PRE-ENLISTMENT / EARLY HISTORY 2525 to 2542
❝I was born on Tribute, little FYI.❞
❝She's drunk again.❞

MARINE CORPS / FORCE RECON 2542 to 2548
❝Never met a mustang I couldn't outpace, motherfucker.❞
❝High Command saved most of the really good shit for their precious ODSTs, and Force Recon licked up the scraps, then said their thank you, sirs for the peasant meal.❞
❝His specific unit was primed and trained for covert engagement with the Covenant, not Insurrectionists and their guerilla warfare shit.❞

REACH / SIEGE OF NEW ALEXANDRIA 2548 to 2552
❝Look. Witness it: what you could have been, if you hadn't cut the survivor out of you.❞
❝Not me. All my fucked up shit came after the war.❞
❝Then the Jiralhanae blew through countless civvies and Marines alike on the first goddamn day.❞
❝Lost my entire unit within a few hours when shit got really bad in New Alexandria.❞
❝The Covies are scrubbing this whole goddamn place.❞

POST-WAR / MERCENARY STINT / CHORUS 2552 to 2557
❝Felix, Locus says. He has a voice that demands attention, silky-deep and warm. Gates, he tries again, and you think you're not supposed to hear this part. His name. You think you've crossed a forbidden threshold. You think they might kill you for this later. Isaac, look at me.❞

MENTAL / PSYCHE / LOCUS SPECIFIC ♤
❝There's really nothing in you, is there?❞
❝Yeah, I've got a thing with motherfuckers who think they can step up to me.❞
❝Dude's fired as fuck. We're done. We've been done.❞
❝With all the annoying irreverence of a man who's never followed a direct order in his life.❞
❝That's fair. Most people don't like him, and the ones that think they like him only think they know him.❞ ♤
❝Blood splatters his lashes, and he blinks. Not his. Ephemera's, coiled over him like a goddamn demon.❞
❝Then you're no good to me, either. Fuck off.❞
❝I came here to get fucked up, so fuck me up.❞
❝Don't ever start shit you can't finish with me again.❞
❝He was preoccupied. I was ambushed.❞ ♤
❝You loved them.❞ ♤
❝The bait. The lure. I'm a talker. I worked people over.❞ ♤
❝You sensitive to the idea of being controlled?❞
❝You're vastly underestimating the depth of my apathy.❞
❝Miss your partner that much?❞ ♤
❝He doesn't have friends. He has contacts and assets, favors and debts owed to be paid in full when and where he needs the additional manpower.❞ ♤
❝Locus his partner. Locus his shadow. Locus his rifle scope fixed for a fucking headshot. They've moved in sync since the ugliest parts of the war, two halves of one viciously efficient whole.❞ ♤
❝It's easier to flinch first.❞