Jun-A266

"In recognition of this, his tireless diligence, we honor him as the vigilant eye of Noble."

- The Monument to Noble Team

Warrant Officer Jun-A266 is a Spartan-III supersoldier, formerly attached to Special Warfare Group Three of the UNSC Army. Trained as part of Alpha Company, he served on NOBLE Team with the callsign Noble Three until the Fall of Reach in summer 2552. The last survivor of NOBLE Team, Jun had become the head recruiter and a trainer for the Spartan branch by January 2553 and the acting Chief of Staff as of 2558.

Early career
Jun was born in 2524 on Tyumen, New Harmony. He was orphaned at a young age. Conscripted as a part of Alpha Company in 2531, early on he stood out from the rest of the group, enough for Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose and Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez to take note of his exceptional skill as an expert marksman and seasoned scout, though complications with his augmentations nearly crippled him. Following graduation at the age of 12, he became one of Alpha Company's best Spartan-III assets, where his skill as a sniper soon had him leading a Headhunter team conducting missions directly for ONI; during that time, he was responsible for tracking down and killing a number of rebel leaders who broke the tentative ceasefire between the UNSC and hostile militia groups after the attack on Harvest. A "cat-2" (a Spartan-III with the genetic profile sought by the SPARTAN-II program) Jun was deemed too valuable to be wasted on suicide missions and was soon extracted from the company along with several other candidates who showed promise. Before the demise of the rest of Alpha Company in Operation: PROMETHEUS, Jun and the other extracted Spartans were assigned to other units, and given more advanced equipment than the mainline Spartan-IIIs to make them more effective on the battlefield.

Jun came to serve on NOBLE Team with the callsign "Noble Three", filling the role of the team's sniper. He fought with the team in various battles, including the Battle of Fumirole and the Fall of Reach.

Fall of Reach
"That's no strike force, it's an invading army. If we're gonna smother this thing, we need to go in hard and fast."

- Jun discovering the Covenant occupational forces

On July 24, 2552, NOBLE Team was sent to investigate a disturbance at the Visegrád Relay. During the operation Jun spotted targets for the team from a UH-144 Falcon, providing intel on enemy and friendly troop deployments. After they were engaged by Covenant forces, Jun, Emile-A239 (Noble Four), and Kat-B320 (Noble Two) flew directly to the relay to get it back operational and send a message to their superior, SPECWAR Colonel Urban Holland.

Two days later, the team was deployed to defend ONI's Sword Base near the Babd Catha Ice Shelf, which was under attack by Covenant forces. While Kat and SPARTAN-B312 (Noble Six) were defending the base's exterior, Jun and the rest of the team made their way to the base's main atrium. After the main threat was neutralized the team was debriefed by Dr. Catherine Halsey.

On August 12, Jun and Noble Six, designated Recon Team Bravo, participated in a reconnaissance operation to assess the Covenant force deployments in the Viery Territory on Reach. They made their way through several Covenant outposts and discovered a Covenant stealth pylon, to which Jun planted an explosive charge. They then proceeded further into Covenant-occupied territory and discovered a massive Covenant ground force massing on a plain in the valley below. They informed Command and mounted a counter-attack the next morning. Afterward, NOBLE Team split up, performing different operations to defend the planet. When most of the NOBLE Team members went to Farkas Lake to initiate Operation: UPPER CUT, Jun, in a Falcon, extracted Noble One and Two from the YSS-1000 Sabre launch facility.

After the Siege of New Alexandria on August 23, NOBLE Team regrouped in the now-compromised Olympic Tower in New Alexandria. During the battle, Jun first encountered Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck of the 11th Shock Troops Battalion. After Holland contacted the team to assign them to a new mission, the Covenant began glassing the city dangerously close to NOBLE Team's position. As the Spartans fled, Kat was killed by a Sangheili marksman. The survivors attempted to kill the Sangheili, to no avail. On August 26th, NOBLE Team emerged from a fallout bunker beneath the ruins of the Olympic Tower to be picked up by a Pelican.

On August 29th, the remaining members of NOBLE Team were sent to the Covenant-occupied remnants of Sword Base; they were to demolish the base in order to prevent Halsey's excavation data from falling into Covenant hands. Jun, Emile and Carter remained in a UH-144 Falcon while Noble Six and a team of ODSTs eliminated a pair of Type-38 Tyrant anti-aircraft emplacements. After the cannons were disabled, NOBLE Team fought their way into the interior of the base. Once they arrived at the designated coordinates, which seemed to be a dead end with no load-bearing structures, Auntie Dot revealed that the team had been given a new objective. They were to rendezvous with Dr. Halsey over a kilometer away and 2,000 feet below ground.

The team soon arrived at the crash site of a Forerunner vessel beneath the ice shelf. Halsey insisted upon the importance of the site and demanded NOBLE Team's support while she completed transferring critical data in her laboratory. Jun and the other Spartans defended Halsey's lab from several waves of Covenant forces, who had found an entrance to the ruins. Eventually, Halsey ushered the Spartans inside, where she revealed the data she had transferred: a fragment of the AI Cortana that carried a "latchkey" discovery found in the ruins. She ordered NOBLE Team to escort the package to, a that was drydocked at the ship-breaking yards in Aszod.

