The Mech Touch

"Nyeow nyeow…"

"You hear that? Minxie has been worried sick while you were gone! When I think of all of the mech pilots who died in Purgatory, I worry I might be one of those unlucky spouses who become widowed all of a sudden."

"C'mon babe, I'm fine. With my strong physique and good diet, I'll be up and running in no time."

"You don't sound like it. Just look at you. You're barely able to sit upright in your bed!"

When Ves entered one of the recovery rooms of the Dragon's Den, he encountered one of the newly-emerged expert pilots along with the rest of his little family.

A white Persian cat rested on Vincent's lap while rubbing her head against her owner's hand.

Director Raella Larkinson stood beside the bed with a concerned and exasperated expression.

"Oh hey, look who's here! The big man finally paid us a visit!"

Ves ignored Vincent and nodded towards Raella. "How are you doing, cousin?"

"I'm doing better." Raella flatly said. "This dummy here is as stubborn as ever. Advancing to expert pilot hasn't seemed to wisen him up at all. He's still as overconfident as ever."

"Hey! I'm an expert pilot now. I'm stronger than ever. Once Ves over here delivers an expert mech to me, I will show you that my performance last time was not a fluke! I have found my calling now! I am a master puncher!"

"You idiot! You pilot a hybrid mech! Fighting up close is only a last resort! You should stick to using ranged weapons!"

"I don't like them anymore." Vincent shook his head. "Back when I broke through, I finally learned my true calling. I've been moving back and forth between different mech types because I never really found what I was good at. In the last battle, I finally found my calling. Screw rifles and cannons. Screw swords and shields. A real man fights with his fists! It's punching time for me from now on! Once I can pilot an expert mech that's a pure punching machine, you can just sit back and cheer whenever I shatter starships in half with my punches and wrestle phase whales into submission!"

"Nyeow!"

Raella did not even deign to comment on her husband's mad ideas. She turned to Ves with a pleading expression.

"Please don't indulge my idiot of a manchild over here. I have a suspicion that his apotheosis hit him so hard over the head that his mental age has regressed. As the responsible adult in the room, I hope you can smack some sense in his head and get him to pilot a normal mech again."

Ves shrugged. "I'll see what I can do. You should get used to this, though. In my extensive personal experience, expert pilots are stubborn and deaf to persuasion."

"I know that. I grew up in the same family as you, remember? Just do what you can. Vincent respects you because you're his mech supplier."

"I understand. Can you step outside for a moment? I'd like to talk to Vincent in confidence."

"Very well. You boys go play by yourselves."

"Nyeow nyeow."

Raella picked up her furry white cat and left the recovery room. Once the hatch closed up, Ves approached and sat down at one of the bedside chairs.

Now that he came close, he briefly swept Vincent with his spiritual senses.

The man he used to know had undergone an extensive transformation in mind and will. Although his personality didn't appear to have changed, he had gained a strong core of confidence and self-belief that persistently propped him up. All of his insecurities and his doubts about himself had disappeared!

Before his apotheosis, Vincent often acted brave in front of a crowd, but Ves knew that this was partially a facade.

Vincent was not an elite mech pilot. He did not undergo military training. He never truly specialized in a particular set of piloting or fighting skills.

In Ves' opinion, Vincent was just a messy mech pilot who lucked out and broke through to the rank of expert candidate under admittedly dire conditions.

That still did not make him ready for the next step. Aside from polishing his piloting skills, Vincent also needed to undergo an extensive mental evolution before he could think about becoming a demigod.

Ves estimated that it would have taken five to ten years before Vincent grew 'mature' enough to assume the power and responsibilities of an expert pilot.

However, the Everchanger's stunt had given this lucky bastard a shortcut that allowed him to resolve his confidence issues in advance, allowing him to undergo apotheosis at a crucial time!

Though Ves was happy that one of his expert candidates finally broke through, he felt that Vincent had only undergone the bare minimum of mental evolution before he became an expert pilot.

Perhaps it would have been better if he spent a few more years as an expert candidate in order to mature his mentality over time!

Now that he thought about it, Ves felt that a lot of mech pilots who broke through too quickly were too prone to developing mental disorders.

He could think about that later. First, he needed to finish his round of talks with all of the new expert candidates and expert pilots that had emerged.

"How are you feeling, Vincent, or should I say Venerable Vincent? Breakthroughs can be violent and exhausting, and you went through an even more dramatic event than usual. To be honest, I did not expect you to wake up so soon."

Ves almost felt sick as he used the word 'Venerable' together with the name 'Vincent'. For some reason, he felt as if the multiverse had taken a terribly wrong turn by creating the conditions where the two words became a fixed phenomenon!

"Heh, as I said, I take care of my body." Vincent grinned. "I'm not as soft as the others."

Plenty of mech pilots regularly exercised their bodies, but their recovery speeds were not necessarily as good as that of Vincent. Perhaps there were other factors at play.

