"If this is some plan to use me, you can count me out." Avery replied.

He was skeptical of Liesel's proposal.

While she was suggesting working together, Avery felt that this was more a means to have him work in her favor.

"I won't lie that I'm hoping to utilize your skills to my advantage, but I'm not planning on just taking advantage of you. After the help and advice you gave me during the second event, I'm hoping to pay off my debt to you. I genuinely want to work together here. We'll take out the rest of the competition, and then the two of us can duke out amongst ourselves at the end. That way, one of us will get first place, and the other will get seconds."

The way that Liesel described things certainly sounded appealing.

Once the two of them had eliminated the other competitors, they would have a fair fight amongst each other to decide which one of them was better.

Nevertheless, Avery still remained a bit hesitant to accept Liesel's proposal. He felt like she must have been attempting to pull one over on him. They were in a competition after all. Most of them would do whatever they could to pull out ahead. No matter what it took.

Naturally, Liesel was able to see how skeptical Avery was of her proposal.

"Here, why don't you take this as collateral. If I double cross you, feel free to spread it across the entire Dramid Alliance."

To Avery's complete surprise. Leisel transmitted to him a compilation of embarrassing videos from her childhood.

There were things like her spilling food all over herself, tripping over essentially nothing, accidently shooting herself in the foot with a laser pistol, and more occurrences along those lines.

Nothing in the file was too bad, but taken all together, it could harm her reputation.

If a potential employer watched all of these videos, they might be less inclined to hire Liesel on account of all of the little mistakes she had made in the past.

"You sure about this? I couldn't ruin your life with this, but I could probably make sure a laughingstock of the mercenary community for a while." Avery said, still a bit wary, but also concerned with how easily Liesel had sent over these humiliating videos.

"Yes, I've already made up my mind on the matter. I sent you those to show my sincerity. I originally chose this event with the full intention of teaming up with you. You've already shown yourself to be quite capable, and as I said before, this is also me hoping to repay you for the second event."

"Okay, we've got three minutes until the event starts. Give me one to discuss this with my copilot and then connect me again." Avery said, cutting off the call.

He then turned to Kasandra and asked her opinion on the matter.

"I don't think that she was lying about or trying to hide her true intentions. Her voice remained steady, and she never looked away. Of course, she could just be a really good liar. I can't definitively tell from over a call if someone is lying."

Avery nodded his head, satisfied that Kasandra also believed that Liesel was being genuine in her offer.

However, whether she wanted to team up with her was another matter entirely. If Kasandra was against it, Avery planned on turning Liesel down.

She thought about it carefully for a few moments, before ultimately sighing in resignation.

"I think that we'll be in trouble if we don't accept. Cerise and Atlas are probably going to have the biggest targets on their backs, but our being in third place means that we're likely to get targeted as well. Having someone on our side watching our backs would massively increase our chances. And, even if we do lose to Liesel and take second place in this event, we'll still be a couple points ahead in the overall scoring."

Kasandra's reasoning certainly made sense, but Avery could tell she was still a bit reluctant for some reason.

"Okay, if you think it's a good idea, then I'll accept the offer." Avery said.

A few moments later, another transmission came in from Liesel.

When he picked it up, Avery confirmed that he would work together with Liesel.

"Perfect. Now we can take down that old hag and bulky brute."

Avery was shocked to hear the way in which Liesel just referred to Cerise and Atlas.

Sure, Cerise was apparently over eighty, but rejuvenation treatments and physical augmentations still here looking like she was in her mid-forties.

She did not look like a hag, and Avery was pretty sure that she might go ballistic if someone called her one.

As for Atlas, he was taller than average and had a muscular build, but he did not really give off the impression of a brute. He actually seemed more like the silent scheming type. Though this could just be Avery's own bias, since he thought the man was cheating somehow.

'I've figured out the main reason Liesel wanted to team up though. She doesn't think that she can beat Cerise or Atlas on her own.'

No doubt settling a debt she felt she owed was only a secondary reason. Obviously, Liesel wanted to win.

She had probably thought about extending her offer of cooperation to the top two as well but ultimately decided that doing so would be less beneficial to her.

Both of their ships were difficult to fight one on one.

Cerise was piloting a vessel focused on speed and would be hard to hit consistently, while Atlas' craft had enough shielding and armor to keep going through a protracted fight.

This may have been a free-for-all battle, but that did not mean that all eight of them would be blindly shooting at each other.

Everyone already had a priority target in their mind, and it was likely that those in the upper rankings were going to be focused first.

'Which is why we're going after Atlas first.' Avery thought, already having pulled up Stifur's heavily armored vessel on the Dauntless' viewscreen.

While Cerise was certainly a threat, her ship would be easier to fight two against one than Atlas' if it came down to it.

Avery and Liesel wanted to avoid him surviving to the end and holding out against them until he took one of them down.

Of course, if Avery really wanted to, he could bust through the bulky vessel with a phasic torpedo, but now that he knew the contents of the last event, he was hoping to save his trump card until the end.

His eyes glancing towards the bottom corner of the viewscreen, Avery watched as the countdown to the start of the battle.

It had just reached ten seconds and knowing that he was in for a fierce fight, Avery tightened the grip on his controls.

"3,2, 1, Begin."

At the end of the countdown, Avery shot directly towards Atlas.

The plan was for him to engage from the front, while Liesel covered him from behind and would fire attacks from difficult to avoid angles.

Yet, Avery was not the only one that had launched straight for their target right from the start.

To his surprise, Jack Huxley was coming directly for him. His weapons were already firing despite the Dauntless being out of their effective range.

'Why the hell is he after me?!' Avery thought as he initiated evasive maneuvers.

He had figured that most people would go after Cerise first, and that was what was happening.

Ranks eight, seven, and four were targeting her, showing no signs of wanting to fight each other until the frontrunner was taken out.

The only reason that Avery could fathom Jack Huxely deciding to focus on him instead, was because like how Avery had teamed up with Liesel, he had teamed up with Atlas.

Almost as if on cue to prove his assumption, Atlas fired off a volley of seeker missiles to the right side of the Dauntless.

Considering that Jack was coming in from the left, this was obviously a play to try and force Avery closer to the famous actor and pincer him.

'Fortunately, I've got backup as well.'

Avery completely disregarded the missiles coming at him and continued charging towards Atlas without diverting his course.

At this rate he was going to get hit hard if he continued to do nothing, but before the missiles could reach him, a spray of red bullets shot through the seeker missiles and caused them to explode before they could reach their target.

"Looks like we're going to have to change our plans a bit. I'll handle Jack Huxley and provide what support I can to you whenever I see an opening. All you need to do is keep Atlas busy until I'm done. Though, if you can beat him on your own first, I won't complain." Liesel said over comms.

With each of them having their own roles to play, Avery and Liesel split up to take on their respective opponents.