"Hey, could you go get me a soda?"
"Of course, Commander."
Jimmy practically skipped out of the room, chipper almost to the point of being creepy. Okay, yeah, it was creepy. One thing the Commander had noticed about him was that he seemed to greatly enjoy following orders. Whether it was simply in his programming, or a result of the simple, universal desire to feel useful, he couldn't tell. Either way, mildly unsettling as it was, it was a good way to keep the both of them happy. He could simply have the robot do all the things he didn't want to do. It kept the Commander happy, because he didn't have to do them, and it kept Jimmy happy, because he got to follow an order and make the Commander happy. It was a sort of mutually accepted truce between the two, while the Commander was still deciding whether keeping the robot was a good idea.
Jimmy eagerly ran back into the console room gently carrying a can of soda, placing it next to the Commander obediently. The Commander smiled, a slight hint of relief washing over his face. If it was this easy to keep the android under control, he was going to have a much easier time keeping calm around him, even as the others had already abandoned him to go do who-knows-what-but-probably-something-terribly-fun without him. Yeah, spending the entire day alone in the BattleTram with Jimmy wasn't high on his list of things he was okay with doing, but at least with his current level of obedience, he could tolerate having him around.
A sudden loud, crashing noise brought the both of them to attention. There was a brief moment of tense silence, as the Commander flashed through several mental images of what the noise could have possibly been, both good and bad. Perhaps he dwindled on this subject a bit too long.
"You stay here," Jimmy took the initiative and rose to his feet after a short moment of neither of the two moving a muscle. "I'll go check out what that noise was."
"Hey, wait-"
Before he could get out the rest of his sentence, Jimmy had already ran out the door. Come on, that wasn't fair. It was the Commander's job to investigate the unknown, even if it was likely just a book someone dropped or something. He felt slightly annoyed at the show of eagerness to please, which appeared to slowly turn into competition. Was there such a thing as being too helpful? He began to believe there was.
It wasn't long at all until Jimmy hopped back into the room and shut the door behind him, obviously enthusiastic to report back so he could wait to receive more orders. It almost unnerved the Commander to suddenly be in a sealed room with him, as manic as he was at that moment.
"A tray fell over," he explained after the Commander hesitated and stared, the robot taking the gesture as a prompt for him to speak. "I picked it up and put it in the cupboard."
"Uh, good for you, I guess?" The Commander spoke uncomfortably.
Almost on cue, the two heard a sudden, sharp banging on the door. Relieved at the excuse to open it, the Commander got to his feet, but abruptly stopped dead in his tracks when Jimmy raced to open it on his own. The Commander was significantly irked by this. He was perfectly capable and willing to open that door himself; he didn't need an over-glorified metal nanny to do it for him.
The door now open, the two stood and watched as Crash stumbled into the room, fully in-uniform, save for his helmet. He looked rushed, as if he had something really important that he had to do right that moment, and his goggles were askew, with only one eye hole properly aligned and the other folded under itself on his forehead. He breathed deeply as he hoarsely spoke.
"Hey, uh, have you guys seen-"
"A helmet?"
The Commander sighed. Of course Jimmy was going to answer first. Naturally. Crash took a moment to process the interruption, and haphazardly nodded.
"Yeah."
"Bathroom, next to the sink. I saw it when I was cleaning in there earlier, and suspected someone was looking for it. I was busy, otherwise I would have picked it up myself."
The Commander hopped in place for a bit. He still had a chance to do something on his own, and by god he was going to take advantage of it.
"I'll go get it for you!" He offered, in an obvious attempt to inject as much enthusiasm into his voice as possible to match up to his competitor's.
"Nah, that's okay, I really need to get back to the others, like, now," Crash muttered, speeding back out into the hallway. He turned around briefly to mumble a quick "thanks, Jimmy" before closing the door behind him.
Okay, that was it. The Commander could sense that his importance was being threatened. He was not going to let himself be replaced by this... thing, no matter how helpful it was. He stood in place, frozen in frustration, teeth clenched uncomfortably and fists tight.
Jimmy hummed to himself quietly.
"I wonder what he was in such a rush for."
The Commander mustered all the self-control in him to keep from socking the robot in the face right then and there.
He would wait. He would wait, and then he would be able to rid the team of this creeps-inducing automaton. He was sure nobody would miss it.
After all, robots don't have souls.