It took several days for us to get everything set up. Multiple trips to the Academy, to the WCP, and to a shop in the center of Rajak had been exhausting and time consuming, but after all that effort everything was finally done. A full four sets of gear at the peak of F rank, one for each member of my crew. They had just now been delivered for us to look over before we headed down to participate in our mission in G district, infiltrating Melissa, or rather Starbreaker's faction within the cavalcade for Cicero so we could find out who our enemy was.

Callie and I had discussed Cicero's actions toward us at length, and despite still wanting to punch him in the eye socket because of it, we figured out the motivations in retrospect at least. Aside from his stated reasoning, we'd neglected the obvious fact that Melissa would definitely be watching. My show with the bull and donation of the chits would have been an obvious sign we were on team Cicero, and for his plan to work we had to be our own separate entity. By being so aggressive and manipulative he not only secured our help, he also visibly and obviously alienated us, something Melissa was sure to have noticed.

Since she would know we hated him now she would be more open to us being recruited, hoping to snatch a pair of talented kids that Cicero clearly wanted on his side. It made me think slightly better of the old ring master, though not by much. I was still pissed about the danger and lack of warning. I was planning to repay that favor whatever his reasoning. Until then though, we would have to be satisfied wasting a ton of his cash, and we had definitely done that well enough.

Which led us to now. We were all in the living room with the wolves, and since this was such a big moment we had decided to open the new gear up one at a time so we could all see what the others had gotten. We'd gone out of our way to keep the details private so we could surprise our teammates, and I for one couldn't wait to show everyone my new equipment. Since we'd left them behind for the negotiations though, we had decided to let Benny and Jessie go first.

Rather than agree to take turns the both of them decided to settle it with a game of rock paper scissors. Shockingly they played about a dozen hands before Jessie managed to eke out a win, and I briefly wondered if one or both of them might have cheated slightly with Perception or something. It would have been easy enough, but whatever the case they had settled it now, and Jessie practically sprinted from the room to put her new gear on, excited to get to show off the powerful armor set that she'd had custom made for herself.

When she came back in, we were all absolutely floored by her new gear. Technically speaking, Jessie's outfit was similar to her previous one, but at the same time, they couldn't have been more different. Rather than one of concept, the main difference was in execution here. Despite being a green cloak and leotard with boots and a green mask, the relation between Jessie's old costume and her new one was akin to the similarity between a child's finger painting of a cat and an actual living feline.

There were plenty of differences despite the thematic similarities too though. The materials were what appeared to be literal leaves instead of fabric, though they were special leaves, the golden vessels inside the leaf structures forming intricate rune patterns so spiderweb thin I had to focus to even spot them. The runes, which had somehow been grown INTO the leaves, held a series of powerful enchantments I couldn't begin to recognize.

Her mask wasn't leaves, but it was a single piece of carved emerald filigreed to look like leaves, with traceries of gold along the edges. The cloak itself was a long carpet of crushed velvet with runes sewn in using some gold thread, and the boots were green leather I didn't actually recognize. It fit together flawlessy, possessing a subtle and harmonious wholesomeness of design that made it clear the set had been made all by one person. Jessie was obviously thrilled with it, doing a pirouette to show off her new gear and shooting us a grin.

She gestured down to herself. "Isn't this great? The leaves are life tree leaves. Celine got them for me. They're super heavy in Vitality and they amplify life and healing based abilities. The enchantments are elven design. I wasn't sure I could get them, but Celine called in a favor to get them laid into the leaves. They had to be done once the outfit was already finished, but it was so worth it!" Doesn't it look amazing? Aside from amplification it also has insane defense and will protect me from most anything."

I could see the elven handiwork in the design now that I was looking for it. Well, not exactly, I could see what looked like elven handiwork. I'd never seen elf gear really. Celine had gear but I was pretty sure she used locally sourced stuff. In any case we all clapped for Jessie, who looked thrilled and walked over to flop down on her wolf as Benny got up to go and get into his new costume. He was just as excited about this whole thing as Jessie had been, and I realized that this was his first set of custom gear.

He'd made his own stuff for integration, but this was his first set of real armor he had bought and I could see why he would want to celebrate it. I was looking forward to seeing how excited he got when he was showing us his new clothes, and to see exactly how impressive they were. I had high hopes after seeing the masterpiece Jessie had on when she'd come out to show us.

