Kimberly Ivy Blackburn

"...I was never human. I was always designed, my height, weight, strength, and creativity were all numbers in a program, my personality a note in a biologist's lab notebook."

- Kimberly Ivy Blackburn to August Plummer

"The most ethically questionable research ever conducted in the history of medicine."

- Rear Admiral Montgomery

"How much have we lost for this? And how much have we won for it?"

- Kimberly Ivy Blackburn

Talon, born as Kimberly Ivy Blackburn, also known by her pseudonyms, Aurora and Nike, was an operative of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. She was the first human born from "human synthesis" theory, and was involved with FORECAST, HUMANCONFIG, and PATRIOT.

Birth
"A disaster in ethics. A horrible atrocity with no peer."

- Lieutenant Lauryn Alden

"Director, I will state for the record that it is completely morally unacceptable to design human life for the sole purpose of experimentation, to assign numerical values to attributes such as strength and intelligence, and to research how to change those variables, how to manufacture a human being."

- Beah Schore to Rear Admiral Gibson

She was born in 2554 in Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center, Asphodel Meadows as the daughter of Alexandria Clarissa Blackburn under the auspices of Projects PATRIOT and FORECAST. Under FORECAST, her mother, as well as the rest of the thousands of women enrolled in the FORECAST program, would be hormone-primed and artificially impregnated, and during the entire nine month span of pregnancy, would be continually perfused to the potent teratogen and mutagen SCARLET.

FORECAST would end up being a significant disaster for the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. While estrogen priming and impregnation was a technique well-perfected in model animals such as mice, and was a common clinical procedure to perform on humans, SCARLET, previously never tested in vivo with humans, much less developing fetuses, would turn the project into a sinister failure. Within days of exposure to the compounds, thousands of women died, beginning to grow second heads, extra arms and legs, sprouting extra fingers from the chest. By the end of one week, over four thousand women died, or were put into such excruciating, inhumane pain from the mutations that they were euthanized.

Only one of the human models — Alexandria Clarissa Blackburn would survive past a week. Commodore Cooke became principally responsible for this gigantic miscarriage — killing over four thousand women in a week by inducing the growth of extra limbs and body parts, for inhumanely slaughtering the women by usage of SCARLET, which had never before been tested in women. Admirals Gibson and Montgomery would severely chastise Cooke, and when Beah Schore found out, Cooke was at the risk of losing his command.

In November 2554, it was to everyone's consummate surprise when Alexandria would successfully reach to term and would give birth to a perfectly normal child, a female, Kimberly Ivy Blackburn. Although Alex was in paroxysms of agony and also metabolic failure from SCARLET, she would survive to give birth to Kimberly, and Alex was immediately put on BLUEBERRY, rescuing the mother from death from the combined mutagenic potential of SCARLET and the exertions of labor. After birth, Kimberly was immediately taken from Alex by the UNSC Department of Biological Warfare, who would claim Kim as their own, and rename her "Talon" in an attempt to destroy the daughter's knowledge of any of her heritage, forcing Kimberly to believe that she was born into the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence.

Childhood
"The FORECAST predicts sunny skies and no rain."

- Cooke

Although the Department of Biological Warfare and Section Three extensively hypothesized about how Talon's physical body would be ravaged, horribly mangled beyond any normal human being because of her exposure to ultrahigh concentrations of SCARLET in the womb, surprisingly, after several months, it became readily obvious that Talon was physically perfect, and far from being a defective child or some gruesome mutant, would be the exemplar of human health. This was corroborated when her mother, Alexandria Clarissa Blackburn, made a full and complete recovery from her exposure to the SCARLET agent, and certain Section Three members had detailed thoughts on Alexandria after her exposure. However, Kimberly's health and fitness were remarkable — in the highest percentiles of the SPARTAN-II children, or even exceeding them in many aspects, even outstripping certain SPARTANs such as John, Kelly, Sam, and Fred in particular characteristics.

Immediately, Cooke began to act on Talon — many Section Three officers would begin to construct legendary myths of Kimberly as the only child that survived after her fetus was exposed to saturating concentrations of SCARLET, a Flood-like mutagen. Many would hold her in even higher regard than the SPARTAN-IIs and the SPARTAN-IIIs, who had been exposed only to limited numbers of far less potent chemical and biological mutagens, and at much lower doses and for a far shorter timespan — and when they were twelve or thirteen, at the peak of their physical health, compared to Kimberly, who had to resist the teratogen as a developing fetus. Kimberly immediately began her education prematurely by hypno-imprinting, and several months after birth, during sleep, she would be hypnotically imprinted with key knowledge — how to read, how to speak — a technically biologically-accomplishable feat because of the extensive plasticity of the postnatal brain. Because of this hyperplasticity, Talon would learn this exceptionally well and quickly, her recently-born amorphous mind capable of absorbing and integrating knowledge with far more tenacity than any older child, who had less plastic neural hippocampal circuitry.

Genetic Heritage: A Legacy of SPARTANs
Kimberly would also become a legendary mythology in Section Three because of her bodily health and physical exceptionalness; something that had been deliberately designed through ethically- and morally-dubious "human synthesis".

After Alexandria would be captured on Nazareth, Beryl, Cooke would conduct genetic screening of all the women involved in the FORECAST program and would find that Alexandria had a peculiar genetic profile; she had the genetic flags associated with creativity and fitness, and a lack of the genetic markers that predisposed to illness, and upon further investigation, found that Alex well-fit Dr. Halsey's exacting criterion for the SPARTAN-IIs — that if Alex had been born thirty years earlier, she would have been a fine SPARTAN-II. Kimberly's mother was thus in supreme physical and mental health because of her genetics; something that would allow Alex to survive the exposure to SCARLET. Furthermore, Kimberly's father was renowned as well. While Section Three had always wanted to mate together SPARTANs to see whether or not SPARTAN traits were genetically inherited, this proved impossible because the SPARTAN augmentation protocol included virilization that diminished sexual drive. However, ONI was able to artificially derive sperm from the male SPARTAN-IIs through iPS reprogramming and germline differentiation — and they artificially impregnated the women of the FORECAST project with SPARTAN-117's sperm.

Thus, in an ethically-condemnable genetic breeding, Kimberly was the daughter of a father who was the most famous SPARTAN-II and also a mother who could potentially have been chosen as a SPARTAN-II.

