"Come on Shannon! Calm down, please! Whoa!" K.O. threw himself onto his back to desperately dodge a wide swing, the razor-sharp blade getting part of his brush like hair cut off.
"You tried to kidnap my brother! You expect me to take that sitting down?!" Shannon declared. The distress signal Jethro sent out with that lie of a message alerted her into action.
"I swear I didn't kidnap him! Right, Jethro?!" K.O. looked over to him with a pleading look on his face.
"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro stated apologetically, once she was like this she tended to be unstoppable until eitehr beaten or exhausted..
"Ah, geez!" K.O. rolled backwards into a ball to avoid a buzzsaw that slammed where he laid. It was fast and sharp enough to cut through the concrete, leaving a cut mark after it. He hated that he had to fight when he just wanted to talk already. Though he knew he was expecting too much if he was hoping to meet her without a fight.
K.O. ducked under another horizontal blade swing. He balled his right hand into a knuckle, beginning to create an aura power fist around his arm.
Shannon's next attack was blocked by that power aura, K.O.'s hand shielding him from the attack. Their eyes locked onto one another as they glared intensely. She still could not believe this was the same pipsqueak, that not even two years ago was Level 0 and couldn't even hold his own against anyone other than Jethro.
"Shannon, please! I just want to talk!" K.O. used his other hand to grab her other arm before forcing them to wrap over one another to keep her from attacking him again.
He needed something to calm her down. His brain scrambled for something he could use to ease her mental capacity. He understood why she was mad, after all he'd be just as angry if a villain had kidnapped any of his pals.
"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro suddenly called out to K.O. and the boy felt an idea snap to his head.
"Oh! You were the one behind that disguise plan yesterday?" K.O. chirped the words which seemed to make her pause her efforts at attempting to attack momentarily. Shannon gave him a slight glare.
"Yeah? So? Gonna rub in how bad it went?" Shannon retorted, her voice bitter. The young boy shook his head.
"N-no! It was a good plan and your new outfits for it were even better! Yours was really cute too!" K.O. blurted out. A moment after, he noticed that his last-minute compliment worked. It made the orange Boxmore bot stare at him in awe, wondering if she had heard him right.
"You… you really mean that?" Shannon asked. She had never heard a compliment like that before in her life. The level 3 hero let out a relieved sigh when she pulled back her sawblades and let her normal hands pop back out. Though now it was becoming clear what was going on here now that her mind was no longer blinded in rage.
"What? You had Jethro just lie to call me over so we can talk?" the young girl tilted her head, confused. K.O. looked very sheepish to speak openly. He did not know what to say at this point.
"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro apologized to his sister, feeling bad about the lie, but he knew she would rush over due to the urgency of his signal.
"I just asked him to call you since he owed me one…" K.O. admitted. There was a long awkward pause between the three from there. The young boy pointed a thumb to the upper area of the plaza. "H-how about I buy us food? No one'll bug us up in the food court."
Shannon crossed her arms, but she saw Jethro nod to the offer, so she shrugged. "Fine… but only because I'm in a good mood," Shannon followed K.O. as the three made for the stairs the plaza was having a slow day so there weren't many to take notice of the pair of villains at the moment. K.O. just hoped she stayed in a good mood long enough to talk.
The three were in an upper food court in the plaza. Anyone in the plaza who saw the three together assumed they were imagining things. There was no way they would see K.O. acting this casual with one of the Boxmore bots, let alone two.
Things were a bit awkwardly quiet between them right now. Jethro's occasional burst of smoke and them eating their lunch provided the sound between them, but none of them said a word.
"So… how have things been?" K.O. broke the silence after a bit more hesitation. He watched Shannon as she paused with another random assortment of metallic tiny items before beginning to crunch and swallow them.
"Why are you suddenly interested?" she raised an eyebrow, finding this all too strange. She wondered if the young boy wanted to make an allegiance for a plan that he needed help with executing, it wouldn't be the first time that was for sure.
"Just trying to be nice," K.O. responded. As nervous as he was getting, he was trying his best to build up courage for the question that had been plaguing his mind since last night.
"I. Am. Jethro.," Jethro said. Things had been quite boring lately. Though Shannon's depressed aura about her showed that things were a bit worse for her than they were for him.
"They've been great… Raymond and Darrell got upgrades, so they're really happy about it…" Shannon stated, but sounded rather bitterly jealous of her brother's upgrades. Even Jethro looked slightly annoyed at the mere mention of it.
"That's great! Does that mean you're gonna be upgraded next?" K.O. asked. The idea of his robotic rivals getting stronger made him eager to fight them again. Maybe he could get stronger himself from it even.
"No… Daddy says we're just perfect as we are…" Shannon let out a long and winded sigh at speaking of the most obvious lie K.O. had ever heard in his entire life.
