Sorry, had to fix it up. Made a few mood mistakes in the last part.

acosta pérez josé ramiro: That's a good way of getting rid of someone's phobia. Too bad Darkwing didn't think of that years ago. Then again, there wouldn't be much of a story.

ReaderPal: Thanks for the compliment. I never saw the Darkwing duck disney adventues so I don't know who Fluffy is. (Hee, hee! Fluffy. Nice name for an evil genius cat) You will find out all there is to know in this chapter. But I'm sorry to say, although Tanaka will be mentioned several times in this fanfic, he will not be in it. Unless of course, I decide to make a sequel. Which I might. ;)

BrideofBasil: Trust me, when you're through with this chapter, you will hate Tanaka as much as everyone else here.

Disclaimer: I don't own Darkwing Duck, any characters from Duck tales or any idea from Ranma 1/2.

Ailurophobia

Chapter four: The Neko-ken

Gizmoduck slowly snapped out of his trance at seeing Darkwing sobbing on his hands, then overwhelming compassion swept his body as he moved towards his friend.

"Darkwing?" Gizmoduck whispered cautiously as he approached him. This was definently not good. What was going on here?

"My fault!" Darkwing whimpered.

"What?"

"All my fault... Was all my fault... But... But... But the c--c-c-c-c-cats... Those c-c-c-c-c-cats... Not the pit... Not the pit... Please don't hurt me... No more... no more... NO MORE!" He wailed.

Gizmoduck reversed away from Darkwing. He turned and looked at Huey, Dewey, Louie and Webby. They looked horrified and helpless at what to do.

"Kids, take Darkwing to the taxi! I have to make a phone call myself." He turned and gently picked Darkwing up. "Darkwing, the taxi will take you back to St.Canard. And first thing tomarrow morning, I will be coming to your hideout early so we could talk." The kids escorted Darkwing out of Fenton's office while Gizmoduck reached for his phone and dialed Launchpad's number.

"Hello?"

"L.P., This is Gizmoduck."

He heard a sigh on the phone. "Is this about Darkwing?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"What happened now?"

Gizmoduck explained what happened, not leaving a single detail out. "After I pulled Darkwing off the Money Bin, I brought him in to talk to him about his fear. He didn't even react to my teasing. He just wanted to use the phone in Fenton's office. I didn't like that bleak look in his eyes and I was going to apologize to him about the teasing. When I came back, he was sobbing on his knees. I didn't understand much that he was saying, but something about a 'pit', 'Cats' and 'how it was his fault'. I don't know what's going on or why Darkwing is afraid of cats, but it must have been something terrible. I may not like Darkwing as much as you want me to, but I always considered him a friend to me. What's wrong with him? Tell me so I could help."

Launchpad had been quiet on the other end, then he found his voice. "I don't know what's wrong with him. But tonight, I intend to find out."

"Alright! Be sure to tell me tomarrow." He sighed as he hanged up. Gizmoduck then removed his helmet and looked out his window, where he saw the taxi cab leave for St.Canard. 'I hope he'll be okay.'

OoooOoooOoooOoooO

F.O.W.L. Headquaters

"What are we doing here?" Tuskernini demanded. "I had an important play ready for tonight in the eve of St.Canard's birthday. I intend to watch it, not sit next to a bunch of tacky low-life villians."

"Yeah, and I'm a missing Gramma's cajun crocodile soup." Jumbilahya Jake muttered

Gumbo gulped.

"I s'a said Cro-co-dile, not gator. Hold them horses...WAIT A COTTON-DARN MINUTE! I reck'on fatso here insulted us."

"FATSO!" Tuskernini bellowed as he waved his cane, threateningly.

"Oh, fatty wants to fight! Well come on then, we'll rassle!" Jumbilahya grinned before getting attacked by a mop.

"No fighting! I just cleaned this place up!" Ammonia Pine growled.

Moliarty looked around, disdainfully. "I still don't know what I'm doing here? I have more important things to do then work with F.O.W.L."

"Ya mean other den simper'in in dat 'ole youse crawled out of?" A heavy Italian accent piped in.The four criminals turned to see Steelbeak strutting in the area.

Ammonia immediately latched on to him. "Steelie! I brought them just like you said! These are the only ones who could come."

"Yeah, dat's great." He said as he tried to get out of her grasp.

"Well, old chum. As happy as I am to see you, may I ask why we are here?" Tuskernini asked as he moved away from Jake.

Steelbeak finally pried himself off the Obsessive-Compulsive cleaner. "Well, it's like dis. F.O.W.L. and I got this mission to pull at St. Canard and I kinda need youse to do a little distraction on the Justice ducks."

"Oh, and what kind of distraction do you mean? A song and dance number, perhaps." Tuskernini asked, sarcastically.

