Cal tightened the screw on his robot. He adjusted the arm and tried to run it again. Just a few more tweaks and it would be ready.

David was painting eyebrows onto his bot. They didn’t do anything for the function, but they made it look menacing. He’d programmed the robot to attack, not defend, so menacing seemed like a good look.

When they arrived at the Robo Wars competition, both boys were nervous. They wanted their robots to win. But, maybe more importantly, they didn’t want them to get destroyed. They had taken so many hours to build, it seemed a shame to think it could be over in a matter of minutes.

Cal had built his robot in the garage with his dad. They used metal scraps and the inside of an old “Speak and Spell” to create the fighting machine. His dad had taken apart an old telephone so the robot made a bunch of sounds. Cal had a lot of great memories of the afternoons they spent tinkering together.

David had built his bot at school. There was an afterschool robotics club that he loved to go to. First they had made their robots to go through mazes. Then, they outfitted them with fighting gear for the battle.

Cal’s first match was against a robot with a huge rotating blade. Terrifying. Luckily his bot was able to avoid the blade by reaching out its long arms and squeezing the other robot to shut it down. Phew.

David’s match was against a robot with a laser zapper. The zapper ran out of energy quickly and didn’t even give David’s bot a scratch. That was a relief.

The boys and their bots ran through the competition easily. Hours passed and it was time for the final round. The matchup was Cal against David. They looked at each other’s robots carefully.

“I love your bot’s eyebrows,” Cal told David.

“And your robots arms are really cool,” David said to Cal. Looking at their awesome robots, the boys felt reluctant to get started with the final battle.

“How about we agree to a tie?” asked Cal.

“Definitely,” said David.

Cal and David shared the trophy. And, maybe more importantly, they both took home their robots ready to fight another day.