Charlotte-G036

Charlotte-G036, colloquially known simply as ‘Charlie’ is a SPARTAN-III supersoldier, trained and augmented as part of the UNSC’s Gamma Company in the waning years of the Human-Covenant War. Aggressive and prone to violence even as a youth, Charlotte had made for an ideal candidate for the newly minted commando program. Even on Onyx, it would take little more than a muttered insult for the young Charlotte to start a fistfight. This rambunctiousness had made her a perfect fit for the close quarters combat seen in the tight corridors of starships and her unit, Team Banyal, was quickly tasked with boarding operations against the Covenant, employed to sabotage enemy vessels as their fleet burned towards Earth in the last days of the war. After humanity’s final victory over the Covenant, Banyal was assigned to intercept Insurrectionist flagged vessels suspected of smuggling arms and soldiers across the human sphere. While she took to this new task with great vigor at the start, her faith in the UNSC was slowly starting to waver. Having never been part of the fight against the Insurrection until after the war, Charlotte grew increasingly troubled and conflicted over the methods used to combat other humans. 
Her convictions in the UNSC would truly be tested on the world of Nachiketa, where she would serve as both scalpel and sledgehammer against the rebellious Revolutionary Committee there. Her reputation for tearing through scores upon scores of RCN troops on her deployments had earned her the nickname ‘The Nightmare of Rừng Sác’. However, unbeknownst to the rebels her own capacity for slaughter had only further damaged her views on the UNSC. The final straw would come during an operation in the Nachiketan capital of Fansipan, where she was to eliminate an suspected cell of RCN double agents. Alongside ONI agents, Charlotte stormed the suspects' home and killed everyone inside. What would have ordinarily been an average mission had taken a turn for the worse when Charlotte had later uncovered the truth about the mission. The targets had never been terrorists, but political rivals to the Nachiketan regime, murdered to placate a government friendly to the UNSC’s goals. 
Charlotte had gone AWOL soon after this operation and is currently on several ONI blacklists. Little progress had been made in locating her, but reports of a power armored mercenary known as 'Charlie' have cropped up throughout the Outer Colonies 
== Early Life ==
One of the thousands of wayward youths produced by the various Insurrections on the war torn world of Satif, whatever family Charlotte had prior to her conscription has yet to be located. While remanded to state foster care, the young Charlotte had spent her youth with other vagrants and derelicts in what remained of the urban centers of the world and had become decidedly un-adoptable. ONI observers had counted at least twelve incidents of unarmed brawls against other homeless youth and two against police involving Charlotte in their month long surveillance.
While Charlotte’s immediate family had either been killed or had abandoned her, the gang she was a part of had more than made up for one. The bond between the children was shown to be as tight, if not tighter than any blood relative. What identities these youths had is unknown, none of them had used (or been given) legal names during their interactions, and some had invented exceedingly complex cover stories to justify their presence in the slums the Satifi city of Dalat. It was common practice for the orphans of the gangs to name each other. If one member of Charlotte’s gang had gotten themselves into trouble the rest would rush to their aid with no questions asked and no strings attached. Charlotte herself was often the one to cause trouble rather than end it. Rather than employ tact or stealth to steal from hapless pedestrians, Charlotte would simply blindside them and then flee with their belongings as they recovered. While adults were the targets of Charlotte’s assaults and her gang’s robberies, their growing stash of food and valuables started to draw the eye of other bands of vagrant youths and they fought tooth and nail to defend their hauls. 
After nearly a year of this arrangement, Charlotte and her gang of five would be arrested after attempting a breaking and entering of a wealthy professional’s home. Failing utterly, all five were thrown into jail, despite eighteen hours of questioning the five had revealed nothing to the authorities. Charlotte and the other five would have almost certainly been lost in the tumult of Satif’s legal system, but ONI had acted to keep her from such a fate. After a quick “interview”, ONI agents had intervened on her behalf, quietly having her released from jail and transported off Satif. While Charlotte was livid at the prospect of abandoning her old gang, the promise of three square meals a day, a new ‘gang’, and a license to assault anyone she pleased was enough to sway her to accompany ONI. 
