On the factory floor lay two suits. One of these suits was a massive bulky power armor. The massive conglomeration of wires, plates, gears and servos made up an over 3 meters tall machine, stuffed to the brim with lasers, missiles and fragmentation grenades. All of it illegal of course.

The other suit, smaller in size, had no weapons, but it did have an overly gaudy golden codpiece.

Ronin was staring both these suits down, trying to figure out what to do:

I could repaint the codpiece on the Heromaker to make it less visible… no, it would still stick out. People will still be able to see it, Ronin thought, shaking his head.

With every day that passed, he’d gotten more and more self-conscious about it. The constant stares, awkward expressions and chuckles, made putting on the Heromaker a nightmare. No, he had no doubts, the codpiece had to go, no matter what.

As for the war suit…

Should I really remove all of its weapons?

It would be such a waste. All of that potential, to just throw it away… After all, who knows what could happen? Why shouldn’t he deserve some real protection? It was his suit after all. It belonged to him, his possession, all his own, his-

“Ronin! Why aren’t you studying for the exams?” A deep voice rang out. “Simons?” Ronin said, interrupted from his musings. “And what's with that scary expression you were making?” Simons followed up.

“Scary expression? No no no, I’ve just been thinking about removing the codpiece from the Heromaker suit.”

“Uhh, ok,” Simons said, looking at Ronin skeptically. “But we both know you're not as innocent as you claim… Defiler.”

“I hate that name,” Ronin breathed out, shaking his head.

After a short pause, he raised his hand to his chin, shifting the conversation onto a more comfortable topic, “I’ve been thinking lately, about how we’ve only been constructing small spaceships until now. At this point, we’re both fairly adept at both the printer and the assembler, and it might be time for us to make something bigger.”

Simons’ eyes lit up, “Really!? But it will have to be after the exams.”

Ronin smirked, “you sure about that? Seems I’ll get a head start then.”

He already owned his own company, why would he bother about exam results? As long as he learned and understood the curriculum, it didn’t matter what grades he got. What he needed was access to the academy's resources. Be it their books, texts or research papers, if he wasn't affiliated with the ISFA like he was now, getting access could get, difficult.

“…”

As Simons went off on his own to cram for the upcoming exams, Ronin gathered his tools to begin working on the Heromaker.

After walking back to the suit, he crouched down, inspecting the codpiece. It was for the most part just fastened to the suit via screws and bolts. No problem, he picked up a miniaturized power tool and began removing them. In short order, the screws and bolts piled up beside him, and after the last screw was loose, he popped off the golden codpiece. After laying down the codpiece beside the screws, he was greeted by a cluster of wires and a battery. He'd have to stuff all of that deeper into the suit if he was going to place a flat plate over it. At this point though... it didn't exactly look like brute force was going to work.

So as to not damage the power armor, he began drilling out more screws, opening and removing more plating as he traced the wires. Interestingly, the wires connected to several different circuit boards. Two of the wires connected to the circuit boards on the suit's lower legs. He disconnected those wires, then turned the Heromaker on to see what changed.

The silent mode of the suit is showing error messages now. These circuit boards must be related to the soundproofing system!

He turned off the Heromaker and reconnected the wires, then moved on, following another set of wires up towards the suit's chest area. Then, after removing another set of armor plates, he reached a large central circuit board. This must be important.

He removed the wires and turned on the suit again. This time it was the dance routine that showed error messages.

So that's where that void forbidden dance program came from!

He began redirecting the wires and after a lot of testing, he managed to connect the battery under the codpiece up to the energy shield system.

With a little bit of brute force and some rearranging of the internals, he also managed to stuff the bulging wires and battery deeper into the suit. He finished the session off by smelting down the codpiece, then, by funneling that very same liquid metal into the 3-D printer, he printed a new flat plate to replace it.

Switching on the Heromaker, it showed an estimated battery time of 1.1 hours of continuous combat.

That's a 10% increase in battery life! And all I had to do was give up some dance routines!

“Hahaha, I’ve done it!” Ronin laughed in delight.

