The Last Ducaine
By: americananime
A/N: ALL BOW TO OTTERCUB-SEMPASI! She has taught me the correct spelling of Bubeleh, and in private, without making me look like an arrogant airhead! Thank you so much! It means a lot to me, and its Yiddish definition brings new meaning to Phil's vocabulary! Thank you and I apologize three million times to Ottercub! ^.^6 *blush* Banah just seems to make herself look like an idiot more and more often these days …
* * *
"Nosedive, are you awake?" Wraith's voice called Nosedive out of the misty darkness, and he sat up.
"You passed out some hours ago, my friend. Is there anything I can do for you?" Nosedive felt around his neck, gasping. Something was gone … it couldn't be gone …
"Where's my amulet?" He ask, his words running together. Fear engrossed him, knowing that he might have lost something that had held his affection for a very, very long time.
"Amulet? Oh, yes. We took it off of you, assuming that it wouldn't be safe to sleep in a necklace which might choke you."
"May I have it back now?" Nosedive's head began to perspire.
"Yes, yes, of course. You wouldn't think we would steal it, would you? Oh, yes, but I suppose in your universe we would. I'm terribly sorry," Wraith seemed to be searching for words as he handed over a small medallion on a silver chain.
"Thank you." Nosedive said, slipping it back on his neck and feeling calmer.
"I trust this has a special meaning?" The Saurian said, off-handedly, as he checked Nosedive's medical stats.
"My grandpa gave it to me whenever I was really, really little. See, it's got a picture of him and me in it," Nosedive opened the locket, glad to hear the faint melody that it played, and showed a photograph of a two year old duck and an aged drake.
"I'm sure you have many happy memories of your Grandfather."
"Dreams, actually." Nosedive wasn't sure how that popped out, but it had. He'd been having the strangest dreams, about himself, his grandfather, and someone else …
"Dreams often really forgotten memories," Wraith suggested, apparently satisfied that Nosedive was in perfect health.
Nosedive blinked, wondering what that could mean, but he shrugged it off.
"So … I'm supposed to meet Draggie – I mean, Dragonous, today, aren't I?" Nosedive asked, rubbing his hand through his hair as he slid gently out of the bed, realizing that he was in a new set of cloths.
"Yes. Lord Dragonous requests that you meet with him to discuss your apparent inner- dimensional travels. The cloths you were wearing were spoiled, so we replaced them with Saurian clothing. It was quite fashionable at the time it was purchased." Nosedive laughed; it seemed strange to him that Wraith would ever wonder if his cloths were in fashion or not.
"Thank you," He said through giggles.
"My, aren't we pleasant this morning?" Chameleon seemed to pop out of the wall suddenly, beside Nosedive. The duck jumped out of his skin.
"OK, man; that did serious heart damage…" Nosedive said, rubbing the back of his neck at the sudden fright of seeing him.
"I'm practicing Mortal Combat techniques," Chameleon explained with a grin. Nosedive laughed; Mortal Combat – That had to be something good in this world. A sudden curiosity struck him.
"Who are the villains in Mortal Combat?" He asked, wondering what the answer would be.
"Liu Cain, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage."
"I thought so." Nosedive laughed slightly. Chameleon looked at him strangely. He shook his head with a grin, and hopped off the table.
"So… um … where is Dragonous, exactly?" Wraith led Nosedive to a small room that held a very large computer that resembled Drake1.
"Dragonous?" Nosedive asked, cautiously. Dragonous looked up from his work momentarily, and motioned for Nosedive to come into the room. Wraith shut the door as he left the two to their talk.
"I wanted to talk to you … you've said that I've done horrible things where you come from … I'd like to talk much, much more about that." Nosedive stared Dragonous in the face, a bit of fear in his eyes.
"Well … For starters, your ancestors took over my planet. And then, when this dude named Drake Ducaine kicked yours off the planet, we're all like, ok. But then, a million years later, dude, bam! You guys attack us again. Only, this time, you're leadin' the movement." Nosedive looked serious.
Dragonous stared at him, a little anxiously, wondering why the young drake was babbling so. He seemed to have the story backwards.
