When she was born, her legs didn't work, and she doesn't know if her parents are dead or if they decided to get rid of her because of it but she never met them either. She was taken in by a homeless man who took pity on her and who'd take her with him to beg for money or even food in Einbroch, and who refused to move to Einbech because "being homeless in Einbroch is still better than having a house in Einbech". And he died when she was six, of some respiratory malady that might've been a virus or might've just been the soot of the city caking his lungs until they didn't work anymore.

The old man had gotten her a small wheelchair, and she used what meagre savings she had to buy a train ticket to Einbech, because clearly she wasn't cut out to be homeless in Einbroch either.

It was the people there who called her "Lucky", because that was everything she was not. But they were also kinder than anyone in Einbroch had ever been, to her—including the homeless man, who she eventually realised had just been using her disability as a way to get more sympathy from the people he was begging from—and they made sure she had something to eat and somewhere to sleep even though she was useless.

The thing is, she doesn't like being useless and doesn't want to be useless. So she decides she will instead become useful. She starts trailing after people. She watches the shoemaker, and the midwife, and the shopkeepers, and their clerks, and the innkeeper, and the brewer, she follows everyone and tries to understand what they're doing and why and how she can help. Some are annoyed, some are charmed, some are impressed. 

But it's the mastersmith's workshop that sings to her soul. She's small and useless but she can be of use to him, fetching him stuff and organising for him, and she watches what he does, and he gives her spare parts he isn't going to use for anything and lets her sleep in the attic. This means that she has space to try stuff out, and she dedicates half her attic to a makeshift workshop to tinker.  And he first notices her talent when she shows up one day with an improved wheelchair after spending the whole night up messing with it.

He starts including her in his work as a more active participant and apprentice after that. She turns out to be very good at mental maths and visualisation of three-dimensional structures, which means a lot less experimentation is necessary and she can spot issues with his designs before he actually tries to implement them.

Lucky eventually becomes responsible for occasionally grabbing supplies in Einbroch. She's acquired a magic crystal core that she used to spruce up her wheelchair, and now it's capable of dealing with stairs using small amounts of anti-gravity propulsion to keep stable, and that same tech allows it to carry reasonably heavy loads.

It's on her way back from one such trip that she meets Gonie.

As she rolling out of the station, she hears the soft sound of someone crying from somewhere under the elevated train tracks.

She is, unfortunately, a softie, probably owed to her own past experiences being ignored and treated as less than human, so when she hears the crying sounds she rolls over to see where they're coming from.

There is a boy with short messy green-grey hair, probably around the same age as her—though it's hard to tell, because she doesn't know when she was born and she is a girl and a small one at that, while he looks unusually tall for whatever age he is—sitting on the ground with his back against one of the pillars propping up the tracks, knees hugged in close with his head buried in them. Her current iteration of her wheelchair is sufficiently quiet that he doesn't hear her until she's reasonably close, and then he looks up at the strange noise, looking alarmed—and then confused, when he sees her.

"...hey," she says, not having thought about what she'd do once she got here in advance. "Are you, um..." He's obviously not okay. Uh.

He just keeps staring at her, still looking confused and not saying anything, but at least it seems like the surprise was enough to stop the crying.

"...do you want a hug? Or, um, do you want to talk maybe?"

He blinks slowly.

"Okay, well, if you want me to go let me know, I'm gonna stay here a bit."

The boy does not seem inclined to say anything at this moment. He's looking less confused but still looking at her, and he doesn't seem to want her gone, at least? Or not obviously so.

"Do you have a name? I'm Lucky. ...as in, that's my name. Or, that's what people call me, I don't know what my parents called me, I never met them. So I'm just Lucky."

Slow blink.

"Wait, maybe you can't speak? Or maybe you just don't want to. Do you use sign language? I know a few signs but I don't know too many. Oh, maybe you're deaf? Oh, um." So some signs she knows are "Hi" and "My name is Lucky". Any luck with those?

He looks more confused by the signs, not less.

"Okay, probably not sign. Or maybe a different sign language. Well, I don't know. So I'll just keep talking in case you can understand me and just don't like speaking, or can't speak, or something. But tell me to go away, okay? If you want me to, that is."

Still no words, still doesn't look particularly inclined to tell her to go away.

You know what, good enough.

"Do you live in Einbech? I do. I think I was born in Einbroch, or at least I lived there for a long time since I was a baby, but like I said I never met my parents so I don't know. I don't even know if they're alive, maybe they died? But I think they might've left because of, you know." She gestures down at her legs. "—I didn't have this chair back then. The man I used to live with got me a chair and when he got it it was too big for me but then I grew up and it was okay, and then I was a bit too big for it so it was uncomfortable, but by then I lived here in Einbech and I already knew my master—the mastersmith, that is, I'm his apprentice, his name is Jon, I don't know if you know him—but I already knew him and I already knew how to make some stuff so I fixed my chair and added a few things to it. I really like it, it's neat!"

He twitches a bit when she mentions her parents could be dead, but otherwise just keeps staring at her.

