User:ÜberToast/SPARTAN-096

SPARTAN-096, also known as Ozymandias or Ozzy, was a UNSC SPARTAN-II and one of the few SPARTAN-IIs officially listed as Wounded in Augmentation. Cheerful, intelligent, and observant, Ozymandias was wounded in augmentation not enough so to be considered crippled, but enough to be turned down for active duty, much to his displeasure. =Ozymandias=

Childhood
Ozymandias grew up on the quiet world of Sirocco, a desert planet known for its rich spice supplies and relative seclusion from the rest of Human territory. His mother was Mayyadah al-Awahri, a high-ranking local bureaucrat and senator in Sirocco's government. Ozymandias' father is unknown. Both of his parents were noticably Arabic in descent, and Mayyadah chose to give Ozymandias and his two sisters, Adara and Jalilah, Arabic names. Because of Mayyadah's powerful position in Sirocco's government, Ozymandias grew up in a life of privilage and luxury, already owning more than $29,000 of personal property before his sixth birthday.

Ozymandias was an extremely social child. During Dr. Catherine Halsey's initial observations of Ozzy, she noted that he was able to easily coerce angry or anxious children into calming down and working together. During her observations of him, she noted many other positive qualities; his intelligence, his ability to remain unfazed in difficult situations, and his talent for making up for his relative shortness by attacking adversaries quickly and mercilessly. But the true turning point came during Halsey's routine interview with potential SPARTAN candidates. During the interview, she asked Ozymandias what kind of games he liked to play, like she did with all candidates. Ozzy asked if games with rocks counted. Puzzled, Halsey replied yes. Grinning, Ozymandias pointed out a crow perched on a fencepost in the distance and picked up a small pebble. He then threw the rock a full 50 yards, where the rock pierced into the crow's eye and killed it instantly.

Approximately four months later, shortly after Ozzy's sixth birthday, ONI Retrieval Officers broke into the government mansion where Mayyadah lived and stole him away. He was replaced with a flash clone which died about two months later. Ozzymandias was initially confused by the event, thinking that the OROs were working for his mother and moving him to a secure location; this happened often to Ozzy, as Mayyadah was a frequent target of attempted assassinations. After being told that he was being forcibly taken from his family, he reacted violently. He attacked several OROs in transit, even biting off one ORO's finger before being sedated. After arriving at the SPARTAN training facility, Ozzy realized that there would be no way to fight this, and so peacefully stopped fighting, even apologizing for the ORO who's finger he severed.

As training started for Ozzy and the other SPARTANS, he quickly realized the relationship between himself and the instructors: shut up, and you won't get hurt. Ozzy quickly gained the respect of most other SPARTAN candidates and instructors, being praised for his ability to follow orders and adapt tactics for changing environments. Ozzy was also considered by some to be vain, however, and he had difficulty relating to candidates raised in lower-class environments, such as SPARTAN-144 Leonid.

Despite his faults, Ozymandias was still considered one of the best in the SPARTAN program. He brought most of the teams he lead to third, second, or rarely even first place in many exercises. One of his obvious specialties in combat was extreme-range sniping; he was able to nail targets most other trainees would not even consider firing at. Ozzy was, however, a physically small child; he was the third-shortest SPARTAN candidates and the first-lightest. To compensate for his relative frailty, Ozzy became a master of morale warfare; he was skilled in ways of making the enemy lose confidence in battle, and was often noted to win fights between other trainees not by blows, but by harsh gazes and intimidating combat moves. Ozzy went on to be graduated at nearly the top of the SPARTAN program. His future was bright in service for the UNSC.

Ozzy's Augmentation Disaster
Both Ozzy and the rest of the SPARTAN program staff were confident in his likelihood for survival during augmentation; Ozzy showed no fear while being initially sedated, and even managed to crack a joke before losing consciousness. Intially, it seemed that the staff's predictions were coming true. During the first few hours of augmentation, Ozzy handled the carbide ceramic ossification, muscular enhancement injections, and superconducting fabrication of neural dendrites very well. However, once Ozymandias got to the occipital capillary reversal, fate stepped in. An unnoticed lack of critical catalysts during the process lead to severe damage of the diencephalon, leading to near-complete achromatopia. Doctors watched helplessly as the lack of vital enzymes during the catalytic thyroid implant tore apart the muscular structure in his throat, resulting in total aphonia. As Ozzymandias regained consciousness, he realized with horror he was could no longer see in color and was mute.

Ozymandias was initially saddened. He had came into the operation expecting him to make a completely successful augmentation process. He did realize, though, that there was still a severe risk of injury during the process, and so was not completely caught unexpected. Soon afterwards, however, information turned up indicating that doctors knowingly started the procedure without the proper chemicals. Ozzy was furious. He raged that the doctors knowingly committed him to his disabilities; the doctors replied that the missing chemicals were in short supply and were intended to be injected by themselves once the supplies were at optimal levels once again. The extra chemicals never came. Ozzy raged for several days, then calmed down. He approached the SPARTAN project command staff, attempting to convince them that his injuries were not nearly as serious as the other SPARTANS injured in augmentation and that he could still serve. But the SPARTAN staff was adamant; he would never see active duty "while the sun still shined on Earth".