September

Disclaimer: I do not own anything or anyone besides Eleanor, her mother and Mike! Enjoy :)

The first thing that woke me up in the morning on the 8th of September was the shrill screech of my mother, and the first thing that got me out of bed was the distinct sound of shattering glass. It was unfortunately often that my stepfather got too inebriated and decided to extract his revenge upon the few pieces of glassware we had, but this morning of all mornings had to be the least acceptable. It was my first day of school at the famous Sky High, and both my mother and Mike had kept me up all of last night because of the yelling. I had gone downstairs at least twenty times after hearing the volume peak way over the acceptable level in the neighborhood – even though that level was already incredibly high because of the terrible area – and had only been yelled at to get back to bed and shut up. It was frustrating living with Mike; both he and my mother didn't have the educational capacity to find real jobs, so my mother worked in a coffee shop a couple blocks away whilst Mike sat around drinking his miserable ass off each day and collected welfare checks. They both had alcohol problems, resulting in physical and emotional abuse from their side. Mike abused us, and it was killing me inside.

I was a healer – my mutation granted me the ability to regenerate and fix the wounds of others – but amazingly enough when I discovered my powers I also found that they didn't work on my own body. It was excruciatingly frustrating and somehow logical at the same time. My body rejected it's own healing tactics because my genetic makeup believed it to be perfectly fine on it's own. I had tried many times after receiving punches and kicks from Mike, but it had resulted in tears each time. It was completely unfair; I was the only person I knew who needed my powers the most, and yet I wasn't capable of using them. It drove me to tears each night, and I thought about ending my life many times. Being the victim of a broken family life from the start after my father had an affair with another woman, it was hard to look at the positive when my mother brought Mike home one evening and made it clear that he would be my new dad. The abuse started months later, after my mother's alcohol problems became more prominent and she got more and more lax on my safety. It got to the point where I could spend weeks out of the house and upon my arrival back be greeted with the same argument from days ago. They didn't care; but I couldn't bring myself to phone the police or talk to any authoritative figure. I was caught in a vicious cycle.

I sighed, pulling on the cleanest pair of skinny jeans I could find, and lacing up my old combat boots. It was only until I scraped together some change that I could go wash my clothing at the laundromat nearby, so unfortunately I didn't have too many clean clothes for my first day of school. I was entering my junior year at Sky High, and had gone through the registration process myself and barely managed to get my mother's signature without a black eye from Mike, but I had done it and was now entering in my first year. It was bound to be different than all of my other years at regular high school; I was told off of the pamphlet that there would be plenty of classes to help me gain more knowledge on supers and to help me develop my powers to the best of my ability. I knew a lot about heroes because of the news – TV was very focused on the way that these mutants helped our community fight against their evil kind who wanted to plunder and take advantage of the humans of the planet, so I had become very educated on the miraculous powers that were out there and the good that they were used for.

Something I hadn't been educated on, however, was the school bus. I wasn't exactly sure how the hell a bus was going to get us miles up into the sky where the school was held on a solid piece of floating land – when I had gone into the registration office down on earth's surface and heard that the school was suspended in midair it caused a giant shock – but I was willing to try out their preferred means of transportation. I basically ran out of our little shabby house after Mike threw a tray at me, and did my best to cover up my black eye that he had given me last week with makeup on my way to the bus stop. It was unfortunately placed a neighborhood away from my house, meaning that I would have to wake up early each morning to get to where the bus would depart, but perhaps this meant I could avoid Mike and his early morning hungover rage. I waited apprehensively at the bus stop minutes later, praying to the skies that there would be some kind of magical way to teleport us all up there without having to get involved in any dangerous situation whatsoever.

