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Character Descriptions

 * silver halos shone hungrily in her black pupils

Amber and Dyne
"It's one thing to say some things are impossible. Use it like an excuse. It's not like knowing things are impossible. To have every strength and the will to do it, and still fail."

- Dyne

Amber never wanted to be a Spartan. She was thrown into it without volunteering, and started out a scared child. While she grew past her timidness, she never grew comfortable with what she was expected to be. She didn't want to die in augmentations just for the chance to be a government-sanctioned kidnapee and child soldier. She looked to Kodiak, who was so comfortable with it and lived the heroism it was supposed to be, but could never look past the things wrong with the Spartans to embrace it as a life like he did. Thus, when the chance to run away from the Spartan life arrived, she took it, and even preferred to die over returning. Her experiences in the months after, especially after joining the Kru'desh, made her realize a life of her own and the power to make her own decisions was what she'd always wanted, no matter how reprehensible those decisions were.

Dyne, by contrast, didn't ask to be a Spartan, but wanted the things that came with it. Friends he wasn't afraid to lose because they were forced to stick together, the cool guns and hardware he got to play with, and a life of excitement and adventure. Thus, when the realities of the life they led finally didn't match up with what he wanted out of life, he left it behind in search of other enjoyment. Before being alone long enough to really feel lost, he found his enjoyment in playing superhero on Talitsa. Situations there force him to grow, make him start to realize he can't just walk away from problems he doesn't like. Before he can really show that, however, Amber arrives and puts him in a position that forces him to leave. More than anything, he's left feeling shame for running, first from the UNSC where he should have stayed to try and help, and then from Talitsa where people were still counting on him. In the course of his working with Riker, he comes to realize that even if he wants to stay with Riker's resistance, he needs to go back and fix the problems he ran away from.

Merlin meets Dyne
"It's a regular reunion out here." Dyne said, looking over the many armored figures around the room. "Cass, Amy, ah..."

Dyne halted mid-turn a few feet away from Merlin, finger pointed at him and a lost expression on his face. "You...?"

Merlin extended a hand, which Dyne met to shake, and introduced himself. "Merlin. D032."

The newcomer Gamma's confusion only deepened. "Uh... D? D as in dog?"

Cassandra spoke up on his behalf. "ONI had a crop of kids recruited for the next class when Onyx was lost. They set up a new camp elsewhere and proceeded to make a Delta Company."

Dyne's eyes shifted from Merlin to empty space, momentarily unfocused, then back to him.

"No they didn't." Dyne stated, then walked away toward the holotable.

Merlin was left with mouth hanging slightly open, fairly sure the Gamma had just denied Merlin's existence to his face and wasn't entirely sure how to respond. After a moment puzzling, he turned back to Cassandra and asked, "Are all your Company-mates crazy?!"

Cassandra sighed and shrugged. "You haven't exactly been crossing paths with the best of us."

"But they did illegally mutate our brains," Dyne called without looking over his shoulder. "So, y'know, probably."

Thorn
"Onyx. Right under my nose. You knew how uncomfortable I was with the SPARTAN-IIIs, and counted on it to keep me away. I should have seen that. I really must be getting old."

"If you have to ask, it means I'm capable of keeping things from you. And if that's the case, I don't know what the hell I've been so afraid of all these years."

Dyne's Escape From Hospital
In walked a young woman at about Dyne’s height, with brown hair long enough to reach her shoulders which blocked him from making out any further detail. Raising the tray, Dyne figured she deserved a little consolation at the least for the unconsciousness he was about to knock her into and murmured,

“Sorry about this.”

The nurse spun around—and caught the tray as Dyne brought it down.

“Huh?”

Confusion was all he had time for as the nurse suddenly and violently...

Genesis
“Behold. Genesis. And the idle Guardians you promised are nowhere to be seen.”

Gavin hummed in agreement. “Cortana must’ve laid more groundwork than I gave her credit for. She had every AI lined up and ready to go before she even made herself known.”

“That, or you deliberately told me she would be slower than you knew she was.”

“But that’s alright. There’s a recall switch on the planet somewhere. How do you think she got ‘em all together in the first place? All we have to do is find it.”

“Each time we near our goal, it seems you find reason for it to change. Time is our only ally, and you are wasting it.”

“I needed to find out if you really could take over a Guardian. Bad idea to bring on twenty of ‘em and find out you’re all scary, deep-pitched talk.”

First to the Top
"You know, that stairwell would probably get us up there in two minutes."

Dyne swallowed his next plea before it began. His gaze drifted across both sides. The nano-weave muscles lining their body gloves tensed already.

"God dammit, Shepard."

Every Spartan exploded into movement at once—some rogues toward the stairwell, every loyalist at the rogues. Dyne flicked his thruster pack to boost back, just to get out of the way—and found Kodiak giving chase, his own armor thrusters propelling the extra broad-shouldered half-foot he had on Dyne after him just as fast.

"Okay... what was step two again?"