"And then I added a few new things to it. I can use it to climb and go down stairs now! Safely, I mean. And I say 'now' but that was a couple of months ago, actually." She gestures at one of the bags hanging from her chair. "I was on a supply run to Einbroch for my master and he gave me enough money to buy a new crystal—a magic crystal, I mean, I don't know a lot about how they work yet but I know a little and that's how I can carry so much weight on the chair and deal with the stairs—the magic doesn't do stairs, it just makes the chair be a lot lighter and not tip over on stairs—anyway so I bought a new crystal for the chair. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, though, I'm sure I'll think of something. Maybe I could make it actually float, get rid of the wheels—actually, that wouldn't be a good idea, because if they ever break then I'm stuck. So I'll keep the wheels. But if it floated I bet I could make it go a lot faster. Look how fast I can go!"

She enables the soft thrusters and starts rolling around in a quick circuit between and around the pillars. She's not as fast as an able-bodied person sprinting, at least not with the curves, but she's faster than a jog.

She looks exhilarated when she's back. "I don't know if it feels as nice as running, or less nice, or nicer, but I really like it. It makes me feel like I can do anything and go anywhere. Not that I can. But someday! I have this thing in mind—I don't know if I can do it but I won't know until I try it, right, except I shouldn't try it yet because it's wayyyyyy harder than anything I've done, I don't know much yet, I'm just a kid—sorry, I hope you don't mind me saying that? Some kids don't like it when I call them kids or sort of say things that mean they're kids, but I'm a kid, I'm ten and a half years old—or I think I am, I don't actually know—how old are you? You look older than me but maybe not—anyway, I have this thing in mind of, like, a robot suit—do you know about robots? They're like people but they're machines instead—I guess they're not a lot like people, I don't think any robots can talk or do people things—anyway I want a robot suit, like machine legs and arms and a body—really it's the legs I care the most about but why stop there?—and maybe I can figure out a way to make the robot legs walk. Or fly! That would be really cool, too, if I could fly. Or even float. Without the chair, I mean."

"I also work on other stuff, of course. My master wouldn't let me slack off, the chair is kind of a side project he helps with sometimes. He works on a lot of things and I help him, and he fixes things, too. He was working on a new kind of gun for the R—uh."

He blinks a couple of times.

"For some customers, I mean. Um. Anyway, he didn't want me to work on it because he said it was too dangerous, and then I took a look at his blueprint and found two problems that could make the gun explode and he let me work on it after that." She looks incredibly proud of it.

"Gonie."

Yesssssss he said a worddddddd wait what word was that. 

"'Gonie'? Oh, is that your name?"

He nods.

"Nice to meet you, Gonie! I'm Lucky. ...I said this already."

That draws a small laugh from him, which triggers a fit of laughter, which in turn causes him to start crying again.

"—wait, no, I'm sorry, I can forget your name if you want, don't cry—"

He shakes his head and buries his face in his knees again.

"Do you want a hug?"

He nods minutely, but doesn't make any movement that would make it easier to hug on the chair.

That's okay, she has a lot of practice getting off the chair and back onto it. She moves it closer to him and then hops down and drags herself over to him to hug him.

He leans into the hug and cries on her.

"It's okay, it'll be okay..." She doesn't actually know that it will be but that seems like exactly the wrong thing to say so she will keep her mouth shut for once and just try to be reassuring and nice to hug.

His crying before had been quiet, but now he's openly sobbing, and after a bit of that he decides to also wrap his arms around her to hug her more tightly.

She doesn't say anything more and just holds him, rocking back and forth a little.

She hopes she's being useful.

It takes him rather a while, but eventually he does calm down enough to stop crying. But he doesn't immediately unhug.

That's okay, she doesn't have anywhere to be.

...wait. Yes she does. Oh, darn, her master is going to be worried. Well, surely he'll understand? She couldn't have just left Gonie here, that wouldn't have been right. She won't worry about that for now.

It takes him a little bit longer still to decide to release the hug, but when he finally does he looks—confused. Like he's not quite sure how he ended up spending a long while crying on a complete stranger. 

...well. Maybe not a stranger, anymore. She did just tell him her whole life story. It was short, because she's ten, but still.

She offers him a tentative smile. "Better?"

He ponders the question for a few seconds then finally nods.

"Oh good! I'm happy." ...and now she's thinking about how she really needs to go back to her master, uh.

Gonie notices something is going on in her head and tilts his head questioningly.

"—oh, it's just, um, my master will be worried, but I don't want to just leave you alone here."

Gonie looks at her for a few more seconds, then up at her chair, then back at her, and decides to lift her up in his arms as he stands up. 

He's even taller than he looked, and very strong for his (probable) age.

She eeps and holds on to him, because she really cannot catch herself if she falls. "It's okay, I can get on the chair on my own, I have a lot of practice—"

He ignores her and walks the one pace to her chair (his legs are very long) then very gently places her back onto it.

...okay. She really could have gotten back on her own but, "Um, thank you."

He nods then walks around the chair and grabs the handles to start pushing her in the direction of Einbech.

"—I can do that on my own! You don't need to do that. It's faster if I do it, too."

"And, and do you even know where the workshop is? I don't think I've ever seen you around before, do you even live in Einbech?"

"Are you even listening to me??"

"Yes," he says, quietly, without looking down at her or stopping pushing her.

"Oh, now you speak! Well, let me go, I told you I can do it myself."

"I know you can."

"So?"

He doesn't say anything.

"...oh, fine, if you really want to," she says, throwing her arms up in the air dramatically. 

But she's smiling

So is he.

"Lucky where in Odin's name were you—oh, hello," says the mastersmith as soon as he spots Lucky's chair rolling into his workshop.

