Dominic Clarke

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Sergeant Dominic Clarke was a member of the rebel group the Patriots' Alliance. Born in 2504 on the planet of Gagarin II, Clarke lived a relatively normal life in the planet's capital. In 2522, when Clarke went to attend college, he also joined the planet's in order to take advantage of scholarships offered for service in the group.
As a militiaman, during summer deployments to the frontier, Clarke was perplexed as to why the citizens despised the militia, and many refused to serve or even interact with them. Despite his attempts to endear himself to the populace, Clarke and his fellow militia were still hated by the populace, and Dominic engaged in several brawls with frontier citizens.
During a summer deployment in 2524, Clarke was captured by fighters of the United Rebel Front. To Dominic's surprise, the rebels who had captured him treated him with dignity, some even with friendliness. However, there was a sinister motive beneath the rebels' friendliness, specifically, to get Clarke to cooperate, and possibly even fight for them.
For three months, the rebel interrogators, led by Matthias Gavilán, slowly but surely persuaded Clarke towards their side, their initial friendliness aiding them, and by winter of , Dominic had become a supporter of the rebels, and even expressed his intention to fight for the URF. In March of 2525, Clarke was released from captivity, ostensibly as a sign of good faith by the rebels, but in reality he was assigned to become a sleeper agent within the UNSC
For the next six years, Clarke worked with a smuggling unit from within the Colonial Militia, along with other rebel agents, moving weapons around for Phillip Roberts, the leader of the Patriots' Alliance, who was beginning a campaign of rapid militarization, turning the political party into an armed rebel organization. 
In , ordered to take part in armed combat against the UNSC, Clarke led a rebel infantry unit in combat in the planet's capital during the URF-PA alliance coup against the colonial government. After the coup, Clarke worked for the new military junta, organizing and training militias in small unit tactics.
After a stint on war torn colonies such as and , Clarke returned to Gagarin II in 2554, less than a year before the reclamation. In 2555, when the UNSC attacked, Clarke led a unit of rebel soldiers in attempting to fight off the UNSC who were attacking the capital building.
However, he failed, and retreated to the countryside, where he continued to orchestrate a campaign against the UNSC, until he was eliminated by Jerrold Pershing.
==Biography==
===Early Life===
Dominic Clarke was born in 2504 in the city of New Kursk, the capital of the colony of Gagarin II, to a stay at home mother, and a real estate agent father. As a child, and throughout gradeschool, Dominic was teased for being a so-called "nerd", due to his above average intelligence, and, after fifth grade, glasses as well. Along with this, due to his lack of athleticism, he was made fun of for his overweight stature as well. This led Clarke to become immersed in books, which caused him to become very interested in aerospace and its various applications.
As he began to attend highschool, Clarke found a clique of friends after he became a part of the school's football team, and went through highschool with a far better experience than he had in gradeschool, however, his grades, due to the more difficult nature of his courses, were a far cry from his straight A's in gradeschool. In his senior year, Clarke was accepted into the Alexei Leonov Aeronautical University, aiming to get a degree in aeronautical engineering.
Due to the school's cost, and his family's inability to pay it off fully, rather than accept a student loan, Clarke decided to join Gagarin II's , to try and take advantage of the scholarships that came along with service.
===Colonial Militia===
====Training (2522)====
After finishing his freshman year in college, Clarke went to Camp Zhukov, where he was processed to become a militia trainee. During his medical examination, the doctors marked him down for laser eye surgery due to the nuisance glasses or contacts might prove, which he received a day after finishing his medical examination. After receiving his treatment and spending the required period of recovery time, Clarke joined a new batch of recruits, the group he had arrived with already having started training.
Beginning his training period, Clarke was initially in a culture shock, the rigidly structured military life a far cry from the freedoms he had at home and in college. But he had little time to mull it over, and soon it faded from his mind as the program moved at a breakneck pace through various topics, forcing him to divert his attention from homesickness to learning new skills.
Having a knack for taking in new information, and his physical stature aiding him Dominic quickly became one of the model trainees of the group, graduating seventh out of the class of about sixty trainees. Returning back to civilian life, Clarke was promised financial aid that would pay off what his family could not if he agreed to deploy every summer for the rest of his college career, along with performing any other duties asked of him by the planetary government.
