O'Malley calls Vic and reveals his plot to eliminate both the Red and Blue Teams and to rule the universe. He also informs Vic that, to preserve Vic's secret, he has hired an assassin to kill Tucker, the only person who knows that Blue Command and Red Command are the same. Back in Blood Gulch, Tex tells Tucker that Wyoming, the assassin hired to kill him, is a freelancer from the same experimental program as Tex, and, like Tex, he had been enhanced with artificial intelligence. During the conversation, Tucker hints that something happened to the state of Florida, the group takes a moment of silence. Still in the teleporter hub with Simmons and Caboose, Sarge contacts Donut to inform him of the "Blue plot" and that Tucker's idea that Red and Blue are the same is nothing but a deception. Wanting to help to find Church, Caboose unwittingly presses a button that activates the bomb in Church's robot body. On Sidewinder, Church consequently lets out a large belch, and his stomach begins to tick.

O'Malley activates Lopez's "secret weapon", a weather control device that Sarge had almost finished. The Red and Blue Teams join forces to confront O'Malley, who begins to wreak havoc with his rocket launcher. Simmons manages to teleport the Battle Creek zealots to Sidewinder and convinces them to attack and defeat O'Malley. Lightning from Lopez's weather device hits Church, thereby damaging the bomb in his body. When Sarge is subsequently unable to disable the bomb, Tucker tries to destroy Church with O'Malley's rocket launcher before Church explodes, but Wyoming snipes the launcher out of Tucker's hand. The bomb explodes and, due to the damage received from the lightning, destroys the present as well, sending both teams (except Church) to the future (Halo 2). Donut attempts to direct a play to explain this sequence of events to Tucker. The group reasons that they were blown into the future because they were standing in front of Church; Tucker deduces that Church must have been blown into the past. Meanwhile, on a Marathon 2 map, Church appears, wondering what has happened.