Well, Fanfic authors and readers, this is where the series ends with this last Fanfic. I have to say, these last two years of writing this has been a great and major part of my time so far on Fanfic, but, as with everything, it has to end somewhere and with this Fanfic it will. Also, just to quickly note, if this is the first Fanfic out of the series anyone is reading, please make sure you have read (in order) Combat Evolved, Delta Halo, The Ark and It's the trailer, Those who Fought and Battle of Reach, also along with their trailers, and the trailer to Transsentient so as not to get confused with the plot of this story.
Although you would have seen the outline of the plot in the story blurb, I will retell it once more. The war is over and now Eve is struggling to adapt to this new life whilst chaos is erupting on Earth, which is under mostly militaristic rule now, even in the West as well as the East. However, she will have to go on one last adventure that will unlock a further secret that will cover how the Forerunner race came into being, their earliest creations and even the creation of the Flood. It will also determine the fate of the galaxy in this last adventure Eve must go on to save not only herself but her friends and all sentient life as well. Some OC's
Well, let's begin this final journey.
Note: I do not own Halo or Wall.E
2557AD, the present year of the Christian calendar after the death of Christ, in the Christian view, over two and half thousand years ago and over two to three million years since the first Humans had evolved. It has always been believed that in the future, Humanity would be a united race, spread out across the stars, no war between each other and everyone, at least in some sense, being equal. By this point, as many from the past believed, the future ancestors were to be technologically advanced and society much different from what it had been hundreds of years before, leaving behind all of the squalor and violence that had for so long plagued Humanity.
Oh, how wrong they were.
From the earliest days of their species, Humanity had been living in small tribes across remote areas of the world, leaving a marginal existence, completely unaware of what they would advance to one day. Then around the apparent death of Christ, Humanity had become a collection of civilizations, many of which were quite advanced, at least for their period or where they were in the world anyway, and ruled over all parts of the Earth. From the tribes of Africa to the emerging kingdoms of Rome in Europe, to the dynasties of China, Korea and Japan to the Mayas of the Americas, man was the dominant life form on the planet. From then on, however, as he had done many times before, he began to develop an insatiable appetite for advancement in technology, both physically, but also mentally as well.
Since then, as Humanity progressed technologically, more civilizations followed suite. Whilst new governments and religions were formed before and after the start of the Christian calendar, society changed with new discoveries in social order, class system and how to entertain one another. Humanity was quenching It's everlasting hunger for advancement, but with every new discovery, either of technology or for society, they wanted more and more and this continued right up to the first years of the 3rd millennium.
Unfortunately, with all these advancements for society and technology, many were used for one thing that was extremely common amongst all Humans on Earth; War. Ever since their first days, Humanity began to fight itself. First it was tribal warfare, then city state warfare between the Athenians and Romans and Egyptians. Then, it degenerated further to religious warfare with the Crusades, the war of the Americas, which was also for conquest and plunder, and what would lead up to the War on Terror. Then, the very motive of war decreased further from territory or plunder to extermination and the way/reasons it was fought changed as well. From religious warfare, it became racial, the most notable of this type being WW2 with the rise of the Nazis party that would eventually lead to the full scale extermination of those they deemed to be 'sub-Human' or even 'non-Human' and with the Japanese expansion from their home islands into the Pacific. Even from here on, the very way in which war was to be fought changed when two atomic bombs were detonated over Japan, thus marking the beginning of the Nuclear Age.
Since then, Humanity, despite being united in the UN, a global organisation of countries that struggled to stand by what it fought for from the very first days onwards, continued to fight itself despite the horrors of the first fifty years of the twentieth century, and all of it was over at least one the reasons mentioned above. There was Korea, a war for communist and capitalist territory, then Vietnam, another war of territory for the two superpower governments, then conflicts in Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East, all for either religion, territory or racism, and then, following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the so called resurgence of the 'War between Faiths', as it later became known in the last few decades of the twenty first century and the centuries following, when the Gulf Wars erupted and the eventual War on Terror.
