The Mech Touch

Before meeting Juliet Stameros, Calabast tried her best to shape his views on the Penitent Sisters.

According to her, the Penitent Sisters were victims and deluded sheep. The true masterminds responsible for committing all of the atrocities were the evil cult leaders who originally devised the doctrine that the phase of damnation represented boys!

Those at the bottom only did as they were told and learned everything the cult passed on. The insular, restrictive upbringing of the Penitent Sisters prevented them from learning any alternative interpretations. Critical thinking was something completely alien to these devoted worshippers!

Ves was well aware of what Calabast tried to do. He didn't buy into her story. Not completely.

At the very least, he refused to equate the Penitent Sisters as victims. Even if it was true that they were deluded and led astray, their continued anger and resentment at his existence made it clear they hadn't really forgotten about their original beliefs!

The hostility oozing from Juliet contained none of the mutual respect that mech designers harbored towards their own kind.

In fact, Juliet should be regarding a young and accomplished Journeyman like Ves with admiration or at least some jealousy!

Yet all Ves sensed from Juliet was a complete disregard of his rank. It was as if his status as a boy was so egregiously awful that it overshadowed everything else about him! In the eyes of a Penitent Sister like her, boys were all the same!

Though Ves felt offended by her lack of respect, a part of him took it as a challenge.

He didn't really care about the rest of the Penitent Sisters, but he couldn't stand the thought of a fellow colleague of his looking down on him despite her inferior qualifications!

The mech industry abided by its own rules! As a fellow professional, Juliet Stameros should have shown more respect to the hierarchy of mech designers!

"Juliet, since you are here, could you please show us around?"

"Very well, sir." Juliet squeezed out of her angry lips. "I'm not a ship officer, so I won't be able to show you around the bridge or the engineering bay. I know my mechs fairly well, though."

"That's fine. I'm not that interested in the ship either." Ves lied. "Please show me the mech workshop first."

They strode towards the mech workshop compartment where all of the more intensive repairs and servicing took place.

When they entered it, Ves immediately noticed that the compartment in question was several times bigger than that of the Scarlet Rose. That made sense as the Surly Cockatrice was a lot larger in order to accommodate forty mechs at a time.

Several crews of female mech technicians crawled all over the partially-disassembled mechs in order to perform some preventative maintenance.

"We're well aware that our mechs are rather old and worn." Juliet explained in a perfunctory tone. "Instead of waiting for the mechs to break down or malfunction in the middle of the battle, we prefer to nip as many problems as possible in the bud. We've been replacing and repairing parts before they reached their limits."

"That is a prudent decision."

"Anything to give my Sisters a chance to survive."

As the head designer of the Penitent Sisters, Juliet must have pushed this decision.

On the surface, Ves recognized that preventative maintenance was the best way to extend the longevity of the mechs of the Penitent Sisters.

Since they were forced to leave the Hegemony, the Sisters didn't have any way of procuring new second-class mechs on their own. They had to depend on either Ves or themselves to keep up their fighting strength.

"The mechs may not seem like much, and their performance isn't on par with the modern new-generation mechs that have rolled out in Hegemony space." Juliet elaborated as they observed the work on the second-class mechs. "Yet they are honest mechs designed by great Hexer mech designers. The machines have served the Hexers before us well, and it falls to us to honor these machines and treat them with the reverence they deserve."

While Ves was very pleased to hear that Juliet and the rest of the Sisters valued their mechs despite their relative age and condition, he was not as pleased with their reasoning.

Her condescending tone directly rubbed the supposed superiority of female mech designers in his face. It was as if there was no doubt that anything proper female Hexer mech designers came up with was leagues better than his own mech designs!

"Meow."

"Yeah, I don't like it either, Lucky." He whispered to his cat.

Though none of the Hexers glared at the mechanical cat that accompanied his owner, Lucky was a boy as well! Even he started to hate the open discrimination exhibited by the Penitent Sisters!

At least with Gloriana, her expression of female supremacy was relatively tame and well-meaning. She had also become more adopt at accommodating him by refraining from

The tour continued. Ves learned a lot how a second-class combat carrier like the Surly Cockatrice serviced her mechs. The tools and capabilities the mech technicians had at their disposal were very impressive, but so were the mechs. Their complexity and difficult construction made it very challenging to keep them in good condition!

The Hexer mech technicians were leagues above the mech technicians that Ves was used to working with. The impressive sight before him reminded Ves that he shouldn't be putting all of his attention on upgrading the mechs and mech pilots of the Larkinson Clan.

The infrastructure around them needed to keep up as well! Third-class mech workshops and third-class mech technicians weren't sufficient in keeping the advanced mechs in adequate condition.

Ves had already heard that the Avatars already started to experience a lot of strain in their attempts to service the new Bright Warriors. This mech model was only a bridge mech, so the problem would definitely become a lot more severe in the future once Ves designed more second-class mechs!

