The marble room was a gigantic rectangle room completely encased in smooth marble looking polished stone, running twenty centimeters thick on all sides, or something close to it.
Glassmetal, the one who construed it and reconstructed it many times, said that he changed the atomic structure of the different minerals he fused together, creating something akin to a super alloy, to strengthen it.
Here Glassmetal was his strongest. His powers made him able to manipulate any type of ceramic material, making it flow like water. It also gave him comprehension and insight into the materials down to an atomic level, enhancing his mind to process things much faster.
This made him specialize in creating intricate circuits, probably inspired by his time as an electric engineer, while changing the atomic structure of the ceramic to circulate electricity perfectly.
This allowed him to make machinery that was strong, efficient and didn’t need separate areas for circuit or battery. The only downside was that they also could only exist as long as he held their changed structure with his power.
Lately, he was working in something in the marble room that he said would be revolutionary. He didn’t let anyone in and we spend the week training in the forest and in the empty lake bed.
Finally today, he was going to show us what he had been working on this entire time, even if Glassmetal was much worse at hiding what it was while giving hints than he thought and so everyone had figured it out eventually, everyone was still excited to see how it had actually turned out.
As we entered the marble room, the high ceiling dotted with strong white lights illuminating the sizeable area, the first thing we saw were about thirty humanoid constructs, honest to god Mechas, they seemed sturdy and were all in a kneeling stance, looking like statues.
“You actually did them,” Swordjuice jumped in happiness, hugging Glassmetal.
“Yeah, it took a good while, but I figured it out.”
He stood there smiling, looking at us all expectantly.
I chuckled, “and how did you do it? I mean, you need to maintain an active connection to your creations for them to function, right?”
“Yeah, and I’ve been trying to circumvent that for a long time. I tried to keep some constructs on me constantly, maintaining and improving their capabilities to see if they would stick somehow. That turned out to be a dead end, and I abandoned it to train in making the alterations quicker and focusing on more things at the same time”
“Oh, so that’s why I never saw you with that ball tablet anymore, huh?” Victor said
“Yeah, I trained long and hard every day and while I can’t make different things at the same time, I can make lots of the same thing.”
He gestured to the massive Mechas behind him, all identical in shape, “and that’s how this came to be. Creating a pre-made built that is exactly equal for all the constructs makes me able to edit and control them in tandem.”
His smile was huge as he walked in front of the group, proudly explaining his achievements. “then that begs the question: how can I make something really complex quicker without needing to build it from the ground up? After all, if my goal is robotics, I couldn’t just program them from the ground up every time.”
Glassmetal was now in monologue mode. Any attempt at interruption would be futile.
“And then I had my revelation; memory alloys! I could try to create one myself with the explicit purpose of keeping the atomic alterations I made solid into matter even without me keeping my attention on them.”
He gestured, and a stack started rising from the ground like a hidden bookcase. “I created a specific material that could, in common terms, remember the spaces the circuits ran through, thus creating my library of effects.” He reached for the case that contained thick blocks of silver colored with the patterning of marble in various speckles of black and maroons.
“These,” he said showing the block to us, “will make me able to create complex and intricate components that I can copy over En masse, focusing much more in the shaping and the quantity of copies instead of the intricacies of the design.”
He paused, looking at us with a maniac smile, waiting for our reaction.
“That’s pretty cool,” Victor said.
“I don’t really get it” Spotlight shrugged.
“So the Mechas work?” LED simply asked.
“Yes, the Mechas work!” Glassmetal said irritably shaking his hands in front of him “I can choose a design that I have saved, which are really complex each and took me days of layering thousands and thousands of hard coded frameworks, and just pop out copies of it, instead of making everything from scratch, it circumvents my biggest weakness, it expands my possibilities so much.”
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We faintly nodded, following his energetic explanation in silence.
“It’s mind-boggling. Don’t you all get it?” He almost yelled in frustration.
“I understand, Glassmetal,” I said, trying to placate the young man. “I’m trying to work on something just as much intricate.”
“It really great, Glassmetal,” Swordjuice added as well in praise.
Glassmetal let out a sigh, all his intensity deflating, “oh well. Let’s get down with it then.” he held the thick plaque that he took out firmly between his hands, making it light up as the subtle lines dotting its surface came alive.
A shining line extended from him through the ground, dividing into two and then into four and continuing like that until it connected to the thirty statues.
The lines slowly crawled up the constructs forms in synchrony, blending into a soft light as the individual lines grew too small to be noticeable at a distance.
Slowly every statue came to life, revealing themselves as the mechas Glassmetal projected them to be, each standing at over two meters tall, with solidly blocky arms ending in cannon like holes encircled by four claw like blades.
