Aaron Ray Michaels was born to Raymond and Angela Michaels on July 25th, 1984 in Queens, New York. His early childhood was unremarkable until his discovery of music at age six. He competed in various choir competitions with his school after only a year of training, and was the lead soloist of their church choir. He started learning the piano at age eight, the guitar at eleven. Over the course of those years, he won a handful of ribbons and awards for musical achievement in an array of county and state musical competitions. Although he would not become as proficient with it as the other two instruments, he learned to play the violin at thirteen.
At 14, Aaron moved with his family from Queens to Midtown, as his father was transferred as part of his job, and the commute would have posed a serious problem. It was a rough transition, but he managed to make new friends, and there was still a band program at his new school. He made the right friends, too — musical ones — and they started a band together. The Lightbringers would last for six years.
Although they remained together, and got a few decent gigs, in the latter years of high school, Aaron reduced his time involved with his band, intending to enroll in the music program at New York University's College of Arts and Science. He studied hard and passed his SATs with a fair deal of room to pick any University that would have him. Paying for it all, on the other hand, wouldn't be easy. He lost a few relatives on September 11, 2001, but he wouldn't be discouraged from his dream of being a composer.
Aaron started the music program in 2002, but had to take things slowly, changing jobs as they became harder to work into his school schedule, and changing courses when they became too hard to work into his work schedule. He had only one or two gigs a year with his bandmates, and they had the most impact on his tuition. Still, they weren't enough. Student loans helped, as did some money from his parents on occasion, particularly his father, who had recently been promoted to district sales manager for the retail corporation he worked for. The extra money helped to move Aaron into an apartment in Greenwich Village, far closer to NYU than the Midtown condo they'd been living in. His parents moved into an apartment to further reduce their own cost of living. That move in 2004 ended the Lightbringers, as he finally separated from the band.
Aaron's decision to take his degree in five years instead of four led to his not graduating. Towards the middle of 2006, he began to get depressed. Life had lost its color, and he described things to a counsellor as seeing things in black and white. It was hard for him to explain, since he could see in color, of that he was certain, but things often seemed less vibrant to him. Things were just darker. Then the bomb happened. It shook his world in more ways than one. For all that he had faith, that faith was destroyed with the deaths of both of his parents, all the while he was as safe as he could be in northeastern Greenwich Village. Many of his friends, some of whom he had been bandmates with, also perished in the massive destruction. His world became even darker, and sometimes he actually swore he was seeing things in black and white.
His faith lost and his apartment not particularly livable, Aaron took to the streets with a bag of his personal belongings and clothes and his guitar. The piano he had at his parents' home was long gone, probably a pile of charred wood and ivory in a heap somewhere. It was not the smartest idea, taking to the streets, but it was the only way for him to survive. He managed to get his student loans waived while he suffered through unimaginable financial distress.
If it had been easy to get out of New York, he would have moved in with a relative, using the small savings in his bank account. Anywhere but there. But he made do with what he had, even if that was little. The music helped. The revelation of the evolved was startling, though. The fact that it was not some sort of terrorist attack in the conventional sense, but a man, shook him to the core. If the discovery had been under other circumstances, he may have felt some pity for those with abilities, but given the situation, he couldn't. They'd destroyed his life.
He moved from shelter to shelter, if he could find one, and otherwise lived in the gutted buildings. He lost most of his belongings trying to protect his guitar, which he began to cling to more and more in the coming days. For all that his faith was destroyed and his financial situation no better with the passing of his family, the music finally came back to him. He would play for people, on the street, at shelters, in the newly reopened pubs. With that music, he could see the color — the light — come back into people, back into his world, which had been grey for so long. Some of the people he played for seemed to feel it to.
It should have clicked. Somehow, he should have realized it. The grey, then the color. Some people smiling. But it didn't. Even with the announcement of evolved test kits, Aaron never gave it half a thought. He moved back into Greenwich Village, finding a small apartment above a grocer's. He dipped into his savings for the security deposit, and agreed to work for the man running the store in order to keep paying the rent, since his savings would run dry really quickly. He also went looking for a second job, to spend his evenings off playing music.