During his sophomore year, while returning from one of his aeronautics history classes, Clarke came across a group of students protesting outside the campus library. Asking one what all the commotion was about, he discovered the protestors were from the political party known as the Patriots' Alliance, demonstrating against censorship by the . Although he was intrigued by their reasoning. Dominic had no intention of getting trouble with the authorities, and continued on after a short conversation with the protestor.
====Deployments (2523-2524)====
Over the remainder of his college career, between academic years, Clarke fulfilled his obligation to the planetary government, and reported for duty on the fourteenth of June every year, two days after the end of the academic year, for a two month period of service on the planetary frontier, augmenting the forces already stationed on the colony. Although he expected a relatively uneventful deployment, Clarke's first in 2523 was far more violent than he had expected, having to work on controlling an angry mob of colonists less than two days after his arrival.
Later in his deployment, two days before he was scheduled to ship out, Clarke engaged in a brawl with a local who had assaulted a UNSC Army trooper. Ending up with a broken nose, Clarke was disciplined by his superiors, who demoted him from Private First Class back down to Private. On his second deployment, Clarke, although prepared for the violence, found that the locals had become even more violent, engaging in a firefight with two weeks into it. 
====Capture and Turncoat (2524-2525)====
A month and a half into his deployment, Dominic and his unit were ambushed by rebel forces. Knocked unconscious by an improvised explosive device, Clarke awoke in a rebel camp, handcuffed to a chair in a primitive tent. A rebel trooper approached Clarke and uncuffed him, offering the dehydrated militiaman water from his canteen. Introducing himself as a "friend of the common men", the rebel was uncommonly kind to Dominic, a far cry from what the militiaman had heard rebel captivity was like. Unbeknownst to him, the entire setup was orchestrated by the rebel commander, Matthias Gavilán, who ordered his troops to build up an atmosphere of false friendship in an attempt to lure him to their cause, with Clarke becoming an effective guinea pig to see how effective the technique would be.
Gavilán came to eventually take part in the molding of Clarke, using the initial friendliness shown by the rebels as a catalyst to begin drawing him over to their side. And, over the course of months, by January of 2525, Matthias, through his conversations with Dominic, had pushed the militiaman over to the rebel side, going so far as to convince him to work against the UNSC, making him believe they were a menace that had to be stopped. Although the experiment did not turn Clarke into a mindless drone, which was not Gavilán's intention, it did prove that said methods, although working, took too long, even on subjects without heavy pro-UNSC leanings, and so it was discarded.
===Insurrectionist===
====Sleeper Agent (2525-2531)====
In March of 2525, as a sign of "good faith" by the rebels, Clarke was released from captivity, and returned to the UNSC. Given a hero's welcome as a survivor of rebel captivity, which was known to be brutality incarnate, Clarke finished off his academic studies at Leonov University with a 3.2 grade point average, and, having to fulfill his contract, was called up by the UNSC, rebel activity having rocketed up in recent times. Still working as a militiaman, Clarke met a rebel contact in the local populace from the Patriots' Alliance, which, under the control of Phillip Roberts, had become a paramilitary revolutionary group. Working with the rebel contact, Clarke falsified records, and aided in smuggling equipment from the UNSC to the Alliance and the United Rebel Front. Continuing this for six years, Clarke's involvement in the weapons smuggling was never suspected, largely due to his status as a former POW and survivor of rebel captivity.
====2531 Coup====
On September 16th, Clarke was contacted by a man who identified himself as "Deepthroat"Metal Gear Solid reference, and told him to meet him in a bar within the settlement Dominic was based in, and that something important was about to occur. Although he was suspicious, Clarke expected it was something to do with the rebels, and snuck out of his camp in the early dawn hours to the bar, where he was informed by the man that a coup was to happen that day, and they were going to assault the Colonial Militia/UNSC Army detachment in their camp at 0930 Hours.
Following the rebels, Clarke armed himself with a , and followed the rebels to their ambush position. Just as the attack was to start, he found he could not pull the trigger on his comrades he had served with. As the battle erupted, Dominic made it seem as if he was a simply an incompetent shot with a rifle, in order to avoid killing so many men he had served with. After the attack was finished, and the rebels were stripping the bodies, Dominic excused himself, and proceeded to retch for minutes on end, attempting to hide his disgust from the rebels by stating he had eaten bad local food, and it was simply a stomach bug.
