As I sit here making this on a JOY with a Shimano Industries shell, typing with fingers powered by scavenged SHI circuitry, watching a uni league press conference on a frazzled stream screen with that world-known fishook logo on its base, I figure it’s about time to talk about the corporation that almost ruled this city.
There was a time, maybe twenty years ago, where the name Shimano Heavy Industries was known all the way from Section Y to this tiny, greasy towerside noodle bar that Nabuna picked for us to eat at. Sick of chicken and rice, he said. I’m not picky. Neither are the other grey-cloaked Venters around us. Good noodles are a beat that anyone can dance to.
Until Thane shows up on the stream, at least. Behind the boiling oil steam, he steals the stream cam’s attention the moment he takes to the corner of the stage, bookending the lowest rank on the Concordia team. He doesn’t even talk. Didn’t even fight with them- I would know if he had, I check every night- but his presence alone makes people take note. A couple of the Venters start watching soon after I do. Even Nabuna keeps his eyes on the screen. As conflicted as it makes me feel, most of the undercity dwellers don’t have the reasons to loathe Thane that I do. They almost look at him like people used to look at Dad. That glint of hope, that faint awe of seeing someone who’s different to such an incomprehensible degree that they might as well be part of a different world.
I can’t exactly say I feel the same.
Which brings us back to reality. The crumbling state of the Vents, the looming darkness of the Shocks on the undercity horizon, the abject sadness that swallows my kinetic sense in an unending miasma.
Shimano Heavy Industries didn’t build this city, but they very nearly destroyed it. Generations ago, they started as humble autobike makers in the same coastal villages I call home. Only with the rise of their Mecha patriarch Shimano Yor did they earn their reputation as titans of industry that they still have today. Despite their attempt at a coup against Champion Fang, despite the entire Shimano clan being exiled from the Section, and despite the decades-long bloodfeud they waged against my father because of that, the name Shimano still holds two very clear places in everyone’s minds: pinnacle tech, and terrifying Mechas.
Every member of the Shimano clan was a Mecha to some degree. It’s as ubiquitous to their reputation as the tech they made, to the point of practically being hereditary. They’re one of the examples of a group that sticks to the tradition of passing down classes. Unlike something like the Lionharts and the Duelist class, the Mecha class offers a staggering amount of flexibility in the forms it can take. When you fire up the class on your JOY, you’re immediately granted the physical changes and augments that you’ve picked for it, which can range from cybernetic augments to control over entire Titan-class frames.
Most Mecha differentiate themselves based on frame type; though the class itself doesn’t discriminate between the options it gives. It offers a fixed pool of one hundred points that users can spend on mechanical enhancements, body reshaping, and hardpoint-mounted tech. If it’s related to cybernetics, prosthetics, cyborgs, or mech suits, you’ll find it as an option. Any of those changes that alter the user’s head or mind make them technological in nature, which has the incredibly powerful perk of making them entirely immune to Psis, who can only influence organic minds. That passive perk alone makes Mecha almost entirely worth as a class. While Guardians and other Psis can become incredibly resilient to mental tampering, Mecha are flat out immune to it.
On the downside, that inorganic nature naturally clashes with other classes too, like Ki Fighter. Ki can’t conduct through inorganic material- ask me how I know, I’ve got a metal arm and a story for you- which means that Mecha tend to be largely incompatible with the class. One of those rare instances where your classes can directly interfere with and contradict each other.
It’s fair to assume that another class suited for building tech, like Innovator, might make some parts of Mecha redundant. But that only holds true to a certain extent. Innovator tech can’t be as freely swapped or applied as Mecha hardpoints, nor does it run off of a limitless power or ammo supply. In fact, Innovator and Mecha gain more synergy when they’re paired together, which is why you’ll often see the classes getting twinned by top-end users. A Mecha can spend a hefty amount of their points on a titan core and customizations for it, but there’s no inherent way to summon/desummon the frame itself. Unlike the classes that can summon objects from an armory, a Mecha who wants to specialize in a titan frame has to build it themselves, meaning it can take real damage without being instantly re-summonable. An Innovator class gives them additional proficiency in creating said frame, and it also lets them save on their Mecha hardpoints by making additional tech by hand; rather than relying on the point system.
In a way, it’s not unlike the synergy between Modds and Biohancers. But more on that later.
Mecha frames are divided by both the nature of the hardpoints and the size of the frame itself. A cyborg frame isn’t all that different from a normal human on the surface. They typically rely on cybernetic enhancements to power up their normal body. Faster twitch reflexes, greatly enhanced durability, augmented senses like thermal vision, self-healing, and subdermal weaponry are all on the table. It’s not the most popular frame, but it’s a prime pick for the people who don’t want to actively go around looking like a robot.
For the fighters who do have that robot fantasy, the exo frame is the standard choice. It’s also the default of the class. Turn on your JOY, and you’re functionally a humanoid robot with a pixel-screen head; fully customizable from there. Exo frames have the downside of openly wearing their modifications, but on the plus side, they don’t have to sleep, they don’t suffer from organic weaknesses- hello, vacuum-capable bodies- and they don’t bleed. There’s entire subcultures of Mecha fashion based on the shape of their helmets and frames, and while they can carry normal weapons, they can also pick from a wider variety Mecha hardpoints that allow for some gnarly options with overlap in both Saboteur and Gunslinger. Micromissiles are a crowd favorite.
