Vincent Lafayette II

"Where there's a whip, there's a way."

- Vincent Lafayette II

Lieutenant Commander Vincent Ulysses Josephus Lafayette II was an Office of Naval Intelligence operative, mainly serving as an operations planner, data analyst and interrogator. Theatrical, sadistic and devoted to his work above all else, Lafayette was driven and fairly competent but disliked by his peers due to his antisocial personality.

Personality and background
For Lieutenant Commander Lafayette, ONI wasn't just a career - it was a way of life. Ruthless, unscrupulous and loyal above all else, he is still notorious in the intelligence community for both his fiendish intelligence as well as cruel and unusual approaches to problem-solving—even by ONI's standards. While he maintained that his extreme methods were purely to attain results, those close to him knew - or at least suspected - that he was actually a sadist at heart. Still, he did gain results and was regarded as competent at his job, which prompted his superiors to look the other way in regards to his more troublesome actions. While a skilled mission planner and data analyst, he was not a remarkable combatant or field agent, and could be rather timid in situations of which he had no full control over. While his ONI conditioning allowed him to overcome his innate fearfulness somewhat and enabled him to function in certain field roles, he was always more at home in the safety of ships or military installations. For "emergencies", he maintained a supply of performance-enhancing combat drugs on his person at all times.

Paradoxically, he fancied himself a well-cultured man and was known for his foppish and theatrical manner, complete with an exaggerated 'upper-class' accent, which he no doubt picked up as an affectation, and took up traditionally aristocratic hobbies such as fencing. While demonstrably a sociopath, he had a profound understanding of human psychology and how to take advantage of it. It is often suspected that he purposefully constructed his flamboyant and bizarre persona to unnerve his enemies, though much of it may well have been genuine, perhaps overcompensation for an intense inferiority complex over his Outer Colonial origins—of which he was highly self-conscious.

Lafayette avoided cryosleep whenever he could, considering it a waste of time, and slept as little as possible in general. In his later years, he was addicted to at least two varieties of stimulants which enable one to function with only two to three hours of sleep a day. During critical phases of any given operation, he would enter a trance-like reverie and often stayed awake for days absorbed in a given task, such as connecting various data points or planning black operations; he expected similar dedication from his subordinates. He always had few to no friends, interacting with his colleagues strictly in professional contexts. He was also a quick to report any suspicious, even "unproductive" behavior within ONI's ranks to the higher echelons (something that contributed to his rise through the ranks), and as he advanced in rank himself, he would personally either interrogate or arrange accidents for many agents he deemed "problematic" for ONI - or for himself. Unfortunately, his pathological paranoia and personal grudges ensured that many good agents were wasted on his private witch hunts.

Since losing his right forefinger to a plasma bolt in 2536, he had a metallic prosthetic installed featuring a sharpened claw-like nail. Polished to a chrome sheen, the prosthetic was built for intimidation rather than utility, and came with an integrated toxin dispenser.

Biography
Vincent Ulysses Josephus Lafayette II was born on the Outer Colony of Eridanus II. When he was five years old, his father was killed in an Insurrectionist car bombing. His mother subsequently descended into alcoholism and drug abuse; Vincent subsequently passed under the care of his paternal grandparents who did spoil him somewhat. While his grandparents were not politically active and always cautioned him against taking sides, as soon as he was old enough to begin to grasp the greater situation of the UNSC-Insurrection conflict, Vincent began to lean strongly for the UNSC side—something for which he was often bullied for in school, for rebel or separatist sympathies ran deep in that region of his homeworld.

As soon as he was able, Vincent joined the local cell of the Terra's Children youth organization and eventually, both his vocal support for the UNSC and high grades in school granted him admission to the prestigious Corbulo Academy of Military Science, making him one of a small quota of cadets accepted to the school not on the basis of nepotism. PR considerations played a large role in such admissions, since accepting a poor Outer Colony kid whose family had fallen on hard times due to Insurrectionist activity would help polish the UNSC's battered public image. Mostly populated by the offspring of high-ranked UEG and UNSC officials, many of Corbulo's other students looked down on Vincent. However, he was used to having no friends, and spent his leisure time on studying rather than socializing. Though his physical scores were merely average, Vincent Lafayette graduated from the academy with flying colors.

The newly-minted Navy officer's tendencies were quickly taken notice of by ONI and he was recruited as a strategic data specialist and operations planner. Very soon, he was busy tracking down key Insurrectionists and rebel sympathizers and planning black operations to undermine, blackmail, or eliminate them; he cherished every opportunity to personally question prisoners. As the Covenant started encroaching on the Inner Colonies and ONI's intel on the Covenant's power structure built up, his duties shifted to finding and eliminating Covenant commanders and potentially, also their civilian leaders. Other than this, he also planned operations to "disappear" problematic individuals at ONI's bidding, and came up with many of the processing protocols for ONI's notorious Midnight Facility. One of his notable (albeit highly classified) accomplishments is helping refine the interviewing and acquisition processes for ONI's Operation: CANDY VAN, the candidate acquisition phase of the SPARTAN-III program's penultimate generation.

He was killed by an ONI black ops team with conflicting mission parameters on October 17, 2554 while undercover as part of Operation: TOOL SHED, being flung out of a corporate skyscraper by the shockwave of a grenade explosion; assuming the trauma from the blast did not kill him, which it likely did, the 1,800-meter fall would have. The incident was attributed to faulty intel and the agents responsible were found innocent, being truly under the impression that their target was an Insurrectionist demagogue. However, the sources of the strike team's intel were never fully traced. There was speculation that the kill may have been engineered by a rival within ONI as part of the organization's byzantine power struggles, perhaps someone attempting to tie up loose ends following Parangosky's retirement, though if this were the case the operative(s) responsible would have done an impressive job covering their tracks. It was well known that Lafayette was not particularly popular within ONI; although favored by the former CINCONI and her small cadre of "true believers", many of his more level-headed colleagues found him a supremely distasteful and unhinged individual.