Joseph-122

"'Highly intelligent and possesses a keen eyesight, exhibits acute hand-eye coordination and dexterity (May make a good sniper)' - Doctor Catherine Halsey's notes on Joseph-122, prior to his conscription."Petty Officer First Class Joseph-122, born Joseph Stuart, is a Spartan-II supersoldier of the United Nations Space Command's Naval Special Warfare Command. A skilled marksman, Joseph wasn't known as a leader until the Fall of Reach when he stepped up in taking command of the second element of Team Delta, after being separated from Will-043, Team Delta's leader.

Joseph spent much of his combat service as a part of Red Team, with a temporary six-month attachment to Omega Team, until after the Battle of Reach, when he was placed in command of James-005 and Carris-137 as the team leader of Green Team, a role he would maintain throughout the remainder of the Human-Covenant war, and into the post-war UNSC.

Early life and conscription
Joseph Stuart was born on the human Inner Colony of Camber on January 19th, 2511. Around 2517, Joseph was identified as an extremely talented child and marked as a potentially exceptional soldier and a candidate for Doctor Catherine Halsey's SPARTAN-II program as a result. During which time Halsey noted how Joseph paid close attention to herself and Lt. Jacob Keyes during her observation of him, something she noted as possibly requiring further observation after his conscription, which would prove important during his and 4 other Spartan-II candidate's escape, post augmentation.

On September 17, 2517, Joseph was abducted by the United Nations Space Command's Office of Naval Intelligence at the age of six to be conscripted into the SPARTAN-II program. He was then replaced with a flash clone and sent to Reach with the other Spartans. His flash clone would die sometime after his abduction.

Like the other Spartan-II candidates, Joseph was trained on Reach by "dumb" AI Déjà and Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, in addition to numerous training exercises. During one training exercise, Joseph and the other Spartans travelled to Emerald Cove for an underwater mission, where along with Fred-104 and Anton-044 they would steal Mendez's tanks and substitute them for the ones he himself has sabotaged forcing Mendez to separate from the Spartan-II candidates, allowing them to live on their own for a few days.

During training, he would form a close friendship, with Daisy-023, Alec-073, Ralph-103, Oscar-129 and Daniel-134, all of whom fostered a desire to escape and return to their families. Also during this time, he would develop a grudge against, Jai-006, Adriana-111 and Mike-120, who's multiple failed escape attempts he saw as a threat to his own plans for escape. In however 2525, he and the other candidates underwent a series of augmentations to improve their abilities. With Joseph being among the ones that survived and were not crippled or killed by the procedure, but upon learning of the death of Alec-073 and the crippling or death of countless more. He and his remaining close friends decided to make an escape attempt in response.

Escape
A few weeks after the augmentation procedures, Joseph along with Daisy, Ralph, Oscar, and Daniel moved to put their plan into action. First, they rebelled against their trainers, holding them at gunpoint in front of Dr Halsey in order to let them leave. Halsey granted them freedom, allowing them to escape into the woods around the facility, and after resting during the night, the five split up and headed towards the nearest starports. Unknown to Joseph, one of the other escapee's had planted a tracking chip on Joseph as he slept, in order to use him as sacrificial bait, resulting in his recapture.

Following this Joseph was punished the harshest out of the three surviving escapees, being confined to solitary for two months on reduced rations, under the guise of being under observation for augmentation side-effects. After he was released from his punishment, he spent a week recovering before he moved to locate his companions in order to try and learn who had betrayed him, having learned from idle gossip during his confinement that Daisy and Ralph had been recaptured, in addition to learning of the deaths of Oscar and Daniel. However, upon finding Ralph confined to a medical suite undergoing a psych evaluation, Joseph demanded that Ralph tell him exactly what had happened and who had betrayed him. To which Ralph eventually revealed to him that he had seen Daisy with a headset, likely meaning that she had planted the track as they had slept. After which Ralph confided in Joseph of the existence of the flash-clones, and the true nature of their 'conscription'.

However soon after Mendez entered with armed guards, due to Joseph having been spotted on a camera concealed in Ralph's room, whereupon Joseph was escorted to Dr Halsey's office, where she confirmed everything that Ralph had told him, before appealing to him to maintain the secret of the flash clones, with Joseph only agreeing to do so on condition that he be allowed to speak with Daisy, who was being also being kept in solitary on reduced rations, but only for a few days compared to Joseph.

