#kilo 5

#WIPTOBER

Our queen, our legend, our Valkyrie <3

I seriously have so much written that this character limit is my enemy. Be expecting several parts for Naomi cause I'm not even done with the trilogy.

Part II

Naomi is very much the quiet one in the relationship as usual with Spartans, though you two do have inside jokes that she refers to. It'll be in an uncalled-for situation when she brings it up or cracks a good one that has you gigging like crazy. Serin has gotten annoyed with you because all she hears is you laughing over comms and Vaz nor Mal understand why you're kneed over with tears in your eyes.

She adores hearing her partner laugh, it just does something to her that makes her feel all warm inside. Naomi feels more comfortable bantering with her partner than anyone else and really does enjoy the inside jokes together.

BB was still in her armor when this happened and gets curious when her heart rate spikes and her body temperature rises. He doesn't understand why it did until he sees what she's seeing. In that moment, everything else fades into the background, and all that exists in her sight and sound is your laughter. It's infectious, she finds the corner of her lips twitching into a smile. She couldn't help but be drawn to it like a moth to a flame and for the rest of the day, BB is in a daze because he doesn't know how to explain this feeling and finds himself watching the two individuals. In the end, BB materializes next to you and describes the feeling, you end up giving him a small laugh. "BB, that sounds like you're in love. Who's captured your digital heart?" And unbeknownst to you, those were Naomi's feelings that he described.

At the very beginning of the relationship, Naomi teaches you the Spartan smile and makes it a habit to gesture it when she sees you, eventually, if you’re an ODST/Spartan, she’ll start swiping her fingers across your helmet. The first time you give her a Spartan smile on her helmet, she’s secretly overjoyed.

Going down the ODST route, if you two get reunited during a mission, she does the spartan smile on your helmet super quickly before going to engage another enemy. The rest of your squad annoys you about it but you’re sworn to Spartan secrecy, they don’t need to know.

This actually starts a rumor that Naomi and you have beef which couldn’t be further from the truth. When you tell her about it, she’s actually concerned and asks why would she be fighting with you? Was there something she did wrong? Later, she finds the humor in it and says ODSTs are odds, which has you cracking up because everyone else finds Spartans odd.

I have a personal headcanon that Spartans like getting their helmets kissed by their partners, I’ll get into this later in another post but Naomi adores this. As long as it’s not in front of someone in command or makes a situation awkward, please kiss her helmet before she leaves on whatever missions she’s next sent on. It’s like her personal good luck charm.

There is a post somewhere that Spartans slam their helmets together affectionately, when Naomi did this, she left you with a concussion for a solid few weeks and shocked you by saying she even held back. Naomi is so scared to do this again in fear of sending you to the medical wing for the second time, you end up convincing her a small tap against your helmet is fine. It’s kinda of like pressing your foreheads together with helmets.

When Serin starts telling the rest of Kilo-Five about the Spartan program, Naomi feels betrayed and it really does bother her. She doesn't tell you outright but you know she's upset about something because she's quieter than normal and lets out a huff when you try to tease her. That's normally her tell that something is wrong.

Naomi will admit to it later when you casually ask her if that's what's been bothering her having heard from Mal what Serin had told them. She gives a short nod, remaining silent until you ask if she wants to talk about it.

Depending on how far along the relationship is she has either told you about the Spartan program or you know bits and pieces about it. Naomi wouldn't enter into a relationship without trusting the person significantly.

Regardless of how long you’ve been together, Naomi will still have her awkward moments, please don’t call her out. Just quietly see if she wants your help with explaining something or if there was a disconnect somewhere, girl’s got nothing to compare her relationship to and appreciates the communication.

If there is something she doesn’t get with Kilo-Five whether it’s a joke or something they’re talking about, she shifts her gaze towards you and you can see the questions in her eyes. This being said, if she finds herself in a situation she feels awkward in, please save her, Naomi will flick her eyes towards you for help.

I think if she has a partner before meeting Kilo-Five, it would’ve taken her longer to connect with everyone. Naomi is content making conversation with you and you alone, she’s also okay with you being the social one in the relationship and her just being there. It’s not to say she would be completely silent, Naomi is curious by nature and will speak up every now and again when you are in a conversation with any of Kilo. BB is the one who gets the most conversation out of her simply because he targets her when you aren’t around.

I also think that you would lowkey beef with Mal, Vaz, and Devereaux at the very beginning simply because of the drama between the ODSTs and Spartans, especially if you were an ODST yourself because you’ve gotten first-hand experience of the Spartans getting hated on by units you’ve served in.

Naomi appreciates your overprotectiveness and loves you more for it, and she knows someone is there to care for her now but she’ll be the one that calls you out. She actually tells you, she thinks you’re being slightly unreasonable about the way you’ve been acting considering that they haven’t said anything about her other than she’s quiet, awkward, and antisocial.

