Adelie

Adelie sighed, slid her laptop off her lap onto the couch and pulled her phone out of her hoodie pocket. The distraction of a message buzz was welcome, but she really did need to get her monthly report on Soot's fitness filed with the ICDA. She unlocked the phone and brought up Petunia's DM in Squabble. A DM again – it felt like she'd been avoiding their team server for some reason lately.

[PrincessPetunia]: I'm worried about this race.

[AnimAdelie]: Is it the money?

[PrincessPetunia]: Not exactly. With the podium bonus from Loudon we're in the black for now. But I want to ask Ms. Rainpuff for a bit more sponsorship money and she wants to come to our next race and meet Selen and I don't know if that's a good idea.

[AnimAdelie]: Why not?

[PrincessPetunia]: You know what we look like compared to the other teams, Adelie. What if she thinks we look so amateur we're not worth funding anymore?

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[AnimAdelie]: We came second last race, didn't we? That has to count for something

[PrincessPetunia]: What if it's not enough, though?

A flicker of light caught Adelie's eye. On the floor next to the sofa-bed, her Wintendo Kitsch had somehow woken up, and was loading into Animal Forest. The console had been twitchy like that ever since she'd brought it up to the farm. It wasn't a problem exactly, except when the battery ran down overnight, but it was weird. She didn't think she'd knocked it or dropped it or anything that might have caused lasting damage.

Her phone buzzed again.

[PrincessPetunia]: Adelie?

[AnimAdelie]: Sorry, got distracted, my Kitsch is being weird

[AnimAdelie]: I think it'll be fine, you should try to use it as an excuse to ask for more money

On the Kitsch screen, the game loaded, and Adelie blinked at it. She was pretty sure she hadn't left her character standing around outside Ronald's house. She'd been trying to get the penguin to leave, his competitive nature was too annoying, and that meant avoiding interacting with him, not hanging around where he was most likely to be. She reached down and switched the console off again, shocked at how cold it was to the touch. There really was some sort of weird draught in here.