Disclaimer: Darkwing Duck is the property of the Walt Disney Company.
Author's note: I wrote this in 2013 and never published it, for some reason? Anyway, going to throw it out here now.
The Perks of Being a Super-villain
The elevator dinged and Megavolt looked up, startled out of a reverie as the doors opened. The ride up here had felt like it had taken forever. Slow elevators for a building with one hundred floors. Around floor twenty-five, he'd considered that he could probably speed things up with a quick zap up the cables to the motor, but in the end he'd settled in for the trip up to the hundredth floor, letting his mind wander and enjoying the moment that someone else had wanted to get on the elevator, taken one look at him, and let the doors close without entering.
He finally arrived, though, and he stepped out into a colonnaded hallway lit mostly by windows. The elevator whooshed shut behind him and departed, and Megavolt, after a glance over his shoulder at it, unclenched his hand and smoothed the piece of paper out that he'd been clutching there. Level A4—no, wait, that was his parking ticket. What a coup that had been, nabbing a spot up on level A! A small victory, perhaps, but a victory, nonetheless. Considering he was still smarting from his latest defeat by Darkwing Duck, he'd take it.
He stuck the ticket in his pocket for safekeeping and read what was beneath it: an address for the penthouse level of one of St. Canard's tallest buildings, an address that from the looks of things, had been abandoned for some time, and underneath the address, a time. A thick layer of dust coated the floor, and the tall, green doors that he found himself standing in front of had a 'for lease' sign stuck on them, with multiple phone numbers crossed out and new ones written in.
He flipped the paper in his hand over, wondering if it contained some further message that he'd forgotten, but no, it was as blank as he remembered it.
The paper had shown up in his apartment yesterday, stuck to the table with a knife, which had been…creepy. Not his style. But it hadn't screamed police, and more importantly, it hadn't screamed Darkwing Duck. So, his curiosity piqued, he figured he'd check it out. And if it was a trap, well, he was Megavolt, wasn't he? Third most wanted in St. Canard. Mad genius. Liberator of the enslaved. Bringer of justice to the oppressors! Er, in any case, he'd just fry anyone he didn't like the looks of.
Cautiously, he reached out and gave the knob an experimental twist. It turned easily in his hand, belying the run-down state of everything else on the floor, as though it saw regular use. With a shrug, Megavolt pushed the door open, peeking inside.
At first, the room that he peered into looked empty. Large, spacious, surprisingly well-kept considering it was a long-vacant penthouse, but empty. Potted plants were dotted around the room, which was devoid of all furniture, except a table with a model of St. Canard sitting on top of it, which he noted in passing. Must have been an architect's apartment, or something. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined one whole wall of the apartment, and even from the door, it was obvious the view was spectacular. Megavolt was impressed despite himself. It was too flashy for his tastes, but whoever lived up here would feel like he ran the city.
He took a few steps into the empty room. And then the door slammed shut behind him.
Megavolt whirled around, electricity arcing between the prongs of his hat, and found himself staring at three of the stranger individuals he'd ever laid eyes on. Of course, this was St. Canard, and, well, come to think of it, he didn't exactly look like a stock broker himself. They looked about as friendly as he did—which hopefully was not at all, since the last thing he wanted to look was friendly—and he flexed his fingers, voltage crackling in his palms.
"Side effects of zapping the Liquidator may include dizziness, loss of vision, paralysis, and death," one of them, canine-shaped, announced, holding up a dripping hand. In fact, it wasn't just his hand—all of him was dripping.
Megavolt straightened up, allowing the current to ground itself and disappear. "Wait a minute, I know you," he said, not really meaning any one of them specifically, because the truth was that he recognized all of them.
"Well, I should hope so," the duck in the jester costume said. "We are three of the greatest villains St. Canard has ever known, after all."
The third one, a…duck that looked more plant than duck, or maybe a plant that looked more duck than plant, sighed. "I just wanted to be recognized for my research."
The jester bounced over and slung an arm around Megavolt's shoulders. "Long time no see, Megs! Heard you got the chair!"
It took him a few seconds to disentangle himself from the duck's grip, a little low voltage finally doing the trick and causing the duck to yelp and let go. "Yeah," Megavolt said, folding his arms across his chest. "For the second time. Took me three days to remember how to get home."
