The Mech Touch

Now that the Larkinson Clan secured the most essential requirement to design a powerful and versatile expert brawler mech, Gloriana could finally work on the C-Man Project in earnest!

Venerable Vincent initially reacted with confusion when Gloriana met with him to inform him of the latest developments.

The expert pilot scratched his head. "I'm happy that my mech gets to be stronger and better, but how exactly am I supposed to make use of this smart metal stuff?"

Gloriana already anticipated that her client wouldn't be able to understand the full benefits of utilizing TESMAS, so she prepared a simple presentation to convey the most important principles.

She summoned a projection that displayed one of her draft designs of the C-Man. She then activated a command that commanded the rough model of the C-Man to spar against a generic melee expert mech.

"Imagine this is your mech. As you can see, the expert swordsman mech is doing a good job preventing your C-Man from getting too close by leveraging the advantage of reach."

The simulated battle was nowhere as real as an actual duel between melee expert mechs. This was because the mechs and mech pilots were both capable of performing extraordinarily powerful feats with the help of their resonance abilities.

However, the depiction was sufficient for demonstration purposes. An actual battle between an expert brawler mech and an expert swordsman mech might fall into the same rhythm.

Vincent scoffed. "I can do much better than this. I won't allow this expert swordsman mech to keep my C-Man at bay."

"That will almost assuredly require you to take great risks and let your mech incur great damage in the process." Gloriana pointed out. "This is why we intend to incorporate Transphasic Energized Smart Metal Armor System to your expert mech. Let me show you a handful of the benefits you can obtain if you make use of TESMAS' capabilities."

The simulated battle changed with the C-Man suddenly activated a function that caused its exterior armor to glow and become more active. While the expert mech radiated a significant amount of heat due to this change, it also became a lot bolder!

Different from before, the C-Man no longer tried to evade or block the opposing machine's sharp sword strikes.

Instead, the C-Man threw all caution to the wind and went on the offensive!

When the expert swordsman mech attempted to take advantage of this change in strategy, its sword struck the surface of C-Man only to bounce away without inflicting any meaningful damage!

Due to this, the C-Man did not suffer any loss of strength and smoothly managed to get close enough to press and wrestle the expert swordsman mech into submission!

Gloriana grinned at the sight. "The primary advantage of TESMAS is that it can make your mech a lot more resilient against damage. It can resist attacks that are up to twelve times stronger than normal."

"Twelve times?!"

"In truth, this is not the most efficient approach to defeat the opposing expert mech. You should only energize the smart armor of your C-Man when you are under imminent attack. You will quickly drain energy reserves if you keep it fully energized for a longer period of time. I will try to mitigate this weakness by adding additional energy reserves to the design, but there are limits to how much I can improve this parameter."

"Oh."

Gloriana reset the ongoing animation and showed off a different simulation.

The starting condition was the same but the C-Man utilized a different approach to defeat its opponent.

Instead of charging the swordsman mech head-on which would expose it to a devastating attack, the C-Man remained just outside the opposing machine's range.

That didn't mean the C-Man was unable to threaten the expert swordsman mech at all. Instead, it began to use its limbs to launch unusual attacks.

In one instance, it launched a punch that magically stretched out the arm so that it was able to smack the expert swordsman mech from a longer range!

In another instance, it launched a kick that turned its leg into an elongated metal whip that struck a solid blow against the expert swordsman mech's side!

These were just the basic applications of TESMAS in a duel. Soon enough, the simulated C-Man mech began to employ more advanced applications of smart metal technology.

For example, the C-Man launched a punch that actually detached its fist and caused it to strike the expert swordsman mech as if it was a projectile!

What was even more astounding was that the detached fist suddenly melted and turned into an amorphous substance. The 'living metal' crawled across the enemy mech's surface and drilled through the weak points of the enemy machine.

As long as the detached nanomachines managed to get inside an enemy mech, it could inflict a considerable amount of internal damage!

Of course, Gloriana knew that it was not that simple to make this attack succeed. Every expert mech was protected by both a resonance shield and other powerful defenses. The C-Man had to weaken or exhaust the energy of an enemy machine beforehand before it could make this infiltration attack work.

Vincent already became impressed, though, and that was what mattered!

The simulated C-Man displayed additional tricks.

It approached and partially melted its body on an expert mech to bind it tighter than ever.

It redirected much of its available nanomachines to reinforce its frontal armor when it was under bombardment.

It shot off all of its arms and legs at once in order to fight against four different opponents at once!

While not all of these scenarios were as practical in reality as they looked, the possibilities intrigued Venerable Vincent. His imagination started to run wild as he tried to come up with other ways to take advantage of the various properties of TESMAS!

