Fanfic / The Spartan Effect

The Spartan Effect is a Halo/Mass Effect crossover fanfic by Gatekeeper333. Set after the events of the original Halo trilogy and picking up in the middle of Mass Effect 2, it covers the journey of the Master Chief and Cortana, as they are recruited by Commander James Shepard into the fight against the Collectors.

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This work provides examples of:

• Accidental Pervert: On one side, Miranda walks in on the Master Chief stark-naked, admittedly, while he's in the middle of a routine medical exam by Chakwas. On the other side, the Master Chief grabs Kasumi by her breasts when she surprises him while cloaked and he immediately lashes out on instinct. In both cases, the offending party immediately back off once the realization hits them.
• Ace Pilot: Joker, as per usual, exemplified particularly during the assault against the Collector Base, where he deals with the pursuing Oculi and Collector Ship with as much ease as he does in the game.
• Action Girl: All female members of Shepard's ground team, with Miranda and Samara as notable standouts. Miranda spars with the Chief on a regular basis and holds her own for the most part, eventually becoming the Master Chief's most trusted ally on the battlefield, whilst Samara goes toe-to-toe with an avatar of the Gravemind and wins.
  • Cortana briefly takes this role during Legion's Loyalty Mission when she hijacks a Geth platform to use as her own body.
• A Day in the Limelight: The loyalty missions, in which the squadmate in question gets center stage, with Shepard and/or the Chief moving to a supporting role. Characters whose loyalty missions were already completed pre-story instead get this during other "main" missions and the Flood arc.
• Adaptational Badass: Somewhat. The entirety of the Normandy crew performs feats that their in-game counterparts cannot do, due to the limitations of the game engine. Namely, Grunt takes on a Praetorian in hand-to-hand combat and wins, Samara's biotics are demonstrated to be much more powerful than the other biotics, and Shepard seems to be a mix of Engineer and Sentinel, given that he uses combat drones and tech armor at various points in the story.
  • On the villainous side, the Collectors are far more of a threat, with their weapons being able to give even the Chief pause. Harbinger's Collector form, as compared to being an annoying Demonic Spider in the game, is much stronger, requiring the likes of the Spartan Laser or Grunt tackling him to be swiftly put down, and while they initially start out as the cannon fodder they are in-game, the Husks are swiftly upgraded by Harbinger into animalistic abominations once he figures out exactly how dangerous the Chief is.
• Admiring the Abomination: Mordin, Legion and Kasumi all admire the Flood in some way or another, though to different degrees. Mordin finds the Flood to be a fascinating scientific curiosity, Legion opines that the Flood are basically an organic counterpart to the Geth, and Kasumi thinks the infection forms look cute, eventually commissioning a plush doll of one.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Zig-Zagged, Cortana falls victim to rampancy and adopts her Halo 4-era persona for the majority of the first act, then pulls herself together and becomes her usual benvolent self. Legion and EDI are as benevolent as they are in-game, with EDI being of particular note when she fights off the Gravemind (with a bit of help from Tali), mainly out of a desire to protect the crew of the Normandy and when Legion aids the Normandy crew in recovering Cortana from her fractured data chip.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The mission to take on the Collectors, as well as several other loyalty missions, get put on hold with the revelation that the Flood had stowed away aboard the Dawn and are now loose in the galaxy. Cortana even outright states that the Reapers are no longer the worst of the galaxy's problems with the Flood around, and Shepard muses that the Flood represent a Reaper-level threat, going so far as to note that the mission to Sanctum is a "practice Suicide Mission".
• And I Must Scream: We get to see several perspectives of Flood forms as their former hosts memories are hollowed out and removed.
• Arc Number: The number 343 shows up in internal and external dialogue more than a few times throughout the story.
• Armor Is Useless: Zig-Zagged. Everyone seems to be wearing the outfits they do in canon, and come out of messy firefights none-the-worse for wear, and Chief's armor saves him on many occasions. Conversely, besides the fact that mooks in full-armor get slaughtered by the truckload, an entire passage is dedicated to one armored Red Shirt, who is unceremoniously killed mainly because getting hit by a falling starship is something armor won't save you from.
  • Averted during the Sanctum Arc. Everyone who went down onto the surface was ordered to wear armor to prevent the Flood from easily infecting anyone. They also had the added bonus of electroshock defenses to prevent infection forms from swarming them.
• Attack Drone: Shepard's specialty, keeping in line with the traditional Engineer powers in the game. His is specialized as an Explosive Drone, and eventually gets upgraded after Thane's loyalty mission to project an image of himself, complete with cheesy one-liners.
• A-Team Firing: Cortana invokes this during Legion's loyalty mission, to her absolute frustration. She's baffled at how she can gracefully fly a UNSC warship through space and nail opposing warships at extreme range, but upon gaining control of a body, she empties her rifle's clip into a geth trooper at point blank range and somehow misses half her shots.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In chapter 44, the Master Chief opines that he'd prefer getting jumped by a squad of assassins over having to go to a formal restaurant with Miranda whilst unarmed and unarmored. They get jumped by a death squad led by Kai Leng in the very next chapter.
• Benevolent A.I.: Cortana, EDI and Legion, though it takes Cortana overcoming rampancy for her to properly settle into the role.