Once the team emerged from the cavern below SWORD Base, Jun was ordered to escort Doctor Catherine Halsey to ONI's CASTLE Base. He was ordered to protect Halsey and the secrets she possessed from falling into Covenant hands. He was gone by the time Spartan-II Red Team arrived the next day.

First class
Through unknown means, Jun managed to escape Reach. He was soon employed as the head recruiter for the fledgling SPARTAN-IV program. In January 2553, he met with ODST Sarah Palmer aboard Lockhart medical station and recruited her into the new SPARTAN program. On February 15, 2553, Jun traveled to Sundown in a shuttle to offer Edward Buck a place in the first class of Spartan-IVs. Much to Jun's surprise, Buck declined the offer, as he felt that he might have to abandon his team and his girlfriend, Veronica Dare. Buck became the first prospect to decline Jun's offer. Jun and Commander Musa's first test for the new recruits was an obstacle course in which Palmer dashed ahead to the objective, leaving her outnumbered comrades behind to be stunned into submission. Jun and Musa's first lesson to the ambitious recruit was to never seek glory for oneself and stick with one's team. Later, Jun and Thomas Lasky gave the recruits a tour of the. During the tour, an insurrectionist team disguised as a construction crew boarded Infinity and took Captain Andrew Del Rio and the Infinity bridge crew hostage. The leader of the group, Ilsa Zane threatened to depressurize the ship and kill everyone aboard if anyone tried to retake the bridge. Though they were not officially authorized to do so, Jun allowed the Spartan-IVs to access the MJOLNIR armor stored on the ship in order to retake the bridge.

After the Spartan-IVs donned their new armor, Jun explained Zane's background: she is the only survivor of a secret, prototypical phase of the SPARTAN-IV program. Although her physical augmentations are superior to those of the mainline Spartan-IVs, they also made her mentally unstable, resulting in her defection. Detecting several Spartans making their way to the bridge of the Infinity, Zane depressurized S-Deck, sending several crew members into space with Lasky and Jun being saved by Palmer and Spartan Edward Davis. Eventually the Spartans eliminated the rebels and retook the Infinity.

Second class
In 2554, the success of the first class of Spartan-IVs allowed Musa to fund further classes. Considering his inability to recruit Buck into the first class to be a personal failure, Jun sought him out at Leeward's bar in Karnak, Draco III. The two shared baijiu together to honor the recently-deceased rookie of Buck's squad. Buck maintained that his answer was the same a year later, but Jun informed him that the increased funding in the program allowed for the remainder of Buck's team to become Spartans alongside him. With his largest concerns alleviated, Buck decided to join the program. Jun later contacted and recruited Michael Crespo, a squad member of Buck's, into the program.

As the training of the second class of Spartans had begun, Jun relocated with them to a UNSC space station in orbit over a dwarf planet. Shortly after the Spartan-IVs received their augmentations, Jun was informed that one of the trainees, Hideo Wakahisa, did not return from his training exercise. Jun went looking for him and found Wakahisa dead in the tunnels of the training arena furthest from the entrance. While Jun searched the area for evidence, he called in a medical team to remove the body and had the station's administration team search the training recordings to remove most trainees from suspicion. Afterwards, Jun and Musa confronted Buck, Crespo, and Kojo Agu in their quarters, as the Spartans were still listed as possible suspects. Jun revealed that he had found a medallion belonging to Crespo, but the latter and his friends insisted that he was not responsible for the murder. Crespo noted that he kept the medallion in his locker—which he never locked—and he believed someone stole it from him. Musa sent Jun to search the security footage of the locker room to find any further leads. Jun was then ordered to assign the three Spartans to temporary quarters and ordered them to remain in the room until further notice.

Further investigations soon proved that Spartan trainee Rudolf Schein was responsible for the murder. Jun, Musa, and Captain O'Day went to confront him, but Schein was waiting for them in the station's recreational room and threatened to blow up the entire station unless his demands were met. When Schein attempted to detonate the explosives he had placed around the station, Jun charged at him and knocked the trigger out of his hand. Musa managed to turn off the station's artificial gravity, which caused the explosives' switches to falter and prevented all the explosives in the station from detonating. Schein still managed to detonate his explosive, which killed O'Day and damaged the viewport in the rec room. As Jun and Schein brawled, they smacked into the viewport and it shattered, pulling them into the vacuum of space. Once Jun was clear of the air escaping the station, he kicked off of Schein's chest and propelled himself back to the station. While Schein died, Jun was brought to the station's infirmary to recover from his exposure to space.

Jun eventually recovered from his injuries. When Crespo defected to the United Rebel Front, he was eventually detained by Buck and Agu and handed over to Jun, who officially arrested him. Jun still held a command position in the Spartan branch as of March 2558.

Personality and traits
"I kill the enemy, but do not hate them."

