Disclaimer: I don't own Halo or any of these characters in this story.

Best of the Best

Chapter 22: The End

The Chief struggled in thinking of a situation. "Crono, Marle, Lucca, Samus, Vercetti, Johnson, get on the plane now!" The chief ordered. The six of them hopped onto the Pelican. The Chief, Payne and Raynor were still firing at the Sentinels. The chief turned to the two of them. "Get on the Pelican, I'm staying behind."

"No way, I'm staying behind." Raynor said, "I'm having far too much fun to go anywhere! Yeehaw!" He yelled, feeding his chaingun into another Sentinel.

"That's unacceptable. You need to get on the plane now." The Chief said.

"Yeah," Max started, "you too, Chief. I'll stay."

"No, you-"

"This is what I was meant to do. I know it. I need to stay behind. I have nothing left to live for, except this."

The Chief looked at Payne, and nodded his head. The chief remembered reading Max's bio. He turned to Raynor. "You heard him, let's get out of here."

"You will pay for this, Reclaimer!" 343 Guilty Spark shouted, as he was out of Sentinels, and buzzed off into the distance.

The Chief and Raynor hopped on the Pelican.

"What about Max?" Samus asked.

"He's staying behind..." The chief told her. "Let's move this thing, now!"

The pilot lifted off the alien surface and began to head out in the sky. Max looked up at the Pelican and the rest of the team as they flew off. He turned his head to see some Covenant emerge from the structure. A tear fell from his eye as he reloaded both of his pistols. He knew that the detonation was going to go off any minute, but he wasn't going to go down without a fight.

"Bring it, you alien mother fuckers!" He yelled, as he fired off his two pistols into an Elite. The two grunts accompanying the elite ran off in the opposite direction. Max unloaded the clips into the eight foot tall alien, until it ceased to live. He chased down the two grunts. He grabbed one by the methane tank and ripped the mask off of the creature. He took his fist and smashed it into the creature's face, crushing its weak skull. He grabbed a grenade from his belt and threw it at the other grunt. It detonated, and sent the grunt flying fore ward in multiple pieces. As nothing else was left alive, Max fell to his knees. He dropped his pistols and stared into the sky. Suddenly a large explosion shook the whole ground. Max looked in the direction of the noise and saw a huge blue stream of energy emerge from the structure, and headed directly into space. A second explosion was heard, and a second stream of energy shot out. This one, however, turned itself around and headed back from where it came. Max witnessed the entire spectacle. The giant blue laser headed right for Halo. The light was so bright, he had to look away and close his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw something he would never had thought he would see again...his wife.

His beautiful wife Michelle was holding his baby girl in her hands. And for the first time in years, Max smiled.

The Pelican took Team Omega to a small base on a tiny planet, where a spacecraft with SlipSpace capability would take them back to earth.

"Chief," Cortana said, "The weapon should be hitting the Covenant home world in a matter of minutes. They won't even have any time to send any fleets out. After that is destroyed, the rouge Covenant will be easy to hunt down and kill..."

"We took these men from their lives only for them to die in the future..." he whispered.

"There's nothing we can do now." Cortana told him.

"Yeah," Samus said, "besides, we wouldn't have been able to do it without their help."

The Chief walked off, while the rest of Team Omega waited for the spaceship. Samus took off her helmet and wiped away a tear, then placed the helmet in the Pelican. Then she followed the chief.

The Master Chief was standing at the end of the landing pad. Samus came up behind him. "Hey," she said.

The chief turned and faced her. She could see her own reflection in visor on the Chief's helmet. "Yes?" he asked.

"I just wanted to thank you for everything...this mission was like no other I've ever done."

"No thanks are necessary."

"You gave me the opportunity to help save the world." Samus said. She smiled at him.

"I was just doing my job."

"You also saved my life, more than once..."

"You are an important member to the team."

"Chief, stop talking like a god damn machine!"

The Chief looked at her. "This is how I was raised. I was raised to speak this way. I didn't have any parents, or any brothers or sisters. I only had teammates. I was raised to fight. That is my purpose in this life, is to fight. What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be human..." she said.

"Why?"

"Because..." she said, as she reached for his helmet. She went to snap it off, but the Chief put his hand on hers to stop her.

"No..." he told her.

"Why not?" Samus said, as a tear started down her cheek. "All humans have feelings. Even you."

"I was taught not to have personal attachments. I was always taught to keep 100% of my focus on the fight. Personal attachments make people think about one another, and it gets your mind off the fight. They're distracting, they make you weak."

Samus looked at him in disgust. "Do you actually believe what you're saying?"

"I have to."

Samus looked at him once more, then wiped away her tear and ran back to the Pelican. The Chief stared at her motionlessly, thinking about what he had just done.

Muka 'Mamamee rushed around, gathering as many soldiers as possible. He had just sent a fleet to the year 1000, but only had time for one more fleet. He flipped through the bios of Team Omega, picked one, and punched in the according year; 2205. Another entire fleet had gotten into the machine and was about to send them back.

"My liege, quickly, into the machine." Muka said to Shlabba. The Prophet hovered into the Machine and Muka climbed in himself.

Seconds after the machine sent the fleet back through time, the weapon struck the planet. It was incinerated in seconds.

The future no longer has to worry about the threat known as the Covenant race. But now, the past does.

The End

A/N: Don't worry, this story will branch off into two continuations. One will be in the Chrono Trigger Category, called "Rest of the Best" and the other will be in the Metroid category, "Worst of the Worst". I don't know when I will have time to start these stories, since I am beginning to work on a novel. Just make sure to keep a look out. Thanks for all my fans who have supported this story through the entire thing, I hope you enjoy the ending.