Obviously we won. The Pierce Clan AEP unit did not stand a chance. He was blasting sharp projectiles at us, but we dodged them. Once we got him in close combat, he armored up. That did not stop us from beating the shit out of him. We did not stop until he turned into the nanite paste. That told us that he was done. He had another health bar. If we emptied that, he would be done for good. It was not like we needed to keep going. He was already immobile and defenseless. Paul called down fire from the sky and it hit the nanites. That lowered the health bar to health. I looked over at him and said "I think we made our point. Let's leave him alone." Paul shrugged and put his arms behind his head. "If you say so..." he trailed off as he began to walk away from the defeated cyborg. I followed him back out the alley that we had run down in the confusion. Paul got us a new car and we drove down the main road to the clan building in Dwan Town. We got inside and told everyone it was time to lay low. All of the PEA and AEP units were to stop going out. Paul Brett and I too. For the clan's safety.
Preparing as a clan engineer meant long days and nights in the labs. I had a whole lot of things to give to my AEP units. I also saw that there were lots of upgrades that we needed to give them. I could give them limb blades, guns, and laser canons. I was also going to get 01 and 03. I wanted them to get upgraded as well. Their gym probably did not have the money to get a nice AEP lab. I wanted to commiserate with them after what happened. It was still a sore spot for me. There was a lot of work to do. It was enough to get Toxic and Water Clans to fuck off. We stuck to our word when I comes to things like this. That made our street cred rise among the PEP clans. Instead of going for Toxic Clan, we switched plans to go for Water Clan. It was not a bank heist, but we would take tons of humans hostage and steal their money. It also had the same idea of half going in there to smash and grab, and the other half would target the hub. Because we no longer needed to rely on the guild, there was no leak up the chain. This was not going to fail. However, we needed to rework the routes.
I was focused on the upgrades. I was behind on a lot of research. First was the limb blades. From there, it was a basic handgun barrel with a 10-shot magazine. Next up was a shotgun. Then was a bolt action rifle. Finally, was the big automatic rifle. After that was a small red light laser cannon. The cannons were a separate branch of research. The got higher frequency of fire and color. At the end of both trees was a large plasma cannon. When the research for the plasma cannons was complete, we called all of them to the lab. It had taken weeks. Paul and Brett were actually annoyed that everything was taking so long. Unlike the AEP and PEP labs, the AEP units could create anything with their nanites. They just needed the blueprints for it. All of them could simply download it. I had seen it in person multiple times as their bodies morphed to create new organs. This would be the first time that we would see it intentionally done. From there, they just had to choose on what upgrade they wanted and what part of their bodies would they put it. I wondered what they were going to look like.