== Training on Onyx ==
Charlotte’s demeanor had almost instantly soured her to many of the other recruits as they met in preparation for the drop onto the training world of Onyx. Her lack of social niceties and flippant energy had almost gotten her into yet another fight in the middle of Camp Currahee’s landing field. When the time for the Pelican jump had come, she was one of the first ones out, heedless of any consequence. After being treated for a sprained ankle, Charlotte would join her comrades in the exhaustive training needed to mould them into the soldiers the UNSC needed. While no stranger to physical hardship and exertion, Charlotte never had to face the grueling marches, sparring drills live-fire drills that made up her life on Onyx. The would be SPARTAN would take well to the training, her natural combativeness had resulted in her striving to excel at all of her tasks, and she was given high marks in the fields of physical endurance and pistol marksmanship, both to the chagrin and wonder of her fellow candidates. While utterly exhausted, Charlotte had never grown truly discouraged. The sparring drills against other candidates would provide an outlet for her frustrations, and she grew to relish competition against her other trainees. On the other hand, Charlotte was utterly and completely hopeless when it came to matters of tactics and strategy. In the field, her solution to most tactical problems was usually a direct and unsubtle assault. The easiest way to incur her wrath was to mention her illiteracy, and more than one trainee and even a drill instructor has received a punch to the nose for doing so.Charlotte’s proclivity to violence, while valued by the instructors during the drills, had landed her in hot water with the staff of Camp Currahee more often than not. She often outright rejected orders in some cases while off the ranges and fields of the Camp, when combined with her poor understanding of the nuances of war, resulted in her being shut out from any possibility of a leadership position in Gamma Company. Charlotte’s rejection of authority had earned her more than a few beatings from the drill instructors, often in full view of the other candidates as an example. On particularly days where drill instructors were feeling particularly cruel, meals would be withheld from Charlotte. For the most part, even the threat of these punishments would do much to keep her in line. 
Charlotte would prove to be a terror during the close quarters combat drills of the Camp, her various confrontations in her hometown had taught her many hard lessons about the art of fistfighting. Despite all the instructor’s best efforts to correct her form and teach her formal martial arts techniques, Charlotte had always fallen back on throwing haymakers and wild punches. This style of fighting wasn’t entirely without its own logic. Charlotte had made a habit of only going for the soft places on an opponent, doubling them over in pain before going for the knockout blow. 
While this may have worked against the other toughs in Dalat, her raw strength wouldn’t be enough to take down a UNSC Marine. While she stood victorious over her other trainees, the Marines present in the camp were more than a match for her, sending her plummeting to the mat without so much as breaking a sweat or letting her land a single punch on them. All the while criticizing her sloppy form in front of the other trainees. Day after day, she would be sent careening into the ropes with her blood spilling onto the canvas, day after day she would learn a little more from each defeat, with her obstinance relenting as she faced the reality of her situation. After weeks of losing, she would score her first victory against a Marine.    
On the heels of her hard earned victory, Gamma Company would be divided into their teams and Charlotte would find herself on Team Banyal, along with Camile-G087, Maribel-G090, Fyodor-G181, and Rowan-G227. Despite the intent to give the troublemakers in Charlotte and Maribel positive role models in Camile and Fyodor as part of the “fireteam-as-family” model, Banyal would quickly prove to be one of the more dysfunctional of the fireteams in Gamma Company. Camile, a young perfectionist from an upper class family on Tribute immediately disparaged the likes of Charlotte and Maribel; claiming that they were dead weight on his road to success. However, the leader of Banyal had proven to be sympathetic to the girls of the team in his own way, usually couched in excuses of still needing her skills. On more than one occasion Camile had smuggled food into Maribel and Charlotte’s bunks when they were denied dinner.
Team Banyal had proven to be an effective team, contrary to the beliefs of the higher ups in Curahee. Off the field, the team had despised each other in one way or another between Camile’s superiority complex and Charlotte’s aggression. Rowan and Fyodor, to their credit, would attempt to break these altercations up. Even these two mediators would get caught up in the ill conceived schemes and petty plots of the likes of Maribel and Camile, even with the knowledge that they’d get punished as well. 
The only thing keeping the team together was their performance as a unit On the training ranges, however Team Banyal would manage to put aside their differences and direct their energy towards a mutual enemy; the drill instructors. Under Camile-G087’s leadership the team would prove to be just as lethal on the battlefield as any of their more socially coherent counterparts. Camile pushed his fellow trainees hard, employing Banyal in unrelenting attacks against the drill instructors, never allowing the instructors to get the upper hand on them by constantly pressuring them in one way or another. A shrewd manipulator even as a youth, Camile had used the punishments dealt on the others as motivation, reminding them of all the beatings and the nights of starvation before drills. This style of combat had resulted in Banyal being earmarked for specialist deployment for naval boarding and urban combat scenarios in the future. 
Eventually, thanks to the camaraderie forged by the training and forced punishment details the hatred between the children of Banyal would simmer down into a form of tolerance for each other. Even as the relationships between the trainees of Banyal had improved, they had never been able to shake their reputation as troublemakers among the trainees and few if any of the other children in Gamma Company wanted to associate with them, resulting in the team drawing even closer together. Even light-years away from her home of Satif, Charlotte had found her place among the misfits and delinquents of Gamma Company, her dedication to her new teammates would prove just as close. 
After years upon years of training, the trainees would finally be deemed ready for the augmentation procedures that would transform them into fully fledged SPARTANS. After Kurt Ambrose and Franklin Mendez educated the candidates on the nature of the biochemical alterations that were to occur and their associated risks, Camile had urged his team to follow through with the procedures instead of opting out; while terrified of the possibility of augmentation rejection, he had also dreaded losing control of his new team. The thought of opting out hadn’t even crossed Charlotte’s mind, and she accepted promptly.
