The C-Man did not look worse off from the battle at all. In fact, the heat sizzling from its overheated frame made it look powerful and dangerous in a way that excited both men and women.
Since most of the viewers who disliked the C-Man had already turned away from the broadcast, the tens of millions of people that had continued to watch up to this point developed overwhelmingly positive opinions about the new expert mech.
Of those viewers, the majority of them simply thought that the C-Man was strong and featured interesting new tech.
A smaller proportion of them were more ardent in their appreciation of the C-Man. They dreamt of piloting the expert mech themselves or wished to acquire a more accessible mech that fought in a similar fashion.
It was these mech fanatics and superfans that played the biggest role at this point!
The C-Man's existence and impressive showing had stimulated these admirers to such a degree that they actually began to display behavior that was awfully similar to worship.
At least at this time, the C-Man had become an idol that they felt compelled to worship as an existence that was more than just an expert mech.
The mech fanatics began to worship the C-Man as if it was a god.
Of course, their behavior was not overtly religious. They appreciated the C-Man as a mech and not as a living deity. Yet the distinction was not important as their intensity and their devotion towards the expert brawler mech had surpassed a certain threshold.
Invisible to anyone except a select few individuals, the divine markers integrated in each individual component of the C-Man began to absorb the spiritual feedback generated by many devoted fans.
Though the energy they passed on without their knowing was weak, the quantity of feedback was still respectable.
Gloriana observed the projected feed of the C-Man closely.
It was difficult for her to examine what was truly taking place, but her instincts told her that the C-Man was likely evolving its physical form at a faster pace than usual!
"I need to examine my work right away!" She gasped!
The show came to an end. The broadcast ended shortly after Ves held a short speech, leaving many viewers excited and hungry for more.
Hours later, the Larkinsons at the training field returned to the Cat Nest. While other clansmen handled the aftermath of the public testing session, a couple of people had gathered in the secure workshop room where Gloriana personally repaired the fixed battle damage of her expert mech.
"There!" Gloriana happily announced. "The C-Man is completely restored. Your expert mech has regained full functionality of its arm."
Venerable Vincent nodded his head in appreciation. "Thank you for what you have done, madame. I can already feel my expert mech is hungry for a rematch against the Everchanger."
Ves uttered a cough. "You will have to wait a few days as we aren't ready to hold another testing session soon. We need to do this step by step. While it may feel to you that the C-Man is completely fine, it is better to be careful and systematically test its performance so that we can be sure that it will not malfunction in battle. We still have a lot of questions with regards to the TESMAS utilized by your expert mech. It is a customized version of Professor Almar's original product and has incorporated many changes. We need to understand exactly how its performance has been affected before we feel comfortable fielding the C-Man once again. We already took a considerable risk in allowing you to fight with it in front of a huge crowd."
The expert pilot looked disappointed. Although he was the closest partner to the C-Man, he ultimately did not own the expert mech. It was property of the Larkinson Clan which meant that Vincent had to wait for instructions from above if he wanted to pilot his new battle partner.
"I will look forward to the next testing session, then."
"Don't get too excited, Vincent. You had your fun this time but we still need to gather systematic data on the C-Man's many performance indicators. We only allowed you to take part in a show match because we needed to play to the crowd."
"What? You're not going to show off my expert mech again?"
"Not until we have done our due diligence and cleared the C-Man for serious combat operations."
"That will take too long! You can't leave my expert mech in the dark for too long. The fans we've created will forget about me and my C-Man if we don't show up again after a while."
Gloriana walked up to the two men and interrupted them. "Vincent has a point, Ves. We should still conduct the necessary tests, but we should also find more opportunities to display the C-Man in public. We don't have to hold more show matches. We can start a PR campaign that can simultaneously promote our clan, our expanding product catalog as well as the C-Man itself. We will be able to hit three birds with a single stone with this approach!"
"That… makes sense, but only if we are okay with allowing the C-Man to become an iconic symbol of the Larkinson Clan." Ves slowly replied. "You know how the public has reacted to our latest work. The C-Man is a polarizing and divisive mech! It's too masculine!"
"I don't see a problem with that, Ves. We have plenty of mechs that are neutral and feminine. As long as we display our other products alongside the C-Man, we can appeal to a wider group of people! I am certain we can generate a lot of interest in our Hexer mechs!"
"..."