Die? Didn't you know? Spartans never die.

OOC
Name:El
Preferred pronouns: She/Her
Over 16?: Absolutely
Contact: lightofdawn
Time zone: CST

IC
Type: OU
Name: Kurt Ambrose, but also known as Kurt-051 and technically his canon name of Kurt M. Trevelyan
Canon: Halo
Canon point: Post death during the Battle of Onyx
Age: 41
Appearance: As a SPARTAN-II, Kurt has been surgically and genetically altered to be at the peak of human perfection. He stands around seven feet out of armor with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. There are a multitude of surgical and battle scars covering large portions of his body from the augmentation program. They are clearly visible on his hands and forearms though most will be obscured by clothing. He also has a neural interface visible at the base of his skull though it is inactive in game since there is no UNSC tech or armor to run it. I chose Shane West to act as his PB since they have the same general coloring.

Personality: In many ways Kurt Ambrose is an unusually complicated Spartan. Where his fellow brethren are standoffish and emotionally withdrawn, Kurt is sociable and empathetic. It put him at odds with the other II’s at times but also made him more emotionally engaged than his fellow Spartans.

But some might argue that his unique emotional perspective is also his greatest weakness. Kurt cannot be completely objective where his Spartans' well-beings are concerned. He has made some extremely questionable decisions as of late in an effort to protect Gamma’s prospects.

At the end of the day, he only wants what is best for his Spartans yet the lengths he goes to in order to assure their survival makes his actions perhaps understandable but does not make him a good person. And despite the fact that he is emotionally attached to each group of Spartans, it doesn’t stop Kurt from sending them to their deaths.

That’s the dichotomy of Kurt Ambrose; the inspiring leader to his people who is ruthless enough to sacrifice entire companies of Spartans because that’s what his orders dictate it or more importantly, because the war requires that sacrifice.

In truth, Kurt is so well-regarded by the III’s that he’s taken on an almost superhuman role for them. He is a father, leader and idol to many Spartan-III’s. Where Chief Mendez has taken on the role as the terrifying drill-instructor that puts them through hell, Kurt has become the inspirational figure that all III’s strive to attain.

A Spartan-II will never have a ‘normal’ life; they don’t have spouses, lovers or biological families because they were conditioned to give the UNSC everything. Yet the Spartan-II and Spartan-III programs are as close to having a regular family as Kurt Ambrose has ever known. They are his legacy and yes, you could argue they are his children after a fashion. This is especially true in his relationship with Tom-B292 and Lucy-B091 whose fates he interceded on after the disastrous Operation TORPEDO. He saved Lucy from becoming a lab experiment and Tom from disappearing into some ONI black-bag program by claiming he needed Spartans to train Spartans. The sacrifice of his Spartan-III's will never come to light, can never be publicly celebrated or mourned but Kurt is still unquestionably proud of them all and holds their memories close even now.

Like all Spartans, Kurt is ready and willing to sacrifice his own happiness and well-being at the drop of a hat if the situation calls for it. Protecting humanity, protecting his fellow soldiers is more than just a mantra for him, it’s a way he lives his life. The best and last example of this came to pass during Battle of Onyx.

Cut off and trapped by the overwhelming numbers of the Covenant armada, the gathered Spartans, military personnel and Doctor Halsey all withdrew to the core room where the portal into the Micro Dyson Sphere lay. Knowing that he was already mortally injured by the blow from a Hunter’s shield and that they were cut off from any kind of retreat, Kurt ordered the Spartans to go through the swiftly closing portal to where safety supposedly lay beyond. Tom-B292 and Lucy-B091 refused to leave him. Not wanting to see them squander their lives in a suicidal last stand, Kurt physically incapacitated Tom and all but begged Lucy to escape.

As he put it, they hadn’t survived Pegasi Delta just to die there. Saying goodbye to Lucy, Kurt waited for her to carry Tom into the micro dyson sphere’s entrance before turning his attention to the Covenant attackers.

He rigged up the FENRIS nuclear warheads to explode once the portal had shut. Left alone on the platform with the Covenant forces encircling him, Kurt waited until the slipspace portal had sealed itself shut and detonated the warheads, thus killing himself and the majority of the Covenant army. In doing so, he ensured that the people he loved and viewed as family would be safe and protected inside the micro dyson sphere. For a Spartan there can be no better sacrifice.