Piled into a captured , Dominic and the rest of the rebels were brought to the capital, where they were ordered to aid in taking the capital building. Clarke led a platoon of rebel troops through the capital, eventually raising the flag of the Patriots' Alliance atop it, in what would become a famed photo across the galaxy of the coup.
Patrolling the shattered streets, Clarke eventually came across his parents, who, despite being unpleasantly surprised at his becoming a rebel, still professed their love for him, under guard by a rebel soldier. The fighter ordered them to stand against a wall, and, along with three other rebels, prepared to execute them, when Clarke stepped in, shooting all three dead, and telling his parents to escape, giving them one last goodbye.
====Post Coup====
Although his effective brainwashing had been cracked by the true horrors of betrayal and treason, Clarke stayed with the rebellion, not out of any ideological love, but that now they were his family, and he was not going to betray a second family like he had his militia comrades. Assigned to a suburb of the capital, Clarke began training rebel militiamen. However, within two years of this assignment, Clarke volunteered for off-planet duties as a frontline infantryman. Although the reasons were never told to his superiors, Clarke's main reasoning was to somehow kill himself in combat, to get away from his past.
=====Deployments=====
======Venezia (2534-2537)======
Clarke's first deployment was from 2534 to 2537, on the colony of , aiding rebel units across the planet in various operations. Fighting in guerilla warfare against the troops stationed on the planet, he became infamous for his reckless sense in combat, putting himself in unnecessary danger. This, although it was seen as valor by the rebels, was Clarke, in essence, trying to kill himself through combat, to escape the ghosts of his past. The apex of this deployment occurred in , when Clarke was called upon to aid in yet another coup. Taking a group of rebel fighters into the city in the dead of night, he led them to destroy critical points of the city's infrastructure, and cause general chaos. However, during the operation, Clarke discovered a rebel soldier attempting to rape a teenage girl. In a fit of rage, Dominic forcefully took the man outside and shot him in the back of the head.
A week later, after the end of the coup, Clarke was informed that Phillip Roberts, leader of the Alliance on Gagarin, was dead, and that his new assignment would be to the planet of Mamore. As the nightmares returned, Clarke, looking for a way out, accepted his new assignment.
======Mamore (2537-2554)======
Almost immediately after he arrived on Mamore, Clarke discovered it was a world of basically endless war. Assigned to a rebel unit that had nearly been wiped out during Alpha Company's attack on the planet, he took part in operations nearly daily against the UNSC. As time went on, and operations became more sporadic, Clarke began to interact with the local populace, eventually falling for a woman, Emily Atkinson. Suddenly, Clarke's outlook changed entirely. He no longer wanted to kill himself through combat, he wanted to escape it, and live a normal life. Now torn between leaving combat for his desires, and not wanting to betray his comrades, Clarke had to make his decision.
However, less than two weeks after he started contemplating desertion, Clarke and his unit engaged in a firefight with a local UNSC patrol. Fortifying themselves in a group of ruined buildings, the rebels halted the patrol's advance. Eventually, after a half hour firefight, the UNSC called in artillery support, which killed many of the rebels hidden in the ruins. Clarke, having escaped the barrage, his missing, and his uniform tattered and blackened, looked the part of a shellshocked citizen, and began wandering the ruins, looking for Atkinson. After two hours of searching, he found her, dead from the UNSC artillery barrage. With the loss of a love and yet another surrogate family, Clarke descended deeper into anger and grief. But he had little time to grieve his losses. After about fifteen years more of constant operations, in 2554, the Alliance recalled all troops, including Clarke, back to Gagarin II.
====UNSC Reclamation====
Returning to the colony, Clarke was given a promotion to Captain, and placed in charge of the militia unit he had been in charge of training nearly twenty years before. A year after his return, Clarke was informed the UNSC had returned, and they were coming to invade the planet. Knowing the rebels stood no chance against the UNSC, and wanting to save all his militiamen, Clarke led them on a march towards the countryside, where he planned for them to live and fight another day.
During the march, as the UNSC advanced, Clarke and his column came under constant air attack from the UNSC, killing them off rapidly. By the end of the week long trek, Clarke was the lone survivor of the group. Stumbling into a nearby settlement, he collapsed from a mixture of emotional and physical trauma, and was taken in by the local doctor, who treated his wounds and gave him shelter.
