The guards worked fast once they decided to stop pretending this was still hostile.
Panels on the hover slid open. One of them crawled halfway under the chassis, muttering about thrust curves and lift response while another adjusted values on a handheld tuner. The tension eased the way it always did in Ashfall, not through apologies, but through noise and talking over each other.
One of them laughed suddenly. "We had a bet, you know."
Xavier glanced over. "About? Who would take on most of my punches?"
"About who'd show up," the man said. "Thought it'd be some rich idiot. You know the type. Soft hands. Loud mouth. Thinks owning something means he understands it."
Klatos snorted quietly. "You lost."
"Yeah," another guard said. "Badly."
There was a pause, then the same guy tilted his head, studying Xavier again. "We were also curious about something else."
Xavier didn't answer.
