...okay but that's different.

"What would you say if I told you you're not allowed to fight?"

He turns to look at her again, frowning.

"Exactly!" She sits up and glares at him. "So stop babying me, I'm older than you." She's pretty sure. "And sure, I'm a bit useless but I'll be a lot more useful if I can fight, and I have my legs now, what's the point of having legs if I can't use them to go places and do things???"

Gonie hates it so much when she says she's useless.

There's a knock on the door and then Elena's voice calls, "Hey, lovebirds, get decent and come down to command, you're being summoned."

Gonie stiffens.

"...huh. Okay. Help me into my legs."

He dutifully obeys, lifting her up and lowering her into the mechanical legs that are standing next to the bed.

Lucky pulls the back of her shirt away from her body so that the spinal control can attach itself to her and then hovers a few inches up—which still isn't enough to make her taller than Gonie; she could hover that high but it feels kind of pointless. She's planning to eventually figure something out for actually controlling the legs like legs, for walking, but that turns out to be a lot harder than just the hovering and isn't actually all that useful.

And then out they go.

"Good, you're here," says Erst, military commander of the Rebellion. "Lucky, I need you to investigate something for us."

In addition to her, Rupert, two body guards, and Elena are in the room. Erst is sitting at her desk and had been reading some documents before Lucky walked in, but the other three were apparently just standing around and Elena had just arrived.

"—me?" she says, conflicted between delight and confusion.

Gonie's gone stiff again, and looks mightily displeased.

"Yes. We need someone who is well-liked in Einbech and looks inoffensive, so that people won't be too suspicious."

"Yeah, girl, you're like, super popular."

"Don't people know that I'm with you guys, though?"

"Not officially. Jon is the only one who has been directly told."

"We operate under the assumption that Rekenber is mostly unaware of our movements and being successfully misled by our diversionary tactics, because nothing we do means anything otherwise, so other than minimising risk there is nothing we can do. Even as far as the ears most sympathetic to us know, the Rebellion has in fact officially disbanded, after we failed to recover the people taken that day."

He twitches.

...people like Gonie's parents. Yeah.

"Well. I'm in."

"We haven't even told you what you're going to be doing."

"It's like you haven't met her, Rupert. Of course she'd say yes."

Nghhhhh.

"There was an accident in an excavation funded by Rekenber right after we heard about some unrest there, and while it could be nothing, enough people died in it that we're suspicious. Your job will be to find out what the residents of Einbech know about it and, if possible, locate one of the people who survived the accident but whose whereabouts are currently unknown to us. We suspect one of the Einbech residents may be hiding him, and you might be one of our best-positioned agents to find this out.

"You will, of course, need to use your chair rather than your legs."

Right. Of course. She hasn't shown up in Einbech with her legs yet, in order not to arouse too much suspicion. Plus it makes her look less inoffensive; the disability may be the same, but a girl in a wheelchair is just a lot less threatening than one in floating robot legs.

"Understood. Do we have a name for the person who survived?"