Coward Mont Blanc

Coward Mont Blanc is the seventh Track in Kiwi Blitz. It is named for “Yowamushi Mont Blanc” by Deco*27 and Gumi.

Summary (spoiler-free)
Ben is furious at Steffi for wanting to continue her foolhardy crime-fighting and declares their friendship over. Steffi recruits 42, who locates the Raccoon's real identity for her, and then sets out to recruit the Raccoon in the plan to retrieve KiwiBot.

Plot
There are two pretitle pages. On the first, Heinrich is watching a news broadcast of the police carting off the remains of Kiwibot, but he turns around as he hears Ben's shout of "What the hell is wrong with you!?" that we also heard at the end of Track 6. Steffi tries to calm him down, but this time he's unwilling to listen. He accuses her of only wanting attention, and of not caring about the safety of herself or anyone else. He says he's no longer going to be an enabler for her and walks out. On the second page, Steffi angrily yells after him that he wasn't any good as a sidekick anyway. Finally she collapses against a wall and says, more quietly, "dummkopf," calling herself stupid, not Ben.

After the title page, we see Heinrich looking in on a sleeping Steffi. He then goes to the garage, where he finds 42. He asks her if she thinks he's a bad father, but she says her AI isn't up to answering such a question. Some of her sisters, she reports, have more powerful AIs. Heinrich asks what happened to the others. 42 doesn't know for sure, but she supposes that they were either hidden or sent to friends as she was. Any that were found by the police would be disassembled.

Meanwhile, some officers are leaving the police station. Reed wonders what happened to Blitz. Cho hopes that she "thought about her life choices." Jones asks if Reed has a crush on Blitz. He vehemently denies it. Jones says "in that case, wanna go on a date?" Cho's comment is "oho."

The next day, we see Steffi in an RBL battle, but her mind isn't really on it. She wishes she were in Kiwibot instead. She imagines how Ben would react if she loses her first match without him, loudly declares that "unacceptable!" and rams the other mech. We don't actually see the result directly; instead we hear Ben's chemistry lab partner telling him that both mechs were severely damaged and the match was a draw. His partner and another student give him a hard time about why he wasn't with Steffi by video as usual, but this doesn't prevent him noticing that the chemical in the test tube he's holding is the wrong color. Their teacher assumes it's his partner's fault; Ben doesn't make mistakes in the lab.

Cut to Steffi, looking miserable, with Winston lying on her head, trying to study algebra and failing. "Screw it all," she says, and sets out to find 42. After determining that 42 wouldn't mind doing something illegal (she points out that her very existence is already illegal), Steffi asks her to find out the Raccoon's secret identity. "I might be able to use his help in... reacquiring Kiwibot."

That evening, we see Reed and Jones on their date, at a cafe. She asks about his relationship with his dad the Chief of Police, and he says that it hasn't been helped by their disagreements about Blitz and about the Raccoon. What about the Raccoon? The Chief thinks that he might be part of "that group that's been giving us so much trouble lately," but Reed doesn't believe he'd be connected with organized crime.

42 knocks on Steffi's door to report that she's found the Raccoon's identity. Steffi notes that the search took a few hours, and 42 replies that she was slowed by an error in the initial problem statement: Steffi referred to the Raccoon as "this guy" but she turns out to be a girl: Chandra Makisig, age 11. Cut to Chandra herself, flopping on her bed ready to sleep at 9:00 according to her bedside clock. But first she lifts the clock to pull out the Raccoon-phone we saw her using earlier. No messages. "Fine by me," she says, and goes to sleep, only to be woken by a loud knock on her window. It's Steffi, on the fire escape, in her Blitz costume. Steffi smiles; Chandra looks terrified. Steffi asks if she can come inside, because it's cold out. Chandra, in a tearful panic, shouts "How did you find me?... You said you weren't gonna arrest me!" Steffi tells her to calm down; she's not going to arrest Chandra. Instead, she wants her help in "something involving your... er... area of expertise." Chandra isn't happy to hear that, but it does calm her down. Icy calm, she ends the track with a flat "what."

Commentary
The track title is "Coward Mont Blanc"; the first word can refer only to Ben. Is Ben a coward? Track titles are the author talking, not Steffi. But if Ben is afraid, it's not for himself; it's Steffi whose life is at risk. And of course it's not much of a spoiler to say that this estrangement is only temporary.

42's ability to retrieve information from the cloud is near-magical, although there can't be that many about-10-year-olds in New York diagnosed as kleptomaniac. (And if KiwiBot makes audio recordings, 42 could use the Raccoon's accent to narrow the search down to one of the five boroughs.) Still, Steffi will come to rely more and more on 42's abilities, however improbable.

Sound Bite
A somewhat younger Chandra (in elementary school, so maybe eight?) is in bed, with a swollen cheek and a bandaged forehead, with her worried parents at her side, wanting to understand why she would steal from older middle school kids, why she would steal altogether. The doctor has suggested that her kleptomania will get worse if not treated, and her parents are also concerned that she might get in trouble with the police if it isn't just kids next time. She says she doesn't know why she did it, but it won't happen again, and everyone should just leave her alone.

Characters Introduced

 * Chandra Makisig