It had all happened extremely fast: just as he was trying to recover from what had struck him (including yanking the arrow out of his butt; ugh, he was going to have to patch that bit up later; maybe the nurse could help him?), Lucca got shot (more like grazed), pulled out her own weapon and...

...well, knocked the thing out, sending it to the floor with a hard clunk.

First things first: He needed to check over her. He could handle abuse; he was built to take a lot of punishment. He could lift more than a normal human, he had reflexes faster than a typical human (usually...he felt a bit sluggish from that arrow, for reasons he didn't quite understand), and could handle temperatures that most people couldn't.

Lucca was a human, however, regardless of how brilliant she was.

Worry bubbled inside his core.

X shook his head.

"I'm all right. I've handled worse. What about..."

He turned to her, ready to finish his sentence. The word was right there on the tip of his tongue, about to fall out--

--but then his eyes met her face.

O-oh. Was his voice modulator supposed to stutter and stop like that? Was it normal for his face to feel like he was stuck in a furnace, and yet there were no warnings of overheating?

When had her face started to glow like that? Had her eyes always glittered in that way, her hair have that beautiful lustre?

Sure, he'd thought she was pretty, but X couldn't keep his eyes off her.

His face flushed, and his eyes and voice softened:

"...you...A-are you okay...?"