Axton piloted Franken II back to where he had initially set out with it, deactivating the hover system and allowing the spider-like legs to scuttle along the uneven and poorly maintained streets. He drove the machine back into the empty hangar bay, repositioned it so that it could more easily exit through the open door again, and then turned the spider-can mech off.

Popping open the ‘head’ of his War Suit, Axton extracted himself from the rather cramped confines of his toy. Despite the mass of the War Suit being considerably greater than Franken I had been, most of that was concentrated in the legs. The torso was smaller than you might expect, with barely enough room for a pilot to sit in when you accounted for the ammo containers, various devices, and the control systems. In fact, the torso was nearly entirely unarmored, to the point that the best hope for its pilot to survive a direct hit to that part was for the hit to strike the two autoturrets on the sides.

The machine began to hiss as Axton clambered down from the mech, the limited cooling system in the machine’s lower extremities working overtime to vent the built-up heat. This hadn’t been a problem with Franken I, partially due to the Beta not having fully added in heat and partially because Franken had not had such extreme movement systems. Certainly, Franken I had been fast, but it had not been able to pull off the kind of things its younger sibling had.

As its pilot jumped down to the ground, the machine let off one last hiss before the last bits of residual heat vanished and the distorted, wavy hot air around the lower part of the War Suit stabilized. Axton walked out of the open door and expected to see Thomas waiting for him. Instead, he was met by an Asian-looking man wearing what appeared to be the full attire of a certain Captain who was normally found on the labels of a common type of alcohol.

“Outworlder Axton Ryker, I presume?”

Axton stared down at the man in front of him. He was a rather short fellow and his facial hair reminded Axton of a certain emancipator of old. It was almost as if this person was a hodgepodge of different ideas and archetypes, all rolled into one. He actually looked a bit like an Asian Danny DeVito with Abe Lincoln facial hair but dressed up like a romanticized Caribbean Pirate.

“I am he.” Axton said before trying to walk past the five-foot-three man. However, Axton found himself locked in place as a feeling of pure, unbridled dread and fear overcame him. Axton’s gaze unconsciously shifted to look the small man dead in the eyes with the sensation of being before an alpha predator surging over him. Axton managed to lift his gaze ever so slightly and caught a glimpse of something that scared the ever-loving crap out of him.

Above the small and flamboyantly dressed man’s head hung three question marks in a row where the NPC’s level would be, with a large, gold skull right in front of them. Axton was not in front of some random Joe Schmo. He was standing before a very powerful NPC that could, quite easily, rip him apart with minimal effort, if any at all. The pressure faded as soon as it had come, and Axton found himself gasping as if he had been holding his breath for minutes.

“I hear you can make some rather… strange War Suits.” The small but absurdly dangerous NPC said with a jovial tone. The man then walked past Axton and began to size up Franken II. The NPC circled the mech a few times, bending his body here ad there and leaning close and far away as he took in the hideous construct that was just in front of him. Finally, he turned, and Axton felt compelled by an unseen but not unfelt force to look the short man in the eyes. “Not a bad piece of work. Are you available to make something for me?”

…

Axton now sat inside a large, heavily armored transport alongside Thomas. The inside was not, in fact, that of a prison transport, but instead was more along the lines of a small but richly decorated one-story apartment. The room they were in was about the size of two modern passenger train cars placed side by side, and that was nothing compared to the size of the rest of the vehicle. Both Players sat in silence as the man before them, one of the Admirals of The Revelry no less, smiled widely at them from across the table.

“You want me to make you a custom War Suit?”

“Yes, that is the idea.”

Axton was still stunned. He had not expected that he would have this kind of dubious luck/ misfortune so quickly. Then again, Donovan had managed to get a bounty on his head before he had even entered the game, so perhaps he had already experienced said turn of events before now.

“I may end up rendering a lot of parts utterly useless. It may not even turn out the way you want it. It kinda depends a bit on luck and chance, to be honest, and I don’t know if everything will fit together the way you would want it to.”

The Admiral sipped a margarita and held his arms to the side in a gesture that mostly read as “I don’t really care.”

“It could be a money sink.”

The Admiral sipped his drink again and replied “So?”

Axton and Thomas looked at each other.

“Do you want Franken II? You could rename it, and-.”

“I don’t want a second-hand piece of tech. If I did, I would go and buy a War Suit from the Black Market. Those don’t interest me. What I want is something big, crazy, and very unique!”

Axton sighed and nodded.

“Alright. It isn’t like I expect you’ll let me refuse, right?”

The Admiral finished his drink and slammed the glass down on the table.

“Correct! Now, do you have any ideas roaming around up there that I can hear about?”

Axton shrugged. “I mostly get ideas when looking at what parts I have available. Do you have a lot of random working parts just lying around for me to work with?”

A smile formed on the Admiral’s face and he took another margarita from a server that had just come to deliver it and take away the empty glass.

“Where do you think we’re going? There is only one place that is on this planet that has all the parts any Suit Builder would ever need, and we’re headed there. Besides, I think you have some skills that my personal Suit-Makers would love to see firsthand.”