Simon-G294

Simon-G294—also known by the pseudonym “Stray” and later “Mordred”—was a from  who was raised and augmented as a child supersoldier during the final years of the. Lambasted as both a coward and the worst-performing Spartan in his company, he gained infamy when he deserted from the and fought for the. Ultimately betrayed and abandoned by the rebels, he was left with a lasting hatred for both of his former allegiances and found himself selling his skills to the highest bidder as a mercenary in order to survive. Consumed by doubts and self-loathing, he nonetheless possesses a keen survival instinct and boundless tenacity in pursuit of his goals. In spite of his crimes and selfish tendencies, he found lasting companions in the rogue Insurrectionist AI Diana and fellow Gamma deserter Cassandra-G006.

The Urchin
"Can't remember my mother much, except that she cried a lot and threw things at me if I got close. She was always yelling at me. Said I was a bastard who looked like his bastard father. I guess she must have really hated me. Never figured out why she kept me around at all, except for when she needed to hit someone she hated."

- Simon-G294

In late 2540 on the Inner Colony world of Iskander, a wealthy businessman was discovered in an adulterous affair with one of his estate's cleaning staff. In order to dissuade the anger of his wife, he dismissed his mistress and turned her out onto the streets. Unfortunately, the woman had already conceived him a son and, unable to gain access to any means of birth control, gave birth to the boy, who she named Simon.

At first, Simon's mother did all in her limited power to care for him. Mere months after his birth, he came down with a fever that brought him to the brink of death. Although local clinicians predicted that he would not survive, the infant Simon recovered against all odds and continued developing at a normal rate. But as the years passed and her financial situation worsened, the maternal love his mother had once felt for Simon faded. Forced into prostitution to make ends meet, she began resenting her son and projecting her hatred for his father onto him. Faced with routine abuse, Simon spent most of his time away from his mother's squalid apartment complex. Older children used him to help them pilfer from local stores, and he soon developed a very loose view of law and order. Soon after he started running with the gangs, his mother died following several months of illness and heavy drinking. Simon was unperturbed by his loss and continued tagging along with street urchins until a vicious encounter with a stray dog while stealing from a scrap yard left him badly mauled. The dying boy crawled out into the street, where he was discovered by local police. After being treated, he was registered as a ward of the colony and sent to an orphanage.

While extremely unhappy in the orphanage, Simon appreciated the security of shelter and regular meals that it provided. He did not get on well with the other children and was often caught stealing and hoarding food. Incidents like these, coupled with the area's low adoption rate, made it seem as if he would merely be cared for until he was old enough to be given back to the streets to fend for himself.

This bleak future changed in 2546, when Simon was "interviewed" by an lieutenant who had been dispatched to recruit applicable candidates into the  program. Although not taken in by the lieutenant's talk of honor and duty (these concepts hollow and meaningless to him), Simon was swayed by the officer's talk of a brighter future and the enriching nature of the program. Simon agreed to be recruited into and was shipped to a  on  for training along with several hundred other young children.

The Recruit
Simon's arrival on Onyx alongside more than three hundred other candidates for the program was met with a test that the man in charge of the program's training division, Lieutenant, had utilized with every batch of candidates since the beginning of the program: a "night jump" from a high-flying Pelican dropship. Simon froze up when it was his turn to jump and was very nearly kicked out of the program on his first night. As he gave up and stepped away from the edge of the Pelican's open troop bay, he was pushed by another child and plummeted out of the dropship. Only a hasty opening of the parachute he'd been issued saved him from a messy death on Onyx's surface.

Along with everyone who passed the first test, Simon plunged into an intensive six-year training program that sought to turn the young children into Spartan supersoldiers. During the first year of physical conditioning Simon was indistinguishable from the other trainees. His instructors noted that he was one of the faster candidates and he proved to have high levels of endurance in the field exercises the trainees were put through. But as time wore on and the trainees' combat training intensified he fell behind the vast majority of his peers. Before long he had gained infamy as being one of the worst-preforming members of the company. From sparring to weapons training, his performance scores were consistently amongst the lowest in the company. Simon's failures distanced him from the other trainees, preventing him from forming lasting friendships.

Simon was widely acknowledged as being the worst trainee in the program, lacking any talent to boost a squad's fighting strength. But he did possess one advantage that prevented him from being drummed out: a sense of cunning and deviousness lacked by his peers. Unlike the more physically and tactically gifted trainees, Simon was forced to turn to more desperate measures in order to succeed. He employed "underhanded" tactics that the others balked at, such as faking surrender, playing dead, and even bribing some of the less conscientious trainees with extra food from his stash of stolen rations. While often caught and punished by various DIs and occasionally Lieutenant Ambrose himself, Simon was learning a different kind of warfare from the tricks and cheats he used to keep up with the Spartan program: one of adaption and survival.

Team Jian
"If we take them apart they'll wear down whatever squads we assign them to. But if we stick all the misfits together, maybe G293 can make a team out of the mess and we won't sacrifice the effectiveness of any of the better-adjusted trainees"

- Lieutenant Kurt Ambrose regarding the formation of Team Jian

After two years of combat exercises under randomly assigned teams and leaders, the Gamma Company trainees were divided into permanent five-person teams, each with its own permanent team leader. Simon was assigned to Team Jian under the command of Jake-G293, one of the best-performing trainees in the company. However, the other members of the squad were not so exemplary. Mary-G130 was feared amongst the other trainees for her short temper and propensity for starting fights. Terrence-G150 was a kleptomaniac who had been disciplined by both his superiors and his fellow trainees for his thieving habits. Ralph-G299 was, like Mary, a fight-starter and a bully who enjoyed mocking Simon for his failures. Jake was less than pleased to be assigned to such a ragtag team (Team Jian quickly gained the nickname of "Problem Squad"), and at first the group's performance was substandard.

The first sets of exercises Team Jian was put to were abysmal failures. It was constantly being outmaneuvered and outperformed by drill instructors and other teams as Jian's flaws and weaknesses always seemed to drag it down. Finally, during a live-fire bomb disposal exercise, a jittery Simon accidentally detonated the device he was trying to disarm. The resulting explosion struck him in the chest at close range and very nearly killed him. He spent two weeks in critical condition in the training facility's medical wing, and although he emerged without any disabilities, his chest would bear a spiderweb of distinctive scars that stretched across his torso for the rest of his life. Following this latest disaster, each member of the team blamed themselves for what had happened to Simon and resolved to perform better in the future. While they punished themselves for imagined failings, Simon had to face the reality of the situation: he had almost died because of his failings as a soldier. At ten years of age he was intensely afraid of dying, either during training or during the combat he knew was to come. Although this fear drove him to get on better with his teammates and devote himself more fully towards his training, it also made him realize just how short of a life expectancy he could have when deployed in the field. This realization began to make him bitterly resent the military that controlled his life; the fact that he had been convinced to volunteer for this life of hardship and danger only served to make him angrier.

The incident with the bomb developed Simon’s relationship with the rest of Team Jian. Though Jake disapproved of Simon's irreverent attitude and ultra-unorthodox tactics, he found ways to work Simon’s unorthodox nature into his team’s structure. This "wild card" allowed Team Jian to secure occasional victories during exercises against other teams. Ralph would never like Simon, and the two did their best to stay out of each other's way, but Mary and Terrence were fond of their unusual teammate. Mary enjoyed his devious nature, and the two often collaborated whenever Mary wished to pick a fight with another team. Terrence, who always got into trouble for stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, found in Simon a willing accomplice in many of his "heists". Simon was more than willing to risk punishment in exchange for extra food and often helped Terrence plan out nightly raids. The bonds Simon formed with his teammates proved to be the strongest he had ever felt, but he was still isolated by his low performance and unable to connect with any of the other Spartans beyond his team.

One of the few non-Jian trainees that Simon did acknowledge, at least inwardly, was one Cassandra-G006, a member of Team Kopis. She, like Simon, had poor ratings when it came to combat exercises but had made up for this shortcoming by becoming one of Gamma Company's few medical specialists. About a year before Gamma Company's graduation, Simon developed a small crush on her, which he was not bold enough to express openly and thus kept to himself. He did make the mistake of telling his secret to his teammates, and it became a common article of derision during playful banter.

Augmentations and Graduation
"My face is the same, but my body is tougher, faster, and stronger than it's ever been. Chemicals someone else made are pumping through it--I know they don't belong to me. So who does my body really belong to?"

- Passage from Simon's diary.

As the time approached for Gamma Company's graduation, Simon's performance continued to lag behind that his peers. Though by now he was used to the constant humiliations that came with being the worst trainee in the program, he remained incredibly frustrated and bitter towards his low standing within the company. He struggled to improve not out of any sense of duty towards humanity but through a determination to make himself strong enough to survive on the battlefield.

When the time for Gamma Company to receive the chemical augmentations that would improve their combat abilities and complete their transformation into Spartans, Simon and the rest of Gamma Company were taken to the medical facility, the. There they were injected with the :
 * Drug 8942-LQ99: A carbide ceramic ossification catalyst to make skeletons virtually unbreakable.
 * Drug 88005-MX77: A fibroid muscular protein complex that boosted muscle density and strength.
 * Drug 88947-OP24: A retina-inversion stabilizer drug. It boosted color and night vision capabilities.
 * Drug 87556-UD61: Improved colloidal neural disunification solution, which in turn decreases reaction time.
 * Drug 009762-OO: A mutagen that alters key regions of the subject's frontal lobe. Enhances aggression, strength, endurance, and tolerance to injury.

