Naomi-010 || Halo: Glasslands

PERSONAL
NAME: Krakatau
PERSONAL JOURNAL: krakatoa
EMAIL: volcanicexpression@gmail.com
AIM: EleiShar
WIKI NAME: Krakattack
CURRENT CHARACTERS: Agent Maine


CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Petty Officer Naomi-010 and A.I. Black-Box (BB journal @ just_monitoring
SERIES: Halo: Glasslands
CANON POINT: Just after killing the final Brute on the Piety
LOSS: Instead of infinite knowledge, BB would be limited to a more Wikipedia-level, and Naomi can not physically eat a MRE; she either has to actually prepare herself a meal, or have someone offer her food. No instant soups or microwave dinners, no matter the situation.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER: It's 2553. The two-decade war between the Covenant -- a collection of alien races (such as the Sangheili, Jiralhanae, Kig-Yar, and Unggoy) -- and Humanity has come to a shaky cease-fire. While Admiral Hood is meeting with the Arbiter, the Sangheili responsible for helping Master Chief split the Covenant, to sign a peace treaty, there are some who aren't confident that this will quell the unrest and loathing between the Human and Sangheili races. Admiral Parangosky constructs a mixed team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs), a Spartan-II, an Office of Navel Intelligence Spook, a smart AI, and a civilian academic well versed in Sangheili language and culture, to try and sow unrest among the differing Sangheili factions before they can unite in full out war against the Humans (who, oddly enough, have their own growing factions to worry about; an Insurrection that had been interrupted by the Covenant and allowed to brew for twenty years).

With the end of the war with the Covenant, all the military's dirty laundry is being aired, and with that comes Halsey's personal journal, which details how her Spartan program utilized child-soldiers ripped from their families and replaced with clones. The Spartan-IIs are learning their origins for the first time.

Naomi-010 is the quintessential Spartan-II. A powerful and adept fighter, she tops out at well over two meters (nearly 7') out of armor, and tips the scales past a half-tonne in full Mjolnir kit. She's wrestled a fully grown male Elite, and has snapped a Brute's neck with one punch. Like any Spartan, she's got increased strength, endurance, keener eyesight and hearing, and the ability to wear full Mjolnir power armor without snapping her spine.

This is because of the rigorous selection process, training regimen, and augmentations she received as a Spartan-II. She was abducted from her home when she was six and replaced with a 'flash clone' (here, in the 26th century, there is the ability to clone organs. Full human beings, however, are subject to numerous genetic disorders, and these 'replacement children' would not have matured into adulthood). Naomi was then put through rigorous military training and tutelage, honed into a feirce and calculating tactical mind, and learned to work with her fellow Spartan-IIs like a well-oiled machine with a sort of ‘hive-mind mentality’. She also underwent indoctrination in order to make her forget the childhood and parents she was ripped from, and to cement the Spartan-IIs as the only family she had. The creator of the Spartan program, Dr. Catherine Halsey, and their main drill Sergeant, Chief Petty Officer Mendez, became the closest things to parents she ever had.

The augmentations were received when she reached fourteen; a collection of musculature and skeletal enhancements that ended up mutating or outright killing half of the recipients. Naomi survived the process, and was one of the ones that not only received epic height and stature, but also slightly translucent skin and what's described as 'near-white, platinum' hair. (Mal Geffen's thoughts upon first meeting her were that she was the 'tallest and scariest woman he'd ever met ... a bloody Valkyrie!').

As per most Spartan-IIs, who were chosen from a much smaller and refined gene pool and psychological stability then the Spartan-IIIs, as well as having undergone the indoctrination process, Naomi is far more even keeled, not prone to emotional outbursts, and generally far more reserved around those she doesn't know or trust. When Geffen's first words to her are a disparaging remark about the Navy, he's fully intending for some friendly inter-service banter. What he gets is silence. It's confusing to him. Later on, he’s struck by how awkward she is. Later, when they’re discussing her armor and how it automatically updates while she’s in cryo, Geffen surmises that when they see her tinkering with it, it’s not because she needs to but because she doesn’t fit in.

However, over the course of the mission they'd been assigned together, Naomi eventually opens up to the others. She banters with Geffen, she develops a sisterly bond with Devereaux, and perhaps even in her own little Spartan-II way she flirts with Beloi. At the very least, she trusts him of all her teammates to ask him to read over her personal file to let her know if it's something she's going to want to see or not. Her warmth and sense of humor are there to those patient enough to coax it out.

Black-Box, or BB as he likes to be called, is a fairly-new Smart Artificial Intelligence unit based in pure intellect. In the Halo universe, there are Smart AIs and Dumb AIs. Dumb AIs are programmed from scratch and created to specialize in one specific area. In this area, they are incredibly intelligent and effecient, but they don’t actively learn or emote from outside of it. On the other hand are Smart AIs, which are created through Cognitive Impression Modelling, where a doner brain is scanned and a digital matrix is created via copying the neural pathways. As the tissue matter is destroyed in the process, they are only created from recently deceased, or in rare (and ethically questionable) cases a ‘flash cloned’ brain of a living donor. This creates an AI that is not only extremely intelligent but has the sometimes illogical human tendencies, such as making gut intcints and following hunches, as well as the ability to learn and adapt. On the other hand, they only have a finite amount of processing space. Any of their learning and thinking on top of their normal processes cuts down on their memory capacity and gives them a lifespan of about seven years. BB is only six months old.

