These chapters are gonna start getting longer, hope you guys are ready.
Also don't forget to leave your opinions in the reviews, I really appreciate it!
At this point in time, Mu had somehow finished her small bowl of gross healing soup and was once again burying herself in blankets in pillows.
Cooking Cat had no objections to this and let the girl rest, knowing that it could only help.
—
Hat Kid and the young directors landed in the parking lot just outside of Dead Bird Studios and made their way inside the building with Hat Kid holding a bird in either arm. Surely enough, Greg was waiting for them by the reception desk and seemed pleasantly surprised to actually see them.
"I'm impressed, I thought for certain I'd be waiting for fifteen minutes while you ran amok to avoid me."
"Don't patronize me Greg, I said I'd come so now I'm here." Conductor growled, "I'm guessing Redd is picking us up via me train?"
"No, Walter."
"Really, I thought you'd be milking in the opportunity to embarrass me by summoning the evil quadruplet." Conductor sounded half annoyed and half shocked.
"I'm not carrying two birds for fifteen minutes," Hat Kid declared, handing the young owl to his brother, "here you go."
"Lassie!"
Hat Kid ignored him and put Grooves on the ground. The boy hid behind her legs as he spotted a small group of Moon Penguins over on his side of the studio. He didn't want them to see him like this, as a shy, timid, and quiet child. He was seen by the public as a bold and loud bird that could handle the largest of crowds, but like this he couldn't even handle being in the same lobby as his fans.
"Hey David, ye doing alright?" Greg asked Grooves, startling him. "I didn't want to point out how much in the same boat you were in as me brother, but you look troubled."
"I, um, well-"
"It's because DJ Peck Neck is a helpless frightened crybaby now that he doesn't have his stage presence and platform shoes." Conductor teased.
"Blake!" Barked Greg, already tired of his brother's nonsense. "At least have some respect for your competitor, sheesh. If you can't be nice to someone that's clearly younger than you than, then you can expect the same treatments from yours truly."
The younger owl huffed, of course DJ Grooves was getting attention like the baby he was being. Nobody deserves to be reprimanded more than the bird that was only trying to help out.
"Hey there little fella," a moon penguin approached and talked to Grooves, "I couldn't help but notice you were eyeballing our side of the studio. Are you a DJ Grooves fan too?"
The child director hesitantly nodded his head; his own fans, who didn't ever reach up to Hat Kid's chin half the time, were now taller than him and it didn't feel right.
A familiar train whistle blew outside the studio, indicating that Walter had arrived. Hat Kid followed Greg outside assuming that Grooves would follow behind, except he didn't follow behind, he was still talking with the oh so friendly penguin in the reception area that wouldn't leave him alone on things he already knew about his adult self. He started getting more freaked out when other penguins came to see him as well, wondering where his parents were; he was getting all sorts of social anxiety and he didn't even know where Hat Kid was anymore, he felt completely alone.
Back with the aforementioned Hat Kid, she and the owls were standing right next to the Owl Express with another Conductor look-alike exiting from the front of the locomotive, this one had white feathers and a grey uniform.
"Looks like I'm here at a convenient time then, right Greg?" Walter asked, he sounded incredibly calm and gentle.
"Indeed."
"And who's little thing is this?" Walter tilted his head and smiled, giving Conductor's cheek fluff a scratch, "He's a sweet little thing for certain, and he reminds me quite a bit of Blake from when we were owlets."
"Eh, he's an orphan kid, apparently they did some blood work on him and he turned out to be one of Redd's granddies." Greg lied, "We might be adopting him as part of the family, oh, and his name is also Blake."
Content with what was given to him, Walter and his brothers boarded the train with the former briefly getting to know Hat Kid as well before driving the train off to its destination. It was at this point that Hat Kid suddenly realized that Grooves wasn't with her and she promptly began to panic.
She ran back into the studio to find the group of penguins chatting nervously to one another.
