Chapter 74- from a peaceful stargazing trip to a serious nightmare
Shortly after the stargazing group had left; Travis, Sunset, Eustace, Milo, Rosa, Clemont, Serena, Vincent, Yolanda and Peach returned to Tulio's Aviary with Andromeda, Eragon and the bat-birds. As the group neared the entrance to the building, they heard the flapping sounds of two pairs of wings in their ears. Eustace looked up.
"Oh, look, Blu and Jewel have returned," he said. The others also looked up in time to see a pair of Spix macaws fly in and touch down before them. As Blu and Jewel touched down and walked over to Travis and company, the latter group put on astonished faces.
"Good grief, you two," cried Andromeda in utter shock, "How violently did you have to deal with that hideous crested parrot!?"
As she said this, Travis, Sunset, Eragon and the other cockatoos and the bat-birds took the time to examine Blu and Jewel up and down. Both Spix macaws' plumages were strewn with red streaks and their beaks and claws bore more of the same red liquid. In their claws quite a few white-grey ragged feathers were caught and Blu was holding a pale yellow one, which Travis knew had come from Nigel's crest, in his mouth. Even more astonishingly, the faces of both Spix macaws were saturated with an extremely acidic concoction of scorn, smugness and amusement, and Travis and Sunset could see a hint of utter sadism thrown into the mix as well.
"You looked as though you've slaughtered Nigel outright and rather gruesomely," added Clemont as he commented on the state of the Spix macaw couple. Blu stepped forward to answer this and Andromeda's question after taking the crest feather out of his beak.
"We didn't kill that cockatoo," he said in a scorn-laced voice, "We just savagely slashed and bit him like a pair of extremely enraged cats, like last time, and tore out as many feathers as we could."
Then before Travis could ask, Jewel, her face completely smug-saturated continued the explanation.
"And not only that," she cackled, "we tormented him by screeching at him in the most terrifying way by bulging our eyes out at him right in his face and made ourselves look as frightening as possible," her beak then widened into an extremely smug smile, "I even took the opportunity to seize him by the neck and strangle him to the point of suffocating him like how Athos had almost done before we turned up. You should have seen how much of a PATHETIC coward he was when we savagely attacked him. He kept screaming and crying like a useless pig, especially when we raked him with our claws and tore out his feathers to inflict him with extreme pain!"
And with that, she cackled menacingly, much to the disgust of Travis and the others.
"We sure enjoyed putting that (bleep) through the same hellish NIGHTMARES he had put us and any other victim he had tortured and abused in the past, I can tell you," added Blu, before his voice melted to one of pure rancour and hatred, "We were gonna kill him actually but we decided to leave that cockatoo to suffer those serious physical and mental scars we had inflicted upon him for the rest of his life."
"And I hope he has NIGHTMARES about us as well, especially after what he had almost done to Ruby," put in Jewel in an equally rancorous voice. Travis and the others continued listening to Blu and Jewel's description of what wrath they had put Nigel through until finally, Travis spoke.
"Well, I think you went a WAY over-the-top with your savage attack on Nigel, you two," he said.
"And I think it's time you got cleaned up," put in Sunset.
"Eragon, I, those three city cats and our bat-birds had wondered what on earth all that agonised screeching and squawking was down that read during our walk," said Andromeda.
"Road," said Travis, correcting Andromeda's calling of the road, 'read'.
"And it actually sent shivers down some of our spines," said Eragon, "Especially Rouge, Andromeda's bat-bird here," he nodded to said bat-bird who let loose a squeaky whimper to confirm her agreement to this statement, "Even the three city cats were startled."
"Where is Nigel now after you had brutally scared him and tortured him?" asked Sunset. Blu and Jewel's faces widened their sadistic and smug smiles, their wings folded and their eyes were shut.
"We tossed him into a chicken farm nearby," said Blu smugly, "Where we hope he'll live out the rest of his wretched days…"
"Well, I think we've heard enough on that subject of that twisted cockatoo," said Travis, interrupting, before his gaze turned to Blu and Jewel, "And as Sunset said, you two need to clean up."
"That's why we've come back here," said Blu, "To clean our pretty blue plumages of that cockatoo slime-ball's blood and feathers."
Jewel then opened her wings and took off for Tulio's Aviary's entrance without another word. Blu also followed with Travis and Sunset in tow.
"Bia and the others have gone stargazing," called Eustace. Blu and Jewel flashed a smile of 'okay' before they disappeared into the building with Travis and Sunset in tow. After the four had gone, Clemont turned to Vincent, Yolanda and Peach and said, "Well, I think it's time that these three are returned to Tulio's Aviary too."
