The Last Spartan

The Last Spartan is an Alternate Universe Halo/Mass Effect crossover Fusion Fic. After the prologue, a novelization of Halo 3's ending, a turian patrol discovers the remains of the Forward Unto Dawn floating in deep space...131 years after the events of the last game. In a historic moment, the Master Chief is thawed out of his Cryo Pod and awakens to a whole new galaxy, one where humanity has not only made peace with most of the former Covenant races, but has since joined The Citadel Council.

While initially nonplussed about some decisions humanity has made about joining the Citadel races, Spartan-117 and Cortana both overcome their culture shock while the former grudgingly overcomes decades of wartime xenophobia to secure humanity's place in the galaxy...by becoming a Spectre.

But all is not well in the galaxy, for Saren Arterius launches an assault on the human colony of Eden Prime in search of a powerful artifact, and while the Master Chief is unable to prevent him from using it nonetheless finds himself on a manhunt across the galaxy.

The simplest way to describe this crossover is Master Chief put in Commander Shepard's boots, and for such a simple premise, it is awesome.

Tropes used in The Last Spartan include:
  • Aint No Rule: While Hackett admits the idea of putting a revived Master Chief forward as a Spectre candidate is ridiculous on paper (in a manner of speaking), he immediately and eagerly Hand Waves the issue by citing this trope. The Chief hasn't even been thawed by the time he gets behind the idea.
  • Arc Number: True to form, variants of the number seven appear throughout the story.
  • Arc Words: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
  • Art Evolution: Slyly referenced in the scene where Garrus finds out Cortana is still alive. He admits to recognizing her from depictions in documentaries, but says he thought her hair would be shorter.
    • After the events of the above, Cortana decides to update her appearance with longer hair, a dress and the color pink, but the Chief is so dumbstruck by it that she said that she'll revert to her previous appearance when they're alone.
  • Ascended Fangirl: Ashley Williams, who studied Spartan manuvers, tactics, read the stories, and even watched the cartoon show... and now fights alongside her idol.
    • N'tho is an Ascended Fanboy of the Chief's, but to a much lesser extent than Ashley.
  • Badass Grandpa: The Arbiter. Even for a species as long-lived as Sangheili, he admits he's in the Twilight of his life. However, he still singlehandedly assaults a mercenary compound, and even after reuniting with Chief and Garrus, continues to hold his own and sends enemies fleeing in terror.
  • Badass Normal: According to Tali, Kal'Reegar came back from his Pilgrimage with a suit full of injuries and a gravity hammer. His answer to the obvious question ("How did [Kal'Reegar] get it?") was simply, "It wasn't easy."
  • Berserk Button: John doesn't appreciate Saren calling him by his real name.
  • Bond One-Liner: Not even the Chief is immune to dropping these every once in a while.

Master Chief: This time, stay dead.

  • Boredom Montage: Chapter 10, Bored, Bored, Bored covers John's attempts to kill time during the three day journey from the Citadel to Therum.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Chief's motions to... interrupt Ethan Jeong's rant resulted in "a wet stain appearing in his groin area." After knocking him out, of course.
  • Broken Pedestal: Khalisah al-Jilani tries to paint the Chief as this after he blows off her interview. Hackett is displeased with both of them and warns Chief that the fight for Feros is going to have to be a vital PR boon for the Spartan.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: N'tho 'Sraom is a competent, badass, (if wet behind the ears) Special Ops soldier and you can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
  • Casual Danger Monologue: N'tho talks to Tali about a rock n' roll variant of Rocky Road to Dublin and a lesson about the historical context behind it. Tali, however, is too busy clinging on for dear life as N'tho drives down a Prothean skyway teeming with geth and Krogan.
  • Character Development: Master Chief's suspicions about both the former Covenant and "new" races slowly but perceptibly erodes over the course of the story.
  • Covert Pervert: Cortana when she watches an Old Spice commercial with a shirtless Sangheili in it.
  • Crazy Prepared: The Chief spends much of his conversations with Nihlus sizing him up and figuring out the best ways to hypothetically kill him (or other Turians, for that matter) just in case.
  • Did Not Do the Research: the author lists the Lekgolo (Hunters, from Halo) as Dextro-Amino life forms, but they consume rock and metal- they don't need proteins and have an entirely different chemical makeup.
  • Dramatic Irony

Nihlus: Not the most glamorous assignment I've ever had. But no less important than any other I've been given. Besides, I've learned a long time ago that you never know when a boring assignment might turn interesting.

