PURE HEROINE ─ young justice

PURE HEROINE

"There's no rule that says you have to be a prodigy to be a hero," she insisted. "If people wanted to stand up for themselves or protect their loved ones or do what they believe in their hearts is the right thing to do, then they would do it. If they wanted to be heroic, they would find ways to be heroic, even without supernatural powers."

—Marissa Meyer, Renegades

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FIRST AND FOREMOST, Julien "JJ" Jones is not a team player. She is coldblooded and focused and insufferable (though nobody can quite say that to her face; it's just not something you say to a friendless orphan who can and will verbally rip your self-esteem to shreds). She is obsessive and arrogant and critical to the point of cruelty, but she is also Gotham Academy's fastest, most talented rock climber, an industrious gold-medallist athlete with a future. Not a team player. Rock climbing is pretty much a solo sport, anyway, and ever since she could remember those two words—climbing and solo—have been the backbone of her life's dedication.

A near death experience and an abrupt revelation that JJ isn't exactly normal brings Dinah Lance—AKA, Black Canary, AKA, JJ's older sister's girlfriend—to the conclusion that in order to control her powers, JJ must be exposed to people who're more like her.

Suddenly, instead of training camp—which, by the way, is absolutely crucial to her guaranteed success this season, since the competition's only getting fiercer, and JJ has set her sights on the #1 spot on the podium—she's running around with some half-baked junior Justice League club, wasting her time fighting crime when she could be rock climbing and figuring out a game plan to take this season by storm with her coach.

So, anyway, that's what she's been up to this summer. Learning the power of friendship and whatnot.

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JULIEN "JJ" JONES
"Codenames are stupid. Just call me JJ."