TTNoobs

ODST: First Contact

Sergeant Ruben Berne, Bravo-Team Office building, Winter 2525

"There's not much we can do about a crowd like that unless we start taking pot shots from the windows!"

Jason chimed as he slipped from the gloom of his windowed-perch, trailed pervasively by his room sucking silhouette, drooping from his feet and skirting the fringes of the dusted sills, reticent at the dimming of the sun. Berne's eyes lingered fleetingly at the shadow, at the point where, knee-high, it broke and splintered, spotted with ripples of shimmer in the half-light, animated at the fringe of its twisted form by the rhythmic hum of micro-gears and the hiss of hundreds of cushioned springs. Jason's mechanical adornments had not irked at Ruben's sense before, in ways, such limbs were a marvel, and on Earth were carved and worked into a myriad of divine and captivating forms, bejewelled or enamelled always in exuberant defiance of the reticence appointed of the cripple. But now, in the cauldron-heat of defiance below, and with the cyborg-girl, scarce twenty, scowling now in the corner with her metal-hands clamped to colder and more lethal steel, the leg seemed more profound, more prophetic, than the clump of hardware it had masqueraded as this last year.

Shall I start taking my measurements? Berne mused, tugging blackened gloves over the back of his hand before slipping it, cradle-like, into the grip of his battle-rifle, the cold of its padded-steel still invading his still-quivering palms. I am more...lucid now. He thought, filled still, even after all these years, with the convulsive adrenaline of a fight to come. It was a burden ever soldier reckoned with, Berne had instructed himself, shaving, perhaps two weeks ago, at a window-glass shard he'd clumsy polished with the remains of a sock, to fling yourself at danger when ever sinew demands that you recoil, but it was one for which he was eternally grateful. Feeling the surge of anticipation drumming at every extremity only confirmed the beauty, the immediacy, of his humanity, and, despite himself, he could not help but pity the two cyborgs at his command, such curiosities of nature blown off and lost to them forever.

Calming them down is useless- We need to redirect their attention, is all, without sparking full force violence.

Jason's continued, Berne snapping his head from the shadow to meet all too human eyes, once more. It was oft that Jason slumped beneath his helmet, but any illusions of a shrinking violet were dispatched to the wind by such irises, driving at their fringes and receding at violent turns, brimming with the ennobled flagellation of his youth. It was enviable, Ruben mused, as his helmet cruised over the dome of his skull, masking his jaded eyes and filling them again with the screaming orange of VISR, but how many others his age milled about now, beneath the smoke and pyre, armed with stolen pistols and the same, piercing gaze that would drive them and his team to a head.

You're good at giving speeches, Berne; Hop up on a podium, broadcast a message- Feed them some sob story, get them listening, sympathizing. Doesn't matter how. While you do, send Hanzer and I to grab our Nimbian. We're quick, clanky as we might be- Can get them in to have a little chat with out ambassadors before you even finish bringing the audience to tears."

Ruben scoffed at that, as Jason genuflected in teasing bow. Berne knew his pontification to be more Gilbert and Sullivan than Mark Antony, pageantry in the recitation stumped the stoicism that fit like a glove to so many ODSTs, and such a tone, all he could summon, could not be welcomed in the broiling-pot that the insurrectionists so clamoured to spill over.

"Keeps them from throwing molotovs at the capital, and unless somebody tries to fire on us while we're walking our new friend into the front doors, it shouldn't require a lick of bloodshed. Most of them are just farmers following the mob mentality, no reason to get violent with them right now. But, as always, Berne- The call's yours. And with fours and Iron on over-watch, it should go off without a hitch. As long as the Rookie can keep up with me."

"Seconded. But I stay with Berne. Something goes wrong, I can't back him up if I'm stuck jacking off up in some sniper roost."

