Simulator ace Iggy Burton entered the terminal room, a number of questions rolling through his head. Why had they drawn lots if the competition was simply a battle royale? Why were the staff calling it a "tropheaum", despite it clearly being a battle royale? Were all gunpla tournaments secretly this haphazard and poorly-organized? He understood these people were probably idiots, seeing as they preferred sluggish, vulnerable mechs to the sleek power of a well-designed fighter craft, but surely even they recognized that this was a terrible idea, didn't they?

GUNPLA BATTLE, COMBAT MODE, START UP.
MODEL DAMAGE LEVEL, SET TO C.
PLEASE SET YOUR GP BASE.

Iggy followed the terminal's instructions.

BEGINNING PLAVSKY PARTICLE DISPERSAL.
FIELD 01-A: A BAOA QU.
PLEASE SET YOUR GUNPLA.

Iggy placed the Lord British onto the base. The fighter's ability to take on large numbers of targets outstripped the Vic Viper; with some luck, it'd be able to make it out of this battle unscathed. He took hold of the controls.

"Lord British Aerospace Fighter, preparing to sortie. Let's get a look at what these boys can do."

Iggy launched, and was met with a vision of pure chaos. About sixty percent of the suits looked like the standards- varying combinations of AGE, Astray, Strike, Crossbone, Destiny, Wing Zero, 00, Qan[T], Unicorn, Turn A, Turn X, and similar. Obviously, originality had gone out the window in favor of high-power vanilla MS. He streaked through the battlefield, moving along the outskirts of the arena to get a better idea of what was going on. Two things struck him in particular.

One, the battlefield was not only swarming with players, but also a horde of Mocks representing the Federation and Zeon forces, which fired upon each other as well as nearby players. A number of overconfident units had already fallen, their active defenses having been penetrated by Zaku bazookas or GM scatter guns.

Two, there appeared to be a virtual sea of remote weapons firing on one another around A Baoa Qu, the gravitational pull of the massive fortress drawing in the half-functioning debris of discarded weapons and rapidly forming a thick ring of orbiting junk, which some participants were currently using as cover. Judging from the lack of remote weapons in the area directly adjacent to the funnel ring, it was safe to assume that it was producing some form of psycommu interference. 

Reconnaissance finished, Iggy dove into the fray.