Thunder Reforged
Copyright© 2026 by FozzieBare
Chapter 9: After Match, Aftermath
The next morning, Elias held a private debrief with Hiroshi, Mikel, Kevin, Amy and Adrian.
They were still riding the high from the victory the day before. There had not been much wrong with the operation, but there were still things everyone could have done better. Elias did not spare himself in that judgment. They had nearly lost a couple of units that escaped the artillery ambush because Reforged had stayed just close enough to still be considered a threat.
All in all, though, the debrief was pretty light.
Mikel and Hiroshi wanted to know if they could put kill stickers on their WarMACs for the machines they had disabled. Most guilds had similar traditions to celebrate victories in battle.
Elias had to think that over.
“My only concern is that if it turns into a way for people to say, ‘I’m a better member of the guild than you because I have more kill stickers,’ they’re coming off. We win as a team. We lose as a team. But go ahead.”
Kevin chimed in.
“So I can put kill stickers on mine too? Great. I’ll put a base icon, a sun icon, and three cow icons. By the way, if I get two more cow kills, does that make me Reforged’s first Cow Ace?”
Elias was mildly concerned and considerably confused by Kevin’s last statement.
“Kevin, there are no cows in World of WarMachines.”
Kevin’s cheerful voice came back over the comm.
“That’s because Kelto hasn’t accepted my feature request yet.”
Elias shook his head.
“You’re a maniac, Kevin. A full-on lunatic. Thank God you’re on our team.”
Kevin chortled.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since I posted that video from the battle. Somebody left a comment calling me a ‘Maestro of Mayhem and Music.’”
Adrian sounded intrigued.
“Okay, I wasn’t going to ask when you brought up the video-editing stuff, but now that’s two days in a row. What video are you talking about?”
Kevin gasped theatrically.
“YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET?”
He posted a link in the private chat.
Elias steeled himself.
It turned out to be a link hub full of news sites responding to Kevin’s video.
Amy and Adrian started giggling madly while Elias just wanted to hide.
The MANIAC. The lunatic. The...
His thought trailed off.
Elias was genuinely at a loss for words.
Kevin had set the artillery barrage to music.
Specifically, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
The one with the cannons.
And every cannon blast in the piece had been synchronized to one of Royal Road’s WarMACs being violently disassembled by Maximum Boom’s artillery. Different angles. Close-ups. Wide shots. The whole nine yards.
Apparently the fan sites had picked it up, and with the Pro League off that week, it had become the hottest thing going in World of WarMachines.
So not only had six members of Reforged helped their new friends at Maximum Boom win a battle for a planet, now everyone was talking about how Reforged had stolen an enemy base right under their noses, held off nearly three-to-one odds long enough to withdraw in good order, and then flattened the base, the enemy reserve, and most of the surrounding terrain with a massed artillery strike.
Elias suddenly wished he were still in bed.
Then he could write all of this off as a dream.
Or, more accurately, a nightmare.
“It’s pretty neat, huh?”
Elias wanted to yell at Kevin.
Something along the lines of:
You absolute whackaloon! Yes, it’s funny! But you just made everyone pay attention to us at exactly the time when being ignored would let us grow faster. What happens when they expect a follow-up?
Adrian laid a hand on his shoulder.
Elias looked over.
“Yes, he’s crazy. Yes, we just got everyone’s attention. But we can’t fly under the radar forever.”
Elias grinned.
It was sickly, and not particularly well maintained, but it was a grin.
“Oh, I dunno. We may not be able to fly under the radar ... but that’s because he would’ve blown it up.”
Kevin followed Elias’s train of thought far too well.
“Well, technically, if I used enough explosives, we could still fly under the radar. Or at least parts of it. The ones that went upward instead of outward.”
“Kevin. Not. Helping.”
Elias sighed, then shook his head.
“Nah. It’s okay. You earned that, I guess. I’ll do my best to swallow my guild-leader pride when you pull this kind of thing off.”
He pointed at the screen.
“Just ... try to keep it to once every six or seven battles, okay? I don’t know if Marcus is springing for healthcare, and I really don’t want to start buying Maalox in bulk.”
Kevin considered that.
“So every sixth battle is approved?”
Elias closed his eyes.
“That is not what I said. I would tell you to warn me when you’re about to do something crazy, but I think in this case, it might be better for my sanity if you just surprised all of us.”
Kevin considered that.
“So spontaneity is part of the brand.”
Elias stared at him.
“I walked into that one.”
Hiroshi and Mikel had to head out for various family obligations that Sunday afternoon, so the meeting broke up a few minutes later.
Before everyone logged off, Adrian spoke up in the chat.
“Kevin. Elias and I need to discuss something later. Will you be around to talk? Not to be all mysterious about it, but it involves the guild.”
“Sure thing, boss. I don’t have much planned except sitting on the deck with something cold and mildly alcoholic while I count down the remaining days of summer. Just send me a message in-game and I’ll hunt you guys down.”
“Do you come up with these phrases deliberately, Kevin, or do you just pull them spontaneously out of thin air? Considering what you pulled off yesterday, my ulcer just quivered at those words,” Elias quipped.
“Um ... yes.”
That seemed like a good place to end the discussion, so the private chat broke up.
Elias raised a questioning eyebrow at Adrian.
“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you? Because I think that’s a crazy idea.”
Adrian stared at him.
“Elias, that’s about eight uses of various tenses of the word think in one sentence. How the hell am I supposed to parse that?”
“You understood it.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“So let me say it out loud, and then you can tell me why it’s a great idea, and I’ll try to convince you that it’s not. Not that I don’t like the guy. It’s just...”
Elias thought about the exact phrase he wanted to use.
“You told me before he had a habit of taking unfavorable numbers, using high explosives to blow them sky high, and watching said numbers come down in new configurations. Not necessarily favorable ones. Just different ones.”
Adrian nodded.
“That sounds about right.”
Elias spread his hands.
“I like my numbers unblown up. He has a habit of blowing them up. You can see my dilemma.”
“I can.”
“Good.”
“I still think we should bring him in.”
Elias stared at him.
“You could at least pretend I’m making progress here.”
“Your problem,” Adrian said, “is that you’re thinking of Kevin as something that happens to your plan.”
Elias frowned.
“He usually is.”
“Sometimes. But yesterday you used him.”
That stopped Elias.
Adrian continued.
“You didn’t ask him to become predictable. You gave him boundaries, pointed him toward a problem, and then used what he created.”
Elias looked unhappy.
“He left the boundaries.”
“Yes.”
“By two kilometers.”
“Also yes.”
“And captured a base.”
“You’re beginning to see the issue.”
“Besides, if he’s here, we can keep an eye on him.”
Elias considered that.
“That is disturbingly persuasive.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“I don’t.”
“But?”
Elias sighed.
“But I like my maniacs where I can see them.”
He tried to rally.
“Who knows. He has a deck. Either he lives in a house or some upper-deck apartment in a far-off city. He may not want to move.”
Adrian looked at him.
“You are now rooting for distance.”
“I am considering logistical realities.”
“You’re rooting for distance.”
Elias sighed.
“A little.”
“Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and the ulcer a little less twitchy.”
“That may be the most Elias sentence you’ve ever said.”
“I reject that diagnosis. And substitute my own instead.”
As it turned out, the negotiations to bring Kevin on board went pretty quickly.
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