First time writing in YEARS, I just really like Saiibo okay. Please write more Saiibo.
It was a hot day and Kiibo was having issues.
He would tell his body to move but it would take anywhere from 3-5 seconds before his body would respond. A heat was building in his chest and spreading, and his mind was foggy and stuttering. He staggered forward, clumsily grabbing at his chest. If he were capable of it he'd be gasping and panting right then. His eyes moved in a stilted manner providing him with, at best, a slideshow of images to process as he tried to get to his destination.
Had he only made it halfway across the foyer? His chest was burning, his core cooking itself, a deafening hum surrounding him. With condensation dripping down his face he clenched his teeth and fists with frustration and queued up multiple other commands for his body. His body could not execute those commands as intended; the result was a janky flailing of useless limbs and he collapsed to the floor.
Not a moment later the doors to the dorms foyer burst open and Kokichi marched in looking pleased with himself. He paused for a second at the sight, and shoving something into his back pocket he dashed over.
Kokichi squatted next to Kiibo. The robot was laid out on the floor completely red in the face with his eyes closed. His armoured vest was open exposing a brushed black steel chest. A small section of that was open exposing complicated circuitry and a desperately whirring cooling fan. Kokichi hovered his hand over the fan feeling the warm air it was blowing out. Kiibo's whole body was burning hot.
When Kiibo didn't react he poked the robot's face some. "Hey, Kiiboy. Kiiiiiboy. Kiibob. Kiibaby... hey, Kiibo," he poked some more. Still with no reaction, he glanced around checking to see if they actually were alone, then jammed his entire hand in the opening.
"… ah, ahh! … g-get your hands out of me!" Kiibo jerked up.
"Nee-heehee, careful with your phrasing, Kiiboy," Kokichi sniggered. "What about if I just touch this?"
"…. n-no! Don't touch… anything!" His voice faltered.
Kokichi poked his index finger into Kiibo's exposed chest again. It took a solid moment before Kiibo reacted to the intrusion.
"Please stop!" His arm jerked out in a jittery manner and the fan spun impossibly faster, but Kokichi had already moved back.
"Wow! I knew you were weak but I didn't know you were so slow too! I'm not even touching you anymore."
Kiibo's arm dropped down and he closed his eyes again. He was making a ridiculous amount of noise. Kokichi was starting to feel bad for the robot now. Maybe.
"You're so noisy," he said and poked Kiibo's arm. He poked him a few more times, then jabbed his legs and then poked his face again. He tried to get any sort of reaction. "Hot too. We could fry an egg on your face, nee-heehee. I was sent to buy drinks and I find this instead? That's a lil' rude of you to distract me like this, our friends could be dying of thirst right now."
Kokichi grinned as Kiibo turned to frown at him before resuming his struggles. The movement of his limbs was choppy like he was a character in a flipbook that someone had torn a bunch of pages out of. The fan was thundering now. With some luck and randomness he'd managed to make it to hands and knees, and then...
"Aack!" Suddenly Kiibo's body seized unnaturally, he stopped struggling, his eyes blanked out with a click like someone had turned off a TV and he fell back down, the fan slowly coming to a quiet stop.
"Whoa! Holy shit! Did you just die!?" Sweating suddenly, Kokichi jumped to his feet and nudged Kiibo with a foot.
Shuichi came into the foyer just then. "Kiibo, Kokichi!" he shouted and rushed over to the pair.
"Did I just watch a robot die?" Kokichi said more than asked.
"Uh, what," Shuichi looked puzzled. "What're you doing to Kiibo?"
"Nooooothing," Kokichi whined. "We were just playing together and he died that's all."
Looking down Shuichi finally noticed that Kiibo was not acting right. Usually when the robot and supreme leader were together it involved lots of shouting, bullying and accusations of robophobia, often ending with Kiibo sulking and Kokichi cackling. Now Kiibo was laid on the floor deadly quiet, though he always operated silently this time it was as if he were asleep, again something not possible. The lights on his body were glowing a dim red and the scrolling text on his collar declared an error has occurred.
If those lights were still on then he was okay. Sort of. Shuichi knelt down by the robot's side. "Just go get Miu," he ordered and Kokichi shrugged his shoulders in response.
"Geeze, getting all dramatic over a dumb robot. But fiiiine, i'll do it for you, Shuichi," he smiled cheekily.