"Drake Ducaine? The dictator? He was nothing but a tyrant on Saurina, until he turned the beautiful planet into a husk. This was all, of course, before I was born. He was driven off the planet, eventually. Then, a few hundred years later, his group attacked a second time; lead by you. You called yourself the Last Ducaine, the conqueror of all, once and for all."
Nosedive looked startled. He had been waiting for a similar story, but he leading the conquest? That simply wasn't possible. Canard, or maybe Wildwing, would have lead, not he. Then again, for all he knew, he might have been older. No, that couldn't be right. Everyone called him 'the kid' and bossed him around.
"So … how did we end up here? I mean, if we conquered your planet, then we should be living the good life back on Saurina, shouldn't we?"
"Wraith, Siege, Chameleon and I were the strike team; we drove you out of your ship and into this dimension. Everyone on your royal advisory board – your team – decided that it was entirely your fault and appointed your brother's assistant leader. Canard has proven a leader for a team such as yours, being as he's a natural in leading tactics. Your alterative self, the Last Ducaine of literal, has fallen into a place of no respect, somewhere between an unwelcome team member and a slave."
Nosedive sighed, shaking his head slowly.
"All of this is so confusing … I don't know what to believe… You see … in our world, Canard sacrificed himself so that we wouldn't be eaten by one of your creations. Then my brother, Wildwing, was handed leadership. And it's been that way ever since. I'm no important guy, never was. I'm just another member of the team."
"Well, it seems that we're quite alternate in our stories … my, my. I believe that the dimensional change you've made is quite remarkable. And I think that careful study will prove that both of our universes might stem from the same universe, split at a time by an unnatural shift in dimensions."
"I'm familiar with the theory of branching universes. In fact, we may be creating one now, which could be a very bad thing …"
". . . Since it might create another one, eventually sending us into a system of chaotic dimensions leading from the same stem. You're familiar with it, you are? How?" Nosedive blushed faintly.
"Well, see, I'm kind of a big sci-fi fan, and really if you absorb enough of it, you start to learn theories of time and space. You know, the Trek stuff."
"It appears that you are very, very different from our Nathaniel "Nosedive" Drake. He is a bit of a brute; not at all familiar with any theory of time and space, much less the highly acclaimed documentaries of Star Trek. Con's records have proven very useful for scientists around the universe to study how such things might be done in our time and place."
"Wait – Star Trek isn't real. And Con isn't the good guy."
"Star Trek is fictional where you come from? That must be horrible indeed. Still, I suppose you're quite a fan?"
"Yes, along with several other things get a little into the idea, like, y'know, all the stuff ran on Sci-Fi channel." Dragonous nodded.
"Now, I want to know exactly what happened when the dimension travel occurred. Did you see anything? Were you dreaming?"
"I crashed really late, and I knew I had school in the morning, so I slept pretty soundly. If I had dreams, I don't really remember them. Anyway, my alarm was set to go off at six, as usual. No body changes my alarm, 'cuz everybody knows that I don't like to wake up early and I'll make their life miserable if they wake me up. Anyway, the alarm goes off at three, and I know something's wrong, so I get up and get my sword …" He suddenly looked around, in alarm at where his sword might have gone.
"It's in the armory. We figured you couldn't exactly sleep with it," Dragonous said, lightly.
Nosedive nodded, and leaned back in his chair.
He didn't relax for long.
A siren wailed, louder than Drake1, in his ears.
"Dragonous, the ducks are attacking," Chameleon screamed over an intercom. Nosedive jumped up, suddenly not knowing what to do.
"You can hide or fight; it's your choice," Dragonous told him, gently. Nosedive, his face twisted in confusion, nodded and shook his head as he tried to figure out if he wanted to hide or help his new-found friends.
"I'll fight," He said, angered at the way he'd been treated. They dashed toward the armory, Nosedive a step behind Dragonous, and grabbed their weapons. Dragonous took a light-saber type device, and Nosedive grabbed his trusty sword and something that looked similar to a puck blaster that had been laying on the table.
"Let's do this," He said to Wraith, who nodded.
Then, they opened the doors.
* * *
A cry of grief hit Nosedive suddenly as he saw the malicious grin on his older brother's face and the real gun in his hand. Whoever this Wildwing was, he aimed to kill.
