“Ah, to feel the warming rays of the sun falling upon my armor once again! I did fear that we would never again be able to experience this. My cousin will be overjoyed that we have made our way back to the surface.”

“That is quite right, obedient dog of the East. My men have languished under the leadership of your beloved ‘General’ Cao Cao for far too long. Now that I have returned, they will have the leadership needed to bring our ‘alliance’ not just to the gates of victory but beyond them.”

“Watch your tongue, Western Barbarian! We only permit you to exist out of pity, so do not push your bounds too far, lest you inevitably fall!”

As the two leaders of the two separate ‘factions’ in the Roleplay-Heavy Company continued to bicker (all in good fun, of course), Axton turned to Thomas and asked him a question that was now present in his mind.

“It didn’t take them long to get back to this, did it?”

Thomas shrugged and sighed. They both knew the correct response, so neither of them deemed it appropriate or necessary to say anything more. There were a few other Players that were part of neither the ‘Kurds and Wei’ Company nor the duo that was Axton and Thomas, but while they were now out in the fresh outside air, they still were potentially at the mercy of either the roleplayers or this novel series’ Main Character and his oligarch friend.

“Hey, uh, can we, uh, just kinda… leave?”

Axton turned his head to look at a screen. The person who had spoken up was one of those who had deigned it appropriate to challenge this ‘event’ on his own, and he was now rather concerned that he would, at any given moment in the immediate future or present, be turned upon.

“Yeah, just go.” Axton said as he waved his hand inside of Franken’s cockpit. “I, at least, won’t go after you unless there is no other option. You’ve earned our respect, and you’ve fought by our side when you could have easily stabbed us in the back. Besides, it wouldn’t be very sporting for us to turn on each other so soon after our improvised alliance ended, now would it?”

“Yep.” Thomas added. “My friend speaks for me, as well. You’re good, so go on and clear out if you feel like it. I’m not gonna be the one to ruin the moment, that’s for damn sure.”

“Does.. that apply to us, too?” Asked another Player.

“It is a blanket decision for us.” Axton said with a smile.

“Oh, cool! Well, I hope to not have to fight you later on!”

Axton chuckled and replied jovially, “Preaching to the choir, you guys. Have fun out there and watch out for that. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

A round of confirmations came in, and Axton brought his pointer finger to his lips.

“Remember, everyone. Loose lips sink ships.”

The unaffiliated Players parted from Axton, Thomas, and the members of the ‘Kurds and Wei’ Company, heading off in all directions. Axton looked over at Thomas and gestured in a direction with his head. Though it wasn’t as easy to determine where he was ‘pointing’ to due to the way the communication screens worked and due to the fact that both people were hidden inside of fully-enclosed metal cockpits, Thomas figured that Axton would move in one direction or another and he would need to follow.

“So, we’ll be leaving as well.” Axton said to the still bickering roleplayers. He waited a bit, hoping for a response, but it seemed that they were too caught up in their bit of theatre to notice anything outside of their self-made, self-directed skit. “Then, well, bye, I guess?”

Axton led Thomas off to the east, leaving the others behind to continue their fun, and only around a half-hour after they both had left did the people from the roleplay-heavy Company notice that they were now alone.

…

With the treads on the soles of its feet moving faster than an ATV’s wheels could hope to match on such uneven terrain, Franken made good progress towards… somewhere. To be brutally honest, neither Axton nor Thomas knew where the fuck they needed to go, or even if there was anyone or anything nearby to fight.

But that was part of the thrill, now wasn’t it? The pair made their way through thick undergrowth and between large trees, around obvious death traps and over nearly destroyed bridges, all in what now looked to be a vain attempt to find anyone or anything to turn their sights on. Hours eventually turned into half a day, and still, there was neither a sign nor even a hint of a sign that anyone worthy of fighting was around.

“I expected a Battle Royale,” Axton grumbled, “and all I got was a bit of nice scenery.”

“Better than getting a shot straight through the chest, right?” Thomas replied in a rather impotent attempt to add some levity to the situation.

“It would certainly make things more interesting, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yeah…”

Suddenly Franken ground to a halt, with Spider-Can nearly ramming into it from behind due to the nature of both their relative distance to each other and the speed at which Franken had decelerated.

“What’s u-… oh…”

Thomas nearly asked what was going on, but he quickly shelved his usual banter when he saw what was up ahead. There was a massive brawl just a bit ahead of both of them, with War Suits slugging it out both in melee and at range. None of the War Suits seemed to be a part of any singular group, instead likely being solo Players or just solo NPCs. Still, though, despite the fact that they were all trying to kill each other (or at least render each other unable to continue) there was one major issue that caught both Axton and Thomas’ eyes.

Far across the battlefield, two War Suits stood waiting, completely uninvolved in the fight. They just stood there, menacingly, and watched everyone in front of them tear each other limb from limb. The Suits were ornate, decked out in no shortage of detailed work, and honestly looked exactly like custom jobs. The real issue was the fact that they both had something wrapped around the waist joint on each of their machines.

Both War Suits had a belt that read simply “Champion”, and that, more than anything else, set off alarm bells. Now Axton and Thomas both knew why these people in front of them were fighting. Whether they allied together or not was irrelevant when their IFF systems could be tampered with on a whim. If these people had tried to form groups for survival’s sake, then those groups had been torn apart with a little bit of hacking.

Axton and Thomas gritted their teeth and grimaced. They had found the cheaters responsible for the hacked IFF tags, and all that stood between the two of them and the pair of cheaters was around 40 or so War Sits that were seemingly unable to surrender or even disengage from their battle. It was time for some justice to be done.