The watery dog, still standing over by the door, exchanged a look with the plant-duck. "Looks like our party of four was once a party of two."
The jester grinned at Megavolt. "We just shared a jail cell once, right, Sparky?"
Sparks sputtered on his hat. "Ooh, don't call me that!"
Holding up his hands, the duck said, "All right, all right, cool your electrons. You remember me, right? Quackerjack? Famed toymaker and devastatingly efficient villain?"
"Yeah," Megavolt said, "so devastating that you ended up in jail."
"Hey, you were there too!"
Megavolt ignored him, turning his attention to the other two villains in the room. Pointing at them, he said, "You're the Liquidator, and you're Bushroot."
"The one and only, guaranteed to make a splash!" the Liquidator said.
Bushroot just nodded. "And you're Megavolt." Darkly, he added, "A couple of your crime sprees shorted out my equipment during very delicate experiments."
"I prefer to think of them as crusades to free the enslaved luminaries of St. Canard," Megavolt said.
"Blowing all the power company's transformers so you could black out the city and rob the First Bank of St. Canard was a crusade?" Bushroot asked doubtfully.
"Oh." Megavolt shrugged. "No, that was just a crime spree."
With a burbling sound, Liquidator flowed across the floor and reformed into his canine form very suddenly and startlingly at Megavolt's side. "Three out of four super-villains are dying to know: why are we here?"
"What?" Megavolt had taken a few cautionary steps backwards from the other villain. "I don't know! I figured you three wanted to meet me. I mean, you were all already here when I showed up." The strangeness of this had been hovering at the back of his mind for the duration of his time in the penthouse, but now that they'd brought it up, it forced its way to the forefront of his thoughts. For a long time he'd been St. Canard's most powerful, and most mutated, super-villain. But he watched the news, and he knew that these three had arrived on the scene at various points in the past few months. He had to admit, as he'd watched the news broadcast of a plant-duck running amok, killing and kidnapping his former co-workers, and just generally terrorizing people, he'd felt…something.
Well, first he'd felt annoyed, because the special report had pre-empted his favorite show, but then there'd been something else. Something that he thought might have been the diffusion of just a tiny bit of loneliness. Not that he was lonely, he had his lights, after all, not to mention appliances—though after that whole incident where his home furnishings had gained sentience of their own and tried to kill him, he was sort of keeping his distance from those—but still, there was something sort of…well, sort-of-maybe-just-a-little-bit nice about the idea that somewhere out there in St. Canard, there was another super-villain. Not like Megavolt wanted to be friends or anything. He'd never needed friends. But still.
And then the Liquidator had showed up, too. Quackerjack he'd known for some time—the aforementioned shared jail cell had afforded them weeks to get acquainted, back when Quackerjack was little more than a two-bit thug—but the duck's main power seemed to be his unrelenting insanity. And Megavolt did not call other people insane lightly. He may have been crazy himself, but you could be crazy, and then you could be really crazy. Quackerjack definitely qualified for the latter.
Still, he supposed they'd gotten along well enough in prison.
Quackerjack laughed. "That's just because we're more punctual than you." He pulled a wadded up sheet of paper from one of his absurdly puffy sleeves and uncrumpled it, sticking it in Megavolt's face, whose eyes crossed with the proximity of it. "It said I could finally have my revenge of Whiffle Boy if I came here this afternoon," he continued, as though Megavolt couldn't read the scrawl on the paper. Though actually, the fact that Quackerjack had all but plastered it to the outside of Megavolt's goggles had made it more or less impossible to read.
"We all got something like it," Bushroot added, finally moving away from the door and towards the three of them.
Giving him and the Liquidator strange looks, Megavolt asked, "You both hate Whiffle Boy, too?"
"Hardly," Liquidator said. "I was given a money-back guarantee that investing my time today would pay dividends down the road."
"My note said coming here today would be a growth opportunity," Bushroot said.
Megavolt considered this, and also tried not to be offended that whoever had left the piece of paper for him had assumed that natural boredom and curiosity would bring him to the address at the appointed time. "Any of you get knives along with it?"
"Buzz saw blade," Liquidator replied. "Same genre, different deadly weapon."
