Definitely seems to be some sort of analysis mechanic. She'll have to be careful about what weapons she shows off she wouldn't want to mess up local balance too much.

She finishes with the efficiency of someone who does this a lot, then stretches out her spine and arms and says, "That's that! C'mon, let's get going."

"Sounds good, where to now? I'm guessing we're going to a base of some sort?" She walks over to the passenger door of the truck.

"I'm gonna introduce you to the Resistance."

"Ah yes, the scrappy underdogs fighting against overwhelming odds. That's a classic for a reason."

" - Hm?"

"Well, it's always important for there to be a challenge. If victory is inevitable what's the point?"

"...On the one hand, yeah beating things up is fun. On the other, I'd prefer the kind of challenge that's like, flying an exploratory FTL ship around surveying stars." And, much more quietly, "Well, for everyone else's sake..."

"Oh, certainly lots of things can be enjoyable. I just get the impression this world is focused on combat. And the risk of failure adds a lot to the experience there."

"War's been going nearly six and a half millennia now. Some people are sick of it, I guess."

"That's a long time... I think the longest time a champion has spent back home before giving up is 10 years. How long have you been here?"

"...A while." Shrug. "It's impolite to ask a lady her age."

"... Have you been here your whole life?" Is she a character or just very committed to her role...

"Been outright off planet a couple times. Been to the Kingdom of Night and even properly into the Kingdom of Day - we're in Twilight now, which is where I'd recommend staying - and I've only been in this region for what, thirty years? At least this most recent stretch..." Shrug. "A lot happens here, so I swing through pretty often even when I'm mostly elsewhere."

(She's speaking casually, lightly, like it's all one big joke... But Akira gets an odd sense of being watched from her.)

Akira doesn't mind, people trying to puzzle her out is fun, most people just dismiss her as an NPC. "Oh cool, it sounds like this world is really big then. Mine is either a lot smaller or absurdly large depending on whether you count variants as different worlds."

"You're not from this system, huh?"

"I don't think I'm from anywhere you could get by moving in a straight line."

"Then where are you from?"

"That depends how specific you want to be, the latest variant I spent time in was The Cloudy Expanse of Wings, the corner of variant space me and my siblings spend time in is called the Realm of The Siblings and the entire collection of all the variants is called Terraria."

"Haven't heard of it!"

Akira drops slightly but immediately perks back up. "You should try visiting sometime whenever you finish with this world, or if you want a break I'm not sure how that part works for champions."

"I'll see what I can do. But it's a bit of a long haul, here."

"It certainly sounds that way." Akira stares into the distance a little. She's pretty unsure what's going on. Her two best guesses at this point are that Jackie is a method actor and this is a persistent state world or Jackie is an NPC unaware of the nature of the world.

"We've been making progress in the war..." she says, staring ahead as she whips the truck between buildings, along long-destroyed roads. "But the enemy's making progress, too. Hard to tell who's advancing faster, sometimes." And, under her breath: "Or who's losing slowest."

They break out of the group of buildings, into a wide sandy stretch. There's a cliff with a tunnel ahead of them, but no way they're getting the truck up that...

So Jackass turns and heads for a narrow crack in the rock. "We'll start picking up speed a little bit from here," she says, hitting the accelerator. "You know we've got units now that could outrun this truck? Could just jump up that cliff, too. And they wouldn't get too overheated, though they'd have trouble hauling all this back..." Heavy sigh. "And now we're starting to see enemy units that none of the rest of us relics can keep up with."

"Ohhh," Akira breathes. So this isn't a champion Jackass is a helper like her but probably one more constrained by champion mechanics... maybe she's a support type champion? "It sounds like that might lead to the stalemate breaking one way or another."