The Mech Touch

If Ves wanted to conduct an experiment relating to 'ghosts' with Helena's input, then he had to make it a little more convenient for her to interact with him aboard the Spirit of Bentheim.

"It shouldn't be a problem for me to create an animated totem for you to walk around and explore." He told her. "In fact, I already promised that I would do the same for our third order living mechs. I have been holding off on this side project so that I can work on my existing backlog, but I guess I can make a mechanical avatar for you first."

"You better make a pretty doll for me then!" Helena demanded.

Ves already stood up and was making his way out of the design lab so that he could go down to his personal workshop.

"Let me start with making a quick and dirty prototype that can serve as a proof of concept. I want to test whether it is even possible and practical for you to inhabit a mechanical avatar and control it effectively enough. I have never really tried this out before with any other spiritual entity."

"I don't think there is a cause for concern, brother. I've become pretty strong, you know. I will definitely be able to control any device you make!"

"Let's see."

Once Ves reached his workshop, he only spent a few more minutes on finalizing a rough mechanical avatar design.

The rush job was incomparable to his serious products. Its design not only featured a lot of obvious suboptimal design elements, but also lacked a lot of originality as Ves just straight up copied design solutions from his older works!

Still, it should be able to function decently enough while also maintaining a fairly serviceable connection to Helena, and that was enough.

When Ves went ahead and fabricated the design using generic second-class materials that were already available in the workshop, the AP-VEX superfab quickly chugged along and completed the job in less than fifteen minutes.

As a quality first-class superfab endorsed by the MTA, Ves was continually amazed at the capabilities of the AP-Vex. It had become even more powerful in his hands after his recent evolution. His increased skills and cognitive abilities enabled him to better make use of the more advanced and intellectually-demanding features of the high-tech machine!

Ves actually spent a little more time on fabricating Helena's experimental mechanical avatar because he couldn't completely get rid of the habits he inherited from his wife.

Helena might be a self-proclaimed goddess, but she possessed a superficial understanding of technology.

Perhaps she might be able to master enough science and engineering to make her own gadgets just by existing long enough, but that would probably take decades if not longer.

For now, Helena had no idea what was going on because she did not have the necessary knowledge to interpret the complicated technical readouts of the superfab's interface.

It might as well be gibberish in her eyes!

"When are you done, brother?" Helena clung onto his back like a koala.

"Almost. You'll have your avatar in another minute or two. Look, this green light over here says that the last parts have already been fabricated. I just need to make sure to add them to the construct and complete a few checks before the machine is done."

By the time the AP-VEX superfab opened up the tray that displayed the finished product, Ves looked at his latest work with a decent amount of appreciation.

"So what do you think, sis? It looks quite pretty despite how little time I spent on its design."

"..."

"Helena?"

The spiritual entity that was clinging onto his back had grown a lot colder and more frigid this time!

"...Ves…?"

"Yes…?"

"What… is… the… meaning… of… this?!"

"It's a convenient body that you can inhabit whenever you want to extend your presence in our clan."

"Your work looks nothing like me! It's a cat! A gray cat!"

The freshly fabricated mechanical avatar turned out to resemble a black mechanical cat!

The newly-designed and fabricated cat avatar shared a great resemblance to both Lucky and Veronica. In order to make sure to differentiate the gray cat avatar from the two existing cats, he made sure to shrink its proportions by 20 percent.

Ves thought that his new cat avatar looked cute, but his sister held a different opinion.

"BROTHER!" Helena roared while she attempted to pull on his ear! "I wanted you to make a doll, not a cat! Do you think I want to go around pretending to be a cat?! I'm a death goddess! I am far more powerful than any feline!"

"Hey, don't knock it until you try it! Besides, there are good reasons why I opted to make a cat as opposed to a humanoid avatar."

"What sick and twisted reasons did you have for forcing me to become a cat?!"

Ves patiently explained his concerns with regards to the MTA. The same reason why he was reluctant to give his living mechs a humanoid interface also applied to his design spirits.

No matter how helpful they were to everyone who utilized his living mechs, there was no denying that his design spirits weren't entirely human.

Spiritual entities derived from alien life forms such as the Illustrious One, Qilanxo, Titania and the Phase King never thought of themselves as human in the first place.

Their frequent and regular contact with human mech pilots did not give them any reason to humanize themselves. They merely became more familiar with the human species, that was all. The alien design spirits all possessed a strong sense of identity and their fixed spiritual attributes made it difficult for them to deviate from their nature.

The 'human' design spirits occupied a gray area more or less. Entities such as the Solemn Guardian, Lufa and the Superior Mother possessed undeniable human roots, but their thinking patterns were completely unrecognizable.

In fact, even if a design spirit was almost perfectly identical to a normal human, Ves still didn't want to take the risk!