Humanity did not get any better after this. In fact, their will to destroy grew more and more ferocious and began to affect not just the natural side, but the very cultural, economic and political sides of Humanity that their society was founded upon.
First, there was the debt crisis in 2008 following through to 2012 when final economic collapse came. Attempts for countries, notably the West, to end this did not have the results they hoped. Iraq had not solved it in 2003 and now neither had Libya in 2011 or Iran the following year. The American and EU resolutions for solving their debt rose and fell many times until late 2012 when the final collapse in November plunged the world into a depression that made the 1929 Wall Street Crash look miniscule, bringing warmth and food shortages to many and causing many businesses and banks to go bust, leaving millions all over the world in poverty even in countries that had for so long been deemed to be places where anyone could start a new life.
As well as economic crises', politics also affected many nations, notably Russia, Greece and the uprisings in the Arab world when changes in the governmental elections brought violence on an unprecedented scale to them. Very quickly, this began to spread everywhere else across the world when new governments bent on this so called 'freedom' theory arose in the Middle East, Europe, America and Asia rose to power and ended up doing little good for their people.
For a while it just seemed that nothing was going right for Humanity. As well as economic collapse and political struggles, the very planet around them began to die as well with what they were doing. Oil was being used up at a faster rate, as was coal and natural gas, the polar caps were still melting, global temperatures were rising and eventually environmental disasters were taking place across the globe such as the blazes raging in Colorado, followed by a heat wave in other parts of the country, earthquakes in Peru, a furthering of the drought on the Horn of Africa, torrential rain in India and Bangladesh and winter storms in Canada and the northern parts of Europe. Nature was striking Humanity as if it were taking revenge for all the years of destruction they had wreaked onto the environment. All of this added up to the problems faced by the leaders of the nations of the world but few could be able to do much against natural problems as well as their own man-made difficulties.
Then, to top it all up, as many feared with the so called doomsday phenomena in 2012, war broke out in November after a dispute in the Middle East and very quickly, the Human will to fight erupted like a supernova and the long feared WW3, also known as the war between East and West, the war that many believed would erupt only years after the end of WW2, finally came. Though, thankfully, the nations of the world had decided to never use nuclear weapons for they knew that if they did, not only would they be destroyed, but they would end up almost certainly reducing Humanity back to the tribal status it had once been many thousands of years before. Although the decision not to use nuclear weapons would not stop the war, at least those not involved could breathe a sigh of relief that they would not be faced with a nuclear holocaust that this WW3 was interpreted to unleash when it happened.
Eventually, after eight years, the war finally ended in 2020, with the death toll estimated to be around 35-40 million, but those who had not died were to face a further deterioration of society. The war had used up a huge amount of reserves of natural resources, destroyed large swathes of land that would take decades to recover, accelerated the declining of the Earth's environmental system and left untold hundreds of millions homeless. Literally, society had collapsed in many areas of the world. Everything had failed to work and at the end of the war, the UN officially ended, beginning the so called, as many historians and people now in the twenty sixth century called it, 'Divided Era'. For ten years, it was literally every country for itself and conflict still continued in some parts of the world, particularly those where WW3 had hit them hard.
Then, in 2035, a man named Shelby Forthright, head of the, at the time, small business of BnL, probably the first businesses ever that ever really did work for Human equality everywhere, and his workers came up with the first ever rocket natural fuel source. Though extremely risky, they hoped to try it out with Humanity's rebuilding space programme, mostly destroyed by the war. It was tried and it, to the surprise of many, it worked. From here on, BnL helped accelerate the use and improvement of natural fuel sources such as solar, kinetic, producing clean water and getting rid of the large amount of Human waste left over from the war and the many years of neglect before it. In fact, when the BnL company began to expand across all societies and eventually into global governments, Humanity was actually beginning to become united once more under them. For about twenty years, it helped get Humanity back on It's feet, it helped feed the population and find homes and jobs for the poor. What was more, it gave equality to everyone regardless of wealth and class systems were abolished, well for most of the world, so all could enjoy this sharing of everything. As for Shelby, he became a global celebrity overnight and was loved by billions all over the world for helping get Humanity on the way back to It's prosperous position it had decades before.