Background/AU details: Spartans never die.
Strengths & weaknesses:
Strengths:

EXPERIENCE Professional Solider with cumulative thirty-plus years combat experience He was chosen along with 75 other children who showed all the best ear-markers for intelligence, athleticism and was then shoved into a training program that would make grown Marine’s cry before age seven. By age thirteen, he and everyone else in his class were capable of killing fully grown adults even before their augmentation procedures.
LOYALTY He is loyal to both the Spartan branch and the UNSC and has been programmed from early childhood to give the UNSC everything. The Spartan-II’s were first used as a means to root out Insurrectionist extremists before shifting to become humanity’s last hope against a genocidal alien race with technology light years ahead of humanity’s. Even in the face of overwhelming odds and technological terror, the Spartans have stood before humanity as its best hope for survival.
TEAM PLAYER He is a people person, not to mention being extremely good at reading people and the lay of the land to the point of being almost preternaturally aware of his surroundings. Most Spartans are isolationist when it comes to outsiders. They generally avoid non-Spartans like the plague but from childhood, Kurt showed a genuine interest in others. Even during his intake interview, he went out of his way to ask his interviewer if she liked her job. This habit has carried on through training and even into active duty. It was this very friendly nature which drew him to Ackerson’s attention and eventually lead to him being shanghaied into Section Three so that he could be assigned to trained a new generation of Spartan-III’s Unit cohesion is something that was shoved down his throat during training and has carried over into his adult life. Where the original II’s were closer than family itself he has tried to instill these very same lessons onto the Spartan-III’s he’s trained.
INTELLIGENCE He is extremely observant as was proven time and time again during training when he showed an almost preternatural ability to sniff out traps. As he grew older, Kurt honed that ability to the point where he even saved John-117 and the rest of Blue team during a mission against the Insurrectionist general Graves. Even fellow Spartans recognize and respect Kurt’s ability to read the lay of the land. But that is to be expected because of Catherine Halsey’s exacting standards when it came to picking her Spartan candidates. Only the brightest, healthiest and most promising of children were deemed ‘worthy’ of becoming Spartan.
HARD WORKER Diligent work ethic and will work himself to the bone for his chosen cause. There is no quit with Spartans, they give it 110% effort every time. The only thing that will stop him when he puts his mind to something is death itself.

Weaknesses:

GRAY MORALITY He does not obey conventional social norms. Spartans were raised to obey orders and don’t really follow society’s rules. That is not to say he’s a mindless automaton but he won’t hesitate to kill or go to the gray side of morality. There is a streak of ruthlessness inside of Kurt and all Spartan-II’s that had been indoctrinated inside them. They are the perfect product of what happens when you teach six year old children to dehumanize the enemy and ignore normal moral quandaries. They were crafted to kill other humans but it was the Covenant who dictated the true path of Spartans. But, in many ways, they can be just as inhuman and merciless as the aliens they fight. This can be off-putting to those who are unfamiliar with Spartans. And always, at the end of the day, he will always side with Spartans first and foremost Which leads into…
TOO ATTACHED He is not as emotionally detached as he should be. Maybe he went a little crazy watching his first two companies of Spartan-III’s being massacred like little more than cannon fodder but Kurt has slipped the leash a little bit towards the end. He willfully implemented dangerously illegal medical procedures into Gamma which gave them the double-knife edge of having superior reaction time and the ability to ignore crippling injuries but at the cost of needing psychotropic altering drugs for the entirety of their natural lives to keep them on an even keel. This is so far beyond gray morality it borders on despicable and would have ended his career if he’d been caught. But for Kurt, it was a worthwhile sacrifice if it meant his Spartans lives wouldn’t be wasted so readily. And at the end of the day, he would do it all over again if given the choice.
DUPLICITOUS Call it a learned behavior from ONI and working a pretty shady government military program for the past twenty years but Kurt has become a master at this sort of thing. Perhaps more than a Spartan ever should. His duties in a lot of ways are vastly different from the front-line soldier Catherine Halsey envisioned and judging by the way he was not willing to fall directly into line with her during Ghost of Onyx, it’s obvious he has become more than the unquestioning soldier she tried to craft all those years ago. He has become a Spartan who keeps secrets, something that surprised Catherine Halsey when she saw him after twenty years. Kurt keeps his proverbial cards held close to his vest and keeps his own counsel. When Deep Winter innocently informed him that he’d noted someone had tampered with Gamma’s augmentation procedures, Kurt feigned ignorance and then quietly had the AI’s files wiped so that no one else could find out what he’s done. Even Chief Mendez, the man who is as close to a paternal figure himself and the man who he has served with every day for over twenty-years was kept in the dark about the truth of Gamma. He truly has become a Spartan unlike any other and that is not necessarily a good thing.
WAR CRIMINAL He is a walking talking example of war crimes. Kurt is a former brainwashed child soldier who was raised inside of a super secret ONI black bag ops that went on to help raise three generations of equally brainwashed child soldiers. Sure, Kurt might have given his Spartans a choice which is more than he was ever allowed, but he still carried on Catherine Halsey’s legacy of taking in vulnerable children and raising them to be soldiers. And in the case of Gamma, even went so far as to tamper with their very genes in an attempt to correct the mistakes of the past. Even the argument of doing desperate things in the time of war does not absolve him of his crimes. And while Kurt’s moral compass does not point true north, he will be the first to admit he is culpable for what he has done.
CONFLICTED He is a man whose soul is weighed on heavily by the perceived mistakes of the past. Every Spartan-III who has died haunts him because it is just proof that he has failed as a teacher. When he learned that Alpha had been killed almost to the man, he privately thought he should be court-martialed for gross negligence. What he saw as a failure in unit cohesion under fire, he tried to correct in Beta. Unfortunately, Beta too was wiped out and that just furthered his own doubts and feelings of failure. So much so that he’s gone to the most reprehensible lengths to ensure that Gamma will not fail as the previous generations have. But the most tragic thing about Spartan-III’s are that they are at its core, cannon fodder. Highly trained, expendable assets meant to achieve with sheer numbers what Spartan-II’s with their meager 30 some odd number could never do. But for Kurt who has been trained for perfection in all things, he cannot accept that reality in many ways and one might even argue it has driven him insane somewhat.

