Doug-103

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Master Chief Petty Officer Douglas Baker-103, also known as simply Doug and known to some as CODENAME: BASTION, is a Class 1. Born to Australians on and later moving to, like all SPARTAN-IIs he was ripped from his family and conscripted into the program. During his training as a young SPARTAN, he discovered he had an affinity for heavier weapons, such as heavy machine guns and was exceptionally good at sabotage.

When he was deployed, he found himself fighting against the Insurrection before being brought over to fight in the. He is one of the few known SPARTAN-IIs to have survived the war. Doug was known to be a sentimental and protective Spartan while at the same time being quite open and frequently cracking jokes, sometimes in the middle of enemy fire. Despite his eccentricities, he again and again shows himself to be one of the best at his profession.

Early History
Douglas lived a rather peaceful life in the colony of Reach when his parents moved there. Originally born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, his family caught a ride to Reach when they could and lived in for several years. Three years after moving, the six-year-old Doug was abducted by and brought into the SPARTAN-II program. As stated earlier, he discovered he had a penchant for heavier weaponry. During training, he forged close friendships with fellow Spartans Colin-142,, ,, and.

Even after his augmentations, Douglas showed a highly resistant fortitude. He had previously shown himself to be brave, but also to be almost unbreakable. His mental stature continued to show all through his career. It was this mental strength that after his deployment, he was explicitly requested by ONI as an enforcer and behind-the-lines saboteur. Once his training had ended and he was officially deployed, he found himself under the Office of Naval Intelligence's wing.

Time with ONI
"So. I'm conflicted on whether I should call her Eggbot, or Maddy."

- Doug-103 on Madeline.

Up into the following battle in 2539, Doug-103 would spend his time in ONI's employ for an extended period. His role as a saboteur and enforcer extended to all kinds of missions - going behind enemy lines, escorting high-importance personnel and gathering all sorts of information. In mid-2532, he was given possession of the "smart" Madeline. The two would spend the next nine years dismantling most Insurrectionist movements where-ever they could, before the situation with the Covenant started to worsen.

During this gloomy era of Doug's existence, he was assigned often with protection duty and escorted many high-ranking ONI personnel. It was during this time he would earn his status as an expert of a wide variety of weaponry, and the toting of his iconic into battle, which he frequently modified and adjusted.

Among one of his most successful missions was involvement in the Battle of New Harmony, where he piloted the UNSC Prowler, with Madeline's assistance and launched a to a retreating Covenant frigate, which lead to the discovery of , allowing  to take place. This feat was the reason for Doug-103 becoming present at the Battle of Kholo and several other conflicts.

Battle of Kholo
During the Battle of, Doug-103 was starting to suffer power failures in his armor due to Madeline slipping into rampancy. Originally, Doug planned to get off-world so he could have Madeline decommissioned, so she could no longer feel the pain of rampancy. However, this was sidetracked when a Covenant scouting party destroyed several mining vessels in orbit, halting Doug's original plan. With several other Spartans present at Kholo, they engaged in a ground-level defense.

While the UNSC forces including the SPARTAN-IIs and IIIs managed to hold off the Covenant for an extended period, they were only buying time. The main airbase was soon destroyed and Doug managed to lose his heavy machine gun turret in the middle of a partially collapsed building. During this, he encountered a an "orangey-reddish" armored Sangheili warrior and confronted him in hand-to-hand combat. Before Doug managed to beat him, however, the floor underneath his feet collapsed and he was trapped under rubble under the next few floors.



When he was awake again, he knew time was short. Once he found his machine gun again, he quickly managed to get the rest of the civilians off-world, and decided to establish a foothold on Kholo once he realized he would not be coming back. The Covenant succeeded in their mission and razed Kholo - or most of it - to the ground. This time period was when Madeline truly started to feel the effects of rampancy, and this proved to be a problem due to them being away without any UNSC support. For three years, he was sealed on the planet with a miniscule human militia effort dedicated to cleaning up any Covenant forces still left on the half-glassed planet.

