A Pair of Prodigies:
When Dad passed his old journal down to me, I don't know if I expected to have any use for it anytime soon. Between me and Mom deciding what weapon I should focus on training with, Dad helping me craft my bow-katana Emerald, and Sandy training me, I didn't exactly think writing down what'd happened in my life every now and again was high on my priority list. After all, I always thought training to make sure I can make it into Haven Academy was more important than a journal – not that I didn't appreciate the idea of logging the events of my life down, but I have my Semblance and a myriad of other things to focus on first.
For the first few weeks I had this damn thing it was just… interesting reading I guess I could call it. Dad always said that he'd kept it as a sort of dream journal, so that on those rare occasions he did dream he'd be able to look back on them, for whatever amusement that gave him. It definitely amused me that's for sure. Elaborate stories of elves and magic and dragons, a world where Grimm don't even exist – or maybe were called Daedra, he never really specified – the list goes on. Heck, if my first impression of him was drawn from the journal and not from being raised by him, I'd probably be sooner to assume he was a writer rather than the blacksmith and leader of the clan he is. I suppose that just goes to show how far I have to go to become well-versed enough in the arts to be ready to inherit the clan down the line. For now, I'll follow Mom's advice – she has told me time and again; "Opal, you need to take things one day at a time, or you're going to run yourself ragged!" Besides, inheriting the Malachite Clan's a long way away, and I could probably do with taking more advice from the human half of my parents. I may connect more with Dad any day of the week about being a Faunus or blacksmithing techniques, but sometimes Mom's simple advice is just what I need to stay calm – I just wish she didn't have to give me that advice seemingly on the hour some days.
That having been said, I sorta dropped the ball when it came to keeping track of daily events now that I've decided to start writing in the thing. A few months ago, I met this awesome person in the market by a stroke of amazing luck. Her name's Aurora Borealis, and much like me she's destined to one day lead her clan forward, but more importantly, she's something of a kindred spirit to me. It was clear from when we bumped into each other looking for whetstones in the market that we were both fighters, but as we got to talking I learned she adored music, Huntsmen, and honing her talents just as much as me. One thing led to another and I hardly even noticed weeks turn into months as we began sparring with one another. Now that her family is hosting some sort of clan gathering and we have to take a break from our shared training, I finally have the chance to put my thoughts into my journal.
I know for sure that this isn't just a passing friendship or anything either. We've known each other long enough to realize that aside from both being prodigies in combat and our Semblances, and our love of the arts, we've grown closer together than we have with any of our short-term friends before now. So, with all that in mind, I'm pretty sure that the gods have finally given me the sister and best friend I've never really had up until now, and for that I consider myself extremely lucky.
Oh! And unlike Sandy – bless his soul for finding the patience to tutor me in combat – whose fighting style with his kanabo keeps him too slow on the ground to teach me about more nuanced, agile combat – Aurora is just as mobile as me, with a Semblance to match. Where I've clung to walls and created bursts of speed as if I was a born assassin with my Semblance, Aurora can create similar results not from her own body, but from what her Semblance allows her to manipulate. Although she can only manipulate a unique metal her clan has forged specifically for her metal-manipulating Semblance, she makes the most out of that metal and then some, using it like an extension of herself.
Where I prefer to wear some stealthy black and green clothes to keep me light on my toes and make the most of my Semblance's evasiveness, she wears her black and blue segmented metal armor like a second skin. Add on the metal cables she uses like extra limbs and she's just as mobile as me, swinging around the sparring ring like a whirlwind of steel and bullets. Even without the bunch of cables she has attached throughout it, she moves faster than some Huntsmen and Huntresses could even dream of moving when wearing metal armor. Add on top of that her naginata-assault-rifle Sapphire and getting near here is just an invitation to be bound in metal before being cleaved in two.
She's the only person my age I've ever been able to spar with to a standstill and keep up a conversation with without running out of things to say, so I suppose it's no small wonder Dad noticed I'd been forgetting to write down my thoughts. Between hanging out with her, sparring with her – again, I'll never get over how she can keep up with me when even Sandy sometimes has trouble keeping an eye on me before I strike – and just hanging out, I think this old thing was the last thing on my mind. Even now, I can only hope to keep my mind off the possibilities of what I'll end up learning about my Semblance or my fighting style the next time we meet up.
The only other thing on my mind nowadays has to be Haven Academy, now that I think about it. Professor Lionheart is going to be accepting new students soon, and I'm more than certain Aurora and I will finish our primary training in Sanctum in time to transfer over to the academy. From what I gather, becoming a Huntress is probably the only career Aurora's ever really thought about pursuing, and I think I know why. No matter how much we may both love the arts and our clans, there's something of a big allure to the chance to gain honor and respect for something more than simply being born into the upper crust of society. Huntsmen protect the innocent from both the Grimm and anyone who would see them harmed, and they earn their reputation from something more than a family name – even if some of them don't live long enough to see their earnings or inherit their clan in the first place.