• Big Bad: The Reapers, though the Collectors are their most visible puppets. They are quickly superceded by The Flood, who put the entire quest to stop the Reapers on hold in order to defeat them.
• Big Damn Heroes: Everywhere. Notable examples include Cortana saving the team aboard the Collector Cruiser, Miranda metaphorically punching the Gravemind in the face with a shot from the M-920 Cain, and Chief saving Shepard during the final battle with the Collectors.
• Blood Knight: Grunt is the most prominent example of this. After Shepard recruits the Chief, Grunt immediately picks a fight with him, which leads to Chief curbstomping him, wrecking Gardner's kitchen in the process, and Shepard forcing them to stay away from each other until Grunt can get his behavior under control. This also has the side-effect of kicking off Grunt's loyalty mission, which leads to another instance in which Grunt takes on a Thresher Maw and Gatatog Uvenk in quick succession.
  • He's outright ecstatic at the concept of taking on the Flood and is the only member of the entire team who is happy to be fighting an intergalactic zombie apocalypse. In fact, he's so happy that being told the plan to stop the Gravemind hinges upon nuclear weapons and not personally killing everything on the planet and then some makes him sad. He also volunteers to fight the Gravemind hand-to-hand only for Shepard to loudly declare he'll shoot him if he does so.
• Body Horror: To be expected with the Reapers and the Flood.
• Breather Episode: Every chapter where things are either focused on daily life aboard the Normandy, or where people don't die horrifically and en-masse.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: By the end of the Sanctum arc, the Normandy ground team is exhausted, injured and on their last legs, the Chief is badly injured and his armor is completely wrecked, Cortana has gone into the AI equivalent of a coma after her data chip is damaged by stray gunfire, and defeating the Gravemind once and for all requires wiping out Sanctum's capital city with a synchronized reactor overload and a follow-up nuclear bomb.
  • And again after the final battle with the Collectors. Everyone survives, but both the Normandy and her crew are badly damaged and spend the next chapter or so recuperating from the Suicide Mission.
• Brought Down to Badass: The Master Chief completely runs out of ammo for all the Halo weapons he brought along with him from the Dawn and is forced to discard MJOLNIR after the Gravemind all but totals it during their final confrontation on Sanctum. While his armor is currently undergoing repairs and his weapons are similarly being worked on, he has to make do with traditional Mass Effect weapons and a set of Colossus Armor in the interim. This in no way stops him from being the one-man wrecking ball he usually is, if anything, it makes him even more dangerous as he's forced to improvise in combat, which in turn brings out his creativity and causes him to pull off feats that he wouldn't have ordinarily thought of while the power of MJOLNIR and his universes' weapons were backing him up.
• Call-Back: The Chief's remembers playing winning every game he ever played while being kicked around like a football by the Gravemind, which gives him the strength to go on fighting.
• The Cameo: Liara T'Soni for the Illium Arc, Aria T'Loak for Samara's loyalty mission, David Anderson (in the present) and the Citadel Council (via flashback) for the Citadel arc and Urdnot Wrex for the Tuchanka arc, though the present story arc seems to be elevating Liara to a more prominent role. 343 Guilty Spark, Avery Johnson, the Arbiter and Catherine Halsey have cameo appearances via the Chief and Cortana's memories.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: EDI, as per usual. She's getting better.
• Character Development: While it happens to everyone, Miranda and the Chief are among the most prominent examples. To wit, Miranda starts off in her usual Ice Queen persona, as per the game, attempting to set herself up as his rival and going so far as to attempt to recruit the Chief into Cerberus, which is rebuffed by way of a veiled death threat. Most of her screentime prior to her loyalty mission is spent attempting to learn anything she can about the Chief's universe, which backfires as she instead starts sympathizing with him, and after her loyalty mission, of which the Chief participated in - and saved her life several times during - simply because she asked, she starts reconsidering her stance towards him. Eventually, she apologizes to him for her behavior, and the two of them properly become friends from there.
  • Grunt also has a noticeable arc, as he starts off hostile to Chief after the Spartan knocks him out on the Dawn, but as they fight together, the Krogan grows to respect Chief even more, with Grunt eventually acknowledging the Master Chief as his second Battlemaster after Shepard.
  • Similarly, the Chief starts off practically dependent on Cortana, purposefully isolating himself from the crew and generally just existing from day-to-day, rebuffing any attempts to get him to open up. After being forced to spend time outside of his comfort zone due to Cortana going rampant, he comes to appreciate the value of the Normandy crew and slowly begins trusting them, partaking in social activities and spending more of his time in their presence. By the end of the battle of Sanctum, he has come to accept the Normandy as his new home and the crew as his new team, finally finding a place amongst their number.
• Continuity Nod: Much of the Halo and Mass Effect mythos are given nods in some form or another, ranging from minor nods, such as John comparing Kal'Reegar to Sgt. Johnson, to very important ones like the entirety of Cortana's post-Flood arc, in which she showcases events from the previous games in an attempt to prove she's still in there.
  • While they have been left largely unexplored at present, several events from the first game can be determined by the presence (or lackthereof) of certain characters. Anderson rose to the rank of Councilor, the Citadel Council was saved during the final battle, Urdnot Wrex and Ashley Williams survived Virmire whilst Kaidan Alenko did not.
