Author's Note: Hey everyone, sorry, I know its been forever since I updated this or what once was this story. I was just a little overwhelmed with how the story was going. Like I said, it was a NaNoWriMo offering and it was pretty AU and I had a hard time figuring out how to out them. Anyway, I decided to rewrite and figure out what you guys want, do you want me to write it AU such as not have Quinn pregnant and obviously with my Rachel (read on, and you will figure that part out) and follow my original Inner Passions canon or should I just follow Glee verse and rewrite the episodes but with my version of Rachel and some of the gang and let that take me places.

To those who followed the old version, I'm sorry for taking the carpet out from under you, so to speak and not writing in forever but here is my rewrite. I'll try my best to make it better :) Still no beta, so please if anyone is interested, I would love some help in making this the best it can be. I don't own the characters as they belong to RIB and FOX.

Chapter 1

Rachel

I was sitting in front of my closet, staring at all my clothes and accessories. Today has to be perfect; it's my first day at my new school. Prior to today, I was home schooled and stints in school lasted about a month long before changing schools and sometimes even changing cities or towns. It took so long to convince my fathers to let me go, more on that later.

Anyway, I'm trying to pick the perfect outfit because I want to fit in, all my life; I have been homeschooled by my fathers because of my "little" secret. Well, I guess it's not that little, I mean, it's a family secret. Man! I got to get out of my head and just get ready. I need to be at school early because I need to pick my courses and have an orientation tour or something.

Suddenly, I hear a loud shout and I hit my head on the closet door in my shock. "Rachel Barbra Berry, you are in trouble if you are not down here in 5 minutes" shouts my papa, Leroy. I look at the time and immediately start throwing on my favourite outfit: a pair of black leggings, little jean shorts, a blue tank top and an off the shoulder t-shirt. I French-braid my hair and put on a blue head band to keep the short baby hairs out of my face.

I rush to get downstairs where I see my favourite breakfast waiting: vegan bacon. And not just any old bacon, it is Papa Lee's awesome glazed vegan bacon. Cooking is one of his "special" talents that come with his presentation of the "family secret".

My other dad is at work already, he's a surgeon at a local hospital and that is part of his gift. I have not told anyone about my gift yet as it is the rarest of all the gifts and if I did my fathers would probably freak and pull me out of school, yet again.

I gulped down the bacon and toast and drank a glass of orange juice.

Then, Leroy called me and I hopped in the car, he was going to drop me off at school before going to the daycare. Leroy cooked for the kids at the daycare for gifted children. I used to go as a kid but my parents pulled me out because I reached the age of 6 without showing signs of my special gift. They thought I was normal, I actually found out about my gift when I was 14. Guess I was a late bloomer, which I hear is typical of those with my particular gift. I mean it makes sense though, if we developed this particular gift any earlier, it would be pretty hard to control and people could easily figure out our secret. Too bad, that isn't the only place where I could be considered a late bloomer. I digress.

He drives me to the high school that I will be attending, William McKinley High School, chattering all the way. He talks a lot when he's nervous; a habit that I picked up from him and apparently I talk a lot anyway. When we arrive, he says, "Dear, do I need to walk you inside or something?"

I turn to him after looking to see what the other students do and say "No, dad, I want to make a good first impression. I want to be 'cool.' Besides maybe next time, you should let me walk to school. I mean, it seems like all the 'cool' kids do." I point at the trail of students heading toward the big ugly brown building on foot. Leroy nods and seems to wipe a tear away when he thinks I wasn't looking.

I leave the car and enter the school looking for the office. I find it, enter and pick my courses: science, visual art, gym and English, for next semester, math, history, geography and vocal music. There is a short orientation and the tour guide drops me off at my first class, science and I pick a seat near in the middle.

The door opens and a cute girl walks in. She is in a cheerleading outfit, red and white with white tennis shoes, she has long blond hair tied up in a high ponytail and hazel eyes and she smirks at me. She walks to the back of the class and sits with the crowd that I deem the popular group.

During the class, I notice that the teacher is teaching something I learned ages ago and so I start daydreaming about the cute girl whose name I do not yet know. I was never bothered about sexual orientation, being raised by two dads but however, prior to seeing this gorgeous cute girl, I definitely preferred guys.

