App

[dust_and_echoes]

ABOUT YOU

Name: Zita
Are you 18 or over?: Yes
Other characters played: None

CHARACTER

Name: John-117 (The Master Chief)
Canon: Halo
Age: 42
History:
Once upon a time on a colony world, there was a little boy named John. One day when he was six years old, he was chosen as a candidate for the Spartan program. John was abducted from his home and taken to a top secret facility on the planet Reach. For the next eight years, he and 74 other children were trained to be super soldiers. The goal was to create a unit of elite fighters to be sent out to help the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) police its increasingly rebellious colonies.

At 14 they underwent augmentation surgeries. By this point John was the clear leader of the unit. It was very risky and only 33 of the recruits survived it in usable condition. Some died, others were so damaged by side effects that they could not continue. The surviving Spartans were issued specially made MJOLNIR powered armor and graduated from their training.

Then something went horribly wrong.

The UNSC made first contact with the Covenant, a coalition of alien races fueled by ancient technology and religious zealotry. A long and very bloody war began. John lost his best friend and right hand man on their very first mission against the aliens that same year. This marked the beginning of his slide into self-isolation. He began to withdraw from his camaraderie with the rest of the group in order to preserve his authority, to be the leader they needed, and to hide the depth of his grief.

John grew up. Despite all efforts, humanity was losing badly. Finally, the Covenant pushed the UNSC back to Reach in its unstoppable path toward finding the Earth. The Chief sent most of his Spartans to the planet surface while he and two others wiped the navigation computer of a ship that had been left in orbit. (To prevent the Covenant from getting Earth's coordinates.)

Reach fell, and the ship the Chief was aboard (The Pillar of Autumn) fled with a blind jump through slipspace according to protocol. Of the two he'd led on the last mission one was lost in space and the other clinically dead, though put in cryo quickly enough that she might be revived. It seemed likely, though, that John was the last living Spartan. He awoke from cryo to find the Pillar of Autumn under attack, it had emerged beside an enormous ring-shaped artificial world. The Covenant were here in mass, and the ship was going down.

The Chief was tasked with protecting the ship's AI, Cortana. John took Cortana in his armor's systems and fled with the rest of the Autumn's surviving crew from the sinking ship, which crashed on the ring.

The stranded troops struggled to stay alive faced with a hornet's nest of pissed off Covenant forces that believed this was a holy relic. Even worse, the Covenant had breached the depths of the ring and unleash an ancient parasite, imprisoned there for millennia: The Flood. Both Covenant and UNSC forces were attacked by hungry, zombie-creating Flood forms. The Chief and Cortana discovered that there was more than one ring, more than one of these "Halos", and that they formed a weapon array that had been created as a last ditch effort to starve the Flood by an ancient, long gone race. They would wipe out all life in the galaxy if fired. Even worse, the Covenant believed that activating the rings was an important part of their sacred "Great Journey".

Cortana detonated the engines from the Pillar of Autumn, destroying the ring and preventing the Covenant from firing it. She and John escaped in a Longsword fighter, and later linked up with another small group of survivors in a Pelican dropship. Together they commandeered a Covenant warship, which they used to go back to Reach to look for survivors. Among them they managed to save several Spartan-II's, to John's great relief. They went on to sabotage a Covenant space station where the armada was massing to prepare to attack Earth, and destroyed a significant percentage of the Covenant fleet.

The Chief returned to Earth and was outfitted with a new set of armor just in time for the Covenant to set its plan in motion and begin the attack. It also turned out that they had far from seen the last of the Flood. During the battle, the Covenant split into a civil war as it turned on one of its member species, the Elites. The Elites joined the human side and between them and humanity, they managed to kill the Covenant's leaders as well as the Gravemind bio mass that controlled the Flood.

This last took place on a far distant space construct, the one where the Halo rings had been built. It was detonated, and as the ship the Chief was on escaped the explosion something went wrong with the slipspace transition and the back half of the ship was left behind. John and Cortana were stuck floating in dead space. The Chief, out of options, entered cryo sleep to wait. Maybe, just maybe, they would be found.

You never know. He'd always been lucky.

Point in canon: ^- After that happened
Window Location: IN SPAAAAAACE. He sort of happened to drift through it, oops. By the time he gets back to it the ship has passed it by. Double oops. There's not much to see, just a bunch of blackness out in the Milky Way.
Universe: The year is 2553. Humanity went out into space and formed colonies that began to rebel against the government on Earth. This prompted the creation of secret super soldiers like the Chief. Then everything was horribly distracted by first contact with a bunch of religious aliens that decided they hated humanity and wanted to wipe them out. A huge war ensued that very nearly resulted in the destruction of Earth. It has just recently come to a really messy close, and despite the backbone of the alien military temporarily joining forces with humanity it's really questionable if this "peace" is going to last for more than, oh, five minutes.
Also there were space zombies and gigantic space super weapons made by an ancient, extremely advanced species involved. But those are just details.
Abilities: John is a Spartan-II super soldier, and all that implies. He's very big, can lift over 800 lbs even without the assistance of his armor, and capable of speeds exceeding 30 mph in short bursts. The MJOLNIR powered armor he wears is equipped with shielding and increases his strength, speed, and stamina. It also gives his reflexes a boost. His augmentations improved his senses greatly and his bones are supported by metal and ceramic so as to be nearly unbreakable. (He's managed it anyway.)
John has been trained to fight and knows the basic ins and outs of most human (and even some alien) weaponry and fighting vehicles from his world, from knives to ship-mounted MAC guns and jeeps to longsword fighters.
He may be socially stunted and awkward, but if you need to scrape together a desperate battle plan with limited resources against towering odds, he is your man.
(PS: Nobody try to borrow the MJOLNIR suit, trying to wear it will kill you if he doesn't first.)
Possessions: 1 MJOLNIR suit, 1 assault rifle with one clip left, a handgun with only a few rounds, and one fragmentation grenade.
Personality:
John-117 is a quiet, serious man who's better accustomed to being treated like a tool or weapon than a person. His job is his life, the people he's responsible for are the most important things in it, and his word is his vow. He is a good person, though he is not purely altruistic or a major idealist. He's seen too many awful things to have such a rosy outlook on life anymore, but he tries to do the right thing and balance pragmatism with it as much as possible.

