[center][hider=image][img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/21/9b/95/219b956a4e0f652eed65ba35285554db.jpg[/img][/hider]
[h2]Theodore 'Teddy Bear' Howser[/h2][/center]

[b]Age:[/b] 41

[b]Position:[/b] Pilot Sergeant

[b]Personal History:[/b] Theodore Howser was born on a refugee barge fleeing New Halcyon as it was consumed by Abberants. Life on barge 117-Beta was harsh: food supplies were thin and medicine supplies even thinner. People died in the hundreds every day. those who worked earned more rations than those that didn't, so Theo spent his childhood repairing oxygen scrubbers and cleaning out waste recyclers. Unlike some ships, the refugee barge wasn't a permanent settlement. It was part of a larger fleet that flew ahead of Aberrant incursions, rescued as many people as they could, and then fled. 117-Beta spent seventeen years in transit before Theo's boots touched soil for the first time in his life.

Poverty loomed over the Howser family even here. 

Levi Howser, Theo's father, was paralyzed during the invasion. The cybernetics necessary to repair his spine cost far than than they can afford. Even with minimum medical attention, his bills are astronomical. He's trying to make a career out of dictating novels with a speech-to-text program, but it isn't going well. 

Asmara Howser worked for a non-profit education advocacy group before her planet was destroyed. She works fifty hours a week as a public educator and another fifteen as a private tutor. Its enough to scrape by even if it leaves her children to fend for themselves most days. 

Theo decided he needed to ease the burden on his mom, so he decided to pitch in. His application to military service was accepted near instantly- the machine always needed more bodies- and he was shipped off world for training two weeks later. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life. The regiment's doctor nearly failed him out after he vomited all over himself and passed out during a run. The human body could only take so much punishment and he was already malnourished when he showed up; Theo wasn't ready. Be it luck or providence, it just so happened that the chief medical practitioner at that particular boot camp was a Halcyonite too. Major Russom Samir prescribed an expensive physo-gene therapy program that built Theo back better than he'd ever been, and two months Samir cleared Theo for service.

Thanks to recommendations from  Major Samir and Lt. Colonel Strutzheim, Theodore was accepted into the pilot program. No one would've called the boy a prodigy: he made more mistakes than most every single time he climbed into the cockpit. But none could deny his passion. There was a fire in his heart that drove him harder than anyone would've thought possible. 

The flame followed him through his next two decades of service. He never let the tragedies of his youth define him. He never let himself dull to the little pleasures of life, like a hot cup of terrible coffee or a night dancing with a pretty woman. Even at forty-one years old he lives every day with the same passion of his youth, for he knows full well it could be his last. A universe cursed with the Aberrants was a harsh one- but life was about more than its darkest hours. 

[b]Equipment:[/b] The [url=https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/016/365/765/large/joe-peterson-dropinwip02.jpg?1551889008]MBM-78 'Grizzly'[/url] heavy assault mech is a fifty foot tall death machine designed to chew through low-class Aberrants like a hot knife through butter. Its primary armament is the X-66 Prometheus: a massive ten-barreled, halocarbon-cooled rotary cannon with a fire rate of sixteen thousand thirty millimeter rounds a minute. The Grizzly carries an auto-factory backpack that rapidly manufactures a variety of ammunition from high explosive and armored piercing to more specialized inferno and swarmer rounds, depending on the situation. For its secondary weapons, the Grizzly is equipped with dual Augsburg Arsenal shotguns for fending off targets that get inside the main cannon's arc of fire.       

[b]Notable NPC:[/b] [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/bb/a8/0abba8e8d3f1d04f21f98bd27a84b5f5.png]Russom Samir[/url] is a military doctor and major in the Armed Forces. He's a native of the planet New Halcyon, which was lost to an Aberrant invasion over forty years ago. Many of his peers consider him a sardonic man that is difficult to work with, with utterly terrible bedside manner. Still, Russom cares deeply for his charges, and tries to maintain relationships with those few people willing to put up with his bitterness. He has a service record longer than his arm and has earned many a favor from higher ups by saving their lives. Teddy is one of those friends- the two trade messages frequently and make plans to share a drink or two whenever their paths cross. Theo owes Samir everything for saving his career when he was only a teenager, and he does whatever he can to pay Samir back for his...unique brand of kindness.