FUTURE: Limit Gear Explained
The past is unchangeable. The future is unavoidable.
Limit Gear was the initial outburst of a mind saturated with anime, dreams, and the passion to bring an idea to life. I never expected it to get this big. But if I don't keep going, I don't know how it's going to end, and then I'd wonder what ever became of characters I made like Ryu Haneda or Rokaici. Yamcha's passion for food would fade from my creative memory. Hakaida's almost inhuman marksmanship would be forgotten. And I'd regret not having pushed this series further.
At first, this was just an idea, a quick hack. Now, I find myself compelled to continue, to really push forward and open this story up. Hopefully, the episodes to come will capture your attention and open you up to a big story. Sure, it won't be authentic Japanese manga, but I'll try to emulate the atmosphere of it as best I can.
Yamcha saved a seat for you at the noodle restaurant. Hurry up and go before he buys out the place...
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Limit Gear in a nutshell
The story behind Limit Gear is covered in the backdrop, so check it out if you haven't already. The story behind the Limit Gear device has not been covered until now.
Limit Gear began as the brainchild of Murasai Haneda, who was developing a device for Tokyo Metro Police to help them gain an edge over crooks using modified cars to elude them. The first years of the trial process were shaky, and Murasai went through many designs (and hundreds of thousands of yen) until he came up with the design mechanism which would really stretch the long arm of the law, involving radically new technologies being adapted from a national space project.
The device was a special turbocharging unit which was installed inside an engine bay, connecting as it usually would to other engine components. However, similarities stopped there. It was essentially a unique unlocking mechanism that dominoed into a 2-stage, power-boosting turbo (some called it a turbine because of how much power it created):
Once the system was unlocked, the intercooler and air intake systems were laced with appropriate liquid / lining that supercooled engine parts and intakes by at least 3 to 9 hundred computer controlled degrees. This drop consistently produced sickening amounts of power all on its own (75 to 100 additional wheel horsepower), but to give officers an even more unfair advantage, the mechanism activated a second turbo (which scrolled into place to double the gain) alongside the first.
The only significant problem inherent to the design: the unsurpassed power production, and its capability to simply devour engine and car parts. Tokyo Metro Police drivers also were too busy to devote time to learning the skill required to drive the car. Ultimately, these reasons, along with project costs, brought any hope of Murasai's project production to a halt.
Murasai's death not long afterwards was the final nail in the coffin for the project. Tokyo Metro Police intended to dismantle project technology - it was simply too much to assimilate into use without proper training, and it was feared that Murasai's connected parties would want access to the technology. The project disappeared from Tokyo Police knowledge. It was to be sold for parts.
Murasai's co-developers had other plans.
Remembering a final wish, his design team went against everyone's wishes in scrapping the project and poured their own time and money into finishing it themselves. Some of these men owed Murasai their very lives, and they aimed to repay him, even in memory (a final repayment from a Haneda family legacy in the police of justice, mixed with mercy and honor).
Tokyo Metro Police discovered the reactivation of the project, but only after it was completed. Murasai's design team successfully legally declared intellectual property of Limit Gear and hid its whereabouts. But it cost them their lives.
Corrupt cops ordered an execution of Murasai's co-developers, but they botched the job. Their plan was to assassinate the co-developers at an engineering conference in Ginza. They blew up a conference building where the meeting was taking place, killing dozens of people with the exception of one Limit Gear developer who threw himself out a second-story window when he saw them firing heavy weapons at the building. He landed in a garbage heap and ran to the project automobile he drove to the meeting in.
Ryu Haneda, out by himself that night, almost collided with him on a back road on the outskirts of Tokyo. The co-developer staggered out of the project car, a yellow Subaru Impreza WRX Sti, and then hobbled over to him. He looked at Ryu for a moment, dropped the keys into his hands, and then shoved him out of the way as he stole Ryu's car. He took off down the road. A scant few seconds later, a genetically-equipped homing missile struck the stolen car and killed the co-developer instantly. Ryu hopped into the yellow Subaru and drove down the road to the hulk of metal that was his old car. With the corrupt cops not far behind, Ryu hid in an abandoned warehouse. They never saw him, and left, thinking their work was done.
Ryu's future and the Limit Gear thusly intertwined, and he has been driving the automobile with no substantial clue of who made it, what it was made for, and just how powerful it is. His enemies will do whatever they can to get to him and the technology, and Ryu will have to deal with them all.