“You’re shitting me.” Axton said with a shake of his head.

“I wish I was, but I did in fact face down a monster like that.” Thomas replied, reaffirming his words. “I know it's stupid as hell, fighting a monster of your own making, but in my defense, I expected it would just, well, die.”

“Must have raised a flag or two before that point.” Axton joked before poking the dying fire again. “But in all seriousness, that could have gone very wrong.”

“Why?” asked Thomas, “Do you think it could have maybe gone full ‘Grey Goo’, but with meat?”

“It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility.” Axton replied. “Since you didn’t get a single experience point, I think it is likely that the blob was quarantined by the GMs and the like before it could cause any more issues.”

“Jeez…” Muttered a rather concerned Thomas. “Didn’t know I had it in me to doom the world.”

“Accidentally doom the world.” Axton said in a joking tone. “Besides, your actions may very well prevent a few other issues that may or may not exist and may or may not have been overlooked from being a major threat going forward. You may not have doomed the world; instead, you may have saved it a thousand times over.”

“Huh… I didn’t think of it that way.”

Axton looked up at the night sky and let the starlight wash over him. Thomas did the same, but the night sky was quickly fading, replaced by a slight light coming over the horizon. Before either Player could drink in the starlight one last time, the lights from over fifteen spaceships popped into being overhead.

The ships were smaller than the station, but they were each around a fifth of the station’s total size, which provided many more artificial lights to muddy the dying night sky. Without realizing that the other was doing the same, both Axton and Thomas shook their heads in annoyance and got up from their seats.

“Well, let’s get this final show on the road.” Axton said as he walked over to Franken.

“With words like that, it looks to be you who is raising the flags now.” Thomas retorted as he clambered into Spider-Can.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” Axton replied as e pulled Franken’s hatch shut and brought his machine out of sleep mode. His War Suit lurched a bit before rising to its full height and setting its gaze on the maze of ruins to the east.

“Two cheaters, a maze of death, and an unknown number of puppeteered War Suits against the two of us.” Remarked Thomas as he, too, set his sights on the destroyed metropolis. “Somehow, I think I like those odds.”

“Then we go with the previously agreed-upon plan?” Asked Axton.

“Yep. You rush in and hit them hard in melee, and I’ll show you exactly what kind of tricks this machine can do.”

“So,..” Axton muttered before making his joke. “Parkour?”

There was a pause before Spider-Can’s torso spun around in a circle and its legs began to dance a merry jig.

“Yes. Violent Parkour.” Said Thomas, adding his joke to Axton’s.

“Ah, yes.” Came the next comment. “Violent Parkour. The best kind.”

“Damn straight.”

And with that, the pair made their way towards their next destination and the one that would be the final one during this Battle Royale.

…

“What the hell is taking them so long?!” yelled a high-pitched, nasally, and overall jerkish voice.

“I, too, am upset by their lack of willingness to face us.” Replied the gruff, near monotone, and utterly spartan voice of the other Champion.

“They can’t be planning to just lose by not facing us, can they? Are they really that cowardly?”

“I do not expect any great challenge from them.” Said the gruff NPC. “They cannot match us, and this is why they refuse to fight. It is the only choice that ensures their lives.”

“Fuck!” screamed the whiny bastard. “I just want to kill them! Is that too much to ask for?!”

“I do not believe that to be so. I, too, desire to kill them. It merely appears as though they are refusing to give us what we want and deserve.”

“They fucked up things this much, and now they don’t even want a final showdown…” grumbled the jerk in one of the two fancy War Suits. “God damn hypocrites is what they are.”

“Perhaps we could go and meet them in open battle? If they will not willingly come to us so that we may end them, it may be prudent to go to them and make them suffer for their actions.”

“Nah, nah. We still have some time.”

Before the pair could make any other snide remarks, an alert came in from one of their allies up in the station high above them.

“Fucking finally!” exclaimed the more jerkish of the two. “Finally! Lambs to the fucking, god damn slaughter!”

“I see that my assumptions were, at least partially, proven untrue. This changes nothing because they will die in pain regardless.” Stated the gruff NPC in his big, buff, custom War Suit. “I will arrange for the controlled War Suits to buy some time, if not render our foes incapacitated. We should prepare to greet out ‘guests’ regardless of whether they make it here or not, which they certainly won’t.”

“Eh, I kinda just wanna go out here and gut ‘em myself, you know?” grumbled the man in the smaller of the two War Suits. He directed his War Suit to kick a rock in front of it, and the stone went flying due to how the Champion had overcompensated, seemingly unaware of how little power was needed to launch such a measly pebble.

As if it was in a comedy skit, the foot of the jerkish NPC Champion’s War Suit shot up and out in front of itself, which completely destroyed the balance of the machine and sent it tumbling backward onto the broken pavement.

“You didn’t see that!” yelled the fool as he righted his killer robot.

“As you wish. I did not see anything.”