As imagened, they weren't empty words. The duck continued to kill the city's criminals one by one, and the criminal underground ran amok, sometimes literally. The deep chock from the reveal turned into sheer panic that couldn't be calmed down. Everyone who had taken advantage of the duck's emotional downfall to beat him up feared now for their lives, so much that some of them even commited suicides in beliefs that atleast they wouldn't feel the extreme pain from the duck's lust for revenge. Of course he wasn't afraid, atleast not in the panic way. Sure he was both shocked and anxious after the reveal of his arch-enemy's new-found murderous wackiness but he didn't let that get in the way. The first thing he did after he watched the police massacre was to made plans in case he would fight him once again. So far, he didn't wanted to made the first move; the duck was too dangerous to face both head-on and ninja-style, and the duck still did a good job cleaned the streets from his compititors, saved him much of the hard liftings. Strange that he didn't tried to take him down first since he both was one of the more powerful factions in the city and the one who humiliated him back down at the city hall no less. Maybe he saved him for the last (and he did, as he can now see while he was being hunted). He came up with what he thought some good plans and started to prepare himself with them for the near future, and he had time to prepare since eversince his arch-enemy's rampages became official, his enemies had pulled their forces from the war against him and turned them toward his arch-enemy. While it helped him to buy some more time, it sure didn't helped them in the long run since some days after the police massacre, his arch-enemy wiped out the Fratelli street gang into nothing and hung their leader literally by his own intestines...and that was just one of the nicer things he did.
The bad thing was that his arch-enemy's rampages caused his minions to panic as well. Since his arch-enemy wasn't just his arch-enemy but their arch-enemy as well, they were sure that when the duck would finally pay his attention toward them, they would suffer the most horrific ways imaginated. Everyday he would hear them ask him on how they would fight the duck if he would attack them. He usually answered that he got plans, and that they didn't needed to worry since they were the most powerful individuals of the city. At first, that usually calmed them down...only to get paniced again the next day after they had watched the news of his arch-enemy's latest clean-up. It wasn't better when new rumors claimed that he had started to use killing machines as his own personal foot soldiers. After some time, their fear gave them courage enough to do something they never had done before, something he thought they never would do;
They started to question him.
After some time; his answers about his secret plans were no longer enough to satifice his minions. They would then start to ask him what kind of plans they were. If he answered as before or didn't answered at all, they would press on with it and only would back down if he threated them. After that, not even threats were enough so he used his chainsaw to make them back down. Then came the day when not even his own beautiful chainsaw was enough. In fact, about the seventh-eight time he pulled it at them, the treeguy asked him with unusual boldness what would he do then if he actually used the chainsaw to put them down, since they were the only allies he had. He couldn't find a countering answer to that. They then even had the galls to threatened to leave him to his own. As enraged he was to hear it, he managed keep a cool face for once and asked them what would they do themselves if they left him, since it was thanks to him that they had became such powerful players in the city, and even if they had superpowers, they weren't worth a jack without a great mind to use them in the best way.
They couldn't counter that so they took back their threats of leaving him. They still asked how they would defeat his arch-enemy if he ever attacked, and he answered them that it was a secret but they wouldn't be disappointed with it. He also didn't told them that this was the point when he started to actually fear his arch-enemy for real, since now the very mention of his name and deeds almost costed him his empire on just one single day.
Some week after the incident with his minions, he got contacted by that goat going by the name Hammersomething. From what he had heard, the goat used to be the lead henchman of that bull crime boss who ruled St. Canard before his arch-enemy decided to put his beak into this town's businesses. When that bull crime boss died, his goat toady took over his business and had been in charge of it since then. While that group no longer was the dominant force of St. Canard, it still was a powerful player. How they survived the water blockade he didn't know. And now they wanted to make a partnership with him against his arch-enemy. Of course, in other sistuations, he wouldn't make alliances with his enemies but with his arch-enemy cleaning up the city, one block after another, he started to considering it. Not that he was weak, he could take him down as soon he dared to show his beak in front of him ever again but because he had heard that the goat had been there when the duck entered the scene for the first time, and surely he had some importent information he could share to him, information he could use against his arch-enemy, he agreed for the meeting. And he could always kill them off after the alliance had payed off its usefulness for him.
