Team Reforged: Vegas, Baby
Copyright© 2026 by FozzieBare
Chapter 14: I trust you
Adrian sat in his chair. He did not immediately get up.
The third-person view was gone. The scoreboard remained.
INTERSTELLAR WARRIORS 7
REFORGED 2
Five points.
One more round.
That was what the arithmetic said. His brain had apparently accepted the arithmetic.
Everything else seemed to have stopped. The booth door opened. The rest of the team started filing out.
Amy stood there next to him.
Adrian looked at her.
“I’m sorry.”
Amy shook her head.
“Not now.”
“That round was on me.”
“I know.”
He stared at her. Amy stepped closer.
“Get up.”
Adrian didn’t move.
“I don’t know what to tell them.”
“Then don’t tell them anything.”
“What?”
“Get up. Go back to the seats. Don’t talk yet. Just go sit with the team.”
Adrian looked through the booth door toward the Reforged seating area.
“They need a plan.”
“No. They need to see you.”
He looked back at her. Amy’s voice softened.
“They believe in you, Adrian.”
That somehow made it worse.
“I’ve got nothing.”
“Then you’ve got nothing.”
“Ames...”
“You don’t have to be ThunderRoad.”
He stopped.
“You don’t have to be the world champion. You don’t have to be the guy who sees everything before everybody else does. You don’t have to pull some brilliant plan out of nowhere.”
She nodded toward the door.
“Just be Adrian.”
A pause.
“That’s enough.”
Adrian stared at her for another few seconds. Then he slowly pulled himself to his feet. They walked back to the team together.
Nobody asked what the plan was. That almost hurt more.
They just looked at him. Waiting. Trusting.
Adrian sat down. He tried to think.
For the first time all day, he deliberately reached for the tactical part of his mind and found absolutely nothing waiting for him.
No formations. No clever use of terrain. No matchup exploitation. No way to manipulate the Warriors into doing what he wanted.
Nothing.
I’ve got nothing.
He looked around at the team.
They looked terrible. So did he, probably.
Five matches. Round after round after round. The Duel. Two 4v4s. The 6v6 he had just thrown away. And now twelve WarMACs against twelve WarMACs.
A Mass Battle.
The round that was supposed to require more coordination than any other.
Great.
Adrian almost laughed. They had just spent two 4v4s proving their brains were taking too long to translate information into decisions. He had spent the 6v6 proving that his own brain could still recognize a mistake, just not quickly enough to fix it.
And now they were supposed to coordinate twelve people?
No.
That wasn’t going to work. So stop trying to make it work.
The thought arrived almost peacefully.
I’ve got nothing. Fine. What can we still do?
They could still move. They could still shoot. They could still cover the person beside them.
They could still play World of WarMAChines.
Adrian looked at the team again. What he was about to tell them was insane.
No. Not insane. Stupid. There was a difference. Probably.
Then again, this was Reforged.
They had launched WarMACs across lava. They had used buildings as weapons. They had buried people in mines. They had completely changed the WarMaster’s role in less than forty minutes. Finishing with five minutes to spare.
Crazy was practically normal around here.
Adrian smiled faintly.
Fine. You want crazy? Let’s go nuts.
He stood. Everyone looked toward him. He took one second to find his voice. It trembled with fatigue, but there was a bit of conviction behind it.
“Alright, team.”
He paused.
“That last round is on me. Not you guys.”
Nobody spoke.
“I made the call. I put Amy where they could isolate her. I realized what they were doing too late, and then I made it worse trying to fix it.”
Amy started to say something. Adrian shook his head.
“No. I need to say it.”
He looked around the group.
“We’ve got one chance to rescue this.”
He pointed toward the scoreboard.
“Five points. Win the Mass Battle, we tie it.”
A couple people straightened. Adrian continued.
“Don’t look at me for a great plan.”
He smiled tiredly.
“I’m fresh out.”
That got a few weak laughs.
“So we’re going to use a stupid plan instead.”
Now he had their attention.
“When the round starts?”
He shrugged.
“We go in.”
Elias frowned.
“All of us?”
“All of us. Straight down their throats.”
Adrian pointed toward Cass and then toward himself. “Missile folks, lay down barrages on the way in. Make them move. Make them look at something other than the WarMAC coming straight at them.”
He looked at Becky.
“Becky? Sorry, but I can’t have you jamming comms this time.”
She nodded slowly.
“Our own comms?”