  • Drives Like Crazy: The Chief. N'tho is a lesser example, but he still makes his passengers plead for their lives.
  • Fan Girl / Fan Boy: Ashley and Jenkins towards the Master Chief, his historic influence being part of their inspiration to join the Alliance military.
    • The Biotic Terrorist Leader immediately surrenders after seeing the Master Chief in person, he and his followers having seen him as a hero as well. It helps that at Kaidan's suggestion, Chief attempted to negotiate with them instead of depressurizing their ship and suffocating them as initially planned.
  • Foreshadowing: After destroying a geth transmitter in the tunnels under Zhu's Hope, Wrex discovers that the three Krogan they killed to get to it were all adolescents, something he points out to the Chief is very unlikely.
  • Fusion Fic: Take a guess.
  • Gas Leak Coverup: Halo's ability to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy has been dismissed as a conspiracy theory. The Chief, understanding the panic this could cause, goes along with it when N'tho asks.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: While fighting Geth inside the Therum excavation site, The Chief picks up a freshly killed Geth Juggernaut and starts running, using it as both a shield and battering ram to knock over other Geth.
  • Hannibal Lecture: Though just as emotionless as ever, the geth runtimes Cortana holds hostage and tries to interrogate remind her of her mortality as a smart AI made from flash-cloned brain tissue and her organic shortcomings. She's able to maintain her composure before destroying them, but it leaves her quite rattled.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Garrus kills Dr. Saleon by locking him in a test chamber with one of the Flood infection forms he was experimenting on.
  • Hidden Depths: N'tho 'Sraom: Ascended Fanboy of the Master Chief, irreverant mid-battle singer, conspiracy theorist (of sorts)...and Warrior Poet (knowing human poetry--in N'tho's case, Shakespeare--is practically mandatory if you want to call yourself a Squidhead with a straight face).
  • Missed Moment of Awesome: Invoked and deconstructed in Chapter 24, when the return trip down the Prothean skyway sees N'tho about to "challenge" a geth hovercraft to a race/ramming run. Tali cuts N'tho's attempt to ram it off the skyway short by firing a needler into its pilot and tells N'tho point blank that she didn't want him to stoop to such antics.
  • Noble Bigot: Chief himself at the start of the story, on the basis that all the aliens he's encountered before then have been trying to shoot him.
    • Noble Bigot with a Badge: He also expresses discomfort at the idea of taking orders from aliens before and after becoming a Spectre.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Captain Anderson mentions offhandedly that one of reasons no more Spartans have been made since the end of the Human-Covenant War was because all the data pertaining to their creation were destroyed with Castle Base during the events of Halo First Strike.
  • Not So Different: After reaching the Exo Geni building and clearing it of Geth, the Chief muses on how much his otherwise rag-tag party has in common with his wartime squadmates.
  • N-Word Privileges: "Squidhead," a Fantastic Slur from the Halo era, has since been adopted by a Sangheili youth counterculture as a badge of pride.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Cortana pretends to be a VI when Garrus examines her storage chip on his Omni-tool. He eventually sees right through it, having seen enough documentaries on the Human-Covenant War to put two and two together.
  • Oh Crap: Dr. Saleon has frozen samples of The Flood in his lab on The Citadel.
  • Old Soldier: Averted with Master Chief, who is the same age as he was in Halo 3 despite chronologically being 172 years old. Played straight with The Arbiter.
  • Planet of Hats: In true Mass Effect fashion, these hats come off quite often, and with the Covenant races to boot. Most prominent is N'tho, a Sangheili Spec Ops warrior who acts unusually informal and Crazy Awesome compared to the Elites we've seen in Halo canon. Likewise, while the few other hats have come off prominently, Kig-Yar, the Goddamned Bats of the Halo franchise, have settled into more benign mercantile professions...such as lawyers.