Fours concurred, finally returned from the rhythm-ed void of his neurosis. The four-by-four clicking of his shotgun, his rifle, his thudding yet impossibly still cheerfully irreverent footfall had been piteous and grating, both, when Ruben and his now well-trusted medic had first crossed paths, huddled under the flickering lights of an beleaguered infirmary as the mad-doctor hap-haphazardly administered agonising needle-marks to those soldiers unfortunate enough to have been flaked by particularly sadistic innie-opportunists. Pipe-bombs were something Ruben hoped he'd never experience, recalling the shredded limbs devoid of whole-some flesh, the potted skulls still loosely cradling a brain lucid enough to agonise, sights that curled his stomach even to this day, perhaps five years on. Fours, though, fours had displayed no such qualms, patching, without em-pathetically at the ruined skin, before retreating to a corner to rap his knuckles four-fold in the wall. Now, having woken to the clicking of shells nightly, four on the dot, on and off for half a decade, Ruben saw the habit as little more than an enigmatic relaxant, akin to the glass of all-too-gasoline scotch the Sergeant through back in the wake of another placated arena of rebellious uprising. Anything to keep him on task.

"Where's Iron tucked away, anyways? Feels better to get some input from our best eyes before we go in on any plans."

Ruben centred his eyes, scoffing, guttural and phlegmy, from behind his muffled helm, before opening his comms for his pronouncement.

"I've heard from her"

The sergeant grumbled. To hear from his sniper,prone and vacant, no doubt, above, scanning the crowd with an ethereal, unknowable gaze, was a rare commodity it itself. In truth, Ruben knew nothing about her - long since abandoning any attempts at arm-round-the-shoulder chats in the mess-hall, pontificated scalding, as the Rookie had received, or even basic deference of greeting, all bequeathed the same, chilled response. For now, she was herself a commodity, a facilitator of knowledge. And it was always grim pickings.

"She seems to think the cauldrons about ready to bubble over, and soon, and I don't disagree."

Ruben recalled the light-show with which he had been entranced an hour ago, flares and tifo morphing into vulgarity-packed chants, that flickered profanity across his visor in a hundred hitherto feeble tongues and colours. When he had risen from his perch, sleepless, his irises still burned upon their closing, the sight of a petrol stoked and choking inferno fleeing, directionless from all sides of an upturned truck, coating the ultras and riot-police both in homogenising soot and, in the blind and colour-void struggle, the first of the thrown firsts and winding-ups of clubs had split the crowd further into factions of frenzy.

"Jason, as much as I'd love to kick-start my fledgling political career with a storied speech, I can't imagine a full-armoured ODST is going to be a paragon of diplomatic virtue!"

Berne wagged a dismissive digit in the in the air before fixing his eyes on Fours and beckoning him forth.

"It would be...appropriate for us to split up, we are limited in our resources, but I cannot tolerate any injury to our charges. Fours and I will find the ring-leaders..."

Grappling behind him in the gloom, Berne clamped a clumsy hand across the butt of a smoke-launcher, before throwing it at Jason's dangling arms.

"Your good self, and Kensington over here, will watch the crowd"

Berne commanded, gesturing at his second-in-command to recline himself across the sills once more. Kensington had an impeccable service record, it was true, but if in the song of silence Mira took the alto, K-Ton sung the bass. The man was apt and capable, moulded to the task of an ODST, if perhaps, prone to the chaff of subordination he did not by his extensive service merit, but he held his surrogate authority with a detached and pragmatic air. Berne knew his capable, but silence and militarism rung in his ears as a bleeding cacophony, and fours was far better a travelling companion. Besides, Jason was nothing if not gregarious, the stapled frame of a pair of vermilion tights perpetually above Berne's other-wise pristine bunk on the Prowler spoke to that. K-Ton would enjoy his leave of autonomy, and Jason would enjoy prising him from his shell.

"Perimeter alarms just got tripped too- someone's in the building."

Kensington implored, red flashing at his wrist casting his twitching face in a hazardous wash, even as his voice drowned amidst static and radio-chatter. This was grim news. The labour of the insertion had been draining, blood now pooled and steamed-off in clumps at Ruben's eyes, weeping as testament to his half sleep. With this encroachment, a crumbled and unassuming building against a smattering of lower-hanging fruit, came the foreboding gloom of the rebel's foreknowledge.

