I don't own Wallace and Gromit, I just own this one-shot where we take a look into Feather's McGraw's mind.
Please let me know what you think.
Feathers McGraw.
As his flippers padded on the rough concrete ground of the town, a penguin walked silently assessing everything with his dark, silent gaze - to an outside observer, the penguin was just walking down the street, as casual as any other shopper or traveller when they took note of the suitcase in the grasp of the penguins' wing. The penguin walked around the town, his gaze silently turning in one direction after another, never once giving any kind of indication of what he was seeking, and he wasn't doing anything suspicious as he walked around town before he found a house with the welcome square of paper reading there was a room to let.
The penguin considered his options. While he had the money for either a hotel or a room to let, he had actually considered the option of merely checking into a hotel and laying low before the job happened, but this was more low key. Besides the location between this house with the Room to Let was significantly closer to the museum than a hotel, and he had to admit while he had a good enough plan to sneak in and out of the hotel, there was still the chance of somebody spotting him and demanding answers, or telling the police if they thought he was acting oddly.
But, a house with a room to let, this was more low-key.
The penguin needed a base of operations to begin preparing for the job. He had spent the last few days studying the routes towards the museum and the one which would
After turning the matter over in his mind, the Penguin knocked on the door and the owner, despite being weird, seemed nice enough and all he needed to do was point out the Room to Let sign, and he was welcomed in. The penguin only had to step into the house, paying only half an ear to the chatter of the owner of the house - Wallace - and he went upstairs, noting the dog who was sitting on a sofa knitting before he went upstairs, deciding to put the dog out of his mind while he listened to Wallace ramble on. The dog wasn't an immediate threat and if he was then he would have to find a way of handling him later, but for now, he had bigger fish to fry.
To say he was unimpressed with the room being let out was an understatement. These jokers didn't have a clue, not a single clue; they had not decorated the place, sorted out the bed, or at least made the room comfortable enough or suitable enough for him to use as a base of operations, although they wouldn't have realised what he was doing even if they joined the dots and linked him to those stupid chicken wanted posters pasted around town depicting a black chicken with a red crest.
But the chances of that happening were remote; besides a few CCTV pictures which were poor quality, the police had no idea the chicken was really him, a penguin.
Ignoring Wallace's chatter, the penguin had immediately rushed to the dog's bedroom and made himself at home - the blue wallpaper blasted with white bones was a bit too much, but that could be changed soon enough, especially if he worked quickly although it was only a small thought in the back of his head - already taking note of the books on engineering, electronics, and the small box of tools neatly stashed on the desk, complete with long white scrolls of technical paper and pencils. Yep, this room was damn perfect and far better than anything he could have expected. He hadn't realised the dog was a technical geek.
Getting rid of Wallace and getting comfortable was just as easy - the penguin merely turned on the volume and changed the radio station to something different than the boring track playing out on the radio before sitting back and resting his head on his wings, the penguin made sure to look like a houseguest who was both comfortable and right at home. Wallace went away, muttering something under his breath, and closing the door - precisely how the penguin wanted it so he could go over his whole plan.
The penguin had found a number of shortcuts from here to the museum, but he would need to finalise his plans and get ready for the burglary. The diamond already had a buyer waiting, and he was looking forward to going underground for a spell. This was going to be his profit of the year, and he wanted it so much. After Wallace had left him, the penguin silently got up from the bed and padded over to the books curiously. He wasn't bad at simple electronics, that went with the territory of a burglar but he didn't understand the rest of the science but he knew better than to dismiss it out of sheer ignorance.
From where he was standing, the penguin could overhear some of the muffled talk from downstairs; Wallace was telling the dog - Gromit - about how he had to move into the spare bedroom, but he wasn't bothered by that; in a short time, the bedroom would be returned to him, no problem. But, later on… the penguin found something interesting, a pair of mechanical trousers which allowed someone to walk upside down from the ceiling, like Spider-Man thanks to the special vacuum boots on the soles. The penguin ignored the look of anger in Gromit's eyes as he slowly, resentfully, painted the ceiling white. Truthfully he didn't understand why they were going to this much trouble to decorate a bedroom, since they didn't know just how long he was going to be here.
Later that night while he went for a walk around the block to find the best way of getting to the museum in the shortest amount of time without being seen, the penguin could not get those incredible trousers out of his mind. For a while, the penguin had been wondering how he was going to get inside the museum. He knew the best way to get inside was to go through the buildings construction plans and find a way in, showing a flaw in the museum's security scheme nobody could have foreseen until after the burglary.
He had the plans, sure, and he'd found a way inside. And all he'd needed to do was simply get ready, but now he'd found a new way of getting inside the museum and getting to the diamond, but he wasn't sure at the moment was how he was going to get his hands on the trousers and make use of them. To do that he needed to understand how the trousers worked and what they could do for him. He already had a clue, though; Gromit had given it to him without realising what he had done.
Somebody could hang upside down from the trousers, and they could reach the diamond; the Penguin himself could do it - he had seen Gromit sit comfortably within the cavity of the trousers, it couldn't be that too tight a fit. True, it wasn't really his way - he preferred being in the background, relying on others to do the dirty work if he could find them, although he was equally comfortable getting his wings and flippers dirty if the situation demanded it, but the penguin was adaptable.
When the penguin arrived at the museum, he gazed up at the sheer wall. He already had a way of getting to the diamond, bypassing security as he did - he had that all worked out, but now it looked like he was going to push that plan away, making it a contingency plan in case something went wrong. It was early days, but as he walked back to West Wallaby Street, his ears picking up the sound of the music booming from the radio, the penguin thought through his plans…
As he walked through the back gate, knocking it back so fast it banged off of the wall, barely noticing Gromit trying to sleep in his kennel - clearly he had got out just to get some sleep because of the music blaring - the penguin went back inside the house and went upstairs, turned off the radio and the light, and got ready for bed, his mind churning with ideas before he hit on a plan he knew would work in his favour.
Wallace had pretty much accepted him; it was obvious now he looked at the matter in hindsight that while Wallace was a kind and clever man, he was oblivious and naive. The only problem he had was he didn't know just how naive Wallace was, since the initial assumption was too early and he didn't know Wallace and Gromit well enough yet to see how far he could go, but the idea was he could push Gromit away from Wallace and if he could somehow find a way of getting the oblivious human into the trousers…
Yes!
Tomorrow, he would work on driving a wedge between Wallace and Gromit, and he would find a way of getting Wallace into the museum and if necessary take the fall for the heist.
Feathers McGraw would win!