Simons, who'd been busy doing exam related sub-light propulsion calculations, walked over.

“Wow! 5 hours of work to replace a codpiece, congratulations sir. Consider me impressed!”

“Stop with the sarcasm already, I did more than that. It’s not visible, but underneath this armor here-” Ronin laughed, slapping the Heromakers chest plate, “I’ve rearranged maybe a third of the wiring in this suit. I’ve pretty much boosted this thing’s longevity by 10%.”

“Oh, that actually is kind of impressive.” Simons said, eyes widening.

“By the way, why are you here at the factory? I mean, I don’t mind the company, but you're not really working, you’re just cramming for school,” Ronin asked.

Simons awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

“I’ll leave if it's a problem, but... I don’t know, I kind of just like the freedom here. Back home, everything operates on a schedule. I’m rarely allowed out of the house, every friend I have was chosen by my father and I’m only allowed to eat when my family does.”

“Really!?” Ronin was shocked. He and Simons apparently lived two completely opposite lives. Whereas he himself could basically do whatever he wanted, for good or for bad, Simons had no freedom at all.

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“What about when a friend asks you to stay over? What about just hanging out outside? Everyone does that.”

“No, never. Not me. My father says there's no point in spending too much time with friends. The only friend's worth making are those who either are or provide useful connections. The friends you can benefit from, the friends who help you rise up, further along the social ladder. There’s no value in wasting your time on nothing.”

Ronin's shock only grew. No wonder he mentions his father so much. He barely has any other relations; his father takes up his whole life.

“Well, I guess you can consider me a valuable connection at least. I’m sure your father also sees it that way as well, so there shouldn’t be any issues with you staying here, whether there’s actually any work to do or not.”

Simons, looking a little embarrassed, nodded in agreement, “yeah, that’s what I was thinking too. It just feels good to be out of the house, you know.”

“Sure man, stay as much as you want. I can even arrange for another bed here if you’d like. Doesn’t matter to me. I mean, heh, void knows, if there’s one thing this place doesn’t lack, it’s space.”

“Thank you, though I think you can hold off on that extra bed. I doubt I’d be able to convince my father to actually let me live here.”

Ronin flashed a grin, “no problem man. But don’t be too sure about that. This is a top-of-the-line factory, and when we get commissions, we might have to pull a few all-nighters here in the future.”

For a factory to feel like a place of freedom, he almost felt a little bad for the guy. Either way, this was an issue between Simons and his father, not something for him to bulldoze his way into. He had a ship to build, a big one at that.

Ronin rose up and stretched his back. “Ahh, now If you’ll excuse me, there’s a very big ship out there, just waiting to be built. Too bad there’s a poor soul here who’d rather bury his head in texts, instead of bringing this large ship to life.” "A sad thing indeed, a sad thing indeed," Ronin said, shaking his head theatrically, sounding like a sad old man.

“Come on! Can’t we wait for the exams first- “

“Nope, time’s precious and I intend to squeeze it for every second it has,” Ronin finished, heading over towards the design studio.

“…”

In order to properly flex his designer muscles, Ronin decided on a landbound cargo vessel. The ship type was not what made this difficult, no. What made this a challenge was the sheer size of the ship.

The big thing was 10 meters long from stern to bow, 3 meters tall and 5 meters in width. It had a much larger cockpit than his old Hemsway and a hallway you could walk through to get to the cargo hold. Finally, it had a small engineering deck as well as a tiny sleeping quarters.

It was essentially halfway between a corvette and shuttle in terms of what it had to offer, and a perfect ship to train on. He was, after all, not going to settle for shuttles, when he was ready, he’d be making proper interstellar spaceships.

Ronin forked over a million credits for the blueprint, then walked over to the 3-D printer to begin printing out parts. Turning on the printer, he uploaded the blueprint he’d just bought and waited for the metal ingots in storage to heat up. He started with the parts belonging to the lower section of the hull.