Depowering/humanization: Spartans are grossly OP so I’ve opted to have Kurt’s trip through the wormhole negate a fair amount of his augmentations. He no longer has the carbine-ossification around his bones and when he came out of the wormhole, he will quickly find himself diminished in nearly every way. Where before his vision was beyond perfect and he had the ability to all but see in the dark, he’s been brought back to regular human levels of visual acuity. His reaction times are slowed and no longer insanely quick. Muscle memory is still there and he is still a man who has trained his body to the peak of human ability but now he’s no longer the beyond pinnacle of human ability.

Placement preference: I’m open to either side. Ceta would be massive culture shock for a guy like him who has lived a very ascetic life. He doesn’t know the first thing about art or culture unfortunately though they might appreciate Halsey’s attempts at bringing her Spartans to Übermensch levels of human perfection. Alternately, I feel like he’s probably better suited for roughing it with Barrayar but would find issue with their sort of backwards culture and the fact that they’re rebels and he was pretty much created initially to fight rebels. Both present interesting opportunities I would find fun exploring.

Character goals:First and foremost, Kurt is going to be interested in getting back home. If he did not die in the wormhole then that of course means he can return back to Onyx and reunite with the people whom he cares about. Nearly every person he has ever loved is currently trapped inside of a Dyson Sphere and that would be a very motivating thing for a Spartan.

Sample: According to the chronometer on his tablet, it was nearly 0200 Zulu time and Kurt was exhausted. Aside from the scant four hours of rack time he’d gotten, he’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours straight as he awaited news on Gamma’s progress. He hadn’t been able to sleep, how could he when he knew just what the candidates—no the Spartans—were going through down in the medical bay?

It wasn’t often that Kurt Ambrose allowed himself the weakness of reflection and of self-doubting thoughts. A man in his position couldn’t afford to doubt because too many people relied upon him to be the clear-sighted leader. The one who was supposed to navigate the murky waters of ONI policy and find a way of bringing everyone back home at the end of the day. Unfortunately, that was an impossible job even for a Spartan.

The guilt of six hundred dead Spartans hung over his head like the proverbial Sword of Damocles every second of every day. Kurt wasn’t supposed to be emotionally compromised, he’d been trained to remain cool headed and unmoved by the most horrific of Insurrectionist atrocities. And those had paled in comparison to the atrocities he’d witnessed the Covenant commit since the beginning of the Human-Covenant war.

But since that fateful day on the Point of No Return when he’d watched Alpha Company die in the unflinching and unfeeling eye of ONI cameras, he’d known he was emotionally compromised. Who wouldn’t be? Watching the children you’d helped guide and train for over six years die in front of your eyes. Only a monster like Ackerson could look on that kind of slaughter and be unmoved by it

And though Kurt had been trained to not let his emotions interfere with his duty, he counted himself lucky to have not slipped down to Ackerson’s level of callousness. Maybe it made him an imperfect Spartan but at least it didn’t make him a monster.

Which considering his actions over the last twenty-four hours…well, was a subjective term indeed. Some would say his actions were monstrous. That what he’d done to Gamma was unethical and most certainly illegal for a reason. Yet if these augmentations gave his Spartans even the slightest chance of cheating death and coming back home alive then he’d face whatever retribution came his way without protest.

Kurt was sick of watching his Spartans die; he was sick of seeing their potential squandered on suicide missions. And despite the unknowns, every one of the Gamma candidates had pulled through. They were full-fledged Spartans now which meant Kurt’s tenure as their teacher was swiftly coming to an end. There was only so much he could teach them, only so many skills he could give them to survive the war. Hopefully with the illegal cocktail of drugs mixed in with the rest of Project: CRYSTANTHEUM, they’d stand a chance now.

Gamma were the best Spartans he’d ever had the pleasure to train but from here on out, their fates would rest in others' hands. Kurt could only hope and pray that it was enough. That he’d done enough for them.

Only time would tell from here on out.