- Jun-A266

He is regarded as "rock solid under pressure" and has shown symptoms of post-traumatic stress in the past. He is rather talkative during missions, sometimes to a degree considered against noise discipline protocols. This is often overlooked in the field by his peers however, due to the informational bent of his chatter. Though he is vocal and not afraid to speak his mind, Jun is always tightly focused on the mission at hand. Some mistake this for a deep philosophy, but in truth, it is more pragmatic than mystical. In a psychiatric evaluation on 15/12/2549, he was noted as having "an unhealthy emotional detachment in regards to the consequences of his actions". Colonel Urban Holland, who later evaluated the members of Noble Team, disagreed with this assertion, commenting that Jun is both a rationalist and a Spartan. He has a tattoo of a fist clutching three arrows on the left side of his face.

Somewhat of a loner by nature, Jun only competes with himself and has little time for trivial personality conflicts that impede efficiency. As a SPARTAN-III he was no stranger to loss and witnessed some of the best and brightest of humanity's youth be sacrificed--sometimes pointlessly--for temporary gain. He views the SPARTAN-IV program and the Spartan branch as a necessary compromise between the creation of child-janissaries and the need for super-soldiers in an extremely dangerous galaxy. To this end, he takes his duties as recruiter and training overseer with deadly seriousness, and is uncompromising in his review process of potential Spartan inductees. Although he has personally recruited Spartans that have eventually gone rogue or failed the training process, to those on the outside he often seems unconcerned. Only Musa is aware that Jun secretly takes even those events as evidence of the success of the SPARTAN-IV program, as those men and women had a choice as to what they would eventually become.

Though now he rarely has the opportunity to use his skills in the field, Jun is widely recognized as one the most talented snipers alive, though he is loath to boast such. His ability to maintain situational awareness and predict enemy behavior is particularly notable, as is his attention to detail while conducting overwatch. Even as a civilian his keen eye and ability to discern motivations from seemingly casual contact is almost preternatural. Jun often downplays this ability, describing it as a combination of simple deduction and great skill at being able to lip-read (or mandible-read, in the case of Sangheili).

Equipment
Jun's Mjolnir Mark V armor was configured to suit his role as a sniper. He wore a Scout helmet with an HU/RS upgrade with an brownish orange-colored visor, a Tactical/Patrol chest piece with a rucksack for additional storage, and FJ/PARA knee guards. He wore his combat knife and spare sniper rifle rounds on his right and left shoulders respectively. His left forearm was equipped with a Tactical/UGPS unit. With the dawn of the GEN2 platform, Jun requested a one-off upgrade to his armor. Interest in the suit's feature set among Spartan scout-snipers led to several other sets based on this design, and it being termed VIGILANT-class Mjolnir.

Trivia

 * Jun was voiced by Sunil Malhotra.
 * Jun's homeworld, New Harmony, was also the birthplace of his teammate Kat.
 * Jun's voice can be used in Halo: Reach's Firefight mode for 10,000 credits.
 * Jun's helmet is available as an avatar award and is obtained by killing 100 enemies in a row without dying in either campaign or Firefight. This is the easiest avatar award helmet to unlock, due to the invulnerability option in Firefight.
 * Jun's tattoo resembles to the Bungie crest, sans plated gauntlet.
 * Jun's number is a reference to the number seven, as (2+6+6=14/2=7).
 * Jun's name is similar to the the pinyin spelling for the Chinese word jǖn, which means "military".
 * During Halo Waypoint's exploration and background explanation on the Defiant Map Pack, three dead Spartans wearing armor identical to Jun can be seen in the remains of a destroyed Pelican on the level Highlands.
 * As Jun is not mentioned in Halo: First Strike, fans long speculated that he was killed between the events of "The Package" and the novel. In the Halo: Reach Legendary Edition developer commentary, Martin O'Donnell and Lee Wilson jokingly state that "the sequel" tells the story of Jun and Halsey's escape, and of their children, who are "very smart snipers". At Comic Con 2011, Frank O'Connor stated, "Jun's fate may not ever be discovered." Three years later he was revealed to have survived, becoming a recruiter and trainer for the nascent Spartan-IVs; his role mirrors that of Kurt-051, who was likewise withdrawn from the SPARTAN-II program to train the Spartan-IIIs.
 * Jun is the protagonist of the fan-made graphic novel Halo: A Fistful of Arrows, written and drawn by Levi "Leviathan" Hoffmeier, which is named in reference to Jun's tattoo. In a conversation between Bungie employee Martin O'Donnell and Hoffmeier on the halo.bungie.org forums, O'Donnell joked that "[...] Jun tripped and broke his neck on the way to escorting Halsey off Reach [and] he's dead." Hoffmeier then drew a short comic strip depicting the event. 343 Industries later referenced A Fistful of Arrows in a Q&A session in their Canon Fodder blog, stating that "the details of [Jun's] survival and escape from Reach remain buried under fistfuls of black ink and red tape."

List of appearances

 * Remember Reach
 * Deliver Hope
 * Halo: Reach
 * Halo: Initiation
 * Halo: Escalation
 * Halo: New Blood
 * Halo: Fleet Battles
 * Halo 5: Guardians