Nervously, Axton settled in the cushioned booth seat. He had a sneaking suspicion that the… person… seated opposite from him was some kind of GM, but he couldn’t be sure. At least, he couldn’t be sure until a point came where this entity either confirmed or denied Axton’s assumptions. The enigmatic vaguely human form lifted its hand, and a waiter came over to take an order.

“I’ll have a h#iP8l[, a Qu7tZ and a J%$jn for a drink.” The being then turned to Axton and gestured for him to order some food and drink.

“Uhhh… Water?”

The waiter nodded and left, leaving Axton and the strange entity alone in the crowded diner.

“Water? Just water?” LW asked. Axton could almost hear the rising of a single eyebrow, but he wasn’t sure.

“I’m not sure I can trust you,” Axton replied. “Most of the people with power that I’ve come across in the virtual setting tend not to be very nice people. Plus, you seem to be doing something to keep me from identifying anything about you. I honestly don’t understand why I was brought here and what you want, but I do have a rebellion to aid, so if we could make this quick, please?”

The vague shape nodded. “Yes, well, we want to get back to things as much as you do, but we do need some info. So, if you would be so ki8nd as to answer a few questions we can send you on your way.”

“Let me just preempt you.” Axton interjected. “I don’t believe I’ve done anything illegal or that breaches the terms of service.”

The shape let out a small chuckle in reply.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you actually read and comprehended the terms of service, do you? Nobody reads that shit.”

“No, I didn’t. But I did obey common sense and, by default that should mean that I didn’t break them.”

“Fair enough,” LW said with his hands up and palms pointed out in front of him. He lowered his hands once again and rested them together as his elbows, or what should have been them, stationed themselves on the table. “Just so we are clear, the reason I’m talking to you right now is that we here at the company have some concerns about your playstyle and the… unique War Suit you’ve managed to make. If we can get these concerns addressed, then we can either get you back in the game or, if necessary, take legal action against you.”

Axton grumbled but motioned for the being to continue.

“As you should be well aware by now, I am a GM. It is the job of me and my fellows to make sure that the game doesn’t have any cheaters, hackers, etc., and that the in-game systems work smoothly. The biggest issue we have right now is the total confusion regarding how the War Suit you made can even work.”

The waiter returned and set two blurry plates full of what Axton assumed to be food down on LW’s side alongside an equally blurry drink. The waiter then placed a glass of ice water down in front of Axton and then walked away.

“As I was saying, this… ‘Franken’ is not supposed to exist. We explicitly made the game so that certain parts could only connect to certain other parts. You must understand how concerned we are when we saw that you made a War Suit out of the components of things that were never supposed to work together. So, here’s the million-dollar question. How did you pull it off?”

Axton looked a bit shocked at LW’s insinuation that he might have been hacking but he could understand where the GM was coming from.

“The long, blue rectangular bit goes in the long, blue rectangular hole. All I needed to do was make them fit and then deliver a bit of percussive maintenance alongside a direct electrical shock. I honestly thought that they were supposed to do that as a hidden feature. Plus, there was a lot of RNG involved, and I had to take parts off and reattach them multiple times to get it to work.”

“But some of those parts don’t have the ‘long, blue, rectangular bit/ hole’. How did you do it?”

Axton shrugged. “Dad had a hobby of being an electrician and old computer assembler. He showed me that most parts actually can work together if you are willing to do what must be done. All I needed was the right machine in-game and I could jailbreak the individual parts. From there it was just a matter of making a few custom cables and using trial and error to find out how to make everything work together. For the parts I mentioned before, all I needed was to make a cable or two that would allow Part A to connect to Part B. It wasn’t rocket science, but it also cost me a whole lot of scrap to make things work. I must have ended up irreversibly ruining more than one third of my overall stockpile trying to make Franken work, but once I figured out what needed to be done it was relatively smooth sailing from there.”

Axton could almost hear the GM blinking while his mouth was agape. Of course, the program that was obfuscating the GM’s appearance prevented Axton from seeing them, but the sensation of pure astonishment was not something Axton had never felt second-hand before.

“That is… wow… just a sec.”

The GM blinked out of the diner, only to reappear a bit later in the same seat but with his hands covering his face.

“Ok… You were telling the truth. I’m gonna have to report this design oversight to corporate, though. This was not supposed to be an in-game feature until the first major patch, but somehow you preempted us.”

Axton smiled and took a drink from the virtual glass of ice water. “Anything else I need to answer?” he asked with a sly grin.

“Yeah, we have some more questions, but most of them pertain to the other major one I had to ask you.”

“And that is?”

LW the GM reached into a hole in the virtual space and pulled out an old clipboard with a few sheets of paper held together by a paperclip. He then slid the documents over to Axton, who began to look them over.

“To be frank, you are the first person to kick off an event in-game and the way you’ve been handling the temporary combat instance had a few of our marketing guys wanting you to hand over the rights to the battle itself. More specifically, they want to make a trailer for the game out of your miniature war, if not make a full, feature-length mini-movie. We’re willing to step in and take an incoming threat of your back if and only if you agree to let us use the in-game recording of your scuffle with the Mayor as well as the next fight you have with him. You will, of course, get royalties from every view, so it would be a win-win. In my books, at least.”

Axton slightly looked up and then went back to reading the contract in front of him.

“Just a sec. This could take a while.” Axton said as he read every bit of fine print he could locate.

And it would.