Nosedive didn't.
None of them locked in steady combat with any certain duck; they stayed in a tight ball to protect themselves and defended against the ducks' strikes.
"I knew that kid was a traitor," Canard shouted. Nosedive winced. Some things never changed.
He drew his sword in fear, ready to fight if the need be.
Wildwing seemed to attack him the most and he knew he'd have to go into steady combat. He made a slash that wasn't meant to hit anything, just give Wildwing a warning.
Wildwing sneered, shooting Nosedive once in the shoulder, sending him falling to the ground in pain.
Nosedive, besides his physical agony, had mental anguish as well. He fell down, and knew he was as good as dead at the other Ducks' hands when suddenly Siege stepped in front of him, Wraith behind him, and Dragonous and Chameleon on either side.
Nosedive passed out, and the next thing he knew, he was once again in the thick of fire.
He held his arm, sitting up and seeing that his companions still stood around him protectively. He decided that it was now or never – it was time for the underdog to take action.
He pulled out his puck launcher-like device, carefully taking aim at the foot of the unsuspecting ducks.
He hit them with a few shots, and they screamed in frustration. Nosedive smirked, glad to get in extra shots on Canard.
He shot, repeatedly, until both ducks and Saurians were tired of play. He sighed with relief, curling into a small ball as the ducks retreated.
Dragonous picked him up, carrying him as both sides returned to their rightful places.
* * *
"Nosedive, are you awake?" A soft voice called.
"I think," He replied, laying back in the bed, moaning slowly.
"You've got to get up. We're dying out here," Nosedive realized the voice's owner was Chameleon. The voice shook slightly as he spoke, and his reptilian fingers trembled as he touched Nosedive, chilling him past the feathers.
"What's going on?" Nosedive sat up, half afraid and half surprised. It only took him a second to remember where he was.
"It's … Dragonous is ill, and the ducks are attacking the ship again," As the lizard spoke, the ship rocked violently. Nosedive jumped up, ignoring the layers of pain in his body, grabbing the sword that lay by his bedside.
"What kind of weapons do they have?" He asked, gripping the sword and looking around for anything else he could use.
"Wildwing and Canard have copters with bombs, and the rest are doing ground attacks," Chameleon replied. Nosedive's eyes widened, running toward the artillery.
"What's the best we've got?"
"We've got a tank," Wraith replied, grabbing Nosedive's arm and taking him out to a hanger. The 'tank' was far superior to anything earth had to offer with the same name; it was an above ground, under ground, under sea, and air born weapon of war, and how a resistance as small as Dragonous's had come across it, Nosedive couldn't guess.
"Phil's on his way to Washington," Siege announced. Nosedive looked up, nodding, and climbed behind the tank's wheel.
"I'll launch attacks on Wildwing and Canard from the air; you take the rest on the ground." The three nodded, taking their own vehicles and arms, heading out to what may have been death.
And Nosedive, the flying ace, sat behind the wheels of a Saurian war tank, staring helplessly at the controls.
* * *
Wildwing stared at the note, over two days later. Where had Nosedive gone, and what had possessed him to leave without a specification of his location?
Suddenly, the door swung open and Nosedive came in. His cloths had paint on them, and his face was smirking at his older brother.
"Nosedive Drake!" Wildwing yelled at the top of his lungs. Nosedive flinched away slightly, and then saw that Wildwing's eyes were filled with concern rather than anger.
"What?" He asked, muttering something about nosey people.
"Nosedive, I was worried about you. Where've you been for two days?" Wildwing ask, angrily.
"I've been at the shop, just like the note said."
"What shop?"
Nosedive backed up from him, his eyes narrowing.
"The body shop. I tuned a few cars, painted a little while. Since when do you care?"
"Since I'm your older brother, that's since when I care."
"Look, Wildwing, you don't care. You just wanna hound me 'cuz I did something you didn't want me to," Nosedive sulked passed his brother, and passed Duke, who was standing in the doorway.
"What's up with him?" Duke ask, entering the room with a bowl of popcorn and munching it slightly.
"Is that kettle corn?" Wildwing ask, sitting down beside Duke, who nodded.