They exited the mech workshop and visited the stables where a lot of mechs were safely stashed. Protective braces and other measures ensured the heavy machines wouldn't tumble down the long hall and squash numerous Penitent Sisters flat if the Surly Cockatrice suffered a heavy attack.

Though Ves had been paying quite a bit of attention to the state of every individual mech, he was more interested in the people around them. He observed and recorded the behavior of every single Penitent Sister he came across.

Whether he would do something with all of these recordings was another thing, but at least he had some materials stored in the vast storage space of his implant.

Currently, Ves paid the most attention to Juliet Stameros. He didn't hide his interest in her, and that made her even more resentful. She hated being stared at by a boy! She probably wished nothing more than to poke his eyes for sullying her in this manner!

There was a very good reason why Ves maintained his interest in her. While he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do with the Penitent Sisters, if he ever wanted to convert them, he had to find an opening.

Right now, earning Juliet's seemed like his best bet. Ves always believed he understood other mech designers the best.

"So, Juliet. You've shown me around and described all of the Penitent Sister's mechs to me. You haven't told me anything about yourself, though."

"What do you want to know, sir?" She growled.

"For a start, where did you study?"

"I was.. homeschooled."

"Did a high-ranking mech designer tutor you until you reached the standard of Novice?"

She shook her head. "My teachers arranged me to study at the Artemis Institute. While I disliked my stay there, I learned about mech design. I successfully graduated from Artemis and returned to my comrades right afterwards."

"She disguised her true beliefs while she blended in with the student body of Artemis." Calabast enlightened Ves.

"I see."

This meant that while she was still a cultist, she at least enjoyed some of the best orthodox mech design education of the Hegemony!

The Artemis Institute ranked close to the top of mech design schools of the Evern Matriarchal Dynasty. The Hexers even respected it more than Hippolyta War College!

His respect for Juliet increased, which was rather strange considering that she still absolutely hated his guts.

Regardless of her views, Ves still respected mech designers who loved their profession and worked hard to make great achievements.

It was too bad that Juliet didn't possess any notable spiritual potential as far as he could tell. According to her profile, she was 35 years old, which meant that the chance of waking her spiritual potential became increasingly smaller.

While Ves hadn't researched a lot about this topic, in his opinion, a person's best chance of developing spiritual potential was in their younger years. As long as someone was younger than twenty-five or thirty years old, they always had a chance of opening up their spiritual opportunities!

That didn't color his views on Juliet. A mech designer was a mech designer, and each one dedicated their lives and pursuit towards developing better mechs!

As he continued to quiz Juliet's history and background, he learned there wasn't much else to the woman. Whenever she didn't work, she prayed. Whenever she worked, she prayed regardless, but in a way that didn't hinder her responsibilities.

"My faith is my life." She stated to Ves. "Women are superior and that needs to be acknowledged. We should have been the foremost proponents of women in the Hegemony!"

"Err… okay."

Ves wanted to impress her with his design prowess, but he couldn't figure out any means at the moment. Her bias against boys like him was so strong that he needed to shock her right away!

Any other means he managed to come up with didn't sound impressive enough to change her views on him. That said, he did come up with one idea that might transform her views on him, but it would take some time to enact that plan.

Until then, Ves had to bide his time and do his best to prevent his relations with the Penitent Sisters from worsening.

"I've been wondering." Ves spoke. "What is it you Penitent Sisters are working towards? I get it that your situation is rather awful, but what keeps you going? What are your goals?"

The other mech designer paused and fell silent. Since Juliet refused to talk, Calabast felt the need to answer in her stead.

"The Penitent Sisters want to be proven right."

Ves frowned. "That's impossible."

"I know." Calabast crossed her arms. "They can never have what they want, so I suppose they will have to make do with less. From my analysis, the Penitent Sisters seek acknowledgement and redemption. Though they hate the Hexadric Hegemony, they still consider themselves to be loyal Hexers at heart. It hurt them very badly when our state turned against them and told them that their beliefs were wrong. While they resent this treatment, they still want to regain their honor."

"I see. They're still redeemable, then." Ves concluded.

"As you have already seen, it won't be easy. The Penitent Sisters are strong and proud despite the restrictions foisted upon them. They will never be truly yours so long as they remain the same."

"We only follow your orders because we have to, boy." Juliet hissed, thereby affirming Calabast's statement.

Hexers always gave him a headache. Ves had enough of the Penitent Sisters for one day. He had seen enough to expand his judgement and form some ideas on how to engage them. Yet before he could do so, he needed to make some preparations.

One way or another, the Penitent Sisters would kneel in front him! He could never tolerate an uncontrolled force in his midst!

During the shuttle ride back to the surface of Cinach VI, Ves continued to immerse himself in his delusions.

Calabast observed him with an incredulous expression. She turned to Lucky who was floating in the air.

"Is Ves always like this?"

"Meow!"