“Exactly. Use everything else you’ve got. Mess with targeting. Sensors. Whatever you can without making it harder for us to talk to each other.”
He looked around the group again.
“Everybody else? Fight whoever’s in front of you. Cover each other if you can. Don’t let anybody get behind you if you can help it.”
He spread his hands.
“That’s it.”
Elias stared at him.
“That’s the plan?”
“That’s the plan.”
Elias hesitated.
“Adrian ... are you sure?”
“No.”
That got another laugh.
Elias didn’t.
“I mean it. If you’re too tired to shot-call, I can do it. Or Amy can. We don’t have to abandon coordination entirely.”
Amy shook her head before Adrian could answer.
“No.”
Elias looked at her.
“Amy?”
“We’re all too tired.”
“I can still call a fight.”
“I know you can. That’s not the problem.”
She tapped the side of her head.
“We hear something. Then our brains figure out what the words mean. Then we figure out what we’re supposed to do about them. Then we actually do it.”
She shook her head.
“Every step is taking too long.”
Elias was silent. Amy continued.
“That’s what happened in your 4v4. You were making the right calls. We were just getting there late.”
She glanced toward Cass.
“And Cass was seeing everything. She just couldn’t sort out which thing needed to be said first.”
Cass grimaced.
“Accurate.”
Amy looked at Adrian.
“And then we did it again in the 6v6.”
Adrian nodded.
“So we shut it down.”
Elias frowned.
“Shut what down?”
“Everything we don’t need.”
Amy pointed toward the stage.
“No complicated rotations. No five-step plans. No calls somebody has to interpret before they can act on them.”
She paused.
“We know how to play this game.”
Adrian understood exactly what she meant.
Amy finished.
“So play it.”
Elias thought about that for a few seconds. Then nodded.
“Reduce the processing load.”
Amy pointed at him.
“That. Except without making it sound like homework.”
A few people laughed. Adrian took over again.
“No fancy stuff. No hero plays. Don’t try to read the whole battlefield. You see somebody in front of you? Fight them.”
He pointed around the group.
“Someone needs help and you can help them without getting yourself killed? Help them.”
Another pause.
“Otherwise, shoot the nearest bastard until they fall over.”
Cass raised her hand slightly.
“Now that is a tactical doctrine I understand.”
More laughter. Not much. Enough. Adrian looked around at them.
“This is it.”
The room quieted.
“One more fight.”
He let that sit for a moment.
“That’s all.”
He looked from face to face.
“Today has asked so much from us.”
Nobody needed him to explain. They all felt it.
“But it can’t ask any more.”
His voice softened.
“One more fight.”
He held up one finger.
“That one percent you have left?”
A pause.
“Spend it.”
He dropped his hand.
“Go as hard as you can.”
Nobody cheered immediately. Nobody needed to. They started standing. Kevin watched them, then apparently decided he could not allow the moment to pass completely unmolested.
“Reforged expects every man to do his duty.”
Cass recognized the quote, but she wasn’t going to let it slide, even if Nelson’s famous signal had been phrased for the men officially serving in his fleet. “Or her duty.”
Kevin nodded solemnly.
“That too.”
Adrian laughed. It hurt. That was fine. He looked toward the stage.
One more fight.
No plan beyond the one they already knew.
No ThunderRoad. No miracle required.
Just Adrian.
Just Reforged.
Just the game.
“Let’s go.”
The Mass Battle loaded.
Adrian looked at the map long enough to register low hills, scattered buildings, broken lines of trees and enough open ground between them to make twelve-on-twelve violence possible.
Normally he would have studied every contour.
Not this time.
He checked his weapons.
Missiles. Definitely missiles.
He stared at the display for an extra second. The readout threatened to blur and become unreadable. Not by jamming. That was fatigue.
Remember that this time. Insanity is doing the wrong thing multiple times and expecting different results.
Around him, eleven Reforged WarMACs waited for the countdown. There should have been something profound about that.
Their entire playing roster.
Every pilot they had brought to Las Vegas. Every person who had spent the day winning, losing, sweating, cramping, shouting, laughing, nearly falling asleep and somehow getting back into the booth when their name was called again.
Adrian couldn’t find anything profound to say. Fortunately, he already had. One more fight.
That was enough.
The countdown reached zero.
“Go.”
Reforged went. There was no probing movement. No attempt to establish the perfect firing line. No thirty-second dance to determine who controlled which piece of terrain.
