Prelude to War-Team GASH

The events that lead Team GASH to the coming War of Seasons.

The Youngest of the New Generation

Their Stories Still to be Told

But Many Truths Can Be Found

Hiding in the Cracks.

 

 

Case of Gray Xiao Long/Grover

 

Gray always had an interesting childhood.  Being the second child was hard enough, but he also felt like he was the one forgotten by the rest of his family more often than not.  His father was always interested in training Ember during his younger days, but thankfully, for a period of time while Ember was at school, this allowed Nathan to spend more time with him.  But when his father decided to leave for his crusade against the Order, Gray felt a great shift within his family.  His mother, while providing a brave front, was clearly hiding great pain within her heart.  Ember was affected by this too.  While most of the members of Team BEAT went out into the world to help those in need after they graduated, Ember spent a good deal of time at home with what was left of her family.  But even then, with Ember home more often, Nathan was still away, causing a great amount of pain for both Yang and Ember.  Gray could see that these two people were hurting immensely.  He tried to help them as best he could by letting them train him.  Gray had discovered his Semblance at a young age when he was fiddling with some scrap metal that his grandfather Taiyang had lying around in the garage.  Gray could manipulate and change metal to match whatever shape he so desired.  At first, this didn’t seem to provide him with many options in combat as it was tricky for Gray to manipulate the metal fast enough to create different weapons and defenses.  However, Pyrrha got the family in touch with miners in Anima who specialized in mining the metals that made up Pyrrha’s armor.  This metal was one that Gray could control easily and quickly and he soon began to develop his own unique technique.  His style allowed him to change his weapons on the fly depending on the situation.  If he were on the offensive, he could wield twin swords or perhaps a powerful spear.  But just as quickly as he could be on the offensive, he could take the metal he was using and quickly morph it into a shield.  He tried to create his own unique style of combat with his abilities, but never really found a good rhythm without borrowing elements from his own family’s techniques.  Every once in a while, Nathan would return from his crusade, but only briefly.  Gray remembered that whenever he did return home, it was mostly arguing between Yang and Nathan about what Nathan had done and his reaction to his wife’s waning support of his actions.  Gray would try to play it off whenever people asked him about it, but it was clearly a touchy subject for him to deal with.  As more time passed, Ember started spending less time at home and more time out in the world as a huntress.  This made home life more difficult for Gray especially when his father was home.  He was actually relieved when he was able to leave home and attend Beacon.  But by that time, Nathan had all but stopped returning home, and what came soon after would make Gray wish for the nights of arguing were back once more.

 

 

 

Case of Aurora Watson

 

            Aurora was born into a very loving and well-off family.  She was the daughter of two of the great heroes from the Battle of Vytal as well as the child of the Chief of Menagerie’s daughter.  So from the word go, Aurora seemed like she was going to have a very easy and comfortable life.  But Miles and Blake took great effort to make sure that their daughter did not enter the world of adulthood with the notion that she would get everything that she wanted without working for it, or that the world was as beautiful as the life she grew up with.  Blake was sure to show Aurora the horrors that the Faunus had to endure over the course of the last several centuries, and Miles was sure to show her the horrors of war and destruction, letting her know that even those who aspired for peace were not safe from the harm of war.  Aurora was very well traveled.  Her family showed her many different locales across Remnant and introduced her to amazing people around the world.  It also helped that since Miles and Blake were still active as Hunters that they had two places where they lived.  They had their house in Menagerie of course, but they also had an apartment in Vale where they spent a good amount of time, especially when Miles and Blake were out on missions.  This allowed Aurora the chance to become good friends with Gray and Ember, as well as a lot of the local children who lived in Vale.  She made several friends, each of whom had many different backgrounds and personalities.  Aurora was a bit unsure of what she wanted to do with her life while she was younger however.  Her younger brother Daniel was born a few years after her.  And while he did learn a lot of the same things that Aurora did, it became apparent that he had no desire to be a Huntsman like his parents.  Miles and Blake were not disappointed by this, rather they were happy to see their son forge his own path forward.  However, this caused to grow doubts about her own future and what she wanted to do.  She knew that her parents would love and support her no matter what, but she honestly didn’t know what else she would be if not a Huntress.  Her parents constantly told her that it was okay for her to follow her own path.  Miles even encouraged it, saying that it was important to have people who cared about helping others but did more than just fight monsters in the wilderness.  Blake also talked about how important it was for young Faunus to do good in the world in more than just fighting the Grimm and other criminals.  Aurora took all of this to heart, but was still unsure of herself.  But one day, there was a surprise horde of Grimm that attacked Menagerie.  No one knows for sure what drew the Grimm to that location, but all that is known was that it was a terrible day.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the Grimm attacks of old, but it still created a great amount of terror.  This was a defining moment in Aurora’s life.  

