The Life

The Life is a Halo Fan Fiction dealing with the life of one Francisco Castillo, better known as Frank. It starts off with Frank joining the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers and making it through boot camp. After he's done with he is deployed to fight the Covenant. His first mission ends up going not so well with Frank and his team having to make an emergency orbital jump to leave their crashing ship. Frank is the only survivor of his squad.

It gets worse

Soon after Frank meets Pavel Klaus, whom he becomes fast friends with. From that point on the duo starts earning their paycheck and kicking alien ass. The story is, paraphrasing the author, what you would get if you grabbed an extra from the Halo series and gave him the spotlight in a television series as opposed to a film. It has dealt with over nine years worth of war in more than 100 chapters. It's a pretty humorous fan fiction with very well-done action sequences that don't usually go over the top. Written fairly realistically (as realistically as you can get with Science Fiction) it gives a different perspective on the Halo Universe.

It can be found here.

"Pavel: ] was the girl, liked to be called ].
 * Alien Invasion: What'd you expect?
 * Author Appeal: Why else would there be so many attractive female characters in the cast?
 * Awesome McCoolname: Strongly averted when it comes to the call signs of the main characters. Grass, Caboose, and Bumblebee don't really inspire terror when you hear them, Snark and Angel aren't very intimidating either. The only cool-sounding call sign is Scarecrow. In a funny case of this, most of the characters have regular-sounding names (except for Arcangelo Lamberti), but the ships have some incredibly awesome names such as:
 * UNSC 'Inconvenience' the ship were the main characters live and are deployed on.
 * UNSC 'Disproportionate Retribution'
 * UNSC 'Count Me In'
 * Badass Bandolier: Caboose wears those.
 * Bonus points for having shotgun shells on them.
 * Badass Bystander: Astrid, the girl from Chapter 102 runs across the battlefield to get help for her injured mother.
 * Crazy Enough to Work: Chapter 81. Full Stop.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Chapter 81, mentioned above, involves doing an air drop on top of a tank with parachutes attached to it with Iron Man blasting through the main character's helmet speakers. You have to read it to understand the sheer awesomeness of the act.
 * Doorstopper: The story currently has over 550,000 words and counting. To put it into perspective, it's longer than the entire Lord of the Rings series.
 * Drill Sergeant Nasty: Gabuka.
 * Elites Are More Glamorous: Since the protagonist is an ODST this comes up sometimes.
 * Five Man Band
 * The Hero: Frank, obviously.
 * The Lancer: Pavel
 * The Smart Guy: Arcangelo "Angel" Lamberti. Although Camilla is probably the smartest member if the team Lamberti is the computer expert and gadgeteer.
 * The Big Guy: George Sutton, his call-sign, Scarecrow, says a lot. Robert "Bumblebee" Agnarsson also has some shades of this despite not being as physically intimidating has the advantage of being the squad member that carries the rocket launcher.
 * The Chick: Camilla "Grass" Seppa
 * Sixth Ranger: While not technically one, Grigori comes of as this at times, probably because Frank distrusts him.
 * Friendly Sniper: Snark
 * The Medic: Lockley is this.
 * Mildly Military: The UNSC Inconvenience is seriously lacking on discipline.
 * Military Brat: Frank grew up as one.
 * Mood Whiplash: Several filler chapters are humorous and soft. The action-heavy chapters are often Darker and Edgier. They still have some humor, but the change is sometimes a little bit sudden.
 * Oh Crap: Too often to keep count.
 * One Scene Wonder: The rocket launcher marine.
 * Only Sane Man: The way that Caboose behaves sometimes makes it seem like he believes himself to be that. He's not entirely wrong either.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: There have been a couple of instances were Frank realizes that he had written down something wrong by how the other character says it.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: There have been a couple of instances were Frank realizes that he had written down something wrong by how the other character says it.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: There have been a couple of instances were Frank realizes that he had written down something wrong by how the other character says it.

Frank: ? You mean.

Pavel: That's what I said."


 * Screw the War Were Partying: Any chapter that involves partying.
 * The Reason You Suck Speech: Frank gets called out by Commander Albaf on Chapter 107. It's not pretty.
 * The Squad: Reaper Squad
 * The Squadette: Camilla "Grass" Seppa
 * Trapped Behind Enemy Lines: Occasionally
 * The Unfair Sex: An 'inversion' when Pavel's girlfriend cheats on him, she is portrayed as a bitch. When he sets himself to sleep around with as many women as he can before actually breaking up with her Pavel is portrayed sympathetically.
 * Urban Warfare
 * Virtual Soundtrack: Used every now and then. Two examples that stand out are Iron Man by Black Sabbath and To Glory by Two Steps From Hell