John-117

Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, also known simply by his rank as the "Master Chief" or (as is common in military culture) simply as the "Chief", is a Spartan-II supersoldier of the UNSC Navy's Special Weapons division from the Piala Universe. He served as one of the most important figures of the Human-Covenant War. After over thirty years of active duty, he is one of the most decorated war veterans of the United Nations Space Command.

When the First Multiverse War came to his universe, John served in the Alliance Joint Military when the war finally ended, became one of the fifth well-known war heroes of the Multiverse wars, alongside with the others. With nearly thirty years of active duty he has become one of the most decorated war veterans in the.

Biography

Training

John was born in 2511 Piala (1370 NE) and lived with his mother and father in Elysium city on the colony world of Eridanus II. He attended the Elysium City Primary Education Facility Number 119. As a child, John had brown hair, freckles, and a small gap between his front teeth. In a dream during cryo-sleep aboard the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, John recalled that his mother "kind of smelled like soap," and that she had "large eyes, a straight nose and full lips."

The would-be UNSC Marine Lieutenant Parisa was a childhood friend of John's who John once saved from drowning at Lake Gusev; John thereafter promised to marry and protect her. Parisa's father shot a photo of the two soon after that Parisa kept as a memento long after she thought John had died. John was also friends with Ellie Bloom and Katrina during his childhood. Some nights, John would lay in grass fields with the girls and the three of them would look up at the stars together.

Dr. Catherine Halsey identified John as an ideal physical and mental candidate for the 150-strong preliminary pool of the SPARTAN-II Program when he was six: he stood a head taller than the majority of his schoolmates, had greater physical proportions, and possessed greater strength, superior reflexes, and an aggressive drive for success. When Dr. Halsey and Lieutenant Jacob Keyes visited Eridanus II in 2517 to study him, they were impressed with his intellect and luck. In a final test of his viability as a candidate, he was asked to determine which side an old coin would land on. He watched the coin as it flew in the air and caught it before it could land, correctly stating which side was face-up and which was the side of the eagle. John was the first candidate Dr. Halsey and Lieutenant Keyes studied. Later that same year, John and 74 other six-year-old children were "conscripted": they were covertly kidnapped from their homes and replaced with flash clones, all of which would later die of neurological problems stemming from the imperfect cloning process, covering up the kidnappings. John, along with the other candidates, was taken to the planet of Reach. Dr. Halsey informed them of the SPARTAN-II Program and how they would be "the protectors of Earth and all her colonies." The next morning John discovered his service tag, stitched into his training uniform, and his new name: John-117.

John began a new life. He trained with other Spartans under Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez. For eight years he learned history, military strategy, weapons and received physical fitness training. Early on, he bonded with Kelly and Sam, who would become two of the few close friends that he would ever have.

John quickly proved himself to be one of the program's top candidates during his training. Both Dr. Halsey and Chief Mendez identified him as one of four emerging leaders within the Spartan-II group, along with Kurt-051, Jerome-092, and Frederic-104. Dr. Halsey most strongly expressed her belief in John by stating that he had the skills and natural ability to lead the entire Spartan-II group. However, Mendez disagreed and instead believed that Kurt would fulfill that role.

When the Spartans were eight years old, they were sent on a training mission in which they were dropped over a forest located deep in one of Reach's snow-filled mountain ranges and expected to get safely to their extraction Pelican dropship. The children also had instructions to leave the last child arriving behind lest they receive painful punishment; John-117 knew, however, that he could not do that. After telling the Spartans where to meet, the Spartans looked to him as their leader, a role he was initially surprised to receive but eventually accepted. When the group came upon the Pelican, it was guarded by armed men. Those men were actually UNSC Marines but were not in uniform; the Spartans therefore mistook them for a hostile threat. John showed early acumen in critical thinking and tactics, not wishing to take for granted that guards would be friendly toward them. He came up with a plan to take the men down, capture the dropship, and ensure the safe extraction of every team member, as he made sure he was the last person aboard. To do so he ended up hijacking the dropship with the help of Déjà and beat down the men with stones, causing severe injuries among the Marines. Chief Mendez was visibly displeased by John's having attacked his Marines and leaving no-one behind, but both Mendez and Halsey recognized John's initiative and promoted him to squad leader. Thereafter, despite other Spartans' rising in rank and at least a couple rising to lead their own teams, he remained the de facto leader of the Spartans as a whole.

John's leadership skills were correctly observed: the result from their mission clearly solidified his role as the overall leader of the Spartan-IIs. He also became the established leader of the Spartan-II Blue Team.

