After endless traveling and countless dead ends, the search was over. Agent Carolina and Church found the man they had been hunting, the Director of Project Freelancer. They entered the old storage facility where it was revealed that he never left. They were just a couple rooms away from taking their revenge. But there was one big obstacle: an army of robot replicas of Carolina's greatest rival, Tex.

The odds were against the cyan Freelancer. Even with Church providing her tactical support, Carolina could only fight off so much. Eventually, the numbers got the best of her. She had been beaten to the ground where she began to fall into despair. She was just about ready to face her fate when…

"NINE POINTS, YOU DIRTY SKANKS!" Donut shouted as he threw three sticky bombs at a few of the Tex robots. Carolina leaped out of the way right when they detonated, where she met up with Washington, the Reds and Blues, Jena Isa, and Strike.

"What are you doing here?" Carolina asked.

"I told you," Washington said, "They're not so bad once you get to know them."

"And here, I thought this wasn't your fight." Church said.

"Come on. Overwhelming odds with little to no chance of success?" Sarge asked. "How can we resist?"

"Besides, if you had told me there'd be robots involved, I'd join you in a heartbeat." Strike said. "Taking down dirty clankers is what I was bred for."

"You got a problem with that, Church?" Tucker asked.

"Guys… I'm an asshole." Church admitted. "I freely say that. And I'll kindly take any and all smart-ass remarks once this is over. But I would like to take the time to point out that we are standing in the middle of a room surrounded by several Freelancer robots ready to kick our butts."

"So… cheesy forgiveness speech later?" Tucker asked.

"Yeah. Sounds good to me." Sarge said.

"May the Force be with us all." Jena said.

"Lock and load, people." Carolina said.

The Reds and Blues readied their weapons, especially Grif with his brute shot, Sarge with his shotgun, and Tucker with his alien sword. At the same time, Strike pulled out his blaster and Jena pulled out her blue lightsaber posing for the big showdown.

"Hey, Jena," Church said, "I know you said that anger leads to suffering or something like that, but I kinda need Caboose to get mad."

"I'm fine with that." Jena said.

"You heard her, Caboose." Church said. "Get angry."

"Okay… but I don't remember how to do that."

"I do." Church said.

All of a sudden, Church inserted himself within Caboose's helmet. Immediately after that, Caboose ran right into the army of Tex robots knocking back all in his path.

"MY NAME IS MICHAEL J. CABOOSE," he shouted as he began bludgeoning and tossing every robot that ever approached him. "AND I… HATE… TAXES!"

"It's 'Texas', you idiot!" Grif corrected.

"THAT TOO!" Caboose added.

"Come on! It's time to go!" Washington ordered charging with the others.

"FOR OUR ANCESTORS' ANCESTORS! ATTACK!" Sarge commanded

The Reds and Blues fired their weapons at each robot that went against them. Washington managed to save Donut from a near-fatal encounter with one of them while Tucker used his sword to slash at others. Carolina saved Grif from being struck in his testicles, but they were struck the second time around.

"Not again!" Grif yelled in groaning pain.

"Oh, come on! You had to see that coming!" Tucker stated.

Strike used his Republic military training to keep all the Tex robots at blaster length. Meanwhile, whenever a robot tried to attack Jena, she dodged it and countered with a lightsaber strike that cut them in half. Whenever she about to be grouped up, she used the Force to push them back.

After a few minutes of fighting, the robots had their enemies fighting back to back.

"There's too many of them!" Simmons shouted.

"Epsilon," Wash said, "Do you remember how the Alpha was able to beat the Meta?"

"Yeah, but that was one guy, not a thousand!"

"There's only one Tex, and Church, nobody knows her like you do."

Church sighed before proceeding. "All right. Everyone, stay back. This is going to be a bit… personal."

Suddenly, a bright light flashed from Church and filled up the room. It just as quickly darkened returning Church to normal. All the Tex robots stopped attacking. Instead, they glitched around until they all dropped to the floor.

"What did you do?" Jena asked.

"I… I got to say goodbye. Let's leave it at that." Church answered.

"You know, you could have said that before I got hit in the nuts by about 20 of them at once!" Grif complained.

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" Tucker mocked.

"Nice job, Church." Sarge congratulated. "I guess, sometimes, little fairies really do make wishes come true!"

"I could've told you that." Donut said.

"So… is it over?" Strike asked.

"There's still the Director." Washington said.

"No." Church said. "What comes next… Carolina and I need to do on our own." He and his partner walked up to the hallway where the office was leaving their friends alone.

Jena approached one of the fallen Tex robots and examined it. Strike was curious. "What's up, sunshine?"