"I was on my way back and then I spotted Gonie cr—uh, I mean I saw him on my way back and I spent a while with him but I'm fine. This is Gonie, by the way. Oh and they'd run out of raw ori, they said to tell you they'll have more in a couple of days."

Gonie nods to the mastersmith in greeting.

"...it's nice to meet you, Gonie." Though he feels he's seen this boy before somewh—oh. Yes. That's. A coincidence. And a problem. "Did you, ah, ask Gonie to bring you back?"

"Of course not! I can do it myself. But he insisted."

Another serious nod.

"Of course. Lucky, could you go leave this stuff in the back? I wanna talk to Gonie a bit."

"—you know him?" She twists around as much as she can to look at Gonie. "You knew him?"

He shakes his head, looking just as confused as she feels.

"No, but I think I know his—family."

He stiffens, at that, but doesn't otherwise reply.

"...kay. But don't be mean to him he's my friend." And, assuming Gonie will let her, she makes her way to the back so that she can place the materials and pieces where they belong.

He does let her go, yeah. 

(Friend...?)

When she's gone Jon looks at Gonie and says, "So uh. Did they really...?"

He scrunches up his face but he doesn't want to cry in front of an adult. All he can manage is a tiny nod.

"Damn, kid. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to, uh, help?"

He blinks slowly.

"Yeah, guessed not, but had to ask. Will you... be okay? Do you have somewhere to go?"

He shrugs a bit then nods, trying to unscrunch his face as he does it and mostly succeeding.

"Right. So it wasn't everyone...? Not my business, sorry, forget I asked."

She bursts out the door, hoping to catch some part of their conversation, but it looks like they're just kind of standing around awkwardly. "He wasn't mean to you, was he?" she asks Gonie, when she's close enough to them again.

Gonie shakes his head.

"Girl, when have I ever been mean to you?"

"All the time!"

"I'm strict, but I think I've treated you alright. Is there anything specific I did that was mean?"

"....guess not. But still, Gonie is, um, sad, so you should be extra nice to him."

Oh, kid, he knows. 

"Don't worry, I was nice."

"'Kay."

"I gotta go," Gonie says, abruptly.

"—oh, okay. Um." She's not sure how to say what she wants to say here, but... "Will I see you again?"

He nods, seriously. "Bye," he says, and leaves.

She looks at her master. "Are you sure you weren't mean to him?"

"Yes, girl. I'm sure." Some people can be even more unlucky than her, sometimes. It sucks that one of them was just a kid.

Over the next several days Lucky will notice a... change, in Einbech. Some people she used to see around seem to kind of stop being around. Gloom settles over everyone else, a kind of lethargy or depression; people are less lively and energetic, they talk less, they shuffle rather than walk. Her master stops working on the guns, and won't explain to her why.

This is really upsetting, especially the not knowing. She's smart enough to guess that whatever Gonie had been crying about could be related to all of this, but she doesn't know where he lives and has no way of contacting him and even though he promised they'd see each other again it's been three weeks and there's still no word from him. 

She throws herself wholeheartedly into her apprenticeship and her side projects, because that's better than wallowing and feeling frustrated. Making her chair capable of actually hovering proves a tough nut to crack, so she has plenty to distract her.

There's less work at the workshop than usual, but on the other hand the alchemist is apparently seeing quite a lot more interest recently.

...okay, you know what, she is kind of curious about that. The alchemist was a close second place in her heart when she was flitting from trade to trade like a workaholic butterfly with ADHD (should she figure out butterfly wings? would they be better at flying/hovering? food for thought), she might as well check them out now that she has some extra free time.

"Oh, Lucky, hello, good to see you," says the alchemist when she spots Lucky rolling in through the door. "Be with you in a moment." There are a couple of customers there, and she's discussing some potion parameters with them.

Yeah, sure, she can wait. ...though she can't wait very still, and she'll start slowly making a round to look at all the fascinating, bizarre, mysterious reagents used for alchemy.

Once the customers are out of the store she turns back to Lucky. "Hi, dear, did Jon need anything? I don't think I got any orders from him but I can check..."

"No, no, I'm here for me."

"Oh? Do you wanna buy something?"

"No, I wanna help."

"...don't you have things to do for Jon?"

"I can't be your apprentice but I can help a bit. And learn a bit. You've been having a lot of work, and my master hasn't, and so I have a lot of free time." In which to fret.

"...well, it would be useful to have a little bit of extra help," she agrees. "And Jon has been nothing but complimentary of you."

"—really?"

Olga laughs. "Yes, really. Are you surprised? You do good work!"

"I'm just ten, I think, I don't do a lot."

"Maybe, but the things you do are very good."

"Oh."

......she squirms happily in her chair a bit.

Olga laughs again. "Come on, I have an idea or two of where you could help."

Even though a big part of the reason why she'd wanted to start helping the alchemist out was to figure out what the heck had happened in Einbech, that gets forgotten very quickly in favour of learning alchemy. She doesn't have the clear innate skill with it that she does with engineering, but she makes up for it in enthusiasm and curiosity. And it's very similar, actually, if you look at it a certain way, how you're combining things to create something that's more than just the sum of its parts.

Another month passes, and Einbech slowly recovers from whatever funk had first swallowed it. Or perhaps it's better to say that the pain of the wound gets duller, and people get used to the new normal. Not that it's particularly transparent to Lucky, what it is that people are getting used to; her master continues to not tell her about it, and neither does Olga, and neither does any other adult she talks to. And the children she talks to, of course, don't know anything either.

