The Mech Touch

Three hunting teams. More of them existed, but Crindon found these three to be notable enough that Ves should consider them first.

Each of them exhibited very different combat styles.

The slow and methodical Cadence Hunters.

The fast and furious Rocit Butchers.

The strong and mysterious Mark of Caantz.

Ves regarded each of them with doubt. In his perspective, the three neatly embodied three different extremes.

The first drew strength from rationality.

The second fought with passion.

The third followed a belief!

For some reason, Ves saw bits and pieces of himself in each of the three hunting teams!

The thought discomfited him a bit. How could he see himself in the Mark of Caantz! He wasn't a religious nut! He was a Brighter, a born secularist! He hated superstition!

Ves furiously shook his head and rid himself of the nonsense that polluted his mind.

"Let's leave aside the Mark of Caantz." He said gently, trying not to be too explicit with his bias. "They are probably overqualified for my needs and they might pose unusual demands. I think it's better to start with the Cadence Stalkers and the Rocit Butchers and keep an eye on other mech hunting teams that haven't been mentioned yet. Any opinions?"

Imon raised his hand. "I think the Mark of Caantz ought to be under consideration, Mr. Larkinson. The footage depicting the three hunting teams couldn't be more clear on which one is the best. The Cadence Stalkers haven't shown any fighting spirit while the Rocit Butchers indulge too much in senseless violence. If the footage represents them accurately, then I'd say Mark possesses the right balance!"

"My brother is right. The Stalkers appear to be our safest option, but they're too methodical to the point that they're probably far weaker when they are faced with unanticipated situations. The Butchers are willing fighters, but their lack of tactics leaves me doubtful that they'll be able to provide adequate protection to you while they are high on battle lust."

"The Mark aren't the easiest hunting team to hire, but they are still rather open compared to the more exclusive hunting teams and outfits. They have a good track record and are known for their honor."

Of course they were, Ves inwardly scoffed. Religious fanatics always abided by their rules!

"Let us not cast our vision too high and overlook the lower-hanging fruit." He spoke, hoping to dissuade the others from considering the Mark any further. "Let's move on from this topic. It isn't the time yet for me to make a selection. I first have to determine which huge cat suits my needs the most. Ingvars, please report on the progress you've made so far."

Casella Ingvar shuffled forward with some hesitation.

"We've managed to gather some descriptions of some of the animals on your list, sir. Although we haven't been able to ascertain the reliability of the information we've gathered, I think they are reasonably accurate."

Ves looked at her sharply. "Can you judge that for sure or is your gut feeling telling you that?"

"...The latter."

"Then don't say something like that. You are letting your own bias taint your findings." He pointed out.

He conveniently ignored how he expressed his dislike of the Mark of Caantz just then due to their religious traits!

"Ah, my apologies, Mr. Larkinson." The female mech pilot said. "The information we've gathered came from professional mech pilots who we've managed to befriend while drinking at a couple of bars. They opened their mouths easily enough when we plied them with free drinks."

"How much of the budget I've allocated to you is left?"

"We spent all of it. We had to end our investigation sooner than I thought when we ran through the money."

Ves refrained from palming his face. He set a fairly generous budget! Yet the pot had been emptied far too quickly! Were the Ingvars even aware of the value of money?!

"Ugh. Whatever. It's only 100,000 bright credits." He muttered before he turned his attention back to Casella. "Please sum up the stories you've heard. They better be good."

She smiled. "Kemila is rife with stories about the huge cats. The tales spoken about the Crown Cats are the most popular, but anecdotes related to the other huge cats in the hunting zones are prevalent as well. The older the huge cat, the more stories it accumulated."

She activated the projector and loaded it up with her own files. The first recording displayed a white-furred snow leopard-like beast. The only abnormal detail that set it apart from terrestrial snow leopard was its strange, shining green eyes that pulsed with light!

"Old Smokey here has survived for over a decade despite his lack of strength compared to the other huge cats. He's described as a wiley huge cat who prefers to hide and evade a hunt rather than to attack the mechs aiming at his life."

"What are his strengths?" Ves asked.

"The leopard possesses exceptional perception. It's how he evades most hunts before they can find and corner him. It's said his green eyes are so good that they can detect signals and other energy emissions! Since almost every mech emits emissions, the cat can see every mech coming from kilometers away!"

"That sounds impressive, but it's not exactly what I need. Has Old Smokey exhibited any unusual traits at all? Something that gives him an edge in battle?"

"No. The battles he's been through have always been by the skin of his teeth. What the mech pilots who faced him in battle did mention was that Old Smokey had an uncanny ability to identify the weak points of a mech and deliberately target them in order to overcome his opponents."

Not enough. Ves couldn't determine whether Old Smokey utilized spirituality. His intuition told him that Old Smokey lacked that bit of flair that he associated with spirituality. At the very least, the huge white leopard did not show any abilities that surpassed his biological constraints.

"Next, please." He said, conveying his lack of interest towards the white leopard.

The projection switched to a larger, more ferocious-looking huge cat. The exobeast showed only a vague resemblance to cats as its outer surface glistened with yellow-brown scales. Thick whiskers trailed from its face, whereupon five eyes blinked in every forward-looking direction.

