"Well...this is summat."

Jack couldn't exactly give where he was a good Yelp rating. Maybe he was dreaming.

That probably explained why the place he was in was so ludicrously dark. He was lit from above by a light, but looking up, he couldn't actually see where the light was coming from. The gobo around him was suggesting it was a lamp of some description, especially considering the telltale signs of slight deterioration where the lamp had probably been damaged in some way and the slightly yellow tint to it.

Otherwise, around him, there was nothing. Just a massive, black void of silence.

Frowning, Jack tried to go for his disk, but was dumbfounded when it refused to respond.

So...he was disarmed.

Grumbling to himself, he kept his wits about him, and tried to piece together what was going on.

Did he die?

Perhaps.

He touched his wrist to check for a pulse.

Nothing happened.

"Well, I'll be fucked..." he muttered, checking all his pressure points. There was no pulse, anywhere on his body.

So how the Hell was he still standing up?

Speaking of Hell, was that where he was? Sure wasn't anything else to do. Maybe that was just it.

He did suffer a lot when there was nothing to do.

Inhaling deeply and sighing as he put his hands into his pockets, Jack looked around the darkness to his front, left, and right, beginning to pace forwards.

So...what now?

He paused, and turned around to pace the other way.

It was then that he caught sight of an entire building that he hadn't noticed before.

Had that been there before?

It looked just like your average roadside bar; Wooden walls, with a variety of vehicles outside it ranging from Second World War-era motorcycles, to a giant monster truck labelled 'Mighty Foot'. Jack narrowed his eyes, wishing he had a pistol or something to hold whilst he approached. Slowly, as he began becoming illuminated by the lights outside, he could hear talking and laughter inside, like there was one hell of a party going on. Muffled at first, but it became clearer once he went up the steps and opened the door.

Just as soon as Jack swung the door open and stepped inside, the pumping rock music nearly blasted his ears open, and he had to narrowly avoid a man in a black jacket and purple shirt tackling another man in an old Russian gas mask to the floor, both laughing as if it were just a play fight despite them literally smashing through tables and breaking glasses as they went. Jack stared at this in confusion, making his way through the crowded bar without drawing attention to himself.

The groups of people he was seeing were definitely not humans...not from his version of Earth, anyway. They all seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't figure out why.

He chewed his lip slightly, and approached the oaken bar. Just between a man in a white shirt and a huge bloke in futuristic green body armour, there was an empty stool. Seeing no other choice, Jack hopped onto it.

Fairly comfy.

For a moment, Jack sat and looked around the bar in bewilderment. All around the room, people were having fights, but the things they damaged would somehow repair themselves in the blink of an eye. None of the fighters were in pain, either; They were all laughing off impacts and returning even more painful looking ones. Sat around the room's wide tables were groups of hardened-looking people, who all seemed to know each other somehow.

Around one table, cheering on the man with the purple shirt that he'd seen earlier, there was a group of people all wearing a purple motif with fleur-de-lis symbols on them. Meanwhile, seemingly rooting for the man in the leather jacket and Russian gas mask was a crowd of soldiers, welders, and typically British-looking people who all seemed to have been thrown through Hell.

Jack frowned.

If everyone knew each other...he was alone.

He was just about to go to the bathroom and see if there was a machine that did those cool little toothbrushes that you can chew on, but the white-shirted man next to him spoke up. "Never seen you in here before, kid," he began in a very gravelly voice. Jack looked over at him; The man had a rather stoic smirk on his face, with a pair of sports sunglasses that had bright orange reflective lenses. Jack raised a brow, and sat back onto the stool as he continued. "Barely look like you've got hair on your chest. How'd you wind up here?"

"Just wandered in," Jack replied, observing the gas mask guy being slammed through a table. "My name's Jack London. Not from around here." The man raised his brows behind his sunglasses.

"Huh, an English guy." He jabbed a thumb at the group of misfits across the room that were cheering on the man in the gas mask, who was in the process of beating the snot out of his purple-shirted opponent. "Were you with those Mercs over there? Don't think I remember them mentioning a 'Jack' at any point. Compared to them, you seem pretty tame." Jack glanced over, shaking his head.

