"Psycho, you maniac! You're starting another story when you still have two incomplete ones?!"

Yes, I am. Please enjoy.

Hat Kid sighed glumly as she lied around at the center of the main hall. Rumbi vacuumed by her several times without a care in the world while Hat Kid watched in a depressed state.

Why was she sad? Because she had an entire Saturday planned out between herself and her friend Mustache Girl (otherwise known as Mu) and it had been ruined by her red-clad compadre catching a cold. Admittedly, challenging the girl in a race to see how quickly either could drench themselves in the Subcon River and then get their clothes to freeze at the edge of Queen Vanessa's territory was a bad idea to begin with, but they were kids! Kids were supposed to have fun and do stupid things.

Unfortunately, it seemed that yesterday's chilly challenge had gotten Mu a bit ill to the point of needing to stay with Cooking Cat for the day so she could get better. This sole reason really put a damper on things since Hat Kid could only spend so much weekend time with her friends before she had to fly back home for another week of school. What was a kid to do? She supposed it might be a good idea to get some of her chores done since she had been procrastinating on them for so long.

She got up from lying down only to immediately hear a knocking at her window. A certain shadowy figure and a goat's head popped up into her view as she approached. With a slight chuckle, Hat Kid opened up the window to let her friends in.

In addition to Snatcher and an Alpine Goat, the Conductor, DJ Grooves, and Mafia Boss (who had recently gotten his body back after some convincing) had joined the party wagon with an Alpine Nomad following behind.

"Why are you guys here?" Hat Kid asked, still sounding a bit let down.

"I heard about the red-hooded brat getting sick. I know you had a lot planned with her today so I thought I'd...let loose for a bit." Said Snatcher, "And besides, I'm still your legally obligated BFF. I'd be breaking my side of the contract if I didn't come to your side to make up for your loss."

"I'm here because Cooking Cat lives in my attic, and I can't stand the possibility of her bringing that mustached menace into my HQ," Mafia Boss explained rather bluntly, "The last thing I need is to catch her sickness...also I wanted to get rid of that favor I owe you for getting me my body back."

"Thank you MB...I guess," Hat Kid mumbled, "anyway what about you guys?" She turned to the other visitors.

"Rham missed you." The Nomad said, patting the goat's head.

"I hate seeing you look so depressed Darling, I absolutely had to drop everything and cheer you up!" Grooves picked up the child and spun her the way a father affectionately did so with his own daughter. "I hope you don't mind."

"I had a day off already scheduled for today and thought I'd come over." The Conductor added last.

"I still find that hard to believe, Darling. The only times you have days off are when you have plans."

"I'm pretty sure I would remember if I had something planned DJ Peck Neck, stay outta me business."

While Grooves put down Hat Kid to banter with his competitor, the child couldn't help but feel uncomfortable about the situation.

"I appreciate you guys showing up to replace Mu for the day, but the things we do together are kinda...dumb kid stuff, you know? Like playing Hide and Seek in the air vents, or sledding down a flight of stairs without a helmet."

"Is...is that what kids do these days Lassie?"

"Those things sound dangerous Darling."

"Those things sound INCREDIBLE Kiddo."

"Those things sound dumb."

"I have no idea what any of those things are."

"Baaaaaa-aaaaaah."

Based on those responses alone, Hat Kid knew this pseudo-play date with her friends wasn't going to work. "I has a feeling I'd get those reactions, you guys can just do whatever. It's you being around that counts." She sighed, "I need to do my chores anyways, feel free to help if you want to."

Hat Kid slowly walked over to the kitchen so she could do something about her piling up dishes, among other things. The adults all looked to one another with a mixture of expressions.

"Poor lass, I haven't seen her that torn apart since the day after the Awards Ceremony." The Conductor's ears dipped down. The fatherly/grandfatherly part of him sensed a feeling of great disappointment from the child. Mafia Boss sensed it too, but that was because his 'children' were the mafia he had to command each day. Regardless, they felt a persistently annoying obligation to help her out so the disappointing sensation would go away.

"Hold on Darling, I'll help you out!" DJ Grooves called out, following behind Hat Kid.

Snatcher slinked into the Machine Room, where he immediately noticed the disarray in Hat Kid's bookshelf and decided to organize it, exclaiming that he would be "snooping around" if he was needed for anything. As a guy that read books in his down time, he felt a bit offended that his 'BFF' didn't have a neater looking shelf, so he decided to alphabetize it as a good deed and definitely not so he could see the kid's reaction when she couldn't find anything.