Have they evolved? Ruben thought, shuddering as he motioned to the stairwell, where the rookie twitched, a diminished predator, eager for the chance to discharge the weapon she had so delicately loaded with those cold, whirring hands. Do they spy on us as much as we do on them?

"...Recommend deploy CS gas to disperse the crowds, then proceed to target building..."

A command crackled into vibrancy from amidst the static ether before its voice dipped and receded again into the throng of shouts and the ringing of footfall on the marbled floors below.

"Right, safety's off, suppressors on..." Ruben barked, placing a hand on the Rookie's wire-mesh of a shoulder and pulling her back.
"Luciel, I want you to run upstairs. Use the DMR to spot for Iron, if we fail, she'll need all the help she can get."

Placing one foot on the stairs, Ruben whirled his armoured frame, clinking and shimmering in the evening-sun, to raise one final imperative digit in the Rookie's direction.

"Contempt." He Implored, eyes shivering and rapid with intensity. "Is not justified."

Turning with a gush of cooling wind, he squared his rifle to his sights, and softly descended.

"Permission to fire?"

Implored Iron, ethereally clear where everyone else had been crackled and piece-meal, her fingers no doubt drumming on her pristine trigger. They were close, he knew, perhaps only a metre of concrete separated sniper from commander, but all the same the clarity of her metallic twangs led credence to her name, and chilled at Ruben's weight-worn spine.

"Not just yet, please." Ruben whispered at the comms, the bottom of the first flight of stairs already screaming into view. "If the crowd hear a sniper, our goose is cooked. Fours and I will try to deal with them more discretely. You just sit tight and watch for trouble makers. I'm sending Hanzer to help you, don't get twitchy when she arrives."

Ruben glanced at his clock, the orange hum still driving whips of care-free steam from his snow-addled helm. 19:32, read the glow, stinging at Ruben's sleep-crusted eye-sockets. Time on missions was implacable, fluid, to him it had been decades since touch down, and yet minutes since the sun had last triumphed over the horizon. All he had was this one, excruciating pulse-light to keep him tethered to the present.

"K-Ton, Stick, keep pointing those smokes at the crowd. If Fours and I go down, go up to the roof and find a way out from there. It'll be all up to you. Other than that, sit tight. We'll be back once we've dealt with the wire-trip. Good luck, everyone. And K-Ton, remember to radio this in."

Sighing defiantly once more, Ruben threw his comm-link into a leathery pouch strapped to his thigh.

"No more chatter, Fours." He glanced back at his medic, steadying his weapon and rounding the stair case with a deft and graceful verve, keeping the balls of his feet prised precariously from each footfall.

"It's just you and me, now...

ODST: First Contact

Also, I'm working on a post right now. I started it just before @Treue posted, I can probably work that particular post in, but after that it's all getting away from me.

EDIT: Just to stress, Berne making remarks about your characters isn't reflective of my view of them, I just feel the need to explain his actions. If I take too many liberties, please reprimand me.

ODST: First Contact

@R31GN Thank you so much :) I have to say, I personally find fours to be a really interesting character - there's a lot to work with from a neurotic and detached young surgeon.

I think I've got enough to response to reply to, now, but if anyone wants to get a word in before-hand, do let me know.

ODST: First Contact

I can post pretty frequently, too. My uni goes back late, so it's dead around my town ATM, so unless I'm working I've got plenty of free time. Things may slow to 3-4 posts a week when I go back.

Also, the post frequency really depends on how people post. I basically can't post until we hear from everyone, but characters can converse pretty quickly through shorter posts. I really would like to get some more detailed talking going, in a group it's pretty easy for us to rely on military bravado/ tropéy lines, because that's all there is to say.

EDIT: Also, following on from that, I can't see any other RPs that have piqued my interest, and since I can't get one of my own going, this is all I've got.

ODST: First Contact

@Treue Go ahead, although I've moved on to giving the briefing, so make sure you only verbally respond to that, otherwise the conversation would feel a little disjointed.

