Young Writers Society

Sadie laughed at that, taken off guard by their sudden humor. They seemed like someone she could get along with. She liked funny people. "Good one."

So rabies weren't baby penguins, then. But if they weren't baby penguins, what were they?

"Seriously," Berry said. "What's rabies? I'm not from here and haven't heard of rabies before."

Some people had assumed Berry was from a place called France, so they had decided to roll with that when asked where they came from. If Sadie followed up with a question instead of an answer, Berry would offer France as their home nation.

Edelgard was glad when they were both finally outside. Now she could focus on sleep and rest for the next day. If everything worked out as she had imagined, she would be two recruits richer in the next few days, as well as debt-free and blessed with a penguin. She could hardly believe her luck when she found herself alone in her room. She tried to suppress a cry of joy, which came out, however, and she also wanted to avoid jumping, but she couldn't manage it and bounce around the room.

"Damn!"

Just a moment ago she was full of joy and free of worries, already she landed on the floor because she had tripped over a folder. She threw it out of the window in anger and went to the phone.

"Who is it? Is it you Emil? Or Jake? One of you go to the courtyard and bring me back the folder with everything in it."

Edelgard hung up the phone and sat back in her seat.

"Now I'm going to take a short nap, " she said with a smile.

Sadie blinked at them, smile slowly fading as she realized that they weren’t joking. She furrowed her brow at them. “You don’t know what rabies are? What, did you grow up under a rock?” She considered leaving it there, then decided insults — alone — were unhelpful. So she added, “it’s a deadly disease spread by animals when they bite you. But I don’t think penguins can get them… wait, hey Siri? Can penguins get rabies?”

“Here’s what I found,” Siri’s robotic voice droned. “Only mammals get rabies. There are no rabies in birds, lizards, or other non-mammalian animals.”

“See?” Sadie turned towards Berry, gratified that she was right. “Just joking. Penguins can’t get rabies.”

Berry nodded like this was the most important information they had been given all day. When they thought about it, it probably was. They didn't want to die from rabies on a world that wasn't their own—or even on Teyvat. That would suckI.

"That's good," Berry decided. "I don't want rabies."

“I would think not,” Sadie snorted. “You’d think scientists would go ahead and eradicate them already. But noooooo we have to be greedy space hoarders instead.” She turned and lazily started towards the stairs. “‘Cause that makes sense.”

Berry didn't have much to say to that, though it did make them think of something they might have heard traveling abroad—maybe in Sumeru, since they were obsessed with knowledge and finding the next best discovery there. Sumeru's researchers probably would have figured out a way to take care of that without needing a healer with a vision.

Berry nodded again, following Sadie to the stairs.

It had been a strange night for Edelgard, especially because she had not been woken or woken up every half hour. She was able to sleep in for the first time in a long time and felt rested and fit when she almost fell off the chair as she stretched.

"What's all on the agenda today?"

She tried to reconstruct what had happened yesterday and wasn't sure if the strange visit from Berry and Sadie was real or just a dream. On the one hand, she wished it wasn't a dream, but on the other hand, she didn't want to have more new people to train.

Edelgard came out of her room and went downstairs to the first recruits who were preparing breakfast for some (if you could call it breakfast for the few kitchen utensils that were present).

"Did I have any visitors yesterday?"

One of the youngest, a blonde-haired young woman in blue clothes winced and shook her head.

"No, I don't know."

"What now?" asked Edelgard, "No or I don't know?"

"Sonia said she wasn't sure."

A young man with a scar on his forehead and only four fingers on his right hand stepped up from behind some makeshift frying pans, whom Edelgard had baptised either Rick or Homer.

"So, no visitors then."

"There were two yesterday," Rick or Homer replied.

"Thank you. Continue working!"

Edelgard turned around dead straight and smiled.

I get my penguin and I'm debt-free!

With a big smile, she jumped every other step back to her room and waited for them to come back.

One night and several disastrous encounters with penguins later, Berry officially had acquired two penguins to call their own.