Along with the rest of the company, Charlotte would be taken off Onyx for the first time in their short lives and taken to the UNSC Hopeful for their procedures and injected with a battery of physiologically altering chemicals. 
Like the rest of Gamma Company, compound 009762-OO would also be introduced to Charlotte’s body, enhancing her physical strength, aggression, endurance, and tolerance to pain. These benefits didn’t come without side effects, and in Charlotte’s case stressful situations resulted in a variety of psychologically involved conditions such as derealization, dissociation, and jamais/deja vu if not treated with proper counteragents. It is as of yet, unknown why these effects occur in Charlotte.
== Service Record ==
The majority of Gamma Company would only see action in the waning days of the Human Covenant War and Team Banyal would be no different. Team Banyal would be rushed across the few remaining colonies in order to shore up their defenses before finally participating in the battle over Earth. Team Banyal for the most part was eager and ready for the fight, with their confidence in their augmentations. Charlotte was particularly excited, claiming that she’d come back with the most kills out of anyone on the cruiser she was embarked on.The long ride aboard the Marathon-class Heavy Cruiser, UNSC Appeal to Authority had left the team with more time to strengthen their bonds often at the expense of the crew of the ship. The rest of the downtime in transit was spent partaking in zero/microgravity combat exercises in preparation for the naval boarding actions the team was expected to experience. Charlotte’s aggression and skill in close range combat would prove to be even more of a boon in the dark, often airless corridors where boarding actions took place. 
==== OPERATION: ICEBREAKER ====
The maiden battle of Team Banyal would be over the colony of Ballast beset by a small splinter fleet of the armada bound for Reach. The UNSC defense fleet stationed there was shredded by the opposing squadron of Covenant vessels and their flagship made a drive to take control of the various tether stations in orbit around the planet in order to shut down or destroy the asteroid defense cannons mounted on them. With the more mobile defenders of Ballast taken out of the equation, the squadron launched its boarding craft. The Appeal to Authority had arrived to support its defenders, and deployed Team Banyal and its complement to retake or support the beleaguered security forces of the stations. Banyal was tasked with the recapture of Platform Spruce which had been depressurized by multiple hull breaches and only had a fraction of its crew remaining to mount an defense against the Jiralhanae boarding parties. Team Banyal would be inserted into the station via a breach charge directly over one of the parties, with Charlotte leading the charge Banyal had killed the opposing squad with little difficulty. As the proceeded into the station, their fortunes would change, facing stiff resistance as they approached the station reactor core. A grueling firefight had broken out between the SPARTANs and the Warchieftan's bodyguard unit. Banyal was quickly pinned down by and fire. Camile had ordered Charlotte and Maribel to assault the position as the remainder of Banyal and what marines remained suppressed the with grenades and rifle fire. 
The pair had made it into close combat with the enemy squad, matching the infamous brute strength of the Jiralhanae with their own. Whatever targets Charlotte could not simply beat to death were filled with bullets from her submachine gun. Where Charlotte was quite comfortable in close quarters, Maribel did not share her counterpart's luck and was impaled by a Spiker round and grazed by another before the other SPARTANs and marines could respond.
It was only through timely application of biofoam and suit patches that Maribel had survived the encounter on Platform Spruce at all and the fallen SPARTAN-III would be evacuated back to the Appeal to Authority for more extensive treatment. The rest of Banyal Team would continue on to repel the Covenant boarding parties from the other stations around Ballast. With the head of their operations cut off, the resistance on platforms Oak, Redwood, and Elm had proven less intense. Once the platforms were secure the battered UNSC task force had managed to regroup around them. Unwilling to extend what was supposed to be a raid into a prolonged and resource intensive engagement, the Covenant fleetmaster pulled their ships back to rejoin the main Covenant force on trajectory for Reach. Despite leaving one of their number critically wounded, Charlotte-G036 was ecstatic at the results of her first combat outing. In her eyes, it had only proved her own skill against the Covenant, and her superiority to her long time rival in Camile. Her exuberance was tempered by Maribel’s condition, which had scarcely improved as the medics of the Appeal tended to her injuries. The team’s first outing on the battlefield had also brought their first reminder that they were just as mortal as any other human, despite what the Office of Naval Intelligence claimed. For all of her bravado, Charlotte had spent time comforting her fellow SPARTAN even as the rest of the team had planned their next moves. 
With the Covenant fleet rapidly closing onto the heartlands of the UNSC, the demand for SPARTAN teams had grown immensely. While Camile was eager to strike against the Covenant to at least slow their offensives against humanity, the reality of the war had forced even the SPARTANs on the backfoot. Despite their earlier victory, the looming dread of the defeat of humanity refused to abandon the crew of the Appeal. 
