Kronin and Kara’s hotel rooms, at the hotel in Mexico City they stay at:
Kara looked over the card at the upcoming event. “You know I’m the only fighter on our team that isn’t a cyborg?” Cassandra’s holographic form replied. “Kronin is not technically a cyborg. Your terminology of referring to him as Ubermensch is actually closest to the truth. He is, for all intents and purposes, an enhanced human. Also W.E.N.D.E. is not human at all. She never was. She has absolutely no relation to or in depth understanding of, humanity. This is evidenced by her incredibly poor attempts at mimicking human behavior in order to pass herself off as human.”
Kara raised an eyebrow. “And Vastrix?” Cassandra smirked a bit. “He is more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.” Kara nods. “Ah. You have discovered Star Wars.” Cassandra nodded. “Human culture is fascinating. You take the same story and change it to mold to new civilizations and advances.” Kara nods as Kronin walks out from his room, the twins having joined but separate rooms. “Well you know, sometimes you conquer someone and find out they have cool stories and you need to tell them in a way that makes them seem like your stories too.” Cassandra pauses for a moment and nods. “I...feel I need to point out that I do not consider Jeremiah Vastrix to be evil.” Kara laughed a bit. “Well his corporation is evil enough for to be grouped in with the Nazis in terms of pure, cartoonish evil.” Cassandra raises an eyebrow. “Do you hold Jeremiah responsible for the actions of his company?” Kara shrugged. “I’ve been a cop for awhile. You can’t convince me that he didn’t know what his company was up to. Maybe he had a good reason for not taking action. But Now that he has full power, maybe he will change things for the better.” While Cassandra and Kara talked, Kronin poured himself a cup of coffee and took a long drink. Cassandra turned and looked as he did so. “I have a question, for you, Kronin. What is it with you and coffee? You are in exceptional physical shape save for your dependency on caffeine.” Kronin smirks. “About 60% or the world has a dependency on caffeine, whether they get it from coffee, or tea, or energy drinks, or soda pop or any number of other sources. Now, seemed like you two were talking about something when I came in.”
Kara looked over at her twin brother. “Well I was prepared to call our team team borg, but Cassandra here has corrected my thinking on that. Still, I think we should plan for our opponents seeing me as the weak link.” Kronin is silent for a moment considering this and going over things in his head, possibly also conferring with Cassandra as well, Kara wasn’t sure. Finally, Kronin nods. “If they were smart. However, look at our opponents. Huckleberry, legitimate threat, skilled fighter. Lulu Biggs, A street thug, no training or style whatever, relies on his size to bully people. Reaganator. A man stuck in the 80s suffering from the delusion that he is Regan or that Reagan was the best president ever or both. Oh and we can’t forget our own Don Quixote. A man who thinks he’s a knight. I don’t think these men could come up with a solid plan if they wanted to. They all have different motivations, different goals and there is nothing about them that encourages alliance and cohesion. Our team on the other hand, Vastrix has proven to be a reliable ally. W.E.N,D.E. has thus far seemed like a sociopathic android trying hard to outdo the terminator as most dangerous machine, but she also helped save our ass. We also have the benefit of being able to appeal to logic. It is in her best interest to help us make it through this match. Overall, I like our chances much better than I like our opponents’ chances.”
Kara shrugs. “If you say so. But you cunningly avoided my comment about being the weakest link.” Kronin nodded. “Well you are a rookie, so there’s that.. But if you are our weakest link, that’s still a situation I would take. Our weakest link is at least on par with if not stronger than their strongest link. I feel confident that we’re in pretty good shape.” Kronin looks at his twin and smiles. “Relax Kara. You’re doing well in training, in our matches, you’re not losing by a lot, you’re not getting crushed. It’s what I would expect from a rookie. Close matches that have one or two things go bad. Now. You were planning for the match right?” Kara took a breath and nods. “You told me to do what I know. Strategy and tactics is a big part of that.” Kronin nods. “Lulu Biggs.”
