"So these are the armors you were talking about. They are- hmm," Cassius turned to Micheal and asked, "What would be the most polite way to say disappointing or underwhelming?"
Micheal remained silent and listened to the bustling of people moving about the hangar and the intermittent bangs from beasts striking the defensive walls a few floors up. It was his only way to maintain a neutral stance on the topic. Cassius may have missed it, but even without looking her way, he knew his boss would be fuming by now. Or so he thought.
"These are early models, while I won't defend that disgusting Firstlight design," Nora pointed at the Firstlight Suit on display, "But as for my Warsouls, they have been defending this building and base even better than what these people could do alone."
"I meant no offense. This design however just doesn't work. The suits themselves are nice," Cassius ran his hands over the suits stopping intermittently to inspect certain points closely, "However, where they miss out is that they are built uniformly for mass production. It doesn't take into account the individuality of the wearer, thus it throttles wearers peak performance."
"Well, we can't arm every soldier with personally tailored suits. Do you have any idea how expensive something like that would be? Even then replacing them in the event the wearer dies is impossible if they are only meant for one person."
"I have to agree. Something like that would be difficult to sustain," Micheal stressed his agreeance and the unsustainability of Cassius' idea.
Cassius didn't comment any further and continued to inspect the suits. Micheal quickly found space for himself and started fiddling with a tablet, where he got it from no one would ever know. Meanwhile, Nora disappeared into the crowd.
'While the design is lackluster and overall waste, it is well crafted for its purpose. But they could have armored this even more if they hadn't given up ground for this one size fits all design.'
Cassius stretched, pulled, and even attempted to tear and rip the suit with his bare hands. His actions drew a few curious gazes, but they soon ignored his actions.
Running his hands through the inside of the suit he could feel various pricks on his fingers.
'This was poorly thought out. Were these needles meant to scan biometrics, there were far better, less evasive, and again more precise ways to do this.'
Without giving much thought to it he grabbed a passerby who was just about to cross in front of him. Coincidentally it was the same man who Nora had originally stopped. He was still wearing the Firstlight suit, with a quick glance Cassius was able to see that it was the base of the Warsoul suit.
"What is your name," Cassius asked.
"Leon, Leon Lawson," the man responded.
"Leon, I need your help. From what I understand some machines test your capabilities and help you adapt to those suits. Can you run some of those tests so I can gauge how well the suits and the machines perform?"
"Who are you exactly, we've got injured and scared people all over this place, and you want me to just stop everything and help you with something that can wait," Leon said, making his frustration clear.
"Cassius, I am the one who got you those suits, now I am thinking about upgrading them."
"Look I don't care who you are but our boss got us these suits," Leon's raised voice started to draw attention to Cassius and himself.
"Katelyn could not have gotten those suits without my being here. She simply did not have the ability to do so as she admitted herself. In actuality, it would have saved time if I approached her instead, but I had assumed her training of you all was better."
The room had become quieter as Cassius spoke, which allowed his voice to carry further. Soon everyone had either heard him directly or they heard twisted versions of it. Nora and Micheal pushed through the crowd to get to Cassius, and just as they arrived they just barely saw the flash of Leon's armored fist speeding toward Cassius. Cassius easily dodged the surprise attack leaving Leon falling forward.
"Was that the best you could do? It seems weak, what's the point of this suit if its wearer is still so weak?"
Nora who was about to intervene was pulled back by the comment Cassius made. Even though he was directing the comment at the Firstlight suit which Leon was wearing, she couldn't help but realize two things. First, that comment's target was much broader and included her Warsoul suit and second, Cassius dodged the punch of someone wearing one of the suits. No matter which suit it was they did augment the wearer's natural ability by at least a factor of two. If Leon's punch was already a blur in her vision it should've been so for everyone, Cassius included.
Leon quickly pivoted and took another swing at Cassius this time it was obvious that this attempt carried not only weight but intent. Leon's fist was aimed at Cassius' face, if his armored fist connected then under the best circumstances Cassius' face would be caved in. A resounding bang was heard and many in the crowd gasped, scrambled to cover children's eyes, or looked away. Nora however, was still watching not because she wanted to but because she was too slow in reacting. She saw Cassius had caught Leon's hand in his own.
"That is enough if even after that you still cannot really hurt me either the problem is with the suit or the user. Either way, this simply won't do," Cassius paused, he placed his fist over his mouth and began to mumble. The onlookers were stupefied, as he was still being attacked by Leon and he evaded and caught the attacks quite a few times without ever turning his attention to his attacker. As Cassius dropped his hand from his mouth he finally retaliated kicking Leon dead-center in the chest sending him crashing to the ground. He turned his attention to Nora nearby.
"Nora, I'd like for you to assist me with a project. We'll redesign not only these suits but the wearer's as well."
"We told you it's completely unsustainable. We can't hope to arm every combat-capable person here with personally tailored suits," Nora replied, making an immense effort to hide her shock and maintain some professionalism.
"We won't be arming every capable person but the very best of them. Your suits are fine for what's currently out there. But you know what our goal is and where we'll be going. I'm planning for the future," Cassius stopped and looked around the hangar, "I plan to jumpstart evolution, I am going to push the most capable to the next stage of evolution, they will be the vanguard for our coming problems. We'll call this Project Akron, in one of your ancient languages it can roughly translate as 'Apex' this project will create a soldier capable of doing the job of an entire team of people in these suits."
The crowd listened to Cassius and watched as this mad man declared he'd force evolution. He looked like an absolute mad scientist at that moment. But for years, even centuries to come stories of this day would be passed down. His words held unshakeable and unquestionable confidence, failure was never a thought let alone an option. No one knew that at that moment, as soon as he decided to focus on the idea of this project not only would they witness the birth of a new spieces but they would become that species.