The four ninja birds soon reached the surface with Lilly pushing the manhole and carefuly peaking her head out to take a glance around. Luckily, the sewer came out in an alley and the four of them could come out safely and enjoy the breeze of the outside world for the first time in years!
The alley was filled with trash cans full of trash, graffiti on the walls, flies flying around empty cans and even an homeless man trying to sleep on a bed mattress, but failing to. All four masked birds looked all around the alley in awe, also listening to the distant noises of the whole city.
"It's so beautiful..." Sparky mumbled, talking for everyone.
"This city is just full of possibilities," Lilly said as the group started venturing out of the alley. "There could be an adventure around this corner or this one, or this one," she kept repeating at every street corner they met, but didn't spotted that much of adventures. "Okay, not there, but there could be somewhere else."
The team kept advancing and watching around the street until Sky spotted a shop that was filled with computers. Since it was one of her main interests, she decided to get to the window and get a better look at them. The computers were turned on and were displaying either images or videos. One of them showed a female belly dancer dancing with a flamenco.
"What's this dance? It looks ridiculous," the young elf owl commented and even gave a glare at the fourth wall.
Meanwhile, her younger brother, Sparky was looking into a video game store where the latest exclusivities were displayed at the store's window. "What's this game? Super Rio: The Video Game? Looks fun, too bad we don't have a console at home," Sparky said with a smile.
Kowalski gave a look to a comic books shop which also displayed good-looking comic books. One in particular named The Blue Phoenix which showed a blue phoenix (duh) on the cover caught his interest. "This looks pretty good."
Finally, Lilly saw a shop that displayed old Japanese weapons and ouvres d'art that looked like they were from the Folklor culture. "Man, this is purely beautiful!" she thrilled before going to join her brothers and sister in the middle of the street.
"So where to next?" Sky asked just as a young boy driving a scooter bike stopped right before them. He was wearing a red helmet with glasses through with he gave a confused glance at the four strange dressed birds before him.
Kowalski smirked and decided to jump in front of him with a monster act. This caused the boy to scream in fear and quickly turn his bike away to drive in the opposite direction where he came from. He dropped a box from a pile that was sitting on the back of his bike in the process.
"We shouldn't stay in the streets and be exposed like that; let's get on the roof and keep going around without getting spotted," Lilly said and then climbed on the roof, followed by Sky and Kowalski.
Sparky was about to follow them, but then spotted the box the teen dropped and decided to pick it before climbing on the roof. As he joined them, Kowalski was the first one to notice Sparky's box in his wings.
"What's this, bro?"
"Dunno, the bike kid dropped it. We're gonna find it out," Sparky said with putting the box down and then read what was on the cover; "Pi-zza?"
"Think we should open it?" Sky asked as she looked at the box with a curious glance.
"Okay, but be careful; it could be dangerous," Lilly said before opening the box which released some steam coming from a circular thing that looked warm and was covered of pepperoni and cheese.
"I think it's...food," Sky pointed out.
"Doesn't look like any food I ever saw," Kowalski said with his wings crossed.
"I'll try it," Sparky declared with taking a point of the food and slowly bit the tip of it, causing his siblings to look at him in concern. The elf owl's eyes shot open in a split-second and he suddenly ate the whole pizza point instantly. "THIS IS DELICIOUS!"
He quickly picked another point and his siblings quickly followed before their younger brother could eat it all to himself.
"Man, Sparky's right, this is DELICIOUS!" Sky sighed with patting her stomach before letting out a loud burp. "Sorry."
"I never though I'd taste anything better than algue, but this is awesome," Kowalski added.
They suddenly heard what sounded like a girl screaming coming from down the streets. They all jumped and looked down to see something unexpected; strange black birds dressed in tuxedos were trying to drag two little green bird - an old male and a young female, probably a father and his daughter - into a bird-sized van. Which was odd as they never saw one before. Probably because they lived in the sewers for years.
"Wow, that little green bird girl is pretty cute," Sky remarked.
"You can tell her that after we save them! Let's go!" Kowalski said and jumped down the roof.
"No wait, Master Yoshi told us not to-" Lilly started, but stopped as Sparky and Skyler followed him. "Of course, let's not listen to what our master says and jump in action anyway," she sarcastically mumbled before jumping down too.