Quinn

William McKinley High School. I am here again and I am on top of the world but it always seems like there is something missing. But I have all that a girl would want, everything my family wants. I am the head cheerleader; I am dating this guy that everyone wants, my marks are great and I have friends. Well, only two real friends but they are my best friends, Santana Lopez, my right hand cheerleader and my enforcer and Brittney Pierce, who isn't traditionally smart but is still a genius. Coach Sylvester never picks sophomores to be team captain but she did at the end of last year. I mean, before now, she never did, it must have something to do with me reminding her of herself or something like that, I always zone out in the middle of her talk. Also we all didn't pay attention when Coach Sylvester ranted about the Glee Club headed by the Spanish teacher, William Schuester who didn't really teach anything at all. I pulled Santana and Britt to the top with me because I wouldn't have it any other way. We are the Unholy Trinity after all.

Anyway, before going into my first class, science, I hang out with all my fellow cheerleaders. We all go into our respective class a minute before the bell rings and I walk by the most beautiful girl. She must be new as I have never seen her before. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside and give her a small smile which I know she sees. But then I see my "friends" at the back looking at me and I give the classroom a disdainful HBIC glare and join my friends at the back.

Through the class, I try not to stare at her and when my friends aren't looking, I get that stupid star struck look that I only got once ever before. I mean at one point at least, I thought he was my one but then I realized over time that I wasn't interested in him and was only with him to make my family happy. I just feared what would happen if my family, well technically, my father, wasn't happy. I must not have been as secretive as a thought because during lunch something terrible happens.

Quinn

Right before lunch, I overhear my friends talking about a really big prank. Here at William McKinley High School, the prank of choice is slushying. A bunch of popular kids would buy slushies from the cafeteria and pour them on the misfits.

Santana's favourite target was the stutterer; I think her name is Tina. The slushy just makes her stutter many times worse. It's like when your computer freezes, no amount of waiting or coaxing can make it move and when you least expected it; it moves but then freezes again. So annoying! But then you see the pain on her face from not being able to express herself or being able to buck the system. The typical result of slushying is an embarrassing freezing person who wears their shame if they didn't bring extra clothes. If they did, they still had to stand there dripping until they can run to the washroom to change and if they didn't, it is a dry sticky tie-dye embarrassment, getting slushied marks you to be the kid that everyone at school can bully. Many of the misfits have "emergency slushy kits" typically containing several changes of clothing, wet wipes and sample sized shampoo and body wash.

I always hated this part of being popular, the needing to hurt other people for the sake of my own reputation. I mean, I remembered when I was once in that situation. I world where my name was Lucy instead of Quinn. And now, I do all I can to avoid the teasing, the being at the bottom and above all, the slushying.

I needed to keep up appearances, so I asked my best friend, Santana, what was going on. She says "We are gonna slushy the new girl. She comes in and acts like she owns the place. We need to put her in her place, at the bottom of the hierarchy"

I freeze in shock. "What did she do?"

"Nothing yet but she looks like she can start a revolution. I mean have you seen here? She's hot! And remember, anything can happen, do you want to lose your popularity and get slushied every day?" she replies.

I shook my head vehemently and ask, "So when are we going to do it?" "Right before lunch" she said. I walk away as I try to convince myself that this is the right thing to do.

Rachel

Everything is going well so far and that makes me really happy but I haven't really made any friends yet. I don't want to breach the status quo or whatever like I don't know where I belong yet. However, I do notice there are popular kids, typically jocks or cheerleaders, the really unpopular kids tend to play video games and role play or something.

It is the ones in between that confuse me like why are they in the middle and where defines the "middle dwellers"? Knowing that I was not a jock or a cheerleader and that I didn't play video games and was not visibly different in anyway, I figured I was somewhere in the middle. Being the know-it-all that I am, I wanted to know more about the middle dwellers. I tried to talk to people but no one seemed to want to talk to me, I was starting to feel a little down so I gave myself a pep talk in my head.

Anyway, I was walking to the cafeteria, lost in my head, when I was blocked by a bunch of jocks and cheerleaders apparently they are called the Cheerios including the cute girl from science class. I stopped and turned around to find a different place to sit and eat when I realized there were more popular kids behind me. They were holding big cups with the logo "Thirstquenchers", the cute girl steps forward and says "Know your place, Loser." She tips her cup over my head and the rest of them follow her lead. All I see is a rainbow of colours and all of a sudden, I feel cold and I look down at the rainbow that has now ruined my favourite outfit.

I run to a washroom as I feel the urge to reveal my secret. Sitting in a bathroom stall, I fight to stay human; I forgot to check if there was anyone else in the bathroom, luckily there was no one else in the bathroom.