In some ways, Benny had a lot more to work with than Jessie had. While he had an aesthetic to stick to like Jessie, Benny's aesthetic was much more average and unimpressive. That was a problem for getting his name out there aside from certain situations like the hunt, but it was also an asset when redesigning his image like this. There was a lot more variety you could get in the strike zone of 'boring black outfit' than 'green leotard and cloak'. There was lots of variety to be found in a black mask and a hood.

And find it he did. I blinked in impressed shock as he stepped out from behind the wall, preening ridiculously as he waltzed into the room like a model on a catwalk. He whirled, looking dramatically back over one shoulder, and Jessie clapped as I rolled my eyes. Callie was doing her best not to laugh, and I finally had to cut in. "Would you two stop feeding the animals?" The wolves all looked up at me suspiciously and I coughed in embarrassment. "Not like that guys, I mean can you stop humoring him. He's got a big enough head as it is, and the last thing he needs is someone convincing him his jokes are actually funny."

Benny sniffed disdainfully. "The intricacies of my humor are far beyond the petty thought processes of an unsophisticated thug such as yourself." His tone was haughty and snobbish, but in an over the top way that made it clear he was just messing around.

Which didn't mean I wasn't going to respond. "Ok, first of all, I'll thuggishly unsophisticate you upside the head. Second of all your back is turned you nimrod. Your stupid cloak is covering up your costume so we can only see parts of it. It's pretty impressive but maybe you can sit still so we can admire it instead of having to look at your frankly underwhelming face, mask or not." I grinned to let him know I was also teasing, and enjoyed the over the top look of offense as he literally put a hand to his chest in shocked outrage.

That faded after a second though, and he rolled his eyes. "Fine. You sure your power isn't cancelling electricity? Because I've never met such an effective buzzkill." He swept back the cloak dramatically. "Very well nerds, behold!" He exposed the entirety of the new armor, and with a better look my impressed shock was amplified. Benny's new costume was a basic black set of gear. A thick arming jacket over a black leather breastplate and leather pants. The pants were thick rough leather rather than the kind you might see for fashion, and had thick cargo style pockets for holding objects.

The entire outfit was covered in a tracery of gold, silver, and copper filigree, traced over the leather in the shapes of mechanical gears of varying sized and complexity, with runes set into the material at various intervals. Nothing as impressive or flowing as Jessie's but I could tell just from the impressions I was getting there was some durability and protection mixed in there.

The subtle accents of the metallic thread changed what had been a basic and uninspired costume into something understated and elegant. I hated to admit it but I kind of wished I'd been able to go for a change that dramatic with my gear, but with my current rep I had to stay on brand as best as I could. Callie waited for Benny to get his preening and posing out of the way before she hopped up and bolted out of the room to get her own new costume. I knew hers had been a bit more difficult to find materials for because she needed either a ton of time to imbue the shadow aspect of her embodiment into the clothes or something shadow attuned that would accept the power more easily. Her embodiment power was extremely useful and I knew she wouldn't be comfortable without her clothes fully empowered so we'd chosen to look carefully for more suitable mats.

I was surprised to learn about the time requirement for her embodiment skill, but it made sense. I'd never seen her use it on anything not prepared, and she had mentioned something about special materials when she showed me her bike I was pretty sure. Still, despite knowing what was coming, when Callie stepped out I admit my jaw dropped a bit. As she'd mentioned, she didn't change her style or aesthetic at all, the design was literally identical. The material however, was a total shift.

Callie's old costume had been black. As in the color. This new one was dark, as in, the absence of light. The entire thing seemed to literally consume the light around her, giving the very jarring impression that she was wearing some kind of screen that was giving us a view into a bottomless abyss. I was almost positive that would harmonize perfectly with stealth and her shadow power both, and just watching her move took a bit of adjustment before I could even process what was happening. My brain kept losing track of her because it didn't want to process the effect, and I was damn impressed with the work of whoever made it.

She gave a twirl and a wide smile and I applauded alongside Jessie. She posed, gesturing to herself dramatically like Benny had, only much more appealingly and with way more grace. "As you can see, my new gear is made of shadowspun wraith weave. It holds dark energy better than almost any material at G rank, only losing out to some proprietary fabrics from the cult we would have had to wait for months to get. It's enchanted with stealth runes." She dropped the pose and looked to me. "Now. Why not get changed into your own costume and show us what you got because we have to go soon." She held up her hand, scan ring out. "Apparently the delivery service told Cicero we got the gear. We've been summoned." I cursed internally. Now my big reveal was going to be spoiled.