“Is he gone?”

“I don’t know, Clem. Maybe stick your head out and look?”

“Why don’t you do it, Billy?”

“Because you were the one to ask first, Clem!”

Two of the few remaining hired goons that Stebbs had employed were hiding out in one of the few buildings that had not either caught fire or been reduced to rubble. Neither of them wanted to be there, and they had good reason to be that way. Ever since the family-run business transferred them to this heaping pile of shit they had been forced to deal with a nightmare that seemed to have no end. Now that nightmare was even closer and more intense than it had been before, and they were not sure if there was even a snowball’s chance in hell that they would make it out of this with their lives.

“I’m not going out there, you know. Did you see what that Suit did to Billy-Ray? It just fucking tore him in half and tossed his upper body into the fires like it was a broken toy!”

“I saw, Clem, I saw. Damn it, how the hell did we end up being the unlucky bastards who got picked for this bullshit mission?”

“Well, at least we’re safe in here, ain’t we?” said Clem. “I mean, the fires mask our heat and our sound, and there have to be others out there more inclined to fight, so maybe the killer mech is gone?”

“Shut it, Clem!” snapped Billy, who was only slightly different on a genetic level from the previously mentioned Billy-Ray, a fact mostly due to the extreme, beyond Habsburgian levels of inbreeding that the family-run business had engaged in. “You know damn well that we don’t talk like that. The last time someone said shit like that they got torn to bits by some random guy with a shotgun and a chainsaw attached to his stump of an arm! Do you think I’m gonna stick around if you call down some kind of sick flag on us? I ain’t saving your ass from shit like that again!”

“But we ain’t heard that thing’s engines for quite some time now. I figure it is long gone, maybe done in by the mayor of this Podunk backwater shithole. So, be a good brother-cousin and stick your head out a bit.”

“I told you,” shouted Billy. “I ain’t doing that! And stop raising flags! You know damn well that-.”

Billy stopped talking mid-sentence and put a cupped hand to his ear.

“Wait a gosh-darned minute.” Billy continued. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” replied Clem. “I don’t hear nothing over the sound of the fire and the rumble of a generator.”

“That’s just it, Clem!” Billy cried as he ran from the wall that he and his brother-cousin were huddled against. “There ain’t supposed to be any active generators within half a mile!”

Clem realized that maybe he shouldn’t have spoken up so much and followed after his relative. Despite running from the first floor to the basement of the building, the sound of the nearby generator only increased in volume. There was a working generator down there, but it should have been deactivated and left alone. Now, however, there was a sound coming from it, and said sound could possibly give away their hiding position. Which could only mean one of two things. Either some idiot was thinking that they could charge their blasters without being detected over the crackling fire, or…

“Hoof it, Clem! We’ve got to turn that thing off before that maniac of an Outworlder finds us!”

“I know, Billy! Just another corner and-!”

Whether you could consider it fortunate for Clem or not, Billy was the one to turn the corner first and as he did, he took a load of buckshot to the side of the head. The force of the impact knocked him over, but the momentum of his previous movement carried him through the threshold of the doorway and sent his dead body tumbling across the concrete floor. It seemed that the Outworlder had been using the generator to juice up his War Suit in preparation for the next major actions they were to take.

“Billy!” Clem shouted. He managed to slow his movement enough that he didn’t end up going through the open doorway and instead partially collapsed by the side of the wall. Clem was now hyperventilating, half overcome by anger and half by fear.

“You damn bastard!” shouted the inbred Hillbilly stereotype.

“Sticks and stones, my man, sticks and stones!” came the reply from the other side of the wall.

“He was my…! He was…!” Clem screamed, not able to fully vocalize the truth behind the relationship he and his relative had.

“Damn, man!” replied the Outworlder. “You guys really are every backwoods hillbilly cousin-fucker stereotype combined into one massive package! What, did you both come from Brokeback Mountain or something?”

“Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!”

At this point, the only thing keeping Clem from trying to avenge his ‘closest’ family member was the knowledge that if he entered the doorway, he too would take a shotgun blast to the face. Rather than avenging his relative, he leaned himself up against the wall and started to cry.

“Oh…. Oh, Billy…. Oh, my Billy!”

This tearful goodbye was met with mostly silence, but even though there were noises coming from beyond the wall, the mourning security guard didn’t hear them over his sorrow. As the waterworks finally ceased and the sad little man regained his composure, a voice that now seemed to be somewhat modulated came from the other side of the wall.

“Are you done? Got it all out?”

Clem nodded. “Yeah… yeah, I did. Although you did kill him, I’m glad you let me cry in peace.”

“So, can we get back to the matter at hand?” asked the Outworlder.

“I… I guess? What kind of matter?” asked Clem, who seemed to have forgotten what he was doing and why he was there beyond the mourning of his brother-cousin.

“Well, there’s a wall here…” came the reply, which confused Clem a bit before said wall was smashed apart and the hulking frame of a War Suit lumbered through.

“And now there isn’t….” continued the Outworlder from inside his metal man.

Clem looked up to see the War Suit lifting a large slab of metal that was in the rough shape of a generic European Longsword overhead. Before the blade came down and snuffed out Clem’s life, the voice of the Outworlder said one last thing.

“But now the only ‘wall’ that exists before me happens to be the group of assholes that made my life in this game so difficult. So, please fall like that one, will you?”

The last thing that passed through Clem’s head was the blade, but the second to last thing was the thought that he would now be able to be with his ‘close’ relative forever.

…

As the blood and gore flowed out onto the ground, Axton looked down at the dead man before him and narrowed his eyes in disgust.

“Incest isn’t ‘Win-cest’, you ugly, inbred freaks of nature.”