"Nah. Never seen 'em in my life." Whilst the music continued and his talking partner continued his beer, Jack eyed up the other man to his right. He had to have been a Space Marine or something; there was a massive logo on his shoulder pad that said 'UAC'. Jack hadn't ever heard of that. As the gas masked man grabbed his opponent's collar and belt before slamming him headfirst into a wall, Jack winced, and looked back at the man next to him. "Lemme guess, rule one of this bar is that I'm not supposed to talk about it?" The man next to him shook his head, and sipped his beer.

"Nope," came the response, "Only rule in The Arena Gunner is that you do whatever the hell you want. We're all dead, after all, so we might as well enjoy it." Jack frowned, and reclined in his stool slightly.

"Fuck. Explains my lack of pulse." The man dismissed him with a hand.

"Well, dead in your world. Whatever happens to your body back where you were means nothing; Right now, you're in the exact state you were in when you kicked the bucket." He flashed a grin. "You musta been having one hell of a party." Jack looked down at himself.

His clothes were still saturated with the blood of those other guys, and still had holes in them. His hands and arms were burned, his chest had blood over it, and his trousers looked seriously fucked up. But he felt fine.

That was all that mattered.

The man extended a gloved hand for Jack to shake. "Name's Sam."

"Well, cheers then, Sam." Jack looked around for a moment after shaking his hand, then back at Sam. "So...I'm done? Here for good?"

"Well, yeah. Least until you leave the bar," he replied, pointing to the door. "You head out there, and there's a fifty-fifty odds of the outcome. You either get revived by someone and then you owe them beers forever, or it creates a whole different timeline and universe and all that bullshit where you didn't get wiped out like a little bitch, and you carry on from about five minutes before you got fragged last time." Jack leaned on the bar, and rubbed his eyes.

Well, that's definitely something: He could load checkpoints.

"So, how'd you bite it?" Sam asked, chugging beer again. Jack lifted his head up.

"Shot to death by two guys with rifles. Killed their mate, they killed me, and then they got shot to death by some other lucky twat." Sam just threw his head back and laughed.

"That's all it took?" he snorted. "What, they get you when you were reloading? Caught with your pants down?"

"No, I was carryin' about thirteen other guns at the time. I was just daft enough to not think that they'd shoot me when I unloaded an AK into their mate's skull." Sam just chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

"Ah, dumbest story I ever heard..." he muttered, sipping his beer. Jack sighed, looking around the bar.

"Trust me, it'd sound crazier when I add in the parts about travellin' across dimensions, the transformin' Goddesses, their four nations, the monsters in their world, Russian gangsters, and a thirty two year old woman dressed as a slutty maid." Sam raised a brow, lowering his beer.

"Good thing you spoke to me about crazy. Fortunately for you, I like crazy. Did crazy shit myself; I fought a fifty story tall monster and used metal construction poles as lightning rods to kill it, then travelled through time to whoop some poor sucker's ass for wiping out humanity." Jack chuckled, leaning on the bar.

"Sounds like summat I'd love to do. Hordes of enemies?"

"More than you can count, kiddo."

"Really. Then how much time'd you spend hidin' behind cover?"

"I don't need cover. I'm all man."

Jack mused this over for a second.

No cover.

"See, that was the strategy I employed. Never really used cover; Preferred runnin' out with guns blazin'." He sighed, and rubbed his head. "If you're here after you used that tactic, it's no wonder I died as well." Sam just shrugged.

"Nah, I didn't die in battle."

Jack looked at him curiously.

"Huh?"

"Didn't die in battle."

"Right...so...how-"

"Fell off a rooftop whilst trying to grab a secret sledgehammer that was on another building."

"That was stupid."

"I know!" Sam replied, raising his hands up exasperatedly. "Y'know something, kid? You're the first person to agree that it's a dumbass way to die."

"Any way of dying makes you look stupid," added the armoured behemoth of a man behind Jack. "It's just how dramatic it looks." The two men gave the space marine's words some thought. Jack glanced at him. He had a helmet on, but beneath that, he figured the bloke was probably glaring down at him.

Then, simultaneously, Sam and Jack shrugged in agreement that it was a fair point.