"Okay, I'm sold." Vincent said. "I think I can make good use of this nanomachine stuff. It gives me exactly what I need to overpower other expert mechs and show them who's boss. What do I need to do in order to make this work?"

"Nothing much for now. I suggest you research smart metal mechs and expert mechs and learn how they fight. The more you know about them, the faster you can get started with your new C-Man. Later on I will require your input in order to configure the TESMAS and the rest of the design to your fighting style and preferences. The C-Man will become a much more complex mech after this addition so we will need to work together to ensure that you can maximize its strengths."

Work on the C-Man Project proceeded quickly after that. Even though working with advanced and unfinished tech introduced a host of challenges, Gloriana never became bothered by them as her expectations remained high.

Designing a smart metal mech was different from a conventional one in many ways. For one, she did not have to commit to a single form. If she wanted, she could program the TESMAS to adopt numerous different shapes and configurations.

In the most extreme example, she could change the very type and nature of the expert mech! The most complete application of TESMAS allowed the C-Man to turn from a brawler mech into a tiger mech or an avian mech. It could even adopt a completely different shape that did not look resemble a mech in the slightest!

However, this was too excessive in her opinion. She was conscious of how much it cost to make and maintain TESMAS. She only planned to use it as the base of the C-Man's armor system.

That meant that the internal architecture of the expert mech would resemble that of a more conventional machine like the Everchanger.

"So in other words, it is only the skin and armor that is made of nanomachines?" Venerable Vincent asked.

"Yes. That is correct. Whatever lies beneath the surface of the torso are all made out of normal alloy components that you are already familiar with." Gloriana patiently explained to her client. "This means that you cannot turn your mech into a flat square or convert it into another extreme shape. It is not necessary for you to morph the C-Man to this extent."

"I get it. It's only the armor and the limbs that are made out of TESMAS, is that right?"

"That is mostly correct. While you can transform the C-Man's limbs much more extensively than the torso, it still retains the shape and properties of a humanoid mech for the most part. The idea is to expand the C-Man's options and turn it into a better brawler mech. It is not meant to grant you the ability to fight like a tiger mech or other mech types."

Even with this limitation, the C-Man was shaping up to be a formidable expert mech. Melmen Advanced Systems constantly iterated on TESMAS and steadily refined its capabilities.

Gloriana regularly corresponded with Professor Almar in order to gain a better understanding of this new tech.

If she was feeling bold, the mech designer also requested the smart metal developer to add new functions or apply other specific changes to the smart metal system!

Over the span of several months, she and fellow Larkinson mech designers such as Sara Voiken and Tifi Coslone requested so many tweaks that Melmen Advanced Systems simply created a variant version of TESMAS that was optimized for the C-Man!

There were many minor differences between the base version and the variant specific to the C-Man.

Gloriana placed a lot of emphasis on it. She not only wanted it to fit the mission of the C-Man as best as possible, but also wanted it to be a carrier of her design philosophy.

She initially struggled to harness the properties of smart metal beyond a basic level. She was accustomed to working with conventional materials and components, so she lacked the knowledge and experience to add value to smart metal implementations.

The problems she experienced over the course of her design project even caused her to pause and think about her relationship with smart metal.

"How relevant is smart metal to my work?"

"Does the perfect vessel have room for nanomachines?"

"Is it possible to fabricate a masterwork mech when its shape can be changed at will?"

All of these questions and more caused her to fall into a period of doubt and confusion.

Though there was no need for her to find the right answers to all of these questions, she recognized that it was important for her to clear her doubts and clarify her design philosophy.

If not, she might never be able to harness smart metal technology properly in her future works!

She knew that if she ever was promoted to a first-class mech designer, it became far more likely for her to encounter smart metal technology in future design projects. It was better for her to master this tech in advance.

"What does smart metal mean to me? Is it just an easy way to correct mistakes or is it something that can change the definition of mechs?"

Days went by as Gloriana hardly managed to achieve any progress in the C-Man Project.

While she was still able to remain productive by diverting her attention to her other ongoing expert mech design projects, she still felt bothered by the issues that the C-Man Project had evoked.

Ves noticed her struggles and eventually gave her a piece of advice.

"If you want to resolve this matter, it's not enough for you to brainstorm yourself into a circle. You need to go out and gain inspiration. Visit different places. Exchange with different mech designers. Gather more input so that you can expand your perspective and develop notions that you ordinarily wouldn't come up with if you stay in your design lab all day."

Her eyes lit up. "You know what? That is a fantastic idea! Let us go on a vacation, Ves! Our daughter would love to go on a trip as well!"