Chapter Three: A More Fitting Opponent

The next day, Friday, the two headed out for more of what Ribbon Girl dubbed "useless training", still set in her pessimistic ways and unwilling to look at the situation positively. However, rather than heading out to the training grounds, Min Min drove straight past the exit.

"...Min? ...You missed the turn?" Ribbon Girl pointed out, confused.

"I know, don't worry. Just thought we'd stop by one of your fans real quick."

"Oh?" Briefly, a smile went on her face. She did love to see her fans, after all. "Oh shoot, I should have brought some merch for them. Usually I give them bracelets or keychains…"

"Don't worry about it. Really!" She laughed. "I'm pretty sure she's got all the Ribbon Girl merch under the sun. She's a super fan, y'know."

Ribbon Girl smiled softly.

Min Min pulled up into a driveway in front of a large garage door, and the two got out.

"How do I look?" Ribbon Girl asked, fluffing out her clothes a bit and running her hands over her ribbons.

"You look great~" Min Min planted a small kiss on her lips. "Now c'mon!"

She pressed a button beside the garage door and it buzzed. A split second later a second buzz came, and the garage door began to open, revealing behind it a small teenager in some goggles and oil-stained clothes.

"H-H-H-Hi Ribbon Girl!" She smiled brightly.

"O-Oh! I know you! You're, um… Mechanica, yeah?" She smiled back.

Mechanica suppressed something of a squeal and nodded rapidly. "Y-Yes! I've been at a whole bunch of your concerts and fights! And you've signed my-" She rushed over to the side of the room and pressed herself up against an old poster of Ribbon Girl from her early concert days. "-My poster of you from the Ribbon Xpress tour! And-" She rushed over again to a tool box on her garage floor and yanked out a large wrench from it. "-And my X09 Adjustable Wide-Jaw Wrench!"

"Yeah, I remember that! It's not every day I sign a wrench." Ribbon Girl giggled. "I'm still surprised you got that through security. Thank god you didn't whack me with it."

Mechanica laughed heartily. "No no no, of course not! I just wanted you to sign it 'cause I use it, like, a ton so it'd be super sweet to have your signature on it." She ran her finger over the signature. "I actually engraved it into it once I got home, 'cause I knew that ink was gonna smudge real bad! So I was really careful with the-"

"Mechanica!" Min Min interrupted her. "Gettin' a lil carried away?"

She blushed. "Y-Yes, sorry! Follow me, it's in the back."

Ribbon Girl seemed confused, but followed the two of them back through a door at the other end of the garage, and into the large scrap yard behind.

Mechanica ran up to the yellow bucket-shaped mech suit lying in the middle of the yard. "Here she is! I've spent ages fine-tuning: getting the weight shifting right, getting the bulk-up to work accordingly… It even flexes at the right times!"

"... Flexes?"

" And I've done this super cool thing where I took a bunch of old Max Brass footage and fed it into this algorithm, and it's pretty much learnt his fighting style to a tee!"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop." Ribbon girl didn't seem amused. "What's going on here?" She flicked her head back and forth between her girlfriend and Mechanica, who looked frozen.

Min Min shrugged, a little nervous. "... You said fighting me, Spring, & Ninjara was useless 'cause it wasn't the same as fighting Brass. So I called up Mechanica to lend a hand."

Mechanica gave a big thumbs up, smiling brightly.

Ribbon Girl still seemed unamused. "No. I'm not fighting this thing."

Mechanica looked like her heart had just been crushed.

"Wait, don't be so quick to say that!" Min Min put a hand on Ribbon Girls' shoulder. "Mechanica's done a real good job, it'll be just like fighting the real deal, and you'll have _plenty_ of time to practice!"

Mechanica nodded. "I-I'm pretty sure it's as accurate as it can be! I still have to sit inside, but that's mostly to counter-shift the weight - the rest of it is automated, a-according to the algorithm!"

Ribbon Girl groaned, her ARMS folded. "...Fine. We'll try it. But I'm still not convinced."

Mechanica smiled nervously. "I-I'll get inside!" And hopped into the yellow tin can as quickly as she could.

Min Min kissed Ribbon Girls' cheek. "You've got this, yeah?"

"...Mm."

The match began as Min Min blew her whistle and, thirty seconds later, she blew it again - Mechanica had PERFECT'd Ribbon Girl.

"You okay, hun?" Min Min asked, rushing over.

Ribbion Girl got up slowly and groaned. "... Okay. Fancy robot, I suppose."

Mechanica smiled.