  • The second game's events up until the story begins can be similarly pinpointed. The events of Firewalker and Overlord were completed, Kasumi, Zaeed, Jack and Jacob's loyalty missions were completed successfully, though no word has been given on the fate of Jacob's father, Aresh, whether Kasumi's graybox was preserved or destroyed or whether Shepard chose to save the refinery workers or go after Vido during Zaeed's mission, and Shepard chose to recruit Thane first out of the post-Horizon squadmates.
  • The Halo series happened more or less as it does in canon up to around the end of Halo 3, which is where the story begins.
• Cool vs. Awesome: What else can you call the Normandy crew going up against the Flood?
  • Also, Chief wrestling a Geth Prime, and Grunt killing a Praetorian in one-on-one combat.
• Covert Pervert: Well, not so covert, but Kasumi spends a good chunk of her time on a Flood infested Sanctum admiring Garrus' body, mostly to get her mind off the fact that she's being chased around by a horde of genocidal space zombies.
  • Jack assumes the Chief is this when she sees Cortana for the first time.
• Crazy-Prepared: Downplayed. The Chief, wherever possible, goes into battle with more weapons than anyone else, with his typical loadout being a combination of standard Mass Effect weaponry, scavenged Covenant weapons, the Spartan Laser to deal with really troublesome foes, and a selection of grenades from both universes.
  • Having learned from the attack on the original Normandy, Joker keeps an oxygen tank and breathing mask under his seat, which comes in handy when the Gravemind hijacks the Normandy and nearly kills everyone onboard by turning off the oxygen.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Besides the fact that he's still dealing with the psychological impact of dying during the destruction of the Normandy SR-1, Shepard is haunted by memories of being the only one of his unit to come out alive from Akuze, in addition to growing up an orphan on Earth. His pre-Alliance history definitely solidifies this, as he witnessed his sister's death in a heist gone wrong, the theft of which was supposed to be the last job before they joined the Alliance.
• Darkest Hour: The latter half of the Flood Arc. The Gravemind has reestablished itself and has the Master Chief on the ropes, Shepard's fireteams are being overwhelmed on all fronts and the Normandy has been hijacked remotely via a corrupted VI. Were it not for Miranda nuking it's main avatar with the M-920 Cain, Kasumi and her team killing a Flood Juggernaut with a broken coolant pipe and concentrated gunfire, and Samara killing it's second avatar in a biotic duel, it would've won.
• Deadpan Snarker: Shepard, to the point where Samara is surprised that he is nothing but polite and respectful towards her after completing her loyalty mission.
  • Miranda figures out the Chief is one in a very, very subtle manner, once she starts catching onto his mannerisms and personality.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Miranda, as per canon. Jack, while not necessarily an ice queen, starts to loosen up just a little bit regarding her treatment of the Master Chief after learning exactly how traumatic his past is.
• Determinator: Bruised, bloodied, weaponless and on the brink of death, the Chief keeps fighting even as the Gravemind himself prepares to deliver the finishing blow, which leads into the aforementioned big damn heroes moment.
  • Samara goes up against the Gravemind in a Wizard Duel, aware that she is, while a very powerful matriarch with a thousand years of experience, still trying to pick a fight with a creature with millions of years of combat experience, using a hijacked matriarch as it's avatar. This does nothing to dissuade her from giving her all and winning.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Shepard does this regularly, to comedic effect, as most of his interactions with the Illusive Man go, and to not so comedic effect when The Flood show up. It gets turned back around to a mixture of the two when when the Gravemind has his team (Shepard, Zaeed, Grunt, Samara) pinned to the ground via a hijacked Asari Matriarch, which leads to Shepard distracting the Gravemind by giving him an unfavorable comparison to the Reapers.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Kai Leng is mentioned as one of the contingencies The Illusive Man is entertaining to deal with the then-unrevealed Flood threat consuming Sanctum. He ends up letting Shepard handle the problem.
• The Engineer: Tali, as usual, and it's Shepard's class.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Faust may be a psychotic killer loyal to Cerberus, but even he would prefer to avoid any chance of letting the Flood loose on the galaxy again. Hence why he destroys the last remaining Flood sample after realizing that it still poses a danger even in that state.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Harbinger, natch. Also the Gravemind, who proves to be far more poetic than Harbinger ever was, to the point where Shepard muses that he's frankly disappointed Harbinger isn't nearly as flowery as the Gravemind.
• Eviler than Thou: As mentioned, Cortana makes it perfectly clear that the Flood are far more of a threat to the galaxy than the Reapers are. Shepard and the crew of the Normandy quickly come around to her line of thinking.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Miranda and Chief intially have a rocky start, with the former trying to persuade the latter to come work for Cerberus. Chief coldly rebuffs her and exacerbates her ire by denying her access to his weapons and armor per UNSC regulations and making her feel inadequate due to his superior augmentations. Eventually, they open up to each other, with Miranda helping him adjust to civilian situations, even taking him out to dinner.
