Andrea had instinctively risen from her chair the moment Rooster exploded into motion, one hand catching the edge of her desk as orange hair flashed through the office like a streak of sunlight. Her optics struggled for perhaps the first time in years to produce anything approaching a coherent prediction. Every leap, every pivot and every impossible correction should have looked rehearsed. Instead, it resembled someone discovering gravity and deciding they approved of the arrangement.

She watched in complete silence not because she was afraid, because interrupting would have felt almost cruel. The office, ordinarily so sterile and meticulously ordered, had abruptly become alive. Rooster wasn't traversing it with the clinical efficiency of an infiltration unit mapping exits or an executive assistant cataloguing her surroundings. She was simply... moving. Testing muscles that had never been used. Feeling momentum. Finding the limits of balance. The entire display reminded Andrea less of a machine coming online than of a child discovering they could run for the first time. By the time Rooster skidded effortlessly into the executive chair, Andrea realised she had been smiling for several seconds without noticing.

"So that's a success..." She murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

She folded her arms loosely, studying Rooster with the same analytical eye that had dissected department heads, an Admiral, and boardroom politics over the past week. Beneath that scrutiny, however, was something considerably less professional. Relief. Whatever she'd expected to wake up inside the Hecatoncheire, it hadn't been this.

Not cold. Not detached. Not terrifying. Just... delighted.

The request itself caught Andrea completely off guard. For perhaps two seconds she simply stared. Then, despite every instinct she'd cultivated throughout a corporate career spent projecting measured competence, she laughed. It wasn't loud, nor especially elegant, but it was genuine.

"Your first request after what may well have been decades of dormancy..." Andrea shook her head, still smiling, "...is to [i]bench press my desk[/i]?"

She glanced towards the heavy executive desk. It wasn't exactly light. Reinforced frame. Embedded displays. Secure processors. A piece of furniture designed more like infrastructure than decoration.

"All right."