ONI said that this was a significant proportion of the explanation of how Kimberly was physically superior and exceptional — while the SPARTAN-IIs had been peerless physically, an inbreeding between SPARTANs would give birth, in theory, the physically transcendent.

Physical Augmentations
"I was a living test bed, a "prototype biological model". As if I was a computer or a piece of software, they "upgraded" me with every biological augmentation there was, until my body was so non-human it fell into a coma."

- Kimberly Ivy Blackburn to August Plummer

Understanding that Kimberly had managed to survive intense exposure to SCARLET in utero, Cooke authorized that Kimberly undergo the SPARTAN surgical and biochemical at a young age, with a high chance of survival, and also the added benefit that at a younger age, the body would still be able to develop around and more fully integrate and incorporate these augmentations. Talon was subjected to some of the previous SPARTAN augmentations, as well several new experimental protocols.


 * Superconductance of myelinated fibers: Talon was infused with a solubilized form of silver hexapotassium aurophosphate, a conjugated anti-myelin silver salt that selectively perfused myelinated nerve fibers in the central and peripheral nervous systems, an improved version of the nervous augmentation done to the SPARTAN-IIs to increase reflex times by superconducting nervous fibers, although this silver salt had the added benefit of being able to infuse into CNS myelinated tracks, and the phenotype effects of the non-specific targeting of higher cognitive functions was unexamined.
 * Transplant of pancreatic islets: Purified human pancreatic islets were isolated and transplanted into Talon's pancreas, allowing for increased glucose tolerance and enhanced metabolism to allow for increased growth and basal energy.
 * Encapsulation and cellular augmentation of skeletal muscle: Certain major skeletal muscles were encapsulated in an electrically-sensitive distensive membrane that contracted upon electrical stimulation; that is, nervous activation of muscles, effectively increasing contractive strength upon stimulation by bioengineering enhancement of contraction power. Skeletal muscle peripherals were also infused with FACS-purified skeletal muscle precursors (SMP), that were formerly shown by Harvard Stem Cell Institute in the 21st century to mediate muscle growth in mice, thus effectively increasing gross muscular growth in Talon. Muscles were also latently infused with (±)-Bay K 8644, a small molecule L-type Ca+2 channel agonist, inducing latent involuntary muscular contraction and subsequent growth.
 * Cardiac expansion and perfusion: Kimberly's heart was surgically dilated and expanded, allowing for increased space for cardiac musculature growth. The heart was also infused with a small-molecule analog of FGF8, a cytokine shown to be necessary for cardiac muscle expansion and regeneration in zebrafish. This led to increased cardiac capacity (end-diastolic volume) and contractile force, more efficiently perfusing the body with oxygen.
 * Pulmonary biological and mechanical expansion: Talon's lungs were locally infused with soluble Wnt5a and Wnt7b small-molecule analogs, cytokines shown to regulate lung size and epithelial / mesenchymal proliferation and branching in the developing lung. Wnt analog application led to hyperplastic lungs, increasing net lung size by distal expansion and also aveolar branching, increasing total lung capacity and forced vital capacity and also increasing the O2 / CO2 diffusion coefficient by increasing aveolar branching and mean blood interface surface area. The possible expansion size was increased by dilation of the pleural cavity.
 * Hematopoietic expansion: Kimberly's long bone marrow were infused with small-molecule analogs of erythropoietin and interleukin-3, inducing hematopoetic stem cell and myeloid stem cell self-renewal and resevoir increase, and also targeted expansion of megakaryoctes, erthryoblasts, and granulocyte colony-forming units (CFU), leading to vastly increased erythryocyte (red blood cell), platelet, and granulocyte production, increasing oxygen-carrying blood capacity, wound coagulation, and also non-specific immunity.
 * Pain tolerance: Talon's nociceptors were chemically ablated with titrated concentrations of diphtheria toxin A (DTA) conjugated to purified recombinant nociceptin, inducing irreversible apoptosis and of many peripheral nociceptors (pain receptors) and greatly increased pain tolerance.
 * Synaptic plasticity and spatial memory: Activity-dependent long-term potentiation (LTP) in the CA1-CA3 Schaeffer collateral circuit in the hypothalamus has been shown to be integral in spatial memory, plausibly through a Ca+2-dependent mediated by the NMDA receptor (NMDAR) and possibly voltage-depnedent calcium channels (VDCC). The NMDAR agonist (1S,2S)-1-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-2-(4-hydroxy-4-phenylpiperidin-1-yl)-1-propanol and Mg+2 celator EGTA were locally applied to the hippocampus, potentiating E-LTP and spatial memory.
 * Auditory Augmentation: Talon exhibits enhanced and sensitized hearing, although not an expansion in the frequency of audible sounds that can be heard, because of an artificially-maintained hyperkalemic environment that alters the inward anionic current into cochlear hair cells, increasing the amplitude of all sounds heard, and also by microsurgical infusion of neurotrophin-3 (NT3) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) small-molecule analogs into the cochlear basilar membrane, encouraging the proliferation and expansion of hair cells as well as strengthening the innervation and excitable electrophysiological characteristics of spiral ganglia neurons.
 * Skeletal Reinforcement: Kimberly underwent continuous, periodic skeletal reinforcement postnatally, after it became readily that Kimberly's uncontrolled growth and tissue hypertrophy was leading to the collapse of her metabolism and her homeostatic bodily regulation, including depletion of Ca+2 reserves and the diminish of osteoclastic activity, leading to the progressive weakening of her bones as her body would copiously drain Ca+2 from her bones to fuel other cellular growth processes. Kimberly would require periodic infusion of strontium carbide, a Ca+2 mimetic, in order to even maintain a non-disintegrating skeleton and to continue field operations.

Flood-like phenotypes


"Definitely not Flood ... but not quite entirely human, either."

- Lieutenant Lauryn Alden

"I doubt we'll ever completely understand the partial Flood characteristics exhibited by Talon. SCARLET had always been a blind shot, and our understanding of human synthesis and human embryonic development currently can't even come close to understanding the effects of nonspecific mutations, especially in regards with xenobiology such as the Flood's."