Naturally, my wish was not granted. At first everything seemed fine when the bus rolled to it's stop – the bus driver gave me a suspicious one over, asked for my name and then nodded me off to join the twenty other normal looking kids sitting on the bus. But when he collected the last of us and began to drive towards a large bridge, I began to worry. The last thing I was expecting was for the bus to head straight towards the ramp labeled 'under construction', and drive straight off of it. Myself and the other twenty-something students on the bus screamed for our lives as the vehicle plummeted towards the earth for several hundred feet, and then engaged some kind of exterior engine that sent us flying through the air faster than any roller coaster I had been on. It was terrifying for the first twenty seconds as the bus driver tortured us by doing barrel rolls, and I could almost feel my eyes starting to roll to the back of my head until he took mercy and leveled the vehicle out. I looked out my window, still clutching the seat in front of me in shock, and found that two giant yellow wings – matching the hideous color of the bus – had sprouted from either sides of it.

I tried to control my breathing, but it was difficult when we were still barreling through the sky at speeds that school buses were definitely not intended to reach – although I doubted that I could just call this a plain old school bus anymore. It wasn't long before Sky High came into view, floating majestically and causing the students to look out the window in awe.

"There she is!" The bus driver called so that all of the students could hear him. "Sky High; kept aloft by the latest in antigravitational propulsion. She is in constant motion as a precaution against those who otherwise might have nefarious plans. Her location is supplied only to a handful of qualified individuals such as myself – Ron Wilson: bus driver."

Before he came into landing he explained that anyone else not entering in their freshman year should find the main office to retrieve their schedules, as power placement would occur privately as well. Hearing this, I made sure that my first move as I got off the bus was to detach myself from the obvious group of freshmen and make my way across the freshly cut grass towards the large school. It was beautiful; there were many pillars and from windows of glass as well as sculptures obviously depicting heroes saving the earth all around the front lawn. There were students arriving from every direction; more buses were landing, people were flying and teleporting out of nowhere – this seemed to be a normal occurrence so I set my eyes forwards and tried to get used to it for the time being. After several confusing long winding hallways, I managed to find the main office and request my schedule to the receptionist. I seemed to be the only one in the office so far – I hoped that there would at least be one new student in my junior year so that I wouldn't be so alone.

"Principle Powers would like to see you before I give you your class schedule," The receptionist smiled, her gray eyes twinkling as she motioned towards a door on the far right. "Go right ahead."

"Oh?" I gave her a weird glance at first, but then obeyed her instructions and knocked on the door. "Thank you."

I let myself in after hearing a brief 'come in' from the other side, and was greeted with a woman clad head to toe in white. Her hair and nails were done to perfection, and despite the giant amounts of red lipstick on her skin she flashed me a smile showing perfect pearly whites. I walked forward to shake her hand, and when I did her smile seemed to get brighter.

"It's nice to meet you Eleanor," She began, sitting back in her chair. "Your registration file was very unique. We get a lot of students at this school but you are the first of your kind."

"There's never been a regenerator here?" My eyebrows flew up. Was I truly that alone? "Or anyone like me?"

"No," Principle Powers shook her head. "We are very excited to be working with you and want to provide you with the best support as possible – since you can't necessarily show me your power I entrust in you that it is the only ability you have and that you didn't keep anything else off of your file. It's important that we know all of your skills so that we can best assist you. You've already been pre-placed into hero-class because of your abilities."

"H-hero class?" I stuttered, unsure of this categorization.

"Yes," She nodded. "We have two classes. Hero and hero-support. Hero-support focuses more on the kids who's powers will not allow them to operate as independent supers. There is a program which allows them to be paired with an equally willing hero to form a team, but the hero-support kids are classified as not having the ability to operate on their own. Hero, on the other hand, prepares the kids with more independent battle strategies and focuses them on learning to become independent fighters."

The whole process seemed very fascist and dichotomized to me, but I instead chose to question about future plans instead. "So we all have to become superheroes?"

"Not all of you," Her eyes regarded me carefully. "Everyone has the option to attend a regular university and become a normal citizen – many of our graduates have used their powers to contribute fantastically towards the human race in many different fields of study. I understand why you would be interested."

I nodded slightly, wondering if my powers could somehow put doctors out of a job. I wasn't even immune to diseases or infections myself – how the hell was I supposed to cure Ebola patients if my own body caught the disease? It was a very complicated field and I needed to learn more before exploring. If only my powers had manifested earlier, perhaps I would have had a better time span to wrap my head around these concepts. As if reading my mind, Principle Powers interrupted my thought process.

