Chapter Text
“I mean… it isn’t bad work. Really.”
You’re not surprised by the feedback, but that doesn’t stop your heart jumping up to your throat and then dropping down into your ass. Your content editor, who’s always been the nervous sort but simultaneously does well with confrontation, rushes to reassure you.
“It isn’t! If anyone else had dropped this by, I would’ve sent it straight through the editing process. It’s just that… I mean, some of the transitions are pretty choppy. Where you do follow through, it almost reads like fanfiction. It’s good, sure, but it’s not your best, that’s for sure.” She picks up momentum as she goes, and you have to give it to her: she really sticks the landing.
“It’s the best I can do with this one.” You lie through your teeth. “Sometimes the chemistry doesn’t bloom with an interviewee, I guess.” You wonder if your nose is growing.
Rachel takes a beat before she rubs, hard, at the side of her face, pulling her cheek up close to her eye. She can see right through you, anyone would: reading like fanfiction usually means the chemistry is off the charts. She can probably make an educated guess as to why your transitions are choppy, too (or, really, a guess as to what you omitted from the piece), but she saves you the embarrassment.
“Just… look back through it. The printed version. Mark it up or something, maybe.” She gestures vaguely at her desk, and you see a neatly stapled version of your interview with Mecha Man.
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The Man Inside the Mech: Interview with (Re)Rising LA Juggernaut
By YN YLN
“It feels weird, being suited up but out of the mech. I feel like the machine is more photogenic than the man behind… well, inside… it.”
Mecha Man is candid about how new the cover shooting experience is for him, and his missing the mech feels less utilitarian and more wistful. He does his best to stay out of the photography crew’s way while staying cognizant of the fact that their end goal for a hard day’s work is to get three or four workable photos of just him. He’s no stranger to photo ops, but this is, as he starts our interview off by noting, his very first time being photographed in just his flight suit and bodily protection.
“Do you think we could’ve fit the mech in here? I didn’t want to try, but I’m starting to second-guess myself. I should probably leave the Spanish inquisition to you.” The mech stands guard in the Verity lobby, and could break through the shoot room’s doors if he wanted it to. If Mecha Man is nervous, he masks it well; even his questions have a decisiveness behind him. He’s neither short nor tall, with angular features that even his mask can’t hide. Despite the lack of access I have to his full face, he uses his eyes to gesture more than his hands: his entire body is taut even while he’s relaxed. I point this out and he laughs, all mirth, and tells me that he doesn’t think he is relaxed, actually.
“Have you ever been relaxed?”
“We’re getting right into it,” Mecha Man says as he leans forward in his chair. His voice, naturally low and sonorous, has a sharpness that meets no edge. His eye contact locks on and doesn’t waver; I have to work hard to match it. “You’re intense. No, I don’t think I’ve ever been relaxed. I need to be hypervigilant in my line of work. Can’t have myself—or worse, the mech, or even worse, a civilian—facing damage because I let my guard down.”
“You keep calling it the mech instead of your mech. Superhero legacies are rare, and having to build one from metal instead of drawing on natural powers is rarer. How does your relationship to the legacy you’ve inherited affect your relationship with your mech?”
I can see in his eyes that my line of questioning affirms my intensity. He doesn’t seem to mind, though he does sit back, finally making use of the arm rests at either side of him. He’s deciding just how honest he needs to be.
“I think that, to the people of LA, it’s my mech because I’m Mecha Man. But I’m not just Mecha Man to myself, right? That’s kind of the Kindergarten way to put it, but they don’t know me as my civilian self, and they haven’t processed on any real level that my dad, when he died, was a real person. To a lot of people, when I rebuilt the mech and stepped in to pilot it, I brought Mecha Man back. But I just brought the concept back, the idea back. It’s been 7 years, sure, so of course people see the pilot as being synonymous with the mech. I’m confident in my work, but I guess I do still see it as my dad’s mech, and his dad’s legacy. It’s only starting to hit me now that I’m not just the guy piloting Mecha Man. I am Mecha Man. The mech is, to some extent, me. And it’s [sic] a greater and greater extent everyday.”
