Julian was often teased by the other kids in his classes because of how intensely he obsessed over martial arts cultivation series. Whether it be manga, anime, or webnovels, he ate them up by the season. He even devoted a few hours each day to meditative attempts at circulating his chi.
Being part of the massive Colton Hotels conglomerate family, Julian Colton was by no means poor, which lead to him purchasing all kinds of “ginseng elixirs” and other types of real world equivalents for the natural treasures in his martial arts series. He was teased even more when he finished off his school lunches with his weird herbal concoctions, especially since he had yet to find one that actually tasted good, and always made the most bizarre of expressions while eating them.
One day Colton was attempting to complete a kata designed to awaken his chi, when he felt something leave him, and stared in excited amazement as a potted plant near the edge of his practice lawn exploded, as though it had been hit by some sort of projectile. He spent a few minutes trying to recreate the sensation, but ultimately gave up and finished his katas, before dropping into a meditation session. He spent that whole session trying to sense or circulate, or even draw towards himself the strange thing he felt leave him earlier, to no effect.
The next day at school, Julian excitedly told his PE teacher about what happened the previous day, not taking any caution to keep his voice down. As he should have learned to expect, this oversight lead to him being teased even more than ever when the rumors spread throughout his school, and by the end of his first period class, practically the whole school knew. New nicknames and more teasing followed him across campus, but – as often happened – let alone ignoring it, he didn't even notice it, as he was barely able to even pay any attention to his teachers.
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Even in his PE class, where he had to spend the whole period being interviewed in great detail by a powers awakening specialist, Julian barely managed to keep his excitement in check enough. It took a while, but he managed to stick through the session and learned that most people's powers manifested as a sort of energy that they could learn to push into their powers. Julian just knew that his experience in cultivation would lend itself greatly towards this, and threw himself into the exercises the teacher gave him to work on.
A few weeks later, he had still made no progress, and was just goofing around with the one friend he actually managed to keep. They started doing imaginary target practice with various weapons. Julian made sure to mostly use bladed weapons, with the occasional needle or bow and arrow, while his friend mostly used guns of various kinds. Finally his friend convinced him to try to hit a tree on the other side of the playground with a finger pistol, and once again, Julian felt the strange sensation of something leaving him, a kind of hot energy, if he had to describe it.
His friend just about lost it entirely, and Julian was not far behind; this was one of the coolest things they'd seen, after all. They spent the rest of recess trying to get Julian to do it again, but nothing worked. This was something their PE teacher was quite glad of when he heard of it, as one of the things they tried was having Julian try to shoot his friend with finger guns.
Julian spent more weeks trying to fit this new energy into his cultivation obsession, but nothing he tried worked, and he was forced to switch to only using the techniques he was taught in school, as they actually made some progress. A few months later, he was mostly able to use his new power on command, but had still been completely unable to cultivate with the energy of his powers. He occasionally would just shoot at cans in alleys or bottles sitting on fences for no apparent reason on his way home from school, and almost always was able to use his powers to do so.
Even when he was a “professional hero” (self proclaimed, of course, as none were anything more than dangerous vigilantes according to the government), he was still unable to circulate the energy of his powers, though he never stopped trying, even when he almost blew his fingers off while trying. But as all the others did, the record of his exploits and powers was added to the list, and other input was sought out.