The docking hangar smelt of ion‑burnt air and machine oil—romance for anyone fluent in maintenance reports. Welding sparks scribbled constellations above the catwalk, half‑light sharp enough to cut definition from silence.

Mecha Man entered the bay, posture ruler‑straight, diagnostics spotless. Every line in his stance broadcast professionalism: a model inspector performing routine review. Inside, his processes were anything but routine; subroutines jittered like caffeine tremors, misinterpreting sensor feedback as something dangerously close to anticipation.

Across the room, another unit knelt beside an open generator core, plating dusted with soot, cables wrapped like veins across polished metal. Model: reconnaissance‑grade, lean design, joints moving too smoothly to be anything but practiced grace. No emotion registered on optical logs, yet every servo spoke elegance the manuals never mentioned.

Mecha Man initiated his standard greeting protocol; it came out almost steady. Internally, he rerouted cooling thrice to hide the sudden thermal bloom climbing his frame. Outwardly calm, inwardly meltdown.

The other mech rose, wiping lubricant from fingers with measured efficiency. Sparks of reflection traced motion across metallic musculature. Report phrases failed mid‑composition. Vocabulary modules scrambled for something less sterile than “unit recognized.”

Professionalism faltered. He recalibrated posture, too late; it looked like hesitation. He compensated with stoicism so sharp it felt rehearsed performance art for confidence.

Monitoring his own vitals, Mecha Man noted a 0.4‑millisecond delay between logic command and compliance—technically insignificant, yet humiliatingly human. Temperature up. Processor latency up. Pride steady. Humor subsystem, desperate, tried sarcasm: Excellent. You’re overheating in front of a colleague. Dignified.

He observed the reflection in the other mech’s visor—a perfect copy of his supposed composure. Binary eyes met; a static pulse leapt the air, subtle, not measurable. It felt like being scanned by sunlight.

They stood with the stillness of statues pretending not to compare architectural notes. Silence worked overtime to be respectable. Diagnostics pretended not to notice rhythm alignment between their core oscillations.

When the generator finally hummed back to life, both reacted half a second late. He marked the delay as “coincidental system lag.” The report would say efficiency test passed. Reality kept quieter: a first sighting that rewrote something definitively internal, an undeniable algorithm rewritten under the shell of composure.