Of course, you two talk about it after she says this in fear of overstepping her boundaries because Naomi is awful at reinforcing those due to her Spartan attitude of ‘dealing with it’. She honestly has to think about it and says she doesn’t mind you looking out for her but your own experiences are getting in the way of your thinking and all ODSTs aren’t like that and use you as an example.

She's the type of partner who will take anything you hand her. Be it food or objects, Serin has watched you walk onto the deck with a bag of candy, Naomi didn't even blink or look away from the console before holding out her palm for whatever you were giving her and plopping the candy in her mouth without a second glance.

As much as Devereaux wants this to work, if anyone else pulls this with Naomi, she just blank stares at them until they explain what they’re trying to hand her.

Whether you’re another Spartan or an ODST or Marine, Naomi has full rights to mess around with your armor and weapons. She does it mainly to quell her own anxieties that something might go wrong on the field plus she likes marking ‘S-010’ on anything that’s yours. The second reason she does this is 'cause she observes her partner and knows their preferences when it comes to weapons and she tries to customize everything for you.

Someone once commented about the numbers marked on your sniper rifle and you were just confused before realizing what Naomi did. When you tell her about the occurrence, her eyes shine with satisfaction, like she had planned for this.

The Huragoks aren’t allowed to touch your stuff, Naomi will get offended because that is her job, she had a straight stare-down with Adj that promised violence, the Huragok seriously had to slowly put down your weapons before Naomi let out a huff and went on with her business.

Anyhow, I started to feel somewhat guilty. Of the Kilo Five team roster, Devereaux and Phillips are canonically confirmed to have started dating. Vaz and Naomi are obvious. So doesn't it seem like a little bit of overkill to add Serin and Mal to the mix? That makes the entire team romantically involved with one another.

But then another thought struck me. Kilo Five was hand-picked by Margaret Parangosky, CINCONI and veritable adopted mother of Osman, herself. They weren't chosen from ONIs existing black-ops teams, they weren't chosen from a pool of volunteers, they were plucked out of their various assignments and professions, told "Your new job is to destabilize the Sangheili culture," and offered no opportunities to refuse. (Because I mean c'mon... who is going to look Margaret Parangosky in the eye and tell her 'no'?)

So, if Parangosky chose this specific team, it must have been because she knew that they would work well together. She must have known that they would work so well together that feelings would inevitably get tossed into the mix. She must have known.

Which leads me to this conclusion: Everyone's favorite combination Boogeyman-Murder Grandma, Maggie Parangosky, deliberately chose this team because she was playing matchmaker for her favorite daughter, Serin.

And that is the official party line to which I shall be sticking.

As far as the Halo novels go... you may have to decide for yourself. Karen Travis is excellent in both planning and executing a story. But she takes a weird amount of pride in NOT doing full research for the universes she's writing in.

There will be parts where you're like... "...what?? Thats not how anything works!". The Kilo 5 trilogy in particular is an attempt to be morally complex by exploring the CIA-like actions of one unsc team (the titular kilo 5) and the moral development of Jul M'dama.

Jul's story is honestly the best part but they give up on it after the first book and it slowly starts to feel like the book is kind of glorifying the actions of the Kilo 5 team.

Karen also can't seem to resist injecting her opinion EVERYWHERE in the book. There are parts that weirdly feel like a direct comment from the author rather than an omnipotent objective 3rd person narrator which tends to take me out of it.

There's also some weird ableism regarding a particular Spartans disability that I just kind of hate. Its that weird trope where after a personal development they are magically cured and I think that's dumb.

Part I

I know for a fact that Phillips and you bond over the truth that Naomi is a beautiful goddess, after that he’s your bestie. Naomi is just happy you found a friend and doesn’t understand how it happened.

At the end of the day, Naomi has to stop you from bullying the ODSTs with BB, she doesn’t know why but you hit it off with BB right away and she’s worried about it, especially when she has to put BB in her armor because the AI calls her out.

“Well, well, [Y/n], it appears darling Naomi doesn’t appreciate our dynamic duo, how rude.”

In my head, for some reason, Naomi is fascinated by physical touch and this only started when she began dating her partner. It’s the little things she loves about it, you resting your arm in the crook of her elbow, intertwining your pinkie with hers, comparing your hand sizes against one another and she likes resting her head on your stomach or lap.

She’s also a sucker for getting her hair played with, it's such a simple form of affection that means the world to her. Naomi grows her hair out a little longer so you can style it, the current go-to is braids or a ponytail because they fit nicely in her helmet.

She actually gets flustered when you call her any form of Valkyrie but loves it when you call her, ‘your Valkyrie’. She didn’t really care for the nickname until you gave it a personal spin and a smile always tugs at the corner of her lips when you walk into a room, spot her, and say, "Well, well, if it isn't my Valkyrie."