With a hard look at Megavolt, Bushroot said, "I thought it might be a trick."
"Ooh, there's the old powers of deduction, Dr. Bushroot; no wonder you were a scientist!" Quackerjack said with a giggle.
He hadn't changed much, Megavolt couldn't help thinking. Back in prison, he'd wavered between being driven to his wit's end with annoyance by the crazy clown, and thinking that in different circumstances, namely, if they weren't forced into each other's company in an eight by eight room twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year (though of course, it hadn't been that long; Megavolt had been sent to the electric chair after only a few weeks, and he could only presume that Quackerjack had contrived to escape. It wasn't too hard, really), that they might actually make a good team. Of course, there was the whole weird Whiffle Boy vendetta, but everyone had to have a hobby, he supposed.
"It'd be a pretty stupid trick to get the four most powerful people in St. Canard together in one room," Megavolt pointed out.
"Yeah, and let's be serious," Quackerjack said, an irony that Megavolt raised one eyebrow at, "the police have never really been great at setting traps for any of us, anyway."
Liquidator looked thoughtful. "It's St. Canard's very own caped, crusading idiot that this super-villain was thinking of."
Bushroot's leafy hands tightened into fists. "If that meddling duck even tried to show his face around here, he'd be mulch before he got to the elevators."
"Not if I fried him first," Megavolt said.
"There wouldn't be anything left for you to fry after my toys got done with him," Quackerjack growled.
"And I still haven't thanked him for opening up the lawn statuary market for me," Liquidator said with a nasty smile.
Quackerjack let loose with that loony laugh of his. "Look how much we have in common!" he said, rocking back and forth on his feet with a huge grin on his face.
"Just like peas in a pod," Bushroot agreed, though he was eyeing the jester uneasily.
The observation that the four of them were getting along pretty well killed the conversation. Which may or may not have been what Quackerjack had intended. In Megavolt's experience, it wasn't always easy to follow the jester's motives or reasoning.
Anyway, he had a feeling Bushroot had only agreed with Quackerjack out of apprehension over the latter's possible reaction. Bushroot's personality seemed entirely at odds with what the papers and news reports had made him out to be. Megavolt had been expecting a much madder mad scientist—hadn't he killed two of his co-workers?—but with the obvious exception of the plant-mutation thing, he had a definite, and unexpected, normal quality. Well, there was his obvious loathing of Darkwing Duck, too. But that was just a matter of good taste.
He hadn't made his mind up about Liquidator yet, though the very fact of the other villain's dripping set him on edge. Had things been a little different when the watery villain had first appeared in St. Canard, Megavolt could have had a field day with the city. All the water turned hard? None to short him out? He'd have been unstoppable! No light would have remained in servitude!
…If he'd been able to get up. It had been too hot to think about committing crimes, too hot to sit under his work lamps and tinker. Too hot to move, really. He had vague memories of sprawling on the couch in his underwear, air conditioner cranked to its highest setting and three or four fans churning the air, glancing at where his rubber jumpsuit was hanging and shuddering at the idea of putting it on. Plus, he didn't want to risk blacking out the city—he might lose his own power, and he almost would've rather fought Darkwing Duck than live more than three minutes without a/c.
But Liquidator had meant business, that much had been clear. Of course they were all sizing each other up through every second of this meeting, but Megavolt got the impression that the watery canine might be a little more adept at it than the rest of them. Better than him, at least. Light bulbs, appliances, those he could handle. When it came to reading other people? Not so much.
"So…" Bushroot said, breaking the silence, "if none of you left those notes, who do you think did?"
The other three of them shrugged, and Megavolt said, "If he doesn't show up soon, I'm out of here. I'm in a two-hour limit parking spot." All four of them lapsed into silence again, and Megavolt's eyes roved the room, looking for some hint about who owned the place, or at least who was using it. His eyes fell on the model of St. Canard and he stared at it for a second. "What's that thing doing here, anyway?" Megavolt asked, turning and pointing over his shoulder with a thumb towards the model.
A new voice made all of them jump and turn towards a door on one side of the penthouse that had been, up until that moment, closed, and subsequently ignored by the four of them. "I would have thought all of you would recognize that city you've tried and failed to dominate…that is, until now."
