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As he worked, he lost track of time. His focus was exclusively on the task. Helmet. Gorget. Pauldrons. Breastplate. Each piece needed refinement upon refinement. Rerebraces. Couters. Gauntlets. Faulds. Tasset. It was a good thing he had already spent so much time working on his normal iron armor and all its variants. Culet. Cuisses. Poleyns. Greaves. Lames. He had a perfect image of every piece in his mind.

It was just a matter of passing over each one, again and again and again. Until they were all done.

And it needed to be perfect, Hector felt. He didn't know if he would get the opportunity to do this again. If he made a mistake now, it might just last forever.

No pressure, though, right?

At length, he finally began to feel like it was almost done. The shapes were all correct, at least. So with his eyes still closed, he set about trying to link them all together. And the best way to do that was put them on.

But after all that work, he was a bit worried that annihilating and rematerializing them onto his body would somehow go awry. What if they resisted even being dematerialized. Or what if they wouldn't rematerialize correctly?

Shit. No helping it, though. The entire goal was to be able to materialize the armor as needed. If that didn't work, then it was better to know now, he supposed.

He would've taken a nervous breath if he could.

He annihilated the gorget. That was the best place to start, he felt. Then he tried to rematerialize it around his neck.

It appeared. He felt it there. Exactly as intended.

Oh, thank fuck. That was one worry down.

He annihilated all the rest and began donning them, making to test all the links. And it was a good thing he did, because they needed fixing. At this point, his iron had become quite comfortable to wear and even quite easy to move in, and he intended for the same to be true with this stuff.

Every link, every connector, every interlocking piece was refined further. Until they were all perfect. They had to be. If they weren't, then both mobility and resilience would be compromised. Maybe in only minor ways, but if this suit was going to be the difference between life and death, then Hector didn't think anything about it right now could be considered minor.