Bonus Short Story
Frame Gear Plastic Kits
“Well, I made it to order like you asked, but I have no idea why you’d want it incomplete.”
“Because that’s the whole point.”
I carefully opened the box I had received from Doc Babylon. A number of frames known as runners with small parts made from a special resin connected along them were stacked inside it. It also came with assembly instructions and decal sheets. The picture on the box depicted a Knight Baron wielding a sword against a backdrop of the castle.
It was a plastic model kit. I’d suggested to Olba that he sell some at the Strand Company, and then I had Doc Babylon create a prototype to show what I meant.
Unlike the kits on Earth, they didn’t come with glue. With the advanced technology we had access to in Babylon, it was very easy to make a snap kit that didn’t require any adhesive. Even kids could easily put together a model like this.
Unfortunately, you would then need paints and special tools to make it as realistic as possible. Dive too far down the rabbit hole and it would become an incredibly expensive hobby.
“You want me to build this?”
“Yeah, just to make sure you can put it together.”
I took the Knight Baron model kit and gave it to Kuon. I wanted to confirm that it was child-friendly, but thirty minutes later, I realized this was a mistake. Kuon didn’t just put together the Frame Gear at the speed of light, he’d done it so perfectly that you’d never think it was a child who built it.
Did he even look at the instructions?!
“Well, you see, I made a lot of these back in my original time, so...”
Oh, I’m so stupid! Of course Kuon’s built them in the future!
This might have been a failure of a test case, but the model looked so good that I could hand it to Olba later to have him display as a sample.
I asked Allis to try to put one together, too, to see if a normal kid could make one, and she finished it fine. Admittedly, it was a little debatable if we could consider Allis normal, but she was close enough.
Compared to Kuon’s, Allis’s was unsurprisingly more roughly put together. You could see where the parts had been snapped off the runners and where the parts connected.
Actually, how did Kuon get rid of those?
“Father, do you have one of Mother’s Grimgerde?”
“Hm? The only one we have finished is the Knight Baron. I’ve asked them to work on a Chevalier model next.”
“Oh...”
I was immediately kicking myself because of how disappointed Quun sounded. I should’ve made models for the Valkyries before the general-use units.
“How about I ask if they can make Grimgerde next?”
“Dad, make the Helmwige next!”
And in comes Linne’s request.
A convertible unit sounded hard to make, though.
“Noooooo! Make Mommy’s Overlord first!”
Steph’s request for Sue’s Ortlinde Overlord swooped in right after. Fusion mechs sounded even tougher to make. Then again, Doc Babylon would be making them, so that wasn’t my problem. The only issue would be that the Overlord would most definitely be really big for a plastic model, which would hike up the price to a level that children would struggle to afford.
Maybe we could release them in different scales.
Small sizes should be a reasonable price for the kids. A small Overlord would still be on the more expensive side, but we could make a version without the fusion form so there’d be a cheaper version. We could even consider releasing an Over Gear series alongside the Frame Gear series. Norn’s Leo Noir, Nia’s Tiger Rouge, the pumpkin-pants prince’s Deer Blau, and then as an especially luxury item, the Val Albus.
Famous Gollems would fetch a fair price too, I would think. We could make a whole crown series. Oh, and Ether Vehicles as well.
Possible lineups kept running through my mind as the girls kept shouting their requests at me.
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