He and the goat decided they would meet each other on the harbor in the middle of the day. The goat first wanted to had the meeting in the inner city but he was able to convince him to think otherwise. The reason why the harbor was because if the goat decided to make any move against him, he would just let the waterdude make some superbig tsunami and drown them all while sparing him. Of course he lied about his reason and told to the goat that the harbor was the last place his arch-enemy would go look for them, since he was used to hunt the big fishes at the central part of the city.
And the reason why the middle of the day was that it was during the nights his arch-enemy was doing his clean-up works. During the day, he usually was nowhere to been seen. When he and his boys got there, they were greeted by the goat and his goons, and both him and he shook hands and plastered fake smiles on their faces, both pretanding that they were on good relationship, both playing the social game of petty norms. A game he hated to play even if he was good at it if he wanted to be, but a neccesary game none the less.
After he surpressed the urge to go to the water and wash his hand for the next couple of hours because it was infected by that filth's stench, he looked at the building the meeting would take place, and it was a warehouse that the meeting would be in. Outside, the goat's goons were dressed as blue-collar workers and pretended to work at the harbor, when they actually were looking out for a familiar but now-insane duck and ready to report to the meeting's participants as soon they would see him. Pretty smart he thought about it. Not as stupid as he first thought about them but let see if it would work in case his arch-enemy would suddenly appear.
Inside there was some stairs, and up the stairs they went up. They came to a corridor, and to the left of the corridor, there was a door. They went through the door and into a small room, there the meeting would take place. Inside the room, there was a small table, meant for just them and their closest men, the lesser size just to make sure no questions were asked from anyone outside of everything. They sat down at the chairs around that small table and began to disscuss the possible alliance between the two groups. The goat claimed that alone, both groups would be vulnerable (yeah maybe he but not him) but if they worked together, then maybe there was a chance to end the threat that was threatening their businesses and surely would soon attack them, and with the combination between his superpowers and his workforce, they surely would be unstoppable.
He had the urge to snort at his face and insult him on how pathetic he must be to come to him and beg for help, and how pitifully he tried to diguise it as an offer of friendship, but he held back with all his willpower. He needed to know what he knew about his arch-enemy, and so instead of going berserk on him, he began to discuss with him about this future alliance between them, told him the words he was sure he wanted to hear. As the discussion went on, the goat's cellphone suddenly rang. He picked it up and putted it to his ear. He listened to the one who rang to him, surely someone of his men disguised as one of the shore workers. The goat looked passively at nothing as he listened but slowly his face showed a look of shock, as if he got bad news from the other line. This got his and his minions next to him curious and they tried their hardest to hear what was said from the other line. As they carefully listened, they could hear that the guy who rang spoke with a stressful and fast voice, as if he rang with a hurry. He spoke so fast that they couldn't get the whole meanings of what he spoke but they could hear things like "Some of the guys...", "...disguised...", "...compromissed.", "he found...", "he knew tha...", and then a loud scream was heard and the line went dead.
The goat's face became paler than usual, and that wasn't any good sigh of what happened on the other line. As the room became dead silent and everyone woundered what just got the goat so scared, gunshots suddenly were heard from the distance. Everyones' heads went up. A firefight just outside? How could that be? They made sure to make this meeting as secret as possible, and then disguise it from the outside world to make sure no one could disturb it. They didn't get much time to think about it since the goat suddenly told everyone in the room that they had to get away. They all left the room, hurryingly after the goat. His men asked him why they were leaving in such quick hurry but he just answered that they had to get away.