A month passes, and one day Gonie walks into the workshop.

"—you!!!" She's manning the counter on her own so she spots him as soon as he walks in and then rolls over to him and stops just short of bowling him over. "You disappeared! You told me I'd see you again!"

He looks at her, conflicting expressions warring for dominance over his face—guilt, sadness, happiness, exhaustion—and doesn't say anything.

"Well? You're just gonna stand there and pretend you can't talk? I know you can! I've seen you do it!"

"Lucky?" calls Jon from the back of the workshop. "What's going on out there—oh. Gonie, hello," he says, stepping out to check what the ruckus is about.

"This, this, this assbutt disappears for two months and he thinks he can just show back up like nothing happened and look at me like a, like a dumbface and not say anything—"

He leans down closer to her chair and wraps his arms around her in a hug.

"—I'm still mad at you!!"

"I know," he says, before straightening back up.

"Is the problem here that you only know like five words? Should I be teaching how to say things? Say 'I'm sorry for being a buttface, Lucky'."

"I'm sorry for being a buttface, Lucky."

Lucky blinks.

She had uh. Not really been expecting him to go ahead and actually say it? Now her sail's windless.

"...I'll let you kids figure it out," sighs Jon, making his way back out. "Yell if you need me."

Gonie watches him leave, expressionlessly, then turns to look at Lucky, expressionfully.

"...well, was there anything you wanted?"

He shakes his head.

"So... why are you here?"

He blinks.

"...okay. Sure," she sighs, rolling back over behind the counter where she'd been messing with the magic crystal again. "If you're just gonna stand there then—"

Except that he actually followed her, and when he's by her workbench he grabs three smaller crystals from his pocket and drops them onto its surface.

"...what are these?" she asks, curiosity winning over annoyance.

Gonie shrugs.

"Well. I'll figure it out myself, then. Humpf," she humpfs, and then gets to work on doing just that.

Gonie pulls up a chair and turns it around so that he can sit on it and hug its back while watching her work. The effect is slightly ruined by how he's tall for a kid his age and not in any absolute terms, so his legs are kind of open at a weird angle and his feet aren't touching the floor, but it works well enough and he's not complaining.

He comes back every other day, sometimes two days in a row, and doesn't say anything, just watches her work. Occasionally she asks him for things, to fetch this or that, or hold something still while she drills it, or grab a customer delivery, and he does what she asks. Occasionally he shows up with offerings, bits and bobs, shiny rocks and trinkets, kind of like a magpie if magpies were tall and gangly and really really quiet. And he always spends the whole day with her, when he's over.

It makes her feel bad at first, how he does everything she says without ever complaining, but eventually she guesses that if he wanted to do something else he'd be able to. It's not like she's making him do it or anything.

And the crystals he brought her on that first day turn out to be really useful. When she arranges them in an array just so she gets an interesting amplification effect that she doesn't really understand, and she hates not understanding things, so she spends all of her free time trying to understand it until she does, at which point it's obvious to her why her second crystal wasn't cooperating with plan "make her chair hover", and she scraps her plans and starts them over with better understanding of how to integrate multiple crystals together.

And while she works, she talks. A lot. Having Gonie around to listen is surprisingly nice, even if he doesn't say anything or ask any questions. She's not sure he actually understands half of what she's saying, but he always looks really interested, and maybe even happy to see her talk. She guesses she doesn't really have any reason not to talk, anyway.

Jon was wary at first, but slowly warms up to the boy and gets used to his presence. With the two of them spending so much time at the counter, he can spend most of his time in the back working on requests or just tinkering, and trust that things will be alright.

With demand climbing back up to its usual levels, soon Lucky gets tasked with another supply run to Einbroch. She's happy to go, as usual, and she can use some of the money she saved up for another magic crystal, of a kind she thinks will work better for her current purposes.

Gonie shows up on that day while she's getting ready to go and peers curiously at what she's packing up.

"—oh, hi." She hadn't been expecting him today. "I have to go to Einbroch for supplies today, sorry."

He nods.

"...which means I'm not gonna stay here."

He nods again.

.......he's so weird sometimes. Well, whatever, she told him. She finishes packing up, tells Jon that she's going, and makes her way out.

He follows her.

"—you can't go as fast as my chair," she says, when she understands what he's doing.

Gonie folds his arms and adopts a slightly petulant expression.

"...is that a challenge? Even if you can run faster I don't have to rest."

He continues to look at her petulantly.

"Alright. I'll show you. On the count of three."

He smirks and walks over to her side.

"Three!" she says, and takes off.

"—hey!" he calls, laughing, and starts running after her.

She's laughing, too, and unlike him she does not need to save her breath to run and do she can keep laughing as she zooms away.

Despite the unfair headstart, he is faster than her chair, and can run past her easily.

That's okay, slow and steady wins the race. ...not that her chair is slow. He's just really fast. But he's going to have to stop to rest eventually.

Is he?

...did she accidentally zoom past him and miss him somehow? He's really tall, though, she doesn't think she could've missed him.

She'll... get to the train station and then turn back around from there.

Nope, there he is, waiting for her. Or, well, he's there, his dark blue jacket is on the floor, and he's lying on it, his white undershirt drenched with sweat and looking like he's got stitches from not breathing well while running. He doesn't even notice her until she's nearly on top of him, and he's too tired to actually sit up when he does.

