Saladin desperately tried to hold off the attacks from his comrade, but while he could obviously take down the poorly-performing marionette that Cao Cao’s War Suit had become, he would put himself in a great deal of danger and, quite possibly, start a rift that could tear their company apart. As such, he directed his War Suit as best as he could, deflecting as many blows as possible and dodging those that he could not.

Thankfully, despite their talk of making this a three-on-one fight, the cheating Champions seemed intent to stay out of things for now. How long that would last, however, was something he did not know.

As the fight dragged on, he found that his usual theatrical style had slipped away, leaving in its place the person he was outside of this game. Gone were the theatre and hammy performances, now there was just a normal man with a whole fuckton of anger trying desperately to keep his mask on.

He pulled back his own War Suit, making a decent bit of distance keep both of them from fighting any longer. He was expecting the currently-puppeteered War Suit of his friend and fellow Company Leader to come after him, but it did not.

He thanked the whims of fate for this, but as he prepared to try and fight again, he got a whisper from the man whom he was forced to face. Though normal chat was blocked, Player-to-Player chat was still running without issues or interference, and this was what Cao Cao was using to give his friend a heads up as to what he intended to do with the minimal control he still had.

Unable to send a message normally, Saladin merely replied with “Ok” in a whisper of his own before taking a long, curving path towards the two Champions. As both he and his fellow Company Leader had expected Cao Cao’s remotely manipulated War Suit moved to intercept, but Saladin was not interested in fighting that machine right now.

Now, rather than trying to disable his friend’s mech, his goal was to get said machine close enough to the real enemy for Cao Cao’s ‘little surprise’ to, at bare minimum, cause some nasty damage. After all, once the fact that the IFF tags were actually backdoor hacks was made known to them all, Cao Cao and the rest of the unprotected members of their Company had been forced to make their own ‘fuck yous’ to anyone who would hack them.

They could not easily make what Axton had, and they lacked the time and resources to experiment, so the only other option was to find some way to let the pilots go out on their own terms. Cao Cao’s War Suit (among many others) had such a jury-rigged feature added in, and while none of the Company members wanted to use it, it was now the only option for one of the two Company Leaders.

Saladin managed to get close enough for the two Champions to start making their own actions, and he made his War Suit raise and bring down its oversized scimitar towards what looked to be the weaker of the two cheating bastards. The blade almost connected, but a barrier seemingly made of light itself halted and deflected the strike merely a few millimeters before it hit the armor.

As the blade bounced off, another blade impaled Saladin’s War Suit from the side. The puppet that war Cao Cao’s War Suit had finally reached him, but Saladin grinned as he and his fellow Company Leader smashed a box in their respective War Suits’ cockpits and pressed the big, red button with a skull on it.

Seconds later, both War Suits exploded with enough force to reduce them both to nothing more than scattered bits of twisted shrapnel that bounced off the ground and off of rocks and trees when they didn’t either cut through them or embed themselves in them. Both Champions had their War Suits hurled backward by the explosion, and those nearby shared an even more destructive fate.

The Champions had been (mostly) protected by their energy shields, but those were now utterly burnt out, and what damage that those shields didn’t prevent had resulted in some decent dents and cracks here and there. The other War Suits nearby were not as lucky, and those that still functioned were in terrible shape.

The two Champion pilots and their War Suits lay on their backs nearly fifteen meters away from where they were just moments before, their cameras nearly fried and their audio sensors (and all sensors in general) were overwhelmed to the point of giving back constant static even after they auto-recalibrated. The larger War Suit of the two got back up faster than the other and surveyed the damage.

“The result is not what was expected.” Said the gruff, stoic, and utterly monotone voice from within. “I request permission to put the rest out of our misery.”

“Just fucking do it and then help me up.” Griped the jerkish one.

The larger, more heavily built War Suit walked forward, every few steps ending in a slight limp.

“Oh, thank god…” said a Player as he watched one of the Champions come closer. “Please, sir, give me a hand here. I can’t get u-.”

The Player and their War Suit were silenced as the nearby Champion brought down a massive double-headed battleax on them, ending both instantly.

“What the fuck, man?!” yelled another Player who had been ‘allied’ to the two Champions. “I know his Suit was damaged, but you swore that you’d protect u-!”

Another blow from the battleax ended another Player, albeit temporarily.

“Shit! Fuck! Everyone who can, bail out, now!” Yelled an NPC, but his words never left his War Suit. Despite being damaged as all hell, the IFF tag was still working and had locked all those here out of their comms systems. They could scream into their mics all they wanted, but no one could hear them do so.

One after another, each War Suit that had even somewhat survived the explosion and the fight prior to it were cut down, until only two functioning units remained, both of which belonged to the Champions.

“Good. Now help me up.” Ordered the jerkish Champion.

“Of course.” Replied the other Champion, resting his War Suit’s battleax on his machine’s shoulder before partially limping over to his master.