"Foist of all, bite me! Secondly, I want de kind of distraction dat involve the Justice dorks outta of town. My boys will 'andle de losers in grey." He chuckled, darkly. "And I will poisonally 'andle Deadwing dork."

Moliarty raised an eyebrow. "You mean like the last three hundred times you've handled him personally? Hee, hee, I'll bet! Tell me, what will be different this time?"

Steelbeak and Ammonia Pine glanced at each other as they gave an evil smirk, like they were sharing a big secret. Apparently, news doesn't travel underground.

"You'll see." They both said.

OoooOoooOoooOoooO

After the taxi dropped him off at the entrance of the city of St. Canard, Darkwing climbed towards his hideout in Auburn Bay Bridge in low spirits. Having his "kryptonite" known to the criminal world as well as being reduced to back-up for S.H.U.S.H. and Gizmoduck can do that to a crimefighter. Self-loathing took over his body, eating away his ego. Self-pity even joined in the all-you-can-eat buffet. He walked to the center of his lair and sighed:

"I am not the terror that flaps in the night. I am the worthless hero-wannabe that's scared of kittens... I am a coward."

"No, you're not." A deep yet friendly voice contradicted.

"Hello Launchpad." He sighed with his eyes closed as the tall avian pilot appeared in front of him.

"You had me and Gos worried when you didn't come back or call. Mr. McDuck called us the first time to tell us where you were and Gizmoduck called us the second time." Launchpad let a small frown appear on his normally easygoing expression. "He suggested that I talk to you about your fear because he said you were crying in Fenton's office and were mumbling about 'Cats', 'a pit' and 'How it was your fault'. I totally agree with him and I wanted to talk to you about it, anyway. So start talking." Launchpad finished.

"We don't have time for that! We have to cancel my mission from S.H.U.S.H. and explain to them I'm not going because of my weakness. AND FOR THE LAST TIME, I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT!" Darkwing roared, furious that Launchpad would pry into his life like that.

Launchpad gritted his teeth and matched Darkwing's furious expression with his own. No, Not this time! He had normally backed down when Darkwing showed his temper, but this was too serious to put off. He was going to find out what made him scared of cats, even if he had to (shudder, shudder) get Morgana in here to zap the answer out of him.

"Au contraire, mi amigo; We have plenty of time. And we will talk about this because you made me and Gosalyn put those little furballs all over the house and scare the living daylights out of you and we don't even know why you're so scared of them. I wanna know what's going on? As your best friend and sidekick, I have the right to know." He pulled up a chair and sat down, giving him his sternest but not very threatening glare. "This fear of cats goes deeper then your average scared-of-the-dark fear, right?"

"Very observant as usual, Launchpad." Darkwing replied, sarcastically but had wavered in his tone. He was sure this was the first time Launchpad ever spoke to him like this.

"Drake, please." The sternest was gone, and within his serious yet calm voice was a plea to understand.

Darkwing looked away, trying to decide whether to tell him or just tell him off.

'He's right. He does have the right to know. I can't continue to hide it now, especially with the risks involved. I'm...I'm not ready to tell him everything, though. I'm not ready to tell him the effects. Or what happened the last time "it" happened.' His body tore with guilt as he remembered that day.

"All right, you win." and he indeed, sounded defeated once again. Pulling out his black leather chair and sat a few feet away from Launchpad's face.

"Do you remember when I told you I wanted to be a superhero when I was a kid?"

"Well, yeah. I remember how you told me and Gos a hundred times."

"Did you know that we had moved to Japan for a while and I saw a Dojo that would teach me how to defend myself and protect me from harsh conditions and physical attacks?" Darkwing continued.

"And you joined the dojo that was taught by Master Goose Lee, the grandmaster of the art of Quack fu, but what does that have to do with your fears of cats?"

"I'm getting there. I was only eight years old when I was a student for him. He trained me in the basics as well as teach me the several forms and stances. But what you don't know is that I was also taught by one of his former students and one of the four masters in Quack fu." He growled out that information with enough intensity to stop a stampede of elephants dead in their tracks.

"Oh, What was his name?" Launchpad looked terrified. He had lived with Darkwing for almost two years and he never had that look on his face. Not even for Taurus Bulba or Negaduck.

"Tanaka." He growled once again in a tiger-like fashion. "He was unscrupulous, dishonorable and came from one of the oldest and proudest family in Japan. He thought that the art of Quack fu belongs to the people of his birth, not some gaijan hero-wannabe, as he put it."

"I take it he didn't like you much." Launchpad gulped.