Like the rest of the Spartans, Simon's body benefited greatly from the augmentations, but he emerged from the augmentations unsure of how to view the permanent changes that he had been subjected to. He was shipped back to Onyx with the rest of the company, where they spent a short period adjusting to their new bodies and perfecting the use of the newest models of their. While waiting for their coming deployment, every squad in the company competed against each other for "top honors" in a series of training skirmishes using non-lethal stun rounds. Although Team Jian did not make it far in the competition, they still did much better than what was expected of the "mongrel squad". When all but three teams had been eliminated, the rest of Gamma Company departed Onyx and readied themselves for war.

Early Deployments
"It was fast, it was noisy, it was chaotic. There was blood all over the place and it got to the point that I wasn't even thinking anymore, just sitting back and letting instinct to all the work for me. We all thought battle would be just like the exercises back in training, but it wasn't..."

- Simon-G294 remembering his first experience on the battlefield

With the UNSC on its last legs in the war against the Covenant, Gamma Company was quickly broken up and distributed to war zones throughout what remained of human territory. Each team was a valuable asset and they were used as tactical commando units targeting key Covenant positions and leaders while buying time for regular units to conduct evacuations or shore up the flagging defenses. Jian's deployments brought it up against the brunt of the Covenant invasion forces, but Jake's leadership brought them through their initial battles unscathed. Simon's kill ratio was predictably low, a fact that frustrated him to no end amidst the added stress brought on by life on the battlefield. Although he had been conditioned for years to adapt to the added violence and danger, Simon's experience of combat was one of desperation and terror.

During one counter-attack against a Covenant special operations division, Jian was paired with Team Kopis with the objective of isolating and destroying an elite enemy strike force. During the fighting, one broke through Jian's perimeter and single-handedly annihilated Kopis before making his mistake. The team's lone survivor, Cassandra-G006 was folded into Jian as it moved on to its next assignment. Simon grew closer to the grieving Cassandra and proved instrumental in helping her cope with the loss of her friends, though he lacked the nerve to indulge any of the growing personal feelings he had for her.

Mission to
With the Covenant's military war machine now locked in a brutal struggle with the UNSC's fleets and armies over control of Earth, every eye in the galaxy was fixed upon the Sol system. However, some of the more stubborn Insurrectionist factions were not content with sitting back while the battle for humanity's survival played out. Team Jian was tasked with raiding the camp of one particular group suspected of possessing stolen nuclear weapons. Jian slaughtered the unprepared rebels; Simon killed three enemy fighters, though he later confided to a sympathetic Cassandra that it felt strange to kill a fellow human being. Although the nukes were not at the camp Jian recovered data files that traced the weapons to the nearby colony of Mamore, a world known for its history of rebellion and insurrectionist sympathies.

Jian was quickly redeployed to Mamore, where they set an ambush for the rebel convoy carrying the warheads. Cutting the convoy in half with hidden explosives, the young Spartans hijacked the warhead-bearing truck and one of the escorting it. But as they fled back to their landing zone, Simon was knocked off the back of the Warthog and forced into a ravine by the pursuing rebels. Although his teammates tried to come to his rescue, the rebel's massive response force pushed them back. Over the team's objections and Simon's radio pleas not to be left behind, Jian was ordered to withdraw with the warheads to their waiting dropship. A terrified Simon could only flee deeper into the ravine as his friends took off, leaving him alone on a planet crawling with hostile rebels.

The Orphan
"I'd been through a lot before then, of course. The streets and the Spartan program were my childhood. But Mamore was where I grew up. Mamore is what made me what I am now."

- Simon-G294

Believing that he had been intentionally left behind by the UNSC Simon resigned himself to being marooned on an unstable colony teetering on the brink of planetary insurrection. Knowing that he lacked the ability to survive in such an environment on his own, Simon buried his armor and weapons under rocks in nearby cave. Returning to the scene of the firefight, he scavenged suitable clothes from the corpse of one of the dead rebels and began to make his way towards the nearest population center, a small town called Concord. Upon arriving in Concord, Simon quickly discovered that the town was overrun by rebel gans who, although lacking the leadership that most Insurrectionist Mamorian towns possessed, still managed to hold the remnants of the UNSC garrison at bay. Trusting no one, he spent several days by himself on Concord's dusty streets. As the days wore on, Simon nursed his anger at the UNSC for abandoning him. On his fifth day alone, he met Emily, an orphaned girl turned insurgent soldier. Emily led a small band of child soldiers, reporting to one of the rebel gangs that was attempting to secure control of the town for themselves. Impressed by the way a hungry Simon managed to resist her gang's attempt to mug him, Emily offered him a place in the group. Once again, Simon slid into a new role in order to improve his chances at survival. In the coming weeks, he would discover that the "incompetence" he had suffered during his time in Gamma Company had only been significant when he was pitted against his fellow Spartans and crack Covenant troops. Compared to the poorly trained insurgent militia who ran Concord he was a masterful fighter who impressed even adult rebels with his tenacity and enhanced reflexes.

While he could have usurped Emily's position as leader of her gang (which the adult insurrectionists affectionately called "The Rat Pack"), Simon did not want any leadership position, especially in the volatile environment of Mamore's expanding insurrection. He was extremely wary of being linked with the Insurrection. Although resentful of the UNSC for his abandonment, he knew of the extensive and deadly UNSC operations against the Insurrection and had no interest in being caught up in such a one-sided conflict. Instead, he was drawn into the family dynamic of the Rat Pack. Most of the Pack's child soldiers had led miserable, impoverished lives much like Simon's and he identified with them far more readily than he had with the war orphans of Gamma Company.

Under Emily's direction, Simon learned about the subtle background politics that ran the rebellion-ridden Mamore. Although the various factions that had risen up against the planetary government were all technically united under the Insurrectionist banner, they were disorganized and often behaved more like criminal gangs than political revolutionaries. Infighting over recruits and weapons was the norm, and the savvy Emily led the Rat Pack into odd jobs for any group of insurgents who wouldn't turn away help from children in exchange for food and access to weapons.

As the weeks began to turn into months, Simon began to see Emily and the Rat Pack as a new family to replace the one he had lost when he had been marooned. As Emily's chief "lieutenant" he grew more in tune with his new status in life: no longer a special forces soldier, he had gone back to being just another mongrel child scrambling out a living on poverty-stricken streets.. Brought back to his life before the SPARTAN-IIIs, he threw himself into the daily affairs of survival, as it helped to hide the pain he still felt from the loss of his Spartan friends and his growing pangs of hatred for the UNSC.

United For War
As Simon roamed the streets of Concord with Rat Pack, he began to notice a change in the behavior of the Insurrectionist factions occupying it. Unbeknownst to him, the Second Battle of Earth had finally reached its conclusion, resulting in a victory for the UNSC and its newfound Sanghelli allies. The Human-Covenant War was over and Earth was able to begin rebuilding its shattered colonies. But while this was good news for the human race, the leaders of the Insurrectionist factions on Mamore knew that this meant they could expect a UNSC military intervention before long. In preparation for the battle to come, the different factions scrambled to eliminate the remnants of the planetary government, secure UNSC military hardware, and solidify their followers. In the confusion, many of the smaller factions were eliminated or absorbed into larger ones, which quickly united amongst themselves with pledges of cooperation and mutual support. The region of Mamore that Concord was located in fell under the jurisdiction of a relatively small faction called the "Mamorian Freedom League" which had managed to survive by remaining largely removed from previous bouts of infighting. With little in the way of advanced military hardware, the Mamorian Freedom League had to settle for recruiting as many fighters as possible in order to maintain its autonomy as an independent group. Concord was one of the first towns it targeted for major recruitment, and before long Rat Pack had been completely incorporated into the organization.

Unlike the rest of Rat Pack and most of the adult insurgents, Simon was keenly aware of how efficient the attacking UNSC forces would be, especially when pitted against the poorly equipped rebels. Not wanting to draw attention to himself as a superior fighter, he submitted to the basic training that the more experienced fighters gave to both the new adult recruits and child soldiers in their ranks. In the meantime, he did his best to quietly convince the children in Rat Pack that any battle against UNSC forces would amount to little more than suicide. His efforts, however, were met with disbelief and hostility. Many of Rat Pack's members, Emily included, had been orphaned by UNSC attacks on local rebels, and even those who did not have the UNSC to blame for their misfortunes had grown up in an environment of enmity towards the UNSC. Simon abandoned his futile efforts to change their minds and began contemplating fleeing and reporting back to the UNSC. But he surprised himself by being unable to abandon the people who had taken him in and become his family. He instead remained with them in the hopes that he could somehow prevent them from experiencing the full fury of the coming conflict.

The Rebel
"The Second Mamore Insurrection came as a shock not only to the military leaders charged with crushing the Mamorian Insurrection but also to humanity as a whole. With our numbers so ravaged by the Great War, many had believed that the Insurrectionists would lay down their arms and abandon armed conflict as they helped our species rebuild. But the years of fighting sparked by the second insurgency showed that this was not the case..."

- A UEG textbook on the Second Mamore Insurrection

"I had lost everything that had been mine in the UNSC, but found a new home and family to take their place. And then, before I realized what was happening, they were blasted away right before my eyes, leaving me with nothing but more pain than I had ever thought possible."

