As my current mission is to build a Grade 0 Battlesuit, I need to design my variant to be a Grade 0 suit and then build a real life version of it. Chances are a Grade 0 variant won’t sell so I do not want to waste too much time on it but I do need to change a few things to make it different enough that the System won’t shift me on the rewards. Knowing the System, I wouldn’t be surprise if it gave me a bad score for failing to change the suit enough after building it.

The first thing I changed was the shape of the fists. The Golden Boxer was designed to be a pure combat suit and the unknown designer of The Golden Boxer fixed the shape the fists to look like boxing gloves. It was an artistic decision that worked well. However modern operators prefer more flexibility so I change the fists into usable hands. I didn’t want to change the size of them but I had to change the structure of the fists so that the operator could now open and close the fists.

It was surprisingly hard to do. The Golden Boxer basically had no controls for the hands as it didn’t have any need for it. So after changing the gloves into hands, I then had to design new pathways to link the hands to the operating rig. Luckily my experience with the Jumpbot served me well. Compare to creating new pathways for a secondary technology, this is easy.

Then I got to the main problem of The Golden Boxer; it’s inability to get close to the opponent. Since I did not want to sacrifice size for speed, I needed something to give my variant a burst of speed. My variant need to cover the ground quickly and after some thought, I decided to go with something I am already similar with; SH-3 Legs.

I shall admit that the SH-3 Legs is not the perfect choice for a Battlesuit like The Golden Boxer. The Golden Boxer is an exoskeleton suit and it weight a lot less than the Steambot so in theory the SH-3 Legs would be too powerful for the suit, but as I am only designing the variant to complete the mission from the System, I did not want to waste DP to buy a more suitable pair of legs for clockwork legs. More importantly, I believe the legs should work well enough for my variant. The Jumpbot was able to get close to the enemy with a big jump and I fail to see why that wouldn’t work with this variant.

Unlike the hands, installing the SH-Legs was easy. All I had to do was to remove the original oversized legs and replaced them with the SH-Legs. I then had to tweak the suit a little for balance. The original designer of The Golden Boxer placed oversized legs on the suit to balance the oversized arms and although the SH-Legs was powerful, they did not have the size of the original legs. However between my Clockwork Technology and Tinkering skills, I easily got the balance right. I was just in time too as Howard chose this time to walk in with a suitcase. I checked the time and saw that it was almost noon. Time flies when you’re having fun. Howard signal that he wanted to talk so I saved my variant to Dive and ordered a short simulation test.

“So what do you think Howard? How much trouble am I in?”

A look of surprise appear on Howard’s face. “Oh! Is that why you send the video to me? I was wondering why you send it.”

“You are my security consultant right? You don’t think this will be a problem for me?”

“Not too much. You run a weapon workshop Toby. So some guys uses your stuff to break the law, so what? As long as you can show the authorities that you have nothing to hide, you’ll be fine.”

“What if I have nothing to show them? I can release my sales records but I don’t know which two were used for the heist.”

“Even better! Cooperate with the police to get them off your back and since you can’t give them anything important, even if they catch the guys who did this, that crew can’t blame you for getting caught.That’s the best case scenario.”

“You’re taking this awfully well. I thought you’ll be more hung up about it because of the dead cop.”

“First, I’m no longer in the force. Second, this happen in another part of the world. I don’t know this guy. Third, you need to give credit when it’s due. Those robbers were just better than that officer.”

“Better than even you?”

“From what I saw; most probably. I’m a certified Advance Operator and I’m willing to bet those two guys were Senior Operators at the very least.”

I was a little surprised at that. Most occupations with certification requirements ran along five ranks from Trainee to Expert. An Advance Operator would be in the third rank with Senior Operators being one rank above them. Howard mentioning it made me realized that the System rank me as a Trainee Designer, even though Designers don’t have any certification requirement. I half-wonder how I was going to rank up as a Battlesuit Designer. I need to ask the System about that sometime.

“The cop? What rank is he in?”

“A Novice but he’s probably just a Trainee who had just pass certification. Even if the robbers were higher ranked, he shouldn’t have lost that fight. He was in a far superior Battlesuit.”

“Hey, I like to think my Trackbot is just vastly underrated.”

“Ha! Glad to see you still have your sense of humor. By the way, this is for you.”

Howard handed me the case and I saw that it requires a thumbprint to open. I glanced at Howards who just wave at the case. I placed my thumb on the scanner and the case opened. Should I be worried that whoever made the case got my thumbprint? Yes but any worries I had was drowned out by what was inside it. I couldn’t help but smiled at the sight of the cards.

“So the Council finally made a decision. Wow, that was fast. It only took them like three weeks to come to a decision.”

A chuckle escaped Howard. “Par for course for them and to be fair Toby, what you are proposing is kind of out there.”

“It will work. As they say; any technology advance enough will look like magic...”

“So any magic can be made to look like an unknown just discovered advance technology. I was there when you made your pitch remember? I still have my doubts but what can I say; you convinced them. The Council has agreed to go into business with The Fat Tinkerer.”