Throughout his career, John has shown a preference for the standard-issue set of the given Mjolnir armor generation used at the time. His Mjolnir armor is invariably colored olive green with a gold visor, which has made his appearance iconic among humans and Covenant alike. At some point during his four-year cryosleep aboard the Forward Unto Dawn, Cortana used nanomachines to repair and physically alter John's MJOLNIR Mark VI armor. [72] [158] Cortana also rewrote the suit's firmware, altering the HUD as well as improving the suit's shield-recharge rate and its compatibility with Covenant and Forerunner armor plugins. [159] His upgraded suit displays the Braille characters "117" on the left of the breastplate.

John leading his fellow Spartans during Battle of Sigma Octanus IV. Main article: Operation: OCEAN BREAKER John succeeded in locating some of his fellow Spartans on Reach, along with Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb and Dr. Catherine Halsey. They returned to the carrier and linked it with the damaged UNSC frigate Gettysburg. Before traveling to Earth, they decided to head into the Eridanus system where they discovered that the rebel base, Eridanus Secundus, was still intact, now led by Governor Jacob Jiles. After receiving some repairs, they were forced to abandon the rebels in the face of a Covenant assault, and made their way toward the Covenant refit-and-repair station, Unyielding Hierophant, where an enormous fleet was poised to invade Earth. John and the Marines traveled through the jungle, searching for evacuation to a nearby military base. Johnson and his team split up from John and the Arbiter. The sergeant and his squad were captured by loyalist Covenant Brutes, although they were soon rescued by John and 'Vadam. After taking heavy fire from Phantoms, a Pelican dropship evacuated the team to a UNSC base known as Crow's Nest. [65] This image shows John in July of 2557 at the age of forty-six, just as his armor was removed for the first time in years. [9]As the war neared its end, most of John's fellow SPARTAN-IIs were killed in action during the Fall of Reach. However, John and his AI companion Cortana fled Reach and their vessel fortuitously arrived at Halo Installation 04, a one hundred millennia-old superweapon created by the Forerunners to destroy their parasitic enemy, the Flood, by killing all life in the galaxy. After destroying the Halo, the surrounding Covenant fleet, and the Flood forces on the ring, John returned to Earth and resisted the Covenant's impromptu invasion. Pursuing the invaders' flagship, the Master Chief encountered Installation 05, where a civil war soon broke out within the Covenant. Weeks later, John followed the remaining Covenant forces to the Ark, the Halo Array's control center, which he disabled before the Halos could be fired. On March 3, 2553, Lord Hood commissioned a memorial near Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa in honor of UNSC service members lost during the war. The ceremony was attended by John's closest folks - Dr. Catherine Halsey, SCPO Franklin Mendez and his comrades - Frederic-104, Kelly-087 and Linda-058, as well as by Naomi-010 and Serin Osman, formerly known as Serin-019. John's Spartan tag was carved onto the memorial by an unknown party and was accompanied by the improper insignia of the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy. [7] In their first training exercise, John was grouped with fellow trainees Kelly-087 and Samuel-034 in a game of " Ring the Bell". John rushed ahead of his teammates and crossed the finish line first; however, he was befuddled to learn that his team had lost, as Kelly and Sam came last. This taught John the importance of teamwork and the next day, his team scored higher. John soon bonded with Kelly and Sam, who would become his first and closest friends among the trainees. [21] For eight years John was schooled in history, military strategy and tactics, and weapons, and was given extreme physical training. During his training, John used to tease Serin-019 and her habit of eating leftovers from meals of the other candidates. [22] Halsey: " It's very nice to meet you. I wanted to ask you what you were doing?" John: " Winning." — Dr. Halsey and John during their first meeting. [18] John has demonstrated easy familiarity with various weapons, though unless a mission specifically requires something, has shown a preference for the MA5 series of assault rifles as his mainstay.