- Simon-G294 reflecting on his role in the Mamore insurrection

The Calm Before the Storm
The UNSC's campaign to eliminate the Insurrection from Mamore officially began five months after the end of the Human-Covenant War when a small Naval task force arrived in system with orders to eliminate all Insurrectionist spacecraft, prevent any further rebel aid from reaching the planet, and gather reconnaissance on the Insurrectionist ground forces. In the meantime, the planet's various factions had come to terms with each other and were united under the banner of the Insurrection and the ideal of an independent Mamore. As their propaganda machines doubled their efforts to recruit more fighters to bolster the rebels' already substantial, albeit poorly equipped, forces, the faction leaders scrambled to prepare defenses in their own regions of the planet. Mamore was one of the few worlds that the Insurrection truly held on a planetary scale, and the rebels were determined not to lose their "bastion of freedom". But while public support for the Insurrection was high, the news of UNSC ships in orbit raised some doubts about the Insurrection's ability to hold on to its gains. Nevertheless, new recruits from a population sick of UNSC ineffectiveness during the Human-Covenant War continued to swell the ranks of the Insurrection.

From where he stood in the grand scheme of things, Simon knew very little of these developments. As soldiers of the Mamorian Independence League, he and the rest of Rat Pack helped construct fortifications around Concord, which had become the MIF's base of operations in the region. The bonds he had formed with Emily and the other Rat Pack members were just as strong as the ones he had held with Team Jian, which had been built up over years of time spent together in training and in combat. The communal lifestyle made necessary by the group's reliance on each other for support and survival made Simon's previous habits of self-isolation impossible. Furthermore, as Emily's second in command in group decisions he had a responsibility to direct the other children, who looked up to him for his "superb" combat skills. It was up to him and Emily to keep the group together while also attracting as little attention from the other MIF soldiers as possible.

A month after the initial task force had arrived in orbit, more ships arrived to supplement it. These carried a ground force of ODSTs and regular Marines, who were to land on the planet and assault several rebel hardpoints, secure landing zones for further UNSC forces, and establish bases of operations over multiple regions. The battle for Mamore, dubbed Operation: UNION by the UNSC, had begun.

The Defense of Concord
For the first few weeks of the operation Concord's area did not see any enemy incursions. Simon and his fellow Insurrectionist soldiers were kept on constant alert, constantly scouting for signs of UNSC troops. Occasionally vehicles carrying wounded or bedraggled Insurrectionist troops from other regions would arrive in Concord, their occupants telling stories of well-equipped UNSC forces overrunning position after rebel position. Seeing his predictions of a one-sided slaughter coming true, Simon tried to think of ways to arrange for his friends in Rat Pack to surrender. In the meantime, the MIL had its forces erect even more defenses in the farmlands and plains surrounding the fortified towns. In spite of constant propaganda from the MIF's leaders espousing their cause's superiority and their own invulnerability, fear began to spread amongst even the most determined rebels. Simon, for his part, began to wonder how his life could have taken such a frightening turn even as he tried to stand by his friends.

"How did this happen? How did I end up here, so far from where my home used to be?"

- Simon-G294 during a moment of self-doubt

When the war finally came to the MIL's doorstep, it was met with determined resistance by several skirmisher units of infantry and light vehicles. By this point more UNSC Marines had arrived on-planet and were conducting extensive campaigns against the dug-in Insurrectionists. The troops battling with the MIL forces mainly consisted of armored battalions sent to eliminate the main bastions of resistance as infantry regiments followed behind to mop up resistance and occupy important landmarks. Although the insurgents fought stubbornly against the invaders, their second-rate weapons and equipment were no match even for a UNSC military weakened by the Human-Covenant War. Despite all of their fortifications and soldiers, the Insurrectionists were driven back to the large town centers, where they hoped the civilian populations would prevent the UNSC from utilizing its heavy air support. In the meantime, small patrols were sent out to conduct guerilla actions against the advancing units. Amongst these ambush teams were the members of Rat Pack, and with them Simon.

Rat Pack's first taste of combat against the UNSC came during a large ambush against an armored patrol of Scorpions tanks and APCs. The Insurrectionists, unleashed a flurry of bullets and grenades on the surprised Marines. Although several enemy soldiers were killed and one of the Scorpions was disabled, the rest returned fire, immediately inflicting severe casualties on the MIL troops. It was then that several members of Rat Pack, Simon included, were sent dashing out to plant satchel charges on the Scorpions and APCs. While their smaller size managed to bring them close to the vehicles without being spotted, the Marines pinned them down before they could reach their targets. At Simon's urging, the children broke and ran without planting their charges. For his part, he avoided firing upon the Marines in the hopes of using his Spartan status to eventually protect his friends.

This was not Rat Pack's first ambush, but it was their last they would undertake without taking losses. Although the training she had received from older soldiers had made Emily a cool hand in combat, they were still facing heavily armed UNSC troops with no armor to speak of besides the clothes on their back. Over the course of the next few weeks, Rat Pack would both gain and lose members as it fought to slow the constantly-advancing Marines. Child soldiers from other areas were taken in by the group as it took losses during ambushes and holding actions. As he saw more and more of his friends die, Simon became less and less squeamish about firing on Marines. His first kill came when he shot and killed a Marine to prevent the man from executing a wounded child from the Pack. Though he dismissed all admiration he received from his friends, Simon experienced little regret and he began applying the UNSC's training against its soldiers. After innumerable engagements, the rebels were driven back to Concord, the town that Simon and Rat Pack called home. Simon spent the next week taking cover in a small dugout with the rest of Rat Pack as the rumble of approaching UNSC vehicles grew ever louder in their ears.

Last Stand and Tragedy
"This battle, comrades, is a crusade against tyranny and a quest for freedom. We shall strike down the servants of the imperialists who dare take up arms against this bastion of freedom. Do not submit to the imperialists! For it is through your sacrifices that we shall pave a road leading out of these dark times, one that will take us into a new era of peace and freedom! Mamore is but a stepping stone to this goal, the first of many worlds that we must free from the grasp of the imperialists! Victory is but a moment away, but it will only be ours if we are willing to do whatever it takes to grasp it!"

- One of many Insurrectionist propaganda recordings, often broadcasted during battles like the one in Concord.

The first UNSC armored units arrived at dawn the following morning. Most of Concord's non-rebel inhabitants had already fled the approaching violence, meaning that the unit's commander was given the go-ahead to launch a full assault on the town. After the first attack was halted by a storm of anti-armor rounds, the Scorpions in the unit were ordered to bombard the town from afar while the infantry were loaded into APCs and air support was called in on some of the more fortified rebel positions. By mid-morning, much of Concord's outer limits had been reduced to rubble and the unit launched another attack, which succeeded in breaching the town's weakened defenses. Although Scorpions and APCs were juicy targets in the town's cramped streets, the Marines deployed around them were more than capable of fending off ill-coordinated attacks on the vehicles. Nevertheless, heavy MIL resistance slowed the attack's progress down to a crawl. Emily and Simon led the Rat Pack through rubble and body-strewn streets and alleys as they darted from one ambush to another. They and the other rebels managed to inflict moderate casualties on the attacking forces in spite of their material disadvantage. However, Simon and Emily could only watch as their home was obliterated by the cannons of the Scorpions and their friends were cut down in storms of machine gun fire.

Although it was now brutally clear that they were fighting an unwinnable battle, the MIF's surviving leaders refused to retreat or surrender and ordered all rebels, adults and children alike, to fight to the death. Faced with certain death if they continued fighting, the remainder of Rat Pack finally caved in to Simon's pleas that they flee while they could. But on their way to the city's perimeter they found themselves cut off by UNSC Marines and armored support units. The group finally collapsed as the remaining children panicked and scattered in their attempts to escape. Simon was forced to watch as all that was left of his new family was cut to pieces amidst the ruins of a town he had come to think of as home. With all of their friends dead and most of the other rebels in the town killed or captured, Simon and Emily fled through the war-torn streets. After an explosion separated them, Simon was unable to find Emily and was left to fend for himself. Alone and surrounded on all sides, with nothing but a rifle to protect him, Simon was ironically saved by two of the UNSC's "gifts": his training as a Spartan and his augmented body. Dodging through the rubble and firing blindly at any UNSC soldier who got in his way, the desperate young rebel relied on his speed and reflexes to get him past the Scorpions and APCs that dotted the streets of the fallen town. Finding that a lone child soldier was much easier to miss than a pack of them, he slipped through the UNSC's perimeter and fled into the surrounding foothills. Alone in Mamore's wilderness once again, with only a rifle and the filthy clothes he wore on his back, Simon collapsed in exhaustion and despair, too stricken by grief to even acknowledge his close brush with death.

The War Goes On
"Now what am I supposed to do?"

- Simon-G294

The battle for Mamore continued to rage across the planet. Small organizations like the MIL were hardly seen as obstacles by the UNSC commanders, who used their destruction to demoralize the larger, more equipped factions while also encircling them and cutting them off from supplies and reinforcements. But while the UNSC was enjoying massive success in a traditional military campaign, it was still suffering from continued guerilla attacks in areas that had already been declared "secure". Faced with hostile populations and refugees in many areas, the UNSC forces where having a harder time dealing with the aftermath of "victory" than they had anticipated.

But all of this meant nothing to Simon. After fleeing from the ruins of Concord, he erected a small memorial to Emily and the other members of Rat Pack using an abandoned assault rifle as a marker while carving their names into a stone with his own rifle's bayonet. The next morning, he began traveling down one of Mamore's dusty roads in the hopes of encountering a UNSC patrol that he could surrender to. From there, he would show them the UNSC barcode tattooed on his neck that would identify him as a special warfare operator. He could then make up any story he liked to alleviate suspicions his superiors might have about his tardiness in reporting back in. As he traveled down the road, he encountered a platoon of marines providing security for a pair of Scorpion tanks as they advanced on an objective. But rather than turn himself in, Simon found himself compelled to hide from the oncoming troops instead. Confused by his loss of nerve, Simon only understood his confusing emotions after the marines had passed him by. Having seen the wretched lives his new friends lived on a UNSC colony world, fought by their side against the UNSC, and seen them die at the hands of UNSC troops he had come to hate his former government as much as they had. Unable--or unwilling--to return to the UNSC and his past life, Simon found himself with few viable options aside from joining up with the nearest Insurrectionist forces and continuing the fight that his friends in Rat Pack had been so determined to participate in.