For three years he laid upon a barren rock infested with squid lips, enemy midgets and hulking orange beasts with cannons mounted on where a hand should be. Kholo no doubt took a heavy toll on Doug, as he had to put Madeline to rest when was reunited with UNSC forces in early 2543, when a makeshift beacon alerted a passing ship. An ONI agent was informed of Doug-103's survival and sent a rescue team shortly after. This was when Doug's intense dislike of the Office of Naval Intelligence started to spark, that they were more concerned about saving their own rather than civilians, soldiers or even Spartans.

Conflict on New Zaječar
Demons of Hope-based Section - this conflict doesn't take place in other universes.

Doug-103's first deployment since the Kholo incident was on the planet of New Zaječar, which saw him moving in a team of other Spartans for the first time - among them was his training buddy Colin-142, both of which rejoiced upon meeting each other again. They worked together with a team of SPARTAN-IIIs during the conflict. Zaječar was known for being an industrial gem, so naturally, it was of utmost urgency that a Spartan team, called Centurion, would be deployed there for protective reasons.

However, something more sinister was going on in the background. The chain of events here take place in the story Halo: Custodia. The Office of Naval Intelligence was in fact performing excavations and power-siphons from a Forerunner city on the planet, underneath the upper hemisphere of the planet. Due to the nature of Forerunner tech, it appears that the city's energy fields had affected the environment around it, causing the biome to be stuck in a permanent state of winter.

Black Operations
Doug once again belonged to ONI and was engaged in several 'black' operations. The Office of Naval Intelligence clearly knew things were getting dire, and they needed to do whatever they could. As a result, Doug became a 'guardian angel' for many high-ranking ONI operatives and even become a solo operator of his own accord.



During these operations he tangled with mercenary groups and of note, a particularly infamous mercenary band that had been hampering intelligence on a nearby planet. Doug destroyed them all with impunity and left little traces of his existence, as under ONI's employ, it was required of him to keep his identity - and even his existence - highly secret, or his involvement with ONI would be compromised. In the Against All Odds universe, he fights the Crimson Claws mercenary band over the events of Halo: Lone Commando, but no mention of the Claws appears in any others.

These tasks saw him deployed to a variety of locations, such as the run-down slums of cities, mercenary ships, or otherwise lowly areas populated with all sorts of never-do-wells with connections. Occasionally he was paired up with another Spartan or two, but it was infrequent. His last - and perhaps most notable - incursion was in a run-down undercity in which he managed to kill two highly influential warlords, raze their headquarters to the ground and escape without a single shot fired. The skills learned here saved Douglas' life during the Fall of Reach many years later, as he learned to be more tactically flexible - rather than toting a heavy machine gun turret around all the time. If it weren't for the impeding disaster about to occur on humanity's last line of defense several years later, he would have earned the status of "hyper-lethal vector".

Fall of Reach
Twenty-two years later after the Kholo 'incident', Doug-103 was released from ONI's employ, publicly known to have been Missing in Action for the same amount of years, even to Catherine Halsey's knowledge. The Office of Naval Intelligence knew the stakes were high, but was not expecting an attack on Reach. Reach was struck by a Covenant scouting force, who were making way for a full-scaled invasion to humanity's last bastion of defense before Earth. Unthinkable to people living in present times. They thought that Reach was invincible.



Naturally, they were wrong - the Covenant was ruthless in leaving an enormous swath of destruction in their wake, as they had with many colonies before. It was the bloodiest conflict of the war - the UNSC Navy, Armymen, Marines, ODSTs, tons of ships, many ground, air and space assets, admirals, and a handful of Spartans were to stand in the way of an enormous Covenant armada ready to stomp them into oblivion.

Firstly, the Covenant deployed the gigantic carrier along with the, which served as the first-strike teams, who soon disabled the communications array at , which cut Reach off from the rest of the UNSC. ONI first mistook the Covenant for the Insurrection, as the Fleet was carefully disguised using stealth pylons that had been soon deployed. However, was soon sent after the comm relay and discovered the alien scouts, cutting them down while making their way to the relay. There, they were attacked by a squad of Sangheili Zealots, who had obtained vital data about a Forerunner artifact.

Doug-103's involvement in Reach came a week after - the solo operator was deployed as an emergency responder to the city of Fonyód, with the assistance of a Army Fireteam also deployed with him. From there, one of the biggest battles in human history commenced.