- Rear Admiral Montgomery

During embryonic development in utero, Kim would be exposed to saturating concentrations of SCARLET in the womb; a small-molecule chemical cocktail that accurately in vitro replicated the phenotype of co-transduction of B3 transcription factors and the GAMBLE genetic sequences. The continual nine-month-long exposure of Kim to SCARLET, a potent teratogen, in the womb would lead to irreversible growth defects with an underlying Flood undertone due to the biological activity mimicked by SCARLET. SCARLET, which induced partial putative Flood-associated reprogramming in vitro in cultured cells, had never been tested in humans in vivo priorly, although the effects on the other four thousand women of the FORECAST project — horrible sprouting of extra limbs and body parts — made it obvious that the mutagen had disastrous effects for most humans exposed to the agent. Kimberly Blackburn, and her mother, Alexandria Blackburn, represent the two living human beings who have ever survived over a week of in vivo exposure to saturating concentrations of SCARLET. Thus, the Flood partial phenotype induced by SCARLET in utero exposure remains not well documented, with Kimberly acting as the first human to be fully characterized.
 * Aberrant neurobiology: One of Kimberly's most peculiar birth defects compared to normally-born humans is a highly aberrant and eccentric central and peripheral nervous system, and this is manifested on the neuroanatomy, cytoarchitectonics, and neurophysiology and molecular levels.
 * Aggression
 * Neuroanatomy: Even upon gross examination, Talon's brain was abnormal with major neuroanatomical abnormalities mostly in the midbrain limbic circuit, with a greatly engrossed prefrontal cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala, tegmentum, and a noticeably diminished septal area. The hypothalamus and the amygdala are well-known for controlling emotion and the expression of emotion, particularly rage and fear. The prefrontal cortex has been associated with higher-level cognitive functions; "executive functions" that control highly sophisticated social behaviors such as morality, troubleshooting, and decision-making. Hyperexcitability in the tegmentum and ablations in the septal area, a nervous system necessary for pleasure and enjoyment, have been shown to induce "sham rage" - random outbursts of undirected aggression, in experimental animals.
 * Neurophysiology: Furthermore, despite Kimberly's female sex, she has exceedingly high concentrations of the masculine steroid testosterone, as well as androgynous steroids corticosterone, epinephrine, and dehydroepiandrosterone — all compounds that induce short-term and long-term rapidly-acting aggression. Serotonin, a modulatory neurotransmitter that represses rage, also has markedly decreased levels in Talon's brain.
 * Epileptic hyperexcitability: In the cortex, Talon's cytoarchitectonics are highly deviant, with hyper-innervation of almost all investigated neural circuits, with excessive numbers of axons and dendrites, with such abundance that even a small number do not synapse because of insufficient targets. Talon shows reinforcement of activating and inhibitory neural circuits because of excessive innervation, but the phenotypic consequence of this phenomenon is unknown, electrophysiological studies have shown that many of Talon's neurons are hyperexcitable, with a greatly increased basal electrical state and a decreased threshold to activation. This has lead to highly complex and never before observed normal electrophysiological brain activities, with proliferous spiking signals typically only seen in patients in an epileptic seizure. These seizure-like electroencephalogram (EEG) activities are reminiscent to the classically-defined "partial simple focal" epilepsy, and Talon exhibits regular seizure positive symptomatology, including uncontrolled muscle movement and uncontrolled auditory and visual hallucination.
 * Pain tolerance and sensation: Talon, even without her biosurgical augmentations, shows endogenous excessively high pain tolerance, with markedly decreased endogenous concentrations of nociceptin (pain-activating neurotransmitter) and extraordinarily high levels of enkephalin and anandamide (natural biologically-occurring pain relievers), which combinatorially serve to decrease pain reception. Furthermore, Talon's thalamus shows suprathreshold afferent and efferent innervation, especially to the eye, ear, nose, and somatosensors, thus increasing the ability of her central nervous system to recieve and integrate external sensory stimuli.
 * Nonspecific telomeric addition: A significant proportion of Kimberly's bodily cells, whether or not terminally-differentiated functional somatic cells or renewing stem cells, strongly express hTERT, the human telomerase gene. Telomerase protects against DNA degradation, thus greatly increasing cell lifespan; cellular in vitro experiments in the 20th century have shown that constitutively active telomerase "immortalizes" cells, making them capable of infinite divisions. While in the typical human, telomerase is only expressed in a very small number of stem cells to allow for limited regenerative capacity, in aging, eventually widespread cellular damage leads to the defeat of the protective telomerase expression by a small number of stem cells, leading to death. However, the fact that almost all of Talon's cells express telomerase means that any cells - not just a rare stem cells - are capable of dividing and regenerating in tissue damage, theoretically augmenting her regeneration and potentially greatly extending lifespan - two key traits of the Flood species.
 * Muscular hyperplasia: Talon's muscles upon a gross and cellular examination are also markedly different; Kimberly exhibits unprecedented natural muscular growth regardless of age, nutritional, or metabolic status, and her mean muscular mass as well as muscular cross-section are superior even to the most fit of the SPARTAN-IIs, suggesting that a Flood mechanism in part or in whole underlies this peculiar phenotype. Kimberly also expresses extensive and continual neovascularization or her musculature and also increased mitochondrial proliferation, accelerating both short-duration and long-duration muscular contraction by capillary perfusion and readily available creatine phosphate. Kimberly also exhibits bizarre muscular cellular structure with highly irregular cell shape and size, almost tumorigenic in the poorness of differentiation, likely indicative of extensive muscular proliferation and perhaps a higher-order organizing Flood cellular biology.
 * Cartilaginous symbiotes: Upon certain parts of her body, it appears that certain stem cell populations have migrated from their resident niches and aggregated into highly plastic cartilaginous networks that are highly fortified with hydroxyapatite, forming an increased structural network underneath Kimberly's skin, potentially for protective purposes, and also secrete significant concentrations of growth factors and cytokines that target a wide variety of tissues for hypertrophy and hyperplasia. This cartilaginous webbing has not been well defined, nor has its trophic support. This uncharacterized symbiotic structure would have a high mitotic index and almost metastatic activity, and has been continually renewing, expanding, and mobilizing to different parts of Kimberly's body, encapsulating more and more with every year.

Augumentations and Ectopic Puberty
"At the age of two, I was sixteen."