For the next month, Simon would once again take part in ambush after ambush, doing his best to harm UNSC forces in any way that he could. Without having to help support Rat Pack, his speed and training allowed him to actually get close enough to plant satchel charges on the vehicles he was sent after by whichever group he was fighting with at the time. He would wind up amongst different rebels all the time, as it was not uncommon for whole ambush groups to be wiped out by the UNSC forces during their attacks. Simon, however, would always be kept alive by his continuing desire to survive no matter what the cost. The most bloody engagements he was involved with were a series of frontal infantry assaults made by close to one thousand rebels. Having kept a marine outpost under siege for close to a month but running low on food and ammunition, the leaders of the besieging forces organized their men and led several "human wave" attacks on the outpost. These attacks were almost entirely ineffectual and ended after a single day of repeatedly failed charges. Simon participated in two of these, but his survivalist instincts compelled him to remain towards the back of the crowd and to flee when things became completely hopeless.

Redmond Venter and the HLF
"Nicely done, kid! I see that this lovely little planet's been teaching you well!"

- Redmond Venter's first words to Simon, who had just ambushed and killed a Marine sniper team

Simon continued to help wage the ongoing war against the UNSC in spite of the marines' expansive victories on the ground, which made victory for the rebels seem less than hopeless. He was driven to fight mostly because he could not bring himself to return to the UNSC and because whenever he tried hiding and waiting out the fighting, he was plagued by guilt about his dead friends. Still bearing the scar on his forehead from the encounter on the Ides of March, Simon had begun to lose faith in his own ability to control his destiny and was starting to believe that it was better to allow other people's goals and desires to guide his actions. Suffering from what some might call an identity crisis, he tried giving the fight against the UNSC his all but was always held back by his fear of death and penchant for self-preservation.

Approximately two months after the deaths of his friends and the destruction of Concord, Simon was on his own again after the small group he was with was gunned down by a lone marine reconnaissance sniper team as they scouted out a ruined town. Still carrying the same low-quality assault rifle he'd been using since the war on Mamore began, Simon stalked the team throughout the rubble, carefully closing the distance between himself and them without crossing their sightline. After entering the dilapidated building they were using for cover, he surprised and killed the sniper and his spotter with a sustained burst from his assault rifle. To his shock, another rebel emerged from his cover in the rubble outside the ruined building along with a small group that included both adult rebels and child soldiers. They too had been investigating the town, and when the snipers opened fire on Simon's team they took cover in time to see him hunt and kill both marines. The leader of the group introduced himself as Redmond Venter and offered Simon a place in the rebel faction he fought with, the Humanity Liberation Front. With no reason to refuse, Simon agreed to the man's offer and joined the group's ranks.

It soon became clear to Simon that Venter's guerilla force, which consisted of far more fighters than the handful he had been accompanied with during their first meeting, was no run of the mill Insurrectionist faction. Rather than remaining confined to one region of Mamore, Venter insisted on taking his forces to wherever there was a sudden surge of violence, using a combination of trucks and disguised footpaths to get his fighters from one place to another. Everywhere they went, Venter would set up small base camps, usually in abandoned towns or cities. There he would coordinate ambushes and raiding parties, the latter of which he tasked with bringing back weapons, supplies, and (most importantly) new recruits. These recruits usually took the form of children from local towns and homesteads; most of Venter's adult fighters were skilled enough to come back alive from engagements and those that fell were quickly replaced by other HLF soldiers from other nearby groups. Simon quickly realized that Venter's goals were extremely different from those of the other rebel leaders on Mamore. Rather than fighting to keep the planet independent from the UNSC, he was using the ongoing conflict as an extreme training environment in which he could build up a hardened fighting force that could be used by the HLF in other, more winnable battles. And the resources that he was using to build this force were the children he recruited into his group.

"Whoever lacks the strength and determination to give everything to the battle at hand is a weakling. And there is no room for weaklings in this army!"

- Redmond Venter

Direct participation in ambushes and raiding parties was not a task that Venter regulated to the children he recruited. Unlike the other factions, he saw no value in sending children out to die with minimal training. Instead, he set up small training camps in every region they visited and it was in these places that he began building his young soldiers up. In addition to weapons, equipment, and tactics training, Venter and his HLF lieutenants knew that in order to forge effective warriors out of their recruits they needed to strip them of all qualms about fighting and killing. In order to do that, they constantly pitted the children against each other in arena-like brawls that were often brutal and life threatening. Rarely issued weapons for these fights, the young recruits were instructed to use anything--rocks, stones, and their bare hands--to beat their opponents. Extra food and offers of a higher status in the group were used as incentives to keep the children motivated. Simon arrived in the group several years after Venter had begun this practice (which he had started before the UNSC even arrived), and even though he had already proven himself in real combat, he was pitted against many of the toughest and most experienced children in Venter's organization. But while his opponents were more experienced and talented at hand-to-hand fighting than he was, Simon's aces in the hole were his years of Spartan training and his physical augmentations. After a week of struggling to win these brutal fights, Simon grew accustomed to the routine of constant fighting and began bringing down his opponents with ease.

After the SPARTAN-III who had once been considered the worst in his class soundly defeated all of the most skilled fighters in Venter's training program, the men in charge of the fights began pitting him against multiple opponents, some of whom they armed with clubs, stones, and even knives. In spite of the stacked odds, Simon won every fight he entered, albeit with many bruises, cuts, and black eyes. Then, when the astonished trainers stepped in to ensure that he didn't become too full of himself, he beat them as well using basic moves he had been taught during his training on Onyx. In spite of the awe he was suddenly held in even by the most hardened members of Venter's cadre, Simon refused to allow himself to become attached or open to any of his fellows. The pain of Rat Pack's loss and the innumerable deaths he had witnessed since then had reasserted the basic principle of detachment that the DIs on Onyx had attempted to instill in their trainees. Finally, after witnessing three of his best men get beaten senseless by the new recruit, Venter himself stepped in to fight Simon. After a fast and furious melee, the skilled Venter disabled Simon and pinned him to the ground, but not before receiving several cracked ribs from the determined young rebel. This defeat at the hand of an unaugmented and unarmed rebel sharply increased Simon's respect in his leader. With his training program in jeopardy, Venter removed Simon from the other recruits and accepted him into his own inner circle of adult fighters who participated in raids and ambushes.

"This is real funny, you twisted piece of shit. You're making a kid do your dirty work for you? You're turning him into a murderer and you still say your fighting for justice? That's real funny... you think you're the good guys, don't you? Well, you don't seem so "good" from where I'm sitting. You didn't seem so "good" when your bombs hit my colony and killed my wife and children. And now you're killing this kid too, with all the bullshit you're pouring into his head. Do you even see the misery you bring, the lives you ruin? Heh... you're evil and you don't even know it. And that's why we'll stop you. We'll stop you--!""

- Second Lieutenant Will Dietz to Redmond Venter just prior to his execution at the hands of Simon-G294

In Simon, Venter saw something far greater than just a skilled child soldier. He realized that there was something special about the newest addition to his fighting force, and he was determined to find out what that was. But he also wanted to be sure that he had secured the young man's trust and loyalty before he could commit him to combat and probe him for details about his past. After observing Simon during several minor ambushes, Venter realized that while Simon was devoted to fighting the UNSC, he lacked the resolve needed to do absolutely anything that was required for victory. After seeing Simon allow a UNSC medic to carry an injured Marine to safety rather than gunning them down (Despite his still-underhanded fighting methods, Simon still adhered to a few basic principles regarding war; furthermore, the medic had reminded him of Cassandra, his former teammate and crush). And so Venter devised a test for Simon that would fully commit him to the no holds barred war that the HLF planned to wage against humanity's government. Gathering his entire group together, Venter had a Marine corporal, captured during the last raid, brought before Simon and told the young soldier to execute him. Simon hesitated even after Venter strengthened the force of his order. However, after the guerilla leader reminded Simon of all the comrades he had lost to the UNSC, Simon was reminded painfully of Emily and Rat Pack's deaths and gunned the hostage down in a fit of vengeance. Although this war crime would haunt Simon for much of his life, it would break down the ethical barriers put in place by Lieutenant Ambrose's teachings and set him on a path of absolute devotion to Venter and his goals.

"In order to give your body to the cause and fully join this war for freedom, there is something you must do. And that is..."

- Redmond Venter ordering Simon to kill civilians for the first time.

Still somewhat unconvinced of Simon's devotion to the HLF's cause, Venter formulated a final test that would ensure the boy's unwavering loyalty. With the UNSC enjoying near-complete success on Mamore's battlefields, the once-strong civilian support for the Insurrection forces had been severely weakened, leading to a rise in Insurrectionist violence against the populace. Venter's men brought a mayor and his wife to the HLF encampment, accusing both of them of spying for UNSC agents. Venter had the two imprisoned inside a small abandoned hovel, then left alone inside. Giving Simon a pistol, he ordered him to execute the prisoners. Sent alone inside the hut to face the captured mayor and his wife, Simon was forced to choose between his personal morals and his desire to remain with Venter and avenge his friends. In the end, the devotion to Venter himself that Simon had been nurturing over the past few weeks came to fruition and he executed both civilians in spite of their pleas for mercy. At this point Simon resolved to devote the rest of his life to aiding Venter and the HLF in the war against the UNSC, but behind his firm resolve lay a horrific sense of guilt over what he had done that would continue to haunt him even after he finally shook off Venter's influence. This repressed guilt was only compounded when, about a month after he killed the mayor and his wife, Simon participated in an HLF firing squad that gunned down almost all leading members of an uncooperative town.