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The rarest of the frames is also the most iconic of the class: the titan frame. Huge machines three meters tall with a cockpit for their Mecha pilot somewhere inside. They’re forces of nature on the battlefield. Slow and unwieldy, yes, but also a moving fortress of armor and weaponry. Massive in every dimension of combat that they charge into. From the clips I’ve seen of my father’s battles against the Shimanos, titans were the favored frame of many of Shimano Yor’s seven sons, and also the patriarch himself.
I’ve never had to go up against one myself. Thankfully, it’s not a frame most teenagers have the cash or the technical know-how to support.
Much more popular among people my age is the Modd class; especially for the casual users who don’t put combat on a pedestal. It’s the most surefire way to customize your own looks to be whatever you want. By default, you can use your JOY to make lasting alterations to a few cosmetic categories even if you take no class: hair and eye color, skin tone, reproductive anatomy, shaving or makeup scans,et cetera. Some changes are a bit taboo- where I come from, at least- but others like hair color and shaving scans are commonplace. I used one to recolor my hair white before coming to the capital.
If you want more advanced anatomical changes, that’s where the Modd class takes over. Using the same point-buy system as Mecha, Modds trick out their bodies with biological enhancements that can range from animalistic features to additional senses, extra limbs, or even a wholly non-human form. The last is definitely the most point-intensive, and one of the least popular due to how hard it can be for a human brain to not go a bit off the rails when it’s living full-time in a non-human body. Some people can work around that dissonance with enough exposure, and some truly can adapt to living in their new shape. But that adaptation often comes at the cost of losing a piece of themselves as they start to reflect the thing they look like.
Sometimes that piece isn’t critical. People going full animal with the Modd class is rare, after all. But when that piece is critical, you get the kind of things I’ve heard about the Vents’ resident ghost story: the Mobiak. Apparently it’s some feral Modd-turned-nightmare that used to prowl in the Shocks. Though whether or not it actually exists is still up for debate.
In general, the bigger a creature someone tries to become when picking a fully nonhuman morph, the exponentially higher the point cost goes. The largest Modd user I’ve ever heard of is one of Dynasty’s seven Executors: the dragon Krevax.
For everyone else who picks up the class, more mundane augments like new senses and cat ears are the go-to things to spend points on. Those damn ears have a resurgence and fall in popularity that repeats at least every couple decades. They’re very in vogue on certain… parts of the Net.
Every girl has a pre-teen phase where they try out the Modd class at least once. Yes, even me. And double yes, I made absolutely certain that there are no pictures left of said phase.
Modd is one of the more flexible classes in that it can fulfill either a backup role- just granting passive augments- or it can be the defining foundation of an entire trio of classes. Most everything you can spend points on is a passive upgrade, so unless someone doesn’t fight whatsoever, you’ll always see a Modd in conjunction with one or two more classes. It has a lot of natural synergy with classes outside the core trio: Hunter is a natural pick to amp up those new senses and give more enhancements to combat with natural weapons, while Biohancer- typically the ‘healer’ class- can help jury-rig even more modifications onto yourself.
Sometimes it doesn’t even take spending a significant number of points to push the class to its max, though. Look at Gami: from what anyone can tell about his class usage, he only spends enough points to pick a nonhuman form that’s a blob of metal material; basically a metal-themed slime. He uses another class to manipulate that form in lieu of spending points, and in doing so, he uses a Metal Elemental’s control to grant himself an unlimited amount of flexibility that the class’ point-buy system can’t come close to emulating.
When I think about picking up a third class- I doubt I will, but I might have to someday- Modd is always somewhere near the top of the list. Classes that are specialized into passive benefits and augments are easy to pick up, easy to customize, and don’t require mastering any new skills like a weapon or shaping class might.
Cal would never let me hear the end of it if I picked up Modd, though. I know she’d be asking about cat ears every single time I walk through the door. And I’ve got enough on my plate with trying to fix what’s already flawed with me. Sure, maybe I could finally ditch my prosthetic arm for something new, but I don’t even know if I’d want to. For all I dislike it, for however ugly a missing limb might be when the prosthetic comes off, it’s a part of who I really am; my conceptualization of myself.
When I dream, I just have my one hand. Not two.
Props to the Shimano corporation where it’s due, though. Their tech is as future proof as you can ask for. Their mark on this city has yet to fade. SHI vending machines are still rusting in the undercity, and SHI autobikes are still the top racers of the surface world.
In a way, it’s a shame they’re gone now. A dynasty more than seven hundred years old, one whose culture stretched back to even before the JOYs, finally extinguished in the wars they started. Shimano Yor and the last of his seven sons are gone, the vestiges of their prized creations growing rarer by the day. They were the most famous thing to ever rise from my home villages. Now they’re dust. But that’s the way of my world.
Only the strongest shall rule.