- Kimberly Ivy Blackburn

Kimberly would be born in 2554, and at the age of two at 2556, Cooke decided to alter the human synthesis protocol, and would order the biochemical and surgical augmentations, believing that if she could withstand the highly potent cytotoxin and mutagen for nine months as a fetus, she could withstand the limited medical procedures, and that, more importantly, if the augmentations were done at a younger age, that her body could incorporate the augmentations better, that it could adapt to it, and as it grew that could respond and more efficiently integrate the augmentations. While the surgical and biochemical augmentations described above were performed to increase her reflexes, her sense of hearing, her metabolism, her musculature, her heart capacity and heart beat, her lung capacity and oxygen perfusion, her blood capacity for oxygen and her nonspecific immunity, her pain tolerance, and her spatial memory.

Cooke would completely violate bioethics protocols and artificially induce puberty at the age of two with small-molecule chemical analogs of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), lutenizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), testosterone, and estradiol. Kimberly's body was irreparably scarred but her Flood-induced regeneration would compensate for it, but at the age of two, Kimberly was extraordinarily close to death as her Flood-associated unstoppable musculature growth, combined with the accelerated growth of puberty, would nearly shatter her body and bring her close to a coma and metabolic failure and ketoacidosis. This artificial puberty would further disrupt her plastic, neonatal neurochemistry and bring out her rage. She would be continually be hypo-imprinted during sleep and indoctrinated with premature knowledge as well as hate.

Boot Camp: Cruelty and Sadism
"We're not going back there—No more."

- Kimberly Ivy Blackburn

Kimberly would emerge from her haze of childhood amnesia and would begin her formal military training in 2558 at the age of four in Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center in a bleak environment of hostility and constant fear. She would be addressed from birth as "Chief Petty Officer Talon", never knowing her true name, and never wanting to know beyond what she was told.

Even from her first day of training, it was evident to ONI that Kimberly's thoughts were a chaotic and entropic slur of primordial hatred. She would wake from her sleep every morning with a pallid scream, and would feel a deep pain every time she would break from her slumber into the realm of consciousness. She was incapable of having coherent, distinct thoughts, and would require a morning transfusion of antipsychotic medications in order to solidify her thoughts into whole thoughts, to control her personality, to shape her anger, to bring her back to reality.

On the first day of training, she would meet Master Sergeant Lansing Lovejoy, a distinguished but savage ex-FORCE RECON special warfare operator chosen by ONI for his barbarous measures to be Kimberly's first primary instructor, in order to foster Talon's emerging inchoate rage and to craft her warfighting talent until she was finer than any of the SPARTANs that would precede her. Yet, even the brutish Lovejoy did not anticipate Kimberly's demented fury—Kimberly would attack Lovejoy, beating him and attempting to eat his hand, and she would need to be suppressed with medication. Afterwards, her personality would always "reset" into the preprogrammed military alternate persona that ONI had programmed into her through hypnotic sleep imprinting, and thus even at the age of four, she had been through four full years of hypnotic indoctrination, and without consciously knowing how, she would have a full technical knowledge of UNSC weaponry and would be familiar with UNSC military protocol, even at the age of four identifying Lovejoy's six golden chevrons as the device of a Master Sergeant and automatically identifying an M6 sidearm and loading it without hesitation. "Faster. Tighter shot grouping. Your accuracy was horrible for a whole magazine."

- Master Sergeant Lansing Lovejoy to Kimberly Ivy Blackburn, at the age of four, after her first kill

Her elemental bloodlust, likely the result of Flood teratogenesis in the embryo, would always shine out, regardless of her age or her mental or physical condition.

Even on her first day of training, when she was led into a room with handcuffed prisoners against a wall and was handed an M6 sidearm, she would reflexively shoot them, killing them without even being asked to.

Her first human kill was at the age of four, when she indiscriminately sprayed handgun fire at a kneeling prisoner, clipping him in the head and watching the prisoner's head explode like a gourd, with blood and brains running from his shattered, blown-out skull. It was then that ONI knew that she had been born inherently despotic and satanic. Lovejoy would reprimand her for her accuracy on her first day of training—that despite the fact that she was four years old, she required a full M6 cartridge to kill a stationary target, and he would order to to kill the remaining prisoners "faster". Kimberly would automatically reload her handgun and casually stomp in his skull by pushing her heel into the prisoner's collapsed skull, flattening it with a crustacean crunch. The executed prisoner's last vision was a young infant standing over him with a nightgown and a still-smoking M6 sidearm. Even the hardened and sadistic Lovejoy, a FORCE RECON special operator, would be disturbed by her keening urge and desire to kill and torture even when she was four. It was only later that Lovejoy would learn that this was resultant from the Flood teratogenesis.

Her continued training would further her physical talents as well as encourage bloodlust. Her Flood-induced avarice, coupled with her extraordinarily premature onset of puberty, would leave her as an uncontrollable flood of fury, and given a steady stream of prisoners, she would show an incredible creativity in killing people and an extraordinary cruelty, without apparently feeling even any emotion, the result of an ablated septal area, and even amongst the hardened special warfare operators that trained her, she was found to have no conscience; that she was simply incapable of feeling pity for those that she executed. She was severely physically tasked, and ONI would barbarically and horrifyingly offer her the reward of prisoners to be executed upon the completion of ridiculous, impossible tasks — twenty-mile runs, hundreds of push-ups. It was a testament to her animalness that she could be lured so easily to impossible tasks by simply dangling prisoners in front of her; almost as if training a dog, some ONI trainers would say. She would be found unconscious, destroyed after series of physical tribulations, and she would literally drive herself to the point of complete physical collapse again and again. However, her trainers would not that she did not care for "defending Earth and all her colonies"; she would train gruesomely and inhumanely simply to kill and also for the sheer drive of succeeding, without any true intent nor allegiance to the UNSC. This would raise significant concerns with her controllers, who worried that they would be breeding an uncontrolled force that could readily turn around and wreak significant damage to ONI.

Kimberly would continue her merciless path of sadism; she would behead and decapitate prisoners with a machete, only to have the machete stuck halfway in their necks, and would have to wriggle the blade in order to complete the decapitation. She would relentlessly beat prisoners for hours on end, smearing their blood across her frail childlike body. Notably, at the age of seven, she would straddle and choke a child of the same age before proceeding to begin to dissect apart his face with her nails. Events such as these horrified even the immoral Office of Naval Intelligence, and many would have serious doubts that she wasn't a Flood combat form in human form.

