The Mech Touch

After Ves exerted a bit more effort to capture his overreacting sister, he shook her mechanical cat avatar a few more times and managed to squeeze a more liberal quantity of spare death energy from her this time.

He tossed the offended cat aside after he extracted enough value from her and quickly brought the gathered death energy closer to the statue.

Of course, that did not do much in itself aside from harming what little life that Ves had imbued in the creation of a totem.

Ves had already expected this to happen, so he worked quickly to prevent the totem from becoming completely invalid.

He needed to work quickly in order to minimize his losses as much as possible.

"Let's compact this first."

He exerted his considerable spiritual strength to squeeze the gas-like free-floating death energy into a more compressed crystallized form.

Once he obtained a dark crystal that was a bit more stable and inert than what he had before, he shaped his power into a hammer and began to fracture the seemingly solid spiritual fragment into tiny shards!

"That's one."

He redirected his spiritual hammer against the spiritual foundation of his fiend statue, causing it to 'die' and shatter into pieces as well!

"That's two!"

Ves quickly moved on to the next steps before his shards fizzled out and disappeared entirely.

"Blinky! It's showtime!"

Mrow!

His purple companion spirit leapt out of his head and quickly utilized his fantastic control over spiritual energy to gather the shards together and mix them up to ensure that they were evenly dispersed.

Shards made out of life and death almost blended together but did not touch each other directly as of yet. That would cause them to cancel each other out and that was not what Ves wanted to see.

Instead, Blinky utilized his fantastic perception and instinctual understanding of spiritual energy to find odd quirks and exceptions where putting the shards together did not cause them to annihilate each other.

The first connections were the most difficult. No existing structure existed as of yet that could provide a stable platform where the energies of life and death weaved together as if they got along like best friends.

Plenty of shards dissipated due to the time it took for Blinky to make the initial matchups.

However, once the Star Cat overcame the most difficult hurdle, he gained a nascent spiritual construct that could merge with both kinds of shards with a lot less fuss than before.

This allowed Blinky to focus on other concerns, such as trying to shape the growing living spiritual construct into a virtually identical copy of its physical form.

Though this was not the easiest job, Blinky was another version of Ves. This meant that the companion spirit understood the design of the fiend statue just as well as his human half!

Soon enough, the cat completed an exquisite-looking spiritual product with nearly the same degree of skill and precision as Ves!

The spiritual entity that was composed of death given live woke up and announced its existence by unleashing a terrifying roar!

Fortunately, the size and strength of the spiritual fiend was a bit lackluster, which meant that its roar hardly affected anyone.

Ves grabbed the dark metal statuette and presented it to the gobsmacked gray mechanical cat.

"Look! This is what we can accomplish when we combine our powers together! Just like the Death Lotus and the Gray Lotus that I made before, I can combine the main spiritual attributes derived from the both of us to create a new spiritual life form that seamlessly blends our strengths at close to full utilization!"

Ves did not pay attention to the nasty and malevolent appearance of his fiend. He solely had eyes on the more meaningful properties of his latest creation.

The fiend was fully alive. Not only that, but he showed no signs that he was decaying over time. The death energy he inherited from Helena had downgraded a bit as the spiritual product was a much weaker and more inferior life form than the Daughter of Death, but that was no surprise.

"The metal indeed works like a stabilizing factor. Even if I haven't utilized a special material like Black Demon Steel, an ordinary alloy with no unusual biases is able to host this fiend without imposing any handicaps. That is good news."

The gray cat still found her brother's latest creation to be a little creepy, but she also gained a morbid fascination towards the so-called fiend.

She padded closer so that she could take a closer look at the dreadful-looking fiend.

The silent snarls and other unfriendly sounds quickly ceased once the fiend felt Helena's approach.

The fiend actually controlled its violent impulses and prostrated before the Daughter of Death!

Ves grinned at the sight. "Look, sis! It, no, he recognized his mother! Look at how loyal he is towards the principal source of his being. This shows that my latest creation can still be controlled as long as I employ the right levers!"

As Ves basked in the success of his latest creation, Helena became completely outraged by what she heard!

"MRAW!" The gray cat's forepaw pointed at the fiend statuette as if it committed a crime. "MRAW MRAW MRAW!"

"You're not wrong." Ves responded. "I crafted him out of both of our spiritual energies, so he can be considered our offspring in a sense. The same can be said for the Death Lotus and the Gray Lotus, by the way, but this is different because this one actually looks like a living organism. Would you want to name our first descendant?"

"MRAAAAAAW!"

"Oh well. I will do it for you then. Let's call him… Tom."

"MRAW MRAW!"

"Okay, maybe that name is a little simplistic considering the meaning of his creation and the significance his kind will play in my future works. A more elaborate and intimidating name will also help in making him more effective at his upcoming job. Let me think. What are the typical names that people use for dark and evil beings? Lucifer, maybe?"

"Mraw. Mraw."