 

She still remembers it as clear as day.  Her parents were off fighting the horde and she was left with her grandparents and the guards that patrolled the area.  However, a new species of Grimm had surfaced and began attacking the town.  These new creatures were mole-like creatures that scientists later named Tunnlers.  They were creatures that attacked from beneath the ground in order to surprise their prey.  This created a huge disadvantage for the Hunters fighting and left several civilians at risk.  However, Aurora quickly leapt into action the moment the monsters started popping up in town.  The family had an old family heirloom sword that was supposedly wielded by Miles’ family eons ago, but hadn’t been used in years as Miles forged his own blades before entering Beacon.  It was a single silver blade with a golden hilt without any other accessories, as it was forged long before it was common to combine firearms and Dust with handheld weapons.  Aurora joined the local militia and Hunters who remained to defend the town.  It wasn’t an easy battle.  Aurora didn’t have much combat training yet, so she mostly played a role of support in the battle.  Striking the final blow in the heads of wounded Grimm, or slashing wildly at any nearby Grimm to distract them long enough for a nearby adult to finish the creature off.  But one moment changed everything for her.  She saw a Tunnler making its way towards a child who had gotten lost in the chaos.  In that moment, her grandfather Ghira leap into the path of the creature fully prepared to give his own life to save the child’s.  What Aurora accomplished next, even to this day when Aurora does it regularly, it is difficult to describe.  It was almost as if all of reality had slowed to a crawl.  In that moment, Aurora didn’t know what happened, but she didn’t question it and rushed towards the Grimm attacking her grandfather.  With one quick strike, before anyone could even blink, one second the Tunnler had a head, and in the next, it didn’t.  After that, Aurora felt completely drained and passed out where she stood.

 

            When she came to, she found herself in her parents house recovering.  The threat had been dealt with, and Menagerie, despite taking some heavy damage, was still standing.  Afterwards, Aurora and her family took the time to find out what her Semblance was and how it worked.  After some practice, it turned out it was a speed based semblance.  It had elements similar to Ruby’s speed and Jacob’s time dilation, but where Ruby moved faster through a sort of phase shift with the rose petals, Aurora’s speed is a true high motion Semblance.  Wherein her body is moving at a high speed and as a result, can move faster than the rest of the moving world.  However, with practice and trials, it became clear that this Semblance drains aura super-fast.  It doesn’t cause the damage that Miles’ Semblance causes himself, but it is an ability that should only be used in emergencies.  Following this event, Aurora felt that she needed to be a Huntress as her career.  Seeing what the creatures of Grimm could do firsthand, she felt a sense of duty to help protect what matters.  Following that day, she started training in earnest with Miles and Blake.  She decided to keep the family sword for training, but also picked up the same skills of dual wielding as Miles had.  Due to this, she forged her own swords with some of the finest blacksmiths on Menagerie.  One sword was a white-ish orange, and the other was a deep blue, which Aurora thought went well with the color of the family sword.  Over the course of the remaining formative years of her life, Aurora kept training to be a Huntress.  While there were talks about possibly having a fifth academy being built in Menagerie, those didn’t come to fruition before Aurora already went to Beacon to begin her training.  During this time however, she would face the greatest of trials.

 

 

 

Case of Sora Nikos

 

 

 