First, he printed out the landing gear, watching as the microscopic needles of the printer rapidly moved around, building each piece, millimeter by millimeter. As each piece was done, it moved along conveyor belts until it reached the oil station. He walked over and, by hand, applied the friction oil. He then put the pieces together, and injected oil into the hydraulic components. He hadn’t quite worked out how to do this with the assembler yet.

He then began printing the base which he would connect the landing gear to. After that, he started on the rest of the lower hull, not stopping until every piece was printed. Finally, as the freshly printed parts cooled down, he checked his storage for ingots.

Yeah… I’ll be needing a lot more metal for this ship, he thought.

After contacting a couple of local suppliers, ordering in a new shipment of ingots, he turned to the assembler.

However, as he began walking towards the assembler's control panel, he saw a familiar figure rapidly making his way over.

“Changed your mind?” Ronin asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Stop teasing, you know damn well I’d never miss something like this!” Simons breathed out. With both hands on his knees, after some heavy breathing, he continued, “can you send over the blueprint?”

“Already on it,” Ronin chuckled as the design of the heavy cargo vessel was transferred over.

Simons read over the blueprint, “oh my! This thing is a monster! 10 meters!? Really?” He erupted, taking a hold of Ronin, shaking him back and forth.

“So, about this exam that's coming up?”

“Eherm, if we can’t wait for the exam, the exam will have to wait for us. Some things are simply more important,” Simons said, puffing up and tapping his chest in an act of importance.

“Alright, let's do this then,” Ronin said.

He connected his optical implant to the assembler's control panel and a virtual interface appeared. On it was a virtual display of the newly printed ship parts, the assembler arms, lifts and bots. To the side, the virtual display showed levers, diagrams and lines of text representing various assembly programs.

“Let’s start with the stern first, I’ll move the parts over while you do the welding,” Ronin said, receiving a nod from Simons.

Taking hold of two of the virtual levers, he began moving two of the assembler arms over towards the conveyor belts. The arms gripped a couple of hull parts and moved them over towards the building station.

Simons quickly followed up, and soon four assembler arms were working in tandem, moving and welding together plates and parts as the ship began taking shape.

As they continued on, the hours passed, and the stern of the ship was slowly but surely being completed.

“Alright, that's the welding done, you take a breather while I fully seal the welds with the polymer,” Ronin said, gripping another set of levers.

“I-I can still go on, we’re just getting to the good part,“ Simons tiredly complained.

As another set of assembler arms began injecting polymer sealant, Ronin chuckled back, “-and that’s why I’m doing it. Now go, rest.”

Simons was a great employee who had more than enough work ethic and enthusiasm, but he couldn’t work him to the bone. Ronin was different though. If he progressed far enough along with the Kalvrakian Embrace, perhaps he could one day work forever?

He shuddered, ok, on second thought, that doesn’t actually sound good at all!

image [https://i.imgur.com/EBoScIM.png]

On a faraway planet, along the arm of Orion, deep into the domain of mankind, a silver haired girl, lazily snapped her finger. The anti-gravity machine slowly raised her from her bed as tables and kitchenware exited the wall, then floated over. The room changed as a soft breeze began blowing, the smell of summer emerged as a field of impossibly beautiful flowers replaced the white walls of the room.

All of it chosen by the central AI to precisely fit the girl’s preferences of course. All perfect. All of it fake.

“Is the setting to your liking young mistress?” An old man asked, walking into the room with the natural grace of a butler.

“Hueh, it’s fine,” the girl breathed out.

She was growing tired of this superficial world around her.

Noticing her expression, the old man added, “We could arrange for some music to be played if you’d like miss?”

“No need,” she said, carefully beginning to sample the food.

“If you are to inherit the company and become the clan matriarch, an optimal mood is better when learning. Your father-“

“Not today, Ludvig,” she interrupted. “Leave me.”

“Very well, young mistress.” The older man, not showing the slightest reaction to his dismissal, walked back out of the room… But he didn’t go far, staying right outside her room, waiting, listening.

The girl looked over towards the VR-capsule at the other end of the room. That world was also fake, but at least the people within were real. The strength she gained from this world was real. It was better than nothing.