The Mech Touch

Gloriana's pregnancy changed everything.

After the implantation procedure, Ves finally began to feel as if he was becoming a true family man. He no longer viewed issues from the perspective of his own interests anymore.

He actually began to consider the needs of his children, starting with his first daughter who was quietly growing in the belly of his wife.

How should he raise her? How much did he have to fight against Gloriana's extreme teachings? Should he raise her along the lines of a leader which she would probably excel at or should he try to win back some freedom for her so that she could pursue her own desires? Should he devote less time on mech design so that he could spend more quality time with each of his children?

His new priorities also colored his views on other matters. Should he dial back his adventurism in order to provide his children with stabler lives? Should he allow his children to become mech pilots and risk their lives in battle if they possessed the right genetic aptitude? Was it too premature to make preparations to establish important leadership positions so that his children could inherit his clan?

Suddenly, his life no longer revolved around him and his ambitions. The prospect of having children who would follow him when they were young and grow into adults in their own rights a few decades later was almost frightening to him. How could he ensure they would grow up as stable, healthy and happy as possible? What kind of measures did he have to employ to make sure they became competent enough to meet the challenges of their chosen careers?

One thing was for sure. Gloriana would definitely work hard to raise her children into talented, capable and successful adults. Ves did not have to worry about that, at least.

What he was actually concerned about was whether his wife would go overboard. He already heard from Calabast that female Hexers placed extremely high expectations on their daughters.

As someone who enjoyed a more normal upbringing, Ves did not want his children to experience too much pressure throughout their youth.

"Children are children. Let them have fun."

Ves could already predict he would have to counterbalance his wife's insistence on training her children, especially her daughters.

"We live in the Larkinson Clan, not the Hexadric Hegemony. We are not turning our daughters into Hexers!"

"Whatever you say, Ves." His wife said as she rubbed her belly.

"Miaow."

Clixie jumped up to the bed and began to sniff Gloriana's stomach. The cat then pressed up against it and began to purr, as if that would make the baby more comfortable.

"Hihihi!" Gloriana radiated happiness as she stroked Clixie's fur. "You'll watch over my daughter, right? Don't let anything happen to her if I'm not with her. Are you up to the task?"

"Miaow~!"

"We should provide our children with their own animal companions." Ves suggested.

"I'm fine with that, but not too soon. We have to pick them out carefully. I don't want our children to be accompanied by weak and stupid pets. They have to be at least as good as Clixie!"

"Miaow."

That was a difficult demand to fulfill, but Ves had a number of ideas.

He briefly focused his spiritual senses towards his wife. Aside from her strong spirituality that was centered in her head, her belly also started to exude life.

The second presence was weak and tiny. So tiny in fact that even an insect probably exuded more life.

His unborn daughter was too young. Despite investing more than 800 billion hex credits to form an extremely high quality gene sequence, his first child was little more than a collection of cells at the moment.

Yet that could be said of every human. When it came down to it, even Ves was mainly a collection of cells. He just had a lot more of it than his daughter.

While Gloriana mainly paid attention to her baby's genes and physical state, Ves didn't really care all that much. He would have loved his daughter even if her genes were completely unremarkable.

She was family. A bond had already formed between them. Even if this connection wasn't as concrete as the bonds that made up his spiritual network, Ves felt an undeniable attachment to what was currently just a small collection of organic cells.

It was like magic, and it reminded him of the wonder that was life.

Two humans came together and contributed to the creation of another human. Even though the designer baby process 'improved' this natural process, the fundamental nature of this process was still the same.

He would become a father soon. A year from now, he would have the opportunity to hold his baby in his arms and experience the full joy that every father felt when they looked at a product of love.

From how Gloriana's eyes turned dreamy, she must be fantasizing about a similar future. The joy of motherhood filled her with warmth and caused her to pay less attention to her work tasks.

Just yesterday, she would never waste so much idle time in bed. She would have risen up and freshen up for the day before immediately heading over to the design lab.

It was quite strange how the prospect of motherhood caused an immediate shift in her outlook. Ves was already liking this change. There was more to life than work, and as much as he was willing to dedicate his life to his ambitions, he was a human as well as a mech designer.

Ves spontaneously reached out his hand and gently pressed his palm against Gloriana's flat stomach.

"Miaow."

Clixie moved a little back in order to give Ves room to marvel at his wife's tummy.

"My belly isn't close to swelling yet." Gloriana looked amused at his antics. "I will take quite a few months before our child takes actual shape."

"I know, honey, but it's the thought that counts."

Ves actually had another reason to touch her skin aside from satisfying his emotional needs. He wanted to examine the spiritual characteristics of the life that was slowly growing inside.

From what he recalled of the implantation procedure, the embryo that the doctors and geneticists had cooked up did not actually contain a notable trace of spirituality.