"Yeah, that might not be appropriate." Ves said while he was in thought. "While this fiend is the first of his kind, he was not born into the light only to fall into darkness. What about… Beelzebub? No, that's not good either. That's usually the fat devil who likes to eat a lot."

"Mraw?"

"Pluto or Hades are both a little too big for our little 'kid'. Just look at him. Do you see how weak he is? This guy can barely harm anyone in his current state."

The gray cat began to look increasingly more thoughtful as she tried to help her brother come up with an appropriate and fitting name for the new creation.

"Moloch, maybe? It has a clear association with devils, so that works, more or less. I don't really know its meaning, though."

"Mraw mraw."

Ves looked impressed. "Abaddon the Destroyer sounds cool enough, but I don't think that entirely fits my new fiend."

After going over a few more suggestions, they eventually found a name that they both could live with. Perhaps they could have settled on a better or more original name if they spent more time on brainstorming, but they had better things to do with their time.

"Mephisto it is, then." Ves affirmed. "This guy looks malevolent enough to bear this name, though he isn't clever and developed enough yet to exhibit the deviousness that is associated with this identity."

One of the reasons why Ves and Helena paid attention to the moniker of the fiend was because names carried power.

Ves had actually noticed this phenomenon in his older works.

The mechs whose names possessed a lot of associations to old and existing myths tended to move towards their ancient namesakes, if only gradually.

This had to do with the spiritual feedback and worship they absorbed from many people who possessed a remarkably consistent idea on what these historical and mythical figures were like.

Shaped by pop culture and the lessons they learned from school, many people thought of Mars, or his 'other' version Ares, as a god that both embodied war and became consumed by it. This caused the living ace mech to gradually develop into a more violent but unquestionably powerful machine!

The Minerva on the other hand noticeably became smarter and 'wiser', and that was not just because her partner was clever to begin with. The loaded name conveyed a lot of preconceived notions and the living expert mech tried her best to live up to those expectations.

As far as names went, Mephisto was such a classical evil name in human culture that it had been used and reused for millenia. Countless different books, theater plays and drama shows utilized the name and identity of Mephisto to represent different forms of evil.

Usually, Mephisto became associated with cunning and trickery rather than brute force. He was often depicted in many franchises as making deals with people who were ill-equipped to recognize the pitfalls of dealing with a devil.

Though Ves did not intend for his new fiend to become a literal deal-making devil, he wanted the new spiritual product to become smart and intelligent enough to lead the fiends that would come after.

There was no way his Ghost Project would be able to haunt an unsuspecting ship with only a single fiend!

It needed to become a hive that hosted multiple fiends that could terrorize the entire crew of a starship at the same time!

"I'm not sure how many fiends the Geist System can fit." Ves frowned in thought. "How many I can squeeze inside will depend on many different factors. If I want to maximize the amount of fiends that my Ghost Project can carry, then I will need to alter and adjust its design so that it can accommodate the maximum possible fiend vessels."

This introduced an additional complication to the design of his first expert stealth mech, but he did not mind it. He actually looked forward to figuring out how he could cover it with as many fiend vessels as possible without compromising its stealth capabilities.

What was important was that the Larkinson Clan gained a new and different expert mech that could plug many shortcomings.

The Ghost Project might not be the strongest machine in a frontal battle, but as long as it remained unnoticed, its many spiritual fiends could wreak havoc among the enemy, all without tripping any alarms!

"This will definitely be a killer solution against unsuspecting alien warships!" Ves grinned as he held the fiend statuette with pride.

"Mraw…" The gray cat swished her tail at a halting pace.

Helena showed a lot more ambivalence towards this development. The birth of Mephisto was both miraculous and horrifying. Not even the self-proclaimed Daughter of Death felt entirely comfortable with the creation of such a malevolent spirit!

Ves didn't care about all of that. All he thought about was that he finally formed a fitting incorporeal attack method for the confoundingly difficult Ghost Project!

Of course, in order to make sure he was right, he still had to conduct an important test.

He turned towards the worktable and tapped the interface device. "Let's test whether you can connect and direct Mephisto through this experimental device. I am almost certain what the outcome will be, but it is best if we can confirm my suspicions with an empirical result."

"Mraw mraw!"

"Oh, come on. Mephisto is practically our kid! He's harmless! Don't you see how docile and friendly he behaves in your presence?"

"Mraw!" The gray cat's tail shot straight!

They argued for a short time before Helena reluctantly cooperated with the experiment.

This time, everything proceeded extremely smoothly. None of the problems that caused the previous experiments to turn into abject failures happened again.

Not only did Mephisto welcome Helena's influence with open arms, he also appeared to feed off and gain power from his precursor!

"Look! Look! Isn't he cute, Helena? He is growing so quickly from the energy that you are channeling through the interface. It's as if you are breastfeeding your baby for the first time."

"MRAAAAAAAAAAW!"

"Ouch! Hey, stop trying to eat off my face with your teeth! Ahhhhh!"