Oh, I guess I should mention that the family secret is that we are all archeadracos. We are the descendants of dragons. When our dragon ancestors began to get persecuted, there was a dragon that fell in love with a human, Eva. This dragon, Genesis, was hunted by the largest group of humans he had ever come across; they were the tribe mates of Eva, led by the man that Eva had scorned in favour of Genesis. Somehow his desire, his love allowed him to shift into a human. He had run away with Eva, was never found and lived a long life with Eva. He and Eva had many children. These were the first true archeadracos.

We can now easily shift to human form and sometimes into certain animals and have certain strengths beyond that of a normal human. My parents are not aware that I am a fire breather but specifically we fire breathers are rare. The archeadraco with healing powers or gifts with spices and herbs, like my father and my papa are the most common. They are often nurses, doctors or work in the hospital or in the medical field or do research or any other job in the scientific field like my father or become chefs and work with spices like my mother. They can also work with animals as a veterinarian or plants as a botanist or gardener. Followed by archeadraco with the gift of knowledge, they can also be gifted with the ability to speak many human languages or speaking to other animals. Next, some archeadracos are able to live in different environments such as underwater, really hot places or really cold places or other locations that other dracolings merely tolerate. These are known as environmental archeadracos or envirodracos for short. Then, there are archeadraco with super strength or super speed. There are also shade archeadraco, these are almost as rare as fire breathers. They hide our race, they can cause people or animals or even archeadraco to forget, they have the most mind powers such as telekinesis or mind reading. Finally, fire breathers like me are the rarest.

No two dragons manifest their special powers the same way. There are also archeadraco that are not endowed with the above special powers; they make up about half the archeadraco population. As archeadraco are stronger and faster than normal humans, we have better senses and we are typically smarter than the normal human. We are generally smaller than regular dragons in our dragon form. Under certain situations such as great stress and life and death situations, we tend to want to revert to our dragon form in order to better protect us.

My dragon is golden with red wings and chocolate brown eyes. We keep the colour of our eyes when we shift to our archeadracos but they begin to shimmer a certain way like the fire in us is coming out.

I pull out my mirror and realized that I had the shimmery eyes and my skin was starting to glimmer with a gold tint. I breathe deeply and shove back my dragon, telling myself that I am in control and that I am safe. When I am ready, I exit the stall and realize that I am in one of the washrooms with shower stalls.

Thank God, I think as I look through door that attaches the shower room to the washroom, no one is inside so I rush in and close and lock the door behind me. I peel off the sticky clothes that may now be ruined and pull out my gym clothes from my bag. I turn on one shower and put my clothes underneath hoping to rinse the syrup from it. I, then stand under the other and begin to cry. I wanted to fit in and prove to my parents that I can do this. I decide that my parents don't need to know.

After all, I really wanted to stay at school and find a place that I belong. Archeadracos aren't meant to stay in populations of just archeadraco; we thrive in communities that have humans, dracolings and other animals. Afterwards, I eat my lunch, put on my gym clothes and put away my slightly stained clothes and head towards the gym. As if everything was normal.

Quinn

After we slushied the new girl, I enter the cafeteria in a daze and sat down next to the football team captain and quarterback, who is my boyfriend, Finn. I am going through the motions, kissing Finn softly, sitting with my friends, trying to ignore Brittney and Santana ignoring each other, eating my lunch when in reality I am thinking about the way the new girl looked at me.

Her normally chocolate brown eyes turned intensely brown, there seemed to be fire jumping within them and her tan skin seemed to shimmer when we had slushied her. I wondered what was going on.

Rachel

The rest of school passed without a hitch. My dad, Hiram came to pick me up and asked "How did school go?" I just told him that it went fine. I learned the name of the cute girl, Quinn and that she and her cheer friends were on the school's cheerleading squad, the Cheerios. Quinn is the head cheerleader and since the cheerleading squad had actually won more competitions than any of the sports teams put together, they rule the school. Even if everyone thinks the football team rules the school, in reality is the cheerleading squad is the school's ruler, which would make Quinn the most popular person and the Queen of the school. Which would make my crush totally impossible for me to achieve, but then again, I'm Rachel Barbra Berry, I can do anything I put my mind to. Plus, I'm basically part dragon. She apparently did well in school; I'm hearing a 4.0 GPA. Plus that guy she's dating is Finn Hudson, the football team's quarterback and captain, the king to her queen. She seemed so well rounded.

I remembered back to when she slushied me and I was just so upset with myself. Why did I ever think I had a chance at fitting in, why did I decide to go to this school? I get the feeling that she doesn't like what she was doing. That there is more to the story but I don't know her, I don't know why she does what she does, slushying and bulling the misfits, which apparently includes me now.

