Devil May Cry © Capcom
Of Valves and Fuel Lines
Jason M. Lee
Nico whistled as she examined Red Queen, jotting down notes and comparing the Durandals and Caliburns that Nero had grabbed from the Order's armory. "Heckuva an idea, old man..." she muttered softly.
It partly amused her that for all of the Order and Fortuna's talk of "tradition," Agnus designing the swords as anti-demon weaponry had to had taken some gumption on convincing the higher-ups as well the lower ranks and general populace. And at least inspiration from the outside world - a motorcycle engine was still designed and engineered differently from a car's engine, despite all their shared similarities. He definitely had to shrink as much as possible without compromising too much of the moving parts and allow space for the fuel container, plus the injection and ventilator ports. The limiters were obviously so the user wouldn't burn themselves after covering the blade and revving the throttle.
(And Nero had called her crazy. She didn't want to imagine the testing phases of the early days of the Exceed mechanism.)
Nero was no engineering genius, but she had to give him kudos on being able to build this version of Exceed. No doubt the parts were scavenged from the armory, if not some exchanges made on the more delicate parts - his right hand obviously didn't quite have the same level of dexterity as his left hand did. She has seen him do some exercises to increase complex movement, though.
"Took the limiter out, added two more injection ports, replaced the brake with an accelerator lever..." She chewed on her cigarette, looking over the blueprints and sketches he had drawn. "Four should've been enough, but this redesign of the ports means more propellant. Although, could use some extra tuning to be more efficient. More flames, more oomph."
"You're still going on with improving the Exceed?" Nero grumbled, carrying a tray of their dinner into the garage.
She shrugged, flicking the stub into the ash can. "Why not? More kick for you."
He paused on lifting his mug, before shrugging. "Can't argue with that."
A/N: Part of Johnny Luuu's DMCtober 2020 prompts on Twitter (handle johnnyluuuarts) at the time, Day 16 "Exceed.
Much of the description was going through the concept art of Red Queen in the artbook "Devil May Cry: 3142 Graphic Arts."