However, there soon came another problem for Humanity. In 1900, there had been one billion Humans on Earth. By 2012, there were seven billion and twenty years on from that; the Human population had almost doubled to around 13 billion, already starting to stretch the available land space for Humanity. Even with the start of creating new lands in places such as Osaka bay or Tokyo harbour or the harbours of San Francisco or new islands off the coast of Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and Pacific nations, which had a limited effect, there was still only so much room. What was more, despite the major introduction of renewable energy sources, the last of the oil and coal that was still needed for only small but important jobs such as using it as rocket fuel when solar of kinetic energy was unavailable or insufficient, was coming to It's end and so to fix both of these problems, the major world powers began a set of conferences in 2044, the BnL corporation was signed between America and Russia, both of who immediately began setting to work on the future colonization of nearby planets, putting the space programmes they had on hold. Fifteen years later, the new League of Europe starting nations of the UK, France and Germany signed the conference pact and joined the BnL League. Shortly after that China, India, Japan, Brazil and Israel joined, making the entire BnL League ten strong.
Then finally, in February 2075, when the world's population was at around 15.6 billion, the first colonization ships left for the moon with twelve million inhabitants and quickly established the first settlements there, also building a large solar atmospheric and artificial gravity generator that emanated a breathable atmosphere for a large amount of time and allowed the people on the planet to venture outside and see the wonders of space up close rather than from a screen or behind a window or dome. What was also beneficial for Humanity was that more and more countries had joined the BnL league, consisting mostly of almost all of North America, all of Europe, large parts of Asia and several countries from Africa and South America, further uniting Humanity under one banner.
Still, though, despite many moving to the planet, there was still a growing population on Earth, notably as it had been in the poorer or densely populated regions such as Africa, parts of North and South America, the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia. This was to grow to about 20 billion by the time of the start of the 22nd century and so plans were made to begin colonizing Mars and continue expanding the settlements on the Moon so the 17 million population of Humans could grow even more. The colonization of Mars was finished the same year and the sister planet of Earth became the home for eight million more Humans and it would continue to grow over the years.
However, it was also during these years that Humanity was dealt a devastating blow. In 2107, Shelby Forthright, aged 95, died of natural causes. Billions mourned his passing, knowing that he had done so much for Humanity in helping them rebuild, though this unnerved some governments and people across the world because he had been the head of BnL and so he was, alongside the world leaders, probably the most powerful man on the planet, but with his passing, there was question now not only to who would succeed him but to also what the future would hold for them.
It was something that they wished they had not asked.
As the decades rolled by and the Human population continued to grow, Humanity's oldest practice was beginning to resurface once more. Many were actually shocked when it began to happen as they believed that with BnL, the Human race was finally united forever, but Humanity's practice of war and destruction had merely hidden itself, gone dormant, waiting for when it would rise up again like some villainous cult or leader seeking to exact revenge on those against him/them.
As Humanity's population rose again, hitting an eye-popping 26.5 billion by 2150, living space on Earth, even with newly invented terraforming, was running out, so nomadic cities built on huge platforms ranging from a few hundred metres to several miles in size were constructed and placed on the seas. It was these, however, that were to begin to cause the problems for after the death of Shelby, the governmental factions that had been in the BnL League council began to fracture and break apart from each other, leading to tensions and disputes between them. With the introduction of these new cities, having been built by single countries rather than countries working together, and setting them in the seas, nations that held overseas territory or coastal boundaries began to grow aggressive and resistant towards them, eventually leading to the arms race of nations, almost, effectively, starting what 26th century historians nicknamed the 'Second Cold War' and arising the very same fear of another global war that the first Cold War just two hundred odd years earlier had started. It was among this that the populations of Mars and the Moon began to grow with people fleeing the planet, hoping that the colonies would provide sanctuary from any fighting that might break out on Earth. Alas, though, even these colonies were not safe. Among here, more disputes began to break out between groups, each blaming the other for their leader's on Earth's actions. As a result, the BnL UN armies began to construct military space stations over the planets, easing the tension slightly but not removing it.
