While Venerable Joshua started a journey of introspection after he received a crucial wakeup call from his living mech, Venerable Vincent Ricklin faced an entirely different problem. "These energy shields are too tough!" His C-Man charged towards an alien destroyer and increased the size and mass of its fists by rearranging the layout of its smart metal armor system. While Vincent tried his best to maximize the transphasic power of his TESMAS by resonating with both Bravo and his expert brawler mech, it was hard for him to exert any greater might without the assistance of a handy weapon like the Scarlet Ember. "Taste my fists!" Having failed to break the increasingly more notorious segmented energy shields employed by practically every alien warship, Vincent had adopted a smarter approach towards this battle. Instead of sticking to the mindless approach of letting the C-Man pound its fists against the energy shields of an enemy ship, Vincent wisened up and remembered there were more ways to break past a powerful obstruction. "What if... I approach this fight like a lancer mech, except without a lance?" The C-Man could easily rely on its mass and momentum to overwhelm one of the segmented energy shields of an intact destroyer! This was why he resisted the temptation to continue punching and drew his expert mech away so that it could build up a lot of speed. Once Vincent felt he had waited long enough, he directed his machine to circle back to the enemy fleet and charge towards a destroyer that had not been affected up to this point. Even as several nearby alien vessels tried to intercept the charging expert mech by directing their gun batteries to fire in its direction, Vincent simply toughed it out and put his trust in the C-Man's resonance shield. "BREAK FOR ME!" He roared! The C-Man collided against a segmented energy shield like a battering ram! The guts and momentum of Vincent and his expert mech produced a powerful impact that heavily shook the energy barrier to the point where it finally failed! While the C-Man barely had enough momentum left to push through the hole it had just made, the expert mech wasn't feeling so good anymore either. Venerable Vincent winced as he felt how much strain and damage its TESMAS had suffered. The powerful and experimental Transphasic Energized Smart Metal Armor System may have been designed to flexibly resist and absorb a lot of incoming attacks, but it had never been designed to cope with so much abuse! Still, despite the complaints from his own expert mechs, Vincent was glad that he finally managed to do what other expert mechs like the Amaranto and Everchanger had done! It may have taken him a while to get through, but at least he could touch the surface of an enemy destroyer now that he got inside! Though the warship in question still tried to drive away the C-Man by turning as many of her gun batteries in its direction, Vincent smirked at this feeble response. "My expert mech has already taken enough damage as it is. I'm not going to let you hurt my baby any further!" There was an easy way for mechs to prevent themselves from getting targeted by most of the gun batteries of an enemy ship. They just needed to get close! There were certain positions on an enemy vessel's hull that were much more awkward for them to repel a parasite than others. Vincent had already studied the exterior layout of the alien warship and knew exactly where his expert mech needed to go in order to escape any further attacks. His C-Man deftly evaded many of the desperate attacks launched by the warship while its battered resonance shield blocked the ones that couldn't be avoided. This didn't last long as the C-Man finally approached the stern of the enemy vessel. An array of large, triangular thrusters were positioned at the rear. They burned hotter and provided more thrust in an attempt to deter the expert mech from getting any closer. The alien ship also began to engage her maneuvering thrusters so that she could put her entire hull into a complicated spin. It wasn't enough! "If you think I'm afraid of getting dizzy, then think again!" The C-Man easily landed into a cranny at the stern of the spinning vessel. The feet of the expert brawler mech automatically turned magnetic in order to maintain its footing on the surface. Though the heat generated by the nearby thrusters made it rather uncomfortable for the C-Man to stick around for long, it was far from serious enough to drive the expert mech away! "Let's see what you are made of!" Vincent grinned. The C-Man began to crouch and began to tear into the hull of the enemy destroyer! While it was fairly difficult for the expert mech to punch through meters of solid alloy, there were plenty of surface modules and other weak points that made it a lot easier to open new holes. Vincent soon discovered that the warship's hull structure wasn't so tough after all. The only major inconvenience was that there was so much metal in the way that a mech that was armed with only its fists needed to invest a lot of time and effort to reach an important section such as what passed for an engineering bay to the alien vessel. Thinking about how Venerable Joshua and the Everchanger instantly crippled a warship by chopping its fancy new plasma sword at the hull made him feel impotent. He didn't think his C-Man was any worse than the Everchanger! "Bravo! Let's work together and show how a manly mech doesn't need to rely on any powerful new toys! Let's punch our way into the depths of this ship!" The expert pilot's determination caused him to muster up more strength and resonate with his machine to a greater degree. The C-Man happened to share his sentiments, so it tried to reciprocate as much as possible. On top of that, the design spirit also provided his support! The expert brawler mech began to glow increasingly brighter as three different but united influences