As Franken stomped back into view, Thomas huffed a bit before pumping another singular shot from Spider-Can’s twin 20mm autocannons into the twitching War Suit that lay nearby. The machine shuddered a bit more, its armor proving to be more than just a minor nuisance.

It seemed that Franken had also had to deal with the fact that some rounds simply would not penetrate the composites that Axton and Sally had dreamed up. While this thankfully meant that the Suit had not taken any true penetrations, it also mean that some slugs needed to be physically pulled out from where they lay halfway inside the War Suit’s armor before any repairs could be made.

As for the machine down near Spider-Can’s feet, though…

Thomas had endured enough of the construct's annoying durability. Bullets didn’t work. Autocannon shells didn’t work. Well, maybe the shells did work, but the armor made them much less effective than Thomas would have liked.

Much to his own joy, though, the armor had rendered the enemy War Suit unable to deal with the fall that it had taken when a few more accurate shots blew its elevated position out from under it. All that armor only added more mass to an already overburdened frame, and though, from the outside, it appeared that only some of the armor on the machine’s legs had buckled, the internal truth was obviously far worse for that machine.

Another good shot from Spider-Can had hit an exposed ammo crate, which resulted in the machine losing not just its left ‘arm’, but also sending it sprawled out on its side. Annoying as it was that he could pump five 20mm shells into the stump where the gun once was, only to achieve nothing, it did give Thomas a chance to further demoralize the pilots of the other crippled War Suits around him.

As Axton hopped out and began to work on his mech in the middle of the wrecked battlefield, Spider-Can scuttled over to the fallen, heavily armored foe and raised one of its forelimbs. The three claws on the end of that leg opened up, snapping shut a few times for added intimidation before latching on to a joint that was at least somewhat exposed.

Another forelimb reached out and grappled a similar gap in the enemy’s armor, and this was soon followed by yet more claws. After only a few moments, more than half of Spider-Can’s ‘feet’ were gripping the fallen foe, and then they began to pull in different directions.

The sound of metal and machine parts screaming under the strain grew louder and more intense for a while until one of Spider-Can’s grappling limbs snapped back upwards as a plate of metal was ripped ‘clean’ from the prone enemy. As soon as it reached the peak of its arc, though, the claw on the end of that leg opened wide and let the torn material fly off before descending again to grab ahold of something else.

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Another limb ripped something else free, discarding it just as casually, and this action was soon repeated again and again until the durability of the defeated foe became next to nil. From that point, mechanical innards were ripped free with a speed that shocked and horrified those foes who had yet to meet their makers, and they watched the arachnid-like death robot mercilessly rip their comrade’s armored vessel apart before doing the same to he himself who laid within the now-shredded mech.

As the victim in its claws faded into light, Spider-Can’s torso twisted to lock its ‘face’ on another target. Slowly and methodically, Spider-Can clambered towards this next target, but before Thomas and his killer machine could reach this man and his downed metal box, the man in question took the coward’s way out and overloaded his War Suit’s reactor, blowing it and himself to kingdom come.

As the heat dissipated, another fallen intruder chose the same fate, and he was followed shortly thereafter by the rest of his downed compatriots.

…

As the last wave of heat buffeted him and another chunk of metal shot past his face, Axton closed his eyes and left out a deep sigh.

“Really, man?” He asked his friend as he stole a glance over his shoulder. “Did you really have to go full Horror Monster on them?”

His response over the party chat was nothing besides some endless snickering, and while Axton could get behind a bit of intimidation, he drew the line when that intimidation risked his own life. Well, he wasn’t ever in true mortal danger, of course. This was just a game, after all, but he had nearly had at least five different pieces of metal the size of his own head nearly decapitate his Player Avatar in the past few seconds alone, and that was to say nothing of the other bits of metal and rubble that had actually ended up hitting him.

He was glad he was in a game right now, as the pain he was experiencing was orders of magnitude less than what it rightfully should have been, and also because he was not in shock. He looked over his body and shook his head before withdrawing a medical injector from his Item Box and stabbing himself with it.

Another minor shot of pain surged over him, but it was about as intense as you would expect a minor pinch to be. The injector made a hissing sound as the glowing blue fluid in it decreased rapidly until it was empty, at which point it disappeared into oblivion like any good single-use item in a video game did.

His body shuddered a bit as random bits of metal, rock, glass and other materials were literally pushed out of the holes they had formed in his body as they impacted him, and he had to be honest; it felt weird. Though, to be fair, having foreign materials in your body forced out through the very holes that they made when they were shot into your body by a series of massive explosions was always going to feel weird, especially as the wounds they had made healed as the foreign objects were pushed out.

As a few more foreign bodies plinked against the ground after being forced from inside of him, Axton refocused and resumed that repairs on Franken. He could have honestly tried to fight the champions as he was now, but that would have been a massive disservice to them, to him, to Thomas, and to the hundreds of trillions of people, real and virtual, that were watching.

Because, yes, the show was still going on, despite some asshole’s desiring the contrary, and Axton was more than willing to give those viewers one hell of a show.