“I know it’s 7 years too late, but I am sorry for your loss, and for the fact that your purpose and your loss are so closely intertwined. Not to be presumptuous about your sense of purpose, of course, but in the press conference where you stepped up as Mecha Man, you said that you would continue the work you were built to do, which was keeping the people of Los Angeles safe. You seemed really young back then. Did becoming Mecha Man help you process your grief?”
“Nobody’s ever asked that.” Mecha Man stops to think, and really does smile at me this time. “At least, not like that. I was pretty young. You must’ve been young too. We seem like we’re the same age.” He falls into a conversational lilt with ease, and I recognize just how used to press he is, even if he still projects an everyman image. A subject that wants to listen just as much as they want to talk is rare enough that I’m momentarily stunned over something as simple as my age. Mecha Man is stunning.
“I’m 24,” I tell him. I pretend not to notice how deftly he deflected my actual question.“First job out of college, two years strong. Do you have an engineering degree? You’ve mentioned in other interviews that you fix up the suit yourself.”
“I’ve only got a couple of years on you, then. I went to college, but not for engineering. I have a psychology degree. My dad left behind mechanics for the suit. I saw a LinkedIn page going around that said I studied mechanical at UCLA. I’m not sure why it exists, but it’s not me. They also used the worst photo of me that they could find. If you’re reading this, please change the profile picture. And no, I’m not going to tell you where I actually went.”
“Someone would probably go through student records, yeah. Why psychology?”
“I was in a weird place.” There’s a joke in there somewhere, and I respond to him in kind.
“For four years?”
“Less than, actually.” He really does smirk now. He won’t specify for privacy reasons. “I grew up learning how to spar and how to pilot the mech and I’ve read every issue of SciTech Digest that exists. But I don’t have powers. It’s pretty necessary for me to understand people and why they might do the things they do, and that’s something I couldn’t learn in the mech manuals.”
Mecha Man is contemplative, and it comes through in his cadence. He speaks just slowly enough to pull you in and keep you right there with him in his thoughts. I generalize because, as we chat, everyone else in the room eventually slows down to listen to him.
“You’ve dedicated even more of your time and thought to being Mecha Man than most people can reckon with. How much of your life is Mecha Man, and how much of it is your civilian self? Do you get time to just be you?”
“Being Mecha Man is what matters most, because it’s bigger than just me. I don’t really divide my time between Mecha Man and not Mecha Man, I guess. Which is another thing that LinkedIn page gets wrong, by the way. Also, while I’m on this, if anyone sees me on Instagram or whatever, it’s not me.” It’s almost comical how this practiced hero who puts villains through bank vault walls expresses the same chagrin at being obviously impersonated as he does with most criminals.
“Hopefully, the kids—because it’s definitely some teenager—behind those pages read Verity.” He laughs outright at this. “I’ll throw out some lightning round questions that subscribers sent in, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure.” He’s pleasantly flippant, and the lighting crew swoops in to prepare for the photo shoot that’ll inevitably commence the moment I’m done with my time. Mecha Man is unbothered by all of the hovering that begins, though he remains, paradoxically, on high-alert: someone drops their phone behind his left shoulder, and he catches it before it hits the ground.
“You should probably get a phone case.” The production assistant on the receiving end of his advice can’t keep his cheeks from warming.
“What’s your workout routine?”
“Chest, legs, arms and back, in that order, and then cardio everyday.”
“Craziest scar.”
“It’s on my back. I’ll leave it at that.”
“Can you listen to music in the mech?”
“Theoretically, yes. I think it would be too distracting for me, though.”
“How do you feel about being a playable character in the new BlastBrawler game?”
“The fighting game? I’ve never played. I’ll have to check it out. Pretty cool, I guess.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“No. If I’m ever in a relationship, though, I won’t reveal it. It would get too dangerous for everyone involved.”
With that, our fifteen minutes are up. I thank him for his time, and he, kindly, thanks me for not just mine, but hopes that I let Verity readers know that he thanks them for their time and support, too.
You can find us at X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.