            Sora grew up with so many siblings, he didn’t know any other desire than to simply get away from everything and just be by himself without several others around him.  Between both his parents being legendary heroes, one of them the Headmistress of an Academy, and his siblings all being extremely gifted fighters, he always had a sense of needing to push himself further by his own merits without relying on his heritage.  This played into him discovering his Semblance when he was very young.  There was one day where he felt like he was completely smothered.  The whole family was training out by the ruins of Kuroyuri, and Sora was feeling especially stressed and panicked at that very moment.  All he wanted to do was get to where he could be free.  And the next thing he knew, he was flying through the sky like a bird.  At first, initial reactions were that it was perhaps a polarity semblance similar to Pyrrha’s, as in he was able to control some of the metal plating on his armor to allow flight.  But after further testing, it became clear that he could fly without anything holding him back.  It didn’t drain his aura too much, it didn’t drain his stamina at all, he could just fly practically unhindered.  While it wasn’t a powerful ability directly linked to combat, it was useful all the same.  Sora continued with his training.  He took up the weapons of twin shields on his arms that he used as weapons and defense.  Hand-to-hand combat was his specialty, and the shields provided some extra power to the strikes.  They could also fire shots akin to Yang’s gauntlets, and they could be joined together to form a single short sword.  Sora never really used the short sword much, only if he felt the need to change up tactics on his opponent.  When the time came for him to choose a school, most people thought that he was going to choose Haven where his parents both worked.  But continuing to live his life where he had always lived practically smothered by his family was not to his liking.  So he decided to go to Beacon Academy.  While both Atlas and Shade Academy made attempts at recruiting him, Sora had no desire to join the military of Atlas nor spend time out in the wilderness of Vacuo.  While he did dream of flying over the vast stretches of desert in Vacuo, he had also heard stories of the many bandit groups and giant Grimm out in the wilderness.  Plus, he always loved Vale.  For whatever reason, whenever he visited, he felt more at home there more than in his home in Mistral.  And while he felt safe and secure in this new place, not everything lasts forever.

 

 

 

Case of Hera Grover

 

            Hera always had a strange understanding of how the world worked.  She had seen so many different things during the course of her young life given the fact that her parents travelled a lot, but most of the things that she had to deal with in her mind were from her dreams.  For as long as she could remember, Hera had dreams of a woman with white hair and red eyes controlling hordes of Grimm across the world.  But that wasn’t all that she saw.  There were sometimes dreams of things and events that made no sense to Hera.  Worlds where her mothers never existed.  Or a world where Natalie and Arri's teacher Verum were the ones who raised her and Arri instead of Ruby and Natalie.  Or worlds with monsters completely different from Grimm with people who fought with magical blades instead of just technology.  Or worlds where instead of fighting Grimm, people were more obsessed with romance than with protecting the world.  This troubled Hera at a young age.  She rarely told anybody about this and kept it to herself.  Daily training would help keep her mind off of these different anomalies.  As she grew older, she pushed her dreams to the side and became more focused on the world in front of her.  Unlike the rest of her teammates, she was actually born with knowledge of how to use her Semblance.  Natalie would tell stories of how Hera would be crawling on the floor before she had learned how to walk, and she would stretch up to where the cookies were kept and make a huge mess.  With some training and guidance, Hera discovered that she could stretch her body to almost infinite lengths.  She decided that her weapons should make the most of this ability, so she wore iron gloves with pistols installed in the wrists.  She studied martial arts with Lie Ren whenever he would come to visit or Hera’s family would go visit the Ren’s.  The gloves were built with the idea that she could use them quickly and freely, but they still weighed enough that she could do some serious damage.  Along with that, Hera discovered one day when she was making jokes with her older sister, that she could actually transform her face and body to impersonate people.  However, ever since that moment, she has not been able to do it at will very well.  Along with that, several different tests revolving around her abilities have yielded some interesting results.  While her body can stretch great lengths, it can only be done if Hera wills it, and it primarily only works on the arms and legs.  Any attempts at stabbing her doesn’t result in a more comedic rubber-person moment, but rather the body responds as if aura is naturally used to deflect the attack.  And if she runs out of Aura, then loses all stretching abilities and whatever form her body was in was stuck like that until she regenerated enough aura to revert back to normal.  While her stretching does not drain her aura fast, it is something that Hera has to keep in the back of her mind at all times as to not end up looking like a pretzel for a few hours.  However, this did not deter her.  She had the advantage of growing up with both her parents around to help train her as her father had to deal with his artificial limbs and her mother needing something to do with Arri off at school.  Hera had a great time connecting more with her adoptive parents and becoming more of a fighter.  And when the time came for her to go to Beacon for school, she faced this new challenge with confidence and excitement.  But not she nor any of the other members of her team could have anticipated what came next in all their lives.

 

 

 

The Pieces Are Falling Into Place

The Warriors Begin to Take the Stage

A Period of Peace 

Will Begin to Shatter

At a Point Where it Bends.

Author's Note

Please read/review/enjoy!

Reviews

[Shep]

Love the history of each of the characters it gives a sense to who they are. It makes me want to read more as i continue reading this saga. Nicely done and very well written. Please return the love. .

to who they are