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MoCM: Chapter 13

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Chapter 13: The Beginning of the End (Amongst Other Cliches)

“WHAT DID YOU DO WITH BIG BIRD?!” MacMillan roared at the Chief as he discarded his black pilot’s jumpsuit.

The Chief stood silent, his assault rifle drawn and aimed dead at MacMillan, who stood with his weapon up as well.

“Like, are you really the Chief? :O!” Suzy exclaimed, clamoring towards the Master Chief, who seemed to ignore her at first, but turned his head towards her slowly.

“Hello, Suzy. He turned you down, didn’t he?” he nodded towards the Arbiter, who didn’t flinch, but his eyes were full of a sudden realization.

“How do you—” MacMillan began, then it hit him, too. “Big Bird?” he asked.

“Nice work, MacMillan,” the Chief began, seeming to be mounting to a long monologue. “It’s time to end this little masquerade. There ain’t no Big Bird, kid. Never was. Fella in my line of work takes on a variety of aliases. Hell, once I was even a Brute for six months. But you’ve been a sport, so I guess I owe you a little honest. Name’s John… ummm… Spartan,” the Chief rumbled slowly, evilly. He continued.

“I gotta say, I had a lot of military partners in my life… but you… course, the fact that you were hungry like a dog for honor when I offered to help you kill everyone in the Halo games might have had something to do with it. But still… listen, I’m gonna run the video game industry tits to toes when you’re done. You’ve been a pal, Captain, but you know what they say: never mix guns and booze.”

The Arbiter and MacMillan exchanged a confused look before the Chief continued.

“Thanks for everything, Captain. Don’t forget to say hi to Johnson for me.”

“Well, that’s a bit of a problem,” MacMillan said slowly, effectually. “You haven’t killed me yet, lad, and it’s time you paid up for your betrayal. This is where you die.”

With that, MacMillan opened up on the Chief, spraying him with a hail of rifle rounds. Several connected, weakening his shields, but the Spartan leapt behind a rock, avoiding the Arbiter’s corresponding plasma fire. MacMillan primed a frag grenade even as he hurled a screaming Suzy out of the firefight. After throwing the grenade towards the rock, he turned to Suzy.

“Lass, get into the Sea Knight! Hide! And whatever you do, do not try to fly it and help out!” he ordered sternly.

“Like, ok… :( ” Suzy responded sadly as, with shoulders hunched and head low, she marched into the helicopter.

MacMillan had a feeling his words were going to go at least partially unheeded at some point. But he didn’t have the time to secure Suzy or the helicopter in a more effective manner, and so returned his attention to where the Arbiter and Chief were in a firefight amongst a group of rocks, plasma and bullets flying everywhere.

MacMillan charged forward to the Arbiter’s position on the exterior of the rock maze, firing several shots towards where it looked like the Chief was hiding.

“The demon hides amongst the rocks, he will try to draw us in,” the Arbiter assessed fervently between bursts of fire.

“I know, lad, but what’re we gonna do? He’s got a superior position there, and his flanks are well cov—” MacMillan stopped mid-sentence and both heroes watched in shock as, for no apparent reason, the Chief raced out of the rock maze and down a slope to their right, slowing his sprint slightly to fire off a spray of rounds, several of which were caught by the Arbiter’s energy shields.

Though the Arbiter and MacMillan returned fire, they landed no shots. Instead, the Master Chief tripped for absolutely no reason and fell into the sand. At first, the heroes thought they had hit him, but he leapt back onto his feet and stumbled into another sprint, taking off for an odd cleft in the rocks.

“Lad looks like he’s running on ice!” MacMillan shouted to the Arbiter as they leapt from their cover and gave chase, despite the Chief’s hundred yard lead.

“Look! In the sand!” the Arbiter pointed a plasma rifle at a small object the Chief had dropped as they neared the area where he had stumbled.

“Oh. No. He. Didn’t.” MacMillan hissed quietly, seeing his wonderful a bottle of brandy completely spent. The Chief was drunk.

As the duo neared the cleft the Chief had disappeared behind, a Brute Chopper came tearing out around the shadowy corner, piloted by none other than the Master Chief, who almost hit the Arbiter, the blade swiping at his energy shields and breaking them, leaving a small scar on his armor. MacMillan, following a small distance behind, had the speed and sense to snag a frag grenade from his sack, and throw it at the Chopper. Unfortunently, it was faster than he anticipated, and the grenade simply smacked the Chief in the visor, bouncing off and exploding in the sand when the Chopper was out of its range.