Jack looked at the sunglasses guy again. "So, why haven't you left the bar, yet?" Sam sighed, and shrugged slowly, swilling the beer around in its glass as he stared down at it.

"I dunno. Figured I'd whittle away some time in here, first. Think I might spend a few years getting smashed, just to see what it's like to be drunk twenty-four-seven." There was a pause. "And you?"

"What?"

"You said it yourself. Real crazy sounding adventure you've got yourself wrapped up in, kid. Sounds almost like a Hollywood movie. It'd be a damn shame not to finish filming it." Jack slowly nodded. "That, and you've got your co-stars to worry about. I think they'd be pretty upset to know that the main actor just quit mid-way through the shoot."

Jack's mind flashed to the thought of the girls reacting to the news of his passing. He knew that Noire, Vert, Blanc, and Neptune would try to remain strong over it, but would probably still be internally broken over the fact they didn't get their in time. Maybe Noire or Vert would do a memorial service or something. Perhaps he'd get a proper burial.

Chika would try and keep a brave face, but considering that he knew her like he did, she'd probably go to her bedroom, take a few steps, then bury her face in her pillows and cry her eyes out. She did that after they both sat and watched that one anime about the dead kids in heaven. She acted nonchalant at the start, but by the end, Chika was just sat there and bawling her eyes out.

And Uni...Uni would be devastated.

He frowned, and rubbed his face.

"Besides, seems to me like you've got a bit of a warpath set against some asshole. Shame to leave that path untrodden, right?"

Jack slowly grinned, and nodded, standing up, and looking to the door. "You've got a point, Sam. I'm comin' back, and I'm gonna put my foot up your arse, Sergei." Sam smirked, and sipped his beer as Jack turned to face him again. "If I'm headin' back out there, can't hurt to ask. Any tips on stayin' alive without cover?"

"You got a minigun?" he asked immediately. Jack nodded. "Then there's no kill like overkill." There was a pause. Jack gave a respectful nod, and turned to leave.

"Go get 'em, kid. I'll keep your seat warm for ya, and you can tell us all about your thrill ride when you next get back here." Jack glanced back at Sam as he went.

"Are you serious?" he asked.

A rather crooked smile broke the man's lips as he span back to face the bar.

"As a matter of fact, I am."

There was a pause.

Jack smiled, and began to head back to the wooden door he'd entered through. Just as he reached a hand out to grab it, there came a rather British shout from behind him. "Hey! You there!" Confused, Jack turned to face the voice. The source was the gas masked man, who had his purple-suited opponent in a headlock. "Off already, mate?" Jack nodded.

"Aye," he replied, jabbing a thumb at the door. "Unfinished business, and all that." The masked man shrugged, struggling slightly against his victim.

"Ah, come on, surely that can wait a bit? Don't wanna come help me dish out some punishment to this third street twat?" The man in his grip just laughed.

"Hey! That's BOSS of the 'Third Street' twats!" he retorted sharply with your average Londoner's accent, giving his attacker a cheeky elbow to the ribs. Smiling at the banter, Jack shook his head.

"Nah, sorry, I can't, mate. Bunch of girls back there need savin', and I don't particularly trust the other lads I left there to get it done." The masked English guy gave an understanding nod.

"Well, suit yourself. You'll be back here at some point, hey?"

Again, Jack nodded at him, and turned to face the door. At that point, there was a brilliant light coming from the other side of it, which almost forced him to cover his eyes as he swung it open, and stepped out of the bar. Just as soon as he'd pushed it open and been engulfed by the eye-mangling white glow, the door behind him slammed shut, only with the sound of the wooden impact he'd been expecting replaced with the signature sound of a 30-06 rifle firing with a deafening volume.

As the sound faded into the void, the ringing sound went with it.

But slowly, it returned with a much higher pitch, accompanied by a familiar, slightly Irish voice that boomed in the distance of his mind.

"CLEAR!"

Thirty seconds earlier...

James lowered the rifle as the Japanese soldier's lifeless shell slammed into the floor. "Suck on THAT, you squint-eyed wankstain!" yelled the armoured Welshman. Just then, Chaz shifted the Apache helicopter an inch or so, resisting a turbulent wind and receiving a glare from James. "Hold this thing still, you dopey pillock!" he snapped. Chaz shrugged, gripping the stick.