The worse would come to pass as the Appeal to Authority transited to Reach. Mere days before they arrived in system, the Covenant armada had defeated the UNSC in detailed and glassed the world. Shocked and demoralized, the crew of the vessel debated on their next actions, some even considering going AWOL to flee from a fight they believed they had no chance of winning. Ultimately, the captain had ordered the vessel to reroute to Earth, hoping to reach it in time to aid in its defense.
==== OPERATION: QUATREMAIN ====
The Appeal to Authority would rejoin the Home Defense Fleet in time to participate in the battle above Earth, with Banyal being dropped to support groundside defense efforts. As the battles started to turn against the human forces in many North African urban centers, Banyal’s tasks would turn from forward observation for UNSC fire support assets to defending civilian evacuation corridors in the city of Algerian city of Marrakesh. The fighting within the city had turned to vicious close combat, with marines and Covenant soldiers engaging in tedious house to house fighting when the Covenant didn’t simply level buildings with barrages of plasma. It was here that the team would be first hand witness to the savagery of the Covenant troops, seeming to take disdainful pleasure in the fear and helplessness they caused as they killed them. 
With Marrakesh being deemed no longer tactically feasible to defend, the UNSC had mobilized units to secure and extract critical assets. Camile would move his team to ONI Warehouse 412 high in the Atlas Mountain range. There they would guard the staff as they secured documents related to NOVEMBER BLACK tier projects. This would generate a substantial amount of friction between Camile-G087 and Charlotte-G036. Ultimately, there would be no time to argue as a Banshee flyover had revealed the location of the warehouse to the Covenant.
Attracted by the presence of a substantial number of Forerunner artifacts the Covenant had quickly made moves to capture the warehouse before ONI dockworkers could finish the evacuation of their materials. A full seven lances of Jiralhanae and Sangheili warriors would descend upon the Warehouse with the intent to overwhelm any defenders and steal as much Forerunner wealth as possible. While vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the SPARTANs and other ONI operators in the area were ordered to hold their ground against the incoming attack, with more units rerouted to assist in their defense. 
While the coming firefight was sure to be terrible for SPARTAN and conventional human alike, the defenders had the advantage of several intact office buildings on their side. Camile had ordered Charlotte and Rowan to serve as bait for the oncoming enemy, hoping to split the enemy force into multiple prongs. Still fuming from Camile’s earlier decision, Charlotte had begrudgingly agreed to follow through with the plan. Using an imitation of a Forerunner signal, the bait team would await their enemy in the darkness of what used to be an ONI research lab. Two of the lances took the bait and were caught in a running gun battle within the twisting corridors of the building, with weapons discharges and flaring energy shielding being the only illuminationHaving been seen the savagery of the Covenant firsthand had shown Charlotte the stakes of the war she was fighting. Where any other person would have been utterly horrified, Charlotte responded with clear-eyed resolve. The two SPARTANs had waged a guerrilla campaign in miniature within the laboratories around Warehouse 412, eliminating lance leaders at close to point blank range before slinking away back into the darkness. The nature of the close in fighting here meant that missteps were often lethal and Charlotte came dangerously close to death on more than one occasion during the fight, having suffered a plasma impact to her right arm during a gunfight. What once was an organized and formidable assault had turned into a ragged attempt at retreat. Not a single Covenant warrior left the laboratories, with Charlotte personally killing the Commander leading the assault with a blow to the throat. 
The ensuing fight between the ONI operators present and the Covenant forces had begun in earnest while the pair of SPARTANs were engaging the smaller force elsewhere with the Covenant inflicting a heavy toll on the defenders. As more and more of Enfield had fallen to the invaders, it had become clear that recovery of a majority of the artifacts and data stored in the warehouse was unlikely. ONI had then ordered the destruction of Warehouse 412 and a full retreat of their surviving assets there. While the result of the skirmish around Warehouse 412 ended in near-disaster, the Covenant were eventually driven from Marrakesh.
Team Banyal would be rushed from hotzone to hotzone across the globe as the Covenant’s fight intensified. Even with their enhanced physiques, the number of missions the team participated in had exhausted them, the members of Banyal often got fewer than an hour of sleep between combat deployments. Despite their best efforts, the onslaught of the Covenant had never seemed to abate. After fighting in Marrakesh, the team would be deployed to the Chicago Metroplex, Luzon, and Shenzen to assist defensive action and civilian evacuations in these areas. It was only with the events on Installation 00 and the Great Schism within the Covenant that the tide began to turn in favor of humanity. Banyal would not participate in the final offensives to drive the remaining Covenant forces off of Earth, with all four of them being hospitalized in the final stages of the battle. 
