I didn’t need to wait for the others long, having sent them a message over the obelisk a few minutes prior. Most of the time, they’d have been en route anyways, not often having too much better to do. At least, I didn’t have too much more to do than attend things at the Legion. Alice collected pictures and trinkets from before all of this happened in her downtime, Fran and Daniel were occupied with each other, and clearly my newest team member Terry had better things to do in his time right now.

Given that, I should probably find a hobby.

In any case, I was looking over the small fleet of heavy duty trucks when I heard the whir of motors and the stomping of Daniel’s mech. Quieter than I would otherwise think, the thing was still a behemoth. Fran was fully suited as well, effortlessly hovering beside his right shoulder, her broad wings not necessary thanks to the fact that Daniel’s mech would be plenty of an anchor to work with, given her magnetics.

“What’s all this you think?” I heard Daniel murmur, the torso of the mech was currently left open while he walked, enjoying the fresh air.

Fran, helmet also shed for the moment, looked around thoughtfully, “Well, probably, we can use these to get out to areas closer to where we need to get dropped off.”

I smiled and stepped out from around one of the larger trucks, big enough to carry Daniel’s mech without overt concerns for the axle bending. “Spot on. Doug and I had the idea to expand after the mine fiasco. It could honestly be a little bit closer, but since this is pretty much just the depot, I don’t mind it being a few blocks away from the headquarters.”

“Cool,” Daniel smirked, “At least a few of these looks like they can carry my rig.”

I shook my head and greeted them, “Good morning, by the way.”

“Likewise,” Fran beamed, “I owe you one, by the way, leaving us all after your grandstanding last night.”

Her friendly smile and tone did not match her words. “Ah, that. I thought it went quite well?”

“Too well,” Daniel laughed, stopping when Fran shot him a sharp glance, “Err, well it generated a lot of buzz. People could barely calm down enough for us to keep going with the announcements. We finally did it, but the rest of us had to get creative ourselves.”

“You know what people are calling our squad now?” Fran half-pouted and half-gloated, “The Reaper’s Hand.”

“That’s badass.” I nodded.

She stared at me blankly for a moment, “You’re not embarrassed at all about any of this, are you?”

“Nope,” I gestured to my whole self, “I’m a Reaper, after all.”

Daniel nodded, “Told ya. They have nicknames for the rest of us too, so far though only one of us has a concrete one.” He then corrected himself an instant later, “Ah, except you, since you’re already just being called The Reaper after your display.”

I could appreciate that, I specifically didn’t remove my armor to help disassociate people with who I am under the armor. With any luck, people would forget the fact that I wasn’t really that old, and while I was sure I wasn’t the best man to lead a bunch of people, there weren’t a lot of options around that I would be happy with. Doug helped smooth that over, but not being questioned every step of the way because of my age and thereby supposed lack of experience was a massive boon. Even if perhaps I did, in fact, lack some small amount of experience. Just a little.

“So? What’s the nickname?” I looked between the two, figuring it was likely on one of them. Possibly with Alice, but Terry was in his wheelchair at the time, not exactly an imposing figure. When he was in his own mech suit, though, I suspected that would be very different.

“The Iron Valkyrie,” Daniel said while looking straight at Fran, whose cheeks reddened just a touch. “In order to reel people back in, she had to show off her wings. For a second, I thought I would lose hearing it got so loud from all the cheering.”

She sighed at that, “I don’t know why I didn’t just wait for them to calm down.”

“Because it’s fun to show off.” I answered without missing a beat, to which she frowned. She didn’t say anything to that though, and I suspected I wasn’t off the mark with that conclusion.

“Any case, while we’re waiting for the other two, I wanted to let you guys know what’s probably going to be happening here soon.” I brought them up to speed on everything that had happened, and what I planned on having done for the Legion overall.

Daniel drummed his mechs fingers against its hip in thought, clacking all the while, “I do think it’d be a good idea to train some people up. We’re growing pretty quick too, so I don’t think we’ll really lack anyone who wants to use a training facility and such. And if we’re gonna go about expanding our arsenal with a research department, I could see if there’s another mech or some blueprints that I can get off of my class shop?”

“That’s a good idea,” I assented with a nod, “If we can get our hands on some of the tech from your shop and some from mine, we’ll be able to really put some work into the department. Fran, do you think you’ll have anything to add?”

She hummed aloud and brought up her shop menu, then asked, “Do you have access to a set of magnetic propulsion called a Val-3?”

I shrugged, “Let me see.” After a few moments of searching I shook my head, “Negative, I don’t have anything really related to advanced magnetic stuff. Are you sure you don’t have a special shop?”

Fran chuckled, “Well, I’m sure I have a special shop, at this point, but I don’t see anything indicating more than that. It’s very specific. But, I can at least see if we can get some of this stuff out as well, I don’t see much regarding blueprints so far, but there’s a couple we might be able to use.”

“Great.” I imagined someone wearing a reaperized mech suit with magnetics.

