Chapter Text
"Wh-ere's my laptop?" Grace muttered, voice harmonizing. "I just h-had it. It was right th-ere."
He was tearing through his lab, wings flaring slightly with every frantic step. He had checked under all the tables, behind the cabinets, and beneath three empty pouches of macadamia nuts. Nothing.
His eyes, wide and hyper-focused, darted across the cluttered floor. The sheer mess of the room—models, stray clothing, beakers, small whiteboards—made it impossible to find the laptop. It was blending in.
The mess awoke a distinctly bird-shaped urge, starting as a tiny itch in his legs. He tried to ignore it, but the longer the search went on, the more frustrated he got, and the more frustrated he got, the louder the instinct screamed.
Messy, messy. Can't find food. Have to clear.
Before Grace even realized, his body had moved. He hopped forward in place, his claws digging into the junk on the floor, and then he violently kicked backwards.
SHREEEK-THUD!
His sharp talons scraped across the decking with a deafening, metallic screech. Everything on the floor was launched into the air—clothing flew like confetti, beakers miraculously didn't shatter, and a stray roll of duct tape was kicked so hard that it slammed into the wall with the force of a cannonball.
Unfortunately for Grace, Newton's third law of motion remained undefeated—for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction—and launching an entire workspace backwards meant that his center of gravity went violently forward.
"Wha-ah!" Grace squawked, a panicked trill leaving him as his massive wings instinctively flared out. He flailed and fell in a chaotic tangle of limbs and feathers.
He landed flat on his chest with a breathless, pathetic oof, an embarrassed chirp leaving him.
Silence fell over the lab, save for the sounds of Rocky's thumping steps echoing from the Eridian's tunnel, growing louder by the second.
"Grace?" Rocky chirped, tapping their leg twice. "Rocky hear big sound. Grace now on floor. Did Grace break floor and fall?"
Grace lay perfectly still for one long moment, his face planted on the floor in defeat. Slowly, he lifted one clawed hand from beneath himself and pointed weakly to the underside of his stool.
"I fo-und the laptop," Grace wheezed in two miserable pitches. "It w-as under my ch-air the whole t-time."
Rocky's carapace vibrated in a heavy, mocking rumble. "Amaze! Found portable human thinking-machine and destroy room! Stupid Grace. Use photon-organs next time, not leg."
"Shut up, Rock," Grace grumbled, clicking his tongue in a sharp smack as he began the undignified process of untangling his wings from his legs.