She would excel physically, however, and would develop a remarkable musculature, and would possess massive brute strength as well as endurance and agility. Her Flood-like phenotype would lead to the uncontrollable, nearly cancerous growth of her muscles, and this was fostered by her induction of masculinized feminine puberty as well as regular infusions of testosterone, insulin, and insulin-like growth factor (IGF), muscle-inducing growth factors. She would receive exceptional military training from special warfare instructors, primarily drawn from the most decorated NAVSPECWAR and FORCE RECON operators, and would learn the arts of battlefield maneuvering, of navigation and tracking, of silent movement, as well as conventional firearms training, and as she grew older and more physically capable to handle larger and heavier weapons, would cross-train on many UNSC and Covenant infantry and vehicular weapons systems; it was intended that she would operate autonomously, alone, necessitating that she was proficient with many weapons in order to adapt herself to the combat situation at hand. While her trainers were impressed with her growing warcraft and weapons and vehicular proficiency, they would carry deep doubts about her psychological stability; that her unrestrained and undirected anger would consume fellow field operators.

Breaking: Torture, Sexual Abuse, and SPARTAN-091
It was decided that she would be psychologically broken. Afterwards, her shards would be picked back up and molded into an effective fighting warrior.

She was immobilized by titrated concentrations of nerve gas, placed in titanium-A bonds wrought of starship armor battleplate and chained to a chair, and would be tortured by NAVSPECWAR operators for hours on end with physical beatings that would let the blood run from her shattered body, for electrocutions that would bring her into tachycardia and near cardiac arrest. Special forces operators were allowed to vent their pent-up aggressions and hatred on her, abusing her body as a punching bag until she would fall limp against the chair, unable to even support her own posture and her bones were as broken as her body. It was a testament to her supernatural regenerative Flood-like capacities that for those long hours, that she could even cling onto life, a pre-teen began savagely tortured by NAVSPECWAR operators. They would hear her shrill scream for hours on end, yet none dared to interfere.

At night, she would be abused and raped by NAVSPECWAR operators, and for the first time, would experience fear. She would begin to hunt down and kill UNSC personnel—ONI's worst fears, realized—tracking down and beating to death the NAVSPECWAR operators that had raped, abused, and dishonored her, bringing judgment into her own hands.

Cooke realized that the situations had spiraled out of control. The personnel at Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center began to fear her visibly in the hallways as words of her murders spread, and the FORECAST chief would demand order. Kimberly to date had been the most atrocious tragedy that ONI had experienced.

SPARTAN-091 was brought in to rein in Talon, and although Kimberly would never lose her innate atrociousness and cruelty, would begin to meld into a professional warfighter as the SPARTAN-IIIs had; 091 would earn and demand Kimberly's respect, and horrified at the allowed tortures and rapings, would demand that UNSCSOCOM end its inhumane crimes against Section Three's most prized child. It was under SPARTAN-091 that Kimberly would become an expert at warfighting, and would finally ascend to a new level of expert marksmanship with weapons. She would learn discipline, with SPARTAN-091 the only card barely holding her in line from UNSC killing sprees again. 091 would maintain her Flood-like personality of boundless aggression into some shape, and Kimberly would finally be confirmed for field operations, with SPARTAN-091 and ONI psychologists carefully maintaining a diligent watch over her.

Beginnings
Kimberly, at the age of twelve, would be confirmed to full operational field capacity by the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence and the UNSC Special Operations Command. Many ONI officers were distraught about the worst possibility; that on the field, out of reach from her mood-stabilizing bipolar drugs and her ONI trainers and controllers, that she would again conflagration into a tornado of bloodlust. She was confirmed as a solo operator, typically sent in with little to no UNSC infantry support, in order to minimize any potential backlashes to the UNSC.

These fears were soon proven to be justified. On the field, she was a seamless and beautiful meld of muscle and grace but would prove almost incapable of executing covert operations, and always would spontaneously break out into prolonged periods of deep, undirected fury, wreaking havoc without direction and without reins nor attention to commanding officers and their directives. Soon, SPARTAN-091 was called upon again to meld her, and the two would perform joint two-person operations for years until she was finally molded into an efficient and precise killing tool and to fulfill her intended role as Section Three's covert executor.

Talon would attain the rank of Chief Petty Officer (E-5) with the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, would be known as the only UNSC serviceman protected by the infamous black operations legislature, Title 9, and given the exclusive right to use the highly coveted and feared call-sign of "Delta X-1". This granted her the protection, classification, and unrestricted area of operations (AOR) necessary to fufill her role as ONI's executrix and murderess.

She would become known to the highest UNSC Special Operations Command as one of UNSCSOCOM's most reliable and prodigious operators, striking with impunity, physically flawless, and negligent of the means; she was incapable of having a conscience, of listening to doubts, of asking questions, and superior even to the vaunted SPARTANs.

Operation: ICEBREAKER
At the age of fifteen, Talon would later be assigned aboard the UNSC Meridian Rays, a UNSC carrier that would be used as a mobile staging platform for the most sensitive UNSCSOCOM and ONI black operations in the Outer Rim. She would first participate in Operation: ICEBREAKER on New Monmouth, Alpha Orionis System, and would be assigned to the operation, the live-fire inauguration of special forces group "Echo" and a targeted counterinsurgency operation against the People's Liberator Army and one of their hinge point individuals, Aaron Shaver.

Delta Team, an elite counterinsurgency team attached to UNSC Counterterrorism Activity Warfare Section, were put under the impression that they would command the operation, although it immediately became clear in the pre-op that things were far less placid and routine as they were. Delta Team would meet Talon, who was introduced as the "ONI field observer" who would be in the secure operations zone but would have a noncombatant role. The Delta Team members immediately became suspect, distrustful, and perhaps even intimidated by the young Kimberly, and Delta-Three would note her extraordinary age, her athleticism, and her piercing, predatory stare, as if examining the Delta operators for signs of weakness. When Delta-One, the team commander, began asking Commander Hayes pointed questions about Talon's true identity, Admiral Gibson, the Chief of Section Three, would pay a visit to demand an end to the incessant questioning, and it was at that point that Delta understood that something was afoot. This was exemplified and furthered by the agitation and foreboding of Hayes, typically an extraordinarily well-composed officer and commander. During the insertion onto New Monmouth, Delta-Three would note that Kimberly would destroy the atmosphere and voided all the light, warmth, camaraderie, and conversation and radiated a corona of darkness, of anger.