"Yeah, it's been a long day," said Vincent with a yawn after this. He then gazed down at his still-healing wing in its cast and sighed. Then Andromeda turned to Rouge and Spyro's bat-bird Garnet and said, "Rouge, Garnet, you two fly after Bia and the others and keep an eye on them. If you see any trouble, report back to us, the crested parrots and Blu and Jewel, okay?"
Rouge and Garnet nodded and took off into the air to follow Bia and the others. As the two bat-birds left, Serena flashed Andromeda a surprised look.
"Why are you sending two of your bat-birds after Bia and the other stargazers?" asked she.
"Just in case something happens to them," said Andromeda, "I just want to be on the safe side."
"But Bia and the others are sensible enough to look out for themselves, my shiny crystal," said Eragon as he stood with the remaining two bat-birds which belonged to himself and Marella, "Including Spyro and Marella. They don't really need out constant eye on them all the time."
"And besides that," added Eustace, "They're not going too far away from here and they're not gonna venture into the forest at this time of night anyway. I'm sure they'll be fine…"
"I just want to make a safety leaf-net," said Andromeda, sharply interrupting Eustace's protests, much to the cockatoo's shock. Then before anyone else could speak further, Andromeda left for Tulio's Aviary's entrance, the remaining bat-birds in tow. Eustace glared after the archaeobird with a disgruntled look.
"She sure is a bit brusque, isn't she?" said he to the others. Then Eragon came in.
"Well, she's just wary of Bia and the others' safety, that's all," he said, understanding Andromeda's apparently overprotective attitude, "After all, well over half of the kids had been taken by those hideous poachers and we had to go through a lot of difficulty trying to protect the remaining ones as well as find out where the kidnapped kids including Sandalwood had been taken…"
"Not to mention all the bother Blu and the others had to go through in finding those kids," added Milo and with that, he left for Tulio's Aviary's entrance too. Rosa, Serena, Clemont, Vincent, Yolanda and Peach followed.
"AND the trouble Esmeralda and Aramis had to put themselves through in rescuing Byron when those rotten toucans seized and made off with him during the toucans' attack on us at Tulio and Linda's cottage, resulting in those two facing a beating from those poachers' crows," added Rosa as she left. Eustace flashed his only sister a glare. He clearly did not like that flock of devious menaces getting mentioned. Eragon's wing claws on his un-casted wing then appeared and landed on his shoulder.
"Let's just return to the building, shall we?" said he gently. Eustace breathed a sigh of defeat and relented, and with that the pair left.
Meanwhile
Carla, Bia and Tiago, together with their respective mates Justin, Virgil and Matilda and their chicks Sirius, Einstein, Miles, Byron, Bellatrix, Sonia, Spica and Melody, continued their walk into the dark clearing away from as much manmade light pollution as possible with the others accompanying them. Walking alongside Carla and company were Zephyr, Aurora, Roberto and Brisa accompanied Kira, Finnick, Achernar, Polaris, Diego and the others including Collette, Broccoli and Daisy and Diantha, Tom, Gladion and Lillie. The kids danced excitedly as the group ventured into the darkness. Bia had the stargazing book while Aramis, Phoebe, Aurora and D'Artagnan and several others carried several pairs of strange dual tube things the human-raised birds called binoculars which they had explained to the members not familiar with them that humans used these to magnify distant birds and stars during birdwatching or stargazing, as well as several more human devices the human-familiar birds called flashlights or torches to help navigate in the dark. As the large group continued to walk along, Sandalwood, while he was hanging onto Stella's breast, kept gazing at Porthos's bandaged talon whose bandage had just been replaced a while ago.
"What happened to Mr Porthos's foot, Mom?" asked Sandalwood. Stella gazed at Porthos's bandaged talon as the muscular blue-and-gold macaw hovered close to the ground for he still could not walk properly yet and said, "He cut it very badly on some stuff humans call glass."
"Glass?" squeaked Acerola as she walked alongside Anabelle, with Ferdinand on her breast, and Sebastian, the latter who gazed at her.
"It's that hard, transparent material humans use to make windows," he explained.
"When it gets broken, according to Carla, Bia, Tiago and the other birds familiar with human things," added Soren who was on Stella's other side, "it can form very sharp edges and points that can inflict injury," his gaze then turned to Porthos' foot, "and unfortunately, Porthos suffered that on that talon from those edges and points."
"How did it happen?" asked Acerola. Anabelle gazed at her and smiled.
"It's too complicated," she said gently, "Let's just focus on stargazing."
Acerola raised an eyebrow and soon put the curiosity about Porthos's injured foot to one side, as did Sandalwood.
As the group walked along, the black canvas awash with the massive glitter river of stars hung above them like a curtain, much to the awe of the group.
"I believe that's the Milky Way," said Sirius as he gazed at the massive sea of stars, particularly the densest concentration of it that flowed across the sky.