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Mecha Man is already there when you walk in, though you’re so distracted that you don’t notice until you trip over a standing fan’s cable and he catches both of your shoulders in both of his hands. His reflexes are so well-honed that he also manages to catch your pen as it slips from your fingers. You’re carrying a bright yellow legal pad, another pen, a water bottle, your phone, your wallet, and your ID on its lanyard in your arms and in between your fingers, and he seems to find this amusing.
“Shit, is that your superpower or something?” He asks, his voice even lower than it comes across on TV. It’s smooth, and not gravelly like you would’ve expected. “Balancing all of that?”
“I wish. Thanks for that. And sorry about it.” You tilt your chin up at the pen he’s idly rolling between his fingers. He’s so dexterous that the gloves don’t impede him at all. You try to ignore how that makes you feel, because you’re a professional, and because you’re surprised by the fact that it makes you feel anything at all. You’re used to feeling starstruck, but you’ve never been super into superheroes; that being said, Mecha Man is known, in part, for his charm and how well it balances his resolve. It takes a lot to be a superhero without superpowers. You don’t look at him head on until you’ve unceremoniously piled your stuff on the floor by what you assume is your chair, as it’s the one facing the photoshoot backdrop rather than the one against it.
“No worries.” He gives you your back-up pen before extending the same hand. “I’m Mecha Man.”
“I figured. I’m YN. ” You say this lightly as you return the handshake, and your eyes meet his. His irises are a bright dark brown, and he’s jovial, but you can’t mistake the gravity in the face that stares back at you, even if most of it is covered by a mask.
“I’ll start recording now, if that’s okay. Oh, where’s your mech?” It’s almost a rhetorical question; although the room is large and well-lit, you can’t imagine the pilotable suit wouldn’t impede the photo team’s work.
“Yeah, go ahead. They wanted a photo of just me for the cover.” He scratches the back of his head as he says this, the very picture of abashed but without an air of true nervosity. “I left the mech in the lobby. It’ll show up if I need it. It feels weird, being suited up but out of the mech. I feel like the machine is more photogenic than the man behind… well, inside… it. Do you think we could’ve fit the mech in here? I didn’t want to try, but I’m starting to second-guess myself. I should probably leave the Spanish inquisition to you.”
You’re surprised at how naturally the two of you are falling into conversation, and a little endeared at his rambling. He gracefully ducks and dodges the light and photo crews as they walk in-between the two of you.
“I think it’s probably best that you left it down there. Is this your first shoot without it?”
“Yeah.” He nods to emphasize his point, and you realize just how angular his actions are. They’re natural to his body, but would seem disjointed on anyone else. It makes sense, you suppose: his facial features are pretty angular, too. “It’s my first cover shoot in general.”
“Is this more or less stressful than that bank heist you stopped last week?” You’re only half-joking, and you gesture towards the chairs. Photo crew has finally stopped moving around, so your sound quality is finally workable. You place your phone—recording device, for this interview—on the arm of his chair. His voice is so low that you can only hope it catches. Mecha Man is strung tight even when he sits down despite the boyish laxness he exudes.
“It’s a toss up. Heist probably edges this out by a tiny bit, though.” He grins.
“Are you sure? You look pretty high alert for someone who’s relaxed.”
Mecha Man’s laugh is sturdy and sure of itself, and there’s a hint of it remaining in his voice when he tells you, “I don’t think I’m relaxed, actually. Can’t tell if you’re helping that or not.” He shifts in order to be just a little closer to you, and you find that you’re having to try to not get caught up in his orbit.
He’s always been suave in a sarcastic way; at least, that’s what your research for this interview has told you. Hours of poring over tape of him speaking to people, at press events, on stream, have led to this moment, and you shouldn’t be surprised, but you almost feel as if he’s actually flirting with you and not just putting up a persona. Even you, who isn’t a superfan of super-anything (really, you’re very neutral), came into this interview finding Mecha Man charming. Now, in the middle of your workday, you’re beginning to find him attractive. Maybe you’re gullible enough to believe that the stripper likes you.