"Where is he?!"
"The little guys? He um, he kinda freaked out and ran deeper into the studio, we're trying to find him." One of the penguins answered.
That wasn't good. She should have been keeping an eye on him, but she had been too busy trying to keep the Conductor out of trouble to notice how uncomfortable Grooves had been during the whole thing; if she was a babysitter, Hat Kid would probably have been fired for this mistake.
At least she knew the layout of the studio pretty well; how hard could it possibly be to find one penguin child?
—
"This is actually edible!" Snatcher exclaimed, having just tried a piece of bacon that Mafia Boss made.
"I told you so." The other said boastfully. Next to the bacon, he had also cooked up some other meaty foods like sausages, ham, and strips of tilapia (although fish technically wasn't a meat, the Boss considered it a meaty food). He of course made salad as well, both to balance out the large amount of meat that was made and to accommodate for the Alpine inhabitants who mostly ate plant material.
"This is really good Boss man." Ewe said in response to the salad, Rham munching away on most of plant-based food.
"Oh, please, just called me Dimitri!" Mafia Boss replied, "If we're going to be children for a while, I might as well get accustomed to a first-name basis."
"Why?" Snatcher asked.
"How would you react if a group of children, and Ewe, just strolled through your forest all willy nilly, and they all referred to one particular child as their Boss? Wouldn't that be strange?"
"From a technical standpoint…" he paused, chomping down on more bacon before responding, "yeah, I guess so. Also, off topic, but this bacon is really good."
"I rest my case...also thank you."
They all ate 'til they decided that enough was enough and saved all the leftovers in lidded-bowls for later. They remained mostly silent and refused to look each other in the eyes, but any conversation that did occur was solely between Snatcher and 'Dimitri'; it started with small talk until eventually they started cracking jokes and just started acting like the young boys that they were. Their jokes, depending on the person, were either crude or subtle, and neither of them seemed to mind the juxtaposition of their drastically different senses of humor as they gradually began to jab at the absurdity of their adult lifestyles.
"You know, it's just occurred to me." Dimitri said, "We're actually, genuinely kids again. The context of how this happened aside, this return to a simpler time is the sort of thing most people long to have happen to them."
"What's your point?" Snatcher asked quietly, falling back into an old habit in which he would become oddly quiet when people talked to him.
"We don't know how long we're going to be like this, and quite frankly I think we're wasting a perfect opportunity to go crazy without any repercussions." He gave off an mischievous smirk, "Why don't we go downtown and create some chaos? Those two girls do it all the time, might as well see what all the hubbub is about."
The Snatcher everyone knew came back like a resurrected flame as his face, while before looking soft and reserved like a prince of yold, switched to a toothy smirk. "Dimitri, you mad genius, you're absolutely right. Let's royal rumpus like this is our last day on Earth!"
"With pleasure!" The mafia boy took hold of the prince's wrist and dragged him over to the other side of the main hall as they made their way to Mafia Town to wreck up Dimitri's own home, as you do.
This, of course left only Ewe and young Rham on Hat Kid's spaceship.
"Oh, I guess I was a bit late in stopping them…" Ewe muttered, "I suppose that doesn't matter. We know where they're going at least, and Hat Kid should be back with the penguin person any second now. We should help her find that book she needs!"
Rham bleated in agreement, hobbling to the Machine Room with Ewe not far behind. Nobody seemed to have noticed that the unstable Time Piece, which Hat Kid had appropriately labeled as unstable and placed in her chair at some point, was missing, snatched away without any alarm.
It could only spell trouble depending on who had taken it, and the person that had already knew exactly what to use it for.
I'm going to reply to current reviews down here now.
Girrafeyla10: I may be an evil person, but I won't humiliate The Conductor. Rest assured however, he will be learning a lesson in this story. Also thank you for the compliments!
Inknroses: Grooves is a small innocent bean as a child and must be protected. :3