I want to point out:
While that scene plays out like a funny joke that is prime meme material, this might be one of the specific moments that allowed Shadowbringers and everything after to happen, actually.
Nero not only accepts that statement and his loss against her, but would have respected it to almost irrational degrees, if we hadn’t resolved Shadowbringers in the way we did.
In the sidestory about the 8th Calamity, we find out that Wedge tragically dies while trying to make a well (aka offer clean water in poisoned lands). The story ends with Cid making himself and Nero a coffee, using ‘a boilmaster’. At that point, Nero and Cid are around 70 years old, so Wedge’s Boilmaster was kept in working condition for at least 40 years. Sure, one could claim that this was all Cid.
But in Shadowbringers, we can enter the Crystal Tower and can find various notes and magitek creations. One of the enemies that protect the main center of the tower, the core where the very thing that allowed the tower to traverse time and space, THE most vulnerable and important part of the whole tower…
One of the enemies guarding that center is called the “Mark CXLIV Thermocoil Boilbuster”. It’s a levitating watertank that attacks via boiling water.
So sure, one could say, that was probably also Cid. But Cid was never into things that can attack people.
So maybe it was Wedge or his descendants? But Wedge also never had any interest in war machines unless they had a smart AI (which the Thermocoil Boilbuster has not), and this likely was the same for his descendants.
Biggs is more or less like Wedge.
But NERO. One of Nero’s main characteristics that Cid keeps complaining about is that Nero’s biggest passion is making weapons. Every time he creates something, it’s meant for battle. Every time he helps out, he can be caught suggesting uses for battle, attaching weapons, etc. He loved the Allagan’s Ultima Weapon, he adored Omega Weapon, he was jealous that he missed out on seeing Alexander, he is in fact very disappointed when the one time he doesn’t make a weapon and instead the brush during the Omega raid (decidedly not a weapon), he doesn’t get praised for it.
As such, it is quite possible that Nero had either built or made the schematics for those boiler machines.
Why would he make boilers of that size and aggression though, when there would be much more efficient weapon designs than something trying to scald you with water?
Because, as the shortstory mentions, the world is overrun by bandits and monsters after the 8th Calamity, there is sickness and a severe lack of food which led to the collapse of entire nations.
A boiler can make clean water. Wedge DIED for clean water.
The Mark CXLIV Thermocoil Boilbuster is as big as a Roegadyn, thus carrying plenty of water. It can spontaneously boil, so any impurities can be quickly get rid off. And it can fight, so anyone trying to threaten its water or those who have come to it for help can be fended off. It levitates, so terrain doesn’t matter. It has arms (and in fact looks like a mixture between Alexander and Omega, which Nero was obsessed with and which he and Cid researched as they neared the ends of their lives) so it might have been able to carry things, making it also a utility or perhaps even rescue machine.
For being based on something as silly as a kettle, the Termocoil is incredibly strong, advanced and efficient.
I’d argue that the Thermocoil and its previous iterations are one reason why people had survived that Calamity as well as they had, despite the tragically heavy losses. It also is likely one of the reasons why neither humanoid nor monster could mess with the tower when it arrived in Novrandt, having been deemed one of their best and strongest weapons, and thus sending it along to protect the tower.
I’d argue that Wedge’s boilmaster was the small droplet that accumulated over the course of 200 years into giving people on the brink of survival the means to live and defend themselves, loooong after the man died.
Nero heard Tataru tell him that the best magitek of the Scions is a waterboiler. He shrugs but doesn’t say that her statement is false (likely because he hasn’t see said kettle). He most likely checked it out, and since we never hear him say something bad about it (which he loves to do) or tease Wedge for it (which he also enjoys), he likely acknowledges it as ok or even good. And we know he deems it a good kettle, because HE HAS IT. It’s with him and Cid during the Omega raids (or at least the same kind).
Ironically, through it he also learns first-hand that properly boiled clean water is imperative, when he accidentally drinks boiled sea water from it.
I believe he (probably in cooperation with Cid) spent the rest of his life improving on the waterboiler as a side project, latest after Wedge’s death.
It’s the CXLIVth Thermocoil. The 144th boiler. Wedge made 14 before he was proud enough to gift his to Tataru. And I think Nero went and made over 100 more iterations after Wedge’s death before he was satisfied…or died.
Because he had respect for Wedge as an engineer.
Because Tataru told him that it was the very best technology they had.
Because Nero thinks Eorzeans are primitive, but he loves smart Magitek.
When the Scions all died, whose mission it had always been to keep the realm and its people alive? When, if not then, is a machine that gives clean water to the thirsty the most brilliant thing one could make?
Tataru didn’t win that argument with 1 vs 0. In the grand scheme of history? She won that argument by thousands of points, because it IS the finest technology, of highest innovation.
And all Nero can do about it is shrug.
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