At the age of fourteen, John underwent the dangerous SPARTAN-II augmentation procedures. These procedures killed 30 and physically disabled 12 of the Spartan trainees. John was one of 33 Spartans who survived the process unscathed, while the rest who could still operate were moved to positions in the Office of Naval Intelligence. At only fourteen years old, John was said to have the body of an eighteen-year old Olympic athlete; the augmentation process hastened their reflexes, increased their strength, enhanced their eyesight, and rendered their bones nearly unbreakable. After their augmentation procedures, John and the other Spartans were transferred to the Atlas in order to recover in a microgravity environment. Four ODSTs confronted John during his first visit to the Atlas' gym; their sergeant then ordered the five of them into the boxing ring. In the ensuing fight, John killed two of the ODSTs, and left the others severely injured, an incident which quickly blossomed into major resentment for the whole SPARTAN Program throughout the Marine Corps. According to Major Antonio Silva, "people who invented John" orchestrated this incident in order to test the Spartans' augmentations.

Early military career

In 2525 (1394 NE), John was given his first mission against insurrectionists in the asteroid belt of his home Eridanus system. He was shot in the side without heavy injury while leading his squad to capture United Rebel Front leader Colonel Robert Watts. The mission casualty list was 11 dead rebel soldiers and an unknown number of rebel civilians. John received a Purple Heart.

Three months thereafter, John and his Spartans were briefed of the First Battle of Harvest that had taken place on Harvest shortly after first contact with the Covenant. The UNSC Commonwealth, under the command of Captain Wallace, soon brought the Spartans and Dr. Halsey to the Damascus Testing Facility at Chi Ceti, where they received the Mjolnir Mark IV Powered Assault Armor. When a Covenant vessel, the Unrelenting, attacked the Commonwealth, John and the Spartan-IIs engaged in their first battle with the Covenant. The Spartans used thrusters to launch from a Pelican dropship. Each Spartan carried a HAVOK Nuke to destroy the Covenant ship. Only John, Sam, and Kelly reached the ship.

They entered it through a hull breach from a MAC round from the Commonwealth and succeeded in completing the mission and destroyed the Covenant ship, but a breach in Sam's armor from Covenant retaliation fire from Covenant forces prevented him from leaving the enemy vessel; he made the most of his misfortune by ensuring that the ship exploded. Sam's death profoundly affected John: it proved to him that the Covenant could be defeated, but only at the cost of many lives.

In early 2526 (1395 NE), John, now a Petty Officer First Class, and eleven other Spartans were employed to strike back against the Covenant as part of Operation: SILENT STORM. During this time, John met Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson who acted as a mentor and friend to the young Spartan while John often clashed with Colonel Marmon Crowther who dismissed John due to his age. Following the Battle of Seoba, John gained Crowther's respect and the two worked closely together to attack the Covenant base at Zhoist and against Insurrectionist elements within their task force. Shortly before his death, Crowther made the unprecedented move of promoting John from Petty Officer First Class to Master Chief Petty Officer, an unheard of three-rank bump.

Months later, a Covenant attack on the Corbulo Academy of Military Sciencesparked the Battle of Circinius IV. The UNSC had suspected the safety of the planet for several days and garrisoned it with Marines and ODSTs. The Academy was destroyed almost as soon as the attack began, but Blue Team was able to deploy to the surface undetected mere hours later. John fought to the Academy ruins and protected the cadets by fighting off Covenant forces while waiting for evacuation by Kelly-087 and Frederic-104. He first met Thomas Lasky, who was a young cadet at the time.

In 2544 (1413 NE), John, along with Fred-104, Kelly-087, Solomon-069 and Arthur-079, participated in the Raid on the Third Fleet of Glorious Consequence to rescue Dr. Catherine Halsey. The UNSC deployed a prowler stealth corvette to transport Spartans who would infiltrate the Covenant fleet as it was forced to exit slipspace in order to traverse a stellar magnetic field. The Spartans were given ten minutes to complete the rescue mission or be caught in the annihilation of Third Fleet of Glorious Consequence, likely only possible through the use of a prototype NOVA Bomb. The team infiltrated the fleet with OF92/EVA "Booster Frame" fighters, which were designed for ship boarding actions. Solomon detected Catherine Halsey's beacon from a Covenant CCS-class Battlecruiser that had its hangar bay shields down. John-117 intuitively voiced his concern about this irregularity but chose to disregard it. Solomon infiltrated the vessel with cover from Kelly and quickly discovered the source: a Covenant antimatter charge.

