As Axton walked back into the depths of the junkyard, Daxter and his fellow orphans retreated through the tunnel and regrouped back in their main base. They had taken Axton’s gifts, by the way, because who were they to look a gift horse in the mouth? Besides, if Axton did decide to turn on them, they would need all the credits they could get their hands on to hopefully mount a decent defense and escape. A few days passed and the salvage was sold off to the tune of several hundred million credits, which left the rag-tag band of orphans rolling in money.

They had already been preparing for what they felt was the inevitable eventual attack from Stebbs’ goons. But, after a week and a half passed since they got that massive influx of funds, they started to realize that Axton may very well have been a man of his word. Either that or he was really, really good at playing the long game. However, given how quick Stebbs usually was in regard to stamping out anyone or anything that did not, and I quote, “Respec his Authoritay”, made it far more likely that Axton was on the ‘right’ side.

A day after the gang came to a consensus regarding how they should work with Axton going forward, Daxter sent some of the older members to try and hand over some credits and a few bits of War Suit equipment. This meeting did not go as planned, however, as Axton made it clear that Stebbs and the rest would be tipped off unless the goods were sent a certain way. Axton’s words seemed to hold some degree of truth, which was why Daxter was now arranging for some Mail to be sent to him.

This was to be the start of a beautiful relationship, but right before the Mail was finalized, Daxter got word that Stebbs and his posse were heading their way, intent on snatching their millions from them. This, of course, was very much no Bueno, and Daxter had to think fast to avoid the sizable fortune that Axton had essentially just given them being stripped away.

Daxter did the only thing his AI could think of and altered the Mail that would be sent to Axton.

…

Axton got back into the pod after taking a break of a few hours to eat some decent food and catch a few hours of sleep. He had received some mail from the company responsible for making Heavy Metal Dawn that essentially gave him infinite paid vacation from his current employer, so long as Axton spent the vast majority of his waking hours inside the game itself. There was also an attached apology from a handful of people saying how while they empathized with Axton’s conundrum, they were ultimately unable to do anything about it. Axton could read between the lines well enough to know that the issue was not the lack of ability, but instead that they had received a large amount of money that kept them from doing anything themselves.

However, there was nothing stopping E-Va from doing things unless they actively put a hamper on it, which must have been one of the reasons why E-Va had stopped helping him overtly in-game. Axton’s world shifted and changed, throwing him back into the junkyard, but now an alert showed that he had new Mail.

He opened it and was shocked at the sheer wealth that was just given to him, but as he read the Mail, he figured out why he had been sent so much.

“God damn it!” Axton spat as he kicked a piece of scrap metal across the yard. Stebbs had gone too far! He was pissed enough that his new allies had been forced to dump all of their assets on his hands until they could avoid the eyes of the Mayor, but what really ground his gears was the fact that Stebbs had taken a few orphans as hostages. There was now no way for the gang to help him, not without there being some very serious repercussions. Axton was beyond livid that Stebbs would take kids younger than 6 years old as bargaining chips and force the gang to work under the eyes of his goons.

“Fuck! Fucking god damn fucking shit!”

Axton raged at the turn of events, but something at the end of the Mail caught his eye before he accepted everything and lose hope. There was a single line, one single, solitary line that seemed to send Axton a sliver of hope.

“I hope this message becomes the Keys to your freedom and our revenge.”

Just a single word in the entire message was not just italicized, but also put in bold ad underlined. It was an obvious hint, and it was one that Axton knew had some grand meaning. With that sliver of hope in his eyes, Axton read through the list of stuff he had been sent. There was, of course, the sheer mass of credits, but there were also some pieces of War Suit equipment and internal components. But, more than any of that and outshining all other things in terms of value, were a pair of items.

One was a single-use device known as a {Universal Skeleton Key}, which was just what Axton needed to get the cuffs off of him. But the other… the other was just as valuable, if not more so. It was a simple handheld device that, for a Player like him, was a godsend, for this was an {Item Identifier} and would be the second key that would hopefully see him free and help him kick Stebbs’ fat, perverted ass.

Axton grabbed the {Universal Skeleton Key} from his inventory and used it. With a hiss, the manacles that had kept him locked up in the prison of a scrap yard fell off and landed on the dirt with a satisfying thud. Axton was free, but he knew that he could not stay in that position for very long. If he was a gambling man (which he normally wasn’t) he would have bet every piece of his now immense fortune that those manacles would now send an alarm and coordinates to Stebbs and his underlings. He figured that it was a nearly 100% chance that Stebbs would know that Axton had freed himself and that Stebbs’ boss would have some very… choice words (among other things) for him if Axton wasn’t chained up before the game went into its full release.

Axton checked his map and then bolted for the one place he was sure that the Mayor and his cronies would not find. He had kept clear of that place for a reason, and now he was making a break for it for that same reason. In the husk of a fallen warship, inside a place that was nigh inaccessible unless you were willing to do some rather impressive platforming that had a decent chance of someone falling to their death, there was a room where power still thrummed, despite the rest of the ship being cold and dead.

In that room, there was a single Light War Suit frame and all the tools needed to assemble something from it.

All Axton had to do now was make that place his new ‘home’ and occasionally venture out into the yard to loot more components, weapons, equipment, and ammunition, identify them and then assemble them into something he could use to kick Stebbs’ ugly face in. It would take days, if not weeks, but hopefully, Axton could make something that, while not pretty, could do enough damage to bust Stebbs’ prisoners out of their confinement. Axton could not contact Daxter or risk Stebbs’ eyes catching wind of his plot, but if Axton made enough noise and drew enough attention, there was at least a non-zero chance of Daxter realizing that he had a golden moment to save those who needed saving.

As Axton calculated the jumps he needed to get to the place where destiny awaited, he kept his mind wandering through the different ideas that he could think of for how to kit out his soon-to-be new toy. He eventually settled on a single idea, but for now, he just had to get to the room. It was no use counting his chickens before they hatched, after all.