Michelle realized around the age of five, on a flight with her family to Spain, that she has the power to cause turbulence.

She had lost sight of her little Tiger, a tiny plastic animal toy that she was constantly losing and thus howling in distress over. As her sobs of agony for her lost Tiger increased, the plane began to shake and shudder. Passengers started screaming as her distress grew, intensifying the shaking of the plane. Thankfully, around the time the oxygen masks were being deployed, the shaking of the plane loosened the Tiger from its hidey-hole, and it fell into sight. Michelle gurgled with happiness, and the plane calmed down.

Mom didn’t quite make the connection, at least not consciously. However, she gave Michelle enough sleeping medication to knock her out for almost the entire flight back, and then the family avoided flying for many years after that.

In fact, Michelle was a young adult, in her first year of university, when she flew again. Her mom had been killed in a car accident by then, so no one was there to dissuade her. Michelle entered the plane already in a frazzled state of mind, one of her professors was being an asshole about their assignment, and the boy she liked had left her to read. Plus, she wasn’t overly fond of Clara, her fellow-student sitting beside her. The take-off was quite bumpy, as they sometimes can be. Michelle glanced at Clara’s annoying profile and heard her extremely irritating whimper as the plane jolted sharply, and the memory of years and years ago, of the plane juddering in tune with her emotions, flooded her.

She forced herself to think of pleasant things, of memories by a warm beach, of summer days, and almost immediately the plane calmed down and started cruising smoothly. The seatbelt sign turned off. Then Michelle knew. What a ridiculous power, she thought bitterly. How could she use it without killing herself? She started training herself and her power. She knew she could do it. Furthermore, she knew that one day, the time would come when she would want to use her power on a plane that was not carrying her.

She spends hours and hours, by airports and studying planes in every single moment of her spare time. Soon she will have the power to apply it, to planes that are not holding. Now, she can make a plane twitch as it takes off and lands, but very soon, she knows, she has it in her, she will be able to down a plane by simply knowing about it and thinking about it as it soars through the sky. She let her mind drift to dark thoughts of how far she could push her powers and which planes she might want to bring down.