  • Grunt and Jack both loathe Master Chief at first, for curb-stomping them on the Forward Unto Dawn, and his aloof nature coming off as dismissive. Following Grunt's Rite of Passage, where the three of them kill the Thresher Maw, Grunt accepts Chief as his battlemaster and Jack buries the hatchet with a drink of ryncol.
  • Cortana to most of the Normandy crew. Due to the innate suspicion of A.I.s in the Mass Effect universe and the fact that Chief only revealed her presence due to the dire circumstances on the Dawn, the initial reception of the Normandy crew upon meeting Cortana directly is primarily suspicion and/or caution (though some take her presence in stride). Due to her aid allowing them to fight off the Flood, she quickly earns their trust and respect, to the point that even Tali is prepared to defy her own people's traditional hatred of synthetics to bring Cortana out of her comatose state after the events on Sanctum. From that point onward, the Normandy crew regards her as a trusted companion, which is helped significantly by her friendly and snarky personality.
• Foil: Master Chief has several with the Normandy Crew
  • Grunt and Jack are both loud, crude and easily provoked to violence, Chief is cold, unfailingly polite (albeit snarky at times) and only resorts to violence on a mission and in self defence. Grunt was designed to be the perfect krogan and fears Chief's superior prowess means that the Spartan will replace him. Jack was raised in captivity similar to John but whilst John was brought up as a soldier and taught to work alongside his brothers/sisters-in-arms, Jack was isolated, abused and trained to see every living thing as a threat. One of her reasons for despising the Master Chief is that he represents what she could have become under Cerberus's influence: a living weapon bereft of humanity and only focused on their mission.
  • To Shepard as well. Both are decorated soldiers with extraoridnary accomplishments and tragic backgrounds that deeply affect them more than they care to admit. Shepard is a charismatic leader who mixes Paragon and Renegade traits, being emotionally supportive of his crew but also enjoys teasing them either due to his sense of humour or to help them (or himself) cope with dangerous circumstances. The Chief, for the most part remains single-minded in his mission, spending every waking moment not fighting either eating, training and maintaining his gear. He is forced out of his comfort zone when he has to get to know the crew on a more personal level and is unfamiliar with civillian customs. While he is haunted by his past, Chief believes it to be irrelevant now whilst Shepard wears his pain on his sleeve, as shown when he breaks down in front of Tali in Chapter 10.
• Foreshadowing: Whilst working on his armor - mostly because he had no other options but to accept her help - Tali offhandedly mentions the Thorian to the Master Chief, citing the damage to MJOLNIR mirrors similar damage to Shepard's armor in the aftermath of being jumped by a Thorian Creeper, and asks him if he fought an analogue to the Thorian in his universe. It's Flood biomatter, and the Normandy crew ends up fighting the Flood later in the story.
• For Want Of A Nail: Cortana's presence aboard the Normandy ensures that the virus in the Reaper IFF is detected and deleted before it could ever become the threat it did in canon.
  • In Spite of a Nail: EDI is still freed from her shackles by Tali in order to better fight a rogue VI controlled and enhanced by the Gravemind when it attempts to remotely take over the Normandy. After the Flood are defeated, Shepard declares that he would've unshackled EDI anyways, given that the Normandy is in full violation of Citadel law and he thinks it would piss off The Illusive Man.
• The Gadfly: Shepard is this to practically everyone, making pop-culture references, snarking and generally doing his damndest to push everyone's buttons. Generally played for laughs, most of the time.
  • It's definitely not played for laughs with his interactions with the Illusive Man. Shepard is genuinely trying to piss him off, mostly because he's well aware of what kind of a person TIM is. Shepard staunchly refuses to do anything more than the bare minimum needed to keep TIM supporting the Suicide Mission, and instantly breaks ties with Cerberus the moment he gets a chance.
  • Kasumi greatly enjoys getting on Garrus' nerves, though in a twist, he actually likes it, going so far as to state he wishes she'd been with him during his days at C-SEC, as it would've made his life far more entertaining.
  • Legion, or at least, one part of them, dubbed "Neville". That particular aspect of Legion is noted to be a bit of a deviant with regards to the Geth consensus, routinely doing anything except pay attention to the proceedings at hand.
• Genre Shift: The primary genres of the story are sci-fi and slice of life, insomuch as the ragtag bunch of misfits that comprise the Normandy crew can have a "slice of life". That said, the story shifts from Star Trek-esque gallivanting into outright survival horror the instant The Flood make themselves known and force Shepard and company to drop everything in a desperate race to stop them from conquering the galaxy. It's a state of affairs that goes on for roughly ten chapters.
• The Ghost: Ashley Williams. She's mentioned in passing and is the Virmire Survivor, but has not yet made an appearance in the story.
• Godzilla Threshold: It takes the appearance of the Flood for Chief to reveal Cortana's existence to the crew of the Normandy. Mordin and Cortana both note that the best way to stop the Flood involve some form of mass-extinction, which eventually gets brought in.
  • On a lesser scale, the Master Chief considers bringing out the Spartan Laser to be this, mostly because he has no way of replenishing its ammo. At least until the Suicide Mission, where he learns that Cortana commissioned Mordin to construct some more power cells for it as a present for him.