"Nosedive," Wildwing said, taking a bite. "Has apparently lost his mind or his memory." Duke nodded; he'd heard the conversation that had gone on between the two brothers.
"There's something different," Mallory said from the door way. They both looked up at her with a nod.
"He's thinner," Duke noted.
"His eyes; there's nothing behind his eyes," Wildwing said, simply, standing up and leaving the room as the two stared after him.
* * *
Nosedive grabbed a control, hoping that it was the right one, and took out the tank on the run way. He saw Canard's copter right away, all though Wildwing's was hidden from sight.
He pressed a red button and a missile went flying out from under him, leaving the craft it a wake as it headed toward Canard.
Suddenly, from behind him, a huge blast went through the air, knocking Nosedive toward the ground. The darkness, the darkness … It was all darkness.
Then there was a glowing light that dimmed all other lights. The sound of the sea lapped at his ears, gently, until finally he opened his eyes, to see the blinding light.
And then he knew he never, ever wanted to see that light again. He'd seen it once before, and once was enough.
' "Move on, boy," Shouted a voice.'
'That was a long time ago,' Nosedive thought as scenes flashed in his mind.
' " Kill him; he's just a no-'count runt.," Commanded someone else.
' "Yeah, sure, he's on the list with about a million other people,"'.
Nosedive shook himself as he remembered, felt the lash of the whip and the sting of the words. He was on the death list, the death list in this horrible place. Wildwing had been ripped away from him, only a few months before that had happened …
'"These two are brothers?" There had been a Saurian official and a guard, bringing Nosedive and Wildwing into light. Nosedive hadn't meant to trip the guard, and then when Wildwing had defended him, they'd been in trouble.
"Yes, brothers. Trouble making little fools," The guard, the same one that Nosedive had tripped, replied.
"Fine. Separate them, put them as far away from each other as possible. They'll learn that you can't mess with Saurians."
And Nosedive, then barely thirteen shivering and crying helplessly as his brother was taken away, most likely to never have been seen again.
"So this is your world?" Cried a voice. It was filled with anger, and a form came running up to him, shaking him violently. Nosedive saw that it was himself, or what he could only guess to be himself.
By: americananime
A/N: ALL BOW TO OTTERCUB-SEMPASI! She has taught me the correct spelling of Bubeleh, and in private, without making me look like an arrogant airhead! Thank you so much! It means a lot to me, and its Yiddish definition brings new meaning to Phil's vocabulary! Thank you and I apologize three million times to Ottercub! ^.^6 *blush* Banah just seems to make herself look like an idiot more and more often these days …
* * *
"Nosedive, are you awake?" Wraith's voice called Nosedive out of the misty darkness, and he sat up.
"You passed out some hours ago, my friend. Is there anything I can do for you?" Nosedive felt around his neck, gasping. Something was gone … it couldn't be gone …
"Where's my amulet?" He ask, his words running together. Fear engrossed him, knowing that he might have lost something that had held his affection for a very, very long time.
"Amulet? Oh, yes. We took it off of you, assuming that it wouldn't be safe to sleep in a necklace which might choke you."
"May I have it back now?" Nosedive's head began to perspire.
"Yes, yes, of course. You wouldn't think we would steal it, would you? Oh, yes, but I suppose in your universe we would. I'm terribly sorry," Wraith seemed to be searching for words as he handed over a small medallion on a silver chain.
"Thank you." Nosedive said, slipping it back on his neck and feeling calmer.
"I trust this has a special meaning?" The Saurian said, off-handedly, as he checked Nosedive's medical stats.
"My grandpa gave it to me whenever I was really, really little. See, it's got a picture of him and me in it," Nosedive opened the locket, glad to hear the faint melody that it played, and showed a photograph of a two year old duck and an aged drake.
"I'm sure you have many happy memories of your Grandfather."
"Dreams, actually." Nosedive wasn't sure how that popped out, but it had. He'd been having the strangest dreams, about himself, his grandfather, and someone else …
"Dreams often really forgotten memories," Wraith suggested, apparently satisfied that Nosedive was in perfect health.
Nosedive blinked, wondering what that could mean, but he shrugged it off.