====Post Reclamation====
=====Commando=====
Leaving shortly after his recuperation, Clarke continued to roam the countryside, looking for a way to kill himself in combat, because he could not find it in himself to perform the act on his own. Despite constant combat for nearly a decade more, and attempts to goad the UNSC into killing him, Clarke was unable to find a way to kill himself. Continuing his constant assaults, the UNSC eventually placed a bounty of 500,000 on Clarke's head.
In 2568, Jerrold Pershing began to hunt for Clarke, and later that year, in November, he found Dominic. Clarke, engaging Pershing in a day long game of cat and mouse, was eventually fatally wounded by him, and expressed to him his thanks for finally killing him.
==Personnel Profile==
===Personality===
Clarke's personality during his early life, up until about age eighteen, could best be described as stubborn and hotheaded. As a young boy, having been teased constantly, this trait led him repeatedly into trouble as he argued with the inciters, sometimes even getting into physical fights, which he usually lost. This later progressed into his bulliers simply goading Clarke into a response, which, due to his short temper, usually came quick.
Despite the trouble these traits, especially the former, caused in gradeschool, Dominic joined his highschool's football team, and became far more fit as a result of his stubbornness and refusal to simply resign himself to a life of being bullied. Also during his later years of highschool, Clarke's temper became more controlled, and, as a result, he was able to form lasting friendships. 
Clarke's personality remained mostly the same up until about 2524, when he killed his first human being, an in a firefight alongside his unit of . Now faced with the reality of military service, Clarke simply tried to forget about it, pushing it to the back of his mind, and focusing on other things. 
After his brainwashing by the URF, Dominic's personality towards others was the same, however, he had become more of a supporter of the rebel cause. Although being far from an utter zealot like other rebels, he still believed they were fighting for the right things. However, even this lasted only up until , when Clarke was forced to turn on his comrades, whom he saw as family. Despite his brainwashing, he was unable to kill his fellow militiamen, whom he saw as family. Although he did not kill any of his former comrades directly, having purposely missed, for years afterward, nightmares about them persisted.
Oddly enough though, Clarke had no issues fighting and killing those he did not know, as first shown during the coup, when he shot a squad of rebel troops dead to protect his parents from execution. As time went on, with time to reflect on what he had done, Clarke became depressed, and suicidal. Even though he was unable to muster up the courage to do the act himself, he still sought it out in combat. But, as the combat went on, and he did not die, but those around him did, Clarke became more and more detached, until he simply became a lone wolf after the death of his love, Emily Atkinson, and attacked the UNSC with the sole purpose of goading them into killing him.
===Relationships===
====Family====
As a young boy, Clarke had a close relationship with his parents, as they were the two people he could find solace in from the incessant bullying he endured. Despite this close relationship as a boy, when Dominic became a teenager, like many others at his age, his relationship with his parents deteriorated, due to his rebelliousness and want to live his own life. However, he mended his relationship with his parents as he went into college, even going so far as to shoot three rebels dead who were about to execute them, which was also the last time he saw them in his life.
====Comrades====
During Clarke's adult life, and armed career, the militia and rebel fighters he served alongside became his surrogate family. His first comrades of this type were his fellow militiamen in his unit of , especially after spending a summer deployment on the frontier, and getting into a brawl to save them. Hence, when he betrayed them in 2531, Clarke found himself unable to kill his former comrades, and, even though he purposely missed, he was never able to forgive himself for his actions in even aiding in the deaths of so many friends.
As an , Clarke found it harder and harder to keep friendships, as more and more of his rebel comrades died throughout the next several decades, as he became more jaded and saddened, which also fed into his desire to kill himself. By the time of his lone operations in the 2550's, Clarke basically cut off any social relationships he had with others.
====Emily Atkinson====
Despite Clarke's personality by the time he arrived on , in late 2538, nearly a year after his arrival, he fell in love with a civilian woman named Emily Atkinson, who he met during a patrol into a town. Although Clarke never intended his relationship with her to turn into a romance, it eventually did, partially due to Atkinson being one of the few people who Clarke could find solace in on the war torn colony, as well as get him to open up and talk about things he either found uncomfortable, or attempted to forget.
As the romance developed, Clarke found himself wanting to leave the rebellion, and live a civilian life with Atkinson, but became torn between betraying yet another family to form another. However, as he was becoming more and more attracted to the idea of living a civilian life, Clarke discovered Atkinson's death after a firefight between the rebels and forces. This discovery had a lasting effect on Clarke, leading him further into his depression.
==References==
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