MacMillan shouldered his weapon and fired at the swerving and dodging Chopper (whether the maneuvering was due to the mental state of the driver or his intentions, the Captain wasn’t sure). He managed to land a trio of hits: two did nothing, but the third managed to hit one of the boosters on the side, disabling it and slowing the vehicle.

“Arbiter, we’re gonna hav—” he said as he turned around, but was stopped short as the Arbiter pulled up in a Mongoose right beside him.

“Get in! We can catch him!” the Arbiter shouted urgently. MacMillan mounted the rear of the vehicle, holding onto the bar with one hand and his rifle with the other.

“Let’s do this, lad won’t know what hit him!” MacMillan said as the Goose accelerated into the sandy dunes. The Chopper was still in sight, some two hundred yards off.

MacMillan breathed slowly as he steadied his rifle, snuggling the stock deep into his shoulder. He looked down the erratically-bouncing scope and saw the Chief, still swerving and clipping the occasional rock. [Don’t drive drunk, kids]

MacMillan fired several times, landing multiple hits on the body of the Chief. MacMillan saw his shields were down.

“Steady!” He shouted to his driver, lining up a shot, a final shot to end it. Just as he was about to fire, however, the Chief hit crested a huge hill, firing his one working booster, sending him flying into the air with a cloud of sand behind him. MacMillan took his shot regardless the poor conditions, and didn’t know whether it connected.

He took the opportunity to slip his clip out and load a new 20 round magazine. Just as the duo crested the hill, MacMillan saw a massive Forerunner stone-structure below, much of it buried in sand or collapsed to rubble. The Chief tore towards it, but MacMillan could barely see that his left arm appeared to not be on the controls. He evidently did land his last shot.

“Good… won’t be long now,” he thought, sensing the end was near as he lined up another trio of shots, hitting with all three and taking down his enemy’s shields again.

Suddenly, however, the Master Chief altered course, to another hill around the edge of the hole the structure sat in, the Chief crested the next hill before MacMillan could put the closer in the Spartan. Just as the duo reached the hill, however, they saw something they did not expect.

The Master Chief had righted his Chopper, swung it around and was heading right towards them along the edge of a slope steep enough to be called a cliff. Before MacMillan could say anything, the Arbiter took action.

And some action it was.

The Elite swerved the Mongoose, sending MacMillan’s vehicle off to the right and away from the cliff. The Arbiter did not follow, however, he leapt clean out of the Mongoose, launching himself six feet onto the side of the Chopper, swinging his massive hoof around to smash the Chief clean off of his Chopper and down the cliff, smashing into the sandy-rock and ceasing to move in any meaningful way. The Arbiter brought the Chopper around and down to the side of the cliff.

MacMillan, after taking the Mongoose’s driving seat, drove his vehicle down the opposite side of the cliff slowly to where the Chief lay. Both pulled up beside the Chief, who lay on the ground, propped up on one elbow.

“Though my mental functions degrade, you'll not defeat me!” the Chief began to rave. “My strength is not in intellect and will, but is in steel and fire! You hear me, MacMillan?! The Master Chief offers you nothing but ashes!”

MacMillan ignored the rant, and instead began to interrogate his subject.

“Oi, lad, I’ve got you figured out. But there’s just one thing that bugs me, Big Bird. Why did you let us kill all your friends and comrades?”

The Chief coughed several times before he answered. “Because they were in the way, too, just like you are…”

MacMillan nodded. He realized it now: he and Big Bird/Master Chief were no different. They all sought eternal glory and honor. The Chief was not a hero who fought for humanity, he was just another wannabe that MacMillan had to take out. Suddenly, things were just as simple as the day he had set out on his quest.

As MacMillan’s eyes scanned the area, ready for the end of his quest to destroy Halo. And something caught his attention: an enormous vehicle, with a crane, walls and ramps all about it, some three hundred yards away.

“Arbiter, wait here, I know how we’re going to finish this,” he said as he marched towards it.