Well, they were technically only going to keep one, but they had still managed to catch two. The first of the penguins was going to go to Miss Edelweiss—it was older and bigger, which probably would be more impressive. They had made a makeshift leash for that one.

The second one was just a little baby that Berry had found all on its lonesome. The baby penguin had been the harder one to catch, but had settled into Berry's arms the moment they picked it up.

Armed with their two penguins, Berry went in exactly the way they had come in. They got a few weird looks as they went to Miss Edelweiss's room, but Berry didn't let themselves get too concerned by that.

They knocked on the door to her office.

Still in the middle of dreaming, Edelgard was woken by a knock on the door. Almost sullenly, she tried to pretend she was asleep, not realising that no one could see her. When she realised this, she randomly grabbed a pen and paper and tried to write down briefly what she had been dreaming about, hoping to get back to it afterwards.

It took her almost ten minutes to write it all down and only then did she make her way to the door, thinking that the person waiting had already left.

To her amazement, Berry was still standing there and to her even greater amazement, they had not one, no, but two penguins with them.

"Give me, give me!" Edelgard rushed out and took the two animals in her arms, completely ignoring Berry, "I'll call you Victoria and I'll call you Luisa."

Edelgard eyed the two penguins again and corrected herself. "You stay Victoria and you become Luis!"

Realising that Berry was eyeing her incredulously, Edelgard tried to regain her steely demeanour.

"Come inside and we'll talk about your mission!"

The baby penguin that Miss Edelweiss had named Luis squirmed in her arms. Berry had actually been planning on naming that one Antoine, since it was a more gender neutral name and they didn't really know how to tell the difference without looking somewhere a little more private.

And maybe Berry should have just gone along with this and let Miss Edelweiss take both Victoria and Antoine, but Berry was already really attached to the little one. And the little penguin had already become attached to them, so. Berry would sacrifice a little bit of their facade if it meant taking Antoine underneath their metaphorical wing.

"Actually," Berry said, stepping inside and carefully taking Antoine back from Miss Edelweiss's arms, "I was going to keep Antoine. I found him after I caught Victoria for you."

Antoine snuggled into their arms.

Sadie wasn't impressed with the tech setup of this organization, and quickly decided she wasn't going to play this game on their terms. So she retreated to her own apartment for the night and did the transfer for Edelgard. It took her several hours, as she'd said it would, but it was nice to be back at it. It'd been a while since she'd hit the bank, and it was fun to get to work past the firewalls their new nerds had put into place since her last attack.

She took another fifty-grand as a 'sorry' for Mr. DeLuca, uploaded it to a flash drive, and sent the drive with a bouquet to his office the following morning. She was sure he snorted and rolled his eyes when he saw it, but she knew that deep (deep, deep) down, he loved her and her antics.

Now, she came striding up to the hall, blinking at the penguins. "...you actually caught them."

Edelgard was pleased with the sight of the two penguins and then looked at Berry.

"Yes, Antoine is fine."

Edelgard sat back in her seat and eyed Berry a little.

"Seems like you're capable of completing a mission after all."

And a little later Sadie also appeared. Edelgard clapped shortly after she had put Victoria down.

"Have you also completed your mission? Then I would continue after you have briefly presented me with proof."

Happy that they weren't going to have to fight Miss Edelweiss for Antoine's name and right to keep him, Berry gave a little nod at Sadie's observation. For now, they'd stay silent and watch how Sadie proved her worth to Miss Edelweiss.

Then, maybe, they'd be able to do something more than just catching penguins. Not that Berry hadn't had fun doing that. But they were honestly starting to get a bit homesick, and really liked the idea of getting one step closer to getting back home.

"I mean, you can log into your account to check it yourself if you want proof -- hacks don't come with receipts." Sadie stopped before her with a shrug. "But I did it, as promised. Your balance is paid in full, and I added in a five thousand dollar buffer just in case you had any pending transactions that hadn't cleared yet."