Trip Machine

Trip Machine is the sixth Track in Kiwi Blitz. It is named for “Trip Machine” from DDR.

Summary
Gear has no problem slicing up KiwiBot, and almost slices up Steffi, too, but the police rescue her just in time. Ben is relieved that the loss of KiwiBot is going to put an end to Steffi's crime-fighting career, but Steffi is already planning how to recover KiwiBot from police custody.

Plot
In a pretitle page, Heinrich is meeting with other managers of his company, Mecha Machen. He is interrupted by Francis, who wants to talk with him alone. On his way out he tells his staff, "Don't worry so much." In the final panel, we hear him yell, "Steffi's doing what!?"

After the title page, Steffi and her team (42 and Ben) look at a thermographic image of Gear. They learn that the right side of Gear's body is normal human flesh and blood, while the left side is entirely prosthetic. (The angle of view makes it hard to be sure, but perhaps even half of her brain is missing, which might explain some things about her.) Meanwhile Gear has turned to face Kiwibot, and after graciously warning "Here I come!" (showing again that she is more interested in the combat than in its result), she slices Kiwibot's right side air jets in half, having no trouble slicing through metal.

While Heinrich bewails what a terrible father he is, and Natalie (who reveals that she's the bank manager) goes to the back of the bank to open the door for the bomb squad, Reed asks Steffi to lure Gear away from the bank. Meanwhile Steffi and Gear are fighting and conversing at the same time. Steffi asks why "a lady like you" wants to fight a kid, and Gear says she's only 17. Steffi says Gear looks older than that; Gear is not pleased.

The bomb squad arrives. We learn that Steffi has mistakenly led Gear right back to the bank. She no longer has qualms about shooting Kiwibot's beak at Gear, although she's aiming for the left side at least some of the time. Gear is annoyed when the beak tears her clothes, so she slices through its tether. The bomb expert declares the bomb real. Ben and 42 think Steffi should retreat, but while that's under discussion, Gear slices through the joint between Kiwibot's main body and its right leg. This immobilizes Kiwibot and also bangs Steffi's head into something inside it. (We've seen several times before that Steffi isn't always good about buckling her seat belt.) She loses consciousness.

While Ben yells at Steffi, trying to wake her up, Gear complains that this was too easy, not much of a test of her skills and her prosthetics. We see in flashback the five-year-old Steffi also unconscious, but (as someone we don't see explains to her) even while unconscious she can hear music, to remind her that she's still alive. This memory helps current Steffi return to consciousness, just in time to see Gear sawing her way through Kiwibot's rear hatch. This leads to an argument between Reed and Cho; Reed thinks they have to rescue Steffi, but Cho wants to worry about "the civilians, not the criminals."

Ben is worried; so is Steffi, but she tells Ben, "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's improvising." And it's true; this is the importance to the plot of her unbroken string of victories at Robot Battle League. She finds that she still has some compressed steam to fire at Gear. This doesn't really slow her down much, but it distracts her just long enough for the police bomb expert to report that although the bomb is real, it has no radio circuitry to allow remote detonation. This allows the police to start firing stun bullets at Gear. The first few hits don't affect her, perhaps because her costume shields her, but she knows she can't last forever against all the police fighting her, so she decamps. Steffi abandons the immobile Kiwibot and runs off. Luckily, she is found by Francis, who is driving Heinrich to the scene.

Gear disappears down a manhole (yes, they're still called that in the future); Ben abandons his computer command center to meet Steffi at her house. Ben apologizes for letting Steffi get into that situation (as if she would have listened to him!) and tells her how worried he was that she was going to die. She assures him that she's fine, and proposes that they start planning the rescue of Kiwibot from the police. "We can't fight crime without Kiwibot." Ben yells, "What the hell is wrong with you?" as the track ends.

Commentary
Ben's attitude toward Steffi's crime-fighting campaign has always been ambivalent. Right at the beginning he tries to talk her out of it, and when that fails, tries to enlist Heinrich as an adult voice of reason. But within a few pages he is encouraging Steffi to take on an Arachbot, a heavily armored military tank. Even in RBL, it's Ben the military expert and gun nut who stays home in front of the computer while Steffi's the one taking blows inside her mech. But now, for the first time, Steffi comes close to being killed, and that settles the question for Ben; Steffi has to stop.

Gear is also the first really serious villain in the story. Barkley was driving a superior mech, but, as Steffi pointed out at the end of Track 2, he's also the kind of loser who falls in love with his computer. And the Raccoon is just another kid. Gear is both heavily armed and careless of human life. And crazy. As Steffi says, Gear must have a traumatic backstory.

Throughout the story, we'll hear repetitions of the argument between Cho, who sees Blitz as just another criminal, and Reed, who sees her as an ally.

And don't forget that page about young Steffi hearing music that reminds her she's still alive.

Sound Bite
This single-panel sound bite is a Christmas card to the readers, but, as the author says in the notes below the page, this one is "canon" and relevant to the plot. It depicts Heinrich, his wife Miriam, and a pink-haired Steffi under the tree, opening presents. The plot relevance is that this establishes that Steffi dyes her hair before Miriam leaves the family.