Anyway, I don't want my fathers to know. They would probably pull me out of school and homeschool me or find me a similarly gifted tutor or not gifted tutor because they don't yet know about the fire breathing. By gifted, I mean an archeodraco tutor. I just went home and did my homework, ate dinner and after my extensive night-time routine, I went to bed. Like nothing was wrong.

Quinn

The rest of the school day went by with me thinking about what I had done. I kept thinking that that girl is pretty and strong. After the slushy fest, she cleaned up and came up with her head held high like nothing just happened. She ran really fast in gym and suddenly I realize that I am falling for her.

Her name is Rachel and she has perfectly brown hair and gorgeous chocolate brown doe eyes. She is beautiful enough to be at the top despite being short but I cannot see her acting the way that the top girls do. She just didn't act like a jerk and seemed like she would never do anything to hurt in any way. Plus the fact, that she just came to this school, she has no power currently. She seems to be so passionate, so kind, so full of emotions; it knocks the wind out of me. But it can't be because she is on the bottom of the social ladder and I am on the top.

I am so angered over this situation. If I wasn't so intent on impressing my parents, trying to belong, then Coach Sylvester wouldn't have chosen me to be head cheerleader. I have practice today, so I go through the motions of practice and drills and bitching on the rest of the team to run more laps and practice until they are perfect. I put on my HBIC glare and mask and most people don't notice my distraction, except for Santana and Brittney but they cover for me. At one point, I get out of my head and concentrate on practice. After all, I'm not allowed to have feelings for girls, I'm not allowed to think this way.

Rachel

The next day, I pack extra sets of clothing for gym and just in case I get slushied or thrown into the dumpster and pick out clothes to wear before heading downstairs for breakfast. I was daydreaming in the car when my dad, Hiram was driving me to school when I thought of something.

I saw a pool at the school yesterday but no one uses it. It looks dirty and has not been used for years but I know that I could probably bring it back to working order. I decide to go to the principal and see if I can convince him to rent it or let us use it so I can start a swim and diving team.

Even though I am a fire breathing dragon, I love water. Swimming and diving almost give me the same thrill as becoming a dragon and flying. Singing, acting and of course being on Broadway, gave me the same thrill, the same drive. Since I was unable to show the dragon inside me, it helped that I could be so vulnerable and display the inner emotions when I sang or acted.

Sometimes, we as a family go out in the middle of the night to a secluded area and transform and fly or use our talents as a dragon. We have not gone in a while; we have been too busy since the move.

I needed a release, I feel as though any little thing would cause "dragon eyes" or "dragon skin" to appear, I had always hated feeling so volatile.

At the principal's office, he allows it when I offer to clean it and give out swim lessons to children. But he says if we don't qualify for regionals, he was going to cut the team and convert the pool space to more classrooms or labs or gym space or something. I text my parents telling them that I wouldn't need a ride home. Hiram texts me back asking what I am doing and congratulating me on making friends. I roll my eyes because I don't have friends. Leroy doesn't respond. I realize that he would be at work and his personal phone is probably in his locker.

I go through classes on autopilot, meeting new friends at lunch: Tina who stutters, Artie who was in a car crash as a child and is in a wheelchair, Mercedes and Kurt who is gay. They are misfits like me and we get along. We share slushy stories and I learn from them that the school can do very little to protect us due to fear of losing funding or stepping on someone's toes, after all, the popular kids come from very old, rich and influential families.

In the second half of lunch, I tell them that I got a job and ask them if they would be interested in joining the swim and dive team. They all agree which surprise me; they are friendlier than I expected them to be. But they say they would only do it if I join the Glee club which they explain is the school's show choir. Apparently, principal Figgins had given Will Schuester the same ultimatum, place at regionals or the team would be cut. They say that we are the "New Directions" and I am overjoyed at being allowed to do the two things that I love so I agree. I tell them that I have to go clean the pool so that we can start practices as soon as possible. To my surprise, they offer to come help me. We do a bit of cleaning and then run off to our afternoon classes. Afterward, we meet up again to finish cleaning and preparing the pool which comes with a small slide for children and a couple diving boards. At the end, we are all covered in nasty gunk that smells bad and are so exhausted but smiling because the pool was beautiful. I tell them all to meet tomorrow at 7 so that we have 90 minutes to train before school starts.

I wait with them until all their parents arrive to take them home because it was pretty late as we leave the school, the doors lock behind us as everyone had already left for the day.

Please, let me know how I'm doing, review or pm me., or just let me know what you want to see. Promise I don't bite :)