The Mech Touch

A handful of fanatics came across the Lady Deathʼs Heel in a completely coincidental manner. Ves pushed the mech to the forefront of the catalog with a modest amount of spending. Every player in the Bright Republic encountered images of the mech in a handful of days, but most didnʼt pay attention to it at all.

They quickly regretted their neglect for this mech. Over a span of a couple of days, it had grown into the latest fad. A decent number of bold girls with plenty of credits or in-game gold to spare started to purchase the Heel by the thousands.

After that, they rained death from the skies.

One of the most successful and iconic Heel pilots was a seventeen year old girl called Irenal. As a daughter of a pair of bureaucrats on Rittersberg, she enjoyed a lot of privilege when she grew up. When the government discovered she possessed the aptitude to pilot a mech, her parents encouraged her to train her potential abilities.

Although she lacked the talent and the drive to work hard, Irenal nevertheless enjoyed so many tutoring sessions that she had reached the top ten percent of her age group. Her parentʼs money and influence ensured she attended one of Rittersbergʼs elite mech academies, and she flourished under the high-pressure learning environment.

In actual fact, she had become a little bored of the life of a potentate. She spent most of her time training for class or training according to the schedule made by her tutors. Irenal hardly spent any time with her friends.

Iron Spirit formed an important part of her training as the other simulators played like single-player games. No matter how sophisticated they tried to emulate human mech pilots, they always felt too robotic.

The sheer chaos, genius and unpredictability of fighting against humans taught Irenal to stay on her toes. People pulled off all kinds of crazy things. Since she lived a rather sheltered life among the cultured society of Rittersberg, she constantly got bullied around online.

That all changed when she first saw an ad for the Lady Deathʼs Heel. The distinctive-looking feminine mech appealed to her fashion senses. Its sharp and narrow profile along with its elegant and fashionable curves appealed to her aesthetic sense.

Itʼs highly distinctive fighting style sounded completely different from every other mech she had seen so far. She desperately wanted to stave off her boredom, and an interesting mech like the Heel sounded just about right.

Without any further hesitation, she threw a bunch of credits at the store. ”Now, youʼre mine.”

She went over the specs of her latest purchase and understood somewhat on how to use the mech. The Lady Deathʼs Heel excelled against melee landbound mechs. They couldnʼt retaliate against the aerial light mech when it started its descent.

”On the other hand, a bunch of rifleman mechs will easily be able to chew this mech apart.” Irenal bit her lip.

She decided to take the mech for a spin in a massive 200v200 Wartorn Instance. Even though the mech couldnʼt be run for very long, the Wartorn Instances offered plenty of opportunities to replenish spent supplies. It was more important for her to maximize the chance of encountering a landbound melee mech.

”In duels, itʼs a complete guess whether Iʼll face a melee mech or not. I can only pick the largest battle I can enter and find my own targets.”

After a short period of waiting, the matchmaking process finished and the players connected onto the hangar that brought all two-hundred mechs in a single place.

Irenal ignored the bickering armchair generals trying to organize the players into following their chosen strategies. She had her own game plan in mind, and it did not entail working together with others.

As soon as the hangar door opened, Irenal engaged the Heelʼs flight system and flew out. The battlefield this time consisted of a half-frozen aquatic moon environment. This was both good and bad for aerial mechs like the Heel.

”One one hand, the lack of air makes it difficult for the Heel to vent its heat while in the air. On the other hand, it can quickly dump its head onto the frozen ground as long as it lands.”

Other aerial mechs that possessed a working pair of legs would find no trouble landing on the ground I was a different case for the Lady Deathʼs Heel, which could not even stand upright on the ground. It had to lay in an unlady-like sprawl when it lost all of its power.

Irenal ignored this minor inconvenience and set out from the base. The instant she dove her consciousness deeper into her mech, she felt some kind of energy passing over her mind. She shuddered a bit as a previously latent desire to kill became a little more prominent.

”I really want to kill someone with this mech.”

Her desires became stoked and her bloodthirsty side started to gain strength. She boldly swept towards the enemy side of the battlefield and started to sweep her eyes over the light mechs that occasionally flitted past.

Even though she immediately wanted to make an attack run, she knew that light mechs would not let themselves be caught.

”Iʼve got to find a medium or heavy mech.”

After a few minutes of circling, the area became a little more crowded with enemy mechs. She often had to swing her aerial mech away from the anti-air pointed in her direction. After she had been driven out to the periphery of the frontlines, she happened to have encountered a juicy target.

”Thatʼs a medium knight! Heʼs all alone!”

Knights almost never moved alone. They always grouped up with at least a single ranged mech in order to cover situations just like this. Irenal grinned, and she started to see red. ”Dive, my mech!”

The Lady Deathʼs Heel hovered several kilometers in the air, but abruptly started descending. The lack of air resistance on the battlefield enabled the Heel to dive even faster. Despite this, the mech shook a little as its flight systems exertised its full effort into accelerating the fall.

The knight mechʼs low-quality sensors finally alerted the pilot to a potential threat from the air. Its main head swiveled towards the air and found a tiny speck closing in. The pilot of the knight started to panic.

”An aerial mech! Damn! I thought this route was safe!”