A Meeting Upon the Battlefield
By the end of their first full year on Mamore, the UNSC pacification forces had achieved widespread military success across the planet, successfully eliminating all major bastions of Insurrectionist activity and liberating all controlled regions from rebel control. It was also beginning to enjoy success with much of the local population, which had grown tired of over two decades of constant war and devastation and was now facing persecution from rebel forces for not supporting them. But regardless of its accomplishments, the UNSC still faced heavy resistance from the remaining guerilla forces who refused to lay down their arms and continued to ambush and raid UNSC patrols and field bases. And one of the most effective of these remnant groups was Redmond Venter's band of HLF fighters.

Venter's plan of using the war to produce competent fighters was finally paying dividends, as many of his young "students" were being sent into combat, where they proved to be just as ruthless and effective as he had hoped. Still refusing to play the common Insurrectionist game of suicidal attacks against superior forces, Venter instead relied upon his own tactical skills and experience as a guerilla fighter in order to take on UNSC targets. He had found a willing and loyal follower in Simon who, while cynical and brooding at times, was quite capable of achieving any task he was given. Once derided as a failure amongst the circles of SPARTAN-IIIs he had grown up in, the traitor Spartan was now a valued component of Venter's fighting force. He rarely dwelled on his past as a Spartan now, instead using his memories of Rat Pack and the near-worshipful attitude he now held towards Venter to strengthen his resolve to keep fighting. Now an experienced and capable guerilla fighter, he was one of the key reasons that Redmond Venter was becoming known as "The Tiger of Mamore" to both UNSC and Insurrectionist forces alike.

About two months after the conflict's first anniversary, Simon and two other MLF fighters were performing a reconnaissance mission against a detachment of UNSC soldiers who had been diverted from their main force to eliminate an Insurrectionist base camp. With their objective completed, the detachment was heading back to rendezvous with their main contingent. After agreeing that there was no sense or hope in organizing an attack on the contingent, which contained three Scorpions and several Warthogs, Simon and the men he was with decided to report back to Venter. Unfortunately, their own Warthog was spotted and fired upon by one of the enemy Scorpions. One of the rebels was killed outright, while another was flung from the vehicle and shot by the Marines accompanying the tanks. With nowhere he could safely run, Simon used the overturned Warthog's radio to send a distress call to Venter's bas camp before firing upon the UNSC forces from cover. Hoping to take a rebel prisoner, the leader of the detachment had his men only use their weapons to pin Simon down rather than kill him outright while they presented minimal targets for him to fire on.

After running out of ammunition for his assault rifle and realizing that help would not come soon enough to save him, Simon chose to throw down his arms and surrender to the UNSC forces. Dragged out from behind the Warthog and brought at gunpoint to the detachment's commander, who was surprised at both the youth and the fire he saw in the prisoner. While acting sullen but cooperative, Simon planned to make a bolt for freedom as soon as an opportunity presented itself. However, before one could he was confronted with an unexpected turn of events. Amongst the UNSC forces in the detachment was a single SPARTAN-III, one Lelouch-G057. Lelouch was shocked to recognize Simon from training and stepped forward and expressed his surprise. Simon, just as surprised to encounter one of his brethren on Mamore's battlefield, realized that he would have to make his move to escape sooner just as Lelouch realized the dangers of holding a hostile Spartan prisoner. Before he could warn the men restraining Simon, the traitor Spartan wriggled free of their grasp and produced a hidden knife from his clothing, which he used to kill one of his guards, steal the man's assault rifle, and flee into the surrounding woods.

Fearing an ambush, Lelouch told the commander of the detachment to hold his position while he went after Simon. Following an exhausting chase through the woods, Simon came upon an abandoned town, one of the many that had been devastated and then left to rot by the constant fighting. Out of breath and knowing that he wouldn't be able to elude pursuit, Simon took cover in a small ruined house just as Lelouch arrived in the town as well. Knowing that Simon had to be hiding in the area somewhere, Lelouch activated his SPI armor's cloaking abilities and began to slowly go from house to dilapidated house in search of his quarry.

During all his time fighting on Mamore, Simon had never faced any of the UNSC's elite soldiers, especially not Spartans. He had forgotten that, even with all the skill he had gained through over a year of constant fighting, he was still outclassed by his fellow SPARTAN-IIIs. Furthermore, he had only the clothes he war and a stolen assault rifle to aid him, while Lelouch had state-of-the-art armor and multiple weapons and grenades. To make matters worse, as Simon began to slowly drift into a panic, Lelouch began to use his armor's communications system to broadcast an amplified version of his voice that filled the area and made Simon even more unaware of his enemy's position than he already was. A skilled practitioner of psychological warfare, Lelouch preyed upon Simon's paranoia about his own ability to survive against such a superior opponent. As he moved from house to house, the hunting Spartan casually listed all of the factors he had in his advantage while also reminding Simon of the incompetence and cowardice he had shown during training. As Simon slipped further and further into a state of unthinking fear, he began to lose his ability to plan and reason out the situation, which was exactly the effect Lelouch had been hoping for. "Simon!!! I know you are afraid! I know everything about your abilities! You can't beat me Simon! No matter what you do, I will always beat you! I'm superior to you in every way! There's no hope. You know what? I often wished to have taken part in the Mamore Insurrection. There, I would've seen you and your ragged band of child soldiers. I would've taken the pleasure of killing them right before your eyes. They are worthless Simon! Pitiful urchin filth that deserved to die!"

- Lelouch-G057 to Simon-G294

But just as Lelouch had reached the alley outside of where Simon was hiding, he made the mistake of referencing and mocking all of the child soldiers who had died in the fighting on Mamore. Suddenly shaken from his fear by a grief-stricken rage, Simon once again became determined to survive in order to continue fighting in Rat Pack's memory. As Lelouch reached the door to Simon's hiding place, Simon removed his combat jacket and propped it up with some rocks and rubble in a corner before quietly climbing into an alcove. When Lelouch entered the building, he saw the jacket in the corner and instinctively fired upon the decoy. Simon then ambushed his pursuer, fleeing towards the door while spraying wildly at Lelouch with his assault rifle. Lelouch's armor saved him from most of the damage, although a bullet struck him in the forehead, cracked his visor, and knocked him unconscious. Not knowing whether his opponent was alive or dead, Simon fled the area to finally regroup with Venter's forces.

Although Simon had escaped alive, Lelouch was still alive and would report back to his ONI superiors that not only was SPARTAN-G294 not dead, as they had believed, but alive and fighting for their enemies. This prompted ONI to move Simon to their "threat list", a collection of individuals that ONI believed needed to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

Defeat and Victory on Mamore
A week after Simon's confrontation with Lelouch, the last concentrated bastion of Insurrectionist strength on Mamore was successfully eliminated by the UNSC peacekeeping forces. With most of the other HLF forces eliminated or evacuated, Venter decided that he had done all he could on the planet to further his organization's goals. Gathering his band together, Venter led them on a hasty march to a region where they were to be picked up by an HLF blockade runner that could get them past the UNSC ships patrolling the system. Simon was startled to realize that this region was the one where he and the rest of Team Jian had conducted their operation over a year prior. On an impulse move, he left the group and returned to the cave where he had left his SPI armor. Surprisingly it was still there and remained in relatively good condition as well. When Simon returned with the armor, Venter was finally able to piece together the clues about his best fighter and realized that he was a UNSC super soldier of some kind. Rather than growing angry over the revelation, Venter was delighted to learn that the legendary Spartans could be swayed to other causes and saw a world of potential in Simon.

Although the revelation that Simon was a former UNSC operative caused an upsurge of distrust in most of the HLF soldiers in the group, Venter's interest in the boy served to quiet their discontent as they reached the rendezvous point and were loaded onto the escape ship and departed Mamore. The planet would be declared completely secure two months later, although sporadic resistance would remain present on the planet for several more years.

Having finally left the planet that had completely changed the course of his life, Simon was suddenly the favored disciple of Venter. The rebel leader was eager to both learn as much as possible about ONI's secret programs and to probe the depths of Simon's potential as a soldier for the HLF, and he ordered Diana, an experimental "smart" A.I. created by the HLF, to begin formulating combat simulations they could subject him to. Diana, who had functioned as an advisor, cyber-warfare specialist, and mission planner during the entirety of Venter's campaign on Mamore, looked down on Simon and saw him only as another "meatbag" (her derogatory nickname for most humans) too dependent on the organization to accomplish anything of real value, so she focused on making the simulations as difficult as possible for him. After a month and a half of cryosleep, Simon and the other HLF soldiers were awakened when their ship docked in an asteroid base located in a rocky belt located above the uninhabited world of Actenia.

The Traitor
After debarking on the asteroid base, Venter assumed overall command of the facility and wasted no time in formulating his plans for Simon. Having already established the traitor's loyalty on Mamore, the HLF officer set out to accomplish two goals at once. The first of these was a steady stream of the simulation battles Diana had designed that took place in one of the bases more advanced training courses. During these exercises Simon was pitted against holograms of both UNSC and Covenant troops in scenario after scenario that left him alone against odds that were often nothing short of impossible. With Diana in control of the opposing forces, Simon found himself "dying" more often than not and was unpleasantly reminded of his days as a SPARTAN-III trainee. With Diana mocking his efforts every step of the way and Venter becoming increasingly disappointed in his new disciple, Simon began to grown more and more discouraged with every scenario he lost. When he began reverting back to his old ways of focusing more on survival than on completing the mission goals, Venter started manipulating his emotions through accusations of cowardice and lack of motivation in order to bring him back to peak performance. Ironically, the times he successfully stayed alive at the cost of completing the mission earned him more respect in the eyes of Diana than the times he tried and failed to accomplish objectives.

