Love During Robot Fighting Time: Chapter 24

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And now, back to our regularly scheduled nerdy romcom shenanigans!

***

Kate

“You ready?” Zeke said, rubbing my shoulders while I was hunched over Poly, tightening the screws that held the wheels in place via power drill. 

“I think so,” I said, his strong hands taking the tension out of my shoulders. The CONSIDERABLE amounts of tension. 

“Good,” Faith said, squatting on the other side of the bot. They were both still giddy from their victory, while mine was… 

I breathed in deep through my nose. I could do this. It was within my power. It was just that I had a lot riding on this- my potential title run, my sponsorship, my pride. 

My pride. My freaking pride. I’d spent so damn long prioritizing that over everything else, and just when I’d finally started to have things to be proud of, I was at risk of completely losing it. It made sense- it’s easy to be unafraid when you’ve nothing to lose, nothing to show for yourself, just hollow bluster you can laugh off when you fall on your face. 

Now, though… I’d be letting a lot more people than myself down if I lost. 

“Hey, uh, just a heads up,” Faith said, poking my nose, forcing me to look up from my machine, finally. “My parents want to take us all to dinner after the fight.”

“Oh. Well, that’s nice of them-”

“And they want your parents to come, too.”

I wanted to blink, but I couldn’t make it happen, as if the concept of doing so had just become incredibly abstract. “What.”

“They-”

“No, I heard you, I just… Why?”

“They want to see what kind of family you’re from,” Faith said. 

“Do you tell them my parents are nerdy hippies?”

“I tried to, but that just made them more keen to make it happen,” Faith said. 

“I don’t know if I’m crazy about this,” I said, standing up and wringing my hands together furiously. 

“Well, they just texted me a second ago that they found your folks in the audience already-”

“But how do they even know what they look like?”

“Social media, babe,” Faith said. “Your mom has pictures of herself and your dad up on your store’s accounts.”

“Oh, right,” I said. I breathed in, breathed out, breathed in, breathed out, breathe in-

I felt two hands cup my cheeks and looked up at Zeke, standing there like a monument of strength and stability. “Don’t worry about it yet,” he said. “That moment you’re worrying about, it hasn’t happened yet. Will it happen? Maybe. But that’s not right now, not right this second. Right now, you’re here, and you’re gonna kick ass, because you’re fucking brilliant, and your bot is brilliant.”

“There’s just so much pressure-”

“And I still believe in you,” he said, pulling me closer, propping my body against his chest, whispering into my ear. “And so does Faith. Even if it ends here, we know you’ll go down swinging. So don’t worry about what’s ten paces ahead of you. Just take it one step at a time.”

I felt Faith’s tiny frame wrap around me from behind, completely the group hug. I felt both their hearts beating slower than mine, but I breathed, and my pulse steadied until it was synched up with theirs. 

I gulped, and I smiled, and I kissed both of them. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

***

Team Forest Fire loomed large- very large, and very buff, and very, distractingly hot- in the box next to me, all clad in firemen’s wear. I recalled my mother’s warning about the man-candy and attempted to focused, even as Lance Masterson, Jake George, and Evan Hernandez all waved at me. I gulped, and attempted to think about something else. Anything else. Literally anything else whatsoever. 

The only other thing that could come to me was the impending panic attack from the possibility that I could lose this and my season would be over and I’d lose my sponsor and be shunted back to the bottom of my career-

No, no, stop that. Stop that right now. Zeke and Faith believe in you, and Mom and Dad believe in you, and Nadine believes in you, and Gaines wants to believe in you on some cyica level. YOU need to believe in you. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Just have to do my best. It was all I could do. 

“ROBOTS! ACTIVATE!”

And just like that, the anxiety cleared out of my brain. As if a lightswitch had been flipped, and I was suddenly in work-mode, and nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. Just the robots, and the fight. 

I took a deep breath, and I charged straight for FF. They opted for an identical strategy, right up until the point where I pivoted left. I narrowly avoided the downward swing of their ax, and instead the blade collided with the arena floor. This caused FF to get knocked into the air by the backlash of the impact, and I seized the opportunity by turning a hundred and eighty degrees and slashing its back-left tire as it landed. 

I cleared out and made them chase after me, wobbling and unbalanced with their injured robot. The tire I’d slashed came tumbling off, and I banked right towards the rotating screws and waited. If I could time this just right, they’d lose their ax to the screws and be without a weapon. 

I waited. They charged. 

I dodged. 

Their ax landed on the rotating screws and TORE THEM OFF OF THE FREAKING HINGES HOLY MOTHER OF GOD! 

“HOLY MOLY! LOOKS LIKE THE CLEANUP CREW IS GONNA HAVE TO INSTALL NEW SCREWS!” Marty howled. 

And the worst part? Their ax was just fine. 

I went on the offensive before they could finish turning around, aiming for their back-right tire. Had to take away their mobility. I positioned myself at just the right angle, only for Evan Hernandez to scream, “Bring it on!” 

FF turned around and buried its ax in the back of Poly, but not quickly enough to avoid a stab directly to the face. 

“OH NO! DO WE GOT A MURDER-SUICIDE ON OUR HANDS?!” Derek shouted. 

I grunted as I swung the reverse button on my control pad, FF removing its ax from my robot’s head and pulling back itself. Smoking. 

Or was Poly smoking?

Oh, no. They were BOTH smoking. 

And then they both burst into flames. 

We untangled ourselves from each other, our weapons intact but our engines burning. I didn’t let up, though. I slammed the forward button and rammed them again, cutting up their front-left tire before making a speedy retreat. 

“Both of these bots are on fire, looks like somebody needs to call the fire department!” Derek said, only slightly calmer than usual. “Seriously, though- maybe somebody should get an extinguisher?”

They chased after me, both of us going slower than usual thanks to our engines basically being fireplaces. The kill-saws went up, and I managed to avoid them as FF swung down with its ax and shattered one of the saws. God, that thing was powerful. 

But the recoil worked against them once more, shooting them a few inches into the air and landing them on the ground with a thud that must have shook some oil loose and prompted their fire to triple in size. 

“OH THE HUMANITY!” Marty screamed. 

I tried to keep moving, but Poly was getting slower, and slower, and slower. 

But FF wasn’t moving at all. 

“10! 9! 8!” the countdown started. 

Just had to keep moving until the countdown ended. Just keep moving. Keep moving. 

“4! 3! 2! 1!”

“Oh thank God,” I whispered as the crowd began to cheer. 

I almost expected the anxiety to slam back into me again, but it didn’t come. There was only relief, and joy, and… 

Pride. 

I was proud of myself. And I think I’d earned it, for once. 

I did a simple curtsy once more, and the crowd cheered and whistled and clapped for me. They… Liked me. They liked the new me. By the sound of it, they liked the new me just as much as the old one, if not more. 

The members of Team FF all came up to hug me, and I tried not to let myself enjoy it too much. As the trio of hunks pulled away from me, though, I saw my parents and Faith’s parents sitting together in the crowd, and then, finally, the anxiety came rushing back and my stomach practically fell out of my body. 

The easy part of the night was over. Now for the hard part.