The heads were simple semi spheres sitting on top of the machine’s large shoulders. They looked like helmets. The legs were digitigrade with rolling balls instead of feet, giving the machines some nimbleness even with their heavy tops.
The thirty giants of marble made some testing motions, moving in perfect eerie synchrony. They moved side to side and crouching lightly as their arms spun and their claws clicked.
For a while, there was only the harmonic sound of whirls and clicks as the thirty machines moved in the perfect, exact way that only machines could. Glassmetal controlled them, standing still with his eyes closed, holding his plaque, looking like a technomancer.
“Wow! this is much more impressive than your discourse,” Spotlight said, his voice clearly laced with awe.
The mechas formed a semicircle behind Glassmetal in two rows of fifteen. He then opened his eyes, grinning.
“These are the expressions I wanted to see.”
“Very good work, Glassmetal,” LED said.
“I want to see the smug look on your face when they’re all destroyed. Glassmetal,” Victor said, a grin on his face to match the one on Glassmetal’s face.
We all nodded to each other standing side by side, everyone buffed and wearing military grade combat gear. We really made quite the sight.
I was in the front with Swordjuice and victor by my sides. Behind us were LED and Spotlight bringing up the rear.
“Okay,” LED said, calling for attention. “We all know the plan, then.“
A chorus of affirmatives responded him, and everyone got ready. Swordjuice formed her shroud, Victor let his metal seep out through his skin and LED buffed everyone.
Glassmetal also readied himself, the mechas coming around to stand in front of him as he slowly backed away. The mechas made groups of five. One group came at us from the front and the other two went to encircle us from the sides.
During our weeks of training, something we realized was that our team wasn’t exactly the most synergistic one, but we had a couple of heavy hitters that working together could take on a lot of things, Spotlight served as an additional knife at the back.
With the enhanced physicality that was further brought up with LED’s buffs, each of us packed a mean punch, moved nimbly and quickly and thought at a speed matching our stronger bodies.
“Let’s meet them head on before they can completely encircle us.” LED said, and we set off directly towards our enemies.
I ran straight at the frontmost mecha while all of them raised their arms, the holes under their claws shining up as they all bombarded us with plasma shots.
It didn’t manage to scorch me for even a full second before my power fully armored me up, soaking up the plasma harmlessly.
Swordjuice sent blasts of force in front of her so the heat exploded away from her body and Victor's metal formed a wall in front of him as he built up a bigger gun behind his shield.
LED just used my body as a shield, staying close behind me.
“Swordjuice bomb them up and then share the shrouds.” Swordjuice nodded, taking out two grenades from each side of her belt, throwing them over at the mechas. Some of them changed their aiming to intercept the bombs and Swordjuice threw little jellybeans to each of us.
I took mine and was enveloped in a thick shroud of pure kinetic energy; I was the one who had the most control over it besides Swordjuice and maintained it controlled around me. Victor used the shroud for defense, taking the chance to use all his metal to make a giant gun strapped to his right arm.
His exposed teeth shone brightly as he started aiming and shooting. I recognised the gun’s design. It alternated between launching an enhanced fireball followed by a quick burst of enhanced freezing-beam, perfect for breaking through solid defenses.
LED was still behind me as I rushed the closest mecha. It started going along a clearly automated defense routine as it tried to fight me in close quarters; I rained punches on it using the shroud to enhance the impacts, as I didn’t really need it for the defense.
The constructs were made solid, resisting dozens of punches and keeping working even as pieces of them fell. Glassmetal would also recover them, pulling more marble from the ground to fill up the chunks that fell off.
LED had slid off to fight his own constructs, dodging the plasma blast at the last second making the mechas shoot each other and harassing them in various way, his punches weren’t that negligible, the serum training together with his buff made his strength decidedly superhuman, although not anything completely crazy.
The mechas punched back, trying to puncture me with their claws, shooting blasts at close range when they had the angle. Nothing of it affected me much, and I focused on my transformation, coaxing bigger effects. I Already stood taller, having filled up with even more muscles, and my armor had optimized to take their shots and resist the damage from slashes and punches.
I stood under the assault of multiple constructs while slowly and steadily pummeling them. They refused to go down though, Glassmetal just refilling and fixing them up from any damage we inflicted.
Around Glassmetal, the floor vibrated and Spotlight jumped away from a spike spearing from where his feet just had been. Glassmetal smiled, the ceramic around him forming into a dome completely enveloping him, multiple barrels and lenses sprouting around its surface.
The familiar whirring noise of the guns charging up filling the suddenly quiet room.