Kelly escaped the immediate detonation due to John's warning, but Solomon was vaporized. A further scan resulted in positive readings from all enemy vessels from which John deduced that Catherine was held on the Covenant flagship at the heart of the fleet. The Spartans then successfully fought their way through the Covenant's Seraph formations, and sheared through the massive vessel's hangar bay energy shields with a large barrage of explosive ordnance, gauss cannon rounds, and their own Booster Frame's as projectiles to infiltrate the Covenant CAS-class assault carrier, the Resplendent Fervor. Upon entry John, Kelly and Fred protected themselves with a Bubble Shield. The clearing smoke revealed surrounding Covenant forces in the hangar bay.

With three minutes remaining, John and the Spartans sprinted through the collapsed Bubble Shield and down the corridors of the vessel, effortlessly slaughtering Covenant infantry as Frederic-104 breached doorways with a Spartan Laser. Ambushed by Sangheili Energy Swordsmen, Frederic locked the nearest doorway behind John and Kelly to engage them with combat knives alone. The Supreme Commander Luro 'Taralumee initiated a scuttle of the rear of the ship to escape the Spartans. Forced to leap from the section disconnected from the Assault Carrier, Kelly grabbed John's hand and threw him forward using inertia to increase his speed toward the escaping ship but thus threw herself back into space: John reached the ship.

After rescuing Catherine Halsey from her cryonic stasis pod, John encountered Sangheili Major Thel 'Lodamee, who deflected John's barrage of assault rifle fire and challenged him to an Energy Sword duel. Thel disarmed John and kicked him to the ground, but he was forced out of the duel when his Fleetmaster separated the lower section of the Assault Carrier to kill the Spartan, thereby pulling Thel back into the upper section; both combatants survived unscathed. John and Halsey descended into the ship and commandeered a weaponless Covenant shuttle craft. A Seraph formation attacked them on exit, but a Seraph commandeered by Fred and Kelly annihilated the enemy fighters and recovered John and Halsey along with fire support from their prowler. John's teammate's deaths deeply saddened him: the operation saw more Spartan-IIs killed in action than any before the Fall of Reach. John vowed to become stronger and never allow such a loss to happen again.

John served in over 200 campaigns against the Covenant Empire over the next 27 years. These included the Harvest Campaign, the Battle of Jericho VII, where he and a handful of Spartans destroyed a force of over a thousand Unggoy, and the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV, in which John and his Blue Team detonated a HAVOK Nuclear Warhead to clear Covenant forces from the city of Côte d'Azur. By summer of 2552 (1421 NE), he had received every medal awarded by the UNSC except the Prisoner of War Medallion: Covenant forces usually take no prisoners, and John would not allow himself or any other Spartan-II to be captured by the enemy.

Fall of Reach

The Fall of Reach, though brief, was of great significance for John. Here, he received the Mjolnir Mark V Powered Assault Armor, which improved his strength and reaction time more effectively than his older Mark IV suit. He was also introduced to and partnered with the AI Cortana, who would become a close friend and ally to him. In the first test of their partnership, the two were put through a practically suicidal test in an attempt by Colonel Ackerson to get rid of John. John refused to cheat the test and was determined to win it by Ackerson's rules. Despite nearly being killed, Cortana and John's teamwork had them pass the test in an early show of the incredible partnership the two would come to develop. After Reach came under attack by a massive Covenant armada, the majority of the Spartans, led by Fred S-104, went to the planet's surface to protect the Orbital Defense Generators which powered the planet's twenty Orbital Defense Platforms. John, with Linda and James-005, were sent to Reach Station Gamma to destroy an unsecured NAV database on board the UNSC Circumference. If the Covenant obtained the database, they would discover the location of every human world, including Earth; the location of Earth by then was still a closely guarded secret. The NAV database was destroyed, but Linda and James were ambushed by Covenant Sangheili; James was lost in space, and Linda was critically wounded. John saved four other Marines on the station, including Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson. The team returned to the UNSC Pillar of Autumn and was placed into cryo-sleep as the ship landed on, then fled Reach and, following the Cole Protocol, jumped into Slipspace with coordinates deduced by Cortana from constellation data retrieved earlier, in hopes of leading the Covenant away from Earth.

Defense of Piala Earth

Once the ship had arrived safely at Installation 04, the crew realized that the UNSC Halcyon-class light cruiser UNSC Pillar of Autumn had been followed through Slipspace by around a dozen Covenant ships, who ultimately engaged the Autumn and sent several boarding parties to board the ship. Captain Jacob Keyes ordered John to be woken from cryosleep, and tasked him with ensuring the escape of Cortana (who was the ship's AI), while he crash-landed the Pillar of Autumn on the unidentified ring.