"The Dragon Cat as she's called is an exobeast that Felixia imported from the frontier. It is one of the rare exobeasts in Asco that hasn't been subjected to any genetic modification. It's wilder and more unrestrained and has racked up a lot of kills along the way. She's considered one of the more challenging huge cats to hunt because of her fearsome ability to accelerate at an instant and charge straight into a mech, impaling it with the horns on her head!"

Ves already read up on these basic details. "What do the hunters really say about the Dragon Cat?"

"Well, the hunters who claimed to have participated in the failed attempts to take her down say that they felt strange when they faced her in battle. They say that the reasons why many of their hunts failed despite their adequate preparation was because they lost their cool and got caught up in the fight."

That caused Ves to widen his eyes. "Their mood changed?"

She nodded. "Some of the hunters swear that even though they memorized all kinds of tactics and strategies to mitigate the charging attacks of the Dragon Cat, they failed to act according to plan when confronting her. It was as if the analytical part of their brains shut off. Attempts to capture her in a net, to harpoon her into place, to use an ultraheavy shield to blunt her charge and so on all failed because the mech pilots failed to perform their roles as well as they should!"

Ves leaned further and further forward while stroking Lucky's back. "Have the mech pilots who claimed to have hunted the Dragon Cat describe their conditions in greater detail?"

"Well, they're pretty ashamed about it. Lots of mech pilots received blame from their commanders for screwing up the hunt. Whenever they described their difficulties, their superiors rebuked the mech pilots because none of the sensors of the mechs picked up any unusual emissions from the Dragon Cat. In their eyes, the mech pilots probably quivered because they feared getting impaled by the Dragon Cat's formidable charge!"

"Interesting, interesting." Ves smiled.

Now this was more like it! The hunting teams wouldn't publicize stories like these because they were too shameful! He had already heard that the Dragon Cat acquired a reputation for causing bad luck to any hunters that wanted to hunt her down, but now he finally knew the reason why many hunting teams passed her over despite not being able to match many other huge cats in pure strength.

He ordered the Ingvars to dig up more stories about the Dragon Cat. He wanted to obtain more information in order to substantiate his suspicion that the Dragon Cat may have been playing with spirituality.

"What else is there?" He asked.

"Well, we've managed to question one mech pilot from a large hunting outfit who participated in the hunt against Zeigra, the Mech Cruncher!"

"The Crown Cat!?" Gavin gasped.

"Yes!" Casella and Imon looked very proud to have encountered a mech pilot who faced Zeigra and lived. "While the mech pilots didn't want to open his mouth at first, we managed to pursuade him to share some details that haven't been mentioned in any of the public reports."

Like his nickname suggested, Zeigra was a huge cat with a rust-bronze colored coat. The creature started off as yet another experimental test tube cat grown from House Laterna's labs.

When the researchers initially dumped Zeigra into a random hunting zone near Kemila, nobody paid any particular note to the cat due to its lack of size and strength.

As smaller hunting teams attempted to take down what they saw as an easy mark, they inexplicably failed. Zeigra proved to be feistier than comparable young huge cats. Not only that, but he started to grow quickly, as if he had just entered his growth spurt!

More hunts ensued, and more hunters failed. Zeigra quickly shot up in the ranking as he started to master the ambush approach. His ability to remain hidden and camouflage his presence became better and better.

"Every genetically-modified cat on Asco is altered to make it harder to track them by their scent, heat signature and other emissions." Casella noted. "This is so that tracking them will require actual effort on the part of the hunters. But the mech pilot claims that Zeigra is so hard to find that their hunting team wasted three times the amount of time they thought was necessary to track down the cat!"

As Zeigra continued to defeat more hunting teams, his fur grew increasingly more red! His strength and capabilities also grew in proportion, so much so that the Kemila Hunting Hall eventually confirmed that Zeigra's fighting capabilities had propelled the initially-unimpressive cat to the ranks of the Crown Cats!

Compared to other Crown Cats, Zeigra lacked an obvious killer ability that made him exceptionally difficult to deal with for many hunting teams. However, his overall mix of strength, speed, resilience, stealth, patience and intelligence was enough to break even the most formidable hunting outfit in Kemila!

"Zeigra is a fairly new Crown Cat and still ranks at the bottom of the listing." Casella mentioned. "However, according to the mech pilot we've questioned, the premier hunting outfits in Kemila all know that there's more to her than what is publicly known. There's a belief within the upper end of the hunting community that Zeigra is a metal eater!"

"A metal eater?!"

"Yes! According to this belief, the reason for Zeigra's explosive growth is that it has been munching certain parts from defeated mechs! When hunting teams kept serving their mechs to Zeigra, the cat grew faster and faster. At this point, Zeigra's ranking will probably shoot up even higher when the listing refreshes in a couple of months!"

"Is there more?"

"Yes! Not only is Zeigra capable of growing faster by consuming certain exotics, but there is also a belief that he can induce corrosion among the mechs he battles! Several mechs that faced Zeigra in battle faltered faster than usual, so much so that some mech designers suspect that the Crown Cat caused certain parts of a mech to break down in a suspicious manner!"