Venter's second goal was to glean as much information as he could from the former SPARTAN-III. During the periods between Simon's resting, eating, and participation in training exercises, Venter personally debriefed him on the nature of the S-III program in regards to both the training involved and the capabilities of the soldiers it produced. He was shocked when Simon admitted to being "pretty much a failure" in comparison to the other trainees in the program and gained a new level of fear and respect for the UNSC's secret weapons when he considered the amount of damage a "failure" like Simon had been able to do on his own. As the debriefings went on and Simon divulged more information on the program, Venter began to formulate plans to forge weapons of his own similar to the Spartans that would be able to realize the HLF's goal of allowing colonies to secede from the UNSC. However, any of these soldiers that he managed to train and field would always be inferior to the UNSC's super soldiers without one critical component of all Spartan programs: the augmentations.

Lab Specimen
"I honestly don't know how much useful data I can get from just one body, not without comparable specimens to analyze as well. But I've always loved a challenge, so I'll do my best."

- Dr. Seid Al-Furud reporting to Redmond Venter after receiving orders to inspect Simon-G294's body for signs of augmentations.

Having coaxed as much information as he could out of Simon, Venter was already formulating plans to create super soldiers for the HLF that could match or at least counter the Spartans of the UNSC. But before he could even so much as begin to map out the course such a program would take, he needed the key to the entire idea behind super soldiers: genetic augmentations. Although the leaders of the Insurrections many factions were aware that the Spartans had been physically augmented in some way, they were unsure about the extent of the augmentations and all previous attempts to replicate them had ended in failure. Venter believed that he could trump these past failures with the one element that had been absent from all Insurrectionist research into augmentations: a live and willing specimen of an augmented Spartan. After determining that Simon's constant training was beginning to yield results, Venter called a moratorium on the defector's simulated battles and expressed his need for Simon to provide the HLF with genetic information on the augmentation procedures. Simon, who at this point was loyal enough to do practically anything Venter asked of him, agreed to spend some time with Dr. Seid Al-Furud, the HLF's chief geneticist. The doctor, himself a loyal follower of Venter, did not subject Simon to any severe procedures and instead did little more than withdraw tissue samples and compare Simon's body to those of unaugmented HLF soldiers. Although Simon was returned to Venter's care after only two weeks of study and was unaware that anything major had taken place, the data retrieved by Al-Furud would be the harbinger of the HLF's Knight Project.

Day By Day
Redmond Venter was not a man who appreciated heroic sacrifices for hopeless causes, and unlike many other Insurrectionist leaders he saw no reason to lash out at the UNSC as it rebuilt. Mamore had taught him far too well that even in its weakened state the UNSC's reprisals for major secessionist actions would be swift and severe. Therefore, Venter was content to bide his time and slowly build up the HLF's forces to the point that they would be able to launch a successful war of secession against the UNSC. Within his well-supplied asteroid base above Actenia, Venter felt secure enough solidifying his position and making plans to exploit the UNSC's weakened state to get his hands on many pieces of military technology left exposed by the chaos stirred up by the Human-Covenant War. However, what Venter hadn't counted on was that the leaders of other HLF cells spread throughout UNSC space would not agree with his strategy and would insist on a more proactive approach. In order to avoid a messy inter-faction civil war, Venter chose what he thought was the lesser of two evils: he began arranging for the UNSC to learn of the locations of opposing cells, which would subsequently be wiped out or forced into hiding. After a few of these "unfortunate discoveries," Venter received much more support from the rest of the HLF, which saw the losses as proof that Venter's ideas regarding the UNSC and the strategy the HLF should take.

Simon, now a member of Venter's inner circle in spite of his youth, found his faith in Venter shaken by these tactics. Although he continued running simulation battles with Diana, Venter had become a much less active participant in his development, being heavily involved in the tensions mounting within the HLF. This time away from Venter's influence allowed Simon to examine the events on Mamore in a much more honest light, and the realizations he began making started to steadily erode his faith in Venter and the HLF as a whole. He began having nightmares about the war crimes he had both seen and committed on Mamore and his memories of these events forced him to realize that the tactics the Insurrectionists had used there were much more damning than anything the UNSC forces had done during the battle. Now completely unsure of himself, Simon could not decide if his actions could be blamed on Venter or if he himself was completely at fault for everything he had done. Regardless of his internal conflict, he knew that he had forced himself into a corner in terms of whom he pledged his allegiance to. He was now known as an Insurrectionist by ONI and he had nowhere else to turn to besides the HLF. The only comfort he now had was his burgeoning friendship with Diana. The formerly hostile A.I. had taken a liking to him, although she still took every opportunity to mock her somber trainee.

Lethal Trackdown
In an ironic twist of fate, Venter's strategy of leaking the locations of HLF cells to the UNSC in order to eliminate his rivals would backfire when an Insurrectionist captured during the ensuing raids divulged the location of Venter's asteroid base to his ONI interrogators. Faced with the opportunity to eliminate one of the HLF's principle leaders and the chance to capture an Insurrectionist stronghold that promised to contain vast amounts of valuable data, the UNSC put together a strike force of elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers and SPARTAN-IIIs to assault and capture the base with a minimal amount of damage to the facility. The HLF only got wind of the attack when a UNSC naval task force appeared over Actenia and launched precision missile strikes that quickly eliminated all of the base's shields and point defense systems. With these out of the way, dropships full of ODSTs were sent to secure landing zones within the asteroid itself.

Knowing that the troops manning the base would be no match for the UNSC's troops, Venter prepared to abandon the facility along with anything he deemed too valuable to lose. Along with Dr. Al-Furud, as much research data as he could salvage from the base's systems (which were already under attack from UNSC engineers), and several of his veteran advisors, Venter boarded a small stealth shuttle and prepared to flee the battle. When the base's crumbling infrastructure prevented him from retrieving Diana as well, Venter ordered Simon to retrieve her data crystal chip from where it was stored within the base's computer mainframe. Simon did so, desperately stumbling through dozens of firefights in order to reach the mainframe and retrieve Diana. But by this time the battle had grown too desperate for Venter to wait any longer. Upon hearing his former idol's orders to abandon both him and Diana, any faith that Simon had retained in Venter vanished entirely and he was left alone in a base that was quickly falling to the UNSC.

Confrontation
"Simon? What are you... oh no. Oh no."

- Jake-G293 after encountering Simon in the HLF base

Surrounded by enemies and with nowhere left to turn, Simon began to panic until Diana, who was not keen on dying either, informed him of another stealth shuttle still docked in one of the asteroid's hidden hangars. If he could get her inside, she could fly them both out of harm's way and make the jump to Slipspace. Since she could not interface with Simon's SPI armor, Diana could not help him as he made his way through the war-torn base in order to reach the hangar. Recognizing a child soldier that Venter had brought from Mamore amongst a group of defenders, Simon found himself participating in a desperate stand against advancing UNSC forces in spite of his urges to continue fleeing. As was to be expected, the rebels quickly fell under a hail of grenades and gunfire and Simon made to flee before the attackers arrived.

But as he retreated through an open doorway, an explosion tore through the room and bowled him over, knocking his helmet off in the process. As he scrambled to retrieve it, someone hailed him from behind. Simon turned to see a SPARTAN-III on the opposite side of the room who obviously thought he was a regular S-III. His long period of separation from his fellow Spartans and the hardships he had experienced since then made Simon unsure to react to such a friendly reception and he froze in place as two more S-IIIs joined the first. It was only when he moved again, exposing his face fully, that one of them recognized them and spoke his name. Within seconds Simon identified the speaker as Jake-G293, his former team leader, which meant that the two with him were Ralph and Cassandra. After several more seconds of hesitation on both sides, Simon retrieved his helmet and fled. The three remaining members of Team Jian, knowing that he was a traitor, pursued.

Ignoring the chaos around him, Simon fled desperately from his former teammates. Behind him, an explosion wounded Ralph and Jake ordered Cassandra to remain behind to treat him. With Jake not far behind, Simon reached the hangar and found a group of rebel soldiers preparing to board the shuttle themselves. Hearing his desperate cries for help they attempted to stop Jake but were quickly gunned down by the SPARTAN-III before they could even get off a shot. Out of places to hide and held at gunpoint by his former leader and friend, Simon urged Jake to let him go. Jake, who had been told that Simon was a dangerous asset to the rebels who could not be allowed to remain at large, refused and urged him to surrender. Sure that he would be executed if captured, Simon threw a grenade that caused Jake to dive for cover and used the time it gained him to bring his own assault rifle to bear. In the short firefight that followed, Jake was wounded in the arm and leg and Simon received a cluster of bullets in his stomach.

Jake, still on his feet in spite of his injuries, approached a downed Simon, determined to take him alive. Simon, who was kept conscious in spite of his injuries by his augmentations, pretended to be helpless until Jake allowed him to stand up. Then, drawing a hidden knife, he knocked Jake's weapon away and stabbed at his visor. The knife punched into Jake's visor and cracked it, but Jake managed to halt Simon's arm before it could push any deeper. The two then proceeded to engage in hand to hand combat. Jake expected Simon to be just as easy an opponent as he remembered him being, but Simon's lackluster skills had been honed throughout the fighting on Mamore and his exercises with Venter and he surprised Jake by holding his own. But even though Simon had improved, Jake was still able to gain the upper hand, disarming Simon and pinning him to the ground. Desperate for a weapon, Simon seized one of the fallen rifles from a nearby rebel corpse. The weapon sported a bayonet, and Simon drove it into Jake's side. When he could reach the trigger he pulled it, sending several bullets through Jake's back, narrowly missing his spine.