Throughout his training, John proved himself as one of the most promising leaders among Spartans, and Dr. Halsey considered him the best candidate in the entire program. His aspiration to win and his care of his teammates eventually helped him gain the position of squad leader. In years to come, many Spartan fireteams emerged with their own leaders. John took command of Blue Team, though he kept his commander role for the whole SPARTAN-II company. During Operation: SILENT STORM, John so greatly impressed Colonel Marmon Crowther that the Colonel, who had previously expressed doubts about the Spartans, promoted John to the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer from the rank of Petty Officer First Class, a previously unheard of three-rank bump. However, Crowther recognized that John's inexperience left John having trouble differentiating between being a commander and a leader and gave the young Spartan advice that he would take to heart. [135] As with all Spartans, John strives to win at any situation, at all costs. Although the drive to win was ingrained to the Spartans as part of their indoctrination, John appears to have possessed such an inclination even prior to his conscription; as a child, he would win at any game he played, including chess, gravball or King of the Hill. [18] He is extremely determined to complete any mission at hand, and often disregards his personal safety to do so. Maître principal is the most correct translation for the rank of "Master Chief Petty Officer" in French, though it was never used. Kelly-087: " Where to this time?" John-117: " Anywhere we're needed." — John-117 informing Blue team about their next assignment [5] On the following day, the majority of the Spartan-IIs were deployed to protect the generators which powered Reach's twenty orbital defense platforms. John, with Linda and James, was sent to Gamma Station to destroy an unsecured navigation database onboard the Prowler UNSC Circumference. If the Covenant obtained the database, they would discover the location of every human world, including Earth. The NAV database was destroyed, but Linda and James were ambushed by Covenant Sangheili. John fought one such Sangheili in close quarters combat, killing the alien before he could compromise the mission. The rest of John's team was not so fortunate; James was lost in space and Linda was critically wounded during the fighting. John saved four 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 and later fled Reach, and, following the Cole Protocol, jumped into slipspace. With coordinates discovered by Cortana thanks to the Sigma Octanus artifact, and in the hopes of leading the Covenant away from Earth, John would soon find himself involved in the most critical battle of the war to date.

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The final mission of the war for John, 'Vadam, and Cortana was to destroy the Flood forever by activating the replacement Installation 04. The three landed on the Halo, discovering that the Gravemind had survived High Charity's destruction and was already trying to rebuild itself on the Installation. Flood dispersal pods released combat forms against John and the Arbiter, forcing them to fight their way up to the Control Room, where the ring could be activated. During the battle, Sergeant Johnson arrived and assisted the Chief. [7]

John's surname is consistently unknown. However, because his redacted name in the Eridanus II census record takes up less space than the surnames of Rolla Hedegaard and Hirayama Tatsuyuki, it can be determined that his surname is less than nine letters long. A wax sculpture of the Master Chief is on display at Madame Tussauds in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. He is the first video game character to receive a Madame Tussaud's wax sculpture. [175]John and the rest of the children chosen for the SPARTAN-II program were brought to the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex, their new home for the next several years. There, Dr. Halsey informed the children of their new purpose: they were destined to become protectors of Earth and all its colonies. The next morning John discovered his service tag, stitched into his training uniform, and his new name: John-117. John began adjusting to his new life, training with other Spartans under Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez. On February 9, 2535 John and some of his fellow Spartans were deployed on the human colony of Jericho VII in Operation: FALLEN WALLS. Covenant forces landed on the colony, where they encountered tough resistance from UNSC forces above the planet and on the ground, resulting in a three-day long stalemate. On the ground, Blue Team's mission was to draw out the Covenant rear guard, so Red Team could slip behind their lines and plant a HAVOK tactical nuke, destroying the next Covenant ship that landed and dropped its shields. John led Blue Team in this engagement, killing hundreds of Unggoy troops in the process. Unfortunately, the UNSC fleet lost control of the space around Jericho VII. However, Captain De Blanc was able to evacuate the Spartans aboard UNSC Resolute before the enemy fleet began its glassing of the planet. John requested to watch the planet being glassed. He observed the assault for nearly an hour as Jericho VII was destroyed. [36]