"There's… something about these droids." Jena said. "Something… sad. Wash, what exactly is the Director's story?"

Washington sighed. "It started at the war between the humans of Earth and an alien race called the Covenant. The Director was a scientist who worked for the UNSC who was married to a soldier. One day, he received unfortunate news that his wife died. He… was heartbroken, becoming bitter and closing off the rest of the world. That's certainly how he was like when he began Project Freelancer, which was meant to research soldiers with AI. However, he was only legally allowed one, and he needed more to conduct his experiments. That AI he got was Alpha, and he mentally tortured him into fragmenting his individual personalities which could be harvested into new AI's. That turned out to be a failure. One of the AI's manipulated the soldier he was with into turning on Project Freelancer and hunting down every AI fragment so it could become whole again. Project Freelancer sent agents like me to try to cover up their actions, but we were too late. The UNSC eventually managed to uncover what the Director's been planning and began to hunt him down, but he was always good at covering his tracks. Now, here we are."

"And what about these robots?" Jena asked.

"They were modeled after Tex, another AI fragment which was based on the Director's late wife, Allison." Washington said. "Carolina used to be the number one Freelancer, but when Tex was born, the Director pushed her up to the top, despite the failures she could bring."

"Failures?"

"The Alpha was based on the Director's mind, and since Tex is based on his wife who died, that's all she was meant to do, fail. She may have Allison's strength and personality, but as long as the Director only remembered her by how she died, that's always been Tex's destiny, no matter what."

"Wow." Tucker said. "Heavy stuff, dude."

"Why'd you want to know, kid?" Strike asked.

"Because now, I finally realized what this was all about." Jena said. "Seeing the sadness coming from the Tex husks, all I could feel is the Director's grief. This whole thing—Project Freelancer, the Ais, the Reds and Blues—were all made because he was mourning his late wife and couldn't let go."

"That's real nice," Grif said, "But it was still uncool for him to treat us so poorly."

Just then, Carolina and Church exited the office side by side. They didn't make a sound.

"What happened?" Strike asked. "What did you do?"

"…I got closure." Carolina said. "It's over now."

"All right." Strike said. "So, what do we do now?"

"Well, I imagine we should probably go explain the Epsilon heist with the UNSC." Church said. "Otherwise, we'll never be able to go back home."

"But we stole military property." Simmons said.

"And don't forget, Strike and I are still fugitives because of the Empire." Jena said.

"Don't worry." Church said. "I imagine that as soon as we bring them all they need to wrap up the Freelancer incident, including the location of this facility, we can all have a pardon and protection."

"Really?" Strike asked.

"It's the least they could do." Church said.

And he was right. Upon heading to the nearest UNSC outpost, the Reds and Blues presented their explanations about Project Freelancer. In light of this evidence, the UNSC Oversight Chairman, Malcolm Hargrove, gave them all a full pardon and protection from the Empire. Now, they could all go home… or so you'd think.

During the transport on a large UNSC cruiser, Jena and Strike were approached by Caboose who carried a metal sphere in his hand. Jena gazed at in and chuckled in surprise.

"I don't believe it." Jena said. "Caboose, where did you get this?"

"In the box of guns and stuff." Caboose said.

"What is that?" Strike asked.

"This is a Jedi exercise tool." Jena said pressing a button on the side. It then hovered in front of everyone. "It fires little blasts that we're meant to block with our lightsabers. Experienced users practice with their eyes covered using the Force to guide them. I'll show you." She readied her lightsaber and closed her eyes.

"Well, this should be good." Strike said.

"Um…" Caboose started to say, "Isn't it a bit… dangerous… You know, since you said there's a gun on the floating ball thing?"

"Relax. It's a minor blast." Jena assured motioning her signature weapon with the sphere. "It'll sting if it hits, but it's not going to maim me, much less kill me. Just watch the magic happen."

Then, the sphere started shooting. With her eyes closed, Jena blocked each blast with her blue saber. Feeling a need to show off, Jena started spinning the lightsaber around behind her… which turned into a mistake. She opened her eyes when she heard something electronic break. She turned around seeing her saber impaling an electronic panel on the wall.

"Oops." Strike said.

"Here's my advice," Caboose said, "Say 'Tucker did it'."

Jena chuckled nervously putting her lightsaber away. She was uncertain of what would happen next. "That… That wasn't important, right?"

That's when the lights flashed red and the alarm sounded.

Author's Note: And so ends the Freelancer saga, which only lasted about four chapters. But don't worry, the Chorus saga is when the plot really picks up. I promise you that. Any and all comments are welcome.