The hour was quickly approaching and a decent number of those who rejected the Mayor’s will walked cautiously towards the coordinates that Axton had left for them. As they drew closer, they noticed that a few loudspeakers had been rigged together and were softly playing a rather calming melody. The armed rebels crested a hill and looked down on the coordinates where Axton had claimed he was waiting for them. Sure enough, the crazy Outworlder was there, and along with him was his War Suit and some rather bizarre objects that some thought to be rockets of some kind.

The hill that they were on did overlook where Axton was, but where Axton had stationed himself overlooked the compound that Stebbs had begun fortifying. From the place where he stood, anyone standing beside Axton could see the artillery that was being set up even during these darker hours as well as the large number of shells and rockets that were stockpiled nearby. One could even see the fuel refinery and storage facilities, which were placed in places that no sane man should have ever thought was a good idea.

Despite being a little bit away, it was plain to see that Axton was fiddling with a large box that had at least twenty wires leading out of it. Some lead to what were presumed to be rockets, but most of them led to the loudspeakers around him and some even led out towards the Mayor’s compound. This, as one might imagine, did not make anyone even remotely surer that Axton wasn’t going to pull something.

Daxter was the one to bite first. He had trusted Axton up to this point, and if Axton had turned then he would be the first to die. Daxter walked down the hill and approached his Outworlder friend and the two began to talk. Several of the former townsfolk had their blasters and kinetic weapons pointed at the two as they talked, but it looked like nothing too fishy was going on.

The Outworlder seemed to be explaining something to the rebel leader, and after that explanation was done said leader seemed to burst out laughing. Daxter then waved everyone over as Axton walked over to Franken and removed the main power core from the War Suit, as if to say that he wasn’t even remotely thinking of using it against them. Still training their guns on the two, the rest of those that had ventured out to see what was up descended the hill and took up positions that would let them fire away if needed.

“I guess that, like those where I am from, you all love your guns a bit too much as well!”

Axton’s words did not break the tension, and he seemed to notice this.

“Well, anyway, today is a very special day for my people. Or at least those where I come from, that is…” Axton looked around and then went over to the box and began to flip some switches. “Today is, by our calendar, a date known as the 4th of July. The nation I hail from treats this day with a kind of irreverent reverence, you know? So many parts of my homeland forbid the use of fireworks on this day due to certain conditions, but nobody ever listens, and they light up the night anyway while letting the snap, crackle, and pop of minor, civilian-grade explosives keep people up all night and make pets scramble for cover.”

Axton flipped one final switch and picked up what appeared to be a detonator.

“Today is a day where men and women celebrate the day when my homeland announced to the whole of the universe that it would not fall beneath the jurisdiction of another, even larger and more powerful nation. Today we celebrate the day when a King was rejected and freedom, at least for some, was made mandatory. Today is Independence Day, and it is high time we deal a crippling blow against the man who wants to see you bound and shackled. Of course, Stebbs is far more brutal than the British were, and by that I mean that the British were only really guilty of taxation without representation and some other minor things, and the British are actually really nice people nowadays, but the date is what it is, and I feel you all need this holiday much more than I do.”

Axton then pressed the big, red button on the ‘detonator’ and the show began to the tune of a Russian man’s song.

…

The sound of classical music began to come from every single loudspeaker both inside the compound and out. It was something that most decent music lovers on Earth would have recognized for the trademark ‘instruments’ that were to be used partially through it, but to the colonists and the people in the compound, the vocal-less song was almost unheard of. More specifically, in-game music history stated that what most on Earth would call ‘classical’ music had been forgotten millennia prior, so the tune that was coming in over the speakers was almost otherworldly.

The music began to pick up, with the tension felt by those who heard it rising as the brass and strings acted as the prelude of what was to come. The beautiful song recording of the concert sped up, but naturally and not by force, the music building to the highest of highs before exceeding that, and then, as the 1812 Overture reached the part that everyone with any sense loved the most, the improvised rockets that Axton had built shot off as timed explosives placed throughout the compound detonated.

The song was meant to speak of the Russian Army’s victory over Napoleon, but had become a piece that had been long since used by the people of the United States of America to go alongside their own celebration, now had yet another group of people who viewed it as something they could love. As the improvised rockets rained down in a random spread and cooked off ammo, fuel, and other things, which in turn spread the calamity even further, those who had chosen to fight their cruel overlord almost wept as the music fit so elegantly with what they were witnessing.

The sound of cannons and brass and strings and rockets and everything else melded together into one amazing experience for those who, up till now, had always been on the edge and on high alert. This…. this was something they would cherish for the rest of their lives, despite the fact that they were essentially just lines of code. As the song faded away, the fires and secondary detonations in Stebbs’ compound continued to exist, and those who looked down upon that place felt something that only a few weeks ago would have been so out of place that they would have thought themselves ill.

As the rebellious colonists stood in silence, Axton walked over to Daxter, patted him on the shoulder, and smirked.

“Face it; you love the smell of freedom, don’t you?”

Turning and walking back towards the base, Axton continued.

“Or maybe it’s just the smell of high explosives, incendiaries, and burning fuel, but isn’t that also what freedom smells like? Or is that connection only something that Americans experience?”