We all make it sooner or later.

Phantoms and Banshees whirred around, dominating the orange, thundering sky, choked with smoke and ash. Reach was still being glassed by the Covenant. Silent as a ghost, Six watched the light show going off in the distance with a strange sort of melancholy from atop the platform of a communication tower. All the colors of death shining through the dark clouds. Again, those harrowing words echoed through Six's head as he was reminded of everyone he had lost up to this point. Six wasn't so sure about Jun, but as far as he knew, he was the last surviving member of Noble team. If he knew one thing for certain, it was that the sun was setting on this burning planet, and it was time for his mission to come to an end. He had done his part and he had done it well.

A heroic death was all a soldier could truly ask for.

A Phantom was unloading troops nearby. DMR in hand, Six headed down the steps and into the place where he would make his final stand for humanity and Noble team. He would put in the grave as many Covenant as he could. There was nothing left for him to do but make these bullets count.

And so it began.

They were endless.

They came in waves, one after other with little pause inbetween.

The Covenant offered no respite and Six made sure to return that favor in full. In the back of his mind, he knew his death was inevitable. They would manage to put him down eventually, either by numbers or through the sheer exhaustion of fighting for hours on end, but the latter was preferable. A slow and gruesome process, both for him and the enemy. He was more than willing to take that route, and so he did.

Six continued to fight. He fought like a lion for as long as possible. He was a Spartan, but even Spartans could get tired. He could feel it growing in his bones. With every grenade blast or boom of the trigger pull, it was like he was singing the tune to his own burial. He had long lost count of how many lives he had taken between the explosions, and dirt, and yelling of Covenant forces.

So much running...

From cover to the enemy...

He was beginning to lose focus.

A plasma grenade stuck nearby. His mind was like a great fog, and in the fog, he had no time to react. The explosion caught Six off guard and blew him out into the open from behind a rock, his assault rifle slipping from his grip as his shields shimmered, having protected him from the brunt of the blast. Exhausted and sluggish, Six clambered onto his feet as plasma fire from an Elite skittered past him. Six threw his cracked helmet off. He couldn't stand to breath with it anymore.

Six took a heavy step forward. He reached out for his fallen assault rifle that had protected him thus far, rising into a loom as he unleashed the entire magazine into the Elite that was shooting at him. The Elite went down but the magazine was empty and there was another waiting behind him with an energy sword. Mustering every ounce of strength left, Six through all his body weight at the second Elite, jawing him across the maw. He too went down, and Six finished him off with a shot from his magnum.

But there were more.

There were always more.

His shields were down and he was out in the open. The plasma fire came in again, thick and heavy like flak. One shot managed to nick Six across the shoulder, kicking the rifle in his grip behind his back. It was only a matter of time before that happened. The hot mass of burning energy seared his flesh, but Six powered through, raised the wounded arm, and kept firing. With how many there were, he had no choice but to pull out his pistol and begin shooting from both hands. Down they went, one Elite and then another, but there were simply too many to handle.

One managed to slip through Six's killzone.

A zealot in white armor.

Six had hardly gotten a shot off with his magnum before the Elite had already knocked him to the ground and was on top of him. In battle, that was usually all it took to begin a downwards spiral. One mistake. A small yet fatal occurrence. He knew his fate was sealed right then and there. He saw the energy sword activate and the Elite go in for the kill, but Six kicked him back as hard as he could and sent alien staggering away.

This was it.

This was where it ended.

Another zealot in red armor was charging in from the side. Like the other in white, this one also went in for the kill, but from the ground, Six threw the fiercest punch he could, stunning the Elite mid strike, knocking the energy sword out of the Elite's hand and buying him a few precious slivers of time.

But time wasn't enough anymore.

He was just one soldier.

The first zealot in white that had managed to break past Six's guard was back again and pounced on him, hovering over the Spartan, determined to finish what he'd started. The red one had also recovered, quicker than anticipated.

Six elbowed the white Elite.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that one in red had ignited his energy dagger and was raising it for the final blow.

Everything came to a crawling standstill. Six knew he wasn't going to make it. He couldn't stop them both at the same time. At the very least, his enemies were all clad in high-ranking armor. Vaguely, in that split second before death, Six registered this amidst the chaos. He took some pride in the fact that it had taken numerous of the Covenant's best warriors to kill him. In that moment, he accepted his fate.

The energy dagger was about to come down on him.

Six closed his eyes.

Six was ready for his death. He awaited whatever was on the other side, but the great beyond never came to retrieve him. What did come, however, was the distinct sound of a UNSC sniper rifle firing a 14.5mm anti-material round through the red Elite's skull.

Six's eyes shot open from behind his visor.

A marine?

The red Elite's body hit the ground with a thud, energy sword deactivating, and then the white Elite too suffered the same fate, plummeting next to Six as well. Two more shots rang out in front of him, making for four in total—a completely spent magazine. Peering past his armor-clad feet, Six saw something that made his heart skip in his chest. It wasn't a marine. It was a familiar blue form that he could've recognized anywhere. One he never thought he'd see again.

Kat had returned from the dead.

"Consider that payback!" Kat sneered as she unloaded her spent magazine. A healthy amount of disrespect in her throw, she threw it aside callously at the corpse of one of the Elites.

Six was still on the ground as she walked up to him, everything but his head speechless and unable to move.

Gazing down, Kat reared her rifle back and extended a warm arm. "Need a hand, Six?"