While it was definitely alive, it was still too early for it to accommodate the mind and spirit of a living human. Ves guessed that this would only come when the brain grew large and vigorous enough to support an actual consciousness.

Even so, with his sensitivity, he still detected enough of a presence for him to act on it. He didn't know why, but he impulsively gave in to his urges and formed a spiritual mote that contained a small but pure trace of life that was slanted towards creation before depositing it into the embryo.

In hindsight, Ves realized that this act could have easily led to disaster! He was well aware of the consequences of messing with the spiritualities of grown adults. Now that he had done something similar to an embryo that was literally just a few days old, the chances were high that all of its cells would have blown to pieces from the excessive pressure that his relatively powerful mote exuded!

He was glad that didn't happen and that the Lifer doctors didn't have to produce a second embryo. For some reasons that he wasn't aware of, his tiny unborn child was able to absorb his spiritual energy without a problem.

He was pretty sure that this was an abnormal result. This was why he was keen to track the spiritual state of his future daughter as she was slowly growing in her mother's womb.

When Ves examined the current spiritual state of his child, he noticed that much of the spiritual mote that he had injected yesterday was already gone.

He already felt that the presence in Gloriana's belly had grown weaker compared to yesterday right after the successful conclusion of the implantation procedure.

That was strange.

Fortunately, his growing child still felt healthy from what he could feel from her weak spiritual presence.

Where did all of that missing spiritual energy go? Had it leaked out of her like water pouring out of a bucket that was already full?

In order to find out what exactly happened, he quietly requested Blinky to prepare an even smaller mote of life-attributed spiritual energy.

Mrow.

His companion spirit knew how important this was to his child, so Blinky worked carefully to form another pure mote.

This time, it was only a fraction as strong as the one the spiritual cat had prepared a day ago. When Ves slowly introduced it into the embryo inside Gloriana's body, he attuned his spiritual senses as much as possible to perceive even the subtlest of changes.

Contrary to his expectations, hardly any of the spiritual energy he put in was leaking out. Though Ves detected faint traces of spillage, it was hardly significant.

Yet as a full minute passed, he could sense that the embryo's spirituality was gradually growing weaker. He had the sense that it was slowly returning to its original level of strength.

Ves faintly began to frown. If the energy he put in wasn't leaking out, then where was it going?

It took another minute of careful examination before he managed to come up with a possible answer.

From what he could tell, the faint leakage wasn't pouring out of his daughter's spirit, but actually came from her cells!

It was extremely hard for Ves to distinguish the two sources considering that she was so small right now, but his intuitive senses somehow gave him the idea that the spiritual energy he put in his unborn daughter's mind was flowing into her microscopic body.

Considering the fact that far less energy eventually escaped her body than what he put in, Ves tentatively concluded that his spiritual energy was merging with the embryo's cells!

His eyes widened. This was something that he had never witnessed before.

Spiritual energy usually didn't interact with organic cells. They just passed through them as if they existed in different planes.

In order to verify this, Ves lowered his hand to Gloriana's leg and experimentally injected a bit of spiritual energy through her skin.

"What are you doing, Ves?"

"Uhm, have I told you that I love your legs?"

"Oh, Ves…"

He paid close attention to what his little spurt of spiritual energy was doing. It turned out that it did exactly what he expected. The jet of energy phased right through Gloriana's leg and slowly faded through the bed and deck while rapidly dissipating from the material realm.

Normal organic flesh wasn't capable of holding spiritual energy. If the reverse was the case, he would have long produced enormous masses of flesh so that he could employ them as organic versions of P-stones!

Ves frowned. What made the embryo different?

He thought about other instances where he managed to empower flesh through spiritual engineering.

"This kind of reminds me of…"

His eyes slowly widened. He recalled the moment where he managed to create highly-potent organic totems in the form of the Four Aspects of Lufa.

When Ves shifted his eyes towards Gloriana's belly, he suddenly realized that he wasn't merely looking in the direction of his future daughter.

He was looking at a developing product!

When Ves thought back on how he formed his mech designs, his totems and his design spirits, he recognized that their creation process had one thing in common.

As long as they weren't 'finished', he could engineer their living aspects!

His heart beat faster when he thought about the implications that his future daughter might also fall into this category. As a product in making, the embryo was highly receptive towards the energy of life and creation that Ves just happened to possess.

Would he be able to.. edit his unborn daughter in this fashion?

It sounded extremely uncertain and most definitely violated one of the fundamental taboos of nature. There were so many ways it could go wrong. Yet the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to experiment on his unborn daughter!

This could be a way to give her one of the greatest gifts of her life! The more powerful she became, the more Ves would be assured that she would grow into a happy and successful child!

An important question came up in his mind.

"How should I design my daughter?"