Franken took a few steps normally, simply to pick up some speed before transitioning to using the treads on the soles of its feet. The treads gripped the ground, even in places where, under the normal rules of reality, they should have spun out, and the machine sped faster towards the horde of animalistic nastiness. Just before reaching the nearest creature, Axton brought Franken’s right arm and hand down towards the side, and as he nearly forced Franken to stop on a dime, he wheeled his War Suit around to deliver a deep cut to the face of the nearest animal.

The blade cut deep, far deeper than Axton had expected after seeing their resistance to both bullets and autocannon rounds, but that was fine. Axton directed Franken to pivot again, drawing the blade in its hand from left to right this time, which ended up being enough to put the cross between a bear, an ancient giant porcine creature, and an equally ancient giant sloth down.

With the first target slain, Axton moved to the next closest one, moving with both speed and caution as bullets and autocannon shots were still pouring in. A few bullets bounced rather harmlessly off of Franken’s armor, and a few autocannon rounds whizzed by at a danger close distance, but so far Franken and Axton had avoided becoming targets of friendly fire.

Another few swings of Franken’s oversized sword put a few more of these odd creatures into an early grave, but there seemed to be no end to them, and the ranged fire seemed to be doing little to nothing at all. Axton was, at this moment, the only person fighting in melee, and as a result, he was the only person getting any decent number of kills.

That fact seemed to be a major factor in what came next, but not the only one. Axton’s gaze shifted towards Franken’s rear as the War Suit’s sensors picked up multiple War Suits breaking off from the pack, all of them moving toward him and the crazed animals in what seemed to be a cavalry formation. He was about to ask what they thought they were doing but was stopped when he overheard their leader (or who he assumed to be their leader) issue a series of commands over wide-band comms.

“Soldiers of Wei, hear me, the honorable General Xiahou Dun! My cousin, Lord Cao Cao, would be appalled at our weakness and cowardice if we stood back and used such useless tools to fight such a foe! Join me in melee against these foul creatures and earn glory for our Company!”

Axton was about to internally facepalm at the sheer levels of hamming that was on display but stopped himself as a second group of War Suits fell in parallel to the advancing group of roleplayers and also started hamming it up to no end.

“Brothers and Sisters of the great and unrivaled nation of Kurdistan, join me and show our allies in this company who the true superior people are! I swear to you this day that we will claim more lives than these pathetic servants of Wei! Onwards, to victory!”

Axton could not stop himself from facepalming for real this time. He finally recognized the series of symbols that adorned both groups of War Suits. One was a flag that once stood for a certain extremist faction of Kurdish Nationals, the other main symbol was the icon used in those many, many, Dynasty Warriors games to mark the Three Kingdoms faction that was the Kingdom of Wei.

As for the third symbol that both groups shared? It was a terribly designed and tacky combination of the two symbols, and at this realization, Axton and Thomas alike finally put the pieces together.

“Oh my god. It’s a pun. These roleplayers named their Company after a pun”

Thomas was heard over their private channel accidentally slapping his face a bit too hard as he, too, facepalmed.

“Ugh… I get it now. They named their Guild… or rather, they named their Company ‘Kurds and Wei’…”

Axton could not contain his cringing each time anyone from this Company spoke. The fact that, despite obviously hamming it up they also seemed to take themselves 100% seriously was enough to cause Axton to slip up here and there as the levels of cringe in the air slowly but steadily rose. The banter back and forth between the two groups was a thing of absurdist comedic beauty in its own right, likely being outdone only by the preprogrammed lines of a certain game series where you fought aliens (which tended to use giant bugs and arachnids) that were trying to conquer Earth.

Axton gave up on trying to follow the seemingly endless idiocy that the roleplayers were engaging in and focused his attention back on the animal mobs that were attacking. His diverted attention had led to Franken’s armor taking a few scrapes, the claws of the creatures actually managing to leave some lasting marks in the armor. It was nothing a bit of light repair wouldn’t fix, but it was the fact that they could do such a thing that mattered.

Thomas and a few others kept firing wildly into the horde of animals, even though their guns were either doing nothing at all or just ticking away a few small numbers of HP. The sheer amount of fire that had been sent downrange had done little to the animals, but there was still the fact that it had lowered the overall HP of a decent number of these critters by at least ten or so each, while also staggering those very same creatures which left them open for a melee strike.

Axton was trying to focus on killing these things, but the banter between both sub-factions within the Company/ Guild that was assisting him kept redirecting his attention. He finally admitted defeat on that front and took a few moments to temporarily close all wideband comms from Franken’s systems. He would still receive directed messages, but at least for now he wouldn’t have to worry about having to roll his eyes or grimace unconsciously.

It seemed that Thomas had already done this as well, having had much more leeway when it came to closing certain comms channels since Spider-Can was mostly a ranged-heavy War Suit. Axton, now free of the endless cavalcade of cringy, pseudo-roleplay banter, redoubled his efforts and used Franken’s sharpened, oversized slab of metal to carve, cleave and cut his way through any enemy mob that got too close.

With a slash here, a cut there, a thrust over there, and a hacking slice in another place, Franken slowly carved its way through mob after mob, and now that there were more War Suits in melee alongside Axton, the numbers of the enemy mobs began to go from a gradual increase to a plateau and then to a steady decrease. As mob after mob fell before Axton and his War Suit, it became ever harder to find another valid target that was not another War Suit.

Eventually, there was but one animal mob left, and it fell to a thrust from Franken’s sword which went straight through its face and deep into its brain, popping out the other side of the skull. The creature went limp at that, and its weight nearly caused Franken to lose its grip on its sword, but with a little bit of direction Axton was able to have Franken flick the sword to one side which dislodged the sword from the animal’s head.

Through the cameras, Axton could see that Franken and its sword were covered in blood and gore. Thankfully, the workings of this game prevented such coatings from staying on too long, and sure enough, the innards and juices of the many slain foes that had covered Franken from head to toe began to fade out of existence.

Franken’s right hand and arm lifted upwards towards the ceiling of the cavern that it was in and gradually positioned itself to hold its sword in a diagonal position relative to its shoulder and back. Now in place once again, the magnetic clamps that normally held the sword in place when not in use activated, and the sword’s handle was soon released with Franken’s arm now returning to a more casual position.