“You’ll be fine,” Katar had said, voice clipped as he placed the oblong, humming device in the corner of the room. “It’s perfectly stable. Just… don’t touch the control nodes.”

Famous last words.

He’d been gone all of fifteen minutes—off to track some low-tier alien smuggler squatting in Blüdhaven—when the so-called “stable” Thanagarian relic blinked red, unfolded like a mechanical flower, and started screaming. Not metaphorically. Screaming.

Now the walls are scorched, furniture is reduced to splinters, and the thing is hovering in the middle of the room, crackling with energy and firing off stun bursts like it’s in a war zone. You’re on the ground, nursing a bleeding arm, trying to crawl toward anything resembling cover when—

CRASH.

The ceiling gives way as Katar slams through it, wings flaring wide, eyes blazing. His mace is already in hand.

“You had ONE job,” he bellows at the construct, as if it can hear him. “Protect. Not vaporise my child!”

He lunges, disabling it in seconds—ripping out the core and slamming it against the floor. Sparks sputter. Silence falls.

He turns to you next, face grim. “You’re hurt.”

You glare. “I told you not to leave that thing here.”

“…It didn’t look sentient.”

You groan, flopping back against the wreckage. “Next time, just bring home a puppy.”

Katar’s wings lower slightly. He grunts. “Puppies bite. This was supposed to be safer.”

He crouches beside you and starts scanning your injury with a small med-device from his belt. “I’m never hearing the end of this from Shayera...”