Team Reforged: Vegas, Baby
Copyright© 2026 by FozzieBare
Chapter 2: Meet Furiosa
Martin and Adrian had spent the last few weeks since the announcement that Adrian was staying huddling and planning. They were building a first-class WarMachine for Amy, and after weeks of discussing heat curves, range bands, and carefully not mentioning the extra surprise Adrian had asked Martin to put in whenever anyone else could hear, Amy was crawling the walls trying to figure out what it was that made it so special. She felt like a kid in a candy store, looking at the tasty treat she had been promised, and every time she reached for it, got gently told, “Not yet.”
Her MAC already had a name, though, one she wasn’t allowed to change. Furiosa. Which, not coincidentally at ALL, was the same nickname Amy had earned during one of the last battles of the Blades Crusade, where she basically had become the spearpoint of an attack that devoured any Blades that didn’t run. Originally, it was a joke that the “Furies had awakened,” but someone decided that she was Furiosa and Reforged were her Furies. And despite protests from Amy that she already had an online nickname, A-Bombadier, whenever they referred to Amy when she was in that hyper-focused, ultra-aggressive state, it was by the nickname Furiosa.
So she understood why her MAC already had a name. It didn’t bother her. Much. But really, she just wanted to see what Furiosa, the WarMachine, could do. She had a name to live up to, after all.
So, it was an early December evening, seasonably cool but never cold, when Amy got to take her new ride out for the first time. Adrian asked to borrow A-Bombadier’s Account Card and made the transfer of the MAC to her account. Then it was time for her new ride to step off the showroom floor and show what it could do when someone put the metaphorical hammer DOWN.
She looked over the weaponry first, of course. Not that Amy was one of those who substituted firepower for tactics, but she always liked the idea of looking at an enemy and saying, “You know, I’d really prefer it if you didn’t exist a few seconds from now.”
And this looked impressively unfriendly. A tri-band laser on one arm could fire one, two, or three beams at any one time, depending on its pilot’s needs and willingness to push the heat curve. The fact that the barrels were mounted so close together made it more likely that the beams would hit in a cluster as well. It lost a bit of damage compared to staggering the lasers, because impact particles thrown into the air by the first beam striking armor could make the later beams lose a touch of coherency. Still, it was clear that anyone facing this machine would NOT want to see that arm with all three barrels pointing at them. It indicated that they were standing in a severely unhealthy place.
She had a cousin of the particle cannon she had almost lost on her prior WarMAC due to an ambush, this time mounted on her chest. And it wasn’t a kissing cousin, either. It was the type of cousin that, after family dinners, made everyone look at their kids and say, “Why can’t you be like your Cousin Tom, the Professor?” It wasn’t THAT much better, but that was compared to her previous cannon, which had already been a step above the sort of cannon even an expert could make with top-level components.
And when you added the MicroMissile Launchers with an integrated targeting system to prevent low-accuracy shots from wasting ammunition? Amy liked it. A LOT. Most people used missiles like a sandblaster from distance. Spread their damage all over the target and hope that at some point they snuck through a small hole in the opponent’s armor. Amy certainly wouldn’t turn that down, but she much preferred using missiles to harry an opponent, to make them move, to make them think. And if she could figure out what the opponent would most likely do when she made them move? She’d have everything set up for them already, prepared for maximum impact.
She hooked up her WarMAC controls to the system, waited for the series of chimes that indicated the controls and the systems were talking the same language, and set off full throttle toward the targeting grounds to get used to the weapons’ feel, already mentally planning out the button bindings for her weapon groupings. Even with the cornucopia of buttons modern WarMAC control setups had, there couldn’t be just “one button for each weapon, and then another for each theoretical combination of weapons,” otherwise her controls would look like someone had tried to create a portal to the Dimension of Buttons.
While she was mentally planning out her preferred setup, with one button switching the laser modes from single to double to tri-band firing, one for the cannon, one for the missiles, and one for “Yes, I want to fire everything. I like living in a WarMAC-shaped sauna,” she raised an eyebrow at the top speed. Eighty-three kilometers an hour? Wait a second. Something wasn’t right here.
Unconsciously, she stopped and contemplated what the design was telling her. The numbers didn’t add up.
She turned toward Martin and Adrian, who had that look of “Oh, she’s found something and we get to show her the REAL surprise” on their faces. What did they know? And why didn’t they tell her beforehand?
“I like it so far. But all these weapons, the top speed. Did you guys build me a glass cannon? Because I appreciate all the fun toys, but if this thing cracks up under any sustained damage, it’s not as useful...”