If Mal hadn't witnessed this happen, he would’ve never believed Spartans could get flustered, cause Naomi had the faint pink on her cheeks and her mood visibly brightened. This man seriously stopped drinking his coffee and stared at you with his mouth hung open. 

BB is the snitch that tells the whole ship you two are in a relationship and he didn’t have to do you guys dirty the way he did.

Naomi is slightly upset about it and almost beefs with BB, her relationship has always been her own and yours. It’s the one choice she made herself and it’s sacred to her, especially if this happens early on before she’s had time to bond with everyone, Naomi feels so awkward and is even more upset for you. She’s seen Marines and ODSTs butting into their teams relationships and she doesn’t want that.

Before BB outed the relationship, Naomi likes to poke fun at the time you first heard Mal call her sweetheart and you had to do a double take like you hadn’t heard that right then gave Naomi a look that meant you could possibly throw hands. She had to talk you down before you did anything dumb. 

Naomi still ended up asking Vaz to read over her file, only because she thought you might view her in different light if you found out more than she had already explained to you. When Serin first told her about the Halsey journal, Naomi felt devastated and a sense of loss, she hid away in the Mjolnir compartment and you found her tinkering away at her armor, she didn’t even look in your direction, which was a sign something was wrong.

You sit silently with her until she’s ready to talk or it stops bothering her, which in this case she wants to discuss once she’s gathered her thoughts together and can properly explain to you what Serin told her. Naomi wants your opinion but it will be hard for her to accept if you talk bad about Halsey, so even if you have negative feelings about the Doctor, you need to understand her side and not let it get the best of you. If you don’t have any hard feelings about Halsey, Naomi’s more inclined to listen even if you say, “Yeah, hun um, that sounds kinda messed.”

This does start some fights between you, Vaz, and Mal. They don’t understand why you can be so calm about this whole Halsey thing and you think they are acting like children that need to keep their noses out of things.

Being lowkey upset with Serin for starting this whole spiral of a mess and some unkind truth are said on your part. Naomi had to step in before you crossed a line she knew you were running for. The captain and you did make up a few days later much to everyone’s surprise, Naomi assumed you were going to be salty for longer.

Mal thought Spartans were already terrifying on the field but nothing prepared him for Naomi’s reaction to when you got hurt during a mission. If what he saw was the equivalent of a Spartan losing their shit, he wonders why the Covenant never called them Devils. Serin had to order him and Vaz to bring you back to the ship and leave Naomi to calm down on the lines of them getting caught in the crossfire [if that’s what the captain could call ‘crossfire’ was Mal’s thought], the only thing he could tell Phillips was ‘there is a lot of blood.’

This point is further driven home when Naomi returns covered in a mix of fluids on her armor and chunks of stuff that Phillips doesn’t want to speculate on. He’s left in awe when the first thing she does is check on her partner and the tone of worry in her voice not matching up with the activities left on her.

Naomi is a huge nerd, she loves talking to her partner about her armor and all the upgrades she’s making or thinking about making. Ask her questions about what she’s doing cause it makes her so happy, if you manage to name certain parts or follow her train of thought, she’s in love all over again and you can tell when her eyes are seriously bright, they look like they have stars in them.

Talking about stars, one of your first dates was star gazing, and it continues to be so on anniversaries and other special occasions. Naomi is an astronomy nerd, so this is a perfect way to spend time together especially if you pack a picnic and spend hours outside with her. If you bring up the idea of getting matching star tattoos, she’s sold and she wants to do it right away.

When Kilo-Five finds out Naomi has a tattoo, they are surprised, especially Serin, she never would have imagined a Spartan getting inked.

If you aren’t on the ship, they are extra shook when she tells them it’s a matching constellation with her partner. The whole ship gets quiet and it takes them a few minutes to respond, Serin wants BB to give her a full report on this individual.

Naomi finds this amusing and calls you that night, if you aren’t on a mission or busy, to tell you. This is also how BB tracks you down to pull your records, he honestly listens to the entire conversation because he’s a snoop and marvelous at the tone of Naomi’s voice when she talks to you. It’s more soft and there is a hint of emotion in her tone that he can’t distinguish.

I’m curious, do you ship Naomi exclusively with a Reader/OC/[Y/N] or do you have any ships with her and the other members of Kilo-5 or any other Spartans ? (I know I’m a big Vaz/Naomi head but I won’t be upset if you don’t ship that too lmfao I’m just curious about any other ships you might have for her!)

Take care!

-Mako xXx

Hi Mako!!! It’s a delight seeing to see you in my inbox <3

That’s a great question, um, I don’t know to be honest. I’m in the middle of Thursday War as of right now, so I haven’t finished it or gotten to the point of having ships within it yet. I’m not exclusively self-interest stuff with her and I’m open to ships within the fandom, however it’s easier for me to write with self-insert because of my thought process, so it’s why I mainly write reader-insert stuff. I wish I had a better answer for you 😭