Hello yes I am here to provide a crackfic that nobody asked for. This story came from a silly coversation I had with some pals regarding everyone's favorite bird directors. Enjoy.
"Thanks for letting me help out in your house Conductor!" Hat Kid said as the aforementioned bird let her inside.
"It's no problem Lassie, but did you have to bring him along?" The Conductor pointed to a certain DJ that had stood behind the child at the front door.
"You said I could bring somebody." She shrugged.
"Yeah, But I was expecting the red-hooded peck neck or that ghost thing you claim is yer friend."
Hat Kid took DJ Grooves' wing to drag him inside as she replied, "MG said she's claustrophobic, and Snatcher doesn't like attics or basements."
"Why?"
"You had to be there." The child muttered, remembering the Snatcher's backstory all too well from when she left the pink Time Rift in Subcon Forest.
"Fine, But why Grooves?!"
"She just happened to bring up that she was coming here when we met this morning!" DJ Grooves explained, "I didn't want her to do your family's work on her own, plus I quite like meeting your folks."
"Hi David." One of the Conductor's sons said to Grooves as that bird's own son carried a flock of great grandkids over to a car.
"Nice to see ya Charles." The DJ waved to the bird.
The Conductor made a noise akin to a growl seeing his family act so friendly towards his competitor.
"Alright you peck necks! Into the attic with ye!" The Conductor shoo'd his visitors upstairs, showing them the way to said attic from the maze of hallways that somehow held all the Conductor's current descendants. "If ye need me, I'll be cleaning the basement."
Left to their own devices, Hat Kid and DJ Grooves started cleaning.
—
"How is this place in worse condition than my attic and Vanessa's combined?!" Hat Kid asked after an hour of cleaning. "It doesn't even make sense. Vanessa's, like, a thousand years old or something and her entire house has seen better days than this place."
Hat Kid mostly dusted stuff off while Grooves moved heavy stuff. The penguin had hit his head multiple times on the low ceiling for various reasons, but he wasn't going to take his shoes off to stop that from happening anytime soon, his poor feet would never heal if they stepped on a nail.
"The Conductor's got some real nerve to ask people outside his household to clean his house on spring cleaning." Grooves grunted as he moved a wardrobe back into an upright position.
"All of his kids and grandkids work, can you really blame him?" Hat Kid asked, opening the wardrobe to see if it would whisk her away to somewhere other than the dusty attic while Grooves trudged into the back of the attic.
"But still Darling, he could've planned something out on the weekeAAGH!" He tripped over a small chest.
"You alright over there?" Hat Kid called out, jumping over all the boxes like a rebel instead of going around them.
"Fine Darling, I've thrown my back out in more humiliating ways, like swimming, and losing a fight to a little girl." He joked, proving he was alright.
"What'd ya trip over anyway?" Hat Kid picked up the odd stuff that spilled from the chest with "Never ever open. Ever." scrawled over it. The contents seemed to be various knickknacks and clothes that screamed 19th-century style while also being decorated with gears and the like.
"Is this what I think it is?" Grooves pondered, observing the cover of a notebook, "Oh my bird it's steampunk."
"Steamwhat?"
"Steampunk Darling!" Grooves exclaimed, handing Hat Kid the notebook while he helped get all the stuff back in the chest. "I never got into it, but it's a sci-fi kind of thing involving 19th-century aesthetics and the like. I think it's used a lot in literature."
"Cool." Hat Kid said, she opened to the front page of the notebook which read 'Property of Walter'. "I wonder who Blake is."
"Hey! Are you peck necks done up here yet?!" The Conductor's voice called out, the sounds of him entering the attic echoed.
"Only about halfway." Grooves said as he dropped the a few more objects back into the chest.
"Hey Conductor, who's Blake and why does he have Steampunk stuff in a chest?" Asked Hat Kid.
"Have you been snooping around in our stuff?!" The owl gawked, "How dare yer!"
"It got knocked over Conductor, we were only picking it up." Grooves assured the other, taking the notebook from Hat Kid's hands and tossing it back into the chest before closing it.
"I'm sure you were you crooked, flightless, no-good, sunglass sporting-"
"Conductor!" Hat Kid interrupted.
"What is it Lassie?!"
"Who's Blake?"
"A member of the family." Conductor replied, obviously dodging the question.
"An ancestor?"
"No, current member."
"Is he some sort of cousin twice removed or something?"
"No. Do we need to have this conversation?"
DJ Grooves was already piecing together the identity of Walter and began to snicker uncontrollably.
"Stop laughing! It's not what you think!" The Conductor yelled.
"Oh Conductor, your reactions prove otherwise." Grooves said hysterically.
"I don't get it. What's so funny?" Hat Kid asked, wondering why she was asking so many questions.
"Darling," he stopped to chuckle a bit, "I've known the Conductor and his family long enough to know exactly what's going on. That chest is pretty old, about as old as the Conductor himself is. Blake is the Conductor's real name."
Oh, that...kinda sorta made sense.
"It was a phase Lassie! Ye gotta believe me!" The Conductor pleaded, "I was a stupid teenager! It was the closest thing to something cool I could grasp onto where being a nerd for trains was completely acceptable!"
DJ just laughed even harder while Hat Kid stared in confusion. Is getting dirt on trivial interests really how old people make fun of one another on this planet?
"Grooves, I swear if you tell anyone outside this room about this, I'll find a way to get back at you! Don't think I won't!"
"You won't have to look very hard Conductor, you know I like to keep things fair and square!" Grooves said as he pulled out a handful of pictures from a pocket. They were really old pictures with Grooves wearing the tackiest, most ridiculous clothes Hat Kid had ever seen next to the DJ's usual outfit, "I had a pretty bad hippie phase during high school that followed me until my graduation."
Conductor was laughing so hard he looked about ready to cry, though that might have partially been because of the events that transpired only seconds before. Grooves pocketed the pictures again while he waited for the owl to calm down a bit.
"Alright Grooves, I guess we're even. If a peep of anything regarding my steampunk phase gets mentioned, I have the right to out you on your hippie phase and vice versa." The Conductor chuckled.
"Deal." The DJ nodded as the birds shook hands(?) on the matter.
"What about me?" Hat Kid inquired.
"Say anything about this, and you'll be a corpse in me next murder movie." Conductor said without hesitation.
"I'm gonna...go back to cleaning now."
"Good."