Kowalski charged at the birds and shouted a: "HEY!" before smashing one of them really hard with his wing curled like a fist. Strangely, after falling, the black bird simply glance at him with an uninterested look.
"Still standing, he? I can fix that!" Kowalski said with taking out his sais and getting on the attack as Sparky and Sky also jumped in the battle.
"I can't believe you disobeyed Master Yoshi after he clearly told us to stay away from people! And restrooms!" Lilly said as she dodged a strange bird's attack and fought back with her katanas.
"You wanted to be a hero like that dude in your show, right? Since when does heroes ask for permission?" Kowalski asked while pushing back a strange bird.
Meanwhile, Sky noticed the young female green bird getting carried toward the van by a strange bird on his shoulder. She quickly dashed at him and smashed him in the back to knock him away and drop the green bird girl on the ground. As she took back from the shot, she looked up as Sky held her wings toward her with a friendly smile.
"AAAAAH!" she screamed in fear.
"AAAAH!" Sky screamed too and kept doing it before stopping. "Huh, why are we screaming?"
The frightened green bird girl stopped and panted. "Are you one of those evil birds?"
"No; I'm nice. My siblings and I came to save you and your father," Sky assured which clicked something into the girl's head.
"My dad!" she said as she noticed the strange birds closing the back of their van where they locked the young girl's dad and started driving away. She tried to fly after him, only to be stopped by Sky.
"Wait, listen...hum, what's your name?"
"Tiny," the little green bird answered.
"Okay, Tiny, wait here and we'll go catch those birds for you," Sky said and then ran after the van with Lilly and Kowalski following.
"I can't believe you slashed my back with your sword!" Kowalski angrily said.
"I couldn't have know you would jump in the way at this moment!" Lilly replied.
Meanwhile, Sparky stood behind to fight one of the remaining strange birds. He swung his nunchucks at many part of his body, but didn't caused any effect. The strange bird soon caught his nunchucks and threw him away into an alley.
"Cheese!" Sparky mumbled as the strange bird slowly walked toward him. "N-No! Stay away!" the elf screamed and instinctively took the kurasigama blade out from one of his nunchucks which he swung at the bird's face, cutting him there.
Some kind of strange light started pouring from the cut as the man staggered away and collapsed. "What the...?" Sparky though as he curiously and cautiously turned the bird's body around and found something rather shocking.
He cut half the bird's face open to show some kind of robotic material that shone in bright purple with some sparkles coming out. Just as he though things couldn't get weirder, he noticed that the tuxedo was open and revealed some kind of creepy alien-like brain monster with a face that screamed.
"AAAARGH!" sparky screamed too as the brain jumped to his face and wrapped tentacles around it to stay there until Sparky finally managed to get him off and throw him on the alley's wall.
The strange brain monster than ran away on its tentacles and Sparky just stood there, trying to proceed what just happened before spotting his siblings coming back with the young girl.
"Guys! Guys! You're never gonna believe this. That guy he- he... had a BRAIN!" Sparky panicked, earning confused glances from his siblings.
"We all have brains, Sparky," Lilly pointed out.
"Not all of us," Sky said with giving a pointing look at Sparky.
"In our chests?!" Sparky asked.
Lilly sighed. "No, Sparky. Not in our chests."
"YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!" the elf owl angrily screamed before Lilly suddenly slapped him in the face. "Did you just slap me?"
"I was calming you down."
"WHY WOULD THAT CALM ME DOWN?!" He then sighed. "If you don't believe me, follow me to this alley," he said and led his siblings to the alley, only to find out the robotic corpse was gone.
Sparky gasped and then looked at his siblings who gave him pointing looks before sighing. "But he was there! I swear!"
"Enough, Sparky!" Sky shouted and then pointed at the still scared Tiny. "This girl is named Tiny and she just lost her father. We need to take her back to the lair where she'll be safe."
"What?! Have you lost your mind?!" Kowalski asked. "We disobeyed Master Yoshi's orders; if we even bring a stranger to the lair, how do you think he's gonna react?!"
"I don't care! I'm bringing her back to the lair, wether you like it or not! Got it?!" Sky angrily shouted back at him and then took Tiny's wing. "Come with us, Tiny, we'll take you to somewhere safe."
She started walking away with her siblings following and Sparky taking one last look at the alley where he fought the brain monster before following everyone.
There was a few easter eggs to my other works in this chapter. I let you tell me which ones in the reviews ;)