"You're crazy," she opines.

"I know," he replies, grinning, and then grimacing because of the stitches.

She can carry everything she wants to by just putting it in bags and hanging it off her chair, but she's finding it kind of entertaining to tell Gonie to fetch and carry things for her. And even with how quiet he is, the run is a lot more fun than usual, somehow.

Gonie continues not to complain about being used as a minion. He honestly looks pretty happy about it, to the extent he ever looks happy about anything.

Lucky would feel mean just actually letting him carry a bunch of heavy stuff on his own, though, given that it literally costs her chair nothing to do the same work, so eventually she has him stop and just leave all of the supplies with her.

He doesn't complain even then, and once his hands are free he uses them to start pushing her chair.

It must say something about her that it doesn't occur to her to protest until they're back at the station, at which point she figures the moment's passed. When they're climbing down the platform, though, she points in a specific direction. "There!"

He looks where she's pointing then back at her.

"That's where I found you. The first time. When, um, you know."

...oh. Right. So it was.

"Why were you crying that day?" she blurts out all at once, and immediately regrets it.

She had decided that she wasn't going to ask, because clearly he didn't want to talk about it, and things had gotten back to mostly normal, sort of, except some of the people who had vanished that first couple of weeks never came back at all even while others did, and she's so so so curious and she's completely sure he knows something about it but it's not her business and she doesn't want him to disappear for two months again. "Um, never mind. Forget I asked."

Gonie stays standing there a few more seconds, looking at the place she'd pointed, then shakes his head and starts pushing her back towards Einbech.

Yeah.

He doesn't say anything on the way back, as usual. But when they get to the workshop he says, "Wait here," then grabs the bags of supplies and walks into the workshop with them.

Um.

Okay???

She can hear Jon's voice. She can hear Jon's voice get louder. Then she doesn't hear anything anymore for a bit. Then she hears something that sounds a bit like Jon's frustrated throat clearing, recognisable even through the door.

And of course, she can't hear Gonie's voice. Even if he did speak, he wouldn't have raised his voice. And after a little bit longer he steps back out.

"What happened? Why was my master shouting?"

"He wasn't shouting."

"Well, he was being loud."

That he can't argue with.

"...was he mean to you?"

Gonie shakes his head. "He's worried about you."

"Why would be be worried about me? I'm fine."

He shakes his head again then grabs the handlebars of Lucky's chair and turns her around to start leading her somewhere else.

"—wait, where are we going?" she says, twisting around to look over her shoulder and then up at Gonie.

He shakes his head a third time but doesn't say anything.

...he's being weird. But she's going to trust him.

He's her friend.

Gonie drives her south from Einbech proper until they reach a river that runs east-west, then he follows it east for a while. There are still some buildings here and there, but they're not walking really very close to them, and eventually they go down a natural ramp into a mini canyon, barely taller than a person, and he keeps walking between the river and the miniature cliff face, completely hidden from view.

"...okay, Gonie, where are we going?" she asks, because this is getting weirder and weirder.

He points.

Lucky squints in the direction he's pointing and sees... nothing? There isn't anything he seems to be pointing at. "There's nothing there."

Shrug.

"You're so weird."

"I know."

"I'm gonna be really mad if this is a prank."

"I know."

"Okay. 'S long as you know."

It's only a couple more minutes before they get to a part of the cliff that's completely indistinguishable from any other part, but Gonie lets go of her chair and walks around her and places his hand somewhere on the dirt and it turns out not to be dirt after all because it opens like a door.

"—a secret passage?" she asks, her prior misgivings immediately forgotten in her excitement.

He nods and then opens the door further and gestures for her to get in.

This is so cool there is a secret passage she wonders if there's like a secret society that Gonie is part of and is going to invite her to, that'd be the best.

The inside is... a weapon store. A small and dingy weapon store, with some swords and guns hanging from the wall behind the counter and barely enough space for her chair.

There's a teenage girl, looking to be about fifteen or so, sitting at the counter, reading a magazine, and chewing gum. Also, she's jacked, sporting the kind of muscle you gotta work for and maintain every day. She starts drawling, "Welcome to Clana Nemieri, how can I help you," before she even looks up from the magazine but she stops at "how" when she sees who it is. "Aren't you a bit young to be here?"

That's when Gonie walks in.

"Gonie! She with you?"

"I'm totally with him!"

He nods.

"What's the passphrase?" She shouldn't ask this directly but, like, it's Gonie.

"Fast grinder cutting through the wind."

"Awesome, welcome in," the girl says, pressing a hidden button under the counter which causes yet another secret passage to open, this one on the wall behind the counter. She pulls the counter door open too so that Lucky can go in.

Secret society secret society secret society that is so cool she's gonna join a secret society!! They have passphrases!!!!!!

Gonie follows after her and starts pushing her chair down a corridor.

The secret door closes behind them, leaving them in utter darkness for a moment, but then a series of lights along the walls light up all at the same time to reveal a metal walkway leading down to an elevator. It looks too be old tech, and Gonie's steps echo as he walks, but the elevator looks to be fully functional, and takes them further underground.

Sooooo cooooooool!

The elevator is the kind with two sets of doors opposite each other, and the doors they didn't come through open to reveal an enormous room where a bunch of people are hanging out. The floor is the same old metal as the corridor above but the walls are wood and lined with bookshelves, weapon racks, and armour mannequins.