"So … I'm supposed to meet Draggie – I mean, Dragonous, today, aren't I?" Nosedive asked, rubbing his hand through his hair as he slid gently out of the bed, realizing that he was in a new set of cloths.
"Yes. Lord Dragonous requests that you meet with him to discuss your apparent inner- dimensional travels. The cloths you were wearing were spoiled, so we replaced them with Saurian clothing. It was quite fashionable at the time it was purchased." Nosedive laughed; it seemed strange to him that Wraith would ever wonder if his cloths were in fashion or not.
"Thank you," He said through giggles.
"My, aren't we pleasant this morning?" Chameleon seemed to pop out of the wall suddenly, beside Nosedive. The duck jumped out of his skin.
"OK, man; that did serious heart damage…" Nosedive said, rubbing the back of his neck at the sudden fright of seeing him.
"I'm practicing Mortal Combat techniques," Chameleon explained with a grin. Nosedive laughed; Mortal Combat – That had to be something good in this world. A sudden curiosity struck him.
"Who are the villains in Mortal Combat?" He asked, wondering what the answer would be.
"Liu Cain, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage."
"I thought so." Nosedive laughed slightly. Chameleon looked at him strangely. He shook his head with a grin, and hopped off the table.
"So… um … where is Dragonous, exactly?" Wraith led Nosedive to a small room that held a very large computer that resembled Drake1.
"Dragonous?" Nosedive asked, cautiously. Dragonous looked up from his work momentarily, and motioned for Nosedive to come into the room. Wraith shut the door as he left the two to their talk.
"I wanted to talk to you … you've said that I've done horrible things where you come from … I'd like to talk much, much more about that." Nosedive stared Dragonous in the face, a bit of fear in his eyes.
"Well … For starters, your ancestors took over my planet. And then, when this dude named Drake Ducaine kicked yours off the planet, we're all like, ok. But then, a million years later, dude, bam! You guys attack us again. Only, this time, you're leadin' the movement." Nosedive looked serious.
Dragonous stared at him, a little anxiously, wondering why the young drake was babbling so. He seemed to have the story backwards.
"Drake Ducaine? The dictator? He was nothing but a tyrant on Saurina, until he turned the beautiful planet into a husk. This was all, of course, before I was born. He was driven off the planet, eventually. Then, a few hundred years later, his group attacked a second time; lead by you. You called yourself the Last Ducaine, the conqueror of all, once and for all."
Nosedive looked startled. He had been waiting for a similar story, but he leading the conquest? That simply wasn't possible. Canard, or maybe Wildwing, would have lead, not he. Then again, for all he knew, he might have been older. No, that couldn't be right. Everyone called him 'the kid' and bossed him around.
"So … how did we end up here? I mean, if we conquered your planet, then we should be living the good life back on Saurina, shouldn't we?"
"Wraith, Siege, Chameleon and I were the strike team; we drove you out of your ship and into this dimension. Everyone on your royal advisory board – your team – decided that it was entirely your fault and appointed your brother's assistant leader. Canard has proven a leader for a team such as yours, being as he's a natural in leading tactics. Your alterative self, the Last Ducaine of literal, has fallen into a place of no respect, somewhere between an unwelcome team member and a slave."
Nosedive sighed, shaking his head slowly.
"All of this is so confusing … I don't know what to believe… You see … in our world, Canard sacrificed himself so that we wouldn't be eaten by one of your creations. Then my brother, Wildwing, was handed leadership. And it's been that way ever since. I'm no important guy, never was. I'm just another member of the team."
"Well, it seems that we're quite alternate in our stories … my, my. I believe that the dimensional change you've made is quite remarkable. And I think that careful study will prove that both of our universes might stem from the same universe, split at a time by an unnatural shift in dimensions."
"I'm familiar with the theory of branching universes. In fact, we may be creating one now, which could be a very bad thing …"
". . . Since it might create another one, eventually sending us into a system of chaotic dimensions leading from the same stem. You're familiar with it, you are? How?" Nosedive blushed faintly.
"Well, see, I'm kind of a big sci-fi fan, and really if you absorb enough of it, you start to learn theories of time and space. You know, the Trek stuff."