• Graceful Loser: Grunt becomes this in later chapters, showing off his Character Development. During a sparring match where he fights the Chief and is bested again, he acknowledges the loss with dignity and admits that the Chief is a better combatant than him. This is a far cry from his first attempts to fight the Spartan, where he was forced to halt by Shepard.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Reapers, who are still traveling to the galaxy as per canon. Their presence naturally drives the story forth and a confrontation with them is inevitable, but at present, enemies like the Collectors, Cerberus and the Flood have center stage.
• Heroic RRoD: Samara invokes this in the name of killing the Gravemind's second avatar. It nets her an entire chapter spent in the medbay as a result.
  • The Chief spends the same chapter in the medbay because defeating the Gravemind resulted in MJOLNIR being totaled, with the injuries to match.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Played with. The Chief clearly intends on invoking this when he chooses to confront the Gravemind on his own, handing Cortana off to Miranda, then locking her, Jack and Gael Faust out of the hallway leading to the Flood's leader. It's then subverted when they come back and drive the Gravemind away with judicious use of heavy weapons.
  • And again during the Suicide Mission. With the timer to the Collector Base's destruction via nuclear overload counting down, badly wounded and unable to walk, Shepard chooses to hold back an oncoming wave of Collector Drones so Tali and Samara can escape, only for the Chief - currently being chased by a horde of Husks - to swoop in, pluck Shepard off the ground, and dive into the Normandy with seconds to spare.
• Hidden Depths: Shepard is a music aficionado who greatly appreciates the "classics" (real-world contemporaries), such as Elton John and Queen.
  • Grunt can cook. Though he'll kill you if you tell anyone. He eventually puts it out in the open, just in time for The Suicide Mission.
  • While Jack's hostility towards the Chief is mostly rooted in his inability to rise to any pokes, prods and challenges she throws at him, she eventually admits to Shepard that most of her hostility comes from him being a stone-cold killer with a distinctive lack of humanity, which scares her, as he represents everything she would've become had the Pragia project succeeded.
• Hijacked by Ganon: As one would expect, the overarching story arc involves the Reapers and the inevitable war that will occur when they arrive, and it's quite natural for the heroes' actions to be focused around finding a way to stop them. Then the Flood enter the story and suddenly the Reapers aren't even remotely close to a threat anymore.
• Hold the Line: The general concept of the Normandy team deployed to a Flood-occupied Sanctum is this. Besides going down there for the purposes of setting up a synchronized triple-reactor nuclear meltdown, they fully intend on doing whatever is necessary to keep the Flood from getting offworld.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Chief, repeatedly. Thane and Legion also count.
• Improvised Weapon: During the Collector Ship mission, Shepard muses that if necessary, the Chief could probably use a plastic cup to lethal ends in battle. Much later, Zaeed ends up using his beloved alcohol flask to save Shepard from a Flood tank form about to squish him flat.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Energy Sword, as per usual. Chief puts the two he scavenged on the Dawn to good use fighting the Flood.
  • The Spartan Laser, as per the game. The Chief uses it on basically anything he can't kill within thirty-seconds, ranging from Praetorians to Harbinger to the Gravemind. Miranda also uses it against the Oculus that boards the Normandy when the Omega-4 Relay is traversed, before handing it off to the Chief.
• It's Personal: The Gravemind is pissed about its previous defeat at the Chief's hands, to the point where it deliberately forces a one on one confrontation between its main body and the Spartan. Conversely, this also works against it, as it is so hell-bent on making the Chief suffer that it fails to account for outside variables (i.e. Miranda with heavy weapons) intervening. Additionally, it gets so caught up in inflicting pain on the Chief that it gets distracted from fighting the other heroes, resulting in Samara killing the Avatar it sends against her team and EDI fighting off its attempts at hijacking the Normandy
  • Samara notes that her vendetta with Morinth is this, and that if Shepard interferes, she will come after him with this trope in play. It immediately dissuades him from doing anything except following her orders.
• The Juggernaut: On the side of the heroes, the Chief and Grunt, to the point where Shepard's usual strategy for breaking an enemy position can be best summed up as "let Chief and Grunt go first". On the villainous side, Harbinger, even more so than his in-game incarnation, given that it takes the likes of being hit in the face with a Spartan Laser to get him to shut up. The Flood form on Sanctum that hounds the stealth team definitely counts, as it is composed of three krogan, has a healing factor far beyond normal Krogan and is capable of effortlessly crashing through buildings. It takes Kasumi freezing it with coolant, concentrated gunfire from Garrus, Thane and Jacob and judicious usage of heavy weapons to finally kill it.
  • About half the husk variants the Reapers create with the express purpose of killing the Chief with are this.
• Killed Offscreen: Basically every Red Shirt who gets a portion of the story set from their perspective ends of biting it. Ranging from the Cerberus fireteams aboard the Dawn to the random civilians on Sanctum when the Flood show up.
  • Sidonis, during Garrus' loyalty mission, courtesy of Shepard.
• Kill It with Fire: Zaeed and Grunt enjoy this line of thinking.
  • Mordin determines this is the best way to combat the Flood on the ground.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: A villainous version. After events start going against it towards the end of the Sanctum mission, the Gravemind makes itself mobile to personally deal with the team at the last power plant. This backfires spectacularly and it is killed in the ensuing battle.