There's an area that could be described as a living room, with a large rug and big sofas surrounding it and facing a fake hearth. Another bit could be described as a tea room without the walls, a couple of armchairs and a small couch around a low center table with a teapot and some teacups. Another area is basically a small library, with more bookshelves and long tables with tiny reading lamps. And yet another looks to be a training area, covered by a soft mat where two people in body suits are circling each other and waiting for an opening. And to her left there are stairs leading up to a landing that surrounds and overlooks the whole room. The walls on both levels have several doors, most of them shut, suggesting an even more expansive compound.

Okay her brain has entirely shut down, now. She has been overwhelmed by the cool.

"...Gonie?" asks a woman who'd been reading a book and having some tea by herself, getting up from her chair and walking over to him. Her hair is long and shockingly orange, and her eyes are a bright, crystalline green. She's dressed like the kind of person who'd live in a mansion, and the surroundings kind of are mansionlike, but it still feels somewhat incongruous.

...waaaait, she recognises that woman. "Ms. Ridsh?"

"You're... Jon's apprentice? You brought her here?" she says, looking at Gonie for the second question.

He nods.

"Wait, wait, wait, is this the secret base of the Rebellion?"

Her gaze turns sharp. "How do you know about the Rebellion?"

"Oh. Um. I. Kind of overheard" (eavesdropped on) "a conversation between my master and someone else."

The woman covers her face with a hand. "When?"

"Um, a few months ago?"

"Right. Alright. Gonie, what were you thinking?"

He shrugs.

"Oh, don't give me that, mister. If your parents were here—" But she realises she said the wrong thing because Gonie stiffens like an angry cat and his face goes cold and hard. "Well. I suppose it doesn't matter anymore, does it?" She looks at Lucky. "There isn't a Rebellion anymore, girl. We lost. The government won. Rekenber won."

"Rekenber... The corporation?"

"Who else?" She looks at Gonie again. "You realise she can't leave this place, now, right? Honestly it was a terrible idea to ever let you leave in the first place, and now this—"

"Wait, hang on, why can't I leave?"

Gonie chews on his lip and doesn't say anything.

"If Rekenber knew about this place, we'd be done for. They'd come after all of us."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Ridsh," says another woman climbing down the stairs to see what the ruckus is about. She's older, and her hair and eyes are the same colour as Gonie's. "Do you really think Rekenber doesn't know about us? They let us stick around because we're not a threat anymore and we serve as a good object lesson to anyone else who'd have the same ideas."

(Is that Gonie's mum? Wait, no, Ms. Ridsh said that his parents weren't around. Aunt? Grandma? Could be grandma but she looks kind of too young to be a grandma? Lucky doesn't know how old grandmas usually are.)

"Who would've? Everyone who did joined us, and now they're either here or gone, Dien. There's no one else on our side."

"Still dramatic as ever. Come on, dear, it's tea time anyway, why don't you join us?" she asks Lucky, walking over to the tearoom and sitting in one of the armchairs.

"—okay!"

Gonie is obviously coming with her, so he pushes her next to the couch and then stands there behind her.

She sighs in defeat and joins the three of them there, reaching over for the cup she'd been drinking from when they arrived.

"How do you and our Gonie know each other?"

"Oh um. A few months ago I was coming back from Einbroch and I found him, uhh."

"Crying," he supplies.

"...crying, yeah. By the train tracks. And I talked to him, and then he, um."

"Hugged her and cried on her."

"Hugged me and cried on me," she agrees. "And he came with me to the workshop and he said we'd see each other again except he vanished for two months and something happened because everyone was sad all the time and no one would tell me what happened and then he showed up again and I was so mad, like so mad, but he apologised and got me gifts so I couldn't stay mad at him and then we hung out a lot and then he came with me today to a supply run in Einbroch and then I asked him why he'd been crying except I didn't mean to because it's none of my business but then he talked to my master and he brought me here and now I'm here."

"Ah," she says, smiling to herself as she pours three more cups of tea. "So you're the reason he's been going out so much recently. Cream?"

"...yes?" she says, not sure herself whether she's responding to the first thing or replying to the question. Another thing she hadn't really thought about, that Gonie's been coming over specifically to hang out with her. Like, yeah, he's been coming over, and yeah, they've been hanging out, and yeah, he's been spending hours with her helping her out, but still.

"Well, thank you. He's been looking a lot better recently and I think it's because of you." She offers Lucky her cup, with cream.

"Oh. Okay. Um. You're welcome?" she says, accepting the cup and... not really knowing what to do with it.

She's never had tea.

"Cream, dear?" she asks Gonie.

He shakes his head, and accepts the offered cup.

"Still," she continues in the same soft, mild voice, "Ridsh is right, on the off-chance that Rekenber doesn't know about this place, they really shouldn't find out."

"I can keep secrets! I didn't tell anyone that I knew about the Rebellion!"

"Even so, if you were to be seen coming and going that'd be very suspicious, especially while leaving wheelchair tracks."

"...don't you leave footprints?"

"We've all trained not to. After... that day... Gonie spent every day training not to leave footprints." She sips from her tea some more, her smile widening a bit. "I guess it must've been because of you."

Oh wow. "Is that why you took so long to come back?" she asks, twisting around to look up at him.

He nods.