"It appears that you are very, very different from our Nathaniel "Nosedive" Drake. He is a bit of a brute; not at all familiar with any theory of time and space, much less the highly acclaimed documentaries of Star Trek. Con's records have proven very useful for scientists around the universe to study how such things might be done in our time and place."
"Wait – Star Trek isn't real. And Con isn't the good guy."
"Star Trek is fictional where you come from? That must be horrible indeed. Still, I suppose you're quite a fan?"
"Yes, along with several other things get a little into the idea, like, y'know, all the stuff ran on Sci-Fi channel." Dragonous nodded.
"Now, I want to know exactly what happened when the dimension travel occurred. Did you see anything? Were you dreaming?"
"I crashed really late, and I knew I had school in the morning, so I slept pretty soundly. If I had dreams, I don't really remember them. Anyway, my alarm was set to go off at six, as usual. No body changes my alarm, 'cuz everybody knows that I don't like to wake up early and I'll make their life miserable if they wake me up. Anyway, the alarm goes off at three, and I know something's wrong, so I get up and get my sword …" He suddenly looked around, in alarm at where his sword might have gone.
"It's in the armory. We figured you couldn't exactly sleep with it," Dragonous said, lightly.
Nosedive nodded, and leaned back in his chair.
He didn't relax for long.
A siren wailed, louder than Drake1, in his ears.
"Dragonous, the ducks are attacking," Chameleon screamed over an intercom. Nosedive jumped up, suddenly not knowing what to do.
"You can hide or fight; it's your choice," Dragonous told him, gently. Nosedive, his face twisted in confusion, nodded and shook his head as he tried to figure out if he wanted to hide or help his new-found friends.
"I'll fight," He said, angered at the way he'd been treated. They dashed toward the armory, Nosedive a step behind Dragonous, and grabbed their weapons. Dragonous took a light-saber type device, and Nosedive grabbed his trusty sword and something that looked similar to a puck blaster that had been laying on the table.
"Let's do this," He said to Wraith, who nodded.
Then, they opened the doors.
* * *
A cry of grief hit Nosedive suddenly as he saw the malicious grin on his older brother's face and the real gun in his hand. Whoever this Wildwing was, he aimed to kill.
Nosedive didn't.
None of them locked in steady combat with any certain duck; they stayed in a tight ball to protect themselves and defended against the ducks' strikes.
"I knew that kid was a traitor," Canard shouted. Nosedive winced. Some things never changed.
He drew his sword in fear, ready to fight if the need be.
Wildwing seemed to attack him the most and he knew he'd have to go into steady combat. He made a slash that wasn't meant to hit anything, just give Wildwing a warning.
Wildwing sneered, shooting Nosedive once in the shoulder, sending him falling to the ground in pain.
Nosedive, besides his physical agony, had mental anguish as well. He fell down, and knew he was as good as dead at the other Ducks' hands when suddenly Siege stepped in front of him, Wraith behind him, and Dragonous and Chameleon on either side.
Nosedive passed out, and the next thing he knew, he was once again in the thick of fire.
He held his arm, sitting up and seeing that his companions still stood around him protectively. He decided that it was now or never – it was time for the underdog to take action.
He pulled out his puck launcher-like device, carefully taking aim at the foot of the unsuspecting ducks.
He hit them with a few shots, and they screamed in frustration. Nosedive smirked, glad to get in extra shots on Canard.
He shot, repeatedly, until both ducks and Saurians were tired of play. He sighed with relief, curling into a small ball as the ducks retreated.
Dragonous picked him up, carrying him as both sides returned to their rightful places.
* * *
"Nosedive, are you awake?" A soft voice called.
"I think," He replied, laying back in the bed, moaning slowly.
"You've got to get up. We're dying out here," Nosedive realized the voice's owner was Chameleon. The voice shook slightly as he spoke, and his reptilian fingers trembled as he touched Nosedive, chilling him past the feathers.
"What's going on?" Nosedive sat up, half afraid and half surprised. It only took him a second to remember where he was.
"It's … Dragonous is ill, and the ducks are attacking the ship again," As the lizard spoke, the ship rocked violently. Nosedive jumped up, ignoring the layers of pain in his body, grabbing the sword that lay by his bedside.
"What kind of weapons do they have?" He asked, gripping the sword and looking around for anything else he could use.