Still, the interview’s already started, sure, but now it’s really begun. You lean forward, hoping that the smile on your face doesn’t give away that you’re having to force yourself to make eye contact.
“Have you ever been relaxed?” Are you challenging him, in some way? Even you aren’t totally sure.
“We’re getting right into it, then.” His voice gets even lower for a moment. Mecha Man leans forward in a natural mimicry of your posture. You realize that your top is a modicum more revealing than you expected when his eyes accidentally flicker down, but neither of you acknowledge it. He directs your gaze to him without moving a muscle.
“You’ll have to make sure that you’re speaking up,” You gesture towards your phone, hoping your voice doesn’t have a newfound sense of give. “So I can get everything.”
“You’re intense.” You can tell that he means it, and he means it respectfully. There’s something else in his gaze, too, but you elect to ignore it. There’s been a shift between you and your subject over the past few minutes, and you’re more struck by it than anyone else in the room.
“No, I don’t think I’ve ever been relaxed.” Mecha Man continues. “I need to be hypervigilant in my line of work. Can’t have myself—or worse, the mech, or even worse, a civilian—facing damage because I let my guard down.”
You nod, hanging onto his every word both by virtue of your profession and due to genuine interest. His mask doesn’t fully cover the smattering of freckles he has across his cheeks. You’re a professional, though, and his reply has sparked a question you don’t even have written down.
“I notice that you keep calling it the mech instead of your mech. Superhero legacies are rare, and having to build one from metal instead of drawing on natural powers is rarer. How does your relationship to the legacy you’ve inherited affect your relationship with your mech? Or is it more… the mech, as you’ve been referring to it?”
He’s floored by this, and sits back, simultaneously propping his arms up. It’s a good question, and you know this by how he takes it in and lets it settle in his chest. It takes him a moment to formulate a response, but you hardly notice, preoccupied with forcing your eyes to look anywhere but at his lips.
“I think that, to the people of LA, it’s my mech because I’m Mecha Man. But I’m not just Mecha Man to myself, right? That’s kind of the Kindergarten way to put it, but they don’t know me as my civilian self, and they haven’t processed on any real level that my dad, when he died, was a real person. To a lot of people, when I rebuilt the mech and stepped in to pilot it, I brought Mecha Man back.” He takes a breath, and you can tell that he is shocked by his own honesty. You don’t think he’s been this candid in an interview before.
“But I just brought the concept back, the idea back. It’s been 7 years, sure, so of course people see the pilot as being synonymous with the mech. I’m confident in my work, but I guess I do still see it as my dad’s mech, and his dad’s legacy. It’s only starting to hit me now that, yeah, I’m not just the guy piloting Mecha Man, I am Mecha Man. The mech is, to some extent, me. And it’s a greater and greater extent everyday.”
You’d prepared questions about his father and grandfather, but your phrasing goes out the window as you set your legal pad in your lap. He’s thinking through his responses as he verbalizes them, a stark contrast from the measured Mecha Man you’ve seen at press conferences.
“I know it’s 7 years too late, but I am sorry for your loss, and for the fact that your purpose and your loss are so closely intertwined.” You try your best to convey your gratefulness at how raw his response was with your eyes, and you think he gives you a subtle nod, though you don’t know if it’s in recognition or response. “Not to be presumptuous about your sense of purpose, of course, but in the press conference where you stepped up as Mecha Man, you said that you would continue the work you were built to do, which was keeping the people of Los Angeles safe. You seemed really young back then. Did becoming Mecha Man help you process your grief?”
“Nobody’s ever asked that. At least, not like that.” He’s quick to reply this time. “To be totally honest, I don’t know if I want my thoughts about my dad and all on… on the record.”
Implicitly requesting that a reporter ignore their recording when they play it back is a risky move, but you recognize how important it is that your interviewees—at least, the ones that are nice to you, you would never treat YouTopia with this much grace—maintain their trust in you.
“I get it.” You say, and you leave it at that.
“It sucked.” He tells you. “It sucks. I was pretty young. You must’ve been young too. We seem like we’re the same age. Did you watch that press conference live?”