"Like me! He hated me! And the feeling was mutual! He didn't want to teach me Quack fu, but Goose Lee gave him an order to do it, and as a master of his art, he had to obey the grandmaster or tarnish his honor. And like I said, he came from a proud family so he didn't disobey him. But that didn't mean he taught me Quack fu. Oh no, he taught everyone else Quack fu. But me! He gave me special training." He shuddered as he thought of some of them.

"What kind of training?" Launchpad asked cautiously, having a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Oh, nothing out of the ordinary," Darkwing replied as a flash of hatred crossed his face. "Except while he strapped the other students with heavy rocks to increase their speed, he strapped me with raw meat."

"Um, why would he do that?"

"To encourage the pack of wolves to chase me."

Launchpad's eyes widened and jaw fell.

"That's not all he did. He taught me how to fall properly by throwing me off the roof of the dojo, he made me swim in shark-infested water while carrying rocks in my pants, he tied me up to the end of the train to, again according to him, increase my speed and he basically expected me to hunt my own food while everyone else ate from their rations as well as mine. Oh and my personal favorite: He and his students toughened my body by throwing boulders at my body while I was tied to a tree." Darkwing felt his temper rise. "He did it to either kill me or to force me to leave. And you know how stubborn I can be."

"Holy Guacamole! That's sick!" Launchpad was disgusted that anyone would do that to an eight-year-old, especially to his friend, Darkwing.

"I have to give him a grudging respect. His attempts to break me only served in making me a better crimefighter. What didn't kill me, made me stronger."

It was true. The tortures had saved him from numerous attacks and near close calls from his enemies, making him as the supervillians described him, as tough to kill as a cockeroach. One of the prime examples was when the Waddlemeyer ramrod blew up, he and Taurus Bulba had taken the full impact of the explosion that would have killed a normal mallard a thousand times over. But instead, it had broken both his legs, fractured his right arm and gave him a mild concussion. Meanwhile; Taurus Bulba, who (by laws of nature) was supposed to have denser bones and thicker hide, had his body destroyed beyond repair.

"For that, I would have respected him as a sensei. But he then did something to me that was unforgivable." His eyes held a burning fire in them.

Launchpad leaned forward to hear the next part, knowing this was where it will get interesting. He heard someone inhale sharply in anticipation. He glanced to see a red pigtail sticking out from behind a couch.

"He had gone through Master Goose Lee's scrolls to make his students more powerful and had stumbled on a technique called the Neko-ken. Now, aside from the fact that no one, not even the masters, are allowed to rummage through the grandmaster's possession; it was a forbidden technique. Meaning not only would it kill your opponent, but it was a likelyhood that it would kill the user of the technique."

"Neko-ken? Wait a sec, I think there's a word for it in English. I understand a little bit of Japanese, with me travelling and all."

"C-c-c-cat-fist. The Engish word for it is C-c-c-at-fist." Darkwing said, flatly. This was hard enough as it was and he did not want any interuptions.

Launchpad immediately took the hint. "Oh, I guess this is the part where your fear of cats come in."

Darkwing sighed and nodded his head. Then, he bluntly blurted it out:

"The technique is simple. Make a twelve foot pit, fill it with starving c-c-c-c-cats (hundreds if necessary), then wrap a child, between the ages of four to ten, head-to-toe with fish sausages and toss him in it."

Launchpad gasped and his hands went to his mouth. He barely heard the gasp behind the couch.

"It had been done to me everyday from dawn 'til dusk for nearly a month. At first, I was stubborn and refused to be brought down. But over the following days, I started to get more and more terrified of them. To the point where I went on my knees and begged him to stop. But I guess he had lost all patience with me. Maybe I had been too spirited, maybe he really got a kick in torturing me. Whatever the reason, he continued tossing me in it." He looked at Launchpad directly in the face, he was trying to stop himself from breaking down again. " I tried to fight the fear, L.P. I really did! But it's impossible! The cuddlliest kitten could destroy my mind with fear. I'm not scared of those felines. I'm terrified of them! Their sharp, jagged teeth! Their long steel claws! Those eyes..." He fell off his chair and sank to his knees, a broken look in his eyes. "Those eyes...God, I'm more scared of those more then anything about them. Cold, feral, slitted eyes that held hunger for my blood and flesh." Darkwing, for the second time today, broke down in tears. "I had never been so scared in my life! I thought I was going to die!"

Launchpad, who was in danger of crying himself, reached out and grabbed Darkwing in a bear hug. How could anyone be so monsterous? 'And to think, all this time I thought Negaduck was a monster. This Tanaka takes the cake.' For the first time since he came to St. Canard, Launchpad felt a deep hatred burn in his heart. If he ever bumped into Tanaka...

