Something was shaking her. The fluid grasp of sleep was slowly relinquishing its hold on her mind, and she struggled to reign in her attention.

"Vale. Vale, get up."

She recognized the voice, and it helped her to snap out of her groggy mental state. Lifting her head up to stare at her waker and push the short strands of hair out of her eyes, she found Rose looking down at her prone form. Once she was up, he extended a hand down to help lift her onto her feet. Still somewhat sleepily, she took it.

"What's happening?" she mumbled.

"There wasn't any announcement," he explained quietly, "but it came anyway. I think- I think maybe this is it. The last match."

She was confused about what 'it' was until she saw the capsule ready by the exit, waiting on them to enter before departing for whatever arena awaited them today. Fallon and Gray were looking at it with an obvious apprehension in their expression; the same kind of apprehension that she was now feeling as she stared blankly at it.

Rose patted her on the back to stop her from zoning out, and put his helmet on. "You ready?"

She took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. "Yeah. I'm ready."

…

"I am so not ready for this," Buck grunted.

You don't have much choice, EV reminded him with urgency in her tone, she's moving fast. It has to be now, or all of them will die.

"I know", he replied as quietly as he could, what with having to hold onto the ledge of the platform he was slowly making progress around.

Two decked out security officers stood atop it, not really paying attention to anything in particular, but still standing guard as their position required. He supposed that either they weren't very worried about him potentially returning to where he'd escaped, or maybe his breakout had just been kept under wraps altogether. Maybe that lady wasn't keen on the idea of alerting others to the fact that she'd failed in containing the Pilots.

Whatever. Time to move.

Jumping into action, he vaulted over the edge and immediately charged the officers. One was dispatched via a snapped neck, something that he definitely did not see coming until his head was forcibly twisted into looking at his killer. The other heard the slight noise, but barely had time to react before Buck's foot collided with his midsection and launched him into the darkness of the chasm below.

Once the area was clear, Buck glanced around to make sure that no alarms had been triggered and he was still undetected. As expected, nothing but silence and faint but echoing hums awaited him.

The platform which he stood on was a loading dock of some sort, with various large tools lying about. He supposed that this must have been what had been used to receive the stunned Titans while they were fitted with the disruptors. A massive door adorned the wall against which the platform was situated, presumably where the Titans were being kept.

Turning towards the wall, he ordered, "Eve, patch into my ocular systems."

After a moment, she gave a small hum of thought. Our prison is behind that large door. Access to the monitoring room can be found to the right, along the catwalk.

He turned his head to follow her guidance, and was rewarded with a sight of another, smaller door a few yards beyond the barracks' entrance.

Stealthily, he ran to it with as much care in his footsteps as he could, minding his surroundings and taking note to use the advantage of the cargo around him as cover should the need arise. Fortunately, it wasn't needed and he made it to the door without any complications.

It slid open at his presence, evidently a motion activated variant. Inside was an ascending ramp, one that EV had indicated would lead to the monitoring room and the control matrix for the disrupters, as well as access to the weapons cache nearby. With not much time left, he made his way upwards and onwards.

The ramp ended in an open doorway into a small room with viewing glass and a command console readily available. Two more grunts were stationed here, watching whatever was beyond the glass and ensuring that everything was proceeding as normal.

One of them stood up to walk out of the room, and Buck took his chance.

The world became grey-scale, and sounds became muffled as though they were underwater. He could see the outlines of the grunts, faint and gaseous; one sitting at the console, and the other walking slowly towards him. Moving forward, he grabbed the upright outline and began forcing himself into the in-between reality of the man's body.

The silhouette began convulsing slightly, pain evidently making itself known throughout his form. He heard the other grunt call in that muffled tone, "You alright?" before he exited phase shift and caused the man to combust outward, red chunks of meat and tissue splattering every which way.

Now standing where the other had been a moment before, he looked to see the other rifleman in complete shock over what had just happened. Without skipping a beat like the veteran he was, Buck grabbed the man's throat and crushed his neck in his metal fist.

The man's body now limp and unresponsive, he noticed an insignia upon the shoulder of their uniform.

"Vinson Dynamics," he spoke aloud, rolling the word over in his mind.

As far as he knew, they were just another robotics company like Hammond had originally been; maybe, just like Hammond, they had expanded beyond simple production of machinery and perhaps into more insidious fields. The simple fact that the hired hand here had been wearing their emblem was ample proof of that.

Letting the corpse slump to the floor, he opted to investigate that point of interest later in favor of working on the task at hand. Moving to the command console, he gazed out of the glass to see a large holding area beneath the room, racks of incapacitated Titans adorning the walls.

He could see quite a few of empty spaces, and the weight of all the Pilots who had died in these Live Fire matches hit him again. After today, he would make sure that no one ever had to suffer through these sadistic games ever again.

EV's voice sounded in his head once again, Find the control matrix; it should be on the console.

He scanned the board of various buttons and screens with projected levels on them. Finally, he saw one with what appeared to be a roster of serial numbers and green lights next to each. He checked the quantity; thirty two. That lined up with what EV had told him, so he knew that this was it.

Below the screen was a handled switch. It had a guard over it preventing it from being released without proper tools to remove the guard. He gave a synthetic sigh, and patted down the corpse which he'd dropped a minute beforehand.

"For the love of …" he grumbled, not happy about having to do extra work. Now with a P2016 in his hand, he unloaded onto the guard until it was nothing but shattered pieces of itself. Behind it, ricochet marks and dents had damaged the machinery a bit. He gave a small prayer that he hadn't broken anything vital, and flipped the switch.