As they went, gunshots remained hearable, and what they could hear, it sounded like it became all closer to them. Screams of agony were being heard as well. In normal sistuations, he would had stayed just to listen the screams, the music of life for his ears, but this wasn't a normal sistuation. He and his guys followed that cowardly goat and his goons while hell was breaking loose just outside. His patience was running out due to the sistuation as they walked down the stairs and then he roared to the goat to stop. He stopped, and he immediatly demanded to know what was going on and why the secret meeting wasn't as secret as he had promised it would be. The goat started to talk about they were compromised or something and that they needed to get out if they didn't want to die. He snorted at that. He dying today, yeah right. Wasn't gonna happen today, especially not because this guy surly had a rat that had snitched to someone of their rivals about this meeting. He told his theory right out to the goat's face, much to his discomfort. He started to babbling about that he didn't had no rats within his ranks and that they had been found out by their enemy somehow. They started to arguing with each other about the sistuation; the goat wanted to run like a sheep while he wanted to stay and fight the enemy as well wanna know what was happening outside. It got even so hard that the goat's goons pulled their guns out and pointed them at him, only for his minions to put themselves in front of him and threatened them with their superpowers. As the conflict almost escalated to a fight, the goat told his goons to put down their weapons. After they did it, much to their protests, he finally told him that the one who was attacking them was his arch-enemy and his robotic horde. This got his eyes get bigger in surprise. His arch-enemy here? With his killer robots? Attacking the secret meeting even with the convincing diguises? With his newfound insanity that surpress even his own? Darn.
In normal cases, he would had abandoned the goat to feed for himself. An ally who runs away the very moment someone is attacking is an ally not worth keeping, but he needed to know what the goat knew so he plastered a fake smile on his beak and said that he would help him get away from his nutsy alternative twin. They went to the garage of the warehouse, there the goat's car was kept. As they were about to step inside the car, an explosion appeared near the door to the right side and a huge hole replaced the door, and through it, one of the goat's disguised goons walked in...or linked in, more off. The goon was extremly ruffed; dirt and blood everywhere on him and running, burn wounds were on his arms and his face, his clothes were filthy and had holes, his right leg seemed to had been broken by something forceful, his hair burned right to the head and generally looked like hell. The goon's eyes rolled back and he fell facefirst to the floor, dead. The others, from the goat to his goons to his minions, were shocked to witness this but he just coldly stared at the whole thing, and felt no bit of emotion for it. Why did they care, he thought. It was war, this kind of things was happening all the time. So what if he died as a burning corpse, was he supposed to suddenly cry of something for it? And why did they act like all shocked and things? It wasn't anything different from what they does toward anyone they didn't like.
Behind the burned goon, something else walked in. It wasn't "someone" but "something", a unliving, cold thing that yet appeared to walk and act like a living being...or more like a living being determent to end other living beings. It wore the clothes of a blue-collar worker, but it wasn't a man nor a beast, but something more unnatural. It walked calmly and looked around the room, like a hunter looked for the prey he had shot but had ran away and hid before he could claim its wounded body and end its torment. Its eyes were cold and calculating, merciless. No pity or compassion, if no emotions at all. In fact, no life was inside those eyes. Just dark holes, red fires burned at the very bottom. Its face was literally nothing but a mask. As it wore a plastic mask of that of a bison, the small scars from bullets and knifes revealed an art of perfect mechanical engineering, works of someone experienced in advanced technology. Than it became clear: his arch-enemy had planted some spy droids inside the organizations, disguised as henchmen to fool everyone else inside and outside. Spy droids that immidiately could turn into the perfect assassins once given the order; deadly, resourceful and will never refuse its master's orders nor give up until the job is done.
