NsiteMarcus puts his hands up quickly and shakes them while nervously stammering and taking a couple half steps backward.
"Whoa whoa whoa there neighbor.... just seeing if I could get a cup of sugar?"
Marcus looks up at his wrist,, with a couple flicks of his fingertips the Virtue's menacingly ample supply of hard points could be out and locked in on our new friends, being only a few bays away,-- but there had to be a far more elegant solution to this circumstance.
Somehow, I read that "could" as "were"
But tbh, I quite like how it's played out!