all joined hands for the sole purpose of preventing themselves from getting upstaged by their rivals! An echo of true power coursed through the malleable frame of the C-Man. As Vincent directed it to launch a flurry of punches into the hull of the destroyer, each fist seemed to cause an explosion of power that spread across the structure behind the immediate impact site. It was as if the punches of the C-Man was able to produce a lesser imitation of the Thunderer Mark II's concussive shockwave attacks! Neither Vincent nor his two battle partners cared about pirating the methods of a fellow warrior. They were just happy that they were making more and more progress. Each success fueled their confidence which in turn allowed them to channel greater strength in their next attacks! In the end, the C-Man had dug deep enough to finally break into an important hall where the aliens had installed their warp drive as well as a couple of their most important power generators. Numerous tiny suited alien figures yelled in panic or took out various small arms and opened fire at the giant mech that had torn its way inside. Vincent paid no attention to the pinpricks that bounced off the resonance shield of his C-Man and looked at all of the strange metal devices that were channeling a lot of energy. "This looks important. I wonder what will happen if I SMASH IT WITH MY FISTS?!" The C-Man acted like a bull in a china shop and began to punch and kick anything that looked remotely important and sophisticated! Even though a few of the devices exploded violently when ruptured, Vincent and his battle partners only felt more glee as they successfully ruined the alien destroyer from the inside! By the time the C-Man tore its way out with its fists, the alien destroyer was practically dead in the water! All but a few of her segmented energy shields had disappeared and she had also lost all of her main propulsion systems. A strong sense of accomplishment and satisfaction overtook Vincent. He, his expert mech and its design spirit had managed to do what the Everchanger had done by relying on nothing but a good mech frame and a lot of manly confidence! "Hah! Did you see that, Joshua!? I can cripple an enemy destroyer by myself as well!" Vincent was so happy with his accomplishment that he completely overlooked the fact that in the time it took for the C-Man to disable an enemy warship, the Everchanger managed to do the same to six comparable vessels! The only advantage that the C-Man gained over the Everchanger was that it had expended a lot less energy in the process. The C-Man wasn't close to reaching exhaustion while the Everchanger was burning through its energy reserves at an insane rate. "C'mon! The fight is far from over!" Venerable Vincent enthusiastically directed his C-Man to leap towards another nearby warship and repeat the same process yet again! It took a little less time for his expert mech to cripple another warship. Though he still made a lot of mistakes, he tried his best to avoid them when he recognized that he had messed up his moves. A part of him found it regretful that the warships he was fighting against were too clumsy to exercise his brawling skills, but another part of him enjoyed the process of wrecking so many large and powerful vessels! The battlefield had turned into a playground where Vincent and his two buddies eagerly punched and kicked up one sandcastle after another. Though Vincent's dueling ability hadn't improved in the slightest, he developed several new methods where his C-Man could inflict more damage than before. He experimented with several different approaches. In one instance, he instructed his C-Man to turn its fists into giant arm blades. Though the new limbs allowed the expert brawler mech to slice through hulls with greater ease, Vincent missed the meaty kinetic impact of a satisfying punch attack. In another instance, Vincent tried to make his expert mech turn its arms into drills and see if that would help it get inside faster. That particular experiment failed spectacularly, but at least Vincent understood the limits of his expert mech better. As the expert pilot continued to explore better ways to destroy enemy warships, his resonance strength steadily grew without his notice. Though his progress was much slower, his earnest efforts to work with his expert mech and improve his own combat methods had enabled him to make much more progress than Venerable Joshua in this span of time! When Ves noticed this detail as he observed the conditions of the Larkinson expert pilots, he almost couldn't believe what he was seeing. He found it ironic that a more flawed and single-minded expert pilot who only managed to break through with the help of the transcendence glow was outpacing the Larkinson Clan's golden boy! Venerable Joshua should have been making a lot more progress in his growth on account of piloting one of the best masterwork expert mechs of the Larkinson Clan. Instead, the young expert pilot not only failed to make any progress, but actually regressed to an extent! Joshua's resonance strength had dropped compared to where he was at the start of this battle! Ves furrowed his brows. He vowed to look into what was happening with his favorite expert pilot, but this was not the time for introspection. Even though the Golden Skull Alliance had made great progress into wiping out the opposing small craft and warships, time was slowly running out. The reinforcements that the Gemini Family warned about had probably drawn a lot closer than before! "Are there any signs of incoming enemies?" "No, sir. The scouts and listening devices that we have spread in every direction have yet to detect any incoming threats." "Keep an eye on any spatial phenomena. If any reinforcements are about to arrive, I bet they will make use of phasewater technology. They won't come in through the front door."