Standing in the doorway was a short duck in a yellow, double-breasted jacket, red fedora, and black mask, glaring at the four of them. "Darkwing Duck!" Bushroot yelped. The Liquidator had grown a menacing several feet into a wave on the verge of breaking, Quackerjack had pulled out a pair of attack teeth, and Megavolt's hands crackled with electricity.
The duck just laughed. "Pah! Darkwing Duck. Defamation of character like that would normally get you a grenade in your petals, Bushroot. But I'm afraid that would be…counterproductive."
Though none of them had stopped brandishing their various powers, Megavolt asked, "Yeah? Well if you're not Dorkwing Dweeb, then who are you?"
Baring his teeth in a grin, the duck said, "I'm glad you asked. The name's Negaduck, boys."
"Never heard of you," Quackerjack sneered.
Negaduck grabbed Quackerjack's bill and yanked him forward. "Gee, could that be because I didn't want anyone to hear of me?" he said sarcastically, while Quackerjack's arms windmilled in an attempt to escape. Abruptly, Negaduck let go of the jester, who went crashing backwards and landed on the floor. "I've been watching this city for awhile," Negaduck said, pacing slowly around the four of them. The fact that three relatively deadly super-powers were all aimed at him didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. "I've been watching the four of you for awhile. You should be able to do anything with those powers of yours!" He stopped, his hands behind his back, and eyed each of them. "But from what I've seen, none of you can manage to accomplish much more than petty larceny."
"Feeling insulted and slandered by a nobody with questionable fashion sense?" Liquidator asked. "The Liquidator can dissolve your detractors!"
"Hold it, you watery washout," Negaduck said, pulling a packet of cement out of his jacket. Liquidator froze, and then he shrank back down to his normal size, his eyes narrowed calculatingly at Negaduck. The duck smirked. "That's better. Are the rest of you ready to listen to what I have to say?"
There was a long moment of silence, and then Megavolt and Bushroot glanced at each other and relaxed a little—just enough so that Bushroot's arms weren't coiling threateningly, and Megavolt wasn't crackling with electricity. "I have a few minutes," Megavolt said, folding his arms across his chest.
Negaduck smiled, though there was nothing nice about it. "Glad to hear it." The four of them watched as the duck walked to the model of St. Canard. He leaned a hand on it and said, "I have a proposal for the four of you. A proposal that's going to make all of us very rich and very powerful—provided, of course, that you accept it." His smile grew marginally wider, and marginally more nasty. "And I think you'll want to accept it."
"I'm listening," Quackerjack said, rubbing at his bill with a grimace.
"Good." Negaduck fixed each of them with a hard stare, then said, "I propose, gentlemen, that the five of us combine our criminal endeavors."
The four of them didn't say anything for a minute or two, and then Quackerjack asked, "You mean like…a gang?"
"If you want to put it that way," Negaduck shrugged.
"A super-villain gang?" Bushroot asked.
"You're super-villains, aren't you?" Negaduck said, traces of a sneer in his voice.
Megavolt narrowed his eyes. "I don't work well with others," he said flatly.
"How self-aware of you, Sparky." Negaduck ignored the way Megavolt's eyes bulged at this slur and put his hands on his hips. "What do you say, boys? Under my leadership, this city won't stand a chance against the five of us."
"Hey!" Quackerjack exclaimed. "Why do you get to be the leader? That's no fair!"
Liquidator nodded. "Never agree to any terms and conditions without reading the fine print."
This seemed to amuse Negaduck. "Oh, there's no fine print. You work for me. We split the loot five ways. I'll even let one of you destroy that dimwit Darkwing Duck. Don't fight over the honor, now."
This was a tempting offer, Megavolt had to admit. Darkwing Dork couldn't go up against all five of them and win. And sure, they'd be splitting the loot—but they could also hit five times the number of banks and stores that he could on his own, which meant five times the loot, and more importantly, five times the number of light bulbs and appliances he could liberate. Er, wait, was his math right, there?
"What happens if one of us says no?" Megavolt asked.
Negaduck studied his fingers, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a machine gun. "I don't think any of you will," he said nonchalantly. Bushroot's gulp was audible, Quackerjack squeaked, Megavolt took a step back, and Liquidator made a low sound. Negaduck shouldered the gun and swaggered past them towards the penthouse's door. "But I'll give you a few days to think about it," he said. "Don't call me—I'll call you."