He's quite proud of his brilliance, as well as being an AI in the first place, and presents himself as a featureless cube that glows faintly blue. He doesn't take on any sort of humanoid appearance, as do most of his AI counterparts, because he does not consider himself a 'surrogate human' or 'human wannabe'.

He is, however, fascinated by the creatures, and uses his abilities to track and monitor bio signs to determine such little nuances as the ODSTs getting excited over having their own bunks on the Port Stanely ("Don’t stalk them, BB, that’s creepy.""Just monitoring."). BB, just like every other member of the team, was specifically chosen in order to mesh with the team and to help the others mesh. This general curiosity for humankind eventually grows into a definite concern of those in his care. He warns Beloi he's not going to like what he reads in Naomi's file, and when the ODST finishes and is just as pissed as BB knew he would be, BB's there to talk him down from making a really bad decision.

Originally, BB was Parangosky's personal AI, overseeing her affairs and keeping out any rogue or hostile AI that tried to poke too closely at her files. Upon joining Kilo-5, he's primarily handed over to Serin Osman, but oversees the entirety of the ship and the other crewmates. There is a dumb AI that can run the ship's systems, but BB prefers to do it himself. He enjoys every bit of being what he is, being able to process everything from ship functions, incoming intel, anomalies in space, and a card game in the hangar bay all at once and finishing within microseconds. He's also able to fragment pieces of himself to keep limited touch over other systems, such as the bit he'd left with Parangosky, and the bit he left at the Galmorgan.

He has a bright and vibrant sense of humor. He refers to people in endearments, and once presented himself wrapped in a big red bow in honor of Parangosky's birthday. When he transferred to Naomi's armor for the attack on the Piety, he signified leaving a fragment of himself on the Port Stanely as a tinier cube that was cracked and peeling.


ABILITIES: As a Spartan-II, Naomi is well capable of feats of strength, stealth, and reaction. In the attack on the Piety, BB notices that she reacts and fires on a Brute before her frontal lobe officially identifies it as such. She’s moved around heavy crates in the hangar bay without assistance and without armor that would normally take several ODSTs and a pulley system. Her hearing and eyesight are on par with cats, including good low-light and nighttime eyesight and ability to hear greater distances, or pick out tiny nuances in a loud environment.

Her armor is the most recent edition of the basic Mjolnir kit, Marl VII, enhanced with Recon specialties. Without her armor she can conduct what would seem extraordinary feats of strength, with it she’s torn a hole in a space-ship hull made of inches-thick metal.

BB can process unfathomable amounts of information, retaining anything he comes into contact with. He can run any machinery he can integrate with, anything from personal data pads to an entire state of the art interstellar space ship, and leave bits of himself to do limited tasks when he cannot be there in full, and can reconnect and correspond with these bits when network levels allow.

THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: [As much as BB didn’t want to be human, he had to admit the times when Naomi got really worked up in her training regimens was about one of his favorite times in this place.]

[Although their experience on the Piety would forever be one of his favorite experiences with her (satisfying as it was to watch her snap an actual Brute’s neck and not just a hologram), he was fascinated by the way her mind seemed to bend time, intrigued by the way her adrenaline spiked and levelled, spiked again, her reactions to events her brain hadn’t proper processed.]

[And here in this holographic chamber, York could tweak the settings and really give them something to practice against. For Naomi it was second nature, but for BB -- who hadn’t ever ridden onboard until Kilo-5 -- it was one of the most intense learning experiences the young AI had ever endured, and he loved every minute of it.]

Two elites on your six. Banshee incoming nine o’clock.

[Naomi didn’t need to reply back, she simply confiscated the spiker from the Brute she’d just felled, and whipped around to fire at the Elites with that and her own Assault Rifle, taking large strides back to pull herself out of the line of fire from the Banshee and put the advancing Elites right in it. ]

FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: [Naomi stared at the blank page. She wasn’t one for public speaking, wasn’t really one for speaking with strangers period, but this place was certainly a lesson in adapting outside of one’s comfort zones.]

[Internally, BB gave her an encouraging nudge. She could handle half a dozen Brutes without blinking, she could handle this. She gave him and internal nudge back before finally taking a breath.]

This is Petty Officer Naomi-zero-one-zero and ONI AI Black-Box. We’re members of the United Nations Space Command and have extensive experience in military tactics, weapons training, and technological equipment of the 26th century.

At least that’s as much as we’re able to tell you, fine fellow residents of this intriguing little getaway resort. You’ll forgive us for sticking with procedure, we’re hate for our superior to show up and realize we’ve spilled all the beans, so to speak.

Let either of us know if we can be of assistance in any way.

INTENT: My original intent was to play BB; he is much different then any of my other characters, and while I had initial reservations because of his curiosity level, the fact that he’s an AI rather limits his involvement. However, in trying to figure out how an AI would work on its own, I ran into much the same problems as Anarin originally found when attempting to app Delta.

Of the options I considered, the one that was the most appealing was bringing him in from a canonpoint that that had him integrated with Naomi-010. Glasslands is by far my favorite Halo novel, and of the four characters that struck me as likely muses, both Naomi and BB were present. When I finally sat down to voice-test BB and Naomi, I had a fantastic experience that involved not only instant glee on the part of BB, but a growing curiosity to see what more Naomi could do.