"You're the idiot who decided to sit on the wing," whistled the pilot. At that point, he glanced over into the building. He had utterly shattered Jack's expectations and arrived in Planeptune within ten minutes like an absolute nutter.

And it was a good thing.

Jack was lying on the floor in front of a window a few stories down, covered in blood, and not moving.

"FUCK!" Chaz yelled, banging on the glass. "Jack's down!"

"Shite!" James yelled, before turning to Luke, who was hanging onto the tail of the Apache. "Luke! Do your thing!" After a moment, Luke nodded, then let go of the helicopter. Just as he began to drop, he reached up and yanked the ripcord on his shoulder, pulling a parachute from seemingly nowhere and immediately slowing down his descent so that he came within a short range of the floor Jack was lying on.

Then, he cut his chute, and expertly landed on the ground beside his comrade. Luke sheathed his knife, and pulled out the defibrillators strapped to the back of his belt, beginning to hover them together to build charge.

At this point, two women came running over from behind cover. He recognised one of them from Jack's Nepchat story, and the other one was in the news article about Jack shooting up the nightclub.

Hell, didn't he meet the red-haired one, at some point?

"Oh, GODDESSES!" screamed the wizard (Mages, if Luke remembered it right) as she dropped straight down next to Jack's limp body, ditching the cane she was carrying and grabbing at the corpse's lapels. "M-MR. LONDON! This isn't happening! This CAN'T be happening!" The other woman (Falcon? Falcob? Falco...m...? Something like that.) just slowed down, standing over Jack with a greatsword in one hand and the over her mouth.

"This..." she murmured slowly. "...this...this isn't...no, no, this...this isn't happening..." Luke dismissed them with a loud 'pch' noise.

"Oh, stand back, you bloody Nancies, I got this!" he groaned, raising the defibrillators. MAGES. shot him a horrified glare, with tears running down her face past a massive mole on her cheek.

"Th-This is a joke! He's full of bullet holes and you're trying to DEFIBRILLATE HIM?!" Luke shrugged, and checked his watch.

"Yes, and I only have another five seconds to do it before he dies," came the calm, collected response of the miserable Irishman. Then, he braced up, and put the paddles to Jack's chest with a piercing electrical whine. "CLEAR!"

The results were, as MAGES. didn't expect, instant: Jack's eyes snapped open, and so did his mouth, as he inhaled sharply, sitting up slightly and looking down at himself. There was a pause as the two women watched in disbelief, Jack patting his chest down and looking around.

"Well," he whistled, eyeing up his torso. "Fuck me, that was a ride."

MAGES. and Falcom stared at him in utter bewilderment. All the bullet holes were gone, and as Luke dumped down a massive crate with a plus symbol on it, the blood began to clean itself from Jack's clothes.

Nevertheless, they let out squeals of delight, before throwing themselves upon him in their cuddly Nep grips. "I-I thought you had been killed, Mr. London!" MAGES. cried, burying her face into his shoulder. Jack looked absolutely confused as to why they were hugging him, but chuckled, regardless.

"C'mon, ladies, I'm insulted!" he laughed, pushing them away and dusting his shirt off. "You both know it'd take a hell of a lot more than that to kill me!" He paused, and sniffed the air. "Smells like burnin'."

Luke shrugged. "Probably the defibrillation doing that," he whistled, slipping the paddles onto the back of his belt. "Got the medic box out, so you should be fine." Jack stared at him in disbelief.

"Wait...so my whole chest got ripped the fuck open..." he began, "...and so you defibrillated me? What's the bloody logic in that? And why're all my wounds shut?"

"To answer those questions, I'll go in order," Luke shot back, pulling his comrade to his feet. Now he didn't feel awkward for being the only one who was taller than the two girls nearby. "First, it's what I was told to do in the event someone dies, and it'd restart their heart, which it did." Luke jabbed a finger at Jack's ribs. "Second, it's logical, because your heart had stopped, and defibrillators are what they use on Battlefields to save soldiers who fell out of fighter jets and landed on concrete." Jack folded his arms.

"No, they're not, because that kind of injury'd bloody kill you," he retorted, "Anybody who thinks that'd work is probably the same person who believes in bloody aliens and giant sharks that attack buoys when people gather around them."

