The Mech Touch

When Ketis proposed Bravo as the design spirit for their current mech design, Ves initially thought she was joking.

Then he thought she wanted to minimize the influence of a design spirit on their work as much as possible.

Now, he began to see that his assumptions or rather prejudices about Bravo were mostly inaccurate.

He still recalled the process of creating this spiritual product for a custom mech called the Adonis Colossus a long time ago. He just wanted to form a macho design spirit that fully complimented a macho mech.

Of course, Ves hadn't been entirely earnest when he brought Bravo into existence. He not only implanted his own exaggerated ideas about masculinity in Bravo's design, but also threw in Gloriana's notions about 'men' into the mix!

For a long time, Ves labeled Bravo as a vainglorious design spirit that only had a limited purpose. While he entertained several ideas on integrating him into several possible mech designs, he had yet to realize any of them up until this point.

Now that he finally made use of Bravo in earnest, he found that there was a surprising amount of depth to the design spirit.

Where did all of these facets come from? Ves did not remember putting in all of these extra dimensions in one of his simpler design spirits.

"Did Bravo develop like this with the help of his connection to Vincent Ricklin?" He briefly wondered.

That was absurd! Vincent was a dunce as far as he could tell. Even if the man managed to become an expert candidate, he was still an idiot who obsessed way too much about protecting his manhood than his clan!

Ves suspected that he was missing a part of the story here. Either he put a lot more into Bravo's creation than he thought or the design spirit went through a unique experience that caused it to grow in an unexpected direction.

Regardless, Ves was pleasantly surprised by the unexpected positive traits that Bravo brought to the table.

What impressed him the most was the more benign form of competitive drive that Bravo was able to evoke.

"Now that I think about it, Bravo is always competitive by nature."

The whole point about emphasizing masculinity was to prove one's superiority over other peers. Contests just happened to be all about that. There was no better design spirit than Bravo when it came to amping up the need to perform better than any other competitor!

Though Ves was able to tell that Bravo also possessed all of its original traits that he was not enamored with, it was easy enough to manipulate how the entity was expressed in a mech design.

A mech design could channel a design spirit in its entirety or make use of a filter to block out certain elements.

Ves had already implemented this solution in three out of four of his Four Aspects of Lufa.

The Aspect of Tranquility conveyed Lufa's glow in its entirety while the Aspects of Healing, Rationality and Transcendence all channeled the angelic design spirit's glow through different filters.

This was how Ves was able to come up with three extra substantially-different glows from the same design spirit!

Though Ves saw no reason to make heavy use of this new capability in his previous mech designs, this time was different.

Bravo might possess a few more favorable traits than expected but he was still a mixed bag at best. Yet as long as he had redeeming factors, Ves could still work with that. He just had to block the way of Bravo's less desirable traits so that only his virtues came through.

As the hours went by, the effect this made on the mech design became increasingly more obvious.

Though most of the audience still didn't notice anything, Ves and Ketis could already feel that Bravo was exerting a significantly positive influence on the mech.

Though Bravo still didn't instill any special abilities such as Ylvaine's prediction abilities, neither of the two mech designers minded that. Just the way that this influence was able to stimulate the desire to win to any mech pilot was already a valuable ability in itself!

The addition of Bravo helped shape and strengthen the three main themes of their swordsman mech design.

The first theme revolved around swordsmanship. Ketis was mainly in charge of this aspect as she had extensively analyzed and deconstructed Lyain Kepper's sword style.

She not only gave Lyain tips on how to fix his flaws and bad habits, she also taught him a couple of new techniques. The mech pilot was avidly training them even now while his mech was slowly coming together.

"Normally, a swordsman who isn't training in an existing sword style should be relying on his own efforts to develop his own fighting approach." She explained to Ves. "That is a process that can take years or decades, though. We don't have the time to wait until Lyain has found his stride. We can quickly boost his combat effectiveness by guiding his swordsmanship."

Different from the other mech designers taking part in the Wild Brawl Bowl, Ketis was a much better warrior than the mech pilots!

This granted her a massive advantage. She was not only able to instruct Team Larkinson's mech pilot as if she was his drill instructor, she also had the opportunity to shape and configure her swordsman mech to optimize its ability to fight according to a specific sword style!

Ketis had already made a lot of profound design choices that Ves would never think about. He simply couldn't come close to her deep and profound understanding of swordsmanship and how it translated to mech combat. Not even going on a hundred Mastery experiences would change that because he wasn't a professional fighter!

Other people in the audience were able to detect her brilliance in this area as well as the mech design became more and more defined. The more details she filled in, the more that other mech designers, particularly those who specialized in melee mechs, recognized the difficulty of reaching her level!