"And give me my wallet back," Shuichi said with a flat voice as he held out an expecting hand.
Kokichi grinned and rubbed the back of his head. "Oh, whoops! You caught me! Looks like I'll just have to use Kaito's wallet instead."
"No, that's… oh, never mind." Shuichi shook his head as he took back his wallet. There really wasn't time to deal with Kokichi's antics right now.
Maybe it wasn't the best idea to send Kokichi of all people to get help, but Miu arrived surprisingly quickly and looking a bit frazzled. Probably from taking a mouthful of abuse from Kokichi, though she was often the one to initiate their little spats anyway. The more common haughty expression returned to her face when she saw him kneeling over Kiibo.
"Alright, dickweed! What's the learning-impaired AI done to himself this time?"
Ignoring the insults (for both of them), he explained what had happened since he arrived on the scene adding Kokichi's comments. Miu gave the robot a check over and came to a quick conclusion.
"The dumbass overheated," she explained. "Resulting in a partial system shutdown. He'll wake up after he cools down, but if he stays here he'll just overheat again when he tries to move."
"We could take him to the computer room? It's always cool in there," for obvious reasons, Shuichi suggested.
"Fuck that, I ain't dragging Kiibo's heavy metal ass up all those stairs!" Miu scoffed, but it was clear under the boisterous manner of speech that she was worried. She thought about it for a few more moments. "The kitchen pantry should be fine. If we shove him into the fridge that should cool his ass down."
Into the fridge? Shuichi thought with trepidation as Miu grabbed Kiibo's arm and tried to drag him along. He quickly hurried around to help her and together they dragged Kiibo to the kitchen. With much swearing and muttering under Miu's breath between them they made it quite quickly, both sweating and out of breath due to the heat and exertion
"Fuckin' amateur hour," Miu was still muttering to herself as she positioned Kiibo near the open refrigerator door. "Only one cooling fan for a sophisticated, human-sized machine. What did the dipshit expect to happen, call yourself a scientist with such piss-poor foresight, tch! Charging cable is so short too, obviously not designed to leave the lab..."
She looked sharply to Shuichi then. Uh, was she talking to him now? "Huh?"
"What a waste! Whoever this professor is he's a fucking idiot amateur! I'll show Kiibo the true genius of a real inventor. He'll have fans coming out the ass he'll be blowing for hours, KYAHAHA!"
Shuichi was confident that Kiibo would not take those kinds of comments about his creator well, so maybe it was for the best he was down right now. Regardless, he would send the robot to Miu's lab later for maintenance… at least, he thought that was the suggestion?
"And don't go poking around in all his shit!" Miu glared at him, pointing at Kiibo's chest.
"I wouldn't!" Shiuichi replied.
"Pffft, whatever," Miu flicked her hair. "If he breaks on your fuckin' watch I'll tell everyone about your desperate limp dick, virgin ass checking out my glorious rack."
"Of course, Miu," he rolled his eyes.
And then she was gone.
It was certainly much cooler in the pantry with the fridge door wide open. Once they'd arrived Kiibo's fan had started up once again so he was quite relieved that Miu hadn't actually tried to fit the robot into the fridge itself. That would have been quite shocking for some poor soul looking for a nice late morning snack. Kiibo was looking very vulnerable right now, with his chest open and inner workings partially on show. He could already perceive a drop in speed the fan was spinning at, but the robot himself didn't show any signs of waking up yet. Or coming online, or whatever actually happened in Kiibo's head. Wringing his hands with indecision he couldn't help himself as he leant forward to get a better look at the technology. Still without actually touching he had his face too close to Kiibo's chest before realisation struck. This must be very personal!
He jerked back with a shameful expression and an apology already on his lips that didn't quite make it out. He sighed and put his face in his hands. Kiibo of course did not react. His face showed no signs of awareness and his body was as still as usual. Even with the fan whirring away his body was dead still; no movement from breathing or any incidental twitching. Nothing. In fact his eyes weren't even closed, they where just off. If someone didn't know otherwise they really would think Kiibo was a lifeless mannequin.
"… is that offensive?" Shuichi mumbled to himself before something happened.
There was a quiet beep and Kiibo's head shot up, eyes looking alert now. He looked at the opposite wall no doubt confused about the change is location.
"Feeling okay?" Shuichi asked.
"Shuichi!" Kiibo jumped when he noticed the detective.
