“Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!” screamed a certain cheating NPC who also happened to be the sole surviving member of the par of Champions of the previous few Battle Royale games. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”

Gone was the previous cocky, jerkish demeanor, and in its place was fear and desperation. He just needed an opening, some way to escape and set this damn planet on the road to self-destruction, but now that his partner was dead he had to contend with two rather nimble War Suits rather than just one.

His War Suit rocked as a volley of 20mm shells exploded nearby, directly in the path he was about to step on. That should have been all but impossible given the fact that he was piloting a roughly 30-ton war machine, but the autocannons he had been forced to deal with up till now had all manner of different specialty shells, so that War Suit having a few with far more explosive power than usual should not have been too surprising.

Either way, he was being boxed into an ever-smaller corner, which he knew was just the prelude to that smaller, faster War Suit and its dumb pilot rushing in to deliver a coup de grace. Those knives may have been a poor counter to his formerly living comrade’s War Suit, given its armor and weight, but against his giant, piloted killer robot it would almost certainly have a better chance of doing some real damage.

Likewise, his War Suit had been pelted with a mix of anti-armor machine guns and autocannons, so his machine’s durability was already in the shitter. He raged inside of his cramped cockpit as a lucky 12.7mm bullet knocked out one of the cameras on the outside of his War Suit, further limiting his vision.

“Why the fuck did you have to come here?!” He yelled, not caring if they heard him or not. “We had a good thing going, and now it's all shot to hell because of you! So, WHY?!”

“Not our choice, in the end.” Replied one of the Outworlders. “Besides, not a single one of our kind would have let you live that bullshit down. Did you think that you could escape justice like before?”

“Yes!” he screamed, now completely uncaring about his own image.

“We can’t die. Not permanently, anyway.” Said the other Outworlder. “All you would have done is made a fuckton of enemies. Maybe they would have come back and rendered your tricks useless on their own, maybe they would have gone balls-to-the-walls crazy and stormed the station to kill you themselves without the glory of a final battle, who knows.”

“Either way, your days were numbered the moment we Outworlders entered this reality.” Added one of the two Outworlders. “And that is the truth. You would have won the battle, but not the war. And if you think we would just call it quits and give up, then you obviously don’t know how utterly petty and vindictive sapient life is in general.”

“Add in the inability to truly die, and you have a fuckton of people who can’t be killed who would gladly go on a massive journey across the galaxy, just to kill you. You could run, you could hide, but unless you both just went and offed yourselves, there would be no escape. They would find, you, they would catch you, and giving you an honorable ‘death by combat’ would be the absolute last thing on their mind.”

At these words, the gravity of his situation finally began to set in. He had not factored in that part of Outworlder existence. And what they said did make sense. He knew natural-born people could be petty, spiteful, vindictive, and prone to grudges and streaks of revenge that could last decades, if not centuries.

…. Fucking hell… What kind of an idiot had he been to assume that he could just do this as many times as he wanted now that they were a thing?

Well, he was a dead man anyway, so he might as well go all in. He gritted his teeth and pushed on, looking for a way to get away ad try and set off his final surprise. However, the cage he was being forced into only got smaller, and with that decrease in space to move came a decreased chance of his final gambit, he last ‘fuck you’, not being able to be activated.

…

Axton and Franken rushed forward as Spider-Can ceased its firing. The pilot and his machine ducked low to avoid a swing from the right arm of the enemy, which passed over their collective heads as it fired off a single 105mm APFSDS round.

The difference between that one big gun and Spider-Can’s smaller guns was clear as day, as one could only fire in a semi-auto mode while the other could spray down a target area with smaller but more numerous attacks.

Franken, or at least this iteration of it, was built for speed and maneuverability, and dodging such an obvious attack with such an obvious firing arc was simple enough to be child’s play for the seasoned pilot. Franken pushed forward with only one knife, holding it properly and pushing the handle forward with one hand behind the other.

Sparks flew as the knife rammed its way through the lighter armor of this foe, severing electronic connections and internal components alike before Franken spun around to yank the blade out with almost as much force as it had used to slam it in. As it spun, it brought out its other combat knife and drew a damaging line across the right flank of the enemy War Suit before swapping the grip of the weapon to a more standard forward one and delivering a double slash with both of its melee weapons.

The deep gashes made into the Champion’s war machine were only possible due to Spider-Can delivering no small number of specialty shells straight to the enemy’s body, which either ate away at the War Suit via acid, thermal damage, or fragmented metal or by simply using pure kinetic force. With that foe’s armor being practically nonexistent at this point, Axton and Franken could go to town and use their knives to their fullest.

A slash here, a slice there, a stab after that, followed up by ripping the blade free; this was how Franken, this version of it, anyway, was meant to fight. Gradually the damage piled up, and the enemy War Suit began to slump and then finally collapsed under its own weight like a puppet with its strings cut.

The dust began to settle, and rather than take any chances Axton did the only logical thing he could think to do. Putting its knives away, Franken unholstered its gun and aimed down at the helpless metal coffin.

“From where you’re lying, this must all seem so familiar, right? Axton asked. “I believe this situation was in the reverse a few weeks ago, wasn’t it, with that dead machine’s predecessor threatening to crush me in my own War Suit like a tin can.”

Axton paused and waited for a reply, but none came.

“Silence in the face of oblivion, is it? Bravo. You at least have some dignity left. I could do to you what you tried to do to me, but I’m better than that. So, here’s a few bullets to send you on your way to the great beyond, or whatever place you believe in or don't.”

And with that, Franken fired its full magazine into the prone hunk of heavily damaged metal.