Just “There’s the enemy. Let’s kill them before they kill us.”
Cass and Adrian fired first, missile pods emptying into the sky in overlapping barrages while the rest of Reforged moved underneath them.
The Interstellar Warriors had probably expected aggression.
Adrian doubted they expected stupidity on this scale. He chuckled. He could imagine them thinking, “Okay, what’s the trick hiding behind this?” No tricks. Just straight-up violence.
Missiles began falling. WarMACs scattered. Reforged kept coming. They moved right and left, but when it came to this battle, there would be no retreat. Only forward.
“Left side moving!”
“Let them!”
“Contact center!”
“Got him.”
“MISSILES!”
“Moving.”
Adrian barely knew who was saying what. That was fine. He had found a Warriors WarMAC. That was his. He knew what to do with that. This was the easiest part.
The enemy tried to move laterally, probably intending to draw Adrian away from the rest of the formation.
Adrian followed.
“Come back here. Let’s fight.”
The Warriors pilot continued moving. It refused to play Adrian’s game. It wanted to break contact, take a breath, and figure out what kind of insanity Reforged was playing at. ThunderRoad was acting like the ThunderRoad of years past. Forward. Aggressive. Direct. Not the ThunderRoad who had almost been made passive by repeated headhunting attacks. Not the one who had tried to hide behind the line, using missiles at long range instead of short-range violence.
“No. You don’t leave that easy.”
He fired. The missile spread forced the other WarMAC to change direction, and Adrian cut across the angle, closing faster than a missile-configured WarMaster had any business doing. Somewhere to his left, weapons fire erupted.
Someone shouted.
“Behind me!”
“I see him.”
“Got you.”
Adrian fired again. His opponent returned fire, catching the WarMaster across the shoulder.
Armor warnings appeared. Adrian ignored them.
I really should turn that screen off. It’ll only tell me bad news.
The enemy backed around the remains of a building. Adrian followed. This was probably a terrible idea. He didn’t care. He had almost regressed to caveman mentality.
“Want fight. No run. Give fight.”
The Warriors pilot fired through a shattered wall, and Adrian twisted the WarMaster aside just far enough that the shot only clipped him.
“Missed.”
Adrian fired. The missiles struck the building, the ground and, more importantly, the enemy WarMAC.
One detonated against its leg. Another slammed into the torso. The machine staggered.
“Yeah. There you are.”
A voice came over comms.
“Gavin’s down.”
Adrian’s opponent tried to retreat.
“Not interested.”
Another missile salvo. The damaged Warriors WarMAC fell.
WARRIOR ELIMINATED
“Got one.”
Adrian did not know whether anyone heard him. He didn’t care about that either.
He turned. There were WarMACs everywhere. Friendly target markers. Enemy target markers. Smoke. Explosions. Missiles crossing above the battlefield in both directions.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Furiosa was fighting somebody.
Somewhere else, Becky was shouting a warning.
Find another. You’re not fighting. You need to be fighting. There’s plenty of people to fight.
“Two moving right!”
“I’ve got one.”
“Other one’s mine.”
“Who said that?”
“Me.”
“WHO’S ME?”
“Tex!”
“Fine!”
Adrian laughed. He had no idea why. It was a childish “Who said me? Me. Who said me said me?” exchange, but it was hilarious in the moment.
A Warriors WarMAC appeared through the smoke ahead of him. It wasn’t looking at Adrian.
It was shooting at Natalia.
“Hey.”
The enemy kept firing. Natalia backed away, her WarMAC already damaged badly enough that one leg wasn’t moving cleanly.
Adrian accelerated.
“Hey!”
The Warriors pilot still didn’t turn.
Adrian fired. The missiles hit from the side. The enemy staggered, finally turning toward him.
“Get off my teammate.”
The Warriors WarMAC fired. Adrian took the shot across the torso. Warning lights multiplied.
“Fight someone else.”
He launched another spread.
“Me.”
The Warriors pilot accepted the invitation. That was probably unfortunate.
Adrian backed away as energy fire chewed into WarMaster’s remaining frontal armor, trying to create enough range for the missiles to do what they were actually designed to do.
Natalia stopped retreating. She turned. Saw the Warriors pilot slowly advancing on Adrian.
“Oh, you’re still here?”
“Yep.”
“Good.”
Natalia fired into the Warriors machine from behind. Adrian hit it from the front. The enemy tried to turn toward Natalia.