“Yeah,” Your voice is soft, you tread lightly around the subject. “I was a sophomore or a junior or in high school. I remember thinking that you could’ve been someone at school, or something. You were just that young.”
“I was 18.” He’s so quiet when he says this that you almost don’t hear him, and you realize that he’s trying his best to ensure that nobody else hears him. Everything, you understand suddenly, every single thing must be a potential privacy issue for him. You do the math: he must be 25 now.
“I do think being Mecha Man is my purpose, though.” You believe him, and he believes himself, but there’s no force behind his statement. Nothing compelling; he may as well have totally deflected. You don’t have a lot of time to unpack this—superhero interviews have strict time limits, lest a kaiju interrupt your chat.
“I’m 24,” You say, hoping you sound optimistic at best and monotonous at worst. “First job out of college, two years strong.”
You pull from one of the questions you’d come in with. “Do you have an engineering degree? You’ve mentioned in other interviews that you fix up the suit yourself.”
“I’ve only got a couple of years on you, then.” He knows that’s an overstatement, but he wants—needs—to keep it vague. “I went to college, but not for engineering. I have a psychology degree. My dad left behind mechanics for the suit. I saw a LinkedIn page going around that said I studied mechanical at UCLA. I’m not sure why it exists, but it’s not me. They also used the worst photo of me that they could find. If you’re reading this, please change the profile picture. And no, I’m not going to tell you where I actually went.”
You laugh out loud at this, and he joins you.
“I’m serious!” He exclaims, and you nod.
“Someone would probably go through student records, yeah. Why psychology?”
“I was in a weird place.” Mecha Man shrugs, and you notice how broad his shoulders are for his frame. He’s joking; at least, you think he is. If his father died when he was 18, though, there’s probably a kernel of truth in there somewhere.
“For four years?”
“Less than, actually.” He challenges you back, finally, and you instinctively chew on the inside of your bottom lip. “I grew up learning how to spar and how to pilot the mech and I’ve read every issue of SciTech Digest that exists, probably. But I don’t have powers, so I need any advantage I can get. It’s pretty necessary for me to understand people and why they might do the things they do, and that’s something I couldn’t learn in the mech manuals.”
He works hard at omitting specificity as he speaks, but his voice is so pleasing to listen to that the slowed speech doesn’t bother you as much as it would on any other day. Everyone else seems to agree, because they’ve slowly moved into his—and your—space to listen in. He’s acutely aware of this. You feel almost jealous when he takes his eyes off of you to look around.
“You’ve dedicated even more of your time and thought to being Mecha Man than most people can reckon with. How much of your life is Mecha Man, and how much of it is your civilian self? Do you get time to just be you?”
“I’m in Mecha Man. Shit. Let me rephrase that.” You can’t help your surprised laugh.
“Okay. What I mean is that being Mecha Man is what matters most, because it’s bigger than just me. I don’t really divide my time between Mecha Man and not Mecha Man, I guess. Which is another thing that LinkedIn page gets wrong, by the way. Also, while I’m on this, if anyone sees me on Instagram or whatever, it’s not me.” He salvages his Freudian slip by coming back to what he knows will make its rounds on Twitter. You appreciate how dedicated he is to keeping the interview light when your questions are hard-hitting, though you aren’t sure how that’ll transfer to the article.
“Hopefully, the kids—because it’s definitely some teenager—behind those pages read Verity.” He laughs, and you think that it’ll be fine if you damn the article. “I’ll throw out some lightning round questions that subscribers sent in, if that’s okay with you.”
“The subscribers? Or are these just things you want to know about me? You’ve had some pretty… specific questions so far.”
“You can say prying, if you want.” You lob back, though you know that that’s not what he means. He knows this, too, but you continue. “I think I’ve gotten my curiosity out.”
“Fine, although I won’t discourage you from asking your own questions. Sure.” He puts on an air of flippancy, but you realize, slightly late, that he really would have liked to hear more from you. TJ, one of the production assistants, drops his phone behind Mecha Man’s shoulders as he tries to shuffle something or the other around—you aren’t sure why he’s even here—and, to your surprise as much as anyone else’s, the subject of your interview catches it.