[The configuration that Miss Ketis is trying to implement in her mech design is anything but standard. Although it might look no different from other swordsman mech designs, if you take note of a couple of non-standard design parameters such as the lengths of the limbs and the center of mass of the mech frame, you can see that they diverge substantially from the norm. It is extremely risky to diverge from the standard norms for these parameters because any radical changes can completely disrupt the mech pilot's fighting rhythm. Imagine what it would be like to dance with legs that are twice as long as normal.]

[Is this not standard treatment for every custom mech? What makes this instance of personalization different?]

[While it is true that any mech designer can tweak these far-reaching variables to a degree in order to align a mech more closely to a mech design, think about who has to make the decision. Obviously, the mech pilot himself cannot randomly come up and say that he wants the right arm to be 20 percent longer. He may be an excellent fighter, but he understands nothing about the science and engineering behind mechs. That job is left to the mech designer, but then you have the opposite problem. What does a mech designer know about fighting?]

[Hasn't there ever been mech pilots who have studied mech design? Surely there must be more mech designers who are champion-level fighters.]

[There are geniuses among mech pilots who are probably able to school many Novice and Apprentice Mech Designers, but it is hard to get any further in both careers. The same goes for mech designers who have trained in martial arts. High-ranking mech designers cannot invest all of their energies in other occupations. This is why Miss Ketis Larkinson is such an anomaly and why she is able to make her swordsman mech so… sublime. Excuse me for employing such a vague word, but it is difficult to describe the extent to which she is shaping her swordsman mech's combat performance by making all of these changes.]

As time continued to pass, more and more mech designers understood how the work of Team Larkinson truly embodied a specific sword style. Lyain Kepper would probably never be able to pilot a mech that was more complementary to his fighting style than this upcoming machine!

When most of the details became clear, the onlooking mech designers even figured out how the swordsman mech was supposed to fight.

[Team Larkinson's swordsman mech is filled with power. Its mass and physical force exertion is higher than usual, and its defense is quite respectable.]

[That sounds interesting, but do note that these advantages come at the detriment of speed. Swordsman mechs tend to be fairly fast and agile in their movements, and that is for a good reason. They are mechs that rely much more on skill expression to defeat an opponent. It is unusual for them to be designed in a way that puts more emphasis on raw strength rather than technique.]

[What does that mean, exactly?]

[A swordsman mech that is physically powerful but lacking in mobility is ordinarily assigned to mech pilots of lesser skill. They don't need to be good. They just have to be good enough to entangle an enemy mech.]

[You're describing cannon fodder.]

[Exactly. Isn't it interesting that a swordmaster such as Ketis decided to take this route despite all of the downsides and stigma surrounding this configuration?]

[Maybe she has a greater plan in mind. What if Mr. Kepper, their chosen mech pilot, can actually fight better with a slower but more powerful mech?]

[I personally find that hard to accept, but who am I to naysay a swordmaster? We shall see in another day whether Swordmaster Ketis has misjudged.]

Though even Ves had doubts at times, he did his best to press them down. Ketis was a much greater authority on swordsman mechs than him, and he trusted her to make the right decisions.

He helped as much as possible to orient the mech design around its deliberate swordsmanship. The mech might not be fast, but as long as it was controlled by a clever and skilled mech pilot, it could still outfight plenty of melee mechs!

Orienting the mech design around this theme caused its character to become more solid and stable. Perhaps too solid and stable. A swordsman who was completely calm and deliberate in his thoughts might be able to outwit an opponent, but there were times when heated passion could play a crucial role in defeating a stronger opponent!

This was where the second theme came in. The competitive drive that derived from Bravo imparted the mech design with a fire that could easily run hot as a fight grew more intense!

Ves had programmed and fine-tuned the glow and character of the swordsman mech to induce a strong desire to win and defeat the opponent.

Perhaps he was going too far with this again, but he couldn't afford to hold back and risk a loss. He was aiming for the top prize this time and would not be satisfied unless he was able to come home with a fleet carrier in his possession this time!

With such high stakes, Ves had no qualms of manipulating Lyain Kepper personality so that he would fight harder and more vigorously than usual. A highly-motivated mech pilot who desired to win at all costs was a powerful advantage in any tournament, and Ves would be a fool to miss this chance to produce one through artificial means!

Ves initially thought that Deliberate Swordsmanship and Competitive Drive were the only two themes that mattered for their swordsman mech. He couldn't really think of adding a third theme to the mech design considering that the aforementioned concepts already covered the key advantages of his work.

Ketis was not quite satisfied, though. She suggested that they expand the scope of their mech design and implement a third theme.

"What is our mech missing?"

"That… depends." Ketis said in a vague manner. She gestured towards the diagram showing the chainsword design… "There is still room to add something special to the main weapon of our swordsman mech."