Darkwing, while tightly hugging back Launchpad; started laughing while crying. " You wanna know the funny thing. Well, Do you, L.P.! When my parents and master Goose Lee, rescued me, I found out later that the Neko-ken was not the ultimate martial arts move, but a failed one. Turns out that no one uses it except to punish psychos and demons. It was impossible to learn because you either die slowly and effectivelly or have an insane fear of cats, forever. I got the latter of it! Lucky me, huh! Neko-ken, the ultimate move! Ha!" He started sobbing louder.

But not so loud that he didn't hear a whimper from behind a couch.

Darkwing jumped and looked towards the direction of the sound.

Gosalyn, in her nightie, came out. Her face was covered in tears and her eyes looked horrified. She had heard everything.

"Gosalyn, honey? Have you been here long?" Darkwing asked as he scanned her face.

It was quickly answered by a blur, followed by a fierce tackle. She started choking on her sobs as she hugged him tightly. How could anyone do that to Darkwing? And he had been only eight at the time, almost her age. It was unthinkable!

"Is that what your nightmares were about? Is this why you freak out everytime you see a cat? Oh daddy, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry this happened to you!"

"Gosalyn, you have nothing to feel sorry about. It wasn't your fault. Besides, at least I'm alive, that's always a good thing. Also, every hero needs a weakness. That's what makes crimefighting exciting." He said.

Gosalyn sniffled but nodded.

"Can I stay with you tomarrow? I don't have school tomarrow because it's St.Canard's birthday." She asked, timidily.

"Sure, but I have to cancel my mission from S.H.U.S.H., first."

Launchpad spoke up. "I don't think you can sit this one out, D.W. After all, this is kind of last minute. Besides, you said so yourself, every hero has to have a weakness in order to make crimefighting more challenging."

"Yeah," Gosalyn perked up in an attempt to restore her father's confidnce. "And L.P.and I will be there! We'll chase those cats away for you. And the Justice ducks will keep them away, too."

"And you've been doing well fighting your fear." Launchpad added, being once again the incarnation of eternal optimism.

"Really? You really think so?" Darkwing asked, eyes shining with hope.

"Sure! Normally, you panic instantly on the sight of cats."

"But now?" Darkwing asked, excitedly.

"It now takes one whole minute for you to react!" Launchpad said, cheerfully.

Darkwing's face was blank for a few seconds. Then a genuine smile appeared on his face as he thought of the possibilities of that statement.

"Yes! I am fighting it! Give it a few more months, and it may take five minutes for me to go nuts! Give it more time and I might stop being afraid all together, forever." Darkwing grinned. "Criminals beware! I am going to beat this fear!" He dramatically pulled his cape around himself.

Launchpad and Gosalyn smirked at one another as they noticed a shadow of his confidence showing.

Looks like the old Darkwing was back.

OoooOoooOoooOoooO

Outside of F.O.W.L. Headquaters

Steelbeak whistled and filed his nails as he watched the eggmen prepare for tomarrow. The four criminals all went home to prepare for their attacks. Before they left, Steelbeak gave Moliarty an electromagnetic pulse to use against Gizmoduck. He was preparing to launch four dozen eggman to get through the S.H.U.S.H. agents as well as find a pendant to cancel out Morgana's spells. With all the influential bigwigs and rich ducks running around the place, this was going to be the biggest heist he ever pulled.

And this time, not even Darkwing will get in his way.

An eggman appeared. "Uhhh, Boss? The shipment arrived."

"Great! I've been wonderin' how long it would take?"

"But what do we need...those animals for? Especially the..."

" 'Ey! Am I paying youse to think? Of coise not! So beat it!" With that, Steelbeak smashed his fist on the poor eggman, sending him flying out the area. He then walked to the large box that was labelled the words 'Danger'. The box was shaking violently and one could here roaring coming from the box.

Steelbeak cooed at the box. "Shhhhhhh, 'ey, chill kitty. Youse'll get your meal soon enough. Tomarrow, we'll 'ave a nice duck to start as an appetizer. Eheheheheh!"

End of chapter four

Oh my! Poor Darkwing, what kind of animal would do that to a sweet duck like him. But what is he not telling them? Is there more to Darkwing's story then just his fear, Will he ever have the courage to tell them? And what was his fault? And will Jumbilahya Jake ever catch a clue? (In my humble opnion, I don't think so.) Find out on the next exciting chapter of 'Ailurophobia'.

Well, this is getting good! But it still makes you wonder what Darkwing did to claim, 'It's all his fault'. Anyway, on the next chapter, it's St.Canard's birthday and F.O.W.L. has dropped in, uninvited. The Justice ducks unknowingly seperate from each other and Steelbeak initiates his plan. Darkwing is in big trouble! Wait! Where is he? What happened to Gosalyn? And what is Goose Lee doing in a Hawaiian shirt?