The excavation of the ship was finished, and now the last few checks were being made. The hangar doors had long since been rendered mostly inoperable, and it took a great effort to force them to open to the point that the ship inside could leave on takeoff. Still, despite the prospects looking bright, everyone, both NPC and Player alike, felt a sense of ominous darkness drawing in. As such, the ship was already being prepped for its voyage. The final checks were nearly done and as far as could be detected there were no issues with the ship beyond a bit of internal dust and debris. But all of that could be fixed with a bit of cleaning, so the remaining NPCs boarded the massive starship and prepared for takeoff.

Stebbs had lost all of his tools that could have been used to take down the ship; Axton’s 4th of July celebration had made sure of that. But there was still the chance that the mad mayor would try and bum-rush the ship before it could finish the pre-flight checks. There was an unofficial timer counting down the seconds until the engines ignited, and while that was happening there was another countdown in the view of all Players, Axton included.

The end of the Beta was only a few in-game days away, or to use real-life time it would only be around two and a half hours until the post-Beta wipe. Axton was on the clock and was urging the NPCs to move their asses and get the ship into the void. However, there quickly arose yet another hurdle for Axton to overcome.

Visible from the secret hangar, three transport ships bearing the mark of the Andromedan Empire descended from the void and landed near the ruined colony. Said ships were unarmed, but their model was equipped with boarding torpedoes, which made the ‘good guys’ a bit nervous. Axton watched as the landed spaceships deactivated their unneeded systems and disgorged around a thousand men in total from all three.

If he was a gambling man, which he normally wasn’t, he would have put at least some of his money on the odds that said transports would be unable to rapidly power up and reach space within the time period needed for the escape ship to… well… escape. He also was glad that he had not put all of his faith in the words of the GM and had prepared as best he could for what he felt was an inevitability. He knew back then that he could only barely trust the company, but this was proof that even believing that they would fully keep their word would be foolish.

He figured that he knew why the Empire had been allowed to arrive. It would have been a great loss for the marketing team if they lost the chance to see how a Player fought against an actual in-game main faction. This only pushed the timetable up even further, and while he could leave the planet with the NPCs, he had a sneaking suspicion that attempting to do so would be a very bad idea.

Besides, he did have another card to play of his own. A kind of ‘fuck you’ he had been working on in the event that this kind of thing happened. A little secret he had stored away on the large, surface-to-space escape ship. If, by some odd miracle, the GM told the truth and those he sent to space would escape the post-Beta wipe, then there was a decent chance that his gamble would pay off. And if his character and some of the data from this Beta survived the wipe, he knew what would be the very first thing he would aim to accomplish.

….

“Are you absolutely certain that you aren’t coming with us?”

Axton nodded in response to Daxter’s question. He had the mother of all hunches that going with the colonists would be suicide for them and himself. He felt that he knew what the assholes in the company’s marketing team wanted, and he had a feeling that if they didn’t get what they wanted then they would make both him and the innocent NPCs pay the price.

“I wish I could go with you, but for now we’ll have to go by that plan.” Axton closed the hatch o Franken and continued to speak using the War Suit’s speakers. “I don’t know if my gamble will pay off. I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again and I honestly don’t know if and when we do meet that you’ll even recognize me. That said…”

Franken began to walk towards the entrance that led from the hangar to the cave system, stopping and then turning ever so slightly once on the threshold to give the impression of looking back.

“It’s been a blast working with you, Dax. May we see each other again in a better place than this. Oh, and one more thing before I go…”

Franken turned back towards the cave system and lowered its stance. The thrusters on its body began to warm up and the treads on its feet were pushed down to slightly lift the multi-ton machine off the ground.

“You’d best tell that sweetheart of yours that you love her. But, if you would, please do so after you escape this deathtrap. I would really hate for you to raise any unneeded flags at the incorrect time.”

A shout came from behind both the Player and the NPC in reply to Axton’s words.

“We all thought you both were gay!”

The War Suit turned and opened its hatch as Daxter also made an about-face. Both of them yelled back at the man who had taken a jab at them in sync.

““I don’t swing that way!””

Those in earshot stifled a laugh and the Player resumed his movement towards the final battle of the Beta, shaking his head inside the confines of his custom-made mech.

“I’m gonna miss you guys! Until we meet again beyond this seeming final shore!”

As Franken sped off towards ‘destiny’, Daxter gave him one last message before boarding the escape craft.

“Don’t wax poetic when we both know you can’t die. We’ll be waiting for you out there, so don’t fuck this up. A whole lot of kids here want to see your face again, so go kick ass and take names. Oh, and give my father a damn good ass-kicking. Put that bastard in the ground, for all of us.”