"There is still time to learn, Eleanor," She assured, brown eyes shining. "You have a lot of options and a lot of people willing to help you. The staff here will try and make your journey as easy as it can be."

I nearly snorted; high school hadn't been easy before, so adding powers and some clearly limiting classification to it definitely wasn't going to make it easier. I could almost see heroes shoving sidekicks into lockers by now. This whole thing nearly made my head reel, but I kept my composure and shot a nervous smile towards Principle Powers, thanking her and heading back to the receptionist. I was given my schedule and a map of the school, and witnessed another new student being shown into Power's office. As I had guessed – every new kid probably got the speech from her.

I ventured out of the office to try and find my first class – History of Heroes. I nearly cringed at the title, but managed to push myself down the hall and followed the map to get to room 200. What greeted me was a class full of perfectly normal looking students and a teacher with eyes glowing pure white. No pupils – no other signs of deformity besides the pure white. I almost blanched before I managed to approach him and give him my schedule, meekly claiming that I was a new student. He accepted it with a smile, obviously being able to read it despite his lack of pupils, and instructed me to sit wherever a seat was available. I took an empty desk at the back and began to take the introductory notes to the course. I had been informed on the Sky High informational pamphlet – lost somewhere in the black hole that was my room - that many of these courses I was taking didn't require a lot of background knowledge, so to make it easier for students entering in separate years. There was also the fact that none of these courses remotely resembled normal high school courses besides Math and English.

I located my locker after the next two classes – English and Hero strategies – and found that it had already been filled with all of the textbooks I would need for my classes. By this time it was lunch, so I exchanged my books and followed the flow of students to the cafeteria to grab something to eat with the little money I had. As it turned out, the food was expensive, so I gracefully let myself out of the line and sat at the closest open available table to read in peace. I was perfectly fine with skipping a meal – ever since my father had left all those years ago and food had come second in place after alcohol in my household, my diet and crashed and my body hadn't been able to gain a pound past 110. For my 5'7 stature I was classified as underweight, but I was still curvy and confident about my body without any health problems, so I continued to live without any problem with it. I plopped myself down on the uncomfortable table and pulled out Lord of The Rings: Two Towers, which I had been reading through for the seventh time. It was one of the only series of books that I owned, which meant that I read it a lot. Finding a source of income was difficult for me, as I had only worked as a bus girl at a cheap restaurant once before being fired for coming to work drunk and quickly found that no other place would hire me with that track record.

My parent's alcohol addiction didn't particularly fuel mine; it was simply the fact that being in a stressful environment surrounded by abuse caused me to want to forget things more often than not. I had realized after a year or two of partying consistently and binge-drinking every weekend that that lifestyle was not sustainable, and after a couple months I had toned down my drinking to one day a week of heavy liquor. I would swipe it from Mike's cabinet and gulp it down as slowly as possible, trying to relish in the slow burning of the alcohol down my throat. I realized that it wasn't healthy, but it was far better than what it had been and I prided myself on that fact.

About halfway through the third chapter of The Two Towers, there was a slam of a cafeteria tray on the table, and a large black mass sat in front of me. My wide, green eyes met a very handsome young man's brown ones. He didn't look all too happy to find me sitting there, and instead of introducing himself, he was glaring at me angrily. His large leather motorcycle jacket made his broad frame look even more intimidating, and although his shoulder length straight hair had one very bright, annoying streak of red in it, the rest of it was a very nice dark brown color.

"What is this?" He spat. "Did someone send you here on a joke?"

"W-what?" I immediately flinched and cowered out of reflex, putting down my book. "N-no! Do people really do that here?"

"If it wasn't a joke," the boy seethed, craning his neck and allowing his expression to harden even further, "then why are you sitting here?"

"I-it was the only free table," I explained, feeling myself grow smaller under someone who was more dominating than me. "I'm sorry – I-I didn't mean to upset you. L-look I'll move if it makes you feel better."

Suddenly, I saw him do a double take and take a closer look at me – squinting his eyes as if I was some kind of specimen.

"Hold on," He requested, his tone softening just a little. I stopped in my place, halfway between getting up and sitting back down. "Are you new here?"