"You have terrible reflexes."
"I'm hot!" Kiibo attempted to defend himself with a frown.
Shuichi laughed lightly. A long moment of silence happened.
"Did you carry me all the way from the dorms to here?" Kiibo eventually asked.
Shuichi looked away awkwardly. Carry perhaps wasn't the best word. Kiibo might want to buff some scratches out of himself sometime later. "Yeah, me and Miu. So you passed out in the dorm foyer, huh?"
"Yes..." Kiibo held a hand up to his open chest and the fan that was now spinning at a normal speed. "This morning the temperature was quite high! I couldn't function at an acceptable level, so I thought I might go to the computer room. But when I started walking I got too, um, hot and then uhh…"
Then he started to overheat and opened up his own chest to try and cool down, but it was a futile effort and he shutdown anyway. Shuichi watched Kiibo who was now red in the face again, this time clearly from embarrassment. He was twiddling his fingers.
"But thank you for helping me, Shuichi!" he suddenly exclaimed, looking up at Shuichi with gratefulness and admiration in his eyes.
Shuichi froze and felt his own cheeks heating up. Kiibo never attempted to hide his emotions and the way he was gazing up at him was, well, so cute. As always really. God, what would Kaede say if she found out he was developing a crush on a robot.
"I'm very grateful!" Kiibo continued. "That can't have been easy. I may be short, but I know I'm very heavy."
Shuichi laughed. "I think all this training with Kaito has been working. Maybe next time you can join us and we can all drag you around."
"How rude! Even now you..." Kiibo frowned.
"Ah-haha, Kiibo," Shuichi smiled awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck, looking at the floor. His face was burning. "W-well, I was hardly going to leave you there at the mercy of Kokichi. I think Miu mentioned something about upgrades if you talk to her later..."
He tried to deflect attention from himself by bringing up the inventor. It worked as Kiibo looked confident now. "Yes, Miu has always been very good to me!"
"She said we should stay here until tonight, otherwise you'll probably just overheat again."
"O-oh, yes. Of course," Kiibo dipped his head. It only took a few seconds before his eyes slowly slid up to Shuichi's face. "We… you're staying with me?"
All this time he'd been kneeling at Kiibo's side watching him. Now he sat down properly on the floor next to the robot and nodded. "Sure, I think it'd be lonely by yourself otherwise, huh?" He smiled and gave the robot's hand a friendly pat.
Kiibo's eyes widened as much as possible and his face flushed red again instantly. He tried bringing up his blast shield to cover his face like he often did when embarrassed, but since he wasn't wearing his armoured vest properly it provided no hiding space. The cooling fan that had finally settled down to a normal speed sped up slightly. Shuicihi deliberately didn't draw attention to this.
"Shuichi is always so thoughtful," Kiibo said to himself out loud. Shuuichi wasn't sure if that was an accident or not.
"Well, you're sounding-uh-looking much better now," he pointed out. He didn't really want to ask his next question for fear of offence, but felt like he had to for the well-being of the robot. "If you think about it, this isn't really much different from one of us fainting from heatstroke or something. Do you think this could be a recurring problem? I... want to help you if I can. This is important."
Kiibo whined, his eyes displaying an emoticon of comically clenched eyes. When he calmed down he was looking down at his hand with a melancholy expression. "I-I suppose I have been neglecting my own upkeep somewhat since we all arrived here. I've never lived in such personal quarters with so many people before, or away from the professor for so long. I think I feel self-conscious that I require different maintenance than you all... I neglected to apply fresh thermal paste recently… among other things."
Seemed like Kiibo was still stuck in the awkward space between wanting to be perceived more human, but still proud of his origin and robotness.
"Please take care of yourself, Kiibo," Shuichi said somewhat sternly and warmly.
Kiibo shut his chest plate with a snap, not making eye contact with him. "What shall we do to pass time?" he asked.
Mentally rolling his eyes Shuichi smiled. Putting a thoughtful hand to his chin he pointed with his index finger. "Have you played rock, paper, scissors before?"
"Yes, of course! I've been told I'm very good. Prepare for a loss, Shuichi!" Kiibo held out his hand looking proud.
He threw scissors, Shuichi threw rock
"H-huuh!? Whaaat!?"
Shuichi laughed.
I might do another chapter with a sick Shuichi instead if I get the inspiration. But no promises!