"Yeah, I'll say! You enter that thing into any tourney and you're practically guaranteed the gold, Mechanica!"

She giggled. "W-Well, according to the rules I'd have to disable all the automated stuff and control it one-to-one! But thank you anyway~" Her mech flexed an ARM.

Ribbon Girl got back to her feet and wiped some dust from her skirt. "Right. Let's give it another go, then."

Another match took place, with Mechanica taking another victory.

"You got me with my guard down." Ribbon Girl panted. "Again. Go."

A third match. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth. All matches ended in victory for Mechanica, with Ribbon Girl on the floor in the dirt.

She groaned, clearly very peeved.

"Um… Do you wanna keep going or…?" Mechanica asked nervously as her mech flexed to the non-existent crowd.

Ribbon Girl got to her feet. "Stop. Flexing." She sounded deadly serious.

Min Min grit her teeth.

"O-Oh, uh… I-I can't really switch that one specific thing off, it's all controlled by one big algor-"

"SWITCH IT OFF." Ribbon Girl shouted.

Mechanica froze in place and quietly flicked the off switch on her mech, causing the whole thing to droop over slightly with her inside.

Ribbon Girl stared at Mechanica with disdain . "You… You really think this is supposed to help me?"

Mechanica didn't respond.

"You really think smacking me around with your stupid robot does me any good? You really think I'm gonna learn anything from this nonsense?"

"I-I could… Lower the difficulty, if that's what y-you…" She spoke quietly and nervously, very uncomfortable in her current situation.

"Oh, shut up ." Ribbon Girl groaned. " You don't even have ARMS! Anyone could beat anyone if you just had to build a big dumb robot."

Mechanica didn't respond, and did her best to keep her eyes held wide open, because she knew blinking them would start the waterworks.

"Ribs." Min Min interrupted.

"Not now." Ribbon Girl rejected, not even turning to face her.

"RIBS." Min Min insisted, raising her voice. She pointed to the garage, eyes still locked on her. "Get inside. Now." She spoke clearly, with something of a fury lying beneath.

Ribbon Girl was taken aback a bit by it, but turned and headed into the garage. She leant up against the wall inside and slid down it, sitting herself on the garage floor. She stared into nothingness for a moment, before bursting into tears.

Min Min entered a couple minutes later, after having taken some time to reassure Mechanica that Ribbon Girl was under a lot of stress and her outburst was entirely misdirected.

Min Min had planned to give Ribbon Girl a real talking down - how dare she treat a fan like that. Someone who offered to help her, who put in so much time and effort to do so. Girlfriend or not, that wasn't something Min Min would let slide. But, seeing Ribbon in such a state, slouched in the corner with tears running down her face, did a lot to negate the anger Min Min had built up. Ribbon Girl already knew how out of line all that was - she regretted it the moment she said it. But failure upon failure can torment a person, and sometimes emotions just bottle up to the point where the bottle can't help but burst.

She slid down the wall beside Ribbon Girl. "... Hey."

"H-Hey…" Ribbon Girl responded, sniffling.

"You're really not doing okay with this Max Brass stuff, are you?"

She shook her head from side to side rapidly.

"Look, Ribs… I get that everything that happened back then was heavy. And I know I can't begin to imagine how humiliating that was for you. But look what it's done to you!"

Ribbon Girl brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her ARMS around them, resting her chin as she stared at the floor.

"You're stressed out, Ribs. Badly. And I hate to see this happening to you all 'cause of some smug bozo." She leant an ARM around Ribbon Girl, holding her close. "... It's important for you to enter this fight, isn't it?"

She nodded softly.

"Then by all means, get in that ring and fight. Give it all you got. And maybe you'll win, maybe you won't. But you know what?" She leant her head against Ribbon Girls'. "Win or lose, you know you're coming home to me. You know we're sharing ramen for dinner and you know we're sharing a bed at night. No matter what happens in that ring, none of that is going to change."

Ribbon Girl moved closer into Min Min and hugged her tightly, still sobbing quietly. "... I-I was so r-rude to Mechanica…"

"She'll understand. And I'll make sure you make it up to her."

She nodded against Min Min's chest.

After a decent while the two of them came out of the garage and back into the scrap yard, where Mechanica was sitting cross-legged atop a pile of scrap. Her eyes were damp and pinkened, much like Ribbon Girls', and to a lesser extent Min Min's.

Ribbon Girl hugged her tightly and apologized profusely, and when all was said and done they left on generally good terms, driving away and heading home as the sunset for a quiet night in to try and unwind as best they could.