== Post War Service ==
The months between the end of the Human-Covenant War and the conflicts after it were blissfully peaceful for the members of Team Banyal. The SPARTAN-IIIs were primarily deployed on long range scout and recontact missions, protecting prospector teams as they attempted to piece together the remains of the UNSC from the ashes of the Human-Covenant War. Rarely, if ever, did they see combat during this year long stint of guard duty and by the end of it they were once again prepared to fight the UNSC’s battles. Maribel had recovered enough for analyst work but not was still not deemed combat ready and would serve as the team's rear echelon support. Rowan and Fyodor were rotated out of Banyal to shore up other depleted SPARTAN-III units. The friction between Charlotte and Camile had remained, undiminished even in peacetime. 
However, this was not to last and Banyal would once again be called to the front lines of a different kind of war. 
=== OPERATION: BUCCANEER ===
With UNSC control of the space lanes seriously hampered after the Human-Covenant War, a resurgent Insurrection had begun to proliferate, surreptitiously moving men and materials between rebellious worlds. In order to counter this the UNSC enacted OPERATION: BUCCANEER, a sweeping effort to kill or capture as many Insurrectionist tagged smugglers as possible and to secure their contraband. Boarding actions aboard human ships are doubly as perilous as ones against Covenant vessels, human artificial gravity generators and life support systems are more easily knocked offline, in this environment even superficial damage through a marine’s armor can easily be life threatening. With their specialized training in shipboard combat and naval interdiction Banyal was picked to support the Marines in BUCCANEER despite their total lack of experience in combating human foes. 
Charlotte was less than pleased to hear that she’d be fighting against her own species, especially so soon after the war. While she made her objections abundantly clear to both command elements and Camile-G087, she followed through with her orders. Their first target would be the MS Santiago, a vessel observed to have made multiple round trips from Mamore to Venezia prior to the war.
Team Banyal was embarked upon a Sahara-class Heavy Prowler UNSC Ma'at, intended to ambush their target in deep space. Upon spotting the MS Santiago, the Ma’at engaged the freighter with her battery of pulse lasers, punching through critical subsystems of the lightly armored freighter. With no emissions coming from the foundered ship, the Ma’at believed the enemy vessel to be disabled and commenced boarding actions. Banyal along with a platoon of marines had been dispatched to breach the Santiago aboard a flight of Pelicans. When they flew within a hundred kilometers of the Santiago, point defense cannons emerged from her hull and fired upon the incoming Pelicans, leaving a squad of marines stranded in a now disabled Pelican. The other two had managed to deploy their combat spacewalkers on the hull of the Santiago after destroying her point defense turrets. 
While Charlotte was no stranger to this method of combat, fear and anxiety of what lay within the hull of the Santiago had terrified her more than any Sangheili warrior or Jiralhanae chieftain. The breach had taken the Insurrectionists aboard by surprise as the ship’s atmosphere was vented, killing nearly a dozen before they could don their vacuum suits. 
The resultant firefight on the decks of the Santiago was typical of most boarding actions against human make ships. Close quarters and unreliable gravity demanded near perfect situational awareness and lightning quick reflexes. Shotguns were preferred by both the UNSC and Insurrectionist forces not just for their close range stopping power but their ability to very quickly compromise a vacuum suit and leave an enemy exposed to the void. Charlotte and Camile’s MJOLNIR suits had protected them from the vacuum as well as it protected them from Insurrectionist bullets. The crew of the Santiago had very little answer for the pair of SPARTAN-IIIs and had considered simply jettisoning away the section of the ship they were on. While engagements on boarding actions are marked by careful slow advances through decks, the presence of the SPARTANs had turned the tides drastically in the UNSC’s favor, especially as ammunition had started to run dry and the troops aboard the Santiago resorted to hand-to-hand combat, tearing at each other’s suits with combat knives.By the end of the three hour engagement, the UNSC had gained control of the MS Santiago with the majority of her crew dead and the remaining Insurrectionists in UNSC custody. The shipment the Santiago was flying was revealed to be a shipment of heavy weapons and several kilograms of rumbledrugs bound for a newly recontacted world called Nachiketa. 
While Charlotte was no stranger to death and the sight of broken bodies had no longer fazed her, the SPARTAN had struggled to reconcile the fact that she was the cause of the carnage, fighting the people she very well could have protected during the battles of the Human-Covenant War. When she spoke to Camile about her doubts regarding the UNSC and their new war against the Insurrectionists, her team lead had simply deflected any attempt to discuss the topic further, reminding her of both of their duties to the UNSC and who their enemies were. Few, if any, knew of these reservations apart from the other members of Banyal Team. Charlotte had attempted to keep up her air of youthful enthusiasm and patriotic bravado while confiding her concerns with Maribel.
OPERATION: BUCCANEER would continue for another five years, with several other SPARTAN-III teams joining Banyal in naval interdiction actions against the Insurrectionist threat. Banyal would remain on the UNSC Ma’at on lonely patrols and ambushes for the better part of the operation, claiming another thirty successful boarding operations throughout human space and the outskirts of Covenant territory. While the efforts of BUCCANEER were deemed acceptably successful by the UNSC, the Insurrection was far from defeated. While many former enclaves of rebellion had quickly folded to the UNSC after the Human-Covenant War, others had held strong against their authority and still new hotspots of resistance had cropped up with each passing month. Among these was the world of Nachiketa, a tropical planet that had exploded into civil war between pro and anti-UNSC factions. 