As a result of his abnormal upbringing and continued social isolation as an adult, the Chief is more than a little stiff and awkward. John lacks a lot of normal human life experience, and sometimes it shows painfully. Most of his remarks are short, terse, and to the point, and John is far from a glib conversationist. He makes jokes on occasion, but it's hard to tell when he's kidding sometimes due to their usually grim nature and his deadpan delivery. He's rather jaded, most of the fire and zest for life he had as a boy has been beaten out of him by cold hard reality and nearly thirty years of fighting a long, slow, bloody defeat against an alien juggernaut. He's emotionally exhausted, and it's hard to even make him genuinely angry anymore. He has work to do, and nothing else is supposed to matter. He has the capacity to care about others, and to care very deeply, but he's reluctant to admit these ties mean as much to him as they do and is very undemonstrative. He just doesn't know how to express this care without violating his sense of a proper distance.

When it comes to other people the Chief is not overly trusting. He's used to watching his and his Spartans' backs with unfamiliar superiors, and he's been thrown under buses a few times too many to readily take to strangers. Before he gets used to you he might even come across as a bit paranoid. Even after he's gotten the measure of others, he's not very open or free with information about himself. He doesn't like to let people in, seeing his problems as his problems alone. It doesn't help that his origins are pretty heavily classified to boot. The Chief's existence is an exercise in self sacrifice for the good of everyone else. He is what he thinks his group needs him to be more than he is himself, and wouldn't have it any other way. He'll tear himself apart on the inside if he thinks that's what he has to do to be a pillar of strength to support everyone else, and do it without a second thought. He's loathe to enter into any relationship requiring a lot of openness intimacy, as he knows he's just not emotionally available enough and it would be selfish for him to pretend otherwise.

It's not just that the Chief's not used to being treated like a human being with important needs by other people. He's out of practice treating himself like one, too.

Thread Sample: Here! (This is from a continuity where he and Samus Aran have been working together for years)
Prose Sample:
John's life had been one largely free of fanfare. There wasn't much to celebrate, being a Spartan, and the last few years in particular had been little but grim. This was too early for a ceremony and medals, the worst was still yet to come.

"I thought you told me there wouldn't be any cameras," the Chief said, eyeing the drone that panned along to get him fully into the frame. Sgt. Johnson didn't miss a beat. "And you told me you were gonna wear something nice," he quipped, eyeing the heavy MJOLNIR suit sidelong. "Folks need heroes, Chief. Gives 'em hope. So smile will ya? While we still got something to smile about."

Given his choice, John would be in the field still. There was work to do. The Covenant were coming and every minute was precious. Even knowing that any little victory was a thing to be celebrated, knowing the high value of a scrap of morale, he still itched to be out.

"Gentlemen," said Admiral Hood as they approached. "We're lucky to have you back."

There was no time for Johnson to put in something high-spirited and irreverent before a familiar figure flared up on the holo-pad to John's right.

"Another whisper, sir, near Io. We have probes en route."

If the Chief were a man to smile, he would've done so then. Good old Cortana, already five steps ahead.

"I apologize, but we're going to have to make this short," Hood acknowledged, but John suspected that suited all of them just fine.

"You look nice," Cortana commented, peering up at him from the platform. "Thanks," he replied, a bit stiffly, though at the same time as Johnson. They glanced at one another, then settled back into rigid attention. Cortana smiled just a little. The Chief had to admit he'd missed her company. The Covenant were on their way. This would all probably be decided within a month, one way or another. He decided he could spare a few bright seconds before it all went to hell again.

Earth needed its heroes now just as desperately as it would in the coming days.

Plans: I intend to lock him out of his universe and let him go explore other ones. He might find his way back eventually if a window opens somewhere that's NOT a yawning void of dead space, but that's a maybe-or-maybe-not possibility. He's much more fun to play being a total fish out of water.
Notes: Uuuuuh. Nothing I can think of. Let me know if you guys need anything or if anything doesn't make sense!

DÆMON

Name: Arachidamia
Sex: Female
Form: Lupo Italiano (Dog)
Additional notes:
Nothing to report. Is a dog.
Why this form:
This is a relatively recent dog breed created by crossing a german shepherd with a wolf back in the mid 60's. The breed is maintained and jealously guarded by the Italian government, which uses it as a working animal. Like John, the lupo is not natural and was cultivated by an agency with a specific job in mind. It is reported to be superior to the ordinary german shepherd in its duties, much as the Spartans are to your average marine. The lupo is large, very resilient, a hard worker, and fearless. While it's very loyal to "its people" it is reserved and somewhat suspicious of strangers. The kinship here is obvious.