Author's Note: So here's the second chapter as promised. Now you'll finally get to see the beginning of Julia's story! Thanks to everyone who read & reviewed. Hope you guys enjoy!
Julia Rush was a self pitying failure.
She knew it too. She also knew how pathetic she was for being a self pitying failure. So really she was a pathetic, self pitying failure but since she'd been able to keep that fact pretty private it wasn't too bad. When she found out that the secret of her sad life was going to be revealed outside of her close circle of family and absolutely no friends, that it was about to become public knowledge just how much of a pathetic, self pitying failure she was…well Julia knew that her poor excuse of a life until then had really just been the calm before the storm (AN: fyi this is an intended pun…idk if it translates lol).
Julia Rush was born exactly one year after her sister Amyann Rush, to the day, almost to the hour. This could've been interpreted as some sort of cosmic sign that the two girls were not about to get along because, lets be honest, there was no way that two female sisters that were not twins were about to share a birthday and not have a problem with each other. Amyann, as the one who got there first, taught her sister (before she was able to realize what a bratty spoiled girl she was) just how much she was encroaching in her territory. So until Julia was about six, she truly believed that she was indebted to her sister and like some twisted infantile version of an indentured slave, went around devoting herself to Amyann.
It was when she was six of course that Julia first showed signs of having power, an unusually early age for such developments. As it was, Julia was a highly unusual individual. The details of exactly what happened were hazy in Julia's mind but what really mattered was that Amyann had done something particularly nasty and selfish and for the first time in her life, Julia didn't take it with a smile. Instead she sent a huge gust of wind that swept up her older sister and dropped her off in a tree in the middle of the gorilla pit (they were at the zoo). Till this day Julia had always allowed herself the small satisfaction of knowing that at least that one time, although at the time she really had no idea how or why she could control wind or even for sure that it was really her doing, she had finally put Amyann in her place. At the time however her satisfaction only lasted a moment before people realized where Amyann was and they were so worried about her safety and began running around trying to save her-the story as usual became about her. And while, at the time her parents were suspicious of Julia, no one truly believed that an innocent little six year old girl could've really tossed her older sister to the gorillas. Though her parents could not understand how Amyann got up there everyone was just so glad that she made it out ok, that they never really did a full investigation of the cause of the accident. This was when Julia first began to resent her older sister.
In the years to come, Julia would develop her powers at a rate that was almost as alarming as the powers themselves. What at first seemed to be an unusually strong manifestation of Julia's own mother's powers quickly turned out to be a profound connection to all four elements. This of course had never before been seen in history. Never had someone been seen with more than two powers but four? And all manifested by age ten? Julia was a ten year old with more power than anyone else in the world. When Julia nearly burned down the local grocery store over a regular child's tantrum, her parents realized that she possessed more power than any one person should or could ever control. Unlike most superheroes when they realized that their child was superhuman, unlike their reaction to Amyann's powers, Rachel and Roarke were horrified at what their daughter turned out to be.
Julia possessed a profound connection to Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The word connection rather than control was used because Julia was in no way in control of her powers. They were so deeply connected to her and her emotions that even just the teeniest slight of annoyance the child may have experienced could result in an angry blaze. Her powers in their very nature were fundamentally different from any that had ever existed before. Even if one forgot the other three elements and focused on just her one power of, say, fire. It manifested so much more differently than a regular pyrokinetic. Pyrokinetics could usually use their powers outside of themselves, for example throw a fireball. They could hold the fire ball and it would not harm them but it was still a physical thing on top of their hand. Julia's fire was sometime like that, and other times she would simply become so enraged that she herself would set ablaze. Her powers were volatile, unpredictable, and even worse was that they seemed to have no limit.
Julia was just ten years old when her parents pulled her out of school and began homeschooling her. They had remodeled the entire house so that it would neutralize Julia's powers and confined her to it like a little ten year old inmate. Julia thought her parents would be proud, she thought she would be welcomed as a hero-to-be. She really wanted to be a hero.
Instead she learned very quickly that she was an abomination.
Amyann on the other hand still got to go to school, go to friend's houses, go to the front yard and play catch with her father. She had dance recitals and birthday parties. And she did it all very haughtily.
Being the freak that wasn't allowed to leaver her house, Julia didn't have anyone to invite to a birthday party and since Amyann customarily insisted on celebrating her party outside Julia spent most of her birthdays alone by the windowsill.
Her parents weren't bad people, you see. They loved Julia and cared about her. And since they already had one daughter who would grow up to a hero someday, they didn't mind that Julia could never practice her powers. But that was just it. The only reason they didn't mind she was letting them down was because they already had Amyann. And no matter how good and kind and loving they would treat Julia, there was just no way they could ever connect to Julia in the ways they connected to the daughter who was following in their footsteps. The girl with whom they could share their life passion.