I nodded frantically, wondering why that would make any difference in his facade.

"What the hell happened to your face?"

I froze, very certain that this was my first red flag to leave the room now. "Excuse me?" I whispered instead, pausing to allow my gut to do a second assessment on the situation.

"I said what the hell happened to your face?" he repeated himself. The bruise on my left eye had swollen itself up, sure, but he had to have the eyes of a hawk to spot the swelling on my face - no one had been able to detect it before and I did a very good job of covering Mike's tracks up.

"Uh," I nervously gulped and played with the long sleeves of my oversized sweater, trying to flip my long black hair so that more of my face was covered. "I got into a fight."

How the hell had he spotted the swelling over copious amounts of makeup? His expression revealed everything. It was clear that he didn't believe me for one second, but I hadn't expected someone to uncover my secret so easily. He must have either dealt with the same problems himself or assumed that I was involved with a bad crowd – but either way he grunted softly, shook his head and pulled out a book himself, beginning to eat. He was reading 1984, one of my personal favorites from George Orwell – but I wasn't about to say anything else to the angry boy. It wasn't until about ten seconds later that he eyed me awkwardly in my half sitting half standing position.

"It's fine," he assured, watching me as I sat down. "You can sit."

"T-thank you," I stuttered, still anxious and cursing myself for not being more confident. He eyed me curiously again one more time, perhaps taking note of my nervous speech impediment but instead choosing to continue reading. For the rest of lunch, we sat in silence until the bell rang, and I only bothered to give him a last glance as we headed off separate ways down the hallway towards our classes. I didn't know anything about him, but I could only assume that he was a senior based on his size and the way that the other students parted like the sea of Moses for him. Clearly people were intimidated, and I wondered if I would get to know him any better or if he would rip my head off before any of that happened.

I sighed, making my way – with the help of my very trusty map – towards my fourth class of the day. Survival strategies was something that I was definitely going to need; the frustrating fact that I couldn't heal myself caused a lot of inner turmoil despite the irony of it, so perhaps something in this course (or a visit to the school nurse – who was bound to know something about strange occurrences in mutations) would help me out. The first lesson was just an introduction, but after reviewing the course material I was glad to find a topic that read 'wounds and battle injuries'. Perhaps I would be to learn about my abilities on a more educational level after all.

My next class was Mad Science, which I had been dreading since this morning. Spotting that on my schedule – no; literally on printed paper, actually – had been a shocker, and I most definitely wasn't expecting a teacher with a giant head to be my professor either. This time, I couldn't help but gawk. I had seen a girl with purple skin, a boy with wings and another girl with a blue tongue – but this topped it all off. I managed to recollect myself after a couple of seconds, and blushed when I realized that he had spotted me. He didn't seem too offended by my staring nor shocked, and instead of yelling simply checked my name off of the attendance and instructed me to sit next at the last available desk at the back. Upon approaching it, I discovered that it held the same boy from my lunch table. He didn't say a word as I sat down whilst the teacher, dubbing himself Mr. Medulla, began his lesson. The boy was silent for the rest of the class, simply eyeing Medulla with the same glare that he eyes everyone else with. The course content was interesting, sure, but the boy beside me was drawing too much of my attention at the moment. I had gotten very curious about him and what he had assumed of me, but was too afraid to encroach on his privacy.

So, at the end of the day when the bell rang and I retraced my steps back to my locker – it was a relief that the first day didn't yield any homework – I didn't assume that the next day would be holding anything exciting for me. I braced myself for a difficult year and all of those horrible bus rides home, and simply reminded myself of the reason that I was at this school; to learn and go somewhere in my life. I would be damned if I ended up like my mother or Mike. So when I reluctantly clambered back on the bus, endured an excruciating dive back down to earth's surface and made my way back to my measly neighborhood and an angry drunken Mike, I reminded myself over and over again of my own worth. Even as Mike pulled my hair and slapped me on the cheek several times, I reminded myself of my own worth. Even as he gave me a solid punch to the stomach and called me useless, I reminded myself of my own worth. I swore to never forget it, and I wouldn't.