Ves called up an information panel that briefly listed Vincent's current condition. The data all looked fine to him. Aside from feeling tired and needing at least a week or two of rest, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the new expert pilot.

His inspection of his spiritual state also revealed fairly few problems. Ves would have thought that sustaining the state of Unity of Man and Machine would have exerted an immense mental burden on him. His force of will should have been weak and ragged.

Instead, aside from feeling a bit drained and listless, Venerable Vincent's willpower had become a lot more solid and unshakeable!

After Ves asked a few more questions about Venerable Vincent's physical and mental state, he finally chose to move on to the most critical subject on the agenda.

"Now that you have successfully broken through, the B-Man that you have piloted for a while is no longer a good match for your newfound strength. We need to provide you with a new solution in order to better draw out your power on the battlefield and give you ample room to develop your resonance strength."

"The B-Man… how is my mech doing?"

"It's in poor condition, but that is not a big deal. Enough of its frame is intact that we can easily repair it without losing too much in the process."

Before he began to meet with all of the new expert candidates and expert pilots, he had taken the time to visit where their old machines were stored in order to determine their actual states.

He activated a small projection that showed Venerable Vincent a snapshot of his B-Man.

Compared to the B-Man in its prime, the custom hybrid mech looked as if it had gone through a giant blender before getting beat up by hooligans.

The most dramatic signs of damage was the extensive amount of cracks adorning its exterior.

The B-Man's muscled chest and abdomen no longer conveyed a sense of masculinity as all of the broken and deformed surfaces made it seem as if the custom mech had turned into an abuse victim!

The stresses that the B-Man had undergone in the previous battle also caused it to lose large amounts of the gold coating that made it look like a god in the form of a mech. The loss of coating exposed the dull and scratched gray alloy plating underneath.

The B-Man already looked sorry from the outside, but Ves had already confirmed that its internal architecture was filled with even more cracks!

However, Vincent did not pay attention to the damage that he couldn't see. From the moment the projection appeared in front of his face, his eyes were glued towards his hybrid mech's crotch area.

"My B-Man! My codpiece! What happened to my big and beautiful codpiece!"

It appeared that Vincent had overloaded the B-Man's systems during his breakthrough event.

The codpiece not only served as a protective layer for the custom mech's shield generator, but also functioned as an external heatsink and radiator.

This meant that it could grow quite hot if the B-Man was running at or above full power!

Ves didn't need to look at the battle footage to know that Vincent had probably gone overboard and pushed the codpiece beyond its limits.

Not only had the excess heat caused the alloys to grow soft, the intense physical stresses also caused parts of it to crack and chip away!

The result of Vincent's violent and brutal handling was that half of the B-Man's codpiece had fallen apart!

"It's not as bad as it looks, Vincent. We can put it back together."

"A codpiece isn't supposed to fall apart! You need to put on a stronger one. I don't want it to fail again!"

"That is related to what I wanted to talk about, Vincent. As you know, you need an expert mech. Before we proceed, I need to hear your decision on how to go forward. You have two possible options. First, we can retain the essence of the B-Man and upgrade it to an expert mech. Second, we can retire your custom mech now that it has done its job and start on a clean slate. What do you prefer?"

"Do you need to ask?" Vincent looked at Ves as if this was a stupid question. "Of course I'm sticking to my battle buddy! We became soulmates during the last battle. I wouldn't have been able to punch fish-whales left and right if I didn't become one with Bravo and the B-Man! I am not a man who is ungrateful to the friends who helped me become stronger. I want both of them to continue to fight by my side, no matter whether I'm an expert pilot or a god pilot. We are best friends forever! You can call me the second coming of Venerable Jannzi!"

Ves slowly nodded. He already expected this answer, but he needed to ask the question anyway in order to make sure.

"We… can accommodate your wishes. As I've said, the B-Man is not in good shape, but there is plenty left that we can upgrade it to an expert mech without changing its essential character. This won't be a quick and easy project, though. Before we embark on this labor-intensive upgrade process, we need to decide on the basic concept and configuration of your expert mech. Do you prefer to keep as much of the original B-Man as possible while lifting up its performance to expert mech standards, or do you want to morph it into a different or more specialized machine?"

Venerable Vincent defiantly crossed his arms. "Didn't you hear me earlier? I have found my calling as a warrior now! I don't need to pilot a hybrid mech anymore. All I need is a mech that can punch! I feel like that as long as you can turn my expert mech into a brawler mech, I can one day enter that wonderful state again!"

"...Are you sure about that, Vincent? The B-Man is a hybrid mech from beginning to end. Turning it into a melee mech and especially one that is focused on bare-handed fighting is an extreme transformation. The design challenges are considerable and the results might not be as impressive as you expect. It is better to start over and design an expert brawler mech from scratch."

Unfortunately for Ves, his client stuck to his demands!

"No! Unacceptable! I won't abandon my combat partner, not after everything that we have been through! I will have my punching mech one way or another! My B-Man, no, my C-Man will be the most manliest mech to ever exist in the Larkinson Clan!"