The Mech Touch

5991 A Life of Struggle

Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson was in pain.

For days on end, he spent his tlying on a bed that had been moved to the darkened mech workshop.

His stomach and gradually the rest of his body continued to suffer as tiny quantities of phasewater dispersed throughout his bloodstream and constantly threatened to tear open his veins and other body tissue.

"Nghh…"

He should have known that this would happen.

He was not ignorant about the consequences of ingesting phasewater. There were so many warning stories on the galacticthat even children knew better than to get into contact with this lethal substance.

Just because it had 'water' in its ndid not mean it was drinkable!

Yet despite how foolish it was for him to do so, Tusa did not refuse Ves' challenge.

The competitive part of his mind irrationally wanted to accept the challenge.

Since Ves believed that Tusa could do it, then what was the harm of swallowing a bit of phase lord blood?

He already regretted this decision shortly after phasewater began to wreak havoc in his mind.

Fortunately, Ves was right that Tusa's willpower along with Blackwing's shadow control could exert just enough suppression to keep the phasewater in line.

It was not easy. Tusa constantly felt as if he was holding the leash of a bucking horse. He had to maintain constant focus and keep his willpower active on drops of phasewater that continued to circulate throughout his body.

While Tusa had reasons to feel confident that he could stay in control at first, as the struggle to exert his willpower and keep track of the phasewater in his body dragged on, he becincreasingly more strained over time.

The difficulty of keeping phasewater in check constantly rose as a result. The struggle turned more and more life-

threatening as Tusa found himself straining his willpower far longer than he used to whenever he was piloting his expert mech.

The battles he participated in never demanded Tusa to resonate with his mech and strain his willpower for hours or days on end!

Tusa had always considered himself to be a sprinter rather than a marathon runner. He excelled in quick and surgical strikes. Neither his combat approach nor the Dark Zephyr were suited for prolonged attrition warfare.

Yet that was exactly what he ended up with after ingesting a bit of phasewater!

Tusa cursed under his breath for the umpteenth tas he blamed Ves for accepting a challenge that happened to target one of his weaknesses.

"No wonder they call him the Devil Tongue!"

After accompanying Ves for so many years, Tusa finally fell victim to the patriarch's infernal persuasion.

The result was that Tusa unexpectedly entered into another struggle of his life!

The hours that passed since the expert pilot got hoodwinked by Ves had becone of the most difficult tests of his life.

The mental burden of exerting his willpower was already bad enough. Whenever he slipped up, he would have to endure the pain of feeling his own flesh shift in ways they shouldn't!

He already began to suffer a few instances of internal bleeding!

If not for the fact that his own piloting suit cwith automated injury treatment functions, he would have been in much worse shape by this time!

Unfortunately, the suit had never been designed to neutralize or remove any phasewater that happened to enter his body. Tusa could only rely on his own efforts to keep his body whole.

"Pf! I am not going to let that smug bastard's blood defeat my resolve. This isn't the first struggle of my life!"

Since the day he was born in the Larkinson Family, he learned that he was a little different from his other cousins.

Many Larkinsons took pride in their names. The spouses that married into one of the relatively famous military families of the Bright Republic mostly abandoned their old family names in order to embrace a more honorable mantle.

Not so for Tusa's branch of the family. His parents and ancestors took pride in calling themselves the Billingsley-

Larkinsons.

The implication at the twas that they considered the Billingsley Family on the slevel as the Larkinson Family.

Larkinsons often stood out from the rest of their generation due to their names alone.

Tusa had to fight against the childish suspicions and faint exclusions of the other children he grew up alongside. There were times where he cried in his bed because his cousins treated him as if he was an outsider rather than a Larkinson.

For this reason, the first struggle of his life was to prove he was a genuine Larkinson!

There was little he could do to prove himself as a child. Neither the adults nor the other kids took him seriously.

However, Tusa quickly realized that the age of 10 was a watershed moment for every descendant of the Larkinson Family.

Each child who reached this age got tested for their genetic aptitudes.

A large majority of boys and girls cout of the testing room with crushed expressions. It was not strange for them to cry every day of the week as they failed to recognize reality.

Once they had no tears left to cry, the new teenagers reluctantly acknowledged the truth and went on to think about growing up to fulfill other jobs.

Tusa did not want to join their ranks. There was nothing wrong with becoming a norm, but the young Billingsley-

Larkinson believed that it was ten times harder to prove that he was a part of the family if he failed to distinguish himself this way!

As a baseline human that never showed any notable talent, Tusa did not have anything special going for him. He was not an academic genius, nor an artist in the making.

Unlike his grandfather, he knew nothing about business and got bored whenever he was forced to learn how to manage real estate.