=== OPERATION: KICKOFF ===
With the situation on Nachiketa steadily degrading the UNSC had come to the conclusion that the mineral rich world could easily slip out of their fingers, severely hampering rebuilding and re-militarization efforts. While some members of the Senate had advocated for a peaceful, diplomatic approach to handling the Nachiketan situation, others had wanted the world to be made an example of. Ultimately the warhawks had won out over their counterparts and a Marine Expeditionary Force was deployed to support the sympathetic Trịnh administration of the planetary government. Prior to the first landings on the world, the Office of Naval Intelligence deployed Team Banyal to prepare the battlespace for the arrival of the expeditionary force as part of OPERATION: KICKOFF. KICKOFF was meant to root out any Insurrectionist or Revolutionary Committee operatives in the major cities of the Nachiketa Planetary Plenum, essentially an extended counterterror/counterintelligence operation across the inhabited parts of the world. Charlotte would grow increasingly insubordinate during the extent of OPERATION: KICKOFF, and would often be reprimanded or disciplined for improper conduct while engaged in it. With the operation necessitating a degree subtly, Charlotte and Camile were rarely deployed in their MJOLNIR suits, and it was here that Charlotte would begin to comprehend the ramifications of the augmentations performed on her. Civilians would cower in fear at her height and physique, whether she was in uniform or not. The exposure to a world of civilians had shown her how truly abnormal her life was. She found herself knowing little of the world beyond the strict military boxes the UNSC put her into. For the first time in her life, Charlotte found herself doubting her purpose which in turn, had only fueled her disillusionment. Despite the best efforts of Maribel-G090 to bolster her closest friend’s spirits Charlotte would slip further away from the UNSC cause. 
Camile-G087 and Charlotte-G036 would proceed to put their skills in urban combat to good use during KICKOFF, assisting the NPP’s security forces in dismantling dozens of suspected RevComm cells buried deep within the cities of Nachiketa, killing dozens of cell leaders and propagandists.
=== OPERATION: HALFBACK ===
Once expeditionary force had arrived on Nachiketa in force, Team Banyal would shift from covert operations to overt combat against the RCN in conventional combat, supporting the marines and security forces as they moved into the deep jungles and underbrush that divided Nachiketa’s major city. The terrain was all but impossible for the UNSC’s armored vehicles to traverse, and MANPADS provided to the RCN by the Humanity Liberation Front made airlifts dangerous at best. Despite being the militarily inferior power, the RevComm was capable of inflicting a steady stream of casualties on marines attempting to move through the jungle. Team Banyal employed in direct combat against the RCN during search-and-destroy missions, with the joint UNSC/NPP command hoping to demoralize the enemy into surrender by inflicting heavy casualties on them in turn. 
Charlotte’s first encounter with the RCN on the battlefield was in the patch of jungle locally known as Rừng Sác, where dozens of RCN guerrilla camps were located. The UNSC had launched an assault in force, with Team Banyal advancing on the RCN positions before the marines. While the RevComm troops were provided with a wealth of heavy weaponry by other Insurrectionist factions and had modified industrial power suits to be able to accept weaponry, none would be able to adequate handle the SPARTANs and the battle of Rừng Sác was remarkably one sided. Nearly a half of the RCN’s troops in the area were killed by the pair of SPARTANs and the RCN had quickly moved to flee the area, but the marines reinforcing Banyal had moved to cut off their retreat, killing hundreds and capturing thousands of regular and irregular RCN soldiers by the battle’s end. 
While Rừng Sác was proclaimed as a victory by the UNSC and NPP and a serious blow to the RCN was dealt, the war would be far from over. While her fellow UNSC troops had celebrated, Charlotte was forced to face the reality of the conflict she now faced. Many of the soldiers she had killed were not much older than her, some younger even, and she had taken their lives with all the effort of someone on a leisurely stroll. The UNSC had condemned the usage of underage soldiers by the RCN, but was she any different from the enemy she killed? The Human-Covenant War far from as many moral conundrums as the conflicts against the Insurrectionists did, and Charlotte was thoroughly unprepared to face them. When combined with the total lack of support structures in the UNSC, there was nothing to stop Charlotte from becoming further disillusioned with her nation. 
HALFBACK would continue on for the several years, never encountering as much success as it did in Rừng Sác, as Banyal was split between several fronts in an attempt to maximize their effect against the RCN’s forces. Within a year after Rừng Sác, the RCN was once again able to combat and infiltrate the UNSC’s forces on Nachiketa. 
While she had assumed that few others had heard her concerns aside from Maribel, such was not the case. A group of RCN moles had been eavesdropping on the conversations between her and Maribel, and Eduardo de São José, the Premier of the Revolutionary Committee of Nachiketa, was aware of the SPARTAN’s mental state. He had one of his agents offer an olive branch in the form of an invitation to meet.