But the problem did not stop there. Fifty years later in 2200, the tension on Earth had ceased and many of the refugees began to return home, but it estimated here, during a short lull in the returning of refugees from the colonies, that there were now 32 billion Humans on Earth, not including the population of the present colonies (to which there would be about 32.4 billion Humans altogether out of the species). It was too much for the Earth to handle, even with the use of underwater cities and the creation of habitable zones on parts of Earth that had once been inhospitable to Man. BnL, therefore, had decided to take the initiative once again by convincing, though this time with more reluctance, that the world leaders had to work together again, just as they had done under Shelby, to solve this problem quickly and prevent any global collapse from breaking out from overpopulation.
And so, this was done in the first twenty five years of the 23rd century. Whilst the construction of space and military research facilities were built on Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars, colonization and terraforming ships were sent out to the planets further out into the solar system, changing the surface of planets such as Carme and Rhea, making them suitable for colonization, as well as moving some of the population to several orbital space stations. This did create a huge so called 'Peace era', when there was a decrease in disputes on Earth, and hundreds of millions quickly flocked to these new territories, finally easing Earth greatly of the swelling Human population for the first time, lowering it to about 22.5 billion by the end of the major emigration to these new zones of colonization.
But, and there was always a 'but', it could not last, and this time it did not for much longer than it had before.
During the first months of 2212, whilst BnL were busy with the construction of settlements on the newly terra-formed planet Io, several terrorist organisations, extremely reluctant of the domination BnL had over the politics, as well as the society, of the world began to spring up on Earth. What was more, some BnL nations that were still ridden with some cases of corruption and violence towards their people, were supportive of these terrorist groups and the more powerful BnL countries decided to seize the opportunity to lead a coalition against these nations that they called 'aggressive' and 'tyrannical', reminiscing the way in which powerful countries of the 21st century had been using the UN for their own ambitions. Quickly tensions began to rise all over the Earth as well as on the colonies over this act, but this was just the first of a series.
Although the fighting was quick on Earth, several of the top leaders being hunted by the leading BnL nations quickly fled into space and to the colonies. As usual, the BnL armies gave chase and the millions of people that had left Earth for the colonies quickly began to flee back to their home planet, knowing that the war was likely to ravage the newly colonized worlds, swelling the planets population to an unprecedented 36.3 billion (almost the entire Human population, which was about 36.8 billion at this time). This time it was far too much for Earth to take and so many people had to be sent back into space, mostly to the moon, Mars or to Phobos and Deimos. Some even went to the BnL military orbital defence platforms hovering over the Earth, where they would all wait, along with the other evacuees, for another five years until 2217 when the last of the terrorist leaders had been hunted down and killed, finally allowing the many billions to leave for their home planets again, but this was not to be the last time for Humanity to begin fighting each other once again.
For the next thirty years or so, as the bustling cities on the moon and Mars began to expand to contend with the rapid growing population, tensions still rose on Earth between the countries there. Corruption and economic collapse in some parts of the world was to bring social instability to the people of those parts of the Earth. Eventually, the threat of war was to resurface again when in 2275, as the Human population of Earth had increased through refugees once more, an asteroid mining scuffle erupted between the leaders of Mars and the coalition planets of Io and Carme. BnL had stepped in once more to prevent fighting from breaking out, but this time it was absolutely hopeless and a full blown conflict erupted between the two sides that was to last for four years, leaving an estimated 45 million dead or missing and an untold number of millions more wounded and scarred before a truce was signed in 2279. After that, BnL took control of all military forces on the colonies, hoping that this would prevent any more conflicts from arising and the people of these planets were returned to them to begin rebuilding their shattered lives, but the fear of another war breaking out lingered in the minds of everyone and there was no telling when the next one would be.
