Project FREELANCER

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"Molon Labe!"

- The motto of Project FREELANCER, Greek for "Come and take them!"



Project FREELANCER, also shortened to FREELANCER was a experimental bioaugmentation and powered armor program operating under its  division. Officially greenlit in the year 2554, the program saw xeno-materials and xenotechnology extracted from both and the Forerunner shield world known as the "The Repository", including battle armors that were believed to belong to Ancient Humanity's special warrior caste.

Candidates were secretly recruited by ONI agents, and many were former ORION operatives or just normal soldiers, who had given up on their fighting lives after the end of the. They were given additional minor augmentations and were given specialized battle armors, codenamed "RAPTOR". The RAPTORs were reverse-engineered from the extracted xenotechnology and included systems such as a seamless interface between the armor and the user's neural interface: a bond further strengthened by a human "dumb" AI residing within the suit. The armor was also designed to augment the user's abilities to more than the basic ODST's capabilities, although an inexperienced user may be lower in regard.

Simulated trials and initial combat deployments showed success for the Project: the FREELANCERs had enhanced physical and biological functions such as speed, strength, vision, metabolism, etc. The FREELANCERs also felt discomfort while outside their RAPTORs and longed to be strapped back in. While originally this was put aside as a basic human feeling, similar to a SPARTAN's feeling while outside their MJOLNIR armor, more research was devoted towards this and the suit's activities as a whole after an incident when a RAPTOR behaved erratically in response to alien technology.

The research revealed that the suits were partially-symbiotic in nature, with the suits giving their "hosts" heightened abilities while the hosts themselves felt naturally elevated. This information was kept a secret within the top staff along with other records, when an unknown hacker released it to all the members of the Program, including the FREELANCERs. This event caused a crisis with it, eventually ending in its shutdown and the FREELANCERs now gaining freedom as they continued to live away from the UNSC.

Origins
With the agreed upon by both the  and  and the  being completely shattered, the Great War officially came to an end. With the end of the war, humanity faced a lot of challenges and opportunities rise up as per their alliance, and their military and technology grew substantially. The wealth of knowledge about the Forerunners and their actions that the UNSC gained boosted 's importance, and soon enough various specialists and technicians, mostly employed by ONI hopped onto the field. They revisited such precursor artifacts and shrines in order to procure technology that could be reverse-engineered to make them more formidable than their allies, as ONI didn't trust that the alliance could stay strong for long.

Creator's Notes and References

 * While the Project's namesake and other various features such as suits with integrated AIs and the "Agent" titles of the FREELANCERs are similar, it should be noted that this program has no relation with the Project Freelancer found in the Red vs. Blue machinima series, or its canonical offshoots/expansions found on Halo Fanon.
 * This page borrows elements from various sci-fi series, especially the author's favourite ones such as Crysis, Marvel Comics, and of course Halo.