Delta Team would arrogantly order the inexperienced Echoes, as well as Talon, to stand off at a distant observation point and watch while the Deltas expertly executed and rendered the operation, which supposedly only curtailed the destruction of an insurgent convoy along with Shaver. It came as a shock at Kimberly, despite her intimidating posture and atmosphere of assured superiority, did not object, quietly shuffling away to the stand-off observation point.

The operation was indeed merely a façade displayed by higher echelons. Through Deep Cover, the PLA had been warned that this was a UNSCSOCOM trap, and the insurgents, sensing a chance to kill the special forces group that was efficaciously tracking and cauterizing rebel cells up and down the Outer Rim, threw insurmountable droves and multitudes down on the outnumbered fifteen-man UNSC special warfare team. Meanwhile, aboard the orbiting Meridian Rays, Hayes could only watch in abject dismay through the SEAGULL THREE reconnaissance satellite as hundreds and thousands of rebel guerrillas and droves of insurgent technicals would fall upon his forces, but under the order of three UNSC flag officers besides him; Admirals Gibson, Montgomery, and Cooke, Hayes would say nothing, and was even ordered to jam all long-range communications to ensure that the UNSC team on the ground would have no chance for immediate extraction.

While the Deltas initially fared well, their advantageous altitude and camouflaged positions reliable to fend off the PLA rebels until hostile mortars would bombard their position, the Echo squad would progress with less success, immediately beset by enemy technicals mounted with juxtaposed machine guns. When rebel vehicles would attack the Deltas, set on extinguishing the entrenched special forces riflemen and snipers, it was Kimberly who would save them; with an AS DAM anti-materiél (AM) rifle and a high and defensive position, she could pick off the rebel vehicles attacking the Delta position, laying waste to their armored column.

The battle, with the UNSC forces being harassed, outnumbered, and outflanked by superior enemy forces, would reach a critical turning point as Talon, under Title 9, would assume complete control over the situation under callsign "Delta X-1", which would grant her automatic control over all local UNSC forces under executive directives from UNSC Special Operations Command.

Kimberly would rally the UNSC special warfare team, and under her command, they would reorganize, regroup, and mount an effective defense. Talon, an unparalleled warfighter bred from SPARTANs and augmented by SCARLET's mutagenic effects, would unleash the full force of her fury, and the PLA forces would falter and dissolve underneath her untethered, unbridled power. After the collapse of the rebel offensive, Gibson would authorize the re-establishment of communications with the ground team, and Foray gunships were released to stage close air support (CAS) for the outnumbered UNSC commandos, and the release of chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would be authorized, slaughtering the rebels in retreat. The team would be fully extracted to the Meridian Rays, and Kimberly would return, triumphant for her success in rallying the UNSC forces and her integral role in the complete rout of the rebel insurgents. The Deltas, who had been the first to shun her and despise her, would agonizingly grow a respect for the talented young woman who had saved their lives. All of the Delta and Echo personnel would return, with only moderate and severe individual injuries but no fatalities. Kimberly had escaped relatively unscathed.

Turning Point
It was during these events that Delta-Three, Petty Officer August Plummer, would develop a deep respect for the young Kimberly; he was initially struck by her aura of effortless power, by her wilting, arrestive gaze. Plummer, who as a child, had watched human blood spread across the African plains as he was enlisted as a child soldier into the UNSC Marine Corps during the last-ditch defense in the Second Battle of Earth in late 2552, would never forget that his life at the highest cost; that it had been bought from human blood.

He would tentatively and gingerly approach the frigid and scathing Talon after the completion of ICEBREAKER, and would offer his compassionate thanks to the reclusive killer, who would coldly drive him away.

Kimberly would continue to serve with Delta and the Echoes during the prolonged counter-terror operations out on the distal Outer Rim, and Plummer would develop and nurture an immature but thoughtful, almost parental care for Kim, and despite their age difference, would feebly attempt to watch over the violent assassin and young, headstrong child during their brutal counterinsurgency campaign—in the absence of any family of his own, he would take upon himself a father figure responsibility for Talon, and despite Kimberly's fierce anger and her inhumane cruelty and depthless masochism to the prisoners they captured in their raids, it would be Plummer that would grow attracted to Blackburn—and would be one of the first to ever feel compassion for the horrible, mangled shell of a human that UNSCSOCOM knew as "Talon". Kimberly, however, in her senseless, wanton violence, would never feel August's kindness, always treating him distantly and vehemently as a subhuman subordinate beneath her contempt or notice.

This would climax with Plummer's exceedingly awkward recognition and celebration of Talon's "sweet sixteen", in honor of her sixteenth birthday; the first time that Kimberly's birthday had ever been cherished by a human being. August would oafishly give the gift of a stylish dress and jacket popular with girl teens on Earth for Kimberly while Talon would be locked in incomprehension over the supposed tradition of celebrating one's birthday. This would inexplicably drive Talon into a drove of intangible fury, and she would proceed to senselessly beat, wound, and torture August in her quarters, eventually driving him into unconsciousness; the special forces operator, a mere human, was incompetent to even begin to contend with the vastly augmented Talon, who was of SPARTAN heritage and Flood distant phenotype. Plummer would re-awaken in the medical bay of the Meridian Rays, unsure of what had transpired.

Blackburn and Plummer would never speak for the end of the extended campaign, and within several months, the Meridian Rays would make its final stop on Asphodel Meadows, redeploying the victorious, alive, but wearied Deltas and Echoes upon the planet, along with the one who had saved their lives all at the beginning—Talon. The special warfare group was given one week's worth of leave at Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center before the impromptu squadron was dissolved and its individual operators reassigned.

It was on the second day that the Deltas would be aroused in the early hours of midnight, with word of a UNSC defector attempting to escape from the special forces base. Delta Team would deploy in the darkness, only to find Talon in the wilderness, attempting to make good her escape from the NAVSPECWAR installation, trying to slip aboard a civilian freighter in one of the distant colony homesteads. Despite Kimberly's full capability to kill the entire team, surprisingly, she would relent, only evading their fire, never killing or fighting against them. It was when Kimberly had made her way upon a civilian starship on a launch pad was Delta Team able to fix an anti-ship surface-to-air missile upon her vessel, creating a tense standoff as UNSCSOCOM assets, including NAVSPECWAR and ODST operators, would saturate the area, encircling the secure operations zone.

