“Come on, man, it’s not like we both didn’t expect more of this bullshit.”

Axton grumbled even as Thomas tried to alter his mood, but Axton was still rather nettled about this whole situation. He just wanted to fight in this Battle Royale, but assholes kept trying to bend or break the very rules that they themselves put in place. God damn hypocrites were ruining his experience, and likely ruining the experience of other people as well.

“I don’t care.” Axton said in what would to some seem a calm and quiet voice but could also be interpreted as a normally calm man’s rage. “We’ve got things to do, so let’s just do them and be done with it.”

Thomas felt a shiver run down his spine as Axton turned around and silently got back into Franken. He did not like Axton’s current mood, and he was fairly sure that Axton wasn’t too pleased with his own mood either. As if his berserker fury wasn’t bad enough, he now was so irritated that he was chillingly ‘calm’ and quiet.

“Well, let’s find someone to take down. That should help you ease out of some of that tension, right?”

Axton said nothing and merely directed Franken to move through the jungle.

“Fuck, man…” Thomas groaned. “This is not going to end well for anyone we meet, is it?”

…

“I shit you not, I just saw a bunch of Players so invested in their roleplaying that they didn’t even notice me walk in on their camp, stand stock still in front of them, back away, and run off back here.”

“Nah, dude, nobody can be that involved in their delusions.”

“Hey, that mental disease… What was it called? Paranoid Schizophrenia, I think? It used to exist, right? That supposedly made people live in a delusional state, right?”

“And there are still people who think that reality isn’t real and that we all are nothing more than lines of code or words in a book. Hell, some people even manage to convince themselves that fictional characters are their lovers, despite them being, well, fictional.”

“Hey, man. Not cool. Don’t kinkshame me.”

“ANYWAY, What I told you was and probably is still true. We can head over right now and wipe a few of them before they even have the chance to fight back.”

As this handful of Players chatted on, an alarm sounded off in their War Suits, which caught them all by surprise.

“Fucking shit, dude, you were followed!”

“Nuh uh! I made damn sure that nobody was after me! Sensors were clean the entire way through!”

“But it says that… wait…”

Before anyone among them could begin to fight, one of the War Suits raised its hand to try and calm everyone down.

“Hey, everyone. Check your scans again. Anything look funny to you?”

“I see nothing but a bunch of hostiles surrounding me!” yelled one of them.

“He’s right! Where the hell did you guys disappear to?! Why am I now surrounded by… hold on a moment…”

The gathering of Players held their ground and popped open their cockpits one by one, taking what they initially thought was a massive risk before realizing that the rumors that had been slowly flowing in over the open chat were alarmingly true.

“Heh…” laughed one of them dryly as he looked from his scanners to the outside world and back again multiple times. “I guess real people aren’t the only people to hack games.”

“Yeah, we’ll need to be careful from now on. Any ideas as to how we can identify ourselves from others?”

One of the Players scratched the side of his head before getting an idea.

“Hey, I may have one, but it may get us in trouble, copyright-wise.”

“Shoot.”

“We could paint one shoulder from each of our War Suits red. I think the left side would be fine.”

“And that would be dangerous why?”

“Well,..” started the one who suggested the idea. “There is an old, old media series with a bunch of mechs that, when a part of a certain group, paint their shoulders, I think the right side, red.”

“How old are we talking about, here?” Asked one of the others.

“Like, over a century.”

“Then we should be fine. Not like they are gonna pay attention to some random ass people, right?”

“I guess so… but… hold on, where did this other red blip come fro-“

Before the question could fully be asked, a War Suit burst from the treeline and shoved a large combat knife into the back of the inquiring Player’s War Suit. The blade found easy passage between a gap in the War Suit’s armor and cut deep into the machine’s power supply. A moment after the blade had gone down to the guard, it was retracted, and the attacked War Suit went limp as it fell to total power failure.

“Fuck! Where the hell did that one come from!” Yelled another Player, but before his cockpit could close the intruder sped around and sliced off its pilot's head.

The ‘brave’ sacrifice of their two comrades allowed the other five Players to completely close their cockpits in time, but they were still new to War Suit combat, which was a major issue that they would inevitably need to deal with. Though, to be clear, they would need to learn how to fight better elsewhere, as the knife-wielding War Suit shanked another of their number before they could adequately respond, this time driving the weapon into a gap between the place where the cockpit met the rest of the War Suit’s chest, gutting the pilot within.

“R-run! We can’t beat him!”

The one who spoke up was the next to fall, a swift slice to the backside of his War Suit’s knee severing the poorly armored mechanical musculature and tendons that gave a War Suit its limb strength. As that machine fell, the attacker drove a reverse-gripped knife into its left ‘arm’, piercing the belt-fed recoilless rifle that was there and set off the already loaded round in it.

The War Suit’s arm weapon detonated, which caused the game’s systems to calculate the chance of the rest of the ammo cooking off. Each round was calculated properly, and as the last one was made to detonate, it, in turn, forced each round that had originally not detonated to make another check, this time with a higher disadvantage. This eventually snowballed as each round detonated one after the other in seemingly random order until the affected War Suit was reduced to spare scrap strewn across the area.

The blast was fast and powerful enough to shake up the unknown assailant, and the other Players were able to split up and run for their lives. As the fireball and pressure wave dissipated and the dust cleared, the intruder’s War Suit stabilized itself and surveyed the damage.

Another War Suit clambered out of the jungle soon after, and it sent the first one a message.

“Axton, my man, are you chill yet? That’s the fourth group so far. You’ve got to be over it by now.”

The first War Suit remained silent for a while before its pilot responded.

“No. Not yet. Need to vent a bit more. Let’s find the next one.”

"Yeah... just try not to kill anyone who can't come back, alright?"