Martin answered for Adrian. “No. Properly armored. VERY adequately armored. See for yourself. Check the armor screen.”
Amy frowned. What did they ... wait one freaking second. That’s ... That is not possible. Did they hack the server or something to make something that was so mobile, agile, hostile, and ... no, Survivile wasn’t a word. Survivable would just have to pack an extra I in there somewhere to make the whole -ile thing work. Considering the number of surprises already crammed into her new ride, it was like trying to store hotel towels in an already overstuffed suitcase before you went to the airport.
She whipped her head back to Martin, who looked completely, ineffably smug with the result.
She tried to avoid using profanity. But this battle was a Lost Cause.
“Martin? How the fuck did you do this? WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Martin adjusted his glasses with the calm of someone who had been waiting for exactly that reaction. “What I always do. Question. Experiment. Mostly fail. Sometimes succeed. This is a success.”
Amy stared at him. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No. Explanation of how we got here.” Martin tapped the armor display. “Your previous WarMachine was the first to receive Class-A Armor. This one is the first to have Reforge-Alpha technology permeating its internal structure.”
He spread several sheets of paper across the table. Amy recognized formulas, tolerances, test results, and several things that might as well have been written in Martian. Adrian leaned in anyway.
“Everyone assumes top-of-the-line plans create top-of-the-line gear, therefore top-of-the-line is a ceiling.” Martin tapped one of the sheets. “Perfect blueprint. Best materials. Perfect execution. This result. Very good.”
He shifted to another page. “But what if recipe changes slightly? Different material where more tensile strength matters, even if bulk increases. Recover that volume somewhere else. Change the myomer process. Alter timings. Alter tolerances.”
Amy glanced at the stack. “And blow up a lot of expensive materials finding out which changes are terrible ideas.”
“Correct.” Martin seemed almost pleased she had followed. “Fumbling in dark. Wasteful. Mostly failure. Unless person doing it is very good at narrowing possibilities.”
He paused, then gave them the conclusion in its simplest form. “They believe it is impossible, so they do not make it possible.”
Martin looked toward Adrian. “Adrian and Elias made it possible by accepting the cost.”
The cost, it turned out, had been roughly four platoons’ worth of material consumed during failed tests. Some could be salvaged for ordinary production, but none of it went back into Martin’s experiments. Adrian and Elias had watched promising avenues die without treating every dead end like wasted money.
Amy let out a low whistle. “So I’m driving around in the equivalent of four platoons of WarMACs?”
Martin’s head came up immediately. “No. Fallacy.”
Of course it was.
“You are using material that took four platoons’ worth of WarMACs to discover. Different thing. Process is reproducible. Repeatable. Expensive, yes. Slow. Right now only useful for key machines, partly because I am the only person who knows how to make it.”
He folded his hands. “Which creates another problem. Every hour I spend producing Reforge-Alpha is an hour I am not experimenting. More budget means assistants, more production, more research. Also greater risk of proprietary knowledge leaking.”
Adrian chuckled. “And with a bigger budget, we might not need to chase every tiny advantage this hard.”
Martin frowned. “I still suspect fallacy in that argument.”
“Probably. But here’s the practical version for Amy.” Adrian turned toward her. “This does not break the meta. It nudges it.”
He pointed toward Furiosa. “We saved several tons. Without that, I would’ve had to make choices. Smaller engine, maybe fifteen kilometers an hour off the top speed. Lose the missile system. Carry around twenty-five percent less armor. Drop the tri-band to a dual-barrel laser.”
Amy looked back at the machine, mentally subtracting each piece as he named it.
“It still would’ve been good,” Adrian said. “Maybe great. But I didn’t design the machine I would want to pilot. I spent hours watching you fight and asked one question every time I made a choice: would you want this?”
He gestured at Furiosa’s weapon arm. “My first plan split the lasers between both arms and the torso. Better survivability. More my style. Not yours. You’d rather accept the risk and keep the damage clustered, because if that arm is gone, enough has already gone wrong that you should be disengaging anyway.”
Amy blinked.
It’s not just a WarMAC built by someone who I know is a great designer, given all the best things by our resident scientist. The builder then says, “Oh, and not only did I make a great MAC, I made it specifically to enhance your fighting style.”
So it’s not just “my WarMAC.” It’s a WarMAC made specifically for ME. My style. My choices.
Adrian Mercer, I could kiss you on the mouth.
Um. Platonically. You know what I mean.