Tusa never wanted to study those boring subjects! He hated the thought of becoming a businessman!

If he was fated to beca norm, then at least he wanted to enlist in the Mech Corps in order to support the true heroes of the Bright Republic!

His odds were not the best. Unlike numerous other children, neither his parents nor grandparents were potentates. To children as young as Tusa, that meant that they probably faced an uphill battle when it cto acquiring the right genetic aptitude!

The worst part about growing up in that age bracket was the complete inability for children to improve their developing genetic aptitudes.

Each kid learned plenty of ways on how to reduce their chances of becoming a mech pilot.

Getting their head hammered to the point of suffering actual brain damage was a surefire way to ruin one's genetic aptitude. Poor nutrition or outright starvation also weakened brain development to the point of sealing people's fates as norms.

In contrast, the Larkinsons always emphasized to their children that there was essentially nothing they could do to promote their chances. No matter whether they spent most of their ton playing sports, studying knowledge or socializing with each other, no single activity had ever been correlated with the development of the right genetic aptitude.

This left a lot of children anxious and restless as they approached the critical age. Every 9-year old kid becincreasingly more aware that the first major turning point of their lives was about to arrive.

Tusa was no exception!

This was the only struggle where he truly felt helpless to change his fate. No amount of fighting or work could make a difference. He could only spend his days at school with constant doubts on his mind.

This was why the outcof the test granted him so much relief.

"I'm a potentate! I can pilot mechs!"

Discovering that he not only possessed the right genetic aptitude, but also above the threshold required to pilot combat mechs in a serious capacity

"My genetic aptitude is C! I can enroll in any mech academy!"

Third-rate states such as the Bright Republic never imposed high demands on genetic aptitude.

Many mech academies even accepted potentates with D-

grade genetic aptitudes as they could still serve as cannon fodder once they learned how to pilot frontline mechs.

His life started to pick up after that. It was as if he finally received compensation for all of the doubts and misery of his early childhood.

Many other cousins failed to obtain the right genetic aptitude. The Larkinson Family always raised a lot of descendants with the obvious expectation that only a fraction of them would be able to serve in the Mech Corps as mech pilots.

Instantly, many boys and girls that previously pretended to be better Larkinsons than Tusa had no leg to stand on anymore. How dare these norms claim that Tusa was a fake when they couldn't even contribute to their state as fighters?

Tusa was over the moon. The Larkinson Family possessed excellent connections with numerous mech academies, so he had no issue with enrolling into one that already did a good job in training a lot of Larkinson descendants.

In fact, it was not unusual for retired Larkinson mech pilots to serve as mech instructors in those very smech academies!

It was then that Tusa began the second struggle of his life.

"Mech piloting is hard."

It took 12 to 15 years of full-tstudying and training in order to beca qualified mech pilot.

Tusa had to spend much of that ton learning math and science. Even if the mech academies dumbed all of the complicated science down, it was still difficult for the mech cadets to becproficient in subjects that did not interest them in the slightest!

Then Tusa had to exercise his body and practice personal combat skills. Since the combat effectiveness of a mech was highly dependent on the fighting skills of the mech pilot, mech academies always forced their cadets to becproficient fighters even without the involvement of a mech.

The physical training might not be too intense, but it often sapped their strength, causing them to retain less energy for other training!

The piloting sessions were the most enjoyable moments for the mech cadets. Tusa spent a lot of ton virtual reality training simulations where he could fool around with virtual mechs without worrying about breaking anything expensive.

Yet it was the realspace practice sessions that excited him the most!

The chance to interface with actual mechs granted him validation and allowed him to feel that he had becan actual Larkinson.

However, Tusa soon learned that piloting mechs was not easy.

It did not matter if he crashed a virtual mech, but the story was completely different with actual mechs. He could not afford to make any mistakes and often had to practice the srepetitive movements and actions over and over again until he completely mastered all sorts of operations.

Plenty of classmates began to overtake him. Tusa felt less worthy of the Larkinson nas his learning ability and his genetic aptitude failed to make him stand out from the rest of his fellow cadets.

Though the Larkinson Family always helped out its descendants by offering private training, they only helped Tusa up to a certain point.

It bectoo difficult for him to excel in any of his classes!

This was why he decided to specialize in a single mech archetype early on. If he wanted to becmore than an ordinary grunt in the Mech Corps, then he needed to forget about mastering everything and put all of his effort into mastering a single mech.

This turned out to be a lot harder than he thought. As a young mech cadet, he had yet to develop his skills, let alone put enough tin becoming familiar with every possible mech type.

How the hell was he supposed to figure out his specialization without wasting so much ton training combat skills that ultimately becirrelevant?