ODST: First Contact

Right, I've made a fairly open ended post, so that anyone can jump in, or @vietmyke can amend anything I may have said for the purpose of the plot.

ODST: First Contact

Sergeant Ruben Berne, Haven, Winter 2525

It was quiet. Too Quiet. JK :)

There had been four way-stations between Ruben's squad and their prowler, shimmering now , no doubt, miles up in the vacuous expanse above, invisible to all but the most dedicated appraisers of Nimbus' notably honeyed sun-rays, who's tendrils the imperfect cloak oft-times flared and spun, like thread onto a hungry and life-starved canvas. Four workstations, and it was only here and now, huddled in the husk of a rumbled building, that Ruben had attuned himself to the electricity of rebellion.

When they had first touched down, assembled in a shivering bunker gilded with frost, the planet had seemed to be all it aspired to when it had christened its capital haven. Then, the sky had been awash in the pulsing amber of Nimbus' twin red-dwarf, which, with the recess of its parent, hung as on orb in the firmament, filaments of violent plasma streaking from its sides and grasping, vine-like, to the vacant sky before breaking into tubes of wispy purple aurora. On Earth, these displays confined themselves to the frosted wastes of the poles, where few people, loving of comfort, who clung tighter and in ever-greater numbers to the country swallowing great-cities, ever contrived to tread. On Nimbus, such views were a birth-right. Nimbus was new, fresh, the lights of Haven, perhaps only a million citizens strong, had glistened subserviently, and, perhaps, Ruben thought, appropriately, then on the shrinking horizon, no match for the heavenly opera that, even in the depths of winter, could be embraced by a man armed with little more than a shawl or coat to ward of the cold. These frontiersmen, sojourning out from the orbit of the inner-worlds and their torch of right-culture were deprived and naive of so many beuatious conceptions, Ruben thought, but with their natural theatre, and the simplistic radiance of the second-sun, it seemed they retained some small measure of the human spirit that, on Earth, seemed to have irreversibly dimmed. Ruben knew first hand, serving years ago at the foot of ONI as a biological science-officer, that to the UEG, there was no sentiment to nature - only consumption, and rage at its denial.

But that had been days ago, and as, with each discreet and slinking pelican drop, the docile glow of Haven grew emboldened to dominate the horizon, to drown out the cosmos wavering above, the peaceful allure of Nimbus drained, as if a torrent, from Ruben's war-wearied eyes. In the streets below burned pyres, stoked and spilled fort from the hearts of the Nimibians themselves and arrayed into patches of choking inferno, sustained by mis-matched oils and petrols, stolen from beneath the glow of house-lights that had once lit wholesome family meals, or providing dimming backdrop to countless, tenderly amorous encounters.

Now, all the lights in the city were ablaze and inferno, the power-stations long since abandoned to strike and to frothing indignation, or themselves consumed by rioting or protest. Beneath his feet, perhaps ten-thousand citizens crammed and milled about the streets. How many, Ruben thought, had simply fled their power-less and frigid homes, and joined the blaze not for ill-contentment, or for contrivances of politics, but for warmth and sustenance? How many cared not for the origin of their refugee-meal, the dispersion of which, itself, had now a cause for riotous conflict, the contenders competing now to paint themselves as forthcoming and benevolent with the piping weapons of stock and of soup.

Ruben rose from his seat, crooked in the sill of a wind-blasted window, from whence he had kept a keen and sympathetic eye on the crowd for these past forty-eight hours. At the crook of his nose pulsed an orange-tinged string of ticking numbers, their filament-heat steaming the clumped recesses of snow from the front of his still-polished visor.

"2h 37m have elapsed, it is 19:00 hours!"

The computer intimated over Ruben's private comms. It was an arbitrary sleep-time he had set, but he had known when it had been entered that he would not rest it through. The vibrancy of the self-righteous crowd pulsed within him, a viral and unwelcome proxy, filling him with a verve and excitement Ruben yearned to throw off his shoulders like a shawl, and to retreat, in the way his squad-mates had, slumped as detritus on the once-marbled floor of their vantage point. Ruben knew he had been in a place like this before, he had read his personal logs yearly, like a favourite novel, entranced by the years of movement, his movements, that held no place in his memory, but he could not allow himself to believe that his twitching and irrepressible alertness was a sentiment birthed to him from those times, lost in the recesses of Far-Isle's ashes.