"I. Am. Jethro.," Jethro explained.
"Wait… he doesn't think you guys have earned any upgrades?" the brush haired boy did not want to sound rude, but Jethro was at least certainly in dire need of it.
"Lately, Darrell and Raymond have been coming out more on top in their plans, so… we've kind of just become the worthless pair of backup failures now," Shannon confessed. She was the least selling of all the Boxmore bots, and that hurt her the most. Even Jethro models sold more than her, even if they were just good target practice dummies.
"Hey, you guys aren't failures," K.O. tried to reassure, "You came up with that plan the other day to disguise like you did."
"You forget the part where it failed?" the orange robotic girl retorted, her head rested on her arms on the table. The level 3 hero found himself pausing awkwardly now. He couldn't continue with that topic if it made her feel even worse. "What is it you wanted to talk to me about anyway?" Shannon asked, now in a bad mood and wanting him to get to the point so she could go home and wallow in her self pity.
"Well… You've been focusing on me a lot more in our fights lately. I wanted to ask if… If you were trying to tell me something?" K.O. tried to beat around the bush. Being direct about it was making him afraid he'd be attacked again.
"I. Am. Jethro." Jethro agreed that this was something he had noticed as well, but the short robot presumed it was his imagination circuit overacting again.
"I'm the one best suited to fight you, according to daddy," Shannon simply responded. She remembered when K.O. made his debut. He was so weak that anyone could just swat him away like a fly. But now he was strong enough to do serious damage. She sometimes found it hard to believe he grew in strength this fast, she was unsure why it impressed her though. "Why? What's it to you?" she then asked.
K.O. figured now he could just throw his response out there safely. Now he could finally get it out of his mind after thinking about it all day .
"I… I figured you might like me?" K.O. admitted. There was a long awkward pause from there as she processed what he said.
"That's… nuts! Why would I like you?! You're one of my enemies and no matter how cute you are, nothing will change that," Shannon had to hold herself back from exploding. She crossed her arms, casting her gaze to the side.
"You think I'm cute?" K.O. squeaked. It was not unusual to hear someone call him that, but to hear it from a rival who tried to murder him on a daily basis was different.
Shannon grew a faint blush on her cheeks, when realizing what she had said aloud. "I-I was trying to just be nice to you for saying my new disguise was cute earlier…" she replied, though she did ponder if he was interested in her now. Though in which case, she was lost entirely on what to do. She never had a human grow affectionate for her before, Raymond had it happen a few times sure, but this was a new experience entirely to her memory.
"I. Am. Jethro.," Jethro said. A sudden buzzsaw was thrown at him, which cut the short blue robot in half easily like a loaf of bread. His two halves hit to the floor, bleeding out nuts and bolts that clattered everywhere.
"Don't even joke about that!" Shannon shouted, her buzzsaws swirling viciously again and her sharp teeth showing. K.O. gulped, but he could not deny that Jethro deserved that one.
"She's acting like Mr. Gar does when he's nervous…" the young boy thought, though with far less restraint. He figured maybe this was a sign of some sort of emotion. What emotion that was, though, was his issue. K.O. had always been bad at reading people's thoughts.
Shannon pulled back her saws after a second. She was ready to leave, but before she could, she felt K.O. grab her by the wrist.
"What is it now? Don't tell me you want to try and fight…" Shannon huffed, no longer up to fighting for the moment. She knew K.O. would only be doing it to try and cheer her up as well. Maybe even feign losing.
"He-here, this is for taking the time to talk with me," the young boy held up a small napkin with writing on it. She took it with a raised eyebrow.
"I.O.U. Shannon any favor, from K.O…?" Shannon read the note. It even had a small, adorable yet poor drawing of K.O. giving a thumbs up. "Uhh… Thanks…?" the orange robot guessed this was just him trying to be nice. She began to walk away. It was hard to be mad at someone who was not trying to fight her and was in fact the most optimistic adorable character she knew.
Shannon walked along on her own back to Boxmore, the sun dangling overhead in the afternoon. She looked down at the I.O.U. in her hand. She wanted to throw it away and pretend it didn't exist, but she couldn't for some unknown reason in the back of her head.
"What was that all about, anyway? And why'd Jethro say all that stuff…?" Shannon mumbled. It felt strange. A sudden thought crossed her mind, which stopped her from entering the place she called home. "Wait… asking if I'm interested in him and acting so shy like that…" the orange bot held her head. She had the idea now. "He really is interested in me… a hero is interested in me…" she was unsure how to feel about this. She had a weird sense of mixed dread and irritation, but also a hint of pure joy in her. It all utterly confused her. She'd need a long while to figure out what she could do about it.
"Why is part of me happy about that though...?"