With that, he opened, and then slammed shut, the door, leaving the four of them in various degrees of stunned silence. Megavolt was torn between relief that he was gone, interest in what the duck had said, irritation that he'd had the nerve to threaten the most powerful super-villain in St. Canard, and a lingering suspicion that somehow, this was some kind of trick. Now that he thought about it, he maybe should have asked where Negaduck had come from…why he looked exactly like Darkwing…
Quackerjack elbowed him suddenly, knocking him forcefully out of his reverie. "Gonna do it, Sparky?" he asked with a wide grin.
Clenching his fists in rage, Megavolt began, "DON'T—"
"Yeah, yeah, don't call you Sparky, I got the picture," Quackerjack said dismissively, waving a hand.
Megavolt cocked his finger and let loose a bolt of electricity at the jester, who yelped in pain and danced away, avoiding the second, third, and fourth bolts but, much to Megavolt's satisfaction, not the fifth.
"Negaduck has a keen sense of marketing to ask us to form a gang with him," Liquidator said musingly, ignoring the kerfuffle going on around him.
"Ask us?" Bushroot said, dodging a stray electrical discharge. "Did you see that gun? That didn't look like asking to me."
Pausing in his quest to zap Quackerjack, Megavolt remarked, "Hey, if you two don't wanna do it, more loot for me."
"This businessman doesn't recall saying anything remotely resembling those terms and conditions," Liquidator said.
Megavolt put his hands on his hips. "Yeah? Well, maybe you should."
"Negaduck asked all of us," Bushroot cut in. "I say we all agree to do it, or else none of us does."
With a shrug, Megavolt said, "Whatever, Bushbrain."
Quackerjack bounced back over at that moment. "I think it would be fun, guys. We could have a snappy name, like…like…" He crossed his eyes in intense concentration, then crowed, "The Fearsome Five! That could be our name!"
"Now you sound like Darkwing Duck," Bushroot said.
"Alliterations are his specialty," Liquidator agreed.
Blowing a raspberry at them, Quackerjack said, "It's good and you both know it." Looking over at Megavolt, whose brow was furrowed in thought, he said, "What do you say, Megs?"
He thought about it for a long moment. What he thought was that he'd been on his own for a long time, and that he liked it that way. What he thought was that it was going to be pretty hard for a villain made entirely of water to work all that closely with someone super-charged with electricity. What he thought was that he was trying to convince himself that this was a bad idea, when he didn't feel that way at all. "We're super-villains," he finally said. "We're not supposed to work together."
"Don't be a sourpuss." When Megavolt rolled his eyes, Quackerjack said, "Liquidator's in, aren't you?"
"It does seem like a practical business decision," Liquidator acceded.
Bushroot looked at the watery canine. "If you think so, then I'm for it."
Quackerjack clapped. "I'm always game for a party. That just leaves you, Megavolt."
Folding his arms over his chest, Megavolt said, "What, are we a democracy now?"
"Sure!" Liquidator said, throwing his arms out. "Vote to join the Fearsome Five today and get rich tomorrow!"
"You know," Megavolt said, "that advertising thing you do is kind of annoying."
"You'll get used to it," Liquidator said, raising an aqueous eyebrow.
Popping up between Megavolt and Bushroot, Quackerjack threw his arms around both of them and managed to pull Liquidator into the group, too. "You guys, this is going to be great! We're going to terrorize this whole city and there are five of us and Darkwing Duck isn't going to be able to do a thing to stop us!" He laughed with such crazed delight that Megavolt found it impossible not to smile.
Chuckles had a point. With five of them, Darkwing Dweeb would be hard pressed to thwart their schemes. Turned out that his parking spot hadn't been the biggest coup of the day, after all. And the name, he had to admit, wasn't bad, assuming Negaduck went for it. Megavolt guessed, as their leader, even though it wasn't official yet, that he got to decide on what they were called. But the Fearsome Five—that was a name to strike terror into the hearts of the plebeian masses.
Yeah, allying himself with a band of super-powered mutants, and of course Quackerjack, who might as well have been mutant, if not super-powered—he could live that.