“Meetings are ephemeral. That is, unless you tie them to you, regardless of the kicking and screaming.” - Old folk saying.

“Be seeing you again, Will. Take care of the stubborn old man for us,” said Reinhardt when Wilhelmina and her father departed from Zephirous to rejoin the rest of their Company a few days later. The father and daughter pair’s vacation had ended and it was back to business for them. “Don’t be letting the old fart croak prematurely on us, you hear? Else all the old fogeys will pick on you the next time you see them!”

“I’m only fifty-six you flea-riddled bastard!” proclaimed Guillaume du Riffons who was right next to his daughter and clearly heard what Reinhardt said.

“And that’s pretty much ancient for a human in this business, old man,” replied Reinhardt without missing a beat, a wide and toothy grin splitting his lips. The insults were of course good-natured ones, as they were close enough to be comfortable to use them that way. “Also, rude, I’ll have you know that I wash my fur at least thrice a week.”

“Only because I’m totally kicking you out of the bed otherwise,” chimed Elfriede all too nonchalantly from beside Reinhardt before she ducked under a playful swipe of his tail.

“May the fortunes of war be with you, flea-bag!” said the old retired former knight as he chuckled and waved his goodbye to the couple seeing him off, while his daughter Wilhelmina apologized politely with a slight embarrassed blush on her cheek. “Oh, and if you do happen to go to the Empire after this and fate puts you on the other side of the battlefield against my stupid son, I’ll pay a bounty if you can bring him to me alive!”

“The same to you, you rickety old bag of bones!” yelled Reinhardt almost immediately in reply. “And sure, will keep that in mind, if we have the chance to. You know how it is with war.”

“Good enough for that scatterbrained son of mine, at least.”

“There they went,” said Elfriede as Guillaume and Wilhelmina left her sphere of wind-sense. “Should I have Loren put a reminder to give a no-kill order in case we run into his son?”

“With the caveat of only when we could afford it,” said Reinhardt coldly. What old Guillaume asked of him – to buy back his son in case the Free Lances fought against and beat him in battle – was contingent on said son being alive. The thing was, it was far easier to kill an enemy than to try capturing them alive. “I’m not having anyone risk themselves just to catch the kid in one piece, unless they’re doing it for the bounty, in which case it’s their call to make.”

“Got it, will let him know,” said Elfriede with a nod. Loren, the water-affinity mage, had diverged in duties into the unit’s secretary of sorts these days, on account of him being both literate and good with paperwork. The former quality was not a certain thing amongst mercenaries. The latter was unfathomably rare, so Reinhardt and Lars delegated part of the Company’s paperwork to him over the years. “Our plans going forward remains unchanged, I assume?”

“Yep. We’ll be weeding out the unqualified amongst our recent batch of recruits till the end of this year while resting up here in town, at the very least. I have yet to see any employment offer that matched the sort of duty I was hoping for, so worst case, we’ll stay here till around next summer before taking up the garrison offer from young Utghwes,” replied Reinhardt. “I’m hoping we’d find something suitable and high-paying from the Empire before then, though, and Zephirous’ is our best bet to get news from there the soonest.”

“Not going to be easy to find a contract that gives us relative free reign to keep training our newbies while paying well and not include much combat duties at the same time, Rein. I think you’re being kinda greedy with those requirements,” commented Elfriede, who was one amongst the few in the know of what Reinhardt had in mind for their next contract. “You might have to settle for something less. I know our coffers are overflowing at the moment, but I don’t think we can remain idle for too long.”

“Lars said the same, y’know? I get what you mean, really,” replied Reinhardt while pulling Elfriede closer to him in a warm half-hug against his side. “I’ll be happy with two out of three of the criteria, to be honest, and like I said, next summer would be the latest before we leave from here, one way or another. One can hope for some luck to come along the way, every once in a while, can’t they?”

“I still keep getting the feeling that we’ve been running our luck really low ever since Theodinaz given all the good things that kept happening, but that might just be me being paranoid,” admitted Elfriede. “Can’t help but worry more, I guess, especially now that Ery’s part of the crew and fighting alongside us. I just don’t want things to go badly for her sake.”

“The feeling’s mutual, Friede. Either way, I don’t really believe in running down our luck. I think luck is what we make ourselves, rather than what the deities hand out to us at random. As such, I plan to go about things how I’ve done it so far,” explained Reinhardt in turn. “Thanks for sticking it out with us during the hardest times, by the way.”

“Not like I got much of an option, what with Ery still being so small at the time,” replied Elfriede coldly, though also partly in jest. “How time flies, eh? Back then we were worried about how we had no idea on the way to care for one little kid, and next thing we knew, we had another one. Both of them grew into such strong children, too.”

“Aye, I’ve seen it myself,” said Reinhardt. “Little Alycea’s practically taking over Ery’s old place as the head of the kids near her age somehow, and they look like they wanted to replicate what Ery did and join the Company as soon as they were of age,” he added with some exasperation. “Sometimes I’m uncertain whether I should be proud of them or have headaches from their actions.”