Post-War (DoH)
Demons of Hope timeline diverges here.

Fresh out of the Human-Covenant War, Doug-103's faith in humanity was mended. Though they had lost much and almost all of their colonies, the UNSC began an enormous recovery effort from the staggering body count of the war, and the loss of equipment all over. However, the Covenant was toppled and naught but remnants continued to fight, and the entire United Nations Space Command took the opportunity to escalate the recovery effort.

However, a new enemy emerged in 2558. With Doug's return into action as a part of the new SPARTAN-IV project, he was eager to combat none other than the Forerunners themselves -, who were powerful Forerunner constructions piloted by the sometimes-unwilling decomposed minds of human or Forerunner beings. Following the Didact's seeming death, the UNSC Infinity, a prototype starship used for as a testing ground for the SPARTAN-IVs, were deployed to Requiem, the Shield World in which Master Chief Petty Officer landed on a year earlier.

Post-War (AAO)
Against All Odds timeline diverges here.

Doug-103, after the Human-Covenant War, was relieved of duty for a large period of time and returned to Kholo to pay his respects to the people who died there, including Madeline. He returned to active duty during the mid 2560s, in which he dug up something of value to him - he discovered the identity of the Sangheili who he fought on Kholo years ago and hounded on Reach. Stel 'Vadam, now Fleet Master of the Sangheili naval forces.

During the events of Vadam Legacies: Warpath, Doug-103 arrived with a return UNSC group of ships consisting of Marines and ODSTs, specifically being on-board a Marathon-class crusier, and was soon deployed to the Jiralhanae colony of Ferinus. He was the one responsible for discovering Jiralhanae excavations on the planet - a crystal similar to but not unlike that of that  discovered in 2552. It appears the Jiralhanae had found a Forerunner repository underneath the planet, indicating the location of an entire Forerunner city that runs under the whole of the planet. Upon meeting back at the central base located within Ferinus' tropical regions, he confronted Marina Morley about the artifact.

Quotes
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."

- A quote by Mark Twain, circumstance unknown.

"You look like a banana."

- Doug, joking to Bailey-132, during Halo: RED FLAG.

"So. Who called for the Holepuncher?"

- In referral to his modified M247H machine gun.

"So, the first time I try to do good, I get 300-odd people killed..."

- Upon discovery of the death toll in OPERATION: PROMETHEUS, Doug was not happy.

Personality
Doug is wildly regarded as being snide and sarcastic. This is no more apparent when his brazen lack of seriousness and wisecracking in the middle of gunfights kicks in, which usually gets him shouted at when he's working with people who are higher-ranked than himself. His seriousness can come into play if people are harmed or severely injured, even killed. In these times, he's shown himself to be protective and quite noble, having jumped on more than one grenade to protect another life. Another obvious trait of his is his optimistic outlook.

Despite having lived through the entire Human-Covenant War, he shows little sign of stress or strain. However, he harbors several guilts about having to exterminate mercenaries and other unsavoury types at the behest of ONI - while he is a fantastic Spartan and one of the strongest there is, he couldn't possibly give less of a damn about what they think. Even though he has worked with them in the past and is on good terms with them, he knows that's about all that's keeping him alive when he crosses them, as he despises the organization, both the Office itself and what it stands for. ONI would readily sacrifice the human race to ensure its own survival, and Doug despises them for that very reason.

Trivia

 * Doug-103 is a partial insert of the author's personality. More specifically, the author's compassion and sarcastic demeanor.
 * Doug's height can not be achieved within the games - the images are there simply to give an idea of how he looks, rather than how tall he actually is.
 * Doug is not to be confused with the canon Spartan.
 * Doug scored a 20 on the Gary Stu test, classifying it as a not-Gary Stu.
 * Doug could be considered an embodiment of the trope Jerk with a Heart Of Gold. He can give others crap, or he can give them utmost loyalty.
 * Doug is four inches taller than . He holds the record of being the strongest and tallest Spartan in the program.
 * Doug receives his more iconic, bulky armor on during his black operations in all other universes, but in Demons of Hope, receives it after his armor is damaged during the Zajecar conflict.