His first sound night of sleep in what felt like ages revitalized Ku-klo. Muscles all over his body hurt after being harnessed to the limit against a Titan the previous day, but it wasn’t as though he couldn’t move. In fact, he felt refreshed thanks to his unbroken respite. Come to think of it, he’d never before gone to bed neither monitored nor pursued. It was no surprise that he felt so rested.
While a good part of him hoped he could just sleep in, Xenophon summoned him before he could relax even a little more.
“Can’t I at least spend one day in bed?”
Kuklo couldn’t but grumble, but he was in Xenophon and the workshop’s debt for a night’s room and board. Given what they had done for Sharle too, he couldn’t simply refuse.
I do want to see the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. Said to be the definitive anti-Titan armament but known for remaining completely unused, the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment was a fascinating tool indeed. For Kuklo, who wished to sever his bond to the Titans, it promised to be an indispensable device.
Though excitement filled him, he felt just as anxious. The reason was simple. The workshop chief created it.
The Vertical Maneuvering Equipment was an invention co-developed by Xenophon and Angel based on the Equipment. While Jorge had given it his guarantee, its performance seemed questionable in more ways than one. Kuklo’s doubts were backed up by the fact that no one had been able to control the machine.
It worries me, but… If he needed it in order to defeat the Titans, he had no choice but to master the tool.
As soon as he opened the door to the chief’s office, Xenophon greeted Kuklo, applauding. The blazing glint in the chief’s eyes more than hinted at his jubilance that the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment was going to be tested out.
Also present were Cardina, Jorge, and Sharle.
“Now that our leading man is here, why don’t we have him get dressed?” the workshop chief cut to the chase, pointing to the soldier’s uniform lying on a table. It consisted of three pieces: a shirt, trousers, and a jacket. The khaki jacket bore the emblem of the Training Corps, two crossed swords. “It should be the right size. Try it on.”
Kuklo followed Xenophon’s instructions and put on the shirt and trousers. The cotton clothes, light yet warm, fit him so well they felt like a part of his body.
“Hey, you look pretty good in those,” Cardina observed.
“When were you able to get these, though?”
It was Jorge who answered Kuklo. “I had a hunch you’d want to become a soldier. I ordered them in advance.”
“These fit awfully well…” The uniform felt like an extension of his own skin, yet they had never taken his measurements. He felt completely unrestricted.
Sharle answered next, but not with words. She simply looked away from Kuklo, but her reaction was enough.
So that’s what. She knew his measurements. Xenophon must have gotten all sorts of information out of her.
“You seem to have seen the light, so could you try wearing this next?” Xenophon took the harness off of the mannequin it sat on and presented it to Kuklo.
The harness stretched from the shoulders to the back and the legs, even down to the toes. On first sight, it resembled a straightjacket. Somewhat distrustfully, Kuklo began to strap it to his body.
“The harness is like a bit and bridle. A rider controls the bridle to stimulate the bit and make a horse follow orders. If we translate this to the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment, you could say the harness is the bit and bridle, while the equipment itself is the horse,” Xenophon explained as he attached the machine’s main unit to Kuklo’s waist. “And these things placed on both sides of your hips are for firing anchors.”
Kuklo looked at his waist and saw contraptions that looked like saddlebags.
“You’ve already experienced that feature.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what pulled us up from outside the wall,” Cardina assisted.
“That thing came from one of these?”
“They fire anchors into targets and pull your body along by reeling in the wires attached to them. These controllers are used to manage them.”
Xenophon handed Kuklo two devices that looked like saber hilts. Instead of a hand guard, the controllers had levers that could be used to reel in wires. As with the old Equipment, the controls were so simple that even Kuklo could understand them without having to ask twice. “It’s quite simple,” he ventured.
“Of course it is!” Xenophon said, his chest puffed out with pride. “The machine’s structure may be complex, but make it as simple as possible to control. Inventions come from a desire to simplify difficult operations, after all.”
Kuklo got that, but one thing still troubled him and he pointed it out: “I can’t attack if both of my hands are full.” Even if he made use of the controllers to move freely in space, he’d never be able to defeat Titans if he had no way of attacking them.
“That was actually one problem with the old Equipment.” Xenophon seemed to have been expecting the question, as his tone grew lively without skipping a beat. “The controllers look like sword hilts because they also act as weapons.”
“Weapons? These?” Kuklo checked them out again, but they just looked like saber hilts missing their blades. He didn’t detect any special machinery in them, either.
“Please place the controllers in the scabbards.”
As soon as Kuklo placed them in the scabbards at his sides as Xenophon instructed, there was a clicking sound and a slight vibration in his palms. Some feature seemed to have been activated. When Kuklo looked at Xenophon, the chief nodded back as if to say, You’ll see when you pull them out.
Kuklo gripped the hilts once again and drew them slowly. Two thin blades appeared, each with regularly spaced notches on them.
“Those are single-edged swords made from Ultrahard Steel.”
“They look kind of weak…” While it was clear that Xenophon held the single-edged swords in the highest esteem, the thin blades seemed quite unreliable. They flexed at the slightest application of force and would surely snap in a sword fight.
“Don’t let looks deceive you. Their sharpness is second to none.”
“Will they even work against Titans?”
“Of course! They’re specially made to be used against them,” Xenophon shot back. “They were made in order to cut through Titan flesh. Specifically, they’re weapons made to slice out their weak point, the medulla oblongata.” The blades described a gentle curve and flexed like willow trees for that same reason. “While the drawback is that they break rather easily, the scabbard holds many replacement blades so that shouldn’t pose a problem. And of course, I guarantee their sharpness.”
“I see,” Kuklo said, returning the blades to their scabbards and placing the controllers back into the cases on each side of his body. They looked exactly like holsters.
“That’s all you have to wear. Less bulky than you thought, right?”
Just as Xenophon said, the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment had been kept relatively compact. It seemed to weigh only two or three kilograms. While it would be difficult to move around unrestricted while wearing it, it had not been designed with land-based combat in mind, so its weight was unlikely to be a hindrance.
“All right, everyone. Let us now to the stage where Kuklo will be making his debut!” Ushering them in high style, Xenophon exited the room, a skip in his steps. He seemed uncontrollably happy that someone was about to operate the machine.
“I have a bad feeling about this.” The more gleeful Xenophon grew, the more Kuklo’s sense of unease deepened.
But it was no time to falter. Kuklo and company nodded to one another and left the chief’s office.