“You should probably get a phone case.” He tells TJ, who turns beet red. You feel wrongly jealous yet again, but he turns his attention back to you almost immediately.
“Are you sure you don’t have powers?” You ask him.
“Is that a subscriber question or a you question?” He grins, basking just a little in your obvious awe. You catch a glimpse of how sharp one of his canines is. It matches his scruff nicely, given him a rogueish look you imagine must be unbearably sexy when he’s out of his flightsuit.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” You fire back, wildly unprofessionally, though he doesn’t seem to care. By the way he runs his tongue over his lower lip, he might even enjoy it.
“Anyways.” You try to exert your final thread of control over the situation, realizing that the clock really is ticking. You finally flip to the most recently scribbled page in your legal pad. “What’s your workout routine?”
“Chest, legs, arms and back, in that order, and then cardio everyday.”
“Craziest scar.”
“It’s on my back. I’ll leave it at that.”
“Can you listen to music in the mech?”
He pauses for a moment. “I’m more of a podcast guy, but I feel like that’s sort of a red flag. Theoretically, yes. I think it would be too distracting for me, though. I probably have a terrible music taste.”
“I can’t imagine choosing podcasts over music.” You say offhandedly. “Next one. How do you feel about being a playable character in the new BlastBrawler game?”
“I just like the voices, I guess. In a not ominous way. BlastBrawler… the fighting game? I’ve never played. I’ll have to check it out. Pretty cool, I guess.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
You suck in your cheeks after verbalizing the final question, taken aback by how abruptly it follows the last one.
“Who’s asking?” Mecha Man doesn’t skip a beat, but you can’t tell if there’s a question actually there.
“Username MechaMadness2497.”
“Fair enough,” He laughs. “No. If I’m ever in a relationship, though, I won’t reveal it. It would get too dangerous for everyone involved.”
“So you’re open to relationships?” You question, and this time, it’s obvious to both of you that it isn’t coming from a subscriber. You glance at your handwriting while you speak, though, in case someone else catches onto the fact that you are, in fact, actively flirting with Mecha Man. You wonder if rapid-onset lust is diagnosable.
“If that’s what you call that, nowadays.”
Before you can respond, your phone timer goes off.
“That’s time.” You scramble to turn it off before grabbing your things. “They’ll run you through every pose in the playbook, now. Thank you for your time, Mecha Man.” You hope he doesn’t hear the extra emphasis you place on his name.
“Thank you for yours, YN.” His wolfish grin eases into a genuine smile as he shakes your hand. “You had some really interesting questions, and you treated my replies with care, considering how tight our schedule was.” He doesn’t let go.
“Tell your readers I thank them for their support, too.” Finally free of the shackles of professionality on his end, he fully eyes you up and down. You don’t know how you’ve managed to get to such a supercharged state of want when you spent the first half of the interview on his grief, but maybe he’s the type of person who gets horny when they’re sad. Someone does come and whisk him away just as you pull away from him, and the long, drawn-out, most emotionally confusing interview of your life comes to as abrupt an end as it had begun.
A photography assistant practically pushes you out of the room once you’ve gathered all of your stuff up, and you give yourself a short, short moment to take a breath before heading back to your desk. You have to channel all of your energy into something.
You finish transcribing and editing your rough draft of the interview within the hour, sending it off to Rachel right at 4:30. She calls you into her office right at 4:59, and, by 5:30, after reading and rereading your work, you’ve decided that you won’t be changing a single thing unless your editor threatens you with bodily harm. You’ve just about packed all of your things up, and you’re about to stand up to get the hell away from your desk, when a hand on your shoulder stops you.
“You forgot this back there.” Mecha Man leans in, far too close, so he can speak directly into your ear. He dangles your work ID in front of you by its lanyard. There’s nobody else left in the office; after all, it’s a Friday.
“I figured…” He drags, as he spins you around in your chair to face him. What you can see of his expression is impishly handsome. “You might need it?”
“Don’t you have a city to save?” You ask him once you’ve swallowed enough of your spit, though you hope he can take an afternoon off. He grins.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”