#mark g313

[whotookmytomato]

Mark, Ash, and Olivia: man Fred is so cool I wish we could be like him. He's able to do all this awesome stuff.

Linda and Kelly: oh let us ruin that for you. *Proceeds to tell the gammas every embarrassing thing Fred has done over the past 30 years*

[imturt]

Shield testing bonks

[doom-dreaming]

take my humble offering of various low-quality halo character textpost memes

Ferrets under the cut

and as a gift for @poisonheadcrabsalesman

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

For @magellanicclouds - I wish it was happier but I am still thinking about the Gammas on that ship after being undercover for so long.

-

As soon as they're well enough to do so, the Gammas start patrolling.

The impulse is instinct beaten into them. Establish a basecamp and then monitor it and its surroundings. Two go and one stays with Mom. She nods and lets them because recon is important and just because ONI isn't on the Spirit of Fire doesn't mean they're safe. Someone is always watching.

The captain. The AI. The medical team. The IIs.

Red team may be apologetic about the circumstances they met under but IIIs don't do manners. Or socialization. It's why during a scouting trip past the onboard gym they heard themselves described as "feral".

At least you could count on marines to be too dumb to be anything but loose lipped and honest.

Years undercover aren't undone overnight. The tangled strands of who they were then and who they are now can never be the same. Some strings are cut to survive. Some parts lost. Habits that kept them alive are viewed as nervous tics and hypervigilance by people who had the luxury of sleeping through the worst of the war.

Maybe that's unfair, but so is their existence. The Gammas are the most volatile of the IIIs. They can never forget it. Revealing their need for smoothers meant handing over their leash. The need for a chemical tether never bothered them so much as the supplier. Nothing is ever certain but the mission. The mission's over now. Everything is uncertain and without each other to ground them, the Gammas would be lost.

Ash thinks of Onyx and Kurt. He thinks of being a leader and what sacrifices are necessary.

He listens to his brother struggle to breathe and wake up choking in the night. He holds Mark closer these days. He hears the sacrifice in his slower words and sees it in his far-away look.

"Exitus Acta Probat" - the ship's motto haunts his thoughts. Exploring yet another colony ship retrofitted for war should stir something in him, but Ash is tired. They're all so tired. Livi had gathered information on one of her patrols and then she had returned to their quarters and slept. And slept. Exitus Acta Probat: the end justifies the means. But what is the end? And where is the limit?

Ash doesn't know, but he'll lead his team as long as he draws breath. He makes Mark lean on him on the way back from patrol, shouldering his brother's weight with his head still on a swivel.

Eyes on them. Rescuers and witnesses to the means. In the end the mission was a success. Intrepid Eye was no more. The Keepers failed. Life goes on, for most.

A young man tucks his family in and then sleep takes him. He dreams of caves and phantoms and the sight of Mark still in the water.

Tomorrow he will get up and walk the ship again. There is no end, only the means and the ever growing middle.

[empresskadia]

I choose to believe that the Spartan IIs and IIIs are not used to normal acts of domesticity outside of the military. If you made them dinner, they would be absolutely blown away by the quality simply because they're so used to MREs.

For them, it was the best meal of their life. For you, it was lasagna day.

I love this and I fully agree. Very few of them recall home-made meals as children but it’s a very distance memory, Fred happens to be one of them. Like certain smells will click that memory in his head but he can never fully grasp it. Kelly teases him about it and tries to figure out what food he’s talking about but they can never put two and two together. It happens to be Blue Team’s greatest mystery they can’t solve.

But you make them food after they come back from a mission, and they are shocked. For Spartans, being cared for is alien to them, so they happen to be touched by this gesture. John and Kelly cannot sit together cause they will try to steal each other food, Kelly’s worse about this and you have to call her out cause she will try with Fred and Linda [who just about stabs Kelly’s hand with her fork.] when they aren’t looking. John will swipe a bite from Fred’s and Fred pretends not to see. For whatever reason when you make food for them, hell breaks loose and they will fight, Linda always ends up winning.

If you ever did this with the Ferrets, they get so quiet and kinda of just stare at the meal waiting for a trick question. Like why would you do this? All three of them are quiet while eating, but Ash is the one who asks if they’re allowed to have seconds and his eyes brighten when you say yes. Olivia gets a core memory unlocked and ends up sharing it at the table when Mark asks if she’s okay. They are seriously moved by this gesture and don’t know how to react but you’ll notice they go out of their way to stop by and say hello between missions. Mark ended up coming to you for advice once and continues to do so, he enjoys helping you in the kitchen too.

[amayavittori]

Fred-104: I envy your youth man, I just turned 47.

Mark-G313: Damn.

Fred-104, doing an immediate double take: F*ck you.

Fred, now doubled over in pain: I mean, damn. Ah shit, that hurt.

*Red team cackling in the background*

Fred: That was- goddamn. That was your real reaction. "Damn. I didn't know numbers got that high."

[halobirthdays]

Happy birthday to Spartan Mark-G313!

Today is his -514th birthday!

Mark was orphaned by the Covenant and conscripted into the SPARTAN-III program at the age of six. Like all Spartan-IIIs, he was taken to Camp Currahee on Onyx to be trained and was assigned to Gamma Company. After the devastating losses in Alpha Company, Spartan Kurt Ambrose decided to do things differently with the Gammas. Determined not to suffer the same losses, he secretly had the Gammas treated with a cocktail of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. While this made the Gammas faster and stronger, it also made them more mentally unstable. The Gammas required the use of "smoothers", drugs which would counteract the mental imbalance.

Mark was originally assigned to Team Saber, lead by Ash-G099. After the Covenant attacked Onyx, the only remaining members were Ash, Olivia-G291, and Mark. After fleeing the shield world, Mark was temporarily attached to Blue Team.

During his time with Blue Team, he was sent to Gao to investigate the presence of a Foreunner ancilla. The ancilla attempted to brew tension between the already-distrustful Gaos and the UNSC by killing Gao citizens, who suspected the UNSC of the murders. Gao Special Inspector Veta Lopis was sent to investigate the murders, accompanied by Blue Team. Like the other Gaos, she suspected the UNSC of the murders and Mark in particular due to the aggression he displayed when off his smoothers.

When the truth about the ancilla Intrepid Eye was revealed and the Gao government turned on Lopis, she dropped her suspicions and joined forces with the UNSC. However, ONI was concerned with the risk the Gammas presented when they did not have a steady supply of smoothers. To keep them out of the public eye, the Gammas, including Mark, were trained to be part of an ONI operative team called the Ferrets, to be lead by Lopis.

The Ferrets went into deep cover within the Keepers of the One Freedom--a Covenant splinter group--posing as Lopis' children. Through this, they were able to follow the Keepers to the Ark. There, they learned that the Keepers intended on using the Ark to fire the Halo array with the help of San’Shyuum Prelate Dhas Bhasvod. The Ferrets broke cover to stop them, with Lopis allowing herself to he captured with the intention of guiding the UNSC to initiate an orbital bombardment to prevent the Halo arrays from firing. Mark, who began to unravel due to a prolonged period without his smoothers, suffered significant injuries by the time the Ferrets were rescued by Red Team. As they retreated, Mark was killed by Bhasvod. The Ferrets joined the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire, who held a funeral in his honor.

[gribble-the-wizard]

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