Vaish-194

Vaish-194, also known as Codename: ISHTAR is a operative serving under as part of the Asymmetrical Action Group. Born on the frosty human colony of , Vaish was cared for by her aunt and uncle alongside her twin sister in her early years. That changed in 2538, when Vaish was abducted as part of the second class of the SPARTAN-II program, being replaced by a back home. Spending the next eight years on , Vaish underwent rigorous training alongside fifty-four other children under CPO Alisson Wilmer and other drill instructors. During boot camp, Vaish built up a reputation of being rebellious in nature, defying her trainers and getting into scuffles with her fellow recruits. Paired with two other similar candidates with a strong sense of individualism, she was named leader of Viridian Team alongside teammates Nessa and Gene.
Despite struggling with team cohesion at first, Vaish quickly proved herself to be an exemplary trainee and often led Viridian to top positions in competitions and challenges, though not without their fair share of reprimands and punishments for their behaviour. Throughout training, Vaish would take a liking to hand-to-hand combat, often attempting to learn more than one discipline at once, and also showed a passing interest in poetry. Seven years later, she underwent biological augmentations successfully and, following another year of training, officially became a SPARTAN-II in the year 2546 alongside the rest of Viridian Team.
Originally operating alongside the rest of her Class II SPARTANs in , Viridian Team were soon separated from her peers to be inducted into ONI 's AAG group, being rechristened as MIRAGE Unit. Vaish frequently led MIRAGE into deep space operations behind enemy lines, either in tandem with an crew or more often on their own, conducting long-range surveillance and disruption of Covenant and rebel forces.
With the war's end, MIRAGE pivoted towards a greater focus on counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism operations, tracking down and other such factions posing a threat to the budding alliance between the UNSC and the . Vaish also found herself frequently splitting away from her team to run solo operations or partner with other units, most notably the binary Headhunter unit of Senna-G074 and Iris-G176 who came to view her as a mentor figure. Following the sudden outbreak of the , Vaish found herself stranded on the frontier world of Orphalese alongside her fellow SPARTAN-IV Parisa Farahani. Living a tranquil life away from war for a short while, Vaish and Parisa grew close and eventually began a relationship, with their future indeterminate.
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==Biography==
===Childhood Years (2531–2538)===
When Maya Sankar became pregnant out of the blue after a brief affair with a VIP she was assigned to protect, she felt conflicted about making her next choice. Maya was reluctant to devote the next two decades of her life to raising her child, working in some sort of Administrative role while the war with the Covenant raged on. Puzzled about what to do, her relief came in the form of her younger sister's willingness to take care of the babies, now twins, safely on the colony world of Europa. Believing this to be her best option, Maya availed her maternity leave and spent the rest of her pregnancy on . Months later, on April 12, 2531, the twins were born, named Vaishnavi and Aisha.
Spending another year or so on Europa, Maya entrusted the twins to her sister and brother-in-law, and promptly returned to active duty as a field agent. While they were kept in the dark about the identity of the father or how often Maya would visit them, the couple nonetheless raised the twins alongside their own son, and the three would grow up as siblings. However, Maya couldn't let her sister carry the entire burden of her kids' childhoods, so with help from ONI and cashing in a few favours, Maya helped secure a promising future for the family by employing the kids in the state's top-ranked school and generously providing her parents with money and other facilities as assistance. Vaish grew up largely in Denegroth and would prove herself to be a gifted child in both academics and physical activities. 
At the age of seven, Vaish was approached by two unsuspecting ONI agents who claimed they were on her mother's behalf and just wanted to ask her a few questions. Believing their words about being sent by Maya, Vaish didn't feel any suspicions about them and answered their queries freely. What she didn't know, however, was that the agents were part of the SPARTAN-II program, having identified suitable genetic markers in Vaish after obtaining biodata from a vaccination drive. Within a week, Vaish was abducted a week later after the ONI agents had verified her to be a valuable candidate for the program. Unbeknownst to anyone, Vaish was replaced by an identical flash-clone, a frail human being plagued by several illnesses before succumbing to them within a year. Devastated by the loss of her daughter and blaming herself for not prioritising her, Maya grew increasingly distant from the family as she threw herself into her work while the war was getting worse and worse. While her twin sister would grow up to be a researcher for the 117 Institute, Vaish, however, had unwittingly embarked on a completely new journey as she, alongside fifty-four other children, was transported to Reach to become something so much more.
===SPARTAN Training (2538–2545)===
===Graduation (2545–2546)===
===Human-Covenant War (2546–2553)===
===Post-War Years (2553–2558)===
===Stranded (2558–2560)===
===Retrieval (2560—)===
==Character Traits==
===Personality===
A defiant child with a mild temperament, Vaish was constantly a name invoked by her drill instructors during training, both prestigiously and notoriously. While often silent or spending little time on conversations when not relaxing, she was undoubtedly a kind and empathetic person who respected her fellow teammates and trainees and occasionally would even prioritise their own successes over hers. Impulsive since childhood, Vaish was infamous for quickly leaping into situations without careful consideration and decisive planning, but what she lacked in premeditated approaches, she quickly made up for by being extremely adaptive to any strange scenarios or finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings. This often won her several competitions during training, as she quickly gained a reputation for never being successfully ambushed, and even if others managed to get the drop on her, she would punch her way out to victory if necessary.
Following her augmentations and graduation as a SPARTAN, Vaish found her new enhanced body a lot more comfortable in comparison to some of her peers who struggled at first. While her MJOLNIR armour quickly became a second skin due to frequent use on the battlefield and other scenarios such as zero-g activity, Vaish found it comfortable to often disembark her powered armour and train herself without it, something she never appreciated until years later. After entering active duty as a SPARTAN-II, Vaish found it of vital importance to reduce her tendency to dive head-first into unknown situations and believe in her confidence and quick thinking to get out of it, as witnessing large swathes of death during the Human-Covenant War gave her a newfound sense of mortality and survival, a constant reminder of the haunting revelation of a technologically superior enemy stopping at nothing to slaughter humanity. 
After the war's end, Vaish and the rest of MIRAGE chose to stick with Beta-5's AAG Division and saw a lot more variety in their missions in the . Vaish felt her personality mature in these years, as she began to branch out into exploring what made her a human more than what made her a soldier. She took up a mentor role to the Gamma Headhunter duo Senna-G074 and Iris-G176, young Spartans who graduated too late to make a difference in the war and were often group with MIRAGE on their hunts across UNSC space for Covenant remnants and human extremist organisations. Encouraged by her teammate and later life partner Parisa Farahani, Vaish slowly began returning to old hobbies of hers during training in her spare time, chief of them being poetry. She was frequently found reading compilations of fabled poets and lyricists across human history during R&R, and more often than not, she preferred reading such poetry collections physically printed on paper. 
The most significant changes in Vaish's character happened during her two years of being stranded on Orphalese, a frontier world colonised during the Great War and out of jurisdiction by the UEG. After Kaurava's defection to the Created left her and Parisa stuck on the planet with no immediate exfil off-world, the duo temporarily settled on the agricultural planet as they slowly adapted a civilian life. Mellowing out from a lifetime of war, Vaish and Parisa's bond eventually blossomed into a romance, free from the burdens of responsibility and presented with opportunities to learn a different way of life. As temporary as this peacetime was before their distress signal was hailed by the UNSC and they were reintegrated into active service, their relationship didn't falter as they stuck with each other in a new galaxy as humanity splintered and rose in power.
===Skills & Abilities===
===Quotes===
==Gear & Equipment==
==Gallery==
==Appearances==
*Alag Aasmaan
**Tranquility
*Survival of the Fittest 
**Season 8