Feathers and Eggs

Chapter Eleven

Grian continued glaring at Iskall, who was still crying tears of laughter at the fact that Grian's hide out was actually built like a giant egg in the middle of a cave. "This is genius, Grian! Haha! Oh wow this looks amazing but I can't believe how far you took this whole thing!" His laughter eventually subsided. "I still can't believe this, dude! I don't know what to say! I know that you are a troublemaker, but this is... this is crazy!"

Grian ignored his friend, slowly walking toward his monitors. He put his mask down on a desk and checked through them all. Iskall watched curiously, silent. Grian then made his way over to a work bench, where he took off his wings and began working on fixing one. Iskall walked over. "What happened to it?" Grian sighed and finally spoke, but did not look away from his work. "I think I hit it on the side of a building. A few repairs should have it working in no time." Iskall watched in awe. "So you took some journalism classes in college, started working in architecture, and now you are like a mechanic? What's next? Can you sing too?"

Grian rolled his eyes, smiling slightly. He put down his tools and faced Iskall. "I really cannot believe this place. First Mumbo tracks me down, then you started making fun of me to my face. And neither of you even knew if I was really dangerous or not!" Iskall shrugged his shoulders. "What can I say? You don't give off a very intimidating vibe. You can be scary sometimes, yes! But you are pretty laid back as Grian and Poultry Man."

"But... the deep voice must've been sort of scary right?"

"Meh..."

"How come everyone was so scared of me, then?"

"I think they were more scared of getting messy from eggs and the fact that you did cause some people to sort of hurt themselves running away. Nothing serious obviously but it's still bad publicity." Grian grumbled to himself and went back to work on repairing his wings. Iskall continued looking around, commenting aloud as he did so. "Wow you have a lot of eggs, Grian! Like, a lot!" "Why is there a brown coat and hat down here?" "Can I try on the mask?"

Grian continued working, ignoring the comments Iskall was making. However, he turned around suspiciously after a long minute of silence. He noticed that the editor was holding up an item that was taken out of the display case. Grian quickly went over and snatched the headphones out of Iskall's hands. "Don't touch these. Ever," Grian growled in a lower tone. Iskall furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "Why do you have those? Do you like listening to music that much?" he tried to joke. Grian continued glaring, holding the headphones tightly in his hand. Iskall gave a look of concern. "I'm joking, dude. I'm sorry I touched those."

Grian became less tense as he carefully placed the headphones back in the display case. He closed it gently, then walked back to where he was working on his wings. "You didn't know. They were a friend's is all. Please don't touch anything else, Iskall," Grian said quietly. Iskall nodded his head. "Of course. No more touching." The room felt stiff from the quiet between the two.

Grian continued fixing his wings, finishing just when Iskall spoke up from where the monitors were. "Uhh, Grian? Do you prank your own cameras?" The shorter man's face twisted in complete confusion at the statement. "Prank my own-? Why would I prank my own monitors?" 

He turned his head toward Iskall. Iskall had his hands innocently behind his back, being careful not to touch anything, but tilted his head at the image on one monitor in particular. Grian approached slowly, squinting to figure out what the picture on the screen was. "Is that a... giant cookie? In the middle of the street? What on earth-?"

The two watched the seemingly giant chocolate chip cookie lying flat on the road. A figure in a jester hat appeared on screen and stepped onto the disk. They raised a cane and stomped it twice onto the disk. Suddenly, the cookie began to spin and rise into the air with the figure standing on top of it. "What is happening?!" Iskall yelled. Grian grabbed his Poultry Man mask and quickly put his wings on. "Stay here, Iskall. I think I'm going to pay our cookie lover a little 'visit'," he smirked. Iskall seemed to be about to protest, but Poultry Man was already off.

As he flew through the sewer tunnel, Poultry Man's mind raced. Was that Npc Grian? That must have been him! But... there was nothing rustic about the design of that cookie. Who is that then? He zoomed out of the tunnel and into the sky, where he dove down into a glide that landed him perfectly and silently on top of a business building that sold watches. Come to think of it, I'm not too far away from where I escaped Detective Doc, he remembered. He crouched down, surveying his surroundings to look for the odd flying craft and its passenger.

In an instant, he heard the sound of a slight jingle of bells from behind him and leapt out of the way as something exploded on the place where he had been standing. Poultry Man looked up to see a brown haired man with a outfit and jester hat laughing insanely. "Hahahahahaha! Almost got you. But I suppose I should have egg-spected that you would jump out of the way." The man paused, seemingly listening to something that Grian could not hear. "Let's take this somewhere else? I don't want to accidentally blow up expensive watches for no reason. If you want to meet Npc Grian, follow me." The cookie flew farther away, with the man laughing atop of it.

Poultry Man immediately pursued. "Sure. Anything to make sure I'm the only one telling egg jokes, clown!" he called, feigning confidence and amusement.

This caused the man to laugh harder, his jester hat threatening to fall off. "I prefer Jangler, Poultry Man!" After the disk stopped flying, Poultry Man landed on an old billboard. "I just want to speak with Npc Grian, 'Jangler'. Where is he?"

"Hmmm, Npc Grian you say? If you can defeat me, maybe the name will ring a bell."