As Helena impatiently listened to her brother's serious concerns, she let go a bit of her anger.

She still felt pissed, but she did not blame her brother as much as before.

"I thought you were pals with the MTA. Won't they cut you a bit of slack?" She questioned.

"I am good friends with a part of the MTA." He corrected his sister. "The Survivalist Faction and the Transhumanist Faction are more than willing to cut me a bit of slack, but the same can't be said for the other factions. There is always a chance that a mecher from an opposing faction will pick any flaw and use that to attack me. I can't let my mechanical avatars turn into a controversy."

In the end, his sister accepted his excuse and agreed to play along… for now. She dove into the mechanical gray cat and tried to take control over her systems.

The process was jerky at first. Helena was working with a completely unfamiliar interface, and she did not possess a good understanding of cats.

"FZRRZZRZURUUAUZURRZZ."

Ves put his palm on the gray cat's back. "Ah, don't try to talk through the avatar's speakers just yet. There are a few tricks to it that are easier to master once you have learned how to control all of the cat's limbs."

He patiently guided his goddess sister on how to control the limbs and basic mechanical systems of her animated totem. It did not take her long to be able to move around like a jerky cat who was just recovering from getting sedated.

Learning how to talk took a bit longer. By the time Helena managed to speak anything else than static, the workshop became filled with the synthesized mewls of a new cat!

"Mraw… mraw…?"

"That's it, Helena." Ves grinned as he rubbed the gray mechanical cat's head. "You sound so cute. Do it again, please."

"Mraww… mraw! Mraw mraw mraw! MRAWWW!"

"OUCH! Stop trying to claw my face! It's useless! I made sure to leave that out of the design!"

"MRAAAAAAAW!"

After the angry gray cat tried to punish Ves for his antics, Helena's spiritual manifestation angrily left her mechanical avatar.

"I can tolerate your decision to pair me up with a cat body, but I will not accept these undignified cat sounds. I sound like a baby!"

"Oh, come on, sister! Sounding like a cat is part of being a cat. Besides, you don't need to talk like a human. I can understand you just fine."

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT! Get rid of this junk and make sure to design a proper cat next time! It needs to be elegant, beautiful, decorated and above all SPEAK HUMAN WORDS!"

It took a lot of haranguing for Helena to get her demand through her brother's thick skull.

"Okay, okay! I promise to do better next time, alright? Can you stuff yourself back inside the cat avatar for the time being? I know it isn't what you expected, but it is all I can make on short notice. I promise that I will make a proper and exquisite mechanical cat avatar for you. I've got plenty of salvaged first-class exotics in stock to make a product that will make other mechanical cats jealous."

"I will hold you to that, Ves."

They finally got back on track once all of the drama had passed. Ves picked up the prototype Helcat and moved to a different location in order to begin his experiments.

"Mraw mraw mraw." The gray cat impatiently squirmed in his grasp.

"Here you go, sis."

He placed the cat on the table before pulling out a strange mechanical contraption from one of the nearby drawers.

He showed off the device to the gray cat.

"This is a device I made to test one of the mechanisms of the Geist System. It is a simple interface which I have made to enable a single mind to control a ghost-like entity. This experimental device has a lot of flaws and can't serve as a completely representative example of the greater system, but I should be able to gather a lot of useful data once I get it to work."

The gray cat tilted her head. "Mraw?"

"It is too soon to experiment with Object 335 directly, so I need a substitute. I can use either myself or you, and I think that you are much more suitable to take on the role of a controller. If anything goes wrong, you are much more capable of resisting any adverse effects."

"Mraw? MRAW!"

"I'm not treating you as my labrat! You're… you're my labcat! Yes, a labcat! You are a valued helper and you will be able to make a massive contribution to science as long as you cooperate with my experiments! Let's just try it out and see what happens, alright?"

"Mraw…"

Despite Helena's obvious reluctance, Ves proceeded with his experiment.

He figured that it was best to start with the safest option, which was creating a weak spiritual product designed along the lines of a ghostly fiend.

The resulting low-quality 'ghost' were more comparable to the simple spiritual fish-whales that Ves made for Phase King than a fully-fledged design spirit like the Superior Mother.

The gray cat did not look impressed. She looked cute when she sat while placing her forepaws between her rear limbs. Her slender tail swished around in a sinuous pattern.

"Mraw mraw."

"I know the ghost I created is nothing impressive to the likes of you, but cut me some slack, please. Can you interface with my device and try to use it to establish a connection, now? I am really curious to see what will happen on the first attempt."

The gray cat rolled her eyes, but she did as instructed.

Once Helena interfaced with the experimental device and learned how to forge a rudimentary connection with the artificial ghost, an immediate reaction took place.

Pop.

The ghost exploded like a balloon.

"...I can't say I did not foresee this outcome."

"Mraw."