The oversized, improvised disposable light anti-armor weapon slammed into the giant War Suit’s already damaged shoulder and injected its deadly and destructive payload into the machine. Though the highly volatile incendiary mixture could not spread very far, it did not need to.

After all, it was not purely designed to deal with the cockpits of vehicles, even if they were compartmentalized. No, the chemical compound that flooded through the minor gaps in between the mechanical components was designed to incinerate flesh and also render machine parts utterly useless, either by fusing them together, melting them, or simply burning them away.

As a result, despite being heavily armored, that one, single shot, combined with the direct hit it had taken a few moments prior, resulted in the shoulder of the Heavy War Suit being rendered useless and broken. As the chemical aerosol burned away, the connection between the main body of the War Suit and the arm it was connected to ceased to exist and the War Suit’s arm went limp.

“You…” growled the still-monotone voice of the tiny man in the giant War Suit. “You have used illegal weapons.”

“Weapons pilfered from your proxies, so don’t go calling the kettle black.” Axton spat back as a trio of 20mm shells streaked by Franken’s head and detonated merely a few centimeters in front of the enemy War Suit.

When the shells exploded, they spread a caustic mixture over everything nearby, and all the gold and bling on the rhino-themed War Suit could not stop the machine from hissing and spitting as the metal that wasn’t (mostly) immune to high-strength acid began to corrode away.

“More illegal weapons.” Spat the monotone man, “You are unworthy of being Champions.”

“Again, Mr. Pot,” Thomas joked as he let a mortar shell arc down to explode on the slow War Suit he and his friend were fighting, “you need to stop calling the kettle black as though you aren’t as well.”

“Be. Silent.” Came the reply, but Axton and Thomas didn’t really give a damn.

With only one arm working, the giant War Suit had an even more difficult time than ever before in its task of fighting off Axton and his piloted killer robot suit. The massive battleax that was once swung with moderate efficiency and minimal effect was now swung around with an even more clumsy movement, and this, of course, gave Franken and its combat knives much more room to do its deadly work.

Where once came swings every two seconds or so, now the swings were not merely ever few seconds, but roughly once every ten or so as the larger War Suit struggled to heft the weapon that weighed nearly as much as a few of Spider-Can’s legs with merely one arm. Though it was mostly drowned out by the sounds of battle, if one listened close enough they could hear servos screaming and synthetic muscles nearly tearing apart as the endoskeleton beneath all of it gradually warped and bent under the excessive strain.

As the enemy flailed around, it gave Axton more than a few more ins to deal some more damage, though the amount that he dealt had dropped significantly due to the overall speed of his foe having dropped as well. As a result, the vast majority of damage dealt to the enemy War Suit came not from Axton and his machine, but from Thomas and his.

Though Axton could score more Criticals, Spider-Can held the top spot in terms of damage dealt due to how rapidly it fired and due to the sheer variety of ranged weapons it was using against the enemy. However, Thomas soon had to divert his attention away from the overly bulky War Suit and back to the other Champion as the trap that it had fallen into finally wore off.

This left the two melee-centric War Suits to fight it out from here on, as Thomas now had his hands full using Spider-Can’s extensive range of ranged weapons to hold the other foe away from the melee fight.

…

“You fight… without… honor.” Spoke the tiny, monotone man in the wildly oversized war machine.

“And hacking your foes to make them sitting ducks that can’t fight back and then trying to send hitmen to kill anyone who doesn’t play by ‘your rules’ is honorable?” Axton fired back with a full salvo of snark.

“We are… honorable. True warriors. Not like you.”

Axton stifled a chuckle.

“You dare laugh at us?”

“Of course.” Axton replied as Franken managed to finally shove one of its knives deep into a gap in the armor plates of its pilot’s foe. “If someone did what you did to all of us and so many others to you, would you consider them to be ‘honorable’ and to be ‘true warriors’?”

“No. They would be cheaters, like you.”

“So, it's fine if you do it, but god forbid someone else does it to you?”

“Correct.”

Axton… had no real answer to that. He had hoped that he could at least somewhat use the moronic, faulty logic that was on display as a way to trip up his foe, but this was not merely someone who was justifying their actions in a normal way. This was, to be blunt, someone who either believed that they were completely and absolutely entitled to anything they wanted, damned be the consequences to others, or this was someone too simple to even begin to comprehend that their actions were wrong at all, even when presented with a hypothetical about-face scenario.

He had to at least somewhat marvel at the level of cognitive dissonance that was being shoved into his face. It was a trait of humans to be arrogant, to be selfish, and to believe that they alone were always in the right, but most of the time people still would at least partially understand the misery of others if forced to at least mentally perceive it being brought upon themselves.

Rare was the man so utterly assured in their own superiority and self-righteousness that common sense, common decency, common ethics and common morality meant absolutely nothing and believed that all of those things needed to be applied to them, but that they needn’t consider applying it to others.

As Franken pulled out the knife it had driven up to the hilt into the joint between two metal plates, Axton shook his head and was forced to change his assessment of his foes.

“You guys aren’t just assholes.” He said with a tone of disappointment. “You’re worse than that.” He paused and had Franken duck under a swing from the enemy War Suit. “You’re total sociopathic narcissists…”