"But they do!" Luke cried. "I saw it happen! You got sent on a different training regime than me, so you didn't see it, but we got shown a training film where a bunch of soldiers went around a water buoy near some islands, and this huge Megalodon jumped outta the water and-"

"Fuck off, Luke," Jack sighed, before patting him on the back. "Just accept that I've said cheers for savin' me." The squaddie next to him opened his mouth to retort, then sighed, smiled, and nodded.

Jack turned his attention to MAGES. and Falcom. "Right, girls," he began, "Tell me exactly what happened here." MAGES. swallowed, and nodded.

"Yes...of course." She cleared her throat. "I was searching for ingredients for my next invention, and then across the room, there was gunfire and demands for everyone to get down. I was not exactly prepared to just become a victim, so I took cover and fired on the shooter. After a few minutes of us trading shots, another seven gunmen arrived, and after a minute or two more, Falcom rushed in and eliminated two of them." Jack glanced at the red-haired adventurer, who brushed her bicep with a hand.

"Fuck me, that sounds like it was awesome," he said, raising a brow and placing his hands on his hips.

The adventurer blushed slightly, and waved a dismissive hand, bashfully gently side to side. "It...it was nothing..." she muttered, rubbing the back of her head.

"At the point you had arrived," MAGES. continued, "I had run out of SP potions, and was firing off my last shots at the remaining three. That was when you stormed in and..." She hesitated, avoiding Jack's gaze. "...ahem." After a moment, Jack shrugged, and began withdrawing all of his weapons in turn, checking them as he faced Luke.

"Well, at least we know that eight of these slimy fuckers are gone," he said finally, racking the action on the RPD and inspecting it, before switching out for the dual Matebas and looking at the cylinders. "Luke, I assume Chaz got you here?" Luke nodded.

"Yeah," he replied, "Brought Josh and James, as well." Jack paused, then smiled.

"Fantastic, a full team. Tell Chaz to drop off the other two. We're goin' up as a team." Luke tilted his head.

"Why, what's the plan?" he asked. "Aren't we letting the CPUs arrive?"

"Well, how many said they were comin'?"

"All of them are on their way."

"All of them? Why? Thought this was only a Planeptune problem."

"The Planeptune Markets have a few high-value targets; Bankers, politicians, and reality TV stars all have offices here."

"...and...we're...supposed to defend these dickheads?"

"Yeah. I told the CPUs that we'd be glad to get them out of here."

"Then you're a fuckin' idiot."

"How?"

"Of all the types of people I hate, those are just three of the types at the top of that list. The others include the Germans, French, Canadians, social justi-"

"Right, shut up, this story's not a place for you to vent political views," Luke cut in, raising a hand. "Fact is, there's people in the building who the CPUs want us to help get out alive. So we're gonna be getting them out."

"Sod that..." Jack muttered, sighing and rubbing his head as he turned and began pacing. At this point, James and Josh had managed to rappel down onto that floor of the tower, and made their way over to the group. "Ah! James! Josh! You showed up."

"Yeah, we did," James replied smartly, Arctic Warfare cradled in his arms. MAGES. eyed him up and questioned how such a short man was able to support the weight of two handguns, submachine guns, a sniper rifle, and a full set of body armour. "If we didn't show up, you would currently be dead."

"Fuck off."

"What, and leave you to get raked with bullets, again?" Josh added snarkily. Falcom looked the man up and down and questioned why he was the only one out of the group who looked ever-so-slightly homosexual. Jack just shrugged at the comment.

"Well, it's gonna happen at some point," he said flatly. "And when I was dead, I went to the afterlife."

"No, you didn't." everyone said simultaneously.

"I got to speak to some other guys who used my strategy of not using cover."

"No, you didn't."

"The guy I spoke to said I should use the minigun I picked up earlier."

"No, he didn-"

Jack's phone rang.

"Jack, it's Chaz. I just heard you say you have a minigun." The recently-revived man put the phone to his ear.

"Aye. And a rocket launcher. Why?"

"First off, that's fucking sick," Chaz began, "And second off, it'll help. I just did a quick fly around of the tower. Looks like the guys with the hostages are taking them all to the top floor."

