“Careful… careful…” Thomas said as he eyeballed Franken’s movements for its pilot. In an effort to make sure that the cube would not break off and detach, the pair of friends had decided to try and put something under the nearly 100-pound box. Right now, they were trying to get Franken to balance on one leg until they could find something to put under its raised foot.

It was a delicate procedure, and it was one that was made all the harder by the fact that the only other machine capable of moving something durable enough for Franken’s foot to rest upon was a War Suit with no arms. However, difficulty breeds innovation, and both Players were using that fact to its fullest. Spider-Can was slowly moving a shattered husk of a nearby War Suit closer and closer, using the claws on the end of its legs to drag the hulk towards Franken.

Slowly but surely, the husk was moved into place and Franken’s foot slowly lowered itself down until it settled. Now some weight needed to be put on it to see if it would hold, and as it turned out, the broken machine stayed steady.

Seeing this, Franken’s other leg began to bend, slowly lowing its posture even more until the War Suit was no longer dangling the armored Blackbox in a loose way. The device slowly came to rest, and much to the delight of both people in the vicinity, the connection remained perfectly stable.

“Hooooooooh…” Axton sighed as he fell back into his seat. This time he made damn sure to avoid touching anything that could accidentally send a signal that would make Franken move. He had been both utterly pissed and completely overjoyed when the impact had allowed him to bypass that dumbass minigame, and he would be damned if he accidentally brought that fucking annoyance back into play with an equally careless action.

“Should we get started?” Thomas asked, but Axton merely raised a hand and waved vaguely.

“Nah, just give me a minute.”

“Fair enough.” Was the reply. “I’ll hunker down and shoot at anything that gets too close, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Axton said casually as he kept his gaze skyward. “Just try not to rock the boat. I really don’t want to go through that again anytime soon…”

…

With a few minutes having passed, Axton finally got around to looking into the data that the Blackbox contained. Sure enough, he saw a single War Suit’s perspective as to what happened a few days ago, complete with a few details that he never would have guessed.

What ended up angering him about what he saw, though, was exactly what you would expect. The cheating Champions used their backdoor into an unprotected War Suit to alter the flow of battle and try and score an easy win.

It seemed as though the two leaders of that roleplay-focused Company had planned for this possibility, though. Axton could read from the data that the two had likely planted bombs in their own machines, and that was likely the cause of the scorched crater a little bit away. Unfortunately, though, it seemed their last gamble had not paid off.

After the data from that Blackbox was gathered, Axton took another look at the battlefield and noticed that his new hunch was likely correct. He finally was able to put a few pieces together in his mind and came to the realization that it was highly likely that both cheaters survived and walked away mostly unscathed, likely ending the people around them in a swift and brutal fashion.

With the mystery solved, Axton no longer had a need for the heavy cube, and promptly disconnected it from Franken before repositioning his War Suit. He had nearly closed the cockpit when the alarm bells in his War Suit began to yell at him.

He hurriedly shut the cockpit and looked around for what was going on but could see nothing on the ground scanners.

“Ax, look up!”

Thomas’ voice led Axton’s gaze upwards. A… well, something was hurdling down towards their rough location like some kind of oversized and oddly shaped artillery shell.

“Scatter!” Axton yelled as he pulled Franken backward. The War Suit’s thrusters and the treads on the soles of its feet went into overdrive and Franken was able to peel away before the.. whatever it was managed to somehow slow down considerably before landing with a thud just a few dozen meters away from where Axton and his machine once stood.

Despite the thing before them looking like a regular weapons crate, just a bit larger, Axton and Thomas kept their distance until the thing opened. With a hiss and a plume of billowing greyish white gas, the box opened up and revealed its cargo.

Franken took a step closer, then another one, and then another one after that. Eventually, Axton was able to look down into the box and see what had just been express-delivered straight to his location. Franken’s right hand reached down and plucked the object inside the crate from within it, bringing it up and into full view.

“Huh… neat…” Axton muttered as he looked over the giant gun in his War Suit’s hand. It looked a bit like a much, much larger version of an old US Military SAW, but with a longer barrel, a simpler design, and with a much larger box magazine. Okay, that technically made it rather different from that weapon, but it was for comparison.

Turning the weapon over and over again, Axton realized that he had overlooked something on his own War Suit. He carefully placed the giant SAW down and plucked the two War Suit-sized combat knives from the back of Franken’s waist. Rather than unsheathing them, the sheathes themselves popped off, and Axton directed Franken to place them near its upper thighs.

The sheathed knives got close, and then Franken's sensors registered the feeling of them pulling towards its legs. Axton had his machine release the weapons, and they instantly jumped onto the sides of Franken’s upper thighs, clinging to them harder than one would have expected. Axton’s suspicions had been confirmed, and he picked up the giant SAW and placed it where the knives had once been.

However, this time the weapon didn’t do what he wanted. He directed Franken to try and look for other positions, but what ended up working was trying to place the gun top-down on one of Franken’s shoulders. Well, at least it was more ergonomic than trying to pull it off from his War Suit’s ass…

Thomas gave a whistle as Axton fiddled with the placing of his new toy. He didn’t know who sent the gun, but they were damn accurate in their delivery.

“Damn, man… Putting Amazon to shame, there. At least, I think it was same-day delivery….”