"They were traitors..."

Ruben mumbled through the mufflers of his suit, and assured himself again. Pressing one hand to the dusted ground, Ruben lifted the one personal effect he had ever allowed himself, a hold over of his colonial-past - a simple plastic rosary. Ruben had no conception of how it had come his way, tucked, as it had been, into his swaddling clothes whilst he languished in Far-Isle's crumbling refugee-camps, nearly thirty years ago. At one time in its life, the rosary had been shimmering, perhaps real-ivory, ironically hewed from the husk of the nature those who followed its religion were sworn to protect. Now, one side was cast in shadow and in soot, bleached and blackened again by the raining thermo-fire that had levelled Ruben's one-time home and delivered him, trussed and hooded, to the doorstep of the UEG, and a life spent here, amidst the flames of more and more embattled colonies, who numbers rose with each rising and setting of whatever sun he happened to be sitting under.

Leaving memory at the window-sill, Ruben strode, thudding and deliberate, towards the centre of the room and to his make-shift depot.The squad had tinkered long into the night, tinkering malicious and not-un-remarkably cruel military tools into "weapons of peace" as if, in this dense and choking crowd, a cloud of smoke would be any less deadly when launched from a grenade-silo than a round of napalm-infused explosive. Still, Ruben's conciseness had insisted they be converted - brass was far too gleeful to deploy lethal force against these rioters, that one might think the UEG really did view their outer-colonists, not as dutiful children, but as cash-bags and expendable yokels. As he strode, the floor buckled and creaked in turns, robbing Ruben of any poignancy or grace as he wobbled to steady himself. The building itself was old and crippled, built in the now ancient, and inexpensive, Earth style of concrete and girders, but to Nimbus and its shearing winds and clumps of periodic dust-storms, holdovers from the still un-cemented terraforming process, it may as well have been a ill-planted leaf. According to the brief, it had been abandoned and unlivable for nearly ten years, and had been in miserable and unpleasant condition long before that, becoming a haven with Haven for sweat-addled narcotics abusers, and violent, secretive black-market trade.

Nimbus' first ruin...

Ruben mused, wondering how many more would fill its wake if he and his team were to fail.

"Bravo Team, what your status?"

Ruben motioned a hand to press him comm-button for reply, then lowered it, pausing to recall the particulars of the mission briefing he had dozed through some two days past. There was something about military planning that seemed so aloof, so pontificated - so detached from reality, that made Ruben recoil at the hearing of it. Throughout his decades of training, he had always found solace in academics, carving himself an indispensable place in the UNSC through his mind, and not his ability to be directed and poised, doll-like, to whatever target his superiors inferred, before slinking off to their officers' mess and the rump-steak with all the trimmings that awaited them. That was what was so liberating about the ODST corps - the designs off his superiors never came to fruition, and with his squad, Ruben was, for perhaps the first time in his life, his own master, and that was more liberating than a thousand righteous colonial uprisings.

"Copy that, Alpha-leader. We have completed our...circadian cycles, and are ready for where the crowd might take us! We will contact you once we've facilitated the hand-shake. Bravo-Leader out."

Ruben clicked the button again, and cringed. The reply was laced with far too much sarcasm, and the alpha-leader was a noted stickler for the rules, born, as he was, on Reach, in the shadow of the Azod shipyards. A man such as this could not have escaped being imprinted indelibly with compliance and submission.

"I'm good to go, just waiting for the orders. We'll show these fucking rebels a thing or two."Rambunctious group, huh? I like our odds though...""