No matter what the risk, Aurora's enough of a friend to me now for me to say with certainty that she really does want to be known for something more than her family name, and although I know she (or I, for that matter) will never leave behind her love of the arts and Mistral's beauty, she'll at least be respected for all the right reasons as a Huntress. That, and not having to answer to the city council is certainly a perk of being a Huntress both of us appreciate. If you're just a clan leader and you get on their bad side, you might be in for prison time, upper class or not. If you're a Huntsman or Huntress though, you might get a lot more leeway depending on how well-respected you are among the people. Judging by how both me and Aurora are up-and-coming prodigies by all accounts, I like to think we'll have a little extra favor when it comes to the politicians here if and when the time comes.
Anyway, as for me? I can't say my choice in career was always as adrenaline-pumping as becoming a Huntress. All things considered, up until relatively recently, I thought for sure that I was just gonna wind up taking up the mantle of leader of the clan and continue to hone my smithing – but the gods had other plans, I guess. After that Grimm attack on me, my parents, and Sandy on our way to camp at Lake Matsu a while back left half of our guards dead and me with a need for a new freaking eye – not to mention the tear in my poor left cat ear – it's not like I could just sit idly by and not try to prevent something like that happening again! It's not exactly a job I'm pursuing for revenge though, despite whatever Dad may sometimes think. If I was an 'eye-for-an-eye' kind of girl, I think Sandy and his remaining guardsmen fighting off all the Grimm that dared to come to attack us before we got back to civilization woulda been enough payback for me. No, I just wanna make sure that my family never has to nearly die or stress so much ever again because I couldn't protect myself ever again – and becoming a Huntress is just the perfect way to do that.
But that's all in the future, and I have katas and sword techniques to practice if I wanna have a chance of hitting Aurora, and not just ending up with the two of us evading every one of each other's blows every time we spar. Even if that means I need to have my parents and the clan's inner council hovering over me to give me pointers, I plan on bringing a few surprises to our next match, so I'll take whatever tips they have to give me. After all, it's not like my family's advice has let me down before. If it did, I wouldn't have been able to make Emerald, let alone learn to wield it well enough to get accepted into Sanctum.
Author's Note: So yeah! There's the first chapter of the Tale of Team Iridescence! I can only hope that in the future I'll be able to keep up the quality! And before you ask – yes. Yes, I did do a shameless self-reference in this chapter and I HAVE NO REGRETS. Its as close to a crossover as I could ever make, anyway lol.
Oh! And shout-out (prepare for a lot of those) to Dunedan! He was my inspiration, primary consult, and constant pen pal concerning my ever-shifting ideas of what could make ToTI a good story despite my niche method of conveying the plot.
UPDATE NOTE: As of November 6th, 2018, ToTI has undergone a rather… drastic overhaul, as you may or may not have noticed. A few weeks after finishing Volume 5 of ToTI, I experienced one of my imagination's oh-so-fickle 'epiphanies' as I like to call them, and asked myself the question – "What if Jade was a woman? Would that change anything?" At first, the answer was a simple 'nah.' But then… I thought about it. I thought about the potential for FemJade's possible romantic interest growing organically rather than the pre-ordained ship of Jade had in the main timeline, and that lead me to ask – "What if Lux was a Faunus? Would he and FemJade (aka Opal) have any interactions concerning the Faunus?" And so on.
Eventually, I found that the Opal timeline I was thinking of fleshed out more about the Griseo twins and the POV of Iridescence than the original timeline ever did allow, at least in my eyes. That, or it simply provided me more potential for writing character development. One thing led to another… and I found myself more eager to entertain the idea of Opal in Volume 6 than Jade, for whatever reason, and thus I made my choice to overhaul ToTI's entire fanon of OC's in favor of creating Opal herself.
I will always look back on the original Jade timeline with fondness, due to it being my first exercise in exploring the world of Remnant through my – admittedly niche – writing, but I hope that the alterations made as of now will prove to make Tale of Team Iridescence a better fanfic now than it was before.
Cheers!
~Constipated Genius~
PS: Oh, and I do have a link to provide here that'll bring you to where my commissions of Team Iridescence's members will go as they come out, but since this site hates links... I'll just have to tell you to go to twitter, then add a (slash)grim10222 at the end to find my profile. Called 'SpaceCocaine,' with a pfp to match - you'll know it when ya see it! Also, they're also located on DeviantArt under the username ThatOneNerdYaKnow – I'd look forward to seeing ya there!