"Oh okay. That's a good reason. I forgive you," she says, and lifts the tea up to her lips to sip at it.

...she does not like it. She puts it down.

...he beams widely.

She grins, too. She likes it when he smiles. Then she pauses as her brain catches up with Dien's words and looks at her to say, "—wait, if that's the problem, I can make my wheelchair hover."

"I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, um, I've been working on it, but I left my crystals at the workshop—"

Gonie reaches into a pocket and then lowers his hand in front of her to show her the crystals, including the one she bought today.

"Oh! I guess I got them. Thank you, Gonie!"

"I'm sorry, please back up a step, you think you could make your chair float?"

"Totally! It already floats a little bit, that's how I can climb stairs with it and carry heavy things, but I could make it, like, actually float for real."

"I don't think you can do something like that—"

"She can."

Both women look up at him.

"She can do it," he repeats, confidently. "Today."

"...um! I'm not sure I can do it today—"

"You can. You showed me how."

.....heeeee actually paid attention to the stuff she was saying? Well okay now she can't disappoint him can she. "Right. Okay. I can do it today. But I'm gonna need tools."

"Oh, this I want to see."

"Me as well," she says, sounding much less disparaging and more actively curious about it. "Gonie, bring Strasse over? We can get her some tools and a space to work."

He nods then taps Lucky's shoulder twice and goes upstairs.

Man, okay, this is a lot of pressure. Can she really do it? She wasn't this confident in her maths. But when Gonie is counting on her... she has to. She steels herself and says, "Can I have some paper?"

She's given paper, and pencils, and she's taken to a workshop of sorts (it's a mess) and they clear some space for her on the floor and give her the tools she needs and then step back to watch.

Of course they're gonna watch. But she's going to ignore all of them—actually not Gonie, she's not going to ignore him, she's going to tell him everything she's thinking about. But first, she's gotta dismantle her chair a bit to fetch the crystal that's already there, and actually she's going to be telling Gonie to help her because it'll go a lot faster that way.

As always, he's more than happy to help.

The first thing she notices when he gives her the crystal that had been in the chair is that it's 70% of the way to depleted, which in hindsight makes sense. Magic needs mana, and she's never recharged it. Thinking about it, the new features are going to be even more magic-intensive so even with multiple crystals they will drain even faster overall. She'll need some way to recharge them without having to open the chair every time. "Is there some spare phra or emve, or maybe even ori?"

The women look at her in confusion but Strasse nods and goes into the mess of the workshop to rummage. "Raw or refined?"

"Oh um. Refined would be better?"

He nods and, after some more rummaging, returns with a bar of solid refined oridecon.

...solid ori is not the best but, whatever, she'll make it work. And that's for later anyway, she just needs to get the chair floating to prove that she can do it, she can add recharging wires later. "Thank you," she says to him, then puts the ori aside to focus on the crystals.

She arranges all six of them in the specific pattern she'd been thinking of earlier and realises immediately it won't work and why, and starts telling Gonie all about it as she does.

He watches her like a hawk.

That's familiar and comforting and makes her feel like she can do anything. Which she can.

So what she's doing is a spell, kind of. It's not a Skill, and it couldn't be, since it's not really standardised and she needs to make it work with her specific device. And she's not a spellcaster but this kind of thing is part and parcel of the kind of artificing that she's been apprenticing for years to do.

Still, it's more complicated than anything she's done before, and she'll definitely need that paper and those pencils to maths it all out. 

And she keeps talking.

It takes her hours, but she barely sees them pass. There's only the project in front for her, and Gonie.

The others come and go, getting tired or bored, but Gonie stays. Different people show up, too, curious to see what this whole thing is about, but they all, also, eventually leave.

At some point food appears near her, and she guesses it must've been Gonie, but she didn't see it happen. She eats, because she knows that she'll forget otherwise and she's long mastered the skill of eating while working. And she works.

And at about 11PM she has a locked array of crystals. Grabbing one of them lifts the other five up like they're connected by solid metal, and when she pulses mana into the array like so it stays in the air even without her having to hold it there.

She looks extremely smug.

Gonie thinks it's time to go grab the others so they can see the end of the saga.

As soon as he's back she has instructions for him because she needs to actually embed this into the chair, but she's already got most of the infrastructure for that, it just needs some adjustments. And, since there's still enough time before it's no longer "today", she indulges in a complicated spell her master taught her that draws a thin sliver of melted ori from the solid bar she has and snakes it up from the crystal array to the right arm of her chair, then solidifies there. That way, she'll be able to recharge the crystals.

And after that... Lucky's pretty sure she's done.

She gets Gonie to help her screw everything shut, then eeps and giggles when he lifts her bridal style to place her on the chair. Once there, she asks him to step back, touches some controls and, with a trumphant soft hum, the chair rises four inches off the floor.

...and then falls back down onto the floor with a metallic thunk after two seconds. "Oh, what? No, come on, I did everything right, what did I mess up, the crystals stayed up—"

"Girl. Don't worry about it. We've seen enough," says Ridsh, sounding genuinely impressed. She stifles a yawn then continues, "I'm sure you'll be able to fix it in the morning, but you really should sleep. We all should."

"—oh, Hel, I have to work tomorrow—"

"We sent Jon a message, don't worry, he won't be expecting you."

"Oh. Okay." ...and now that she's done all of her energy drains from her all at once and she slumps in her chair.