The rookie's voice crackled over the comms, dripping with irreverent enthusiasm. She was remarkable, in a way, Ruben considered, striding over to her wake, the whirring of her cybernetics pulsing globules of dust in rhythm from the ground, women who had endured such tragedy were regrettably commonplace in the UNSC, but few of them bore it with such poise. To Ruben, her attitude was paradoxically irksome and inspiring, admirably resilient, but tinged with just a hint of sociopath - for is someone was not moved to emotion or to brooding by such a loss, would they be moved by anything, beautious or sorrowful, that life could appoint to them?

"You will show them nothing..."

Ruben grumbled, prising off his helmet and raising his brows in an imperative scowl. She was not a diminutive girl, but wagging her pistol flippantly from the window-frame, she looked every inch of her near six-foot frame as though a child would, at play with her father's effects.

"You are far too flippant with your contempt. If you are going to hold that implement, then I suggest you display to me a little more discretion in who is deserving of your use of it."

Ruben placed his hand on the pistol with a grimace, skillfully triggering the safety before fixing Luciel with a wordless, smouldering glare.

"Just because they can't see us doesn't mean you should be aiming a pistol down at them."

Muttered Fours, his eyes blinking rapidly, still recoiling from the shock of the comm-chanter he was too exhausted to fully process and react to. The man was flippant and contemptuous himself, perhaps even sadistic, but Ruben felt a twinge of respect for him, all the same. Beneath his scarred and greying eyes flickered, it seemed, the brain of a good-soul that, perhaps, needed some light encouragement to come forth. Waddling towards the window frame, Ruben tapped the back of the medic's helmet, in part to stir him from his fractious sleep, in part as a clumsy thanks for his scolding of the rookie.

This will work Ruben thought, The more I starve the Rookie and her outbursts of affection, the greater the drive to live up to our example.

"What's the plan, boss?"

Fours implored in response. The question was confirming somehow, if another of the squad had been so dejected in the briefing, then, perhaps, Ruben's little kingdom of six would be more conducive to any off-the-book detours. Gesturing to the rest of the squad, Ruben strolled over once more to the weapons cache, lifting a smoke-converted grenade launcher onto his lap before sitting down clumsily between two half-settled crates.

"The Plan, Fours, went out the window with that crowd. It was consumed in their pyres!"

Ruben wagged a hand flamboyantly. In ten years of giving military speeches, he found, for the soldiery, each one of which was endowed with a sense of divine-purpose and of self-importance; everyone appreciated a little theatre.

"Everyone, the ambassadors for the UEG have been holed up in the Capital Building for days, and they haven't done much in the way of their job description!"

That was an understatement. The Ambassadors seemed little more than the enablers of a coup-de-etat, riding to the colony on the pretence of concession, before depriving their fellows of legitimacy, and declaring them criminals. It was they who had summoned these riots that entrapped them, and Ruben felt little pity for their predicament, stacked, as they were, with armed guards possessed of dubious morals.

"So, then, if the ambassadors cannot make their entreaties, and leave the capital without being torn asunder by disgruntled protesters..."

Ruben paused, summoning all the gravitas he could from the room, crimson tinged now as the sun slipped below the horizon, and the first tendrils of the binary-star grasped the sky.

"Then we shall simply have to escort those with whom they ought to be debating to them! The protesters will not hurt one of their own, if we want this to go over smoothly, we need to find and escort Nimbian government representatives to Capital."

Ruben swallowed. Many of his squad were bought-and-sold UNSC fanatics, more like to shoot at Rebels than to facilitate conversation. it would take all his clout and charisma to keep them on task.

"So, I would like to open up the floor. We know there's a very severe risk to the Capital building at this very moment, one which requires urgent addressing before we go on the hunt. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we may proceed? I am all ears."