Then, in the early parts of 2299, a second solar system was discovered far beyond Pluto. What was more; it had many planets within it, several that were habitable. Almost as soon as it was discovered, the plans to begin moving billions to this new solar system were put into place and they were started the following year, the start of the so called 'Colonization Age/Era' that 26th century historians liked to name it as. Within a matter of about sixty years, many major planets had been colonized in this solar system that was given the name Niobe Aino, notable among them was the 'Second Earth' known as Takra because of It's mostly Earth-like appearance even though it was just under twice the size of Jupiter, but it had been given a breathable atmosphere and a global artificial gravitational pull so as not to affect the other planets in the solar system as well as the people on Takra.
Within about two hundred years of the starting of the colonization of the Niobe Aino system, almost every planet here had been colonized. It was in 2515 when the newly named UNSC, given the name by the head of BnL to be a United Nations Space Army, claimed ownership over the planet of Reach, one that was to become the central hub of the UNSC in the Niobe Aino system and the second out of all the other colonized planets, being only just behind the Earth. This UNSC was quickly set on the right path to bringing stability to all the worlds and setting out great plans to build mighty fleets of military spaceships. It was the height of 'Humanity's United Golden Age', or HUGA period as it was referred to in the later parts of the 26th century after the war, which coincided with the Colonization period.
However, there was always one question that Humanity had been fascinated/fearful/sceptical about since they first went into space in 1957 many centuries ago. Was Humanity alone? Ever since this theory arose in the 1950s after the end of the Second World War and during the rise of the Cold War, they had always been searching the stars for answers, but had found nothing at all. Then when the Colonization of other planets began to occur, scientists hoped that life would be discovered on other planets, but it was not so. The moon and Mars were both empty, asteroids were also scarce of any life, even the ice planet Europa when the thick ice that covered the planet's surface was broken and the huge water world that was believed to be under it was discovered, there was absolutely nothing within it. So the search was given up in the home solar system of Humanity and began again in the Niobe Aino system, but even there nothing turned up. Every planet was scoured and searched, but nothing was found by the time the search began to grind to a halt in the first two years of the 2550s. It looked like nothing was out there, but still some scientists never gave up trying and really wished that one day they would come into contact with a different species out there among the galaxy.
Unfortunately, they always say that wishing would have severe consequences for you and those around you and in the first few days of March 2551, that wish came true, only in the way that Humanity feared and hoped would never happen.
What they came into contact with was actually a coalition of alien races made of what was better known as Grunts, Jackals, Elites, Drones, Hunters, Brutes and led by a race of Prophets, notably the top three called Mercy, Regret and the leader Truth. These prophets had believed Humanity to be an affront to their gods, known better as Forerunners, even though Humanity were actually linked to the Forerunners themselves, and launched a holy war against them. For the next year, Humanity was thrown into an intergalactic conflict that killed billions and left the Niobe Aino solar system almost completely destroyed, Reach being the only planet left to stand in the path of the Covenant.
These defeats were a great shock for Humanity for they had been expected to win. After all, they had the advantage of fighting on home territory and just the very belief that despite the Covenant being advanced, they could triumph over them, but it was not to be. It was not going to be like in the films that had been made over the centuries with the extra-terrestrials coming down, destroying everything and everyone and pushing Humanity to the brink of extinction or defeat and then some last minute discovery or hero would come and save the Earth from annihilation, no. This time, Humanity really did look like they would lose for if Reach fell then the discovery of Humanity's home solar system, meaning the discovery of Earth, would be next and even though Humanity would be on familiar territory if that was to happen, the losses they had sustained were tremendous and any hope to win the war would be gone.
Then, the use of the Dorvask material, mined on several planets colonized by Humanity, and morphing it into bodysuits with shields allowed Humanity to create a special taskforce of soldiers to enable them to fight the Covenant and, hopefully, turn the tide of the war. However, two days before the mission was to begin, the Covenant attacked Reach and slaughtered the taskforce, leaving only one woman member of the taskforce, by the name of Evelyn Knight, or Eve for short, alive and straggling on the UNSC ship, the Axiom, as it attempted to lure the Covenant fleet away from Earth.