Rham and the Nomad just sat around with the latter combing the former's fur and pet talking it. Apparently the Nomad was a goat tamer, or groomer, or something along those lines. Nobody really knew why anybody from Alpine visited Hat Kid. Regardless, everyone was busy doing their own thing for about half an hour before an alarm went off.

"Attention! Your bi-monthly Time Piece check is today, please return to the main hall!"

Hat Kid dashed out of the kitchen and immediately tapped on the monitor next to her vault, muttering 'peck' under her breath multiple times. She did a bunch of nonsense with the monitor before opening up the Time Vault and sighing for what felt like the 100th time that day, this time though, it was a sigh of defeat.

"What's this about a Time Piece check?" Snatcher asked. He had apparently moved from the Machine Room to the Bedroom at some point as he left the bedroom hallway with a colorful book in his hands.

"Put down my diary first, then I'll tell you."

Snatcher obliged, throwing it at Mafia Boss' face in a very passive aggressive way for no reason other than the fact that he just really hated the Boss' guts.

"Once every two months I have to open up the vault and make sure the Time Pieces aren't unstable or damaged. The computer can't check it on its own, so I have to do it manually."

"Can we help?" The Nomad asked.

"Sorry Ewe, but this is a Time Travelers-only job. There are very specific things that you need to know to determine if something is wrong with a Time Piece and I don't have time to list them off."

"Oh."

"You can be my sleep guards though, so I don't fall asleep on the job from not going to bed at all last night!"

"Sleep guard Ewe is on duty!" The Nomad exclaimed, staring down Hat Kid while perched on Rham's head. Hat Kid slowly counted each Time Piece that she checked.

"That could work…" The Conductor whispered to Mafia Boss, dragging him to a distant corner of the main hall.

"What do you mean?" The other whispered back.

"Lassie is sad because she wanted to do things with the Mustached Lass that she can't do with us because they're both young'uns, right?"

"Yes."

"So that means we just need to find some kids around her age to play with."

"We don't know any other children."

"Let me finish! I'm proposing that take a Time Piece, break open a portal, and find some peers for her to play with."

"Darling, that is the worst idea I've ever heard." DJ Grooves butted in, startling the owl.

"I have to agree with Captain Disco over here, that is a terrible idea." Snatcher added, making the corner rather cramped at this point.

The corner was silent as Hat Kid asked Ewe to take her diary back to her room for her. "Boss Guy, you can be the sleep guard until Ewe comes back, right? Ewe's probably going to be distracted for a while."

"Sure." He waited for Hat Kid to continue counting before he slowly leaned into the other adults and whispered "I'd go with the plan."

"Thank ye." "Darling no!" "Are you an idiot?!"

Before the group could argue, a small snore could be heard from the vault. Mafia Boss had already failed his one job and let Hat Kid fall asleep.

Conductor seized this opportunity and scurried over to the vault to pluck a random Time Piece.

"Darling, did we learn nothing from the Award Ceremony? Or from when a certain Red-Hood someone decided to rule the world?" DJ Grooves asked, clearly annoyed.

"Those were for selfish desires Peck Neck. Getting the Lass some peers to play with is a perfectly good cause!"

The DJ didn't hesitate to lunge at the other bird with full intent to stop this madness before it began. The game of keep away that ensued went on for about five minutes, with Mafia Boss and the Conductor passing the Time Piece to one another, to Grooves' annoyance, while Snatcher cackled in amusement at the center of the room.

Unfortunately, nobody was watching where they were going as one person ended up tripping on Snatcher's tail, which in turn tripped up everybody else and caused the Time Piece to brake.

"25!" Hat Kid yelled out as the shattering noise jolted her awake.

Something about the Time Piece's usual properties was not normal as, when it shattered, it didn't just rewind time to a few seconds earlier; it tried to pull through with what The Conductor, the guy that had dropped the Time Piece, has in mind when he stole it in the first place: Get Hat Kid some peers to play with. The hourglass definitely did it job, just not in the way that was intended.

Instead of one Boss of the Mafia, a shadowy noodle man, two birds, and a goat the height of a small building, there were now two humans boys, a duo of smaller birds, and a goat that was half a head taller than Hat Kid herself.

The former adults looked at each other in shock before staring in the direction of a very unhappy Hat Kid.

"It was Conductor's idea." A black-haired boy said, pointing at the small owl in a striped-shirt.