Upon being let into Daisy's cell, Joseph proceeded to verbally bombard his 'former' friend for her betrayal, before attacking her when she attempted to defend herself. With Joseph being in a superior physical condition compared to Daisy, Joseph was able to get the upper hand quickly and landed several powerful strikes on his opponent before Mendez and several guards restrained him, but not before he had turned Daisy's face black and blue. However this time Joseph was only given a verbal warning by Mendez for his actions before being released. The reason for this leniency was that Mendez had overheard how Daisy had betrayed Joseph and had come to the conclusion that she had deserved the beating that she had gotten.

Post Augmentation
Following his return to the surviving Spartan-II's, Joseph was assigned by John-117 to a restructured Green Team under Kurt-051, with his new teammates being Solomon-069, Malcolm-059, Anton-044 and Carris-137, due to Kurt being the most charismatic of all the Spartan-II's, which influenced Johns decision as he saw Joseph was in a 'bad way' personally.

At first, Joseph had a hard time adjusting to his new team, having never been personally close to any of his new teammates, and so was rather lonely in Green Team early on. However as time passed, Joseph would form a budding friendship with Carris-137, who had lost all of her friends as a result of her augmentations, and so the two would keep each other company in the early days of the reformated Green Team. This new friendship would help both Spartans integrate better with their new team-mates, and would help draw Joseph out of the 'slump' he had fallen into as a result of the fallout from the escape.

Operation: CERBERUS
Operation: Cerberus

In late September of 2525, Joseph would participate in Operation: CERBERUS, a strike mission to kill or capture a second high ranking member of the URF, Major Leonard Klein, Watts' designated second-in-command and his natural successor, whose location had been gathered during Operation: TALON a few weeks prior. The operation would be on the planet Eridanus II, in the Luxor Spaceport, where Klein and a small but well-equipped team of infiltrators had made plans to leave the planet, having waited out the search teams following the Bombing of Elysium City a few months prior. Due to the public nature of the operation, Green Team would be assigned ODST armour for the mission, in lieu of their normal stealth suits.

As Green Teams marksman, Joseph would be located on top of the spaceports control tower, the highest position on hand, providing overwatch fire to the other members of Green Team, who were waiting in ambush in the terminal complex, ready to intercept Klein and his team as they made their way to their private ship.

Unfortunately, things would go awry from the start, Klein and his men had been tipped off regarding the Spartan's presence at the spaceport, but as the information identified them as ODST's, Klein would instead attack the Spartans preemptively, in an attempt to avenge Watts' capture and possibly secure bargaining chips he could use for his superiors freedom. To this effort, he had endeavoured to position members of an unknown local insurrectionist cell at the spaceport, having planned to preemptively strike at the Spartans before they could react, only a gut feeling by Kurt would prevent the Spartans from being caught off guard.

Within minutes the carefully planned operation had gone out of the window, being replaced by a pitched battle that spanned the entire complex, Joseph would at first find himself pinned down by insurrectionist counter-snipers, which he dealt with as quickly and efficiently. However before the body of last enemy sniper stopped twitching, Joseph would find himself under direct attack from the team of insurrectionist soldiers sent to capture him. Outnumbered, with more insurrectionists on the way and lacking a suitable weapon for a CQC fight, Joseph would instead leap off of the control tower onto the adjoining terminal's roof, a jump of around 30 meters, which would have injured most men, but thanks to his augmentations, Joseph would be uninjured by this action, and allow him to escape into the much more open terminal complex.

Joseph's next action would be to provide long-range fire for Green Team as they attempted to capture Klein, who having seen the state of events, wasn't taking any chances and was heading to his escape ship. However, Kurt would then order Joseph to instead pursue Klein, as he was the only member of the team who was free to do so. Rapidly Joseph would catch Klein and his bodyguards, executing the latter with ease before moving to apprehend the target who attempted to run once again, only for Joseph to shoot him in his left knee with his sidearm, incapacitating him. Once Klein was secure the rest of the team would disengage from the enemy and retreat to their waiting ONI Owl dropship, and evacuated before local UNSC forces could arrive and pacify the insurrectionist threat.