Cooke would finally arrive, demanding Talon's debarkation from the vessel, citing high treason against the UNSC. When she refused to comply, orbital assets were mobilized in order to ensure that the freighter would not attempt to lift off and attain air altitude. When she was on the verge of abject destruction by the companies of UNSC special operators encircling her, Plummer would suffer an emotional collapse and plead, making overtures for her to comply to the UNSC special forces companies deployed around her.

It took long minutes before a disorganized, disordered Kimberly would stalk down the starship's ramp, before being immediately stunned and tranquilized by the marauding UNSCSOCOM operators. She would disappear for weeks for "readjustment" while the Deltas and the Echoes were reassigned.

It was only when Plummer would return, after long months, to Asphodel Meadows for a voluntary leave would he find Kimberly within the bowels of the Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center. The two would share a silence as she collapsed into his tight embrace, and she would be cradled in his warmth for long days as she said nothing, her eyes unfixed, distant, her mind filled with unvoiced thoughts, her heart exhuming of silent emotion, her brain remembering, recalling. It was at the end of his leave that Kimberly would enfold the special forces operator in a contradistinct and agitated, uncomfortable hold, and for an eternal moment, Plummer would stare into her brilliant viridian irises, and would not see the fleshy hunger of her rage, but a quiet, changed silence within her eyes. Delta-Three would leave shortly thereafter, bound for further UNSCSOCOM instructions, and it was to Plummer's surprise that Kimberly would return to active elite counterinsurgency operations, but now conditioned, changed, and perhaps for the better welfare.

Talon would resume her role as a decorated and highly-efficient special warfare operator, and would be quick to resume the confidence and dependence of ONI and UNSCSOCOM, and though her operations beyond her ONI readjustment at Asphodel Meadows remain currently unknown, it is assured that Kimberly maintains an integral role in UNSCSOCOM's field operations.

Physical Appearance and Presence
"Schore'': Kimberly...I knew your real mother...your eyes, so much like hers...and my sister...she knew your father well. Talon: I had no mother, nor a father. My family was the Office. I was born to serve."

- Beah Schore and Kimberly Ivy Blackburn

Kimberly was striking in the UNSC Defense Force because of her exceptionally young age; Delta-Three would note that by 2570, when Talon was already operational as a covert field asset of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, that Kimberly was younger than twenty; at the time of Operation: ICEBREAKER, Kimberly was indeed only sixteen years of age, younger than the average recruit to the UNSC Marine Corps, and this would make her the target of many snide puns from fellow operators unaware of her skill, who would deride her with comments such as she was fit to be on the "high school soccer team" and similar immature jibes.

She was, however, memorably attractive by the standards of many, and had luscious black hair, striking viridian eyes, a strong jaw, thin cheekbones, and a slender, athletic figure that suggested regular exercise. SPARTAN-091 would note that her face had a particular physical beauty that he could distantly recall; this was the result of Kimberly's inheritance from SPARTAN-117. Beah Schore would note that Kimberly inherited her mother's face, who also had black hair, green eyes, and a trim figure.

However, Kimberly's appearance was instantly recognizable by her intense, arrestive stare, one that was said to be a penetrating, intrusive stare that burrowed through flesh and marrow. Her skin was abnormally blanched and pale, and her cheeks were drawn tight over thin cheekbones. Furthermore, most striking about her was her carriage. Her mere presence appeared to withdraw the ambient light and warmth, and her company was said to be dark, frigid, and bitter, and she would inspire fear with her fellow soldiers, not respect nor leadership. She could trigger an unnatural phobia even in the most highly-trained special forces operators, activating an instinctive urge and desire to kill, and would lead by terror, not leadership.

Talon would later reveal to August Plummer that not all her physical beauty was all that it seemed. Her skin was pale because of her significant, almost cancerous proliferation of type two "fast twitch muscles", the white-colored muscles that gave rodents their characteristic whiteish and transparent color; the result of the Flood-like excessive musculature growth induced by SCARLET. Her cheekbones were thin and attractive because of the failure of her body to maintain itself, diverting all resources from maintenance and bodily upkeep instead into muscular growth and organ expansion; Ca+2 reserves were nonexistent and osteoclastic activity, a biological maintenance process, would be completely expended because of its usage of energy, and because of that, her bones were brittle and on the risk of collapse and breakage, and she required regular infusions of strontium carbide solution in order to even maintain a skeletal system. Her trim and attractive body was the result of a hyperactive metabolism; how the Flood maintained their own bodily growth by possessing an exaggerated metabolism to quickly incorporate and integrate nutrients into biological growth. Her powerful and vigorous musculature was resultant of the almost tumorigenic and uncontrollable muscular growth induced by the Flood-like SCARLET teratogen, resulting in her sinewy frame.

Kimberly often did not wear a dress or a service uniform because her rank, affiliation, decorations, and campaign ribbons were classified, and a wholly unmarked black dress uniform was likely to attract extensive attention from other UNSC service personnel. Rather, in all non-combat circumstances, she typically wore a jacket or a vest and full jeans, wearing a civilian garb that was more familiar to special warfare operators.

While Talon's exceptional physical stature and musculoskeletal system was peerless, definately capable of handling the formidable MJOLNIR power armor donned by the SPARTAN-IIs, she also typically forewent this because of the covert and abtruse nature of the special operations she typically handled, which did not require excessive firepower or armor, but rather, camouflage, care, and discrete. While the SPARTAN-III Semi-Powered Infiltration (SPI) armor system was familiar to her, with texturing field camouflage capabilities, she typically preferred a simple, tight-fitting black or blue-white environmental suit that offered little protection from enemy fire, but instead did not interfere with her considerable agility and dexterity, and protected her against the elements and also limited exposure to chem-biol WMDs (chemical and biological weapons). She typically also drew her long hair into a sinuous ponytail during field operations, and although typically wasn't garbed in a helmet, would have goggles and optics over her eyes, although her wear was highly heterogenous and variable, dependent on mission parameters.

Psychology and Personality
"Mentally unfit for duty. Continual audiovisual hallucinations and epileptic-like cortical electric activity. Absent emotional control and uncontrollable, instinctive aggression and rage."

- UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence psychological assessment

Kimberly, while physically exemplary, was psychologically defective deficient, even to the state of psychologically pathological. Her psyche and personality was broken, shattered, presumably from the effects of the Flood-like teratogen, SCARLET, which as detailed above, had caused extensive changes to her neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, which notably included exceptional, gross enlargement of the amygdala, hippocampus, and the tegmentum. The amygdala and the hippocampus of the limbic system are the primary controllers of human emotion; of generation of emotion, of memory of emotion, and expression of emotion, and the amygdala specializes in the handling of primal emotions such as aggression and fear. While overenlargement of the amygdala has never been fully characterized in humans, Klüver-Bacy Syndrome in animals, the bilateral lesioning of the amygdala, has led to a pronounced nonaggressive state, and thus ONI has reasoned that conversely, excessive growth and activity of the amygdala may contribute to Talon's hyperaggressive state. Furthermore, artificial stimulation of the tegmentum has been previously shown to induce "sham rage", bursts of inexplicable aggression and fury, in animals.

Kimberly's natural personality is so abberant as to be defined as pathological, more animal than human, leading many ONI officers who meet her in person to conclude that the Flood-like mutagen treatment has led to excessive bodily and mental defects. At rest, Kimberly has an exaggerated, unperturbable, brooding state of constant, aggrieved, uncontrolled anger and fury. She is bloodthirsty, aggressive, lusting for blood and death in an uncomfortably impassionated state. Electropsychological studies have confirmed that Talon has continual visual and auditory hallucinations of screaming and bodily carnage. Often times, Kimberly's thoughts are discontinuous and shattered, filled by incochate anger and blind rage. This, though the midbrain limbic system, has physical manifestations; Delta-Three would note that her "skin was drawn taut over delicate cheekbones, and there was a pinched expression to her face, some unnatural intensity ... from the darkness, her verdant eyes scythed out. They smoldered with a lust, some fleshy hunger." Other UNSC personnel would be unnerved by her intense organic yearning and animalism for killing and cruelty, and her presence would create a negative space of empty hunger, and Delta-Three would describe her exuded sense of sadism and barbarism to portray her as a "chthonic archangel upon a throne of obsidian black ... a corporeal creature more of shadow than flesh". Kimberly would have a continuous frame of anger, as if preprogrammed — an unstoppable, continually-activated program of anger and fury.

Talon's hemorraging anger would lead to her unspeakable sadism and her inhumane cruelty. In line with her Flood-related voraciousness, she would move for the most inhumane ways of killing people—straddling and asphyxiating them, choking them with her bare hands, lighting them on fire—and during her training, she was given extensive "free time" where she had to release herself, and where she could unleash her indiscriminate aggression upon prisoners, attempting to empty herself of her rage. She reported that she heard continual, corybantic screaming, the auditory hallucinations, and would attempt to release the screaming and the darkness of her heart by sadistically killing others. This elemental rage, far more profound than the innate aggression of the SPARTAN-IIIs, would make her a dangerous asset to ONI, as while she exhibited intense fury towards the enemy in the field, she was at risk at randomly lashing out at fellow UNSC personnel. She was impossible to break during training, and while ONI would foster her rage, they would be unable to control it and break her and the Flood madness within her, and eventually Cooke would enlist SPARTAN-091 to beat Kimberly into some kind of directed fighting weapon. Yet, after intensive physical and psychological destruction, Kimberly would always exhibit hostility to UNSC personnel, often by her cold, dark presence, her blatant and open disrespect to rank and commanding officers, and her scathing, demolishing glare from her piercing viridian eyes. Despite this lack of adherence to military protocol, ONI would continue to feed her anger, and she was perpetually kept on pharmacologicals that served to artificially augument and intensify her anger and perpetuate her bloodlust.

It was after meeting August Plummer, an operator of the UNSC Special Operations Command, UNSC Counterterrorism Activity Warfare Section, at the age of sixteen that Kimberly would begin to recover from her utterly consumed abyss of a childhood and a young adulthood. August would unfathomably unlock some fundamental, formless lock within Kimberly by demonstrating care and emotional affection, and Kimberly would finally open her eyes to her atrocities, and while would always be psychologically damaged and drip with aggressiveness, would begin psychological recovery and have a personality that could be classified as human, beginning to feel sadness, despair, and depression and to open up to recieve a spectrum of previously unrecieved emotions, demonstrate (extremely limited) emotional control, and exhibit even possibly affection.

Genealogy
The Blackburn Family

Behind the Scenes

 * Kimberly Ivy Blackburn was partially named in homage to a particular Halo Fan Fiction Wikia administrator.
 * This article, as of December 2008, stands as the longest article on Halo Fan Fiction Wikia that is a legitimate article, discounting roleplays, novels, and lists.
 * While Kimberly was originally created by RelentlessRecusant as a test of his own theoretical biology, Kimberly would later evolve into a stark warning against the horrific possibility of science unleashed without ethics or morals, and would later take guidance from Ishmael Beah's excellent book, A Long Way Gone, a national bestseller, accounting for the potential abject horror of the abuse of human rights., as well as extensive anti-war music and themes. This article finally stands as a depravity in the hopes that others can realize the necessity of human rights, of the possibility of human cruelty, and of ethics in the direction of science.
 * Kimberly was born from the novel Halo: Vector, written by RelentlessRecusant and co-authored in part by SPARTAN-091, Rotaretilbo, and Subtank.

Acknowledgements
The first author of this article, RelentlessRecusant, would like to thank his various mentors, advisors, and friends over the years who have mentored and advised him in the molecular, cellular, and physiological biology necessary to write this article.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute

 * Douglas A. Melton, PhD (Harvard University)
 * Justin P. Annes, MD, PhD (Harvard University)
 * M. William Lensch, PhD (Children's Hospital Boston)
 * Kelvin Lam, PhD (Harvard University)
 * Justin K.I, PhD (Harvard University)
 * Esther Y.S. (Harvard University)
 * Noemi L. (Massachusetts General Hospital)

UMDNJ-RWJ Medical School

 * Dale L. Woodbury, PhD (The Ira B. Black Center for Stem Cell Research)

Rutgers University

 * Anthony Uzwiak, PhD
 * Mark R. Plummer, PhD
 * Robin L. Davis, PhD