I My Me Mine

I My Me Mine is the eighth Track in Kiwi Blitz. It is named for “I My Me Mine” by 4Minute (not to be confused with "I Me Mine" by the Beatles).

Summary (spoiler-free)
Steffi and Chandra succeed in recovering KiwiBot, thanks in large part to Chandra's mysterious access to high technology. They then have an unexpected encounter. (This episode continues in Track 9.)

Plot
There are two pretitle pages. On the first, the green-haired RBL announcer is doing a special report: Who was Blitz? Most of the fans agree: father a rich mech designer, probably Steffi. Ben, watching this, thinks it's a good thing she had to stop when she did. On the second page, in an ironic contrast, Steffi and Chandra are discussing the retrieval of Kiwibot from the police. Chandra assumes Steffi is blackmailing her into helping, but Steffi thinks Chandra legitimately owes her a favor for not having arrested her, without Steffi having to threaten to expose Chandra. "That was plan B, tops." Steffi wants them to be friends; Chandra is not yet convinced.

After the title page we see Reed at home, at 3am, reading email. On his screen is an email from Cho, forwarding the RBL special naming Steffi as the probable Blitz, but instead of dealing with it, Reed decides that he should get out of the habit of still working at 3am, and he deletes it unread.

The next day, Steffi and Chandra are on the phone making plans. Chandra says her parents will be away Friday, and asks if Friday evening is a good time for Steffi. She hesitates before agreeing; we can tell from her face that she would have been doing something with Ben had they not had that fight over Steffi's continuing desire to be a superhero. But she doesn't say anything about it.

The next day, though, we see Ben, his mother, and his two dogs taking a walk, and his mother is asking "Are you sure you don't want to invite anyone to your birthday dinner?" Ben reminds her that he and Steffi aren't friends any more, but won't discuss why. This conversation, we're told, happens Thursday at 9:32am. We don't actually need to know that time to the minute, but Ben and Steffi are separately heading toward a moment of crisis, and the timestamping of several scenes in this track and the next build our awareness of the coming crisis.

Thursday afternoon we see Steffi telling 42 where they are going to meet during the Kiwibot retrieval mission. Shortly after midnight, so technically Friday, Chandra tells Steffi it's going to rain and she should wear something waterproof. Saturday at 1:55am, though, we see Steffi out in the rain in her Blitz costume, complaining about the cold. Chandra arrives and teases Steffi about being so fragile; Steffi teases Chandra about her adorable raincoat. Steffi must stay away from the target building's entrance until Chandra disables the security cameras. But she does arrange to be seen by the guard, walking in the street and then falling down. This lures the guard out of his station -- leaving the door open. Chandra drops a Raccoon-decorated smoke bomb, which disorients the guard long enough for her to dash through the door and use her grappling hook as a projectile to smash the guard's computer. She then uses a Taser-like electric shock device, but instead of being a gun that fires electrodes, it's attached to Chandra's fist and she uses it by punching. Chandra then waves at Steffi through the guard's picture window, so she can finally get up off the street and join Chandra in the guard station. Chandra sticks a square patch marked with a Z on the guard's forehead. Steffi asks what it is, and Chandra says it's a "sleeper patch" that will keep the guard from waking up for a while. Steffi asks where Chandra got such a thing, and she answers, "I know some people who are good with biology stuff."

They're at a storage facility where the individual units have truck-sized roll-up doors. They find the right unit (previously learned through 42's computer skills), but the lights outside it are lit, presumably because someone's inside -- probably the police. Indeed, we see inside the unit, where the pieces of Kiwibot are stored. One of the officers is trying to break Kiwibot's encryption, but is failing. Then they hear a knock on the door. One of them pushes the button to open the door, swinging his baton at the expected enemy, but it's Chandra who enters, so his aim is too high. Then Steffi jumps in also. Chandra Tases one of the officers just as she was aiming her stun gun at Steffi, which messes up her aim so that she ends up stunning the other officer. Chandra hands Steffi two sleeper patches to put on the police while Chandra is off stealing a truck from the facility. "That is one weird kid," thinks Steffi, whom some people might also consider weird.

Then they get to work carrying the pieces of Kiwibot into the truck. As they do this, we see someone's leg, in silhouette, in the rain next to the storage facility gate.

The two girls get in the truck and start to drive off. Steffi apologizes to Chandra for "kinda" forcing her into helping; she replies "Eh, whatever. It was honestly kinda fun." But then suddenly she says "I thought we weren't meeting anyone 'til the dropoff point." Steffi looks through the truck window and we zoom in on her face as the page ends.

Yeah, it's Gear, sitting on top of the exit gate from the facility. Her saw blade is sticking out of her arm prosthesis, dripping blood. And that's the end of the track.

Commentary
Gear's bloody blade is a warning to the reader, as well as to Steffi, that the story is about to become less cheerful. And KiwiBot is in pieces in the back of the truck; Steffi isn't going to have a metal outer skin when she faces Gear.

It's worth noting that Steffi's entire contribution to this adventure is falling down in front of the guard; Chandra and 42 do all the hard parts. 42 and KiwiBot are both available to Steffi because of her rich dad's robotics business, and Chandra indirectly, by way of 42; it's still easy to read Steffi as a spoiled rich kid living out her fantasies. Just remember that Robin (as in Batman and) is a spoiled rich kid too, and nobody makes fun of him.

Sound Bite
A slight flashback, to earlier the same evening. It's Ben's birthday dinner, with his parents and his older brother who's come to town for the occasion because his classes haven't started yet. Ben is not having a good time, and it gets worse when his brother asks, "Where's your girlfriend?" After blowing his top, Ben sums up the occasion with a sarcastic "This is the best birthday."

Also between this track and the next, technically not a sound bite, is a guest comic drawn by Magnolia Porter. In it, Steffi wants to make up with Ben by giving him his own bot: the Crabby Jerk Bot, shaped like a crab, which can only be driven by a jerk. "I'm actually still mad at you, too." "Yes, I gathered."

Characters Introduced

 * Ben's parents and brother.
 * The storage facility security guard.
 * Two unnamed police officers (later identified as Flores and Barnes).