== Absent Without Leave ==
The meeting between Charlotte-G036 and the architect and current leader of the Revolutionary Committee had taken place within the city limits of Fansipan, Eduardo flaunting the enhanced security measures and UNSC patrols. Wearing a near total disguise and accompanied by only the most trusted of his Revolutionary Guard, the Premier had spoken to the SPARTAN in an old bar far from the UNSC garrison in Fansipan. Their discussion had run the gamut of topics, with the silver tongued Premier outlining the purpose of his fight and its justifications, careful to not entirely condemn the UNSC as evil while ensuring that the RCN was the sympathetic party during the war on Nachiketa. 
While he had no information on the extent of the SPARTAN projects beyond their combat efficacy and their involvement in the war, Eduardo de São José had turned hundreds if not thousands from the NPP cause to the RevComm one in any of his impassioned speeches. He knew exactly how to manipulate a bitter and disillusioned soldier to question their own cause. His weapon of choice was rhetoric and he was a masterful wielder of it. He had asked more than one pointed question about the war, revealed the extent of UNSC crimes against the people of the RCN and asked Charlotte-G036 if they were really justified in being on the world. Questions she had few answers for. 
In truth, he had no desire to help the listless SPARTAN, it was a ploy to have her removed from the battlefield of Nachiketa and it had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. After their conversation, Charlotte’s disillusionment with the UNSC had grown into spite. Uncertain if he could control the SPARTAN-III by himself, Eduardo had advised her to flee the world, providing her with the location of Fareeda Benyamina, a smuggler who had a long history of smuggling heavy armaments and supplies between Insurrectionist held worlds and arranged for the SPARTAN’s offworld passage. 
By the end of their conversation, Charlotte-G036 was far more internally conflicted than she had ever been in her life, split between her convictions to the UNSC long since ingrained into her, and the prospect of a life free from the violence the nation had moulded her to inflict. Within the next week, she had made her decision and under the cover of night, slipped out into the jungles surrounding Fansipan.
== Desertion ==
The trek into the jungle was war from easy, even for the likes of a SPARTAN. The journey would have been nigh impossible for any unaugmented person, and Charlotte would be pushed to her limits as she fled from Fansipan, stripping her armor of any identifying marks and anything that could easily be used to track her. She found herself fired upon by UNSC troops and RCN milita as she prowled in the shadows of the jungle, relying on the armor’s kinetic defenses to protect her in order to keep a low profile. It took nearly four days for Charlotte to make it to the designated dead drop point to meet the elusive Fareeda Benyamina, who was using an abandoned UNSC airstrip to maintain and hide her freighter, an Aeneid-class Light Freighter called the Onna-Bugeisha. The first handful of moments between the pair were terse, keeping each other at arm's length as the smuggler did the work to restore the freighter to spaceworthiness, an exceedingly long process for a single person to undertake. 
While never having encountered Charlotte or Banyal Team during BUCCANEER, Fareeda was more than aware of the UNSC’s efforts to snuff out the smugglers of the Outer Colonies and the marines had come dangerously close to killing her and her crew during her runs between Venezia and beyond, and made this abundantly clear to her newfound companion. While Charlotte had no love for the UNSC, the near constant needling and thinly veiled jabs at her had worn on the SPARTAN, often times simply threatening the smuggler’s life if she did not cease. Between limited human contact, an increasingly depleted supply of Smoothers, and increasing frustration with the situation, it took all of Charlotte’s willpower to not kill her only way off of Nachiketa.  Benyanima had made it abundantly clear that the only reason she was willing to take this job at all was for the immense payday the RCN had offered to get the SPARTAN-III off world and out of their hair.While Benyamina had taken great strides to conceal her craft from the air and footpatrols, it would be impossible to disguise the immense energy spike from the activation of the Onna-Bugeisha. With little other recourse, the pair would be forced to take off from the jungle, attracting a flight of Longswords that would hound their retreat until they breached the mesosphere, shooting down a Longsword in pursuit as they did. The pair of UNSC cruisers in geosynchronous orbit around Nachiketa made to pursue the light freighter, they had failed to keep the comparatively tiny vessel from jumping to slipspace and escaping. This, however, would not be the end of the troubles for the pair. While Charlotte had demanded to be taken as far away from the UNSC as possible, the Onna-Bugeisha had neither the fuel nor the range to flee to somewhere more remote.
== New Ogizima ==
The voyage away from Nachiketa was particularly long and arduous for both Fareeda and Charlotte, with much of the journey spent traveling through realspace so as to avoid overly taxing the Onna-Bugeisha’s slipspace drive. While the two had cooperated to escape from the world, their relationship had scarcely improved once the UNSC was off their trail. Benyamina still held a great deal of resentment for the UNSC’s actions during BUCCANEER, with no outlet for her frustrations, she took every opportunity to needle her defector passenger, but was nonetheless careful to not overly aggravate Charlotte, lest the SPARTAN kill her. The deaths inflicted on her old crew had led to Fareeda having to take on their duties, further exhausting her patience for the ordeal she found herself in. One of the few agreements that the two passengers had made was to cooperate in operating the ship, despite Charlotte’s total lack of experience in doing so. 