It would have probably been easier to grow up in her circumstances if Julia didn't love her family so much. Her parents were generous and they gave her the best education she could hope for, they fostered all of her interests (the ones that didn't involve going outside or using her powers anyways) and they loved her very much. And no matter how horrible her older sister was or how much she resented her, a deeply hidden part of Julia would always look up to her sister and admire her almost as much as Amyann admired herself. Nonetheless, once Amyann began school at Sky High, Julia had to watch while her sister achieved her dreams.
It was just seven years after her powers became evident, the year that Amyann would be going into her senior year at Sky High, that their parents enrolled Julia.
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The summer before Amyann's senior year was completely normal, up until the day their house cracked in half.
For almost seven years, Julia's powers had not manifested. She could still feel them there, coursing through her. She could sometimes feel the fire when she was angry or the air when she was calm. Sometimes she would get insanely moody and she knew it was her powers, making her emotions stronger and more unstable. All of this time she felt her powers suppressed. However, she sometimes had a feeling as if they were being built up and sometimes she felt closer to them, as if they were there just under the surface and she could almost touch them.
The idea of using her powers both exhilarated and terrified her. Sometimes when she was particularly bored or depressed or angry she busied herself mentally with pushing the boundaries by trying to reach out to her powers. Sometimes she felt as though she could almost tap into them and then she would get scared and stop. Afterwards she would mentally berate herself, tell herself that there was no way she could ever use her powers in her home and that she was probably just imagining it. One day right after she had been doing just that, she went down stairs into the kitchen for a snack.
Like most heavily sheltered youths, Julia had a long and rather unfortunate list of allergies, some of these allergies were things she had barely even experienced first hand like pollen for example. One such allergy was to any sort of pet dander.
While she began to make her sandwich, Amyann came home from school. A strange feeling came over Julia as Amyann walked past her on her way to the fridge. It began with her eyes welling up and watering all of their own accord and soon with a familiar tingling sensation in her nose. Julia recognized it, immediately irritated she turned to her sister,
"Have you been playing with any PETS?"
"No, WHY?" Amyann responded nastily.
"Because you know I'm allergic and I feel like I have to sneeze!"
Amyann scoffed, "Well it's not MY fault one of my boyfriend's (term used very loosely) friend's abilities is to turn into like a hamster or a rat or something! Don't blame me for actually having FRIENDS you FREAK!"
At this time Rachel Storm was warily heading towards the sounds of her daughters fighting, as was their daily custom.
"UGHHH! You are so SELFISH! All you care about is yourself! You don't care that you come in here and fill the only place I'm safe with RAT DANDER and make it even MORE miserable for me!" And that was when one angry Julia Rush let out one monumental sneeze.
It nearly blew their house apart.
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A few days later, the very flustered and very desperate Rush couple had their good friend Patty Powers over for coffee. Patty was the principle of Sky High and she happened to know about the unusual powers of the youngest Rush girl, after all it was she that suggested to her friends that they remodel their house in the same material she used for her school's detention hall, which neutralized powers, so that they could control their daughter.
"Patty, we just don't know what to do anymore." Rachel explained as she leaped over the giant rift dividing their kitchen to bring Patricia some sugar for her coffee.
"We thought that we could keep her safe by cutting her powers off from her, maybe we were naive in thinking we could keep her here forever…but we never imagined that her powers would grow strong enough to-" Roarke began but his wife cut him off.
"-Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do? I mean, it is pretty unnatural to cut someone off from their powers for that long before they even learn how to use them…The more I think about it the more seems unhealthy and wrong." Rachel said stirring her coffee shamefully.
"Maybe you're right Rachel. There's no point in beating yourself up about it now. You did what you thought you had to do for the safety of your daughter and the world." Patty patted Rachel's arm reassuringly.
"But what do we do now?" Roarke desperately wondered.
"The only thing you can do. The only choice that's left is for you to allow Julia the chance to learn to control her powers. If only just enough so that she can express them and keep them from manifesting all by herself, naturally." Patty's smile was hopeful.
"But how are we supposed to do that?" Roarke countered. "Powers like hers have never existed before, we don't even understand them!"
"The only way to do it, Roarke, is by treating it like any other power. By starting with the usual approaches and improvising a little." Now Patty beamed and as if reassured by her own power of persuasion she stood up definitively, "Enroll Julia in Sky High! There we have counselors and teachers that are skilled in helping students to hone their powers. Julia will learn how to harness her abilities like any other hero!" Although her previous hope and conviction now reflected back at her in Rachel and Roarke's faces, Patty could now see (from her new vantage point, created by standing) the long crooked line of upheaved floorboards, rock and soil that Julia's sneeze had caused and as the rift loomed ominously in the background, Patty became dubious that she would be able to help this girl before she destroyed Sky High and the whole world with it.
Stay tuned for the next installment...and please send feedback!