"You're correct, son," said Bia, "That's our galaxy."
Nearby, Antares, Betelgeuse and Rigel turned their heads to a specific constellation that was quite low in the sky. This constellation was divided by three stars that appeared to be aligned in a row and below that row several blurry objects were aligned vertically and pointed downward, like a dagger from a hilt.
"That's the Orion constellation," Spinel told her three chicks, "That's the constellation our friends Cometa and Lightning took for their son because the markings on his underside resembles the pattern in that constellation's midsection."
Betelgeuse then gazed at a specific red star, the only red star in the Orion pattern and the one she was named for, and smiled while Rigel gazed at the blue star diagonally opposite the red one.
"Yes, my daughters," said Sheldon, "We've named you two after those stars while your brother was named after another star in another constellation."
Antares looked up at his father and smiled.
"While Tiago and Matilda have named their daughter after that star," said Spinel, a nod to another blue star nearly horizontal to the red one but above the 'Belt' and with that she flashed a glance at Bellatrix as she listened to Tiago explain her name origin as well.
"What other constellation is my star in?" asked Antares.
"Scorpius," said Spinel.
"Known in our tribe and some of the other tribes as the Eagle Claw," said Sheldon, "While the archaeobirds call it the Bipedal Lizard Talon."
"So most of us have been named after stars?" asked Rigel.
"Yes," said Spinel, before her gaze turned to Bia and her family as they talked with Aurora and Zephyr, "And Sirius is named after that bright star just near the Orion pattern," and as she said this she pointed to said star, prompting Betelgeuse, Rigel and Antares to gaze at it. That star was very bright, brighter than the stars that formed the Orion pattern.
"When we grow up, we wanna take some chicks stargazing too," said Betelgeuse with a smile, her brother and sister nodding in agreement. Spinel gazed with a smile at Sheldon.
"Must run in the family, I suppose," said she in amusement, to which Sheldon smiled back. Nearby, Poinsettia as she walked with Wilbur, Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine, all of who were named after the four bases in DNA, flashed an amused smile at this joke when she heard it. Spinel returned the smile.
From his mother Stella's breast, Sandalwood gazed at the sea of stars with wide eyes as did the other kids, including Aldebaran whose worry and uneasy feeling he had been experiencing at the Vista Chinesa and for Bill and his box of matches all swept aside. Broccoli, Daisy, Collette and Sardonyx, Greg, Kevin, Steven and Connie also gazed up at the sky and smiled in awe.
"We've always wanted to go stargazing properly when we lived in that 'Paradise Sanctuary'," said Greg, "but to actually go with other macaws is simply an awesome experience."
"I think we should take Travis and the others with us to stargaze next time," said Broccoli. Collette and Daisy then relished a small breeze as it blew by and caressed their fur, ruffling it like grass. Then Zephyr said to Bia, "Right, Bia, where shall we go?"
Bia smiled and nodded to a specific spot in the clearing.
"We'll go there," she said. With that, the group began to head for that spot, the streams of artificial light flowing from the torches held by some of the macaws aiming for the area, the kids excitedly bouncing along as they looked forward to peering through the binoculars and admiring the beautiful jewels of the night sky. However, the group was completely unaware that the chosen spot was already under occupation and those occupiers were completely enveloped by the darkness of the night, doing what Bia and her group were about to do once they got there.
As Bia and company continued to their spot of choice, Porthos, who had fluttered to the front of the Spix macaws, suddenly felt his wing hit something, followed by a scream of shock. Porthos flapped back in surprise and stopped the others dead as his other wing accidentally slapped Carla and Justin in the face and he flopped to the floor to be caught by Roberto and Brisa.
"MOOOM, DAD, GUUUYS!" cried the thing Porthos had accidentally struck with his wing, "SOMEONE'S ATTACKIN' MEEEE!"
Disbelief tore through Bia's group and glances were exchanged.
"'Someone's attacking me'?" repeated Kira with surprise and confusion as Finnick, Diego, Achernar and Polaris only looked on speechlessly. Then Zephyr and Aurora came in with Orquidea as Porthos apologised to Carla and Justin for accidentally hitting them in the faces with his wing. However, a look of suspicion was plastered all over the three macaws' faces as they glared at where the little creature accidentally struck by Porthos had dashed off to. Bellatrix and Byron jumped into Matilda's wings while Stella and Soren came in with Sandalwood.
"Someone's already stargazing?" asked Stella confused. Zephyr's green eyes then detected and just made out the partial silhouettes of some of the shadowy figures from the dark background. However, as he made out the shapes of what appeared to be the head features, he hissed a, "Oh, peaches and apples!"