Charlotte’s contempt for the smuggler was barely, and on many occasions not, concealed. Years of UNSC propaganda and indoctrination had told her that Fareeda Benyamina was the enemy, traitors to the very human race who would stoop to any low to ensure that their cause was successful. Despite her weariness with war against her fellow man, Charlotte was far from sympathetic to the Insurrectionist case and Benyamina had made a poor case for changing Charlotte’s mind. To make matters worse, Charlotte had run out of smoothers in the midst of the Onna-Bugeisha’s travels, leading to Charlotte physically lashing out at Benyamina on one occasion. The lack of smoothers had also resulted in episodes of severe dissociation, nightmares, and hallucinations. 
While the standoff between Fareeda and Charlotte was intense, their relationship would improve somewhat during their voyage, developing something resembling camaraderie as they maintained the Onna-Bugeisha together, and the utter hatred between the two gave way to a more amicable relationship. 
After nearly two months of realspace travel, Fareeda and Charlotte arrived on New Ogizima, a relatively distant habitat hidden in a very dense asteroid field. An O’Neil cylinder with a population of a mere three hundred thousand, it had escaped the notice of the Covenant during the Human-Covenant War, and was only recently recontacted by human authorities. Its remote location had also spared it from the ravages of the various conflicts after the war, and it was also passed over by both the UNSC and the Insurrectionists. The pair had settled down on the station for months, laying low until the Onna-Bugeisha could refuel and have its drive repaired or replaced. 
While Fareeda had spent years bouncing from stations twice as seedy as New Ogizima, this was Charlotte’s first experience in a relatively normal civilian environment, and she quickly found herself completely out of her depth and struggled to acclimate to the new environment. Combined with her imposing physical stature, it made keeping a low profile exceptionally difficult, if not totally impossible for the pair. Despite the difficulties, Charlotte and Fareeda had managed to find some level of domesticity on the station, developing connections with station leaders, and performing odd jobs wherever needed.
While New Ogizima had served as a stable home for the pair for a substantial amount of time, it was not to last. The UNSC would never tolerate a SPARTAN deserting, and had quickly worked to have her killed. Section Zero of the Office of Naval Intelligence had mobilized their operatives across the UNSC frontier and supplemented them with underworld contractors. The Office had placed a several million credit bounty for proof of the SPARTAN’s death, with somewhat smaller figures for any individual who assisted her. While it took weeks for news of the bounty to filter out into the fringes of the UNSC, various organized crime groups wasted no time in tracking the SPARTAN down and infiltrating New Ogizima. Aware that facing the SPARTAN in open combat would be tantamount to suicide, the bounty hunters and assassins had cooperated to remove any local support and goodwill Charlotte may have accumulated during her stay on the station. In doing so, they had hoped to flush the pair out and leave them with no one to help them. Footage of Charlotte fighting on Nachiketa was spread to station overseers and to the average people of the station. Painting her as a war criminal and a pawn of the UNSC had done most of the work for the bounty hunters, as a mob had quickly formed, demanding that the pair leave the station immediately. New Ogizima had a small defense force, and they had threatened to remove the pair by force if they did not comply. 
Unwilling to get into a fight, especially with so many civilians in the vicinity, Charlotte and Fareeda had complied. On their way back to the docking pads, the pair were stopped by a group of defense force officers who had quickly revealed themselves to be bounty hunters, opening fire onto the pair from a hastily constructed checkpoint with a recoilless rifle, just barely missing the smuggler and SPARTAn. Fareeda had taken a shrapnel injury to the arm, while Charlotte’s enhanced reflexes kept her from being too severely wounded. Bleeding heavily from her main arm, Fareeda handed Charlotte her sidearm and relied on the SPARTAN to cover her as she attempted to tend to her injury. Despite the withering automatic fire from the bounty hunters, Charlotte’s training and augmentations gave her an edge and she had killed several of them in the first minutes of the engagement. Charlotte had quickly identified the recoilless rifle crew and destroyed the position with grenades taken from the dead hunters. 
Realizing that they stood little chance of survival, let alone success, the hunters had settled for hastily sabotaging the Onna-Bugeisha before fleeing into the depths of the station. Charlotte had attempted to chase them but was stopped by Fareeda, who had managed to staunch her arm wound’s bleeding. The pair had worked to undo the damage inflicted on the ship, scavenging and stealing materials from the dock to do so. 
Distraught and demoralized by the events on New Ogizima, Charlotte had fallen into a depressive episode, convinced that she would never escape her fate as a soldier and would never find a place as a normal person.