Jerrold Pershing

Jerrold Pershing, also known as Agent Virginia, was a supersoldier of the secretive Project FREELANCER. Formerly a member of New Alexandria’s police department and the UNSC Navy before being recruited for FREELANCER, Pershing was present for some of the most important missions undertaken by the project’s agents. He was one of several agents critical in bringing the project down and its Director to justice before being folded into the UNSC Army to fight against the Covenant during the final months of the war. Following the end of the war, Pershing abandoned the military, becoming a wandering gunman across the burgeoning post-war colonial frontier.
Originally arriving on the world of Catanejo, Pershing was quick to put his skills to work defending various settlements across the planet from various raiders, pirates, and criminal groups. Thanks to his interventions, he began amassing a group of followers who colloquially referred to themselves as "Pershing's Rifles", a name he personally disapproved of. As the Rifles grew, so to did their reach, acting as colonial protectors across a sector of space, though not without consequences. Their growing influence and notoriety began attracting numerous elements from across human, and even former Covenant, space. To protect himself and the people around him, Pershing decided to readopt the Virginia codename, despite early efforts to distance himself from his time in FREELANCER.
==Biography==
===Early Life===
Jerrold Lee Pershing II was born on the Inner Colony of Actium on September 13, 2516, to Jerrold Pershing Sr. and Clara Pershing. While Clara worked in the commercial sector, Pershing Sr had served time as a UNSC special forces operator alongside his brother, in actuality both were members of the secretive Project ORION, unbeknownst to all but the two. Because of the genetic modifications the elder Pershing had undone as an ORION, Jerrold was seemingly far more developed than other children his age, quickly being seen as a child prodigy amongst his peers and community. The younger Pershing would excel both physically and academically all throughout his youth, participating in a variety of sports and other extracurricular activities, such as his school's JROTC and Gravball team.
One of the constant drivers of this desire to excel was his older cousin, Melanie, with whom he maintained a fairly competitive rivalry for most of their youths. Soon after graduating from High School, Jerrold's family moved from Actium to Reach, settling in one of its outermost suburbs, where he attended the University of New Alexandria, graduating in 2538, with a degree in Criminology. Following this, he joined the New Alexandria Police Department, where he would eventually become acquainted with fellow future Freelancers, Reginald Harding and Butch Flowers. Pershing would work with the two many times over the next several years, trying to maintain law and order amongst a city increasingly feeling the effects of the encroaching war with the Covenant.
Over the course of the next several years, Jerrold worked as a duty officer, performing a variety of tasks ranging from foot patrols to traffic stops, up to busting drug dens and the disturbingly increasing number of human trafficking rings, mostly targeting New Alexandria's constantly growing refugee population. In 2542, Pershing applied, and was accepted into, the NAPD's SWAT Team. Soon, he would spend most of his time more directly dealing with the sharp uptick in violent crimes plaguing the city. This would include several confrontations with localized criminal organizations and gangs, where he would receive several commendations from the local government for his actions.
It was during his time in the SWAT team that he became involved in stopping insurrectionist elements, led by Jonathan Ulan, from using stolen military-grade munitions in a deadly terrorist attack. As the leader of his SWAT element, he supported both Harding and Flowers, as well as a mysterious woman named Valerie Sulzer, during their hunt for Ulan and his cell across New Alexandria. This would eventually culminate in a prolonged and deadly firefight on the Centennial Bridge, the rebels' intended target. In the end, Ulan escaped, but his rebel cell and the local criminal elements that had supported them were completely dismantled, with over a hundred individuals between various groups either killed, wounded, or incarcerated.
Following the Centennial Bridge incident, Pershing began to rethink his position within the police. Much of his time in the NAPD had taken him in and around the city's various refugee encampments, which had a cumulative effect on him. As time went on, he began to feel that he was only helping to delay an inevitable outcome, and that as the war with the Covenant continued, the situation would only continue to deteriorate. Thus, only a few months after the the Centennial Bridge incident, Pershing resigned from the NAPD and enlisted in the UNSC Navy. 
===Military Service===
===Recruitment into FREELANCER===
===Missions===