Leaving the building, Emmet stared curiously down at the creature in the cage in front of him. He couldn’t help but marvel. Really, it was a unique specimen.

Big dark purple eyes, a long dark beak, three sets of enormous red and blue striped wings, a feathered body that gave it a fluffy texture - Emmet had never seen something so exotic. Back in his hometown, he had only ever seen common pests like horu-beetles, gawker pigeons, and grazing beasts. Never could anything so colorful have appeared amongst the vast plain farmlands.

Along the way back to his apartment, the creature seemed to realize what was happening and assumed a happy demeanor, dancing around its cage and chirping giddily as it observed its surroundings. Occasionally, it would look up at Emmet with a grateful look, causing Emmet to still in his steps. When it made those expressions… it really did seem human!

A few minutes and many happy chirps later, Emmet finally reached his place. Walking in through the door, he casually called out a greeting, receiving a short greeting in return - it seemed that Tauruk was home.

Carefully, Emmet carried the cage in and walked toward the source of the voice - the living room. Sure enough, Tauruk was sat at a desk, his head down facing a packet of paper and writing down notes. At that moment, he looked up and spotted the animal, a look of surprise entering his face. “What’s that?”

“Dunno…” Emmet shrugged, also staring down at the bird with wonder.

In the next few minutes, he quickly gave Tauruk a brief explanation of the series of events that had occured between him and the employer.

After hearing everything, Tauruk pushed away his work and assumed an excited demeanor, staring out toward the creature with intense interest. “I just bought some fruit last week, do you think it’ll eat it?”

“No idea....” Emmet shrugged.

The two quickly came up with a haphazard plan. Together, they brought the cage over to the living room, prepared a barrier enclosing formation in case it was hostile, got out the fruit, and then opened up the cage.

...Cheep?

The creature stared at the open cage door for only a brief moment before hesitantly stepping out. For a few moments, it stared at the two boys with big eyes.

Finally, it let out a delighted chirp.

“I think it likes us,” Tauruk murmured toward Emmet. “Let’s feed it some fruit.”

Emmet nodded, grabbing a few grapes and rolling them out toward the creature.

Ch… cheep? Cheep?

A bit startled, the creature looked down at the grapes curiously. For a few moments, it inspected them suspiciously. Finally, it gave in and pecked at one, swallowing it whole. Letting out a series of delighted cheeps, it quickly pecked at another one… and then another one. Within a few moments, all the grapes were gone.

“Whoa…” Emmet’s eyes shined. He had never had a pet before, so this was a fascinating experience.

“It does like them!” Tauruk also became excited, grabbing a few more grapes and tossing them over toward the creature. The creature eagerly received them as well and ate them all up.

For a full hour, they continued to feed the creature various fruits, of which the creature eagerly ate up. Quickly, they found that out of all of them, it seemed to like grapes the best. When Fontezul returned to the apartment at end of that hour, he also joined them and fed the creature even more fruit. By the end of it, its stomach was completely bulging, and it staggered around a bit dizzily, as if drunk.

“You should name it!” Tauruk turned toward Emmet and gave a wide-toothed smile.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Ah… a name?” Emmet stilled, unsure of what to think.

Cheep?

Suddenly, the creature also turned toward Emmet, as if also anticipating what he had to say. Startled with its sudden gaze, Emmet suddenly couldn’t help but feel some pressure.

“Um…” Emmet thought for a moment, glancing toward the remains of the fruit splattered across the floor. “Maybe… since it likes fruits so much... ‘Fruity’?”

“...huh?” Tauruk and Fontezul turned toward Emmet with strange expressions. “...‘Fruity’?”

They glanced toward each other with somewhat weird expressions. They could have expected something like Edmund or Charlie - normal pet names. But, out of all things… ‘Fruity.’ In all their years, they had never heard of such a name before…

Chip! Cheep!

Yet, at that moment, the creature seemed to react happily, suddenly dancing around and chirping happily, as if it really liked the name. Seeing the creature’s happy display, Emmet couldn’t help but smile. “Fruity it is!”

From then on, Fruity became a permanent fixture of the three boys’ residence.

-------------------------------

Making the last few marks on the large sheet of blueprint paper in front of him, Emmet finally put down his pen. Leaning back and looking over his work, he couldn’t help but form a satisfied smile.

Over the past week, he had been hard at work crafting a new design for an ambitious new project he’d had in mind for months now - it was a new attraction for the area around Maisytown, which he had epicly named the ‘Sky Wheel.’ The final product was to be a large tower carrying an enormous spinning wheel on it, stretching down toward the ground and up into the sky. For each spoke on the perimeter of this wheel, there would be little cars for passengers to ride - visitors would enter the cars from the bottom, and then ride up along the wheel toward the top. As opposed to the adrenaline pumping action of the Maisy Mega Marvel, Emmet intended this ride to provide a slower, mellower experience - inspired by the quiet and nostalgia-inspiring trips Emmet had made on Maisy’s flying formations vehicle, Emmet wanted the wheel to turn slowly, allowing those within the cars at the top to see the full extent of the city stretch out from beneath them in a beautiful portrait.

The designing process took longer than usual. On top of it being so large and thus much more detailed, Emmet was especially painstaking about his calculations, more so than about any other project he had ever done before. Such an enormous structure, once it was built, it was not easily fixed. Further, there were actual lives at stake. If his calculations were off and the wheel did not have proper structural integrity, it could result in a catastrophe. Thus, Emmet made sure to quadruple check all his work and further confirmed with some people he trusted, including Tauruk, Fontezul, and Qiay. Apart from that, the project itself wasn’t too technologically advanced or challenging, so he finished the actual designing rather quickly.

“What do you think, Fruity?” Emmet turned toward his side, where there was a bird-like creature perched on the edge of his chair. He petted the bird on the back of the head, stroking its feathers softly.

Chip! Chip! Fruity nodded its head up and down, as if it strongly approved.

“Haha, thanks Fruity,” Emmet couldn’t help but smile. At this point, the bird looked almost like a completely different creature, its previously dirty and malnourished self nowhere to be seen. Over the past week, it had adapted to its new life incredibly quickly, eating well, taking regular baths, and getting along with everyone at the apartment. By now, its previously matted coat was vibrant and healthy-looking, its belly was swelling up, and its head was held high.

Every day, it seemed to become more relaxed, and by extension, more curious and intelligent, occasionally poking around the apartment observing what the boys were doing. It quickly picked up on the boys’ simple commands and questions, and even seemed to be able to understand some of the more complicated things the boys would discuss with each other. Frankly, the boys were fascinated by this behavior. Most birds were dumb animals, and rarely operated on anything more than pure instinct. Yet, someone, it seemed Fruity was capable of much more than that.

As for food, as the days progressed, the boys found out that Fruity seemed to eat everything that a human would, making meals easy - it would just join the other three for regular meals. However, most of all, Fruity seemed to like fruit the most, especially grapes, fitting for its name. Emmet didn’t know if it was just his imagination, but with all the food it was consuming, it already seemed to be growing larger.

Back at the Maisy Debugging Depot, things were finally settling down, so Emmet found that his schedule had relaxed considerably. Although the workload of formations to debug increased as the school year progressed and classes heightened in difficulty, it seemed that everyone was adapting quickly, debugging through the formations faster and better. By now, as it was still only early on in the semester, Emmet only needed to step in occasionally, either to help handle the workload or take care of some of the advanced level formations that no one else could figure out.

That meant that now, he had much more time to focus on his own personal projects.

“Hehe…” Emmet peered down giddily at the detailed lines on the blueprint in front of him. He couldn’t wait to get started.