Tal

Description

(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

History

(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

Talya “Tal” Shoshani grew up as an only child in Tel Aviv, her mother a nurse and her father a businessman. Her parents weren’t strictly religious, but they were adamant Zionists, as were her grandparents. On her father’s side her grandparents were holocaust survivors from Poland and on her mother’s side her grandparents had spent the war in America, supporting the war effort. She grew up hearing of her peoples need for a homeland, the evil that had been wrought upon them for thousands of years while they wandered without one, and of the looming threats that their neighbors posed. The Palestinian uprising before the Oslo Accords only seemed to reinforce the danger her country faced, and she felt the shadow of war and conflict hovering over her childhood. When she turned 18, in 2001, she volunteered for the recently formed combat battalion Karakal (Caracal), determined to help defend her nation, her people, and to fight their enemies. The Second Intifada had been happening for some months already, and after going through her combat training Tal was deployed for combat. Nonetheless, she didn’t see any fighting until 2004 and this lasted sporadically into 2005 when her Battalion began evacuating Israeli citizens from the Gaza strip. During her days in conflict, Tal had definitely felt fear, but she also felt exhilaration. She had helped to defend her people and she’d faced the enemy bravely, shedding their blood. She’d already passed from required service into career service and she enjoyed her time in service until 2006, when the Israeli-Lebanon war began.

Tal was deployed against the Hezbollah soldiers in southern Lebanon and this was her first true taste of warfare. The Hezbollah were equally well armed and well trained and they fought with coordinated tactics that rivaled the IDF’s. Talya saw some of her friends die and she saw civilians gunned down, by Hezbollah and Israeli bullets alike. She left the war feeling drained. Part of her knew that she had fought to protect her nation, but another part felt slick red liquid on her hands. After her last firefight, when her unit moved forward to eliminate or capture whatever enemies were left, that they came across civilian bodies among the dead Hezbollah. Some of them were near where Tal had been shooting and she dreamed of their faces and their sprawled forms for months afterwards.

She waited until her contract with the government was up and then applied for a support position, instructing advanced combat training. She was chosen to learn and then teach advanced knife techniques and for three years she instructed soldiers in the art of knife fighting. After this period of peace and recuperation, she decided that she wanted to get back into the field again, the faces of the people she might have killed looming shadowing and almost forgotten in her mind. She signed up with the Magav Border Guard with the hope of joining the Yamas, an undercover Special Forces unit, but she was quickly turned down. After looking at her options, however, she soon applied for sniper training and went to the IDF sniper school to train before entering active duty with the Magav. During her career with the Border Police she spent time in the West Bank and was able to observe her Palestinian neighbors as they went about their lives. Involuntarily she began to see them as people, not enemies thirsty for her blood, and she began to re-examine the events of the past. In an effort to do her job better she learned modern standard Arabic and this allowed her to truly relate on some level the Palestinians. They became people and the issue of her state and theirs suddenly became complicated. She couldn’t view them as enemies anymore, and she felt herself dreading having to combat them. For the first time since she was a child she began to think about living a civilian life rather than die bloody or retire after the prime of her life. In 2012, however, any decision in the matter was taken from her. During a period of leave, on November 21st she got on the route 142 bus in Tel Aviv to visit her parents. Before she arrived at her stop, a bomb on the bus exploded. She survived the blast, but her right leg was mangled and her back was injured. She was discharged from reserve duty and let go by the Magav as she was no longer fit for duty. She spent the time recovering with her parents, and dreamt of living peacefully. She was no longer able to protect her people, they didn’t need her anymore, and now that her duty was done she wanted to do something constructive and tranquil. Staying in Israel wouldn’t make that possible. She’d given over a decade of her life to her country. It was time she gave a decade to herself. She spoke with cousins of hers in San Diego, people she had visited a few times as a teenager, and after hearing about their lives she decided that a life in the US would be perfect. She got all her affairs in order and got a visa to live in the US.

By the time she got her green card Tal had decided to enroll in college and get a degree in physics. She already knew quite a bit about ballistics from her military training and thought that perhaps helping solve crime would be a fulfilling pursuit. She also started taking Theology classes taught by Rory Gordon to help her re-examine her beliefs. Then, low and behold, one day she was driving home from temple when she hit a stop light and, when looking around, thought she saw a bullet hole in the window of a condemned building. Deciding to pursue her curiosity she parked her car and began to investigate. She found that the bullet had come from inside the building and against her better judgment ducked inside to see if she could find out what happened. To her surprise, she found a spatter of bullet holes and shotgun fire and then a stained drag mark leading to the basement. She followed the drag mark down to the basement and found a body covered by a tarp. Except that the things head and had looked wrong, twisted and alien, like some sort of mutant or creature. Disturbed, she turned to beat a hasty retreat when she ran into four people entering the building. A tense conversation happened but by the end of it Tal had learned several things. One was that monsters were real, threats to every human. Two was that these people hunted those things and kept them out of their neighborhood. Three was that someone in her neighborhood belonged to the same group. Four was that they called it Union. Five was that she wanted to join.

After contacting the local Union reps (Eli and Chrissy) she got a bit clued in on how things worked. She also started training with some local people at the gun range or in private, like with *insert Casitive’s character here* to get back into shape and begin the Hunt.