Aided by his augmentations, Jake too remained in the fight. He caught Simon in a stranglehold with both hands and began to choke him. As Simon ran out of air, he desperately grabbed his fallen knife from where it lay nearby and slashed Jake across the forehead with it, giving him a deep scar oddly similar to the one Simon still bore on his own brow. Jake instinctively reacted to the pain and Simon was able to escape his chokehold. With both combatants dazed from blood loss, they barely noticed Cassandra enter the hangar. Realizing that more reinforcements were sure to arrive, Simon desperately tried to end the battle by detonating a grenade and diving away. He did not jump far enough and caught several pieces of shrapnel in his left arm. Jake was injured and knocked back by the blast and Cassandra, who had been running in to help Jake, was hit by dozens of pieces of shrapnel and left unconscious and bleeding on the hangar floor.

Of the three wounded Spartans, Simon was the only one able to get to his feet. With Jake on the verge of unconsciousness and Cassandra already knocked out, he was the last one standing. He restrained himself from killing his former teammates and instead boarded the shuttle and inserted Diana's memory crystal chip into the main computer. As Diana hurried to prepare the ship for departure, Simon feared that the heavily wounded Cassandra would die before UNSC reinforcements arrived on the scene. With the deaths of her former teammates already on his conscience and his feelings for her not completely gone, Simon decided to take her aboard and treat her himself. At this point he had lost a large amount of blood and would later wonder if he had been thinking clearly at the time. Nevertheless, he brought her aboard against Diana's protests to the contrary and put her in one of the ship's four cryo tubes before the ship took off and fled the asteroid.

The Ending Day By Day
With the shuttle's stealth systems fully engaged, Diana was able to pilot it past the UNSC task force and make a Slipspace jump to the nearest Insurrectionist enclave. In the meantime, Simon temporarily staunched his bleeding wounds with biofoam and prepared to thaw and treat Cassandra. With Diana serving as an impromptu advisor, he bandaged and treated her wounds as the shuttle traveled through Slipspace. Uncertain of what to now do with his captive. Although Diana cautioned him to arm himself and restrain her, Simon refused to do either and instead worked to treat his own wounds.

Cassandra finally awakened several hours later to find Simon asleep in the chair where he had been seeing to the various scrapes and bruises he had received during her fight with Jake. A startled Diana alerted Simon, who awoke to find a battered Cassandra holding a gun to his head. With nothing on hand to defend himself, Simon was completely at his former teammate's mercy. But rather than kill him, she asked if he had killed Jake. When Simon told her that Jake was still alive, she relented and surrendered the gun, saying that she was tired of fighting.

In the awkward hours that followed, Simon and Cassandra traded terse accounts of what had happened since Team Jian's mission on Mamore. Although Simon had been aware of the end of the Human-Covenant War since before the fighting on Mamore had started, he was able to get a first-hand account of its fulfillment. He, in turn, gave Cassandra an abbreviated--and heavily edited--version of his time with the Insurrection and his reasons for betraying the UNSC. While the two were still not able to fully trust each other, the were able to rekindle some of the friendship they had shared while in Team Jian. In the meantime, Diana (who had nicknamed Cassandra "Doc" because of her role as a medic) discovered that the shuttle's Slipspace drive was malfunctioning and was in risk of overloading and destroying the ship. Making an emergency abortion of the Slipspace jump, the shuttle emerged in a sector of deep space that was nowhere near any inhabited planets. With no way to fix the Slipspace drive, they were effectively stranded until Diana could reach the nearest settlement with the ship's regular settings or until another ship discovered them. Diana advised Simon to put himself and Cassandra into cryosleep indefinitely until they encountered civilization again.

Simon agreed to the suggestion, as did Cassandra, who was already starting to think of herself as part of the ship's three person "crew" (Simon, Diana, and Cassandra) in spite of her loyalty to the UNSC and Simon's status as a wanted traitor. Both young Spartans accessed the ship's cryo-bay and entered the deep sleep of suspended animation while Diana remained active as the ship's pilot.

Against All Odds (2570)

 * Date of emergence from cryosleep: 2564

Galactic Era

 * Date of emergence from cryosleep: 2564

War on Dashan
"I thought I'd made this clear to you when you hired me, but since you obviously didn't get it I'll repeat myself: I'm in this for revenge just as much as I'm in it for the drugs and money you're paying me with. It's what keeps me going when things look bad, that little vision of revenge against the UNSC. I'm an avenger. I can't help it, it's just the way this galaxy's made me. At the end of the day I'm the very worst kind of person, someone who lives to make his enemies suffer. And believe me, before this is over I'll make sure that my enemies suffer."

- Mordred to Deacon Zuag, Joseph Stockert, and several other resistance leaders on Dashan.

Mental Report
"Simon does what's best for Simon. As far as he's concerned, just about everyone else can go to hell."

- Cassandra-G006

Since the Office of Naval Intelligence first learned that one of their volatile SPARTAN-III operatives had gone rogue and sided with the Insurrection, numerous classified psychiatric evaluations were conducted in attempts to profile the traitorous Spartan. All reports eventually came to the conclusion that Simon's betrayal was sparked by a mixture of rebel brainwashing and his own sense of inferiority as the worst-performing candidate in Gamma Company's ranks. What the reports failed to take into account was the fact that Simon, unlike most of his comrades, had not lost anything to Covenant or Insurrectionist activity and was instead merely the unfortunate result of a broken home. This basic fact, when coupled with his low performance records, made him an outcast even within his own squad and weakened his ability to firmly latch onto the UNSC military with the devotion displayed by most Spartans of all generations. Having been a pariah all his life, Simon was quick to fall in line with any new ideology after being separated from the UNSC command structure and was thus an easy recruit for the rebel militia on Mamore. But his subsequent betrayal at the hands of Redmond Venter left him disillusioned with causes of any kind and, prevented by low self-esteem from forging himself as the center of his own moral compass, he was cast adrift in the galaxy with very little to cling to.

While mentally stable, Simon possesses an extremely skewed view of both the galaxy as a whole and himself as an individual. Having spent his entire life--particularly his years in the hyper-competitive training environment on Onyx--at the bottom of the heap, he has little experience with being truly successful at anything. He is used to everyone being faster, stronger, or smarter than he is, and in spite of his own considerable intelligence is almost always willing to settle for less--both materially and morally. His self-image has been partially shaped by other's perceptions of him, particularly those expressed by his fellow Gamma Company trainees on Onyx. In order to hide his insecurities, he has embraced the image of a deceitful, self-serving coward, pretending to revel in these traits while secretly loathing them. His professed disdain for other people and society in general actually hides his true feelings: that he himself can never have a place either in civilized society or with anyone else. He balances this self-loathing with healthy doses of self-pity and anger towards those who used and wronged him in the past. This vindictive streak manifested itself in a variety of ways, from day to day resentment towards authority and people who got the better of him to full-blown, often self-destructive quests for vengeance.

In spite of his weak self-image and warped moral compass, Simon is capable, in spite of himself, of occasionally performing acts of kindness and even selflessness. Though he puts most of these decisions--such as his rescue of the wounded Cassandra-G006 in the Actenia asteroid field--down to emotional selfishness, he nevertheless despises injustice and though by and large he hardens his heart and accepts a "cold, fucking galaxy" mentality, his own experiences as both an expendable soldier and a slave can push his conscience into going out of his way to help those in similar circumstances. Although his less admirable traits often win out, his conscience will sometimes get the better of him when he is under the right influences. He is also stubborn to the point of thick-headedness and will tenaciously endure against pain and adversity if properly motivated.

He is tactically clever when it comes to his own positioning on the battlefield, but is no leader and is very unskilled at coordinating groups of people. Nevertheless, his intelligence and deviousness have helped him to escape potentially lethal situations. Although his later training improved upon his combat skills somewhat, he still relies mainly on his wits to help him succeed during combat.

With Cassandra-G006
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

- Simon-G294 to Cassandra-G006

With Diana
Simon's partnership with Diana was originally founded solely on necessity, as the two of them had to cooperate in order to escape the UNSC forces invading the HLF asteroid base above Actenia. Previously, Diana had dismissively classed Simon as "just another flunky" of Venter and had limited her contact with him. But in spite of this precarious alliance, Diana aided Simon when he was attacked by Team Jian even though the ambush was entirely his fault. After the engagement left Simon badly injured, Diana also provided him with medical instructions as he patched himself up, allowing him to recover from his injuries in time to stow the comatose hostage Cassandra-G006 in cryo and plot a randomized course away from the planet. Diana showed further loyalty and attachment to Simon when she spent the time following his capture by Jiralhanae slavers tracking him down by herself until she eventually caught up with him at the Visag keep on Sanghelios.

Both Simon and Diana are doggedly loyal to each other, although their interactions are often just antagonistic. Diana in particular is particularly guilty of this, nicknaming Simon "Dumbass" and making efforts to mock or aggravate him at almost every turn. In spite of this, she is also receptive to his problems and is highly protective of him in both combat and non-combat situations. Simon, in turn, is extremely defensive of Diana despite their constant bickering and considers her to be one of a very small number of individuals that he can trust. In what could be considered a darker aspect of their relationship, Diana often eggs Simon on when opportunities arise for him to be treacherous, cunning, or even ruthless in their line of work as mercenaries. Some of her words and actions indicate that a large portion of her attachment to Simon stems from the fact that he allows her to exercise her practiced contempt and disregard for human lives without many of the restrictions that other human handlers might enforce upon their A.I.s.