"You didn't shoot them?"

"Couldn't. Too much risk."

"Piss."

"That's not all. I saw some guy in a red uniform running around the building behind IF, but it didn't look like he was trying to attack her." Jack frowned, and looked at the phone.

"What?" he asked. "Someone on the other side's gone rogue against the rogues?"

"Yeah. Considering he's got IF with him, looks like she's probably gonna have told him not to attack us."

"Not like we wouldn't be able to handle him anyway."

"Well, he's got an RPG-7. So good luck with that."

"Bollocks!" Jack snapped. Luke tapped him on the shoulder and leaned in to listen. Jack covered the phone's mouthpiece. "He said there's a bloke runnin' around the buildin' with Iffy and an RPG." Luke gave an understanding nod. "OK, so what can we do from here?" Chaz thought for a second.

"Well, if I had to suggest anything, it'd be to keep going up the building as a group, and wave that minigun around like a dildo at a feminist rally." Jack gave an understanding nod at the totally accurate analogy.

"Got it," he replied, turning back to the group. "Circle the building and keep pace with us, Chaz. You see anyone comin' towards us, waste the fucker."

"Alright then, sounds good to me."

Chaz hung up, and Jack placed the phone back into his pocket. He then looked at his team.

James, a marksman who stood still often but always hit.

Josh, a close-combat user with a posh accent.

Luke, who was little more than your average squaddie in equipment terms.

MAGES., who Jack was yet to see in a fight.

Falcom, who Jack knew fairly well and thought was pretty alright in a fight.

Chaz, who was currently sat behind the controls of a chaingun that could kill Glasgow.

And he himself, who had literally just died and was just about to lead a suicidal charge up a tower infested with highly dangerous combatants.

It was at this point where he withdrew his minigun and yanked the charging handle, garnering loud cries of 'WOAH, WOAH' from the others. Confused, he looked at them. "What's up?" he asked calmly. Luke looked stunned.

"Jack...Jack, there's a fucking line in the sand as to what you can do to people!" he cried. Jack shrugged.

"Yeah? They killed me, so I earned this."

"That's not a valid excuse to saw them in half with bulle-"

Luke's phone rang. He answered. "Hello?"

"Fuck you, it's a perfectly valid reason!" Chaz snapped, before hanging up. Luke looked at his phone blankly, then groaned, and rubbed his face.

"...fine. Fine." He withdrew his L85, and ensured it was loaded, as everyone else gave a brief weapons check.

"Alright, Mr. Loondumb, you seem to know what's going on," Falcom began, "So what're we doing?" Jack pointed to the massive atrium gap in the center of the tower.

"What we're doing is gettin' to the top floor. That's where Sergei Crashyourmum's hidin'. Already waxed a few of his boys in the weapon hall, and I'll tell you; They're hard lads, with big guns. I think some might have RPGs and flamethrowers. The only advice I have is to stay out of sight and only strike when you know you'll kill them. No room for subduin' them." The smaller woman nodded, and Jack glanced at MAGES.. "MAGES., you try and do some magic on them from a distance." The wizard tilted her head and adjusted her hat slightly.

"I'm not exactly a combatant," she replied hesitantly, "But I will see what I can do, Mr. London." Jack turned his gaze to Luke and James.

"I need you two supplyin' coverin' fire. Luke, make sure they keep their heads down. If they go for our flanks, make sure they leave empty-handed, or in a bag." Luke nodded. "James, make sure the area near your shootin' position is clear, and then provide overwatch." The Welshman gave a thumbs up. Jack then turned to Josh, and paused.

"...you sure your strategy's not a bit risky?" he asked. Josh rolled his eyes.

"I invested in a sword the other day, I can do this," he groaned, "Got some pistols as well."

"Draw their attention." Jack paused, then reached into his satchel, pulling out the single frag grenade he had left. "Worst comes to worst, use this, shove it in a bloke's mouth, and pull the pin."

MAGES. winced at the mental image as they turned and headed towards the staircase in a light jog.

"And what're you doing in all this?" Josh asked.

Jack just smiled in a predatory manner, raising the minigun up wickedly as he slowly advanced up the stairs.

"Gettin' serious."