The Arbiter nodded and watched the Chief splutter random non-sense. But suddenly, his head jerked up, and he saw the Sea Knight coming towards them. MacMillan saw it while he walked towards the vehicle, too.

“Oi, Suzy…” he hissed through gritted teeth as he watched the helicopter lose altitude rapidly, coming right towards him. MacMillan sprinted towards the large vehicle now, trying to get out of the way of the helicopter as it came tearing down into the sand. Right before it, hit, he caught sight of Suzy’s horrified face at the controls.

The helicopter slammed into the turf where MacMillan once stood, its blades slowing quickly as they chopped up the sand fruitlessly. MacMillan would normally have gone to help her out of her predicament, but wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment, and instead allowed the Arbiter to take the Captain’s normal role as her caretaker.

The Arbiter watched and, seeing MacMillan wasn’t going to help, marched towards the helicopter, feeling sure enough that the Chief wasn’t going anywhere. He heard the wailing, overdramatic screams from inside the cockpit, knowing that Suzy likely wasn’t in any danger or pain.

As he walked up to the shattered front windows, he looked inside at the now-prostrate Suzy, who had apparently passed out. While mumbling, he bent the metal bars aside to create a hole large enough to haul her out, then removed her.

“Oh, Arby, you saved me!” Suzy said as she just “happened” to wake up. The Arbiter quickly dropped her into the soft sand.

“Stay out of the way of the vehicle, human, the Captain is in it, and our quest is nearly completed,” he said coldly, marching back towards the Chief.

“Hey! I’m hurt! You need to carry me! >:(” she shouted angrily. Upon seeing he wasn’t coming back, she got to her feet and joined him by the Chief. MacMillan drove the Elephant around the wreckage of the helicopter slowly, moving slowly towards the Chief. MacMillan was lining up the treads with his enemy slowly and surely. The Arbiter took up a position on one side of the Chief, while a very angry Suzy took the other.

MacMillan’s Elephant rolled slowly, oh so slowly, towards where the incapacitated Chief lay in the sand. The Arbiter stood six feet from the Chief, arms crossed, face tight.

“You… Arbiter… he’s going to turn on you and kill you, too… You’ll steal his fame,” the now-sobering Chief pleaded with the Elite for aid.

“You do not understand, Demon. The Captain and I have come to an understanding. His respect for me, earned by fighting both each other and our mutual foes, has led him to believe that my glory is both acceptable and desirable. No plea a dying traitor can make will change that.”

The Chief turned slowly towards Suzy, who stood, dejectedly, on the other side of the Elephant’s path. Her teary stare at the Arbiter bore into him, but he ignored it icily.

The Chief turned to Suzy to beg her. “You’ve got to stop them… the Covenant will destroy humanity if you don’t! Suzy! Please!”

Suzy ignored him, until he said something that struck a chord.

“Suzy… he betrayed you.”

Suzy fixed her gaze on the Arbiter, who returned it only temporarily.

“You’re right,” she said, too softly for anyone to hear over the roar of the Elephant’s engines. But the Chief sensed it, even as the Elephant closed to within six feet of his legs.

“Suzy. I need a weapon,” he said, his hand reaching out towards her. After a moment’s hesitation, Suzy did something she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of: she whipped an M6D out of her belt and hurled it to the Chief.

The Arbiter didn’t have time to react: the Chief shot him almost instantly. As his body hit the ground, the faint, anguished roar of “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” coming from both MacMillan, who saw the Arbiter hit the sand, and the Chief, who was crushed under the Elephant’s treads.

“SUZZZZZZZZZZY!!!!!” MacMillan screamed as he tore out of the Elephant’s cockpit, leapt off of the top and descended on the Arbiter’s body, which lay mutely in the sand.

“Arbiter! Can you hear me, lad!?” MacMillan shouted as he took the Elite’s head in his hands and shook.

The alien didn’t respond. He was dead and already going cold. MacMillan did nothing for a couple of moments, staring at his friend’s corpse, trying to think of some way to honor the fallen hero. It only occurred to him after several minutes that Suzy was gone, as was the Mongoose. He saw the tracks going off into the north, away from the structure and this scene of death.

For once, MacMillan had no master plan. His mind’s incredible gears churned not. For MacMillan needed no thought nor logic:

He knew what he had to do.
What a tweest! :O
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