The mission would be considered a success as the information Klein possessed would lead to the successful aversion of multiple URF terrorist attacks. It would also earn Joseph some praise for his quick thinking in disengaging from an unfavourable fight in an 'unconventional manner' and for his skilful shooting which had protected the members of his team, and led to the capture of Klein. Additionally, the mission would Joseph would earn the nickname as 'The madman who jumped off a roof', which would stick with him for the rest of his career.

Daisy-023
"'You stabbed me in the back! and for what? I know about the clones, Ralph told me everything!' - Joseph berating Daisy after her betrayal."Joseph and Daisy had a positive relationship during training, this was due to a mutual desire to escape and return to their homes and families. However, their relationship soured after the escape attempt, where Daisy used Joseph as bait, by placing a chip on him so that the ONI recovery teams could find him, in order to give herself and the other escapees a better chance at successfully escaping Reach. After learning of her betrayal, Joseph would confront her in her cell, angrily berating her what she had done to him. However, when Daisy tried to defend herself and justify her actions, Joseph attacked her and beat her severely, before being restrained by Chief Mendez and several guards.

After this point, Joseph would refuse to interact with Daisy except in a professional manner and would ignore any attempts by Daisy to heal their relationship, and would refuse to comment on 'what had happened' when asked by any other Spartan's. However, after Daisy's death, Joseph found that she had left him a data file, and after some persuasion by John-117 and Kelly-087, Joseph watched the file, finding it to be an apology by Daisy, where she admitted that she had been wrong to do what she had done and asked for his forgiveness, which Joseph after some soul searching, was willing to give his deceased comrade.

Ralph-103
Joseph and Daisy had a positive relationship during training, this was due to a mutual desire to escape and return to their homes and families. Following the breakout, Joseph and Ralph's relationship would become stressed due to him not knowing who had betrayed him. However, after learning that it had been Daisy who had been responsible, they would eventually part on good terms when Ralph was discharged on psychological grounds. Upon learning of Ralph's death, Joseph would become saddened at the news of the last of his few friends from training.

Alec-073
Joseph and Alec were close during training, often sharing jokes when in their free time, his death during augmentations would hit Joseph hard and would serve as a contributing factor in the breakout a few weeks later.

Equipment
Like most Spartan-II's Joseph wore a standard olive green set of MJOLNIR Mark IV, with that being replaced with a set of Mark V armour in preparation for Operation: Red Flag, which he would stay with for the rest of the Human-Covenant War (due to a lack of available brand new Mark VI armour, his Mark V was modified into Mark VI by Jake-A384 and the technicians at Beweglichkeitsrüstungsysteme's Essen facility.)

During the War, Joseph like the wore a set of green Mjolnir armour of Mark IV and V models, with him taking a preference to the Commando variant of the armour. Postwar Joseph as one of the few operational Spartans at that time was reassigned to Specwarfare Group 3 as the team leader of Green Team, with his armour becoming more 'personalised' in a reflection of the more diverse sets of Armour that the surviving Spartan-III Cat-2's operated.

Joseph would primarily operate either an SRS99-AM sniper rifle, modified with an expanded 8-round magazine or an M392 DMR with an extended barrel. As a backup, he would operate an M6G Magnum pistol, although on an operational basis he would operate other weapons without issue.

Battle Honours

 * Operation: CERBERUS (2525) - Green Team
 * Battle of Harvest (2525-2530) - Green/Red Team
 * Battle for Arcadia (2531) - Omega Team
 * Battle of Albion (2531) - Omega Team
 * Battle of Vodin (2532) - Red Team
 * Battle of Jericho VII (2532-2535) - Red Team
 * Battle of Miridem (2544) Red Team
 * Battle of Skopje (2547) - Red Team
 * Battle of Reach (2552) - Red Team/Delta Team
 * Battle of Sol (2552) - Green Team

Appearance

 * Halo: Remnants

Trivia

 * Joseph-122 has a similar voice to Ghost from the short film, Prototype from Halo Legends, this is a reference to the two having the same voice actor, David Matranga who voiced both Joseph (Homecoming) and Ghost (Prototype).