| abstract | - Major Laszlo-108 (full name Hoban Lavernius Washburne at birth, Hoban Laszlo Balázs Tarkov post-adoption, and Laszlo Katona after Office of Naval Intelligence enlistment, also known by designations Sierra-One-Zero-Eight, Codename: HIGH DRAGON and Albion Actual) is a commissioned field-grade officer of the UNSC Army, one of the last remaining SPARTAN-II Commandos of the UNSC Defense Force, one of three Leonidan Operatives and a distinguished operator of the Office of Naval Intelligence Delta-4 Division. Hailing from the original class of the SPARTAN-II Program, he served from the waning years of the Insurrection, throughout the entire Human-Covenant War and the following Mandorla and Reclamation campaigns. He then went on Operation: SAVIOUR, an effort by the UNSC to locate the missing Spartan John-117, until the operation was called off in 2596. Following his return from the operation, he assumed the role of commanding officer of Albion Company, one of several companies making up the 117th Special Operations Regiment. Laszlo was born in a rebel hideout in the capital city of Tribute, Casbah, to Alan and Gina Washburne, two of the best infiltrators and commandos of the United Rebel Front. For his safety, his parents placed him in an orphanage in Manassas, Reach. Ironically, he was then adopted by Antonin Tarkov, a Major General of the Army and Director of Reach's Colonial Military, and his wife, Yekaterina Tarkova (née Michanova), a university teacher. He then moved with his new family to the New Salgótarján habitat on Csodaszarvas. At the age of six, only weeks after a seemingly inconspicuous meeting with a former student and friend of his mother's, Doctor Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, Laszlo was abducted from his home and taken to a military complex on Reach, where he and 74 other children were officially conscripted into the SPARTAN-II Program, as per Naval Code 45812. For the next seven and a half years, he and the other candidates underwent a rigorous training regimen. Over time, he ended up a member of Brown Team alongside Riker-012, Leonid-144, Maria-062 and Randall-037. In 2525, things took a turn for the worse when the augmentation procedures he and the other candidates underwent rendered him permanently blind and afflicted him with a fatal illness that took his life a few weeks later. However, in reality, he survived; abducted by Rear Admiral Ned Rich, commanding officer of the Delta-4 Division (also known as the Covert Operations Group), as part of Project LEONIDAS and replaced with a flash-clone to cover his tracks. Following his recovery from the procedures, he was entered into the division's ranks as a member of the elite Fade Cell under Lieutenant Colonel Walter Nautilus Cardwell. He quickly proved himself as the cell's single most capable operator after numerous covert missions against the insurrectionists. The discovery of the Covenant Empire sparked a change of priorities regarding his deployments. As the war with the Covenant began to rage, Laszlo fought in the shadows alongside other Fade personnel against the alien juggernaut in numerous engagements (including the Harvest Campaign, the Battle of New Harmony and the Siege of Roost) and proved himself capable of fighting the new threat. In 2540, he was given a commission to Captain and reassigned to Fort Hamill on Tantalus to train the third class of the SPARTAN-II Program, the Ares Detachment. With the support of his new superior, Colonel Griffin Standoff, and former SPARTAN-I Commando Master Gunnery Sergeant Dean Jackson, he trained the fifty candidates in a similar manner to how he himself had been trained to prepare them for their new lives as supersoldiers. In 2548, the candidates underwent augmentations and were fielded soon after. Laszlo then returned to frontline duty, going on increasingly desperate missions assigned by ONI to turn the tide of the war with the Covenant. One of those missions was to recover lost AI research on the formerly UNSC-held world of Aphrodite II. During the mission, he discovered and rallied other UNSC personnel – a black ops agent, Helen Calypso, and two SPARTAN-III Commandos, Jane-B337 and Nessa-B256 – on the planet sent to undertake the same task, and ultimately managed to complete the mission, though at the expense of Jane and Nessa's lives. He continued to fight in the Great War, barely escaping the Fall of Reach in August 2552 along with fellow SPARTAN-IIs Riker-012 and James-007, as well as a SPARTAN-III (Bonnie-A261), going on Operation: WOLF BAIT before returning to Earth, where his Leonidan status was removed and he returned into the fold of the Special Warfare Command to most of his remaining brother and sister Spartans. He and Bonnie were then paired with another Spartan, SPARTAN-II Class II Commando Amanda-208 for the duration of the Battle of the Sol System, undertaking assignments in Greece and on Titan and Luna, and ultimately in the South Pacific. Following the UNSC victory thanks to their new Sangheili allies, Laszlo accompanied a small task force pursuing several Jiralhanae ships throughout the Labyrinth Array, until it achieved a considerable victory in a final battle over Mandorla. After the end of the Human-Covenant War, he took part in the Reclamation Campaign to recover all of humanity's lost colonies and push back the crumbling Covenant. After the Battle of Doisac, he then accompanied his brother and sister Spartans on Operation: SAVIOUR to look for John-117. He stuck faithfully to the operation until it was called off and deemed a failure in 2596. He then headed to Arcturus, where he and the other Spartans began training the candidates of the new SPARTAN-IV Program, taking command of one of the companies, Albion, a position he still holds. He is secretly and unofficially married to Helen Calypso, having striked up a romantic relationship with the latter after the mission to Aphrodite II. Together, the couple had a child, Kalman, whom they handed over to a friend of theirs, Benjamin Reaver, in order to keep the relationship secret and their child safe from ONI.
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