What happened next was to really turn the tide of the war over the next few weeks. Evelyn Knight and those on board the ship discovered a ring world called Halo with the power to destroy all life in the galaxy. It was also here that they would discover the dark and deadly purpose of Halo and how it came into being. It was this adventure that began here which would lead her and many others all the way from Halo to Earth and then back to a second Halo and then to Earth once more and then the Ark outside the Milky Way where the war finally came to an end, though it very nearly destroyed Humanity completely and sent them careering wildly on trying to survive.
The Covenant, meanwhile, had been going through their major dangers at this time. The long and heavy rivalry between the Elites and the Brutes, the two dominant races in the Covenant, finally boiled over when Regret had been killed on Delta Halo by Eve, resulting in the changing of the prophets guard from the Elites to the Brutes and the initiation of Truths' long devised plan to eradicate the Elites from the Covenant and replace the entire coalition under the leadership of the Brutes. In turn, the Elites defected to the Humans, having finally realised the danger their prophets had been leading them into, and aided Eve and the UNSC in finally defeating Truth and then destroying the threat from the feared parasitic race that the Halo array had been made to keep isolated from the rest of the universe.
Eventually, in April 2552, Eve returned home with the other survivors and said her farewell to the Elites and a special friend of hers called Wally, or 343 Guilty Spark as he was normally known as he had been the monitor of the first Halo that Eve had landed on before she destroyed it. He had to depart to aid in battling the Brutes on the Elites' home world of Sanghelios, leaving Eve behind to amend herself in adapting to this new world, hoping for a better future.
But, it was not that simple. Bloodshed had been spilled greatly over the past year in the war with the Covenant, resulting in a death toll of somewhere between 55-63 billion Humans, leaving about 4.2 billion left on Earth and the few surviving outposts in the home system of the Human race, but it was not to end there. In the months following the end of the war, several disputes had broken out across Earth over the cause in which society was struggling to pull itself back together. It was only under the leadership of President Samuel Johnson, the head of BnL at the time, who kept Humanity together and enabled it to gradually begin working back to recovery.
However, in 2554, to the shock of the entire world, Samuel died of severe cancer, thus ending the revival of BnL after the end of the war but also bringing a halt to the very reconstruction of society. In fact, what was to happen next following his death over the years was to destroy it further. Violence erupted onto the streets of many of the major cities of the world, many of which were badly destroyed in the war with the Covenant when they attacked Earth, forcing the UNSC to now be used as a global police force once more, but not long after this violence began to spread, terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, Zionist Front and the Christian fundamentalists, all claiming to have religious word from God as they had all done before, all groups thought to have died out centuries before, now suddenly re-emerged and launched a war of attrition against one another and the societies of their enemies, leaving fear struck into the hearts of even the most heavily protected nations once more as it had done centuries earlier.
What was more, as the years slowly rolled past, the UNSC, once united fully under the banner of Humanity in the war against the Covenant, was now beginning to split. The ODST's once the shock troopers and the toughest the UNSC could offer behind the special taskforce now became more of a secret police and an elite private army for different leaders or groups around the world. The regular army of the UNSC either disbanded or broke apart into several factions, some hoping to bring an end to the chaos on Earth, others to, or sometimes brainwashed to, bring their own ends and needs onto Humanity. As a result, almost certain civil war had broken out in some areas. Even the few remaining orbital space platforms the UNSC had built and so valiantly defended during the war were now feared by people on the ground for in case they were to be used, something that was unlikely, but always useful to spread a rumour about when need be.
That was the sad thing about Humanity in the beginning of the second half of the 26th century. As usual with the Human race, it had arisen out of the period of war and suffering, only to descend back into the darkness of the abyss once more like the species they had been for so long since they could first walk over many thousands of years ago.
As for the surviving veterans of the war, very few wished to get involved in these events circulating on Earth now, uncaring of what would happen, and, impossible as it may seem, Eve was one of them.