John escaped the Pillar of Autumn on a life pod, and rallied Marines to fight against Covenant forces stationed on the ring. Cortana found out that Captain Keyes had been captured and was held prisoner on the CCS-class Truth and Reconciliation, by way of hacking into the Covenant battlenet. John joined the strike team that was sent to rescue Captain Keyes, where he learned that "Halo" was a super weapon. The Captain gave John new orders, to locate the map room that pinpointed the location of Halo's Control Center. When John was finished, he was dropped off in the first of three snowy chasms leading towards the Control Room. During the long trek, he encountered Fire Team Zulu and they assisted him in securing the first and second chasms.

Initially, fighting on Halo was between UNSC and Covenant forces, but after Covenant forces had unwittingly released an ancient parasite, the majority of both forces were infected, and the fighting shifted to combating the new enemy.

Flood Infestation

John-117 was sent out by Installation 04's Monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, to retrieve the Index, an activation device for the Halo ring that John-117 is led to believe would destroy all Flood forms within a large radius. Upon John's return to Halo's Control Room, Cortana revealed that Halo's true purpose is to destroy all sentient life forms in the galaxy to starve the Flood, not to kill the Flood themselves. John was then forced to disrupt Halo's firing system by disabling Halo's Phase Pulse Generator in order to delay the Monitor's plan.

John soon joined the three-sided combat among the Covenant, the Flood and the Forerunners' Sentinels. Soon after, he tried to rescue Captain Keyes, but was too late. Captain Keyes had been transformed into a Proto-Gravemind Flood form. After infiltrating the Truth and Reconciliation, John managed to retrieve the Captain's neural implants, which he used to activate the Pillar of Autumn's self-destruct sequence. He then proceeded to the hangar of the ship and stole a Banshee. John and Cortana barely made it back to the Autumn with the Banshee only to discover that ship was crawling with both Flood and Covenant alike. After the self-destruct sequence was aborted by 343 Guilty Spark, he proceeded to manually overload the fusion reactors, which would subsequently destroy both the Pillar of Autumn and Installation 04.

After successfully destroying the fusion reactors on the Pillar of Autumn, John-117 used a Warthog to reach the extraction point where Pelican Echo 419 would pick him up. John-117 reached the extraction point, only to witness the Pelican crashing into the Autumn's hull after being shot down by a pair of Banshees. John quickly diverted his escape route towards the ship's hangar bay, which housed a Longsword fighter. Only a handful of UNSC forces survived, including Lieutenant Elias Haverson, Corporal Locklear, Warrant Officer Sheila Polaski, then-Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, Private First Class Chips Dubbo, and then-Staff Sergeant Marcus Stacker.

Personality

“I guess some of your luck has rubbed off on me.” — Dr. Halsey

“We make our own luck, but I'll always be there when you need me.” — John-117

The personality of John is explored much more deeply in the books than the games. This is in order that players can more easily project their own personalities onto John-117.

As a child, John strove to win at any situation, at all costs. This seems to have been a part of his character even prior to his conscription to the SPARTAN Program, as he pushed himself to win at any game he played, including chess, gravball or King of the Hill. As his career progressed, he transformed his desire to achieve personal victory to a desire to achieve victory for his squad and, by extension, humanity as a whole. John is tenacious to complete any mission at hand, and often disregards his personal safety in order to win. Indeed, he has often emerged victorious from situations many would consider impossible. Though even a Spartan is not devoid of fear, John simply acknowledges it and puts it aside, while never openly showing it. He is not shy about expressing caution, however, as shown in his first encounter with the Gravemind. John is generally stoic and taciturn, but not devoid of a sense of humor. He often makes dry remarks about the situation at hand, but this seems to be more frequent when interacting with Cortana than anyone else, such as other Spartans.

John is also known as a man of his word and will strive to keep any promise he makes, even at great personal risk. As he was forced to leave Cortana behind on High Charity, John promised to come back for her after dealing with the Prophet of Truth. Cortana chided him not to make a promise when he knew he couldn't keep it. However, despite incredible odds, John did keep his promise, as he fought his way through the Flood into High Charity to retrieve her. Upon finding her, Cortana was in a weak and damaged state. Nearing rampancy, John-117 told her, "You know me. When I make a promise…" to which Cortana replied "You keep it." This encouragement gave her the strength to compose herself after enduring the mental tortures of the Gravemind. John holds great personal respect for his trainer and mentor Chief Petty Officer Mendez, as well as Dr. Halsey, who he considers a mother-like figure. He appears to deny Halsey's claims about his extraordinary luck at several points in the Halo Legends episode "The Package."