"What is it, Uncle Zephyr?" asked Carla as she held Spica and Justin held Melody and Sonia. Bia, Virgil, Sirius, Einstein and Miles who stood near them just said nothing. Zephyr turned to his sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law and grand-chicks as well as the others and began to command them to turn round.
"Let's head back," he said, his gaze turned to the shadowy figures once again as Porthos, also having deduced what the silhouettes were, also began to command the same thing, "Based on the sound of whoever Porthos had accidentally hit with his wing, I've a feeling that you-know-who have already taken up that stargazing spot. We'd better…"
But before the Spix macaw could finish, an angered, "What's the BIG IDEA of hitting our daughter Isabella and sparking PANIC into her, you LOUSY, INTEREFERING MORONS!?" exploded from the crowd of shadowy figures, freezing Bia's group in their tracks. This plunged everyone's hearts into ice and whipped up a whirlwind of fear within them, especially the kids but most especially Sandalwood, Bellatrix, Sirius, Spica and also Diantha, Tom, Gladion and Lillie, and all the kids leaped into their parents' wings, especially as the air was flooded with the sounds of wing-flaps… TOUCAN wing-flaps. Roberto and Finnick's crests spiked out as did those of some of the others such as Betelgeuse with her pineapple stalk-like crest, and Achernar and Altair. Broccoli, Collette and Daisy's fur also puffed out suspiciously while Carla, Bia, Tiago, Kira, Justin, Matilda and Virgil all flinched harshly and wrapped their wings around their chicks. Broccoli then glared at the incoming shadowy figures and hissed, "Anastasia, Marco and their gang and their numerous, numerous chicks," under his breath disgustedly and timidly.
As the flock of the shadowy figures began to surround Bia and company and enclose them in a frightening ring, Zephyr barked at the group to beat a retreat but it was too late. The shadowy figures, which were indeed many of the horrible toucans and their countless kids, among them Anastasia, Marco, Sofia, Marcel and many of the other toucans and descendants of Rafael and Eva who have developed a bitter hatred of Blu and company, completed their entrapment of Bia and company, much to the latter group's frightened alarm and fear of the kids including Sandalwood, crow-like cackles escaping their big beaks. Sardonyx, Greg, Connie, Steven and Kevin threw on astonished, disbelieving looks as they examined the black and white birds with massive orange, black, lime green, magenta beaks and red, white or cream fronts as they flashed in the streams of artificial lights emanating from the torches held by some of the macaws, their eyes laced with suspicious scorn and mischief.
"Hey, what gives!?" snapped Greg at the behaviour of the toucans as they began to examine the toucans as they glared menacingly at them and the others in Bia's group. The kids huddled timidly closer to their parents while D'Artagnan, Sapphire, Aurora, Zephyr, Brisa, Roberto, Porthos, Orquidea, Aramis, Esmeralda, Phoebe, Cobalto, Levi and Lapis Lazuli, together with Broccoli, Daisy and Collette, Augustus, Diantha and Tom, took up defensive stances.
The number of toucans was massive, and the majority of them were kids. There seemed to be too many of them to count but Aramis, along with Poinsettia and Bia, had estimated the number of them to be well into the two-hundreds or perhaps more, more than twice the number of toucans than the number of members in Bia's group with all the adults and kids summed together. That certainly was a LOT of toucans, and Bia's group could see the mass formed by them as they encapsulated them like a cell trapping a bacterium. Then as soon as everything had calmed down, one of the adult toucans, Marco, then stepped forward from the crowd of black and white/cream/reddish feathers with colourful large bills, his face saturated with the bitterest scorn Bia and company had ever seen, especially as his eyes bore into Tiago, Carla, Bia and their mates and chicks.
"Leavin' so soon, you bunch of lousy little troublemakers?" crooned he much to the laughter of the other toucans surrounding Bia and company. Bia's group continued to gaze at the wall of the countless toucans as their scorn-saturated eyes bore into them and the terrified kids of Bia's group in the wings of their parents. Sirius, Miles and Einstein timidly peered over the rim of Bia's wings while Sandalwood peered out from the wrapping of his mother Stella's membranous wings, his eyes and ears just visible. In Carla's wings, Spica was visible but her sisters Melody and Sonia were hidden in Carla's wings for they were too afraid to peer out at the scornful toucans. While the mothers and some of the fathers protected their chicks and pups, the fathers and few of the mothers who did not have any of the kids in their wings spread their wings protectively across their families. Virgil did that with Bia and his sons while Soren did the same with Stella and Sandalwood, his eyes flared with wariness and rage as they scanned the mass of toucans as they flashed in the light streams from the torches. The other families also huddled together with either the father or the mother in a protective pose, their wings spread out as they glared at the toucans with Porthos and the other older adults and Broccoli, Daisy and Collette.