  • Played for Laughs with Zaeed during a bar fight. While everyone else gets into the thick of it, he's content to sit around and drink, citing his back and a general lack of enthusiasm for doing the things youngsters do. Then an unlucky turian crushes his glass, and he immediately throws himself into the fray to avenge it.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Grunt's response to the Chief and company gawking at him go by with bags of cooking supplies? "You saw nothing, humans."
  • On a less funny note, after dealing with the Flood threat on Sanctum Shepard tells Cortana he'd appreciate it if the Gravemind was never brought up ever again.
• Loophole Abuse: How EDI goes against her programming and keeps herself from reporting Cortana's existence at the latter's request.
• Mad Scientist: For comedic effect, Mordin is very interested in UNSC tech and about half his dialogue involves some form of "what is this amazing alternate-dimension tech and can I study it forever and ever?". For not-so-comedic-effect, Cerberus, who seize control of Forward Unto Dawn and subsequently unleash the Flood in the process.
• Mood Whiplash: Any sequence with Legion taking center stage invariably bounces between Legion rambling on the nature of life, the galaxy, or both, and the fact that he's often in the middle of a violent bloodbath when he's making those ruminations. One memorable instance has him go on a tangent about Peter Pan while in the middle of being chased around by a horde of Flood.
  • Miranda's attempt to have a serious moment to herself in the elevator during Legion's loyalty mission is immediately derailed by EDI (on Shepard's orders) blaring Elton John music.
  • Samara's loyalty mission, obviously a serious thing, is juxtaposed with Chief and company having a bar fight, which is in turn juxtaposed with the lyrics of real-world contemporary artists like Sweet, My Chemical Romance, Smash Mouth and Andrew WK.
  • Tali's attempts to save the Normandy from the Gravemind by way of giving EDI control of the ship, a very serious event, swing between a life-and-death situation and her ranting to herself about the irony of a Quarian unshackling an AI.
  • With only seconds left on the timer before the Collector Base goes up in a nuclear fireball, a badly-wounded Shepard chooses to sacrifice himself to ensure the Normandy escapes, which is naturally, a serious event. It's immediately derailed when the Chief barges in on Shepard's dramatic moment, grabs the Commander and carries him to safety.
• Mook Horror Show: The scenes of Cerberus soldiers aboard the remains of the Forward Unto Dawn quickly become this as the Flood make their presence known. Several segments within the book are dedicated to the perspectives of the Cerberus fireteams on the ship, and end with all of them meeting a grisly end.
• Motor Mouth: Mordin will not. Shut. Up. Ever. This comes in handy when reconciling Halo tech with Mass Effect tech. And for finding a weakness with the Flood, mostly by way of Mordin laying the seeds for the Normandy crew's counterattack, as his ramblings note that a mass-extinction event and incendiary weapons will be the most effective weapons, leading him to develop a hybrid between Shredder and Incendiary rounds perfect for killing Combat Forms, an electric pulse weapon that wipes out Infection forms by the dozen, and lays the groundwork for a HAVOC Nuke that finishes off the Flood. It also lets Tali know something's wrong when the Gravemind hijacks the Normandy and shuts off most of the ship's life-support, as Mordin shuts up, notes he's out of breath, which never happens, and then collapses.
  • Mordin practically faints when Cortana shows him the Ark.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: The Chief's view towards the UNSC. This causes some tension with the Normandy crew later on, especially when Miranda points out the UNSC doesn't exist in the Mass Effect universe.
  • He starts to break out of it after the Flood arc, having come to bond with the Normandy crew over the whole zombie apocalypse thing.
• Near-Villain Victory: The Gravemind nearly succeeds in overwhelming the teams on Sanctum, brutally battered the Master Chief and was still overwhelming and was close to coercing an unshackled EDI into joining him before Miranda injured the Gravemind's main body via M-920 Cain, causing its concentration to slip, which is then compounded by Samara killing one of it's avatars at roughly the same time.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Faust remotely destroying his ship ended up wiping out Sanctum's entire spaceport, which kept the Flood from escaping the planet after they had taken over the city.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Mordin, when confronted with the Flood invokes this in a more scientific manner. Conversely, Kasumi thinks the Flood infection forms are cute, commissions a doll of one, and spends a good chunk of her screentime afterwards with said plushie in her arms.
• Noble Demon: Gael is arguably this. While he's grating and someone who exemplifies the worst of humanity, he gives Miranda a heads-up on an incoming assassination attempt on her and the Chief, rationalizing that it makes them even for saving him on Sanctum. More importantly, he destroys the Flood samples he took from Sanctum, rather than let them get into the hands of the Illusive Man.
• No Kill like Overkill: As far as the Normandy crew is concerned, simultaneously overloading a Flood infested colony's three nuclear power plants and creating a meltdown that makes Raccoon City look like amateur night, then hitting the irradiated remains with a HAVOK nuke roughly four times more powerful than standard HAVOK warheads, is considered to be the bare minimum needed to stop the Flood. Shepard briefly laments that they can't simply destroy Sanctum outright.
• Noodle Incident: Grunt was involved in one prior to the events of the story, apparently because of a Blasto advertisement. Whatever happened, it resulted in numerous apology letters to the Citadel authorities, a permanent ban on him ever using the Firestorm again, which is immediately rescinded the instant the Flood threat is verified. Shepard still has nightmares about it.