Kara thought for a moment and nods. “I agree with Cassandra. He’s a thug. Totally unskilled brawler. Like most big men he puts his weight behind all of his strikes, which means they will be slow but powerful and he will likely telegraph. Take out his legs and you take him out. I think you’re being too dismissive of Reaganator though. It’s clear he’s ex-military.” Kronin nods. “Yeah, as in.. Vietnam era military. He’s a old racist who can’t find a better job than Janitor here at UOW and doesn’t like Valora because she has the audacity to be both a woman and a Hispanic in his country. The man is in his 60’s. A fight like this is going to be a marathon and he just doesn’t have the stamina.”
Kara pinches the bridge of her nose. “Cassandra?” Cassandra’s holographic image shrugged. “According to his medical reports on file since he became an active wrestler and correlating that with his past performances, Kronin would seem to be correct on his assessment of Reaganator’s lack of stamina. However, the man was able to ambush Valora and a number of other wrestlers for this company indicating that Kara has a point as well. Also, Kronin. As you aptly pointed out. He is an old man. The time of his prime would be when the part of Germany you and your sister are from was East Germany. Meaning that he likely sees you two as Communists who oppose his President.” Kronin thinks about this, scratching his chin. “Hmm. I hadn’t considered that. I suppose I should have considered the fact that he might be an equal opportunity bigot. So. Thoughts on Don Quixote reborn?”
Kara smirks. “Well… it might be considered fighting dirty but… Abbigail and Rosalyn both speak with English accents.” Kronin nods. “More accurate to say Abbigail can fake an English accent with the best of them, but she is American.” Kara nods. “Right, anyways. Rosalyn is a Noblewoman.” Cassandra, listening to the back and forth, interceded here. “You mean to have her introduce herself to him? To what end?” Kara nods. “In the book, Don Quixote, the title character has read all the books about the romantic knight. Fighting for his Lady fair, the brave knight must do whatever his Lady commands.” Kronin listens with a thoughtful expression on his face. “So, Rosalyn meets him, enlists him as his knight and…?” Kronin trailed off, using his hand in a circular motion to gesture his twin onward. Kara took a breath. “Up to her, she can command him not to help his team, to help us instead, or she can listen to him talk and figure out if he is just insane or if, by some act of cosmic weirdness, he actually is a knight.” Kronin gave his twin a deadpan look of utter disbelief. “What are the odds he’s a time traveling knight who doesn’t know what cars, gunpowder or firearms are?”
Kara, meeting his gaze defiantly sighs. “The same as an A.I. implanted in you letting you fight. Or Jeremiah Vastrix being freaking Robocop. Or a terminator like android being on our team. Or the odds of Valora leading the biggest… no the Valora point had good odds actually. My point. Is a metric crap ton of unbelievable stuff has been happening lately.” Kronin listened to this and nodded along. “Point taken. We can also figure out if he’s a real knight in our match too.” Kara nods. “He should be pretty basic in hand to hand combat. If he busts out anything too modern, that will tell us a lot.” Cassandra again added in. “But simply not being skilled at hand to hand fighting does not prove he is a knight.” Kara points at Cassandra. “Good point, it doesn’t but it will be a part of the puzzle. At any rate, we’re all in agreement that Huckleberry is the biggest threat here.” Kronin nods. “And WENDE is the biggest question mark on our team. Where’s Samantha? Maybe she can hack the damn android or something.”
Cassandra answered this question. “She is examining a sample of specialized nanites. Valora captured them from, as she put it, ‘A real grade A fuckin’ nutjob of a pendejo.’ I tried to correct her grammar but she cursed me out in Spanish.” Kronin and Kara share a small laugh at this and nod, Kronin speaking. “To be expected. What do the nanites do?” Cassandra shrugged once more. “I know Valora claimed they controlled the host they were injected into. How they worked, or any other information is beyond me at least until Samantha completes her examination and I can speak with her.”