The largest War Suit that Axton, Thomas, or any of the non-oligarch Players had ever seen pushed its way out of a heavily damaged drop pod, the large, talon-like claws of the machine ripping open the metal and composites of the pod like an eagle ripping apart a sheet of aluminum foil. From within, a metal beast emerged, four thick legs shuffling the construct out of the gaping hole and onto the blasted dirt and dust with a menacing and intentionally slow gait.

The War Suit looked to be a cross between some kind of centaur-like design with both an overly thick lower body and legs combined with a bulky humanoid torso and arms tipped with nasty claws and sporting a head that had a single glowing ‘eye’ that was obviously some kind of directed energy weapon.

That same head scanned the surroundings, which either demonstrated that it also had a camera function or that it was merely looking for adequate targets. And, unfortunately for a rather unlucky member of the defending forces, the ‘eye’ locked onto them and unleashed a focused blast of thermal energy that set the Player’s flesh on fire before reducing him to a burnt corpse.

The head then turned to look over at Axton and his War Suit, and the typical back and forth began.

“Plebian bastard! Do you even realize just how angry I am?!”

Axton smirked inside of Neo Franken II’s cockpit.

“I have a rough idea. Did you honestly think I would just lie down and take your dumbfuckery? I am not your whipping boy anymore, you spoiled asshole!”

“I am owed anything I want, and you all deserve nothing but what you are permitted to have! I and those like me are infinitely better than all of your inferior pieces of animalistic trash combined! Surrender and let me do what I want to you all, and I may consider-!”

“Shut the fuck up!” shouted a so-called ‘inferior’ person, who quickly ducked away when Donovan’s War Suit directed its gaze toward her position.

“If we’re so utterly and completely ‘inferior’,” Axton added with an audible tone of mockery, “then why did your forces get utterly crushed so easily? I’ll admit, you had a strong position during the opening of this battle, but during the last two thirds, we mere ‘plebs’ have done nothing but beat your supporters into a bloody pulp! Wherefore lies your superiority, Donny?”

Donovan could be heard to audibly rage over his War Suit’s open loudspeakers for a few seconds. It was beyond obvious that he was close to simply rage-quitting, but Axton was more inclined to drag this humiliation out a while longer. All the pieces were nearly in place. He merely needed to buy a few more moments before the last of the preparations for his duel were in their proper places.

“Fight me!” Donovan screamed. “Fight me now and stop resorting to such infantile schemes!”

Axton laughed in response, which only riled up the hedonist that much more.

“It isn’t a bad thing to outmaneuver and outthink your opponent. Haven’t you heard of Asymmetrical Strategic Planning?”

“What the hell is that supposed to be?!”

Axton’s final preparations were done, but now he just needed to goad Donovan into striking first. After all, if he made the first attack, then some people might think that he was the aggressor, and that simply would not do, no matter how obviously false such an assertion would be.

“I’ve heard it go by another name; you know. Tactical Fuckery; the art of playing your opponent to such a degree that they grind themselves to gristle and think that they are somehow winning even as they suffer defeat after crippling defeat. I know for a fact that we’ll be meeting each other again under similar circumstances multiple times in the future. You simply do not know how to take a defeat with grace and humility, and as such, it is inevitable that you and I will meet under similar, if not identical circumstances, with your forced gutted and broken but you yourself refusing to admit that you’ve bitten off way more than you can chew.”

“SHUT UP AND DIE!” Donovan screamed as he shot a blast of relatively focused purely thermal energy from his Suit’s only ranged weapon. The distance between the two opponents was too great for the weapon to do anything of value, and the most that happened to Neo Franken II was that a bit of the paint became a little bit hotter.

However, Axton’s allies included a lot of Tacticians, both for Infantry and War Suit Classes. His plan had already been disseminated ahead of time, and Donovan’s refusal to get involved up until now had only allowed Axton’s schemes to come to fruition in a much more perfect way. A Tactician could do quite a lot, but if you gave them items or equipment to use with their abilities, even more strategic and tactical fuckery could be achieved. Donovan’s War Suit was slowly picking up speed, but it would only be a matter of moments before it reached Axton’s first trap.

As it passed over a certain point, Axton directed his War Suit to reach down into the dust near its feet. The hand of his mech grabbed something wire-like, and with a swift pull, a mass of oversized grenades was yanked up from under the dirt like a massive tuber plant. Shortly after that, the grenades detonated and the fragments of metal and other materials from those explosives laid into the rather weaker underside of Donovan’s War Suit.

With that first ploy complete, Axton bid a swift retreat and began to set up for the next trap. If he was correct in his belief that Donovan was too blinded by his rage and hatred to think clearly, then the next trap would be unavoidable. When the galloping Heavy War Suit clambered over a small hill after Axton, the ground beneath it partially gave way and the machine was dumped into a very shallow but very wide pitfall Less than half a second after Donovan’s mech’s feet hit the ground, the pit erupted into flames as the incendiary gel in the hole ignited and clung to the machine’s lower limbs.

Donovan still seemed to be unable to think ahead and followed Axton a bit farther until it tripped a tripwire and a series of disposable rocket launchers fired at the Suit at near point-blank. Nearly all of the rockets hit somewhere and caused even more damage to Donovan’s mech, but the stubborn and short-sighted bastard drove his rapidly overheating vehicle onwards.

Axton led his foe from one trap to another, slowly increasing the damage that the opposition’s machine had taken until he was ready for the next part of his plan to humiliate and destroy his foe. With his Suit now so heavily overheated that the safeties began to forcibly limit the Suit’s functions, Donovan was only driven to an even deeper depth of rampant and gradually less sane fury. If only he had known what Axton’s final masterstroke would be, perhaps he would have simply surrendered then and there.

Actually, knowing him, that would be only a non-0% chance of happening, if not a truly 0% chance to begin with.