[@Crimson Lion]

Riku could only blink in silence. Team? Him? The outcome of the battle wasn't even on his mind anymore. Did Naoki really want him on his team? He supposed this was inevitable on some level. WARS format required teams in order to make it work. It wasn't hard to see that the old ways of battling solo in a royale or in a duel against another Gunpla was slowly being phased out. Today's tournament was one of the only opportunities Riku had had to compete in some form for this reason. He wasn't one to just invite himself onto someone else's team, and until now, no one had ever approached him.

[i]WARS format... with opportunities to design everything from Mobile Armors to Warships. No way I can pass this up.[/i] His gaze shifted down to the broken Gunpla in his hand. That was something else he needed to mull over. With its present specs, the Metal Angel wasn't performing like he'd hoped it would. He'd already effectively decided it needed to have some of its armor slimmed down in order increase mobility, but it was also possible Riku would have to look into using a different model as the base for the build. He believed the beam spikes still made for an effective close range combat option, but the Titus was clearly too slow and clunky for his purposes.

At this point, Riku had brandished his phone. On it he was browsing for information on various suits from various series, hoping to find one that might better match the movement capability he was looking for. And that was when he saw it. It was a clip from a series he hadn't watched yet, and the machines there were moving in ways unlike anything he'd seen elsewhere. He looked up the series in question, discovering it used the Gundam elements and placed them in a fighting tournament rather than outright war. And then, in one of the clips, he saw one of the Gundams detach its shoulder armor pieces and reattached them to its fists, converting them into reinforced punching weapons. In addition to that it discarded the chest plate of its armor entirely, overall becoming much faster and more agile as a result. But it was the emphasis on boxing that really sold Riku on this machine.

"That's it!" he said to himself, not realizing he was speaking aloud, "I need that machine." he could already visualize a few ideas in his head. The question was, did the Gunpla Shop here at the arcade have any of that Gunpla in stock? Hopefully so, because Riku had already made up his mind. The model that would serve as the new base for Metal Angel... was that one: The Gundam Maxter.

"I'll be in the Gunpla store. Need to pick something up." he told Naoki suddenly before rushing off without another word. He returned to the Gunpla store and began his search.