“No.”
Adrian wasn’t sure if he had said that or Natalia had.
Adrian fired again.
The WarMAC disappeared behind a cloud of smoke and debris. When the smoke cleared, it was on the ground.
WARRIOR ELIMINATED
Natalia laughed over comms.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
A shot came from somewhere Adrian couldn’t see. Natalia’s WarMAC jerked.
Another followed.
Her machine collapsed.
REFORGED PILOT ELIMINATED
Adrian stared at it. Natalia’s microphone vanished. For perhaps half a second, his old instincts tried to build a larger picture from what he knew.
Gavin was down.
Natalia was down.
He had two kills.
Somebody had said two were moving right. Where was Amy? Where was Elias? How many were left?
Stop.
That wasn’t the plan. Find somebody. Fight them.
A Warriors WarMAC emerged from between two trees.
Good enough.
Adrian went after it. Behind him, Natalia pushed her chair away from the computer. Her hands were shaking slightly, partly from adrenaline and partly from exhaustion, and she turned toward the other Reforged stations before stopping herself.
She wanted to say something. Anything. A warning. Encouragement. A joke. She didn’t.
They didn’t need another voice. That had been the entire point.
So Natalia stood silently behind her chair and watched.
On the battlefield, Adrian fired. The enemy dodged.
“Stop doing that. Who said you were allowed to dodge?”
The Warriors pilot, being unable to hear him, declined the request.
Adrian fired again. This time, only a partial hit.
“Come on.”
The enemy returned fire. WarMaster’s left arm armor went from yellow to red.
“That’s rude.”
“Adrian?”
Amy’s voice.
“Yeah?”
“Are you talking to them?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Okay.”
That was all.
Amy’s Furiosa was apparently too busy to investigate further.
“Keiji’s down.”
“Mm.”
Adrian blinked.
That had been Keiji himself. Then his microphone disappeared.
“Wait, did he just report his own elimination?”
“Yes,” Elias said.
“Efficient.”
Adrian’s opponent tried to move away again.
“Oh, no you don’t.”
He followed. The enemy WarMAC disappeared behind a low ridge.
Adrian crested it and immediately realized there were two of them.
“Oh. Oh dear.”
Both fired.
The WarMaster lurched. One missile pod flashed a failure warning.
The other remained functional. Adrian backed down the slope.
He could hear Amy.
“Trevor, behind you.”
“Moving.”
Cass shouted.
“Mine’s down!”
Someone else shouted almost simultaneously.
“Reuben’s out!”
Adrian had no idea what that meant for the numbers. He didn’t try to calculate it.
The two Warriors came over the ridge. Adrian fired his remaining launcher.
One enemy dodged. The other took the spread across the chest.
Not enough. Both kept coming.
“This seems unfair.”
A burst of fire crossed from Adrian’s right and struck the damaged Warrior.
Adrian glanced toward the source.
Henry.
“Thought you might need help.”
“I had them exactly where I wanted them.”
“Of course.”
Together they fired.
One Warriors machine fell.
The second turned on Henry.
Adrian launched another spread. The enemy ignored him.
“Excuse me. I thought we were having a moment here.”
It kept going after Henry.
“No.”
Another salvo.
“I’m talking to you.”
The enemy hit Henry hard enough to spin his WarMAC halfway around.
Adrian charged. He knew that was stupid. He had stopped assigning importance to that word.
The WarMaster hit the other machine bodily, not hard enough to knock either of them down, but enough to spoil the follow-up shot.
“Get off my teammate.”
Henry recovered.
His return fire struck the Warriors WarMAC from the side.
Adrian fired point-blank. The explosion filled his screen.
For a moment, he could see almost nothing.
Then the target marker vanished.
WARRIOR ELIMINATED
Henry laughed.
“You know those are missiles, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just checking.”
“Less booming, but still boom.”
A second later something hit Henry from behind.
His WarMAC stumbled. Adrian turned too late.
Another Warriors machine had arrived.
Henry tried to twist toward it. The next volley finished him.
REFORGED PILOT ELIMINATED
Henry pushed away from his computer and pulled off his headset.
He turned toward Adrian’s station.
Adrian was leaning forward over the controls, eyes locked on his monitor, talking to somebody who could not hear him.
Henry nearly laughed.
Instead he moved backward from the station and folded his arms, because there was nothing useful he could say that the people still fighting did not already know.
Adrian went after Henry’s killer.
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