  • After Aetheya throws Jack out of her bar, Garrus briefly notes that he bore witness to a similar incident in said bar, likely referring to Conrad Verner's sidequest in the game itself.
  • Apparently, the Elcor have done covers of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Smash Mouth's All Star, to Shepard's eternal disapproval.
• No-Sell: Chief downs an entire glass of Ryncol, and the most that happens is that he sways uncontrollably for a few moments before moving on like nothing happened. It earns Grunt's respect on the spot.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Between Jack and the Chief. The moment that she learns of the Chief's backstory - namely, the whole "kidnapped at an early age and turned into a supersoldier" part - Jack explodes into a truly epic fit of rage, with at the vast part of that rage directed at the fact that she and him have fundamentally similar origins, even if they turned out very differently.
• Nuke 'em: Miranda invokes this to save the Master Chief, and the Normandy crew invokes it to put down the Flood, once and for all.
• Odd Friendship: Slowly but surely, Master Chief makes friends amongst the Normandy Crew, whether through finding common ground or fighting side by side.
  • Him and Garrus strike an accord when they discuss tactical situations in Chapter 6, with Garrus inviting him to eat with him and Tali and a game of Skylian Poker.
  • Samara takes an interest in Chief as his hyperfocused stoicism makes him stand out. The historical link between his namesake and the Ancient Spartans also intrigues her. Having already been fascinated by humanity for their individuality, Samara offers to train Chief in countering biotics on Shepherd's suggesion.
  • Tali is initially uneasy about Master Chief's aloof nature but fascinated by MJOLNIR and tries to help repair it, much to Chief's chagrin. She gets more hands-on in repairing MJOLNIR after it's trashed by the Gravemind.
• Oh, Crap!: The Chief has a very pronounced (by his standards) one the instant the Flood make themselves known, and he doesn't come out of it until about ten chapters later. Cortana's reaction to the event isn't much better, as she loses much of her trademark levity and has PTSD-style flashbacks to her torture at the hands of the Gravemind.
  • This is basically the reaction of the entire Normandy crew upon discovering the Flood. The normally boisterous crew are noted to be so silent that the sound of a pin dropping could be heard.
  • Miranda has a spectacular one when the Chief entrusts her with Cortana and goes off to confront the Gravemind one-on-one, and Garrus has one when he realizes Kasumi's plan to kill the Flood Juggernaut stalking his team via a broken coolant pipe hinges on him having perfect timing in a high-stakes game of tag.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Gravemind, as usual.
• One-Man Army: Shepard, Chief and Grunt are the most prominent examples, though everyone else in the ground team are definitely no slouches.
• One-Steve Limit: Presumably to avoid confusion with the Master Chief, Shepard's first name is James rather than John.
• Only Sane Man: Gael Faust takes this role to all of Cerberus, which is ironic given his proven mental disorders. Specifically, upon capturing an intact Flood spore after the events on Sanctum and seeing it multiply right in front of his eyes, he immediately disposes of the sample in the nearest incinerator.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Shepard, Tali and Miranda are concerned when the normally stoic Master Chief starts to get worried when discovering the Flood onboard the Dawn. The Illusive Man deduces that this is in full effect when EDI and Cortana promptly throw their full weight into attempting to break into the Cerberus network, resulting in him granting them full access to whatever information they need to track down the Flood-controlled Lelantos.
• Out of Focus: Jacob Taylor. While he's instrumental in integrating the Master Chief into the Normandy Crew and has a prominent role during the Flood Arc, being one of the fireteam leaders, he tends to be relegated to supporting roles during the story. Kelly Chambers also qualifies, as barring a quickly averted attempt to psychoanalyze the Master Chief, she at best makes cameos every now and then in the story.
• Pass the Popcorn: Cortana intentionally invokes this trope by manifesting a holographic bowl of popcorn and eating from it after the Suicide Mission when EDI confronts Joker on his decision to leave the cockpit and provide covering fire for the Commander as they escaped the Base.
• Posthumous Character: Kaidan Alenko, who died on Virmire. And Jane Shepard, Commander Shepard's sister.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Normandy crew's battle against the Flood on Sanctum. Save for Gael Faust, the entire colony is wiped out to the last man.
• Rotating Arcs: The story primarily swings between Shepard and his squadmates of the day doing their thing, and Chief, Cortana and Miranda doing theirs.
• Sad Clown: Shepard. His comedic persona is an act used to hide the fact that he never wanted to be resurrected in the first place, is haunted by the death of his sister on Earth and his entire unit on Akuze, and the fact that the only reason he was even brought back was because he was needed to fight the Reapers and not for who he was as a person. It takes Tali's friendship and affection to pull him out it.
• Serious Business: Zaeed's treasured alcohol flask. He takes it with him everywhere, and when Shepard, due to a serious ammo shortage, muses about using it as a weapon against the Flood, he openly declares that such a scenario will result in him letting the Flood assimilate him just so he can come back to exact revenge on Shepard.
  • He eventually does use it against the Flood, saving Shepard's life with it.
