Spartan-273

"When we start our training, we are told Spartans never die. However, as we later find out, that isn't true. The reason I believe they tell us that lie is because once a person becomes a Spartan, their life ends, and one needs a life to die..." - Joe-273 to Zena upon arriving on Reach

Early Life
Joe-273 was born Jeremiah Tanner and was orphaned when a group of Brutes killed his family when he was 3, after which, he became an orphan. Jeremiah stayed in an orphanage until he was 6. After turning 6, he was adopted by what seemed like a nice couple, however, it would later turn out these people were ONI agents. Upon being taken, he began his traning to one day become a SPARTAN, and from the moment he arrived, he was known simply as Joe-273.

During his training, Joe was always a hyper, sarcastic boy and full of energy. However, he had had few friends and was beaten up almost daily.

Not much is known about what happened to Jeremiah during his training up until his augmentation day at the age of 14 other than the fact he was liked by few of his students and recieved a long gash on the left side of his face during an 'accident' during a training excersise with a fellow soon-to-be SPARTAN.

After Augmentation
Upon being augmented, Joe's perspective on life changed. No longer was he energetic and sarcastic, but he was now serious and emotionless.

Shortly after recieving his MJOLNIR armor, and becoming a full fledged SPARTAN, Joe began going into real combat and killing real enemies. During his training, he prefered fast weapons that he could use from a distance, however, upon fighting in reality, he felt that close range weapons did the best and most effective killing.

When Joe reached the age of 18, he had already been in many small battles, however, no major battles. Most of which either involving small covenant attacks or civil disputes. Up until then, he had been fighting with allys, but no friends. That is, until he met two SPARTANs by the names of Alex-277 and Scarlet-275, the two of which became friends with Joe very fast. Joe became associated with them during a small mission on one of the outer colonies, after which, he began to fall in love with Scarlet.

At first his emotions for Scarlet were merely crush-like, however, as he began to notice her feeling for him become more apparant, he made his move and confessed to her. Her reaction was almost instantanious, and the two became inseperable.

Almost two years passed, and after much time together and breaking many rules, Joe and Scarlet started to become intimate in secrecy, which later resulted in them becoming parents of a baby girl. Upon realizing this, Joe was punished, and Scarlet was forced to give the child up upon birth. During Scarlet's pregnancy, Joe was only allowed to see her about once a week, if that, until the child was born.

After the birth, the two began to grow distant from one another, and most of the time forced to go to different planets for various missions, however, the two still loved each other very much. Eventually, it grew to a point where the two became seperated for several months. Finally, after several months of seperation in 2532, the two were assigned the same mission and were reunited once more. However, they wouldn't be together long.

The start of the mission was a success, the group had cleared out a base from Covenant soldiers. However, shortly after, Scarlet was mortally wounded by a Brute Chopper that had run her over from behind. Joe ended up killing the rider very quickly, but it was too late.

After the attack, Scarlet was escourted out of the battlefield with Joe by her side, reguardless of the punishment he was going to recieve for doing so. He stood by her side the entire flight, however, shortly after landing at base, she died from a mixture of blood loss and internal injuries.

Scarlet's demise resulted in a depression that resulted him to become a cold blooded killing machine. However, this resulted in him becoming violent towards his own partners as well. After several months of this, he was put into cryo-sleep to be called upon at a later date. Finally, after 20 years, he was awakened due to a problem on Reach, a problem that would be the last one he ever dealt with.

Upon awakening, he was sent to train for several weeks before being deployed to reach, and in this time he was introduced to his AI system that refered to itself as Zena.

At first, Joe hated Zena. The reason behind it was because for some odd reason, she acted almost exactly like Scarlet in personality and mood. However, after accepting the loss of his former lover, his bond with Zena grew.

After a couple weeks of fighting and growing a close bond with Zena, partially filling the hole in his heart from the loss of his love, Joe was sent on his most important, and final battle. At 41 (however, due to the cryo-sleep he is physically 21), he was sent to Reach during its time of need. Nothing is known of what he did upon arriving or what happened to him after, but the moment he arrived, he was never seen or heard from again.

Appearance
Joe-273 is 6' 3" Caucasian male that is fairly light weight for a SPARTAN. Without his armor, he has short dark brown curly hair and brown eyes. He also has a long scar on the left side of his face from a fight during training.

Early on, he decided to alter his tags so that the 2 was flipped over to look like a J, making his tags read J73.

His armor is a very dark grey (almost black) with blue features and tan markings. He has recieved many armor styles over the years, but when it came to his favorite, it was his EVA armor with a CQB helmet. He was usually seen with a pistol on his waist as well. His emblem is a spartan helmet with crossed swords on a diamond background (shown above).

The armors he had over the years were:


 * Original Mark IV Power Assualt Armor
 * Mark IV CQC Power Assualt Armor


 * Mark IV CQB Helmet with EVA Power Assualt Armor (favorite)


 * Mark IV Recon Power Assualt Armor (only used on certain missions)


 * Mark V UA/CNM Recon helmet with UA/Multi-Threat Armor (was given on Reach in 2552)

Zena (Smart AI)
Zena is the Smart AI that 273 carries around with him. She was made using the mind of Gale Hammon, a little known scientist that had volunteered to be used for the creation of an AI before her cancer induced death several years prior.

When Zena chooses to show herself as a hologram, she is a lightweight female with a thin figure. Her hair is in a long ponytail on the back of her head, yet she has two strands of hair that she has hanging down the sides of her face. She is usually a light shade of purple, yet when she is mad she becomes more red and when she is really happy she turns pink. When thinking, numbers cover her body.

Zena does have one flaw however. She has a tendancy to randomly fade out when she is thinking too hard, but when she comes back she is perfectly fine, however she totally forgets everthing 30 seconds prior to her fade out.