Phony

Phony is the fourth Track in Kiwi Blitz. It is named for “Phony” by Neil Voss.

Summary
Steffi punches out the Raccoon; this turns out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Meanwhile Heinrich assembles and activates the robot, 42.

Plot
In a pre-title page, Heinrich finishes assembling the robot that came, in pieces, in Track 3. In the background is a news bulletin saying that Steffi has entered a building, temporarily abandoning Kiwibot, to do battle with the Raccoon. Heinrich pays no attention to the news, completely engrossed in the assembly. To rub in what a neglectful parent he is, in the last panel he thinks, "wasn't there something else going on?" with Blitz and Raccoon shown in silhouette behind him.

After several pages of remarkably polite conversation, they start fighting, and Raccoon kicks Steffi in the shin. She complains, "It's always the shin with you kids," reminding herself of an event we see in sepia-toned flashback, in which Ben is saying the same thing to an unidentified kid at Taikwondo class, perhaps the same session whose beginning we saw in the Sound Bite just a few pages ago. Steffi's reluctance to participate is only reinforced by this shin-kicking episode, but Ben persuades her by saying that she may punch him as hard as she can if she agrees to work with the group after that. The flashback panels alternate with present-time panels, with a series of parallels. (The Raccoon tells Steffi "I ain't holding back," and four pages later Steffi tells Ben "I won't hold back.") Her punch in the flashback has no effect, and Ben tells her that's why she has to work out.

During the polite conversation, Steffi expresses surprise that the Raccoon isn't using the grappling hook as a weapon, only to be told "It would kill you if it hit ya." (This sets up the literary trope known as "Chekhov's grappling hook," not resolved until quite late in the overall story.) Despite the threat not to hold back, the Raccoon's fighting technique is mostly to do fancy acrobatics to avoid Steffi's punches, but eventually she connects, in a single-panel page on a red background. Apparently she did develop some strength in Taikwondo classes, because the punch throws the Raccoon across the room and into the far wall, head-first. The Raccoon starts crying and throwing a tantrum: "You're all like, hey... why don't I just punch that adorable face into the dirt!" This is a clue, in case we weren't sure earlier, that the Raccoon is considerably younger than Steffi (whose 14th birthday party we saw in Track 1). This isn't the response Steffi was expecting (presumably "Drat!" or "Curses, foiled again!"), and it makes her uncomfortable. So she offers a compromise; if the Raccoon returns the stolen artifact, Steffi will look the other way during the Raccoon's escape.

By this time the police have arrived. As the Raccoon sails over their heads by hook, Steffi climbs out of the window and calls "Hold up, Mr. Lawn Head," referring to Officer Bahia's green hair because she doesn't know his name. She hands him the stolen fossil. He asks her why she's doing all this. "Boredom, mostly," she replies. She goes on to explain that she once wanted to be a police officer herself, but these days they don't have the resources to do their jobs successfully. In return, he tells her that his name is Reed Bahia, but she can call him Reed. "Noted," she replies with a smile. Alone now, he thinks "she's definitely a girl" while we see Ben kneeling into the wall of his room saying "she talked to the police without Kiwibot's voice mask." (This is when we learn about that capability.)

Back home, Heinrich and Ben are impatiently waiting for Steffi to return so they can turn on the assembled robot. The robot looks female. As it turns on, its previously dull eyes shine and reflect the ceiling light. (Everyone calls the robot she/her, so we'll do the same now.) Her face has a fixed smile that Steffi finds creepy, but it does change while she talks. The robot asks, in Japanese, "Excuse me, where am I?" Heinrich introduces himself, and the robot happily replies that she has a message for him from Mr. Ishinomori. Her mouth opens into a wide circle and we hear the roboticist's voice. He confirms that he has sent robot number 42 to Heinrich because the police are on his tail and he's running out of hiding places. He'll retrieve 42, he says, when things cool off. But Ben shows Heinrich a news story on his phone saying that Ishinomori has been arrested.

Meanwhile, on the last page of the track, we see the Raccoon, on the roof of a building, speaking on the phone to someone, apologizing for not having succeeded at stealing the fossil. This is significant because the police theory, as Reed explained to Steffi, is that the Raccoon is just a kleptomaniac who steals any old thing for fun, and now we are learning that someone is placing orders for specific thefts. In the last panel we see that the phone is circular with cute raccoon ears attached.

Commentary
It's clear that Steffi sees the Raccoon as something other than an evil criminal mastermind, and an important purpose of this track is that we, the audience, should agree with her, influenced both by "that adorable face" and by the Raccoon's concern for Blitz's safety during their fight.

Blitz's first two missions have been completely successful, despite being outgunned the first time and out-agiled this time. Almost everyone (including among the readers) thinks Steffi is a harebrained lunatic for wanting to fight crime at age 14, but she's doing well so far, and has every reason to be confident.

The situation regarding robots in Japan will come up again a few times later in the story.

Sound Bite
On this flashback page we meet Reed, age 6. He is ecumenically wearing a Green Lantern t-shirt while reading a "Speida Man" comic. (Perhaps this page was drawn while the author was teaching English in Japan?) From his conversation with his mother, we learn that his father is a police officer, and that even though in comics and movies the police are useless, in real life it's the police who have to be the heros. So Reed decided that he wants to be a police officer, too, when he grows up.

Characters Introduced

 * 42