Axton walked through the dense jungle towards where he had been informed that the drop pod containing his new War Suit would be landing. At first, he was a bit worried that someone could or would spring some kind of a trap on him. Hell, he honestly wouldn’t put it past those cheating sons of bitches to send a few suicide bombers his way, just to make sure that he died in a way that would boost the ratings.

Though, if the running commentary that he was getting from Thomas was anything to go by, the bastards up above had bigger issues to worry about, though he wasn’t sure how long those issues would stay in play. If he knew the media like he thought that he did, then they would learn nothing from any of this, and once the immediate firestorm had died down they’d be right back to their old tricks.

As such, he was of the mind to find his new War Suit as quickly as he possibly could, and he had been informed that a tell-tale sound would signal its arrival. What that sound was, though, was something he had not been informed of, but he had been told that he would recognize it.

He wasn’t alone in his trek through the jungle, either. Thomas was there, to, along with a few members of that roleplay-focused Company, though none of them were bearing the names of anyone of historical note. He had to give them credit where credit was due, they kept their show up even during this bullshit, which was no doubt a feature that was unintentionally driving up the ratings, no doubt.

As he walked towards the rough area where the drop pod was supposed to land, he looked up to the sky as a shrill mechanical voice screamed out a cry from a falling piece of metal.

“SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!”

As it fell, Axton looked over at Thomas who, despite being obscured by lots of metal, was no doubt wearing a massive grin.

“Seriously?” Axton asked with a quizzical look on his face.

“What? It’s a classic!”

Axton shook his head and walked onwards towards where the bright streak was descending to the ground. He pushed through the undergrowth just barely before the drop pod impacted the ground, but with a sound that made it seem like it had landed violently on top of something that was not solid earth.

He pushed the last bit of vegetation aside as he finally entered a small clearing, setting his gaze upon a large teardrop-shaped object that was hissing loudly as it forcibly reduced the thermal energy it had taken on. The outside went from being white hot to red and then to a nice metallic sheen in under a minute, and the sides of the crafter rattled a bit before being violently blown off their hinges by small but powerful directional explosive charges.

One of those doors missed Axton’s right arm by only a few inches, the pressure of the air being shoved aside being enough to knock Axton onto his other side with a potent amount of force. He got up quickly enough, though, as he couldn’t afford to wait much longer to get into his new War Suit.

With little time left to spare, Axton entered the drop pod and popped open the cockpit of Franken Mk.4 before hopping inside and breathing a massive sigh of relief that he had only just barely beaten the clock. He still needed to run a few checks and power up the rest of the ‘non-essential’ systems, but right now he was out of danger and unable to be disqualified so easily anymore.

With their job done, the roleplayers walked back into the jungle, leaving Thomas alone to guard Axton as this next iteration of Franken finished its first start-up. A few more minutes passed as the diagnostics ran inside of Franken, with Axton anxiously tapping his foot as the seconds and then minutes ticked by.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that fate was not about to sit idly by and let Axton do this slowly and methodically, and the jungle foliage began to rustle as a number of smaller but still deadly crosses between a mountain lion and a warthog rushed out and began to attack.

If he was alone, this would have likely spelled the end for Axton’s part in the Battle Royale, but he was by no means actually alone. Thomas was here, and with him was Spider-Can, and these new enemies were considerably less of a bunch of bullet sponges than the creatures in that Dungeon had been.

…

Spider-Can’s quad 12.7mm machine guns that made up the machine’s right auto turret fired in a cyclical fashion, meaning that even though technically only one gun of the four was firing a bullet at any given time, the next one would be spitting lead almost immediately afterward. This kept up a withering rain of high velocity and high caliber light anti-armor fire that turned the rampaging critters to not much more than stains of splattered gore in mere moments, but the sheer volume of animals rushing towards the clearing was beginning to push the limits of Spider-Can’s main anti-infantry weapon.

That was where the twin 20mm autocannons on the War Suit’s left side picked up the slack. Say what you will about gratuitous overkill, but when you seem to be facing a never-ending wave of violent animals that would each be big enough to make a tiger look ‘medium sized’, you need all the firepower that you can get.

And due to the staggered rate of fire that the two autocannons put out, Thomas was able to hose down the encroaching tide with enough exploding 20mm shells to reduce many a critter to scattered giblets while also doing damage to the animals beside them. If only PETA could see Thomas now, it and its members might have died of the sheer level of death that was being unleashed on the ‘poor defenseless animals’.

Then again, when in modern times had PETA been above killing any animal they came across in order to ‘save’ them? So, maybe they would be fine with it, after all. Either way, Thomas was beginning to run out of ammo, and the number of angry little animals was barely slowing its climb. With few other options left, Thomas prepared Spider-Can for melee combat, even though he knew that it would likely result in Spider-Can’s destruction.

As he made ready for a desperate charge, the heavy metallic riff of a very, very old song billowed out from behind him. He smiled and moved Spider-Can to the side as a gout of liquid fire flowed out from the darkness inside the drop pod.

In time with the beat, the heavy sounds of metal impacting metal sent shivers down the spines of the annoying little animals, and with the first line of the song, a metal hand gripped the exterior of the drop pod, pulling the new and improved Franken Mk.4 out of the darkness like he was a goddamn comic book action hero on the silver screen.

“Okay…” asked Axton in a rather irritated tone. “Who thought that this was a good idea? I’m almost sure that there’s gonna be hell to pay regarding the use of this song, but for now, let’s deal with the task at hand.”