ODST: First Contact

@Treue Sorry to be presumptuous, but if we're all putting our characters in hiders, then, don't you think you ought to use your character's name as the title of that hider, rather than "The Fucking New Girl". Sometimes people only check the OOC to recall the name of a character they're addressing, and it's much easier to do that at a glance than as is now, in that they have to open the hider and sift through the fields. I know that's nitpicky, but, well, you started it ;/

ODST: First Contact

Berne, Ruben

Name: Berne, Ruben
Gender: Male
Age: 37 (Born 23rd of April, 2488)
Birthplace: Far Isle, Outer Colonies
Appearance: Ruben's skin is tinged with an auburn perma-tan, paying deference to his Armenian mother without distinguishing him notably from a well-sunned Caucasian. Silvered wisps of helmet-mottled hair drape irreverently over his face, pressing, in patches, to his sweat-glistened brow ill-cooled by the haberdashery of his visor's vents. Ruben is customarily athletic, though his Olympian form is spoilt, somewhat, by blotched, ill-pigmented skin and copious freckles that can only have been a heritage of his Celtic past. In his armour, Ruben stands around a clumsy 6'1", having been a rank and file barrack-bound solider for much of his career, and a privileged pencil-pusher before that, his military experience has not afforded him the appearance of grace when standing in 80kg of vacuum sealed spacesuit.

Rank: Sergeant (Assigned through ONI's command structure)
Specialization: Translation, Flora Expert
Callsign: Ruben has not acquired a nickname as of yet, his surname "Berne" being sufficiently snappy so as to serve as his diminutive form.

Psychological Analysis: Results of extensive ONI observation would suggest the operative in question is, at all times, motivated by an entrenched inferiority complex, perhaps the direct result of his being impressed as a young child and subsequent installation into a hostile civilian environment. The UNSC is, of course, culturally amorphous, but owing to his origin, the son of willing subjects of a rebellious and famously ill-fated colony, Ruben attempts anyway to present himself as a model, reactionary citizen of the inner colonies. Whilst it is unclear to what degree this is a front, Ruben becomes quickly angered when mention is made of the demise of his home-world, and seems often to present himself as that colony's "redeemer", proving to the world that those of his stock can excel both militarily and academically. Far from indulging in what seems to be a cultural norm among his age-group, political dissent, Ruben never misses an opportunity to speak to the superiority of home-world culture seeing as it graciously stepped in to raise him the wake of his destructive rebel parentage.

In addition, the general absence of parental figures in Ruben's upbringing has made him both extremely cynical of others, and at the same time, grasping at affection. Having been subjected to a strict military regime and a series of loveless foster-homes, Ruben generally distrusts the affections of others, finding making any form of emotional en-treatment to any other person to be exceptionally embarrassing, and scoffing at the attempts of others, despite himself. However, those who do show unexpected and unprompted affection can expect a degree of emotional dependency and jealousy. Within the confines of the military, however, Ruben's approach is entirely ideal.

It should be noted that Ruben's entire animus centres around his inherited guilt for Far Isle's rebellion, without any significant attachments to the inner colonies, his general "prove-it-to-the-world" attitude may suffer a shattering reversal were any remaining threads of the Far Isle insurrection to encounter him. A perfect agent to use against the Insurrectionists, it is important he make as little contact with the general population of contentious worlds as possible.

Military Background: Sgt. Ruben Berne, born to a mother and father of Armenian and Irish maritime origins, respectively, spent the first four years of his life on the fringes of Far Isle, a water-world colony with only a single city of perhaps only 700,000 inhabitants. The majority of Far Isle's inhabitants belonged to two petty classes - the subjects of the Amphora Agrarian and Maratime Conglomerate, a company sponsoring colonists with extensive experience in farming and fishing industries, and one which particularly appealed to the descendent of traditionalist subsistence communities, swallowed up by Earth's extensive conurbations - and the subjects of the UNSC sponsored IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), which sought to use the colony as an "Ark-World", and had lobbied the UEG for quite a significant sum of credits for the task. Regardless of these trivialities, the friction between the peoples of AAMC, who saw their agraian needs increasingly disregarded by the "intellectually aloof" UEG, and the IUCN fostered the circulation of insurrectionist political material within the AAMC's population.

In 2494, shortly after Ruben's 4th Birthday, elements of the insurrectionist sympathisers forcibly accessed a UNSC drydock, and, whilst much of the details are redacted, it can be inferred that the UNSC's subsequent deceleration of CODE: BANDERSNATCH, and razing of the colony, can have only been in response to attempts by these forces to break out of the planet's blockade and deliver warships to the greater insurrection.

