PURE HEROINE ─ young justice

[ 001 ] beta

BETA — A specific step-by-step description of a climb or a sequence. This is information provided from a guide book or a fellow climber.

CHAPTER ONE

SUNSET bled through the evening sky when Coach Wymack dismissed the team from the day's training. By the time JJ shoved all her climbing gear into her black duffel bag and made it out of the perfume-fogged locker room alone, not stopping on her warpath through the rush-hour congested streets of Gotham packed by the sea of pedestrians, cutting through the unrelenting crowd with her elbows knocking into ribs without much ceremony, she was not only running late, but agitated enough to slam her elbow into the next suit-clad asshole who told her to watch where she was going. Of course, it was important to preface this by noting that her annoyance had not been borne of the evening's commute on foot back home.

The house that built JJ was not made of an oppressive darkness but a darkness blotting out everything, closing in on the inextinguishable light at the end that was rock climbing. Tunnel vision kept her focus knife-bright and sharp where she wanted it to be. It took a lot to rattle self-made girls reinforced by iron and will like JJ, especially when she so easily compartmentalised everything in her life into two boxes marked "things that didn't matter" and "rock climbing". She hadn't even been that shaken by her fall from El Capitan. Though she supposed she could chalk that down to the new development in her acquired skillset. Or the automatic mechanism of emotional and psychological repression she turned to like a favourite sweater. Nothing really got under her skin.

But as she was hurrying home, barely dodging the tide on the crosswalk, JJ couldn't help the irritation prickling her veins, a slow inferno working through her blood that hadn't worn off since she'd left the bouldering gym at Gotham Academy—the only facility in the school that hadn't been closed for the summer. Tears didn't become JJ, purely because she wasn't a crier like Olivia or a wallower like most other people. And yet, she couldn't quite understand why, as she crushed a corner of the permission slip for a 2 month long training camp to prepare for the upcoming competitions in the fall climbing season in a tightly curled fist, the sheer ignorance and incompetence of her teammates got to her like this.

Locker room gossip was a circle of girls who'd just gotten out of the shower stalls wrapped in their towels and were performing the hour-long ritual of drying their hair and getting changed into clean attire. Although the hour spent locked in that trading port of exchanged secrets was less productive and more debate on which boy had gotten cuter over the summer, or which couple had broken up, or which person was cheating on who, or which unfortunate soul had managed to squeeze their way into the Bitching Blacklist. JJ's lack of interest in entertaining her teammates hadn't granted her a rite of passage in clinching a spot on the gossip committee's board. They all knew she was the best, but they also knew she didn't want to talk about Jessica's new foreign-exchange boyfriend or Keith Walker's male entitlement despite his ugly teeth, which meant she wasn't going to sit with them during lunch or interact outside of training. That being said, they always fell silent each time she walked past, which meant, she'd somehow made it onto the blacklist.

Usually, she'd cruise past without giving them the time of day, mostly because she'd be the first one in and out of the showers after Wymack had threatened to put his foot through their faces if they tried to stay past training hours. This time, however, JJ had caught Coach on his way back to his office to talk about El Capitan, which meant that the gossip circle would've already been in session by the time she walked into the locker room, and one the girls would've been halfway through bitching about someone to her captive audience by the time JJ was out and changing up.

"—Your upper body strength is embarrassing, just commit and go," Clio had said, in a cheap imitation of JJ's instruction earlier during their bouldering session, and JJ had tensed for a split second while shoving her feet into a clean pair of socks. The girls snickered, and Clio continued her bit, "like, she's good and all, and I respect that she's, like, Coach's pride and joy or whatever, but, it's like... this isn't the Olympics, y'know? Fucking chill out."