After a moment, the green lights next to the serial numbers all turned red, and warning lights began to turn on in the barracks below. With a resounding echo of ker-chunk throughout the chambers, the racks allowed the Titans to detach. They caught themselves as they fell, and immediately began to work on yanking off the disruptors attached to their chassises.

I've told them all what we're doing, EV explained, they know what the plan is.

"Yeah," he muttered absentmindedly as he made sure that every Titan was now free, "about that; not sure how well this plan is going to work out if I can't get the other Pilots out in time. Can you tell me where they are?"

Hold on. He waited patiently until a familiar North Star stepped into view below and waved at him. He gave her one in return and awaited her word as she accessed the systems through the now inactive signal of the disruptor.

Alright, they're- oh no.

That didn't sound good. "What's wrong?"

She's doing away with all of them, trying to end it all here. She's directing all thirty two pilots into a new chamber, some kind of battle-royale arena. If you don't get to them fast-

"Then we're gonna have a lot of Titans without their Pilots on our hands," he finished grimly. "I'm on it. Opening the doors for you guys now, and then I'm off to the weapons cache." Hurriedly, he unlocked access to all facilities that this station had control over.

Understood. It should be along the left catwalk, half a klick down.

He didn't take the time to thank her as he quickly sprinted out of the room and back down the ramp as the massive door began to open. He was back at the loading platform before it finally finished raising into the ceiling and the Titans were able to exit for the first time in several weeks.

EV walked over to him, the quake of her footfalls the most comforting sound he'd heard in quite a while. She knelt down, and allowed him to pat the top of her optic's housing unit. Once he was finished, she pointed in the direction she'd been referring to earlier.

"The cache should be that way. I'll guide the other Titans to the rendezvous."

He nodded, and took off running. He needed to arm himself properly, and they were quickly running out of time.

It was now or never.

…

Once again, a panel of the arena slid aside to welcome the participants in. Vale stepped in first, followed by Rose, then Gray and Fallon. Unusual, however, was the stadium itself.

Instead of a rectangular box with various environmental factors and obstacles within it, it seemed to be a rather large cylindrical arena with a view of some far off mountain range and the sky projected onto the holographic panels. In the center were three pillars, erected up until they stopped about halfway to the roof.

Another peculiar sight was the fact that there wasn't just another team awaiting them this time; it seemed as though there were far more Pilots here than normal. Were they supposed to fight more than one team at once?

The others seemed just as confused as they were, and milled about aimlessly until a speaker powered on and they awaited whatever the sinister voice on the other end had to say.

"Welcome to the final match of Live Fire; Coliseum. I regret to inform you that due to … unforeseen complications … I've had to rush your progression."

That had to be Buck's doing. If anything, she was at least glad that the ACES soldier had managed to piss off their captor so much.

"As such, today your goal is slightly different than it has been in the past."

There was an uncomfortable pause, allowing tensions to rise in the Pilots' ranks before she continued.

"There are no teams. Kill everyone. The last Pilot left standing will be allowed to live."

The line was delivered with dripping malice, and Vale felt her breath leave her. Kill … everyone? Rose, Gray? Fallon? How would she be able to do that, after everything they'd been through together?

"I understand that some of you may be opposed to this idea; but as the saying goes, it's every man for himself."

"The Live Fire match will begin in fifteen sec-"

"No."

She did not yell it, but she said it firmly enough to where she knew the rest of the arena, as well as the voice could hear her. There was a silence as they stared blankly at her, fear and shock upon all their expressions.

The voice became low, with a subtle tone of hostility present. "… No?"

Vale shook her head defiantly for all to see. "Look at us; all of us have done what we had to do, for our survival just as much as our Titans. We've killed many of our own, this psychotic 'game' forcing us time and time again to disregard who we are and take whatever chance we could at making it to the next day."

Her voice had steadily risen in volume until it finally dropped back down as she let the tension leave her body. "No more. I, for one, am sick of being someone else's puppet."

The voice sneered. "If you will not fight, then both you and your Titan will be-"

"Then do it!" she yelled angrily. "I know that he would be proud to know that I upheld my mission; to not become a monster like you." She pointed accusingly upward at wherever the voice was coming from. "Buck may have been a simulacrum, but he was more human than you'll ever be, you bitch!"

Silence descended on the arena once more, threatening to burst with every passing second that it endured.

Finally, a small clatter came from a group of Pilots some yards away from them. Looking over, she saw that one of them had thrown his rifle he'd grabbed from the ordnance pod onto the ground. It lay there unmoving, and he stood there unyielding.

Slowly, more Pilots around the arena threw down their arms and joined one another in unity against their torturer. She noticed the sound of shuffling feet, and turned to see Rose and the rest of her team moving forward to surround her in strength together.

Once more, quiet fell over the arena. After a few moments, the voice gave a resigned hum.

"Very well. If I have to execute you myself, then so be it. Ready a team of Stalkers for insertion-"

Her words were cut off as a faint boom could be heard outside the walls of the arena. All of the Pilots turned their heads to garner where it had come from before another, louder echo was heard and they all decided on a general direction from which it was emanating.

It seemed to take pause, and Rose muttered, "What the hell was that?"

Then the wall of the arena exploded.

A/N: REVIEEEEEWWWWWS

That is all.

Until the next time,

- Matteoarts