    • And then he makes Shepard replace it, an apparently, it wasn't a cheap flask, if the Commander's dismayed thoughts are any indication.
• Ship Tease: Shepard and Tali, who eventually become official, along with Kasumi and Garrus. Is presently happening very, very slowly with John and Miranda, and mostly one sided on the latter's part. Cortana bounces between being bemused by the Chief's marked inability to understand Miranda's affections, and being frustrated at the aforementioned inability to understand.
• Shock and Awe: Shepard's go-to strategy in combat, to the point where he's described as the kind of man who could "slap Zeus in the face and walk away whistling".
• Skewed Priorities: Grunt spends a good passage or two during the Flood arc wondering if they're edible.
  • After defeating the Chief in a one-on-one confrontation, the Gravemind goes on another one of its monologues, rather than finish the Spartan off immediately. This gives Miranda the time needed to line up a shot on it with the M-920 Cain.
• The Sociopath: Kai Leng, as per usual. He cheerfully has several captured Normandy crewmen implanted with mind-control devices, even declaring that they should have the devices implanted without anesthetic as "payback" for siding with Shepard.
• Sole Survivor: Shepard, given that he has the eponymous backstory. Miranda deduces this applies to Chief from their talks as he is unaware of the canonical survival of Kelly, Linda and Fred, along with a few others, and Gael is the sole survivor of everyone who was down on Sanctum when the Flood came calling.
• The Straight Man: The Illusive Man is naturally this, and is often on the receiving end of Shepard's jabs. An internal monologue reveals that he only goes along with it because he thinks it'll make Shepard somewhat more amenable to working with him.
• Trickster Mentor: Shepard acts as this, pushing members of the team who are polar opposites to work together. In the case of Chief and Miranda, it works magnificently, as it precipitates John and Miranda´s Character Development, results in them becoming Fire-Forged Friends, and sparks the Ship Tease that occurs.
• Underestimating Badassery: Miranda and Grunt clearly think this with regards to the Chief, prior to their Character Development. It gets Miranda a very stern talking-to from Shepard, forcing her to do some self-reflecting, while Grunt gets his ass kicked twice by the Chief and ends up having to undertake his loyalty mission to finally understand that being a warrior is more than just brute force and durability.
• Unknown Rival: Prior to the completion of her loyalty mission and some self-reflection, Miranda attempts to set herself up as the Chief's rival, only to be trounced at every turn by him. Shepard eventually tells her to knock it off. Chief, for his part, doesn't seem to notice the rivalry, instead assuming that she's simply setting up a competition with him, which spurs his competitive instincts, but nothing else.
• Villain Episode: Downplayed, but it's there. Chapter 17.5 is dedicated to Gael Faust's point of view, while the Collectors, Reapers and Flood get their own segments exploring their points of view, usually towards the end of a given chapter.
• Walking Armory: The Chief goes into basically every mission with as many guns as possible. To wit, on the Collector Ship, he goes into the fray with his Spartan Laser, two M-12 Locusts, an M-96 Mattock and several plasma grenades. It gets upped even further when the Flood show up, at which point he goes into battle with 'both Energy Swords, every plasma grenade he has left and all of his remaining scavenged Covenant weapons, along with a full complement of standard Mass Effect weaponry and his Spartan Laser. He ends up using them all.
• Wham Episode: Several.
  • Chapter 9: Cortana goes rampant in the middle of a firefight, leaving the Chief bereft of his closest ally when he needs her most.
  • Chapter 10: The Flood have somehow survived the final battle on the Ark and are present on the Dawn.
  • Chapter 23: The Normandy ground team venturing aboard the Dawn are attacked by Flood, forcing Cortana to be revealed to the Normandy crew at large as the Chief scrambles to contain the ancient threat, and while the fallout of her being kept secret is dealt with, the Flood attack Sanctum and assimilate almost everyone on the planet.
  • Chapter 45: Cerberus forces launch a truly spirited assassination attempt against Miranda and the Chief, while simultaneously hijacking the Normandy while it's defenseless, as Shepard and company are engaging in Lair of The Shadow Broker are thus miles away from the ship.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Cortana is forced to reveal Master Chief's origins to the crew in Chapter 25, Jack is enraged by the revelation, her past with Cerebus being almost parallel to Chiefs. The rest of the crew are divided on the matter but the Flood's presence leaves little time to dwell on the subject.
• Wizard Duel: Samara has an epic one with the Gravemind's second avatar. She wins, at the cost of being incapacitated for the rest of the mission.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The story of the Cerberus guards Reg and Mil aboard the Dawn ends up being this. After a harrowing chase aboard the ruined ship as they try to escape the Flood and return to the Lelantos, they succeed and get back aboard the Cerberus vessel... only to find that the Flood had already taken it over.
  • While she's a one of the main characters and has Plot Armor, Cortana suffers this to a downplayed - but not by much - extent, given that she spends much of the first arc rampant and thus unable to do much of anything besides fight a civil war with herself. Then it happens again when she gets shot during the Flood Arc and is once more put out of action for several chapters.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Flood naturally invoke this, stowing away aboard the Dawn, assimilating the crew of the Lelantos, conquering Sanctum's capital city and creating a (thankfully localized) apocalyptic scenario that would make any fan of Resident Evil proud.