I need it. I chuckled to myself, something like that would expand our firepower immensely, though I doubted it would be anything but excruciatingly difficult to replicate that kind of technology.

That brought up another interesting point. Were people able to influence what would be available to them through shopping for specific things? It certainly seemed so, but why would that be the case? So far everything else might have made sense, but that one seemed counterintuitive, even weapons were available to be unlocked in this way it seemed, and quite a bit less expensive than the standard options. A weapon similar to my reaper weapons were basically called slag guns, and the non-reaper variant was prohibitively expensive. For the price of one, I could buy at least two dozen assault rifles and ammo enough to teach a bunch of recruits how to shoot all day long. That said, it didn’t look like I had a lot of options otherwise for upgrading. We’d have to eat the bill on the first advanced item and then work on reverse engineering it.

I was no researcher, but I suspected that would have its own problems.

As we talked about ideas for what we thought could be done with our own respective shops, I noticed Alice approaching, rapidly at that.

“Sorry guys! I slept in a bit!” Her movement was fast, much faster than it was the day before. I realized that her legs bore ovular casings that covered her feet and calves entirely, a pair of protruding, curved rods extended from them. They were elegant and flowing in design, and her exo-suit hugged her body in several locations. Her limbs each bore flowing pieces of metal, each joint crafted to move along with the limb itself, though it was anything but apparent. They were seemingly designed with subtlety in mind, unlike Daniel’s full mech suit, for instance. Instead of knobby joints with finite range of motion, these limbs gave the illusion that they could be twisted and allow free flowing motion. I doubted they would bend in ways that her body couldn’t, and their compressional strength was probably quite absurd, especially given that I suspected that she could go as fast as Daniel could now.

Her bow was safely stowed on her back, though even seeing half of it peaking over her shoulder immediately made me aware that it had been upgraded considerably as well. She currently wore a visored helmet, likely assisting at traveling at such high speeds.

I paused and looked at the truck next to me. Did we even need these?

Well, then again, not everyone on our team was as mobile. I definitely couldn’t outrun these three.

“Alice,” I greeted, “Don’t worry about it. We’re still waiting for Terry anyways.”

She smiled, “Oh, he’s right behind me, he rebuilt a lot of his mech. It looks really cool.”

A sinking suspicion hit me as I recalled the limb he was working on in the shop. No sooner than the thought hit me did he appear, his mech considerably larger, and I could hear the crackle of electricity as he rounded the corner, bobbing in the air as he corrected direction and came towards us. Clearly he couldn’t stop on a dime, or turn rapidly, but it was very fast. The legs seemed to have condensed, large panels protruding and jolts of arcing electricity going from the many prongs to the ground. Terry’s mech had certainly gone through many more upgrades at that, a large device sat around the mechs hips and rose up across his back. Some kind of shoulder mounted objects that likely served as guns sat there as well. Certainly the one on the right was similar enough to a rifle that I suspected he might have even be aiming for creating a rail gun, whether or not that was successful or not I couldn’t say as of yet.

“It works!” I heard him laughing as he slowed during the approach, leaning backwards as a wave of electrical discharge flooded the area just in front of him. There was plenty of room between us, luckily, but that certainly was disconcerting.

In the next moment, a few of the protrusions darted downwards, grounding himself as the legs switched modes, allowing him to stand when they finished unfolding.

The mech legs allowed him to walk fairly easily, but I could tell they weren’t designed with a great deal of motor mobility in mind. Still, considering the man had figured out how to float, I doubted considerably that it would be an issue.

“I’m not too late, right?” Terry hollered out as the spherical torso opened from the middle. Dense metal and insulators protected the man from any electricity that could potentially run rampant in the mech itself, and the varying spikes and antennae that now protruded from the back of the mech danced with electricity slowly snaking its way across and upwards like ripples in water.

I shook my head, “No, you’re fine. Daniel, Fran, mind filling them in? I need a moment to… take a look at something.”

They looked at me strangely, not realizing my inner plight, but they agreed readily.

Seriously, I’m the slowest in the group now? I sighed, looking at the fleet of trucks. I wasn’t going to bother taking one of these out myself if I’d be the only one needing to be ferried. At least the other teams can use these.

I opened up my reaper shop, wondering at what I could get my hands on. If I was lucky, maybe I could get a hold of something that could even up the speeds a bit. I could in theory hitch a ride on Daniel’s shoulders, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept that as a genuine option. Sure, I could physically grab a hold of his mech suit and probably be fine, maybe uncomfortable, but with my now enhanced body, I doubted it would do much more than that. But I was The Reaper now, damn it all, I was not going to ride on someone’s shoulder all the time to get around.

If nothing else, I had a large amount of Matter Energy and not much to do with it. I didn’t have a mech suit per se, my armor qualified as an exo-suit but only just. Wings were probably a no go. I looked around, sighing as I realized that I would likely have to go the vehicle route for now.

As I looked at the shop, however, I couldn’t help but grin at the options available...