In a strange twist of fate, one of John's closes friendships was with the construct Cortana, an artificial intelligence "born" from the mind of Dr. Halsey herself. Cortana was initially assigned to him for his mission to capture the Covenant Prophets. Despite some initial hesitation towards working with an AI out of fear of conflicting directives, John and Cortana quickly formed a formidable team and John realized quickly that Cortana would be a great help instead of a liability. The two's relationship evolved from a partnership to a close friendship over the course of Halo: Combat Evolved, due both the duration of the mission and the life-or-death situations they struggled through. During their adventures, John showed absolute trust in Cortana, believing in her even when Lord Hood was unsure of her reliability, being willing to trust her enough to risk Earth on her word that she had a way to stop the Flood. The two also had similar personalities: they both had a propensity to blow things up, with John commenting he wasn't sure which one of them was better at it. The pair also tended to enjoy executing high risk plans. After Cortana explained to John his strategy to use a disabled bomb to blow up a Covenant Carrier was crazy, he offered to leave her behind. Instead, she quipped, "Unfortunately for us both, I like crazy." When Cortana begins to go rampant, John becomes desperate to find a way to save her. Her absolute loyalty to him is shown when she restrains the Ur-Didact to save him, telling The Didact when he asks why she's helping humanity "I'm not doing this for mankind," showing she's helping out of loyalty to John. Cortana sacrifices herself to save John and he is clearly devastated by her "death," though he gets to say a goodbye to her in which she can finally touch him, something she has always wanted to do.

Although John has difficulty understanding the 'undisciplined' lifestyle of civilians, he is fiercely protective of their lives and humanity as a whole. The mass slaughter of civilians at the hands of the Covenant was enough to drive even the stoic John into a cold rage. After the massacre of Draco III, John and his Spartans remained on-site until every Covenant soldier responsible for the atrocity was dead.

John is known to show an exceptional care for soldiers under his command, while at times viewing them as a liability rather than an asset (more out of fear and concern for them than for himself). By 2552 Piala, after his experiences on Halo, John acknowledged to Corporal Locklear that, armor and enhancements aside, there was little difference between a 'normal' soldier and himself. This is not to say that John was previously without compassion. During the Battle of Installation 04, when searching for the survivors of the Pillar of Autumn, a Marine named Fitzgerald was wounded by an Unggoy with a Needler. John-117 retrieved a first aid kit and expertly treated the wound, taking time to ask the Marine if he was alright. By 2552, most members of the UNSC held "John-117" in complete awe, even among his Spartan comrades. His exploits and prowess quickly made him a legend in his own time, and his mere presence on a battlefield was enough to inspire the hope of victory regardless of the odds.

Despite his life of military indoctrination, John is not entirely submissive to command. On multiple occasions John has directly disobeyed protocol, and even superior officers that contradicted what he personally thought was right. On the UNSC Gettysburg during Operation: FIRST STRIKE, Dr. Halsey decided to test his morality by giving him two data chips, one containing information regarding Avery Johnson's immunity to the Flood, which would surely lead to his dissection by ONI with little chance of replicating his immunity. The other was missing this data, and John originally planned to sacrifice his friend in accordance with directive, but realized that one man can make a difference, and crushed the complete record into dust. Later in 2557 when John and Cortana made their way aboard the UNSC Infinity, after Cortana's rampant outburst surprising everyone in the room, Captain Andrew Del Rio acted on his resentment of John-117 for questioning his orders to flee Requiem and subsequently ordered that Cortana be destroyed. Before Commander Lasky could retrieve her, without hesitation John did so first, displaying his unflinching loyalty to Cortana, and that not even the UNSC would stop him from doing everything in his power to save her. Del Rio personally ordered John to hand her over, but he refused, responding, "no, sir." After the infuriated Captain ordered his arrest, Commander Sarah Palmer refused to act, and John-117 promptly left Infinity in a Pelican Gunship to stay behind on Requiem to stop the Didact.

Relationships

Friends

• Cortana
• Terrance Hood
• Thel 'Vadam
• Anakin Skywalker (Filo)
• Rex Tano
• Cody Kenobi
• Catherine Elizabeth Halsey
• Alexi Scott
• Bad Batch

Enemies

• Darth Vader

Gallery

Master Chief's battle against Darth Vader