One For The Road

13: Perspective

The next day, Sacrilege was poised to go up against Amazon and the Megha Ratti. I still didn't exactly know who she was, but I was going to find out real soon.

I never minded a challenge. My life had been nothing but a series of them, and I was doing a pretty okay job at it.

Well, that was debatable, but who was the best judge of myself? Me.

Despite everyone's low opinion of me, I wasn't hungover or miserable in any way. It was obvious that they already had their minds made up about who I was, and no amount of bitching on my part could change that. All I could do was prove them wrong.

Once again, I was used to that. But that also didn't mean that I wouldn't bitch. It was in my blood to fight bullshit, really.

Even though Drake and Josiah hadn't said much to me throughout the day, they had no choice but to encourage me right before the fight. I was their best chance at winning this tournament, because like Annie said, I didn't know what I was doing, so no one else knew what the hell I was doing.

"I know I don't have to tell you this, but stay away from the vertical spinner on Amazon. You'll be lucky if you can survive more than a couple hits from that," Drake said.

"And we're running low on money, so don't fuck this up, got it?" Josiah said.

I laughed. "Guys, guys. You don't have to remind me of the stakes. I'm really good under pressure."

"Didn't you lose a race, and that's why you're here?" Annie asked.

I glared at her, but when she smiled at me, I accidentally cracked a smile. "Well, yeah, but that wasn't my fault at all. I was gonna win."

Annie nodded. "Sure you were."

The amount of shit-talking that came out of her cute little mouth was astounding. At least it meant that she liked me. Probably.

With half of the teams eliminated the day before, the work station before the fights was much less crowded, and in our little corner, Sacrilege was perched upon her throne, and the four of us had our lucky t-shirts on.

"How are you feeling before this fight, Katie? Good?" Annie asked.

I shrugged. "I don't really know what to expect, but I'm undefeated, so I'm clearly a legend already."

Josiah rolled his eyes. "I know you don't understand much about this line of work, but you can't be smug here. It doesn't work, unlike your little racing gig."

"Right, because the height of stock car racing in America was my little racing gig, but this amateur shit is the big leagues." I shook my head. I knew pressure, and this wasn't it.

Drake forced out a laugh. "Alright, alright. No need to take it personally. Josiah's just nervous about this fight, that's all. And you," he looked at Josiah, "stop it. The rest of us want to win just as badly as you do."

We really didn't take too much damage during our last fight, so there wasn't much work to do leading up to the fight. That only meant that there was more time to stress about it, or, in my case, more time to regret the night before. British SpongeBob sure knew how to waste a woman's time.

Not far away, two other robots were loaded into the arena to fight, and it looked like one had a horizontal spinner like Sacrilege, and the other had a vertical one like Amazon. Maybe I'd be able to pick up a thing or two if I watched that fight.

Any information that I could use to beat Megha would be helpful, since I didn't even have a clue about what I was getting into, and I watched that vertical spinner tear the other bot to shreds for a minute and a half.