A man reclined in a rolling chair, his feet firmly planted atop the screen of a computer and his hands interlocked behind his head. His eyes were closed, and he was almost about to doze off, but a shrill beep from the computer in front of him nearly caused him to not only fall from his seat, but also to nearly knock over the valuable electronics on the desk.

As he regained his composure, he calmed himself and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He was sure that there was a noise earlier, but he wasn’t sure what noise it was. Sighing to himself, he checked over the notes to his right, which were written on a very old form of medium called a ‘notebook’.

The graphite lines on the paper pages of that old thing were faded and barely legible at best due to age, but then again no one had needed to read it in an age and a half, so of course it would gather nothing but dust. The machinery that had its details and the like written in that old piece of history had worked perfectly fine for over 450 years straight, and had been working well up till now, but now there was a single noise that the operator hadn’t heard in, well, his entire career.

He almost opened the book, only to pause and put it away. The beep was likely nothing serious at all, so what was the point of using something like that notebook? Hell, the last time he himself had tried to leaf through it the thing had nearly fallen apart.

Plus, if something was wrong, then it would be on his head to fix it, and with a match already going on, that would involve halting said match. He was many things, but suicidally stupid was not one of them. The investors and the people watching all of this go down would not be happy if he halted the game for something that turned out to be nothing important, so he decided that he could just wait until anything else happened before thinking about all of this again.

With that course now plotted, the man tilted his chair back, raised his feet back to their original position, interlinked his two hands behind his head, and resolved to once again try and make the trek to dreamland. Hopefully, no other noises would draw him back up to the waking world anytime soon.

…

On another part of the planet, a War Suit with detailed ornamentation that was painted in a deep metallic blue color ceased its movements. It had embedded its blade up to the hilt through the torso of another War Sit, having taken the final kill from the battle it had been in. The War Suit’s right hand gripped the blade as the massive blue machine moved back slightly before slowly and calmly releasing its hold over it.

The opposing War Suit teetered a bit before starting to fall backward, and as it did the blue War Suit reached out and held the handle of its weapon, which then slid out of the wound in the fallen combatant’s chest. Through the gap that the sword had made, the internals of the opposing War Suit could be seen to be covered in blood, with a lifeless NPC body lying within having had a decent portion of her chest opened up.

Another War Suit charged the ornamented metallic blue one but was stopped by a high caliber delayed explosive round slamming into it from behind before exploding inside the machine. The other enemy War Suit managed to take a few more steps, but it too fell over, though it fell face-first rather than backward.

“It is far from usual that the ‘great’ Cao Cao would be so careless.” Said an allied War Suit. “Of course, our leader, the great Saladin, would not show such childishness upon the field of battle. This, therefore, proves our nation is far superior to you Chinese Swine.”

“And yet, who was it who was apparently going silent since the Battle Royale began, Western Barbarian?” retorted a burly bald man in a very heavy Medium War Suit. “I will applaud you for knowing your place and saving my master, but it should have been myself, Dian Wei, to save my master, not a coward like yourself!”

“Dian Wei, calm yourself.” Replied the man in the metallic blue War Suit. “We know not why our ally has remained silent and untraceable up till now, but we do have a duty to find him and secure him. I refuse to allow any great talent to slip through my fingers, and it is that which has bound us to these Westerners. That said, I will lower myself to thank the one who did save me so willingly.”

The ornamented metallic blue War Suit turned to face due south and leveled its sword’s tip at the horizon. “Come, my subjects and my allies! We march to reclaim those who were denied to us when this mockery of true battle began!”

…

In another part of the planet, there were two men currently tearing a single War Suit limb from limb. They had truly enjoyed themselves watching this rag-tag gaggle of idiots try and work together, only to turn on each other when their IFF tags were altered remotely. Now there was one left, and they were slowly and cruelly tearing it apart.

The man inside was frantically calling out through every channel that he could to announce his surrender. If the tags had not been hacked, he would have saved himself, but these two bastards had a sick sense of delight in toying with those who crossed their path. This was one of the few places where one could get away with murder, and they had murdered a hell of a lot of people with these methods.

“Please, oh God, no! Help! HELP ME! I SURRENDER! NO! PLEASE! STOP!”

“No one can hear you except for us, chicken!”

“That is true. Though you are not a bird, it is still a fact that there is no one who can hear your cries aside from the two of us.”

“No! STOP! PLEASE! HELP! ANYONE! HELP ME!”

The pair continued ripping the War Suit apart, slowly but surely reaching the interior of the machine before shoving a mechanized hand inside to deposit an incendiary grenade.

“I hope you like the heat, ‘cause you’ll be dying in it!”

“The thermal damage will be intense, but if you try to breathe it should result in suffocation if the blast itself does not kill you immediately. Do not attempt to resist, as it will only make things harder for yourself.”