"Wildwing and Canard have copters with bombs, and the rest are doing ground attacks," Chameleon replied. Nosedive's eyes widened, running toward the artillery.
"What's the best we've got?"
"We've got a tank," Wraith replied, grabbing Nosedive's arm and taking him out to a hanger. The 'tank' was far superior to anything earth had to offer with the same name; it was an above ground, under ground, under sea, and air born weapon of war, and how a resistance as small as Dragonous's had come across it, Nosedive couldn't guess.
"Phil's on his way to Washington," Siege announced. Nosedive looked up, nodding, and climbed behind the tank's wheel.
"I'll launch attacks on Wildwing and Canard from the air; you take the rest on the ground." The three nodded, taking their own vehicles and arms, heading out to what may have been death.
And Nosedive, the flying ace, sat behind the wheels of a Saurian war tank, staring helplessly at the controls.
* * *
Wildwing stared at the note, over two days later. Where had Nosedive gone, and what had possessed him to leave without a specification of his location?
Suddenly, the door swung open and Nosedive came in. His cloths had paint on them, and his face was smirking at his older brother.
"Nosedive Drake!" Wildwing yelled at the top of his lungs. Nosedive flinched away slightly, and then saw that Wildwing's eyes were filled with concern rather than anger.
"What?" He asked, muttering something about nosey people.
"Nosedive, I was worried about you. Where've you been for two days?" Wildwing ask, angrily.
"I've been at the shop, just like the note said."
"What shop?"
Nosedive backed up from him, his eyes narrowing.
"The body shop. I tuned a few cars, painted a little while. Since when do you care?"
"Since I'm your older brother, that's since when I care."
"Look, Wildwing, you don't care. You just wanna hound me 'cuz I did something you didn't want me to," Nosedive sulked passed his brother, and passed Duke, who was standing in the doorway.
"What's up with him?" Duke ask, entering the room with a bowl of popcorn and munching it slightly.
"Is that kettle corn?" Wildwing ask, sitting down beside Duke, who nodded.
"Nosedive," Wildwing said, taking a bite. "Has apparently lost his mind or his memory." Duke nodded; he'd heard the conversation that had gone on between the two brothers.
"There's something different," Mallory said from the door way. They both looked up at her with a nod.
"He's thinner," Duke noted.
"His eyes; there's nothing behind his eyes," Wildwing said, simply, standing up and leaving the room as the two stared after him.
* * *
Nosedive grabbed a control, hoping that it was the right one, and took out the tank on the run way. He saw Canard's copter right away, all though Wildwing's was hidden from sight.
He pressed a red button and a missile went flying out from under him, leaving the craft it a wake as it headed toward Canard.
Suddenly, from behind him, a huge blast went through the air, knocking Nosedive toward the ground. The darkness, the darkness … It was all darkness.
Then there was a glowing light that dimmed all other lights. The sound of the sea lapped at his ears, gently, until finally he opened his eyes, to see the blinding light.
And then he knew he never, ever wanted to see that light again. He'd seen it once before, and once was enough.
' "Move on, boy," Shouted a voice.'
'That was a long time ago,' Nosedive thought as scenes flashed in his mind.
' " Kill him; he's just a no-'count runt.," Commanded someone else.
' "Yeah, sure, he's on the list with about a million other people,"'.
Nosedive shook himself as he remembered, felt the lash of the whip and the sting of the words. He was on the death list, the death list in this horrible place. Wildwing had been ripped away from him, only a few months before that had happened …
'"These two are brothers?" There had been a Saurian official and a guard, bringing Nosedive and Wildwing into light. Nosedive hadn't meant to trip the guard, and then when Wildwing had defended him, they'd been in trouble.
"Yes, brothers. Trouble making little fools," The guard, the same one that Nosedive had tripped, replied.
"Fine. Separate them, put them as far away from each other as possible. They'll learn that you can't mess with Saurians."
And Nosedive, then barely thirteen shivering and crying helplessly as his brother was taken away, most likely to never have been seen again.
"So this is your world?" Cried a voice. It was filled with anger, and a form came running up to him, shaking him violently. Nosedive saw that it was himself, or what he could only guess to be himself.