pushed a little girl off the swings and she had begun to cry. Physically overwhelmed by the girl's pain and heartbreak, I became angry. I dropped my flower, stood, crossed the playground, and walked straight up to the large ten-year-old boy. My advance had caught his notice and he turned – and just in time to watch my scrawny fist come flying at his chubby face. I didn't hit him hard enough to break his nose, but certainly hard enough to make him cry.

I did not recall there ever being a bully at Chesterfield Elementary after that.

Perhaps karma got back at me the following year, for hitting him – violence was not the answer, as they constantly reminded us. My foster father had been taking me to school one rainy morning. Typical of southern California, there were always at least six car accidents every time it rained. We happened to be the first one that day.

Someone had run the stoplight. It happened too fast for either of us to react, and before we could fully comprehend what was happening the SUV had crunched against the hood of our car, jerking us forward. A second car swerved to miss us – we had ended up the middle of the intersection – but had lost control on the still-wet road and fishtailed directly into our hood.

The windscreen had collapsed as the second car crushed us with its back end. We had been jerked forward again, and despite my seatbelt, the force of the crash had sent me face first into the dashboard, directly into a shard of broken windshield.

My right eye had been damaged beyond repair, they later told me, when I had been taken to Intensive Care. It would have to be removed, they had said. Removed and replaced.

They gave me a glass eye. They were going to give me a green, but I had shaken my head no. None of the green matched my dark irises. I chose blue, thinking that if they weren't going to match, then the difference might as well be obvious. One eye was always open a little wider than the other, after that.

As if I hadn't already had enough trauma. Not that I had shown any fear, of course. That would have gone against the grain of my now reinforced creed; the crash had brought back the memory of what had originally influenced my opinion of the world, almost half a decade before. I hadn't "flown away," had I? No.

It wasn't until another year later that I finally put a name to my ability.

I'd gone to the library. One of my books had been due, and the idea came to me as I passed the computers. Despite the still-relatively-slow Internet of 2002, my research was brief; the answer was synonymous. That day became a climax in my life. I now knew what I was, more of who I was. And the correlation with my name was incredibly comical.

I am Christina Jay Shipht. A shapeshifter.

Okay, it looked longer on paper...