As soon as he took off, Jon noticed that something was wrong. His thrust was uneven, pushing him to the right.
"Um, hello? I seem to be having a little trouble here."
"I see it," said Dr. Takeda. "Looks like you burned out one of the thrusters. Just like I warned you about. Just compensate for it; one should still be enough to get you back here."
"Okay," said Jon, and he continued flying back towards the base.
When he arrived, he found the two doctors waiting for him, along with a very cross looking Mr. Smith.
"You disobeyed orders!" he growled as Jon came in for a landing, setting down unsteadily on just the one foot with a working repulsor.
"I'm sorry," said Jon sarcastically, "But in case you didn't notice, there was a plane going down. People could have died!"
"You were not ready for a mission yet. What if you'd failed? This agency needs the Supergirl program to be a public success."
"And I just saved a couple hundred people. What's unsuccessful about that?" Jon demanded, taking a step forward.
Mr. Smith just glared at him, but a moment later he stepped back.
Dr. Bradford came up to him. "Are you hurt at all?"
"I'll be fine. Just a little banged up. And I think I may have twisted my right ankle a little when I fell. I'm not exactly used to these heels."
"Fix it," Smith snapped, turning away. "Because of this whole ... situation, we have to accelerate our timetable. I want her ready for deployment by tomorrow."
"Yes, sir!" said Dr. Takeda.
The two doctors ushered Jon back to the medical bay.
Dr. Bradford put her arm around him. "You did a good job today. Mr. Smith may not appreciate it, but you saved a lot of lives."
"And gave us a ton of data! I was analyzing your brainwave pattersn during that rescue, and I think I can improve the efficiency of the neural link by another twenty percent."
"That's great," said Jon as he pulled off his high heels, wincing and probing gently at his wounded ankle.
"And I think we can help with that as well. Right, Dr. Bradford?"
She seemed to hesitate a bit, then nodded.
"For now, you just get some rest. I'm going to give you a mild sedative and then we'll get you fixed up."
Jon considered protesting, but as the medicine started to take effect he decided it wasn't worth the trouble...