Due to a lack of better options, the knight pilot controlled his machine to brace itself against the grown. It knelt down on one knee and braced the enormous kite shield against its arms at an angle facing upwards.

The pilot didnʼt bother trying to dodge. His knight mech was too slow, even if it barely fell into the mediumweight classification.

In the meantime, the more the Lady Deathʼs Heel dove down, the more her passion became stoked. Her heart beat faster as her anticipation ballooned to an unprecedented level. Her smile grew wider and crooked as various thoughts sprung to her mind.

Within seconds, the Heel reached the ground. The knight mech put up a desperate struggle, not quite knowing what it faced. If it knew a little bit more about the Heel, he might have chosen to dodge or find some kind of alcove in the frozen seas.

”Hahahaha! Death from above!”

The collision happened instantly. Irenal underestimated the force her mech brought to bear. Even if she piloted a light mech, they still consisted of many tons of alloys and composites. Not even the thickest mech armor could withstand the power of a falling mech concentrated into a single point.

The Heelʼs pointed spike mounted on its lower body did its job. It pierced through the knight mechʼs shield as if it was paper, and proceeded to dump an incredible amount of kinetic energy in its chest. The penetrative qualities of the bottom spike had instantly bumped against the chest armor of the knight, which was one of its best protected portions.

It lasted only milliseconds before the spike ran straight through the frontal armor. Still, the armor did bleed off a decent amount of momentum, so while the spike had managed to pierce through the back, it ran out of steam at that point.

”This.... this mech is fantastic!” Irenal exclaimed, but quickly halted her celebration when she found out the mech below her spike still showed signs of moving. It tried to grasp onto a sword that had fallen a bit away from its fingers.

”Oh no you donʼt. Your time is finished here.”

This time, Irenal remembered that her mech came with a light hammer. She raised the handle of the weapon and swung it down against the torso of the knight. She hadnʼt meant to aim at anything in particular. She just wanted to wreck the sitting duck apart.

This time, the hammer just happened to fall in front of a very sensitive area to men.

”Yeouch! That hurt!” The other pilot cried over the open channel.

The neural connection between pilots and mechs went both ways. If the pilot got hurt, the mech got hurt, and if the mech got hurt, the pilot received a little damage as well. In the game, this reciprocal connection was kept to a minimum in order to prevent the players from being overwhelmed by pain.

It still felt awfully unpleasant for men to get hit down below.

Irenal grew a little interested at the manʼs extreme response. Her mech raised its hammer yet again and let it fall on the exact same spot.

”My nuts! Stop it! Please have mercy on me!”

The woman grinned when she heard the pleas. Ordinarily, she should have finished off her opponent and find some other prey in order to tilt the battle in the favor of her team.

Yet some kind of urge held her back from moving on. She wanted to derive more satisfaction against the mech that her mech had mercilessly impaled onto the ground.

The hammer rose and fell for at least a dozen times. The torso area became more dented and broken with each swing of the hammer. The knight adopted a defensive build, so its waist enjoyed a lot of protection.

A single light hammer wielded by a light mech wouldnʼt be able to break the shell with a couple of swings.

Nevertheless, Irenal didnʼt mind this at all. Instead, she began to get lost in her own world as the hammer kept banging against the mechʼs lower waist. Even its engine module broke down from all of the stress and shocks. The knight could not be piloted anymore, and the entire mech turned into a greyed-out mech.

That meant its mech pilot had forcibly logged out of the match. Anyone who left the match prematurely suffered a lot of penalties from the game. The knight pilot suffered so much redirected pain that he couldnʼt take it anymore.

”Hahahahaha!” Irenal laughed in a deranged manner as her satisfaction broke through the roof. It felt good to hammer down a man. ”More!”

Her mech lifted up into the air with difficulty. The brutal collision damaged the spike to the point where it incurred a minor mind.

The woman cared nothing for this, and sought out another prey with gusto. She eventually found an isolated medium swordsman mech and chose to impale it from the skies.

This time, her opponent reacted a little smarter and moved his mech into speeds. It darted along the frozen wastelands in order to make it hard for the Heel to pin it down.

Still, despite its best efforts, Irenal succeeded in predicting its final moments. The swordsman mech became impaled upon the frozen sea. The shock to the Heel was immense, but it had been designed to withstand several of these kinds of shocks in quick suggestion. The mech wouldnʼt fall apart that easily.

The swordsman mech impaled to the ground started to struggle. It had managed to keep hold of its sword, and began to slash apart the spike that nailed it onto the surface of the moon.

”Nuh-uh. You wonʼt get away from me!”

The hammer banged down against the sword, flicking it out of the swordsman mechʼs reach with a single blow.

The subsequent hammer blows fell down onto the lower waist of the defenseless swordsman mech. Its pilot howled as Irenal went to town with his mech.

The swordsman mech pilot quickly logged out as well, depriving her of her latest toy.

”Oh well, itʼs not like I can find a new toy to play with.” She said to herself as she lifted her increasingly battered mech to the air.

By the end of the match, she ruined five different mechs. Her mech had become one of the most prominent ones on the battlefield, and everyone who took part in the Wartorn Instance got to see a quick highlight of her actions.

Witnessing the mech demolish five mechs in a row with the exact same brutish methods led to extreme indignation among the men.

”Whoever designed this mech is a devil!”