"Gonie, why don't you find a room for her?" says Dien, amused.

He nods and walks around Lucky's chair to start pushing her out of the workshop and lead her to a room where she can sleep.

"Thank you, Gonie," she says, tiredly, and finding herself having... a lot of trouble keeping her eyes open. "I need to use the bathroom..."

There's one attached to the room he's taking her to, so she can use that one.

Good, good. Then she rolls over to the bed, pulls her shoes off—

Gonie lifts her up again into his arms and gently places her on the bed.

She doesn't even have it in her to protest. She's exhausted.

That's okay. He tucks her in, turns the lights off, and leaves.

Lucky's very confused when she wakes up. She's somewhere that's not her master's attic, and she remembers a bunch of things about being in a secret Rebellion compound but that sounds so unlikely that she spends several minutes trying to figure out if it was a dream. After examining her memories (and waking up further), she concludes that it wasn't a dream, which means she has to contend with the implication that she's in a secret compound owned by the Rebellion.

It occurs to her, belatedly, that she's not sure what exactly they're Rebelling against, and why. The government? The Rekenber Corporation? Why? What did they do?

It occurs to her, after another moment, that she didn't finish her chair and with the benefit of a good night's sleep she knows what she did wrong. She drags herself out of bed (who decided it'd be a good idea to make such a tall bed?) and up onto her chair, uses the bathroom (an individual bathroom connected to a single room, these people live in the height of luxury), and then starts to make her way back to the workshop.

Unfortunately she was 90% asleep last night when Gonie was taking her to that bedroom and the compound is very big and so she ends up quite lost.

"Hey, girl! Lucky? Is that your name?"

Lucky turns her chair around and sees the girl from yesterday, who had been at the counter of the fake secret weapons store. "Oh, hi, good—morning?" Is it still morning?

She laughs and jogs down the hallway towards Lucky. "I'm Elena," she introduces herself. "Didn't realise I was talking to a celebrity yesterday."

That seems like it's coming out of nowhere. "Who?"

"You!"

"I'm a celebrity? Since when?"

She laughs again and shakes her head. "You're the reason Gonie's been gone so often! Everyone was curious. Were you looking for him just now?"

"Oh, no, the workshop." Though having him there would be pretty useful.

"Workshop...?"

"The, um, someone named Strasse took us there?"

"Oh, that room with all of the junk? What do you need to go there for?"

"I wanna fix my chair."

"It's broken?"

She demonstratively gets it to hover for a couple of seconds before it clunks back to the floor.

"Walk me through this, Lucky, what was it meant to be doing instead?"

"Stay in the air! Why would I want it to just jump for two seconds?"

"Guess that makes sense. I'll take you there," she offers, jovially, and walks around Lucky to drive her. "You get anything to eat yet?"

"Oh. No." She forgot about the concept of food when she started thinking about her chair.

"Alright, I'll grab you some and bring it to the, heh, workshop. Got any allergies?"

"Any what now?"

"That'll be a no, then," she says with a smile in her voice.

Probably not, she guesses! Except maybe she knows whatever it is by a different name? What would she have in the context of getting food that could be asked about? She puzzles over that until they get to the workshop, at which point she completely forgets about it because she has a mission.

The tools she had been using yesterday are still there on the floor where she left them.

"I'll be right back," says Elena with a two-finger salute, before sauntering off.

This place is a mess, she can almost hear her master chiding her for being so messy. Except, you know, 99% of the mess in this room wasn't her fault, so.

Anyway, she gets off her chair and gets to tinkering. 

It's Gonie who shows back up ten minutes later with a plate of food and a mug of hot chocolate.

"You! Gonie! Good morning, thank you for the food, come over here I need your help."

He places the food next to her and peers at her work.

The innards of the chair are once again exposed and she's been messing with the wiring inside, because it turns out that the problem she's having isn't with the crystals. Rather, the internal structure of the chair that she'd made to channel the one crystal wasn't actually able to do the same with the whole array, and she didn't think about it at the time because she got too focused on the magic part.

She barks some instructions to him and then grabs a bready thing and sniffs the contents of the hot mug suspiciously. "What's this?'

"Hot chocolate," he says, without looking up from where he's following her instructions.

"What's that?"

He shrugs.

She really doesn't know what she expected. Well, sure, she'll try it.

!

!!!

"This is delicious I've never had anything like it before what is it!"

Another shrug.

She starts drinking it all at once and does it too quickly and burns her tongue.

Gonie looks up at her when he hears the distressed noise and then sits up in alarm.

"I' hine I' hine, huhth bu'n my thongue," she says, sticking her tongue out like a dog.

...he giggles a bit but stands up and starts making his way out.

"Whe'e a'e you goi'?" she asks.

He just lifts a hand in a "wait" gesture and dashes off.

He can be so unhelpful sometimes. But she can't eat and doesn't want to tinker while her tongue hurts so she just sits on her thumbs and waits.

Gonie's back shortly with some kid a few years their senior that she hasn't met in tow.

"—seriously? You dragged me here because your girlfriend burned her tongue?" He casts a healing spell with a lazy flick of his wrist and turns around. "Honestly."

Gonie blinks after the boy, looking deeply puzzled.

Okay that was really cool she'd never been magically healed before. She pokes her tongue with a finger and, determining that it feels fine, gets to drinking the rest of the hot chocolate, making sure to blow on it to cool it down beforehand.