As the last remaining people in the colony itself lay either dead, dying, or on fire, Axton finally turned his attention to the ruined compound where he was absolutely certain that Stebbs was waiting for him. It was an easy conclusion to make. After all, his HUD currently showed that there were a bunch of people and a rather large extra ‘something’ waiting for him in there, and while his HUD didn’t tell him what that ‘something’ was, the fact that it was marked as a hostile was all the info he needed. Axton had Franken stand facing the rough direction where the ‘ambush’ waited and after pressing another button on the control panel the last two dumbfire rockets that had been mounted on Franken in a way reminiscent of a Sherman Calliope flew off towards the area.

Wisely anticipating that the extra weight from the now-empty rocket launcher frame would inhibit his movement, Axton temporarily shut down most of Franken’s systems in order to reroute a large amount of power to Franken’s left arm and hand. Said arm and hand reached up and grabbed the supports holding the emptied MLRS above the War Suit’s upper limits and then ripped the whole apparatus off and tossed it aside as if it were so much trash.

Thankfully, the external mounting had been made out of steel, not the same stuff that the majority of Franken’s armor and main body was comprised of, and the damage suffered by the War Suit was, as a result, relatively minor. As the frame clattered to the ground, Axton realized that he had missed the always enjoyable sound of gratuitous explosions, but once the game actually began after the post-Beta wipe, he would be able to more easily indulge in his innately human-male desire to see things go boom.

It was regrettable that he had been unable to witness the number of red dots drop from the number that they were previously to what they were now in real-time, but at least he would get to fight a weakened foe. Axton set the power distribution back to normal and the treads on the soles of Franken’s feet pulled and pushed the roughly ten-ton mech towards the last battle both it and its maker would fight for a while.

…

It was just around one last corner….

Axton stopped Franken just before it would pull out in front of the opening that led to where the big, shiny, expensive hunk of junk that Stebbs was piloting stood. He popped open the cockpit and held his body out slightly so that he could use a single eye to peer around the corner. Sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed, and he could clearly see the gold-plated monument to so much pain and misery standing like a giant, gold-covered, humanoid turd in the center of what was essentially an arena. What was also rather easily visible was the multitudes of random inbred mooks that were waiting for… something.

Axton could not be sure whether they intended to get involved in any fight he would have with their ‘boss’ or whether they were just there to watch, but the fact that they were carrying their weapons made him rather… anxious. He was about to get back into his War Suit and lob a few grenades over the top to try and thin out the herd as his rockets had done a fair bit prior, but Stebbs apparently had seen him and called out from inside his expensive toy.

“Outworlder! I know you’re there! Let’s settle this like men, mano e mano! Whoever wins takes it all, and my men won’t interfere regardless of how it turns out! You have my word on that!”

Axton closed up Franken’s cockpit and replied in kind.

“Your ‘word’? Do you even know how little that means, you sadistic maniac? You promised the people here that you would take care of them, that you would protect them and serve them as you were selected to. Yet what did you do, huh? You gave them your word that you would get them off the planet and into a better place if they did what you said, and what did your ‘word’ amount to? Another chain, another collar, another slave master. Despite giving them your ‘word,’ you tricked them into changing one despot for an even worse one, and yet you ask me to take you on your word? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“I did what I had to in order to keep control! Do you even know who was supposed to come here if it wasn’t to be me?! Now, you can come to fight me one versus one, or you can try and take everyone here on all at once. It’s your call!”

Axton was not about to let Stebbs keep a passive audience that could, at the drop of a hat, become a very active audience, and thus made his demand.

“Fine, you child murdering sociopath! But I’ll not face you in front of a crowd of armed men who are under your employ. I don’t trust you not to call for their help if things start to go against you, so I’ll be right here until I can tell that they are far enough away that they won’t be of any help to you in the event that I start winning.”

“Afraid of an audience to your failure, Outworlder?” Stebbs replied, but Axton was not going to let this variable remain in play.

“Oh, there is an audience, alright, but you just don’t see it. Now send those mooks away, far away, or I’ll start lobbing grenades over the wall and we’ll see how long they want to stay around and support you as an ‘audience’ then!”

Axton made sure to up the volume on Franken’s loudspeakers for that final sentence, making damn sure that Stebbs’ grunts heard full-well that he was not fucking around. Even without Stebbs’ orders, the bulk of the hired goons began to file out and leave. They were most likely fully aware that neither Axton nor Stebbs would mind if they got caught in the crossfire, and Axton’s willingness to simply bombard them from beyond their reach had already been made perfectly clear when the two rockets came down and wiped a good 1/5th of them from the makeshift arena.

“Cowards! Traitors!” Stebbs shouted as the number of people watching him stand in the arena dropped until there was only himself and his War Suit in that place.

Axton snickered and then pulled Franken back a bit, creating distance before he began the fight. If he could time it right, he would rush around the corner and into the arena, lobbing a few grenades as he did. If his luck was good, then the grenades would be smoke, but if he fired a few HE or AP grenades instead and a few managed to hit the gold-covered goliath….

Well, a first strike was as useful in PvE and it was in PvP, and with AI like the ones for the NPCs in the game, this would, in a way, be a mix of both.