    • When Chief first gets to the Presidium, he notices a Drone/Bugger/Yanme'e flying through the air... delivering pizza with an advertisement for his workplace draped over him.
  • Ramming Always Works: While driving the Mako across Therum, the Chief follows an old rule in vehicle combat from the previous games: "Don't brake for nobody."
  • Retcon: There was a period of time when the author couldn't decide how to mingle the two timelines together. At first, the Halo verse was bumped up a few centuries, with the story taking place in ME time. Then the story was in 2683, for no reason. Then bumped to earlier, with the author justifying it by pointing out how the technology present in Halo would be more along the 2100's. Then finally, it seemed to settle on 2683, because it would be impossible to colonize 800 planets in 70 years, and instead moved the Mass Effect universe up 500 years.
  • Shout-Out: When a Brute is discovered among the pirate crew at Sharjila, the narrator muses on some of their more savage actions during The Battle of Crassus.
  • Space Jews: In addition to the Volus, any Kig-Yar who haven't gotten jobs in the military or piracy fall under this trope, having become shrewd businessmen and lawyers in the last century. Some Unggoy are said to fall under this trope as well, but the majority can be considered Space Mexicans, as they are a source of cheap labor.
  • Start of Darkness: Explicitly referred to as such in the author's notes for Chapter 19. When Garrus corners Dr. Saleon in his lab (after seeing footage of a turian being turned into a combat form and catching him over a dead Asari he did the same to), he locks him in a testing chamber and lets a Flood Infection form loose in it.
  • Stealth Pun: In chapter 10, the Chief comes across Garrus fiddling with the Mako. When pressed, Garrus said he thought the Mako's suspension was off and needed adjustment...another word for calibration.
  • Tempting Fate: Tali decides to drive with the Chief, thinking he can't be as bad as N'tho. See the "Drives Like Crazy," entry for more details.
  • Title Drop: Twice so far. First when The Chief visits a memorial to his fellow Spartans and realizes he's the last one. A second one comes when Sha'ira advises him to open up more to his crew, telling him that by doing so (read: acting like a proper Western RPG protagonist) he will "no longer feel like the Last Spartan."
  • Too Good to Last: In-universe, Ashley thinks that the one-season cartoon about the Chief shouldn't have been cancelled, as she thought it was cool.
  • Tranquil Fury: The Chief manages to remain outwardly composed when Saren addresses him, condescendingly, by his real name, John. He ends up quietly breaking off and bending a piece of guardrail afterwards.
  • The Voiceless: Averted unlike the Halo series. Since Master Chief is filling in for Commander Shepard, he's spoken more in his first two chapters than he has in the Halo Trilogy. Played for Laughs as he still uses short, blunt sentences where Shepard used charismatic lines, and complains silently about how sore and raspy his throat is becoming.
  • Warrior Poet: We already know Ashley's one, but both she and Master Chief are surprised when N'tho shows off his knowledge of Tennyson and Shakespeare. He reveals that it's practically a requirement for the Squidhead subculture.
  • Wham! Episode: Chapter 18. Chief has been kidnapped on what he now learns are orders of Saren. The Arbiter is launching a rescue mission with Garrus. Cortana is missing. And to top it all off, Saleon is working on the Flood.
  • Worthy Opponent: Though initially just as dismissive and contemptuous of The Chief as he is of any other human, Saren starts developing a fascination with him after watching a video-recording of his actions on Therum.
  • Your Costume Needs Work: Although no one says it to the Chief himself, Harkin and Saren (understandably) don't think John is the real McCoy, and is just an unusually tall soldier they put in similar armor as a publicity stunt.
    • Ethan Jeong is unimpressed when the Chief states he swore an oath to protect Earth and its colonies, and unlike the above two examples, openly calls the Chief a phony. The Chief's response puts him in his place though.
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