Parisa

Lieutenant Parisa is a Company Grade officer of the UNSC Marine Corps who served during the Human-Covenant War. She was a childhood friend of the future SPARTAN-II and Master Chief Petty Officer, John-117.

Childhood
Even into her adult life, Parisa kept with her a picture of herself and John on a beach at Lake Gusev on their homeworld of Eridanus II; taken some two weeks before John was abducted into the SPARTAN-II program, as a lucky charm. She believed, like many others, that John had died not very long after the picture was taken. In fact, he was replaced with a flash clone to hide his disappearance, said clone dying soon after.

She had stated that after John saved her life from walking out into the lake too far, he promised to marry her and keep her safe. Years later she said that although it was silly and John was "dead", she intended to hold him to that promise.

Battle of Mombasa
During the Battle of Mombasa in October 2552, she was in command of First Platoon of Kilo Company, part of E2-BAG/1/7. She was coordinating the city's defense effort in a command post in a hotel next to Beria Plaza when John-117 arrived to the command post with a squad of Marines to assess the situation.

At the time, Parisa was holding the picture of herself and John as children. Just as John was about to tell the lieutenant to not bring personal items to a combat zone, he recognized the picture. Parisa, obviously not recognizing John because of his armor, explained the story behind the picture to him. Despite the sudden flood of memories, John couldn't bring himself to reveal who he was, knowing that doing so would be detrimental to his own morale and the morale of their soldiers, as well as being a massive security breach for ONI. Instead he maintained his stoic façade and the two of them began planning a counterattack to the Covenant.

Canon status
Palace Hotel is of debatable canonicity because it greatly contradicts the events, characters, and locations shown in the Halo 2 level Metropolis, on which the story is based. Parisa's unit from the short story (Kilo Company, E2-BAG/1/7) corresponds to A Company from Metropolis. In-game dialog suggests that Parisa may have canonically died before meeting the Master Chief, as A Company's lieutenant was put out of action before the Spartan's arrival.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * Palace Hotel