Regardless, desperate to reshape the political narrative following the admittedly despotic destruction of an almost entirely defenceless colony, the UNSC deployed its medical corps to tend to the wounded, and used public funds to provide suitable upbringings to those orphaned in the blast. Of course, ONI recognises the need for model, inner-cultured outer-colonists to fill the ranks of the fight against the Insurrection, and therefore, a portion of the allotted humanitarian funds were plied into the military upbringing of some of the rescued children - Ruben amongst these.

In this line, Ruben was installed on Earth, in a series of military schools and academies in the old United Kingdom, borded during the school-year and fostered with retired ONI agents in the summer months. By design, these agents generally possessed apathetic personality tenancies, or were themselves raised in strict and particularly unfeeling homes, in the hopes that this would illicit within Ruben a set of insecurities and dependencies that the military could subsequently fill.

Being an outer colonist, and of mixed race, it was deemed useful that Ruben be instructed in the usage of multiple languages. Whilst the core systems are dominated by the use of English, Spanish, Chinese, and French, the outer colonies have extensive eastern-European and Eurasian influence, with Hungarian, Slavic languages, and Armenian being common. Indeed, many of the UNSC's own battalions in these regions are far more familiar with these tongues than with any commonly used by the EDF or EEF. In this vogue, his military education, in addition to extensive seminars on command and battle-tactics, particularly with focus on Ruben's personal fascination, the illustrious Admiral Preston Cole, was tailored towards a degree-patch which might ingratiate him to the outer-colonists just enough that he may be a persuasive ambassador. Upon the completion of his studies, Ruben was not only a well-prepared ONI-enlistee, he was also a Master-degree Holder of Biological Engineering with Language Studies, a godsend for liasons with the primarily agrarian outer worlds.

Following his graduation at the age of 25 as an ONI Sergeant, Ruben was then installed as a NCO at the barracks on Eridanus II, tasked with overseeing the mining colonies upon the moon Ehilend, which, at the time were considered particularly prone to sublimation by the Insurrectionist threat, commanding a group of locally sourced recruits. During the 2513 rebellion, Ruben distinguished himself when, as the barracks were assailed by requisitioned scorpion-class tanks, he was able to emphatically persuade his charges to not only refuse to turn over their arms and join their fellow colonists and families in rebellion, but to make a daring nightime assault to sabotage their artillery line, saving the ensuing UNSC reinforcements countless lives and expenses on the loss of military hardware.

Whilst Ruben, in this endevour, showed little athletic or combat excellence, it was this the ingenuity for this covert-op that tapped Ruben for the ODST corps, and as such was subsequently reassigned to the Epsilon Eridani Defence Fleet over Reach to undergo his training. It was here, in 2524, nearing the completion of his training, that a perhaps fortuitous event occurred that may secure the loyalty of Ruben against the insurrectionist threat - the destruction of the "National Holiday" cruise liner over Reach, in full view of Ruben's practice-drop-pod.

Following graduation roughly 18-months ago, Ruben was reassigned to ONI's Red Glare Prowler and its ODST squad, bound for a frontier role in OPERATION: TREBUCHET.

Loadout:

• BR-55 Battle Rifle
• M6C Magnum with HUD-linked Holographic Sights
• Combat Knife
• 4x Smoke Grenades
• Holo-Pad with multiple dictionaries and extensive translation software
• HUD with Closed Caption generating software to aid with translation

Halo ODST: First Contact

@vietmyke I'll go ahead and take the leader role then. I was thinking that the dynamic of having my character subordinate to a man 12-years his junior could stimulate some interesting conflict, but it's a path far too well trodden, and as you kindly said, my character doesn't fit a military-bravo-esque mould so as to be particularly bothered by such an arrangement. If you need to direct the story, you could always have your character split off from the group, get lost, or become insubordinate, or simply PM as to what exactly I need to relay.

Anyway, glad that's settled. Like I said, really excited, I hope this goes the distance and I look forward to seeing your plans unfold. :)