With Redmond Venter
"I guess now, knowing what I know and feeling the way I do, it seems crazy to think about how I gave myself, body and soul, to Venter. But back then, it made perfect sense. There I was, with a whole mountain of hate and pain and nothing tangible outside of the UNSC troopers to direct it at. And there he was, offering to give me that direction I wanted so badly. Thinking like that, it really isn't any wonder why I let him use me the way he did."

- Simon-G294

Religion
Simon has had no manner of religious education and adheres to the principle that even if there is a God, such a deity is not worth paying much heed or attention to. His limited views on such matters have gone unchallenged for most of his life though Cassandra-G006 would confront his views on the metaphysical during their time together on Hekate.

Appearance
During his early life, Simon’s head was always covered by a tangled mop of dirty black hair. When he entered the SPARTAN-III program it was shaved off so as to conform with military regulations, but after deserting he grew his hair out again as a sign of defiance and was rarely motivated to groom it throughout the rest of his career.

From his early days, Simon was always a thin, scrawny child even during periods when he was well fed. His training and augmentations surprisingly did little to change this trait and most people would never guess that he is a former Spartan from merely looking at him. His left arm, which was lost during his escape from a Jiralhanae slave camp, has been replaced by a robotic prosthetic which he has heavily modified in order for it to act as a base into which Diana can be inserted and project herself.

Simon’s chest is covered with scars, most of them inflicted when a bomb he was disposing of during a training exercise detonated prematurely. After Gamma Company began to operate with Semi Powered Infiltration armor he began to wrap his torso in bandages, claiming that the scars chafed under the armor. His back was heavily scarred by the beatings he received during his time as a slave to Jiralhanae pirates, marking him as an ex-slave to anyone familiar with the Jiralahanae and their customs.

Simon rarely laughs or smiles and generally maintains a stoic expression or a scowl on his face. When he does smile it is usually when few or no people are present. His piercing gray eyes are often the only things that people can use to read his emotions, as he maintains less control over their behavior than he does with the rest of his facial features.

When not clad in his modified SPI armor, Simon generally dresses in a ragged, patchy overcoat and underclothes of similar quality. Like most Spartans, his skin is very pale from spending so much time inside his armor.

Weapons
"Never trust Simon with any kind of precision rifle; he'll just waste the ammunition for it and you have just as much chance of getting shot by him as the enemy does. Same with rocket and grenade launchers, only in their case it's easier for him to accidentally kill you with them. We just let him have something like an MA5 or an M7 and stay the hell out of his line of fire when he starts shooting."

- Jake-G293 explaining one of Team Jian's more unorthodox policies to a newly transferred Cassandra-G006

From his first combat exercises using firearms Simon was a notoriously poor shot, almost completely flunking at accuracy tests with such weapons as the M392 DMR, the Battle Rifle and the various sniper rifle systems. He performed slightly better with such mid to close ranged systems as the MA5 series assault rifle and various submachine guns and carbines, so these became his weapons of choice during his deployments with Team Jian during the Human-Covenant War. He would also use a variety of knives and pistols, favoring the maneuverability they offered him while he wielded them.

When he was fighting for the Insurrection on Mamore, Simon used the outdated but reliable AR-74, a staple of Insurrectionist forces throughout the galaxy that usually sported an anachronistic bayonet attached to the weapon's barrel. The Insurrection's heavy use of guerilla tactics during the Mamore conflict resulted in Simon becoming a much better shot than he'd been previously and he began to use such weapons as the DMR when necessary. Furthermore, he and other Insurrectionist fighters made heavy use of knives and silenced pistols, which they would use to kill unsuspecting UNSC troops during night attacks. Simon would continue to use such weapons as the AR-74 following his recruitment into the HLF and his departure from Mamore, but he was often granted access to the well-funded organization's arsenal of superior UNSC weaponry.

After leaving Hekate and spending time as both a pirate slave and an apprentice to the Sangheili blademaster Roni 'Visag, Simon reasserted his preference for MA-series assault rifles, although the weapon's modeling and distribution had changed somewhat in the years he had been in cryo sleep. He also used knives, pistols, and explosives to a greater extent and developed a distinct combat style that centered upon possessing as many small weapons on his person as possible without hindering his own movement. One of the most striking additions to his arsenal was a slightly smaller than average energy sword given to him by his Sangheili teacher, who had it modified to fit Simon's smaller size and drilled him in its use. Although doubtful about its overall potential, Simon bowed to his mentor's wishes and kept it even after he left the master's household. Inspired by the weapon's small size when deactivated and lethal close-range cutting potential when active, Simon kept both the original blade and a spare he'd had constructed before his training had ended.

In his current capacity as the mercenary known as Mordred, Simon maintains an MA-series assault rifle as his weapon of choice (using other weapons he comes across when the need arises) along with numerous knives and sidearms--strapped to various parts of his armor--as secondaries. His two energy swords are clipped to either side of his chest, where he can access them quickly during combat. Although he is only an average shot with most firearms, his training with the Sangheili blademaster Roni 'Visag made him one of the few humans to come close to mastering the art of wielding an energy sword in combat.

Armor
Simon has always favored the Semi Powered Infiltration armor that was standard issue for SPARTAN-IIIs throughout the duration of the Human-Covenant War. When he was a member of Team Jian, he would often wear the armor even when off duty, enjoying the sense of security that it gave him. Following his abandonment on Mamore, he would hide his armor to avoid detection by Insurrectionist forces, but would return to the area and retrieve it shortly before leaving the planet with the HLF. The armor was badly damaged during his engagement with Team Jian on the HLF asteroid base but would be gradually repaired and refurbished by Simon over the course of his training with the blademaster Roni 'Visag. This armor was painted a dark grey and had most of its original features, most notably the camouflage system, removed in favor of several modifications that Simon--under Diana's guidance--made to it. These were mostly geared towards making the suit more compatible and accessible for Diana, and he had the left arm of the suit removed entirely in order to provide unhindered access to his prosthetic arm.

Additional Equipment
Apart from his weapons, armor, and the various field tools that Simon employs during combat, he also utilizes a unique set of holo-drones during certain situations. Designed by Diana after her extended exposure to Covenant technology in the months following the landing on Hekate, the drones are designed to project full-sized, life-like holograms of whomever they are programmed to. Furthermore, they emit a wide range of noises at varying decibels to further mimic real individuals and can generate heat signatures to complete the deception.

Although these devices are incredibly useful, they also possess several drawbacks that limit Simon's use of them. First and foremost, the parts required to build them are mostly of Covenant design and are difficult and expensive to acquire. Furthermore, Simon must put them together manually under Diana's direction, a lengthy and complex task in and of itself. The energy required for their extensive use is tremendous; the drones can only operate for a few minutes at most. Finally, the drones are almost worthless without Diana to direct them, which she generally does from her position in Simon's prosthetic arm. From there, her extensive processing capabilities can easily maintain all of the variables involved with maintaining a convincing impersonation and she can guide the holograms through rapid and complex maneuvers. Without Diana to manage them, the best they can do is hover in place and project little more than a stationary image.

Even with their limitations, Simon considers the drones to be incredibly useful and keeps several with him at all times. He uses them in combat to divert and distract his opponents, offsetting his mostly rudimentary marksmanship and firearms abilities.

Trivia

 * Simon harbored a particular dislike for Ash-G099, the leader of Gamma Company's Team Sabre. He saw him as a brown noser who was constantly playing for Lieutenant Ambrose's attention.
 * Even after his genetically hastened puberty, Simon grew very little facial hair and he rarely has to shave. It is unknown if this is a side-effect of his augmentations or merely a regular genetic mutation.
 * After learning that each unit could hold up to a liter of water, Simon has kept a small stash of condoms for use as emergency water bottles.
 * Simon's ancestors on his mother's side were truly world-spanning, being made up of numerous ethnicities over innumerable generations. They also had a history of military service in many of humanity's most decisive wars, but almost every individual that served during these conflicts ended up fighting on the losing side.

Related Articles

 * Team Jian
 * Diana
 * Cassandra-G006
 * Redmond Venter

Related Literary Works

 * Halo: Paths of the Exiles--Fate of the Exiles, Traitor's Path, and Traitor's Destiny
 * Halo: Descent
 * Halo: Avenger's Quest
 * Halo: Indelible Past
 * Halo: Avenger's Reckoning

Behind the Scenes

 * Simon was Actene's first character on Halo Fanon
 * Since Actene is a terrible brow-beater when it comes to thinking of names for his characters, the name Simon was taken from The Lord of the Flies which Actene was reading at the time. Simon-G294 bears little or no resemblance to the boy from the novel.
 * As of May 5, 2010, this article has the fourth most page views out of all Spartan characters on the Wikia, with the leading three articles being SPARTAN-144, SPARTAN-013, and SPARTAN-091. It is the fifth most viewed character overall when one takes into account Kimberly Ivy Blackburn as well.
 * Most of the pictures of Simon in this article come from either the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam 00 or the Full Metal Panic! Sigma manga..
 * Simon's overall alignment is Chaotic Neutral although he displays tendencies towards the Neutral Evil and some towards the Chaotic Good alignments over the course of his story. The only time he significantly deviates from his is the period he spends with the HLF, during which he shifts towards the Lawful Evil alignment.
 * This article scored a 21 on this test, classifying it as not a Gary-Stu.
 * A growing list of tropes associated with this character can be found here.