The droid looked around the room. First at the corpse of its prey, still burned fresh. No remorse it registered, or no pride of its work. Just stared at it like a computer screen staring at its user's face. Then its eyes saw them. Lifelessly it stared at them for one or two seconds before it pulled its weapon up, a machine-gun, and aimed. They had just bairly time to duck behind the car before bullets were allover the place. Fortuantely for them, the goat was atleast smart enough to bullet-proof his car with armored plates and bullet-proof windows. Too "bad" that one of the goat's goons wasn't fast enough to duck before his head got one huge-butt hole on it. The others quickly opened the car doors without rising their heads off while his minions and one goon provided covering fire. The mechanical assassin took the bullets and the water rushs without going down. Only when gigantic, superlong plantsnears, summonded by his tree-huging friend, appeared right out the wall and sneared around the robot and threw it away did the shooting stop.
They quickly went inside the car and speed off, without open the garage door first. As they speeded through the harbor, they could see the battle. The goat's goons fought at their hardest against the mechnical hordes of his arch-enemy, who had conquered the major parts of the harbor, but they got gunned down one by one. As they drove, his wet friend asked if he should summond the whole might of the ocean to crush their enemies. He considered the idea but the goat refused to let them do it. Appearently, that would kill the rest of his forces still fighting on.
As they drove, they neared the outskirts of the harbor. It wasn't any form of fighting there, but sighs of it were everywhere. Dead bodies laid on the ground rotting away with each second, and buildings had holes on them, obviously made of the bullets that were sprayed by both sides. Some of the buildings however were blasted to kingdom come, surly by something high-explosive. From what he could see, they seemed as they were blasted from the mid-to-high air and not from the ground. Strange, since so far he hadn't heard any form of information that his arch-enemy had started to use aircrafts for his crusade, and he was sure that the military no way would give some of their own to him.
As they neared the highway, sounds could be heard from above and they sounded like that of a aircraft's engines, only it sounded as if it was too close to the ground than an aircraft sould be. In fact, it sounded like it flew some 30-40 meters above them. Then they saw it; a flying object neared them. It was formed after a duck's face, with the "eyes" formed the cockpit. It looked almost like the aircraft his arch-enemy used but it was different. Instead of being painted red it was painted purple, and instead of two engines it had four engines; two on the wings that are close to the main body, and two on the top of the said body. Sandwished between the top engines was a black box that had something thin but widespreed thing pointed at the front, with a hole on the very end. Maybe it was the aircraft's camera. On top of the camera and engines was a r-shaped thing with something that looked like a antenna on it pointed weirdly at front. The main different thing was the facial form. The red one was formed a face of neutrality, but this craft's face was formed as one of rage, an animal hungry for blood. A predator flying up the sky just waiting for the right moment to claw its prey inside and out, but instead for claws it had missiles under the wings and the belly. And now it flew in front of them, its cockpit-eyes stared at them with furious hatred that dispite it wasn't alive cut through their souls like burned swords cutting through butter.
The belly opened up and through the hole, a missile bigger than the other ones came out. Hysteria quickly flamed up inside the car as he, his minions and the goat shouted to the driver to get them out of there. He didn't had time for it though because the aircraft shot out the missile that fastly neared the car. Letting his survival instincts to take controll, he opened the door and jumped out of the car without thinking, right before the missile hit the car.
He remembered the awful ringings in his ears and how dizzy he felt before his head got cleared. What he saw wasn't pretty; the car was nothing but pile of burned plastic and metal, and awful smelling smoke came out of it. Burned bodies were inside, their dead faces frozen in fear. As he looked around, he saw that atleast his minions survived the attack, though the treehugger had some nasty burnwounds. He also saw the goat, coughing but alive. The aircraft was still there, howered above them. It seemed as if it didn't cared about him or his minions, just on the panicly frozen goat. As it was about to fire another missile at the goat, bullets were attacking it. When they turned around, they saw some of the few surviving goons of the goat. Appearently, they had hid while their comrades were getting gunned down by the mechnical horde and stayed at their hiding places while the horde advanced toward the meeting place, but now that their boss was getting threatened personally by this thing, they suddenly grew some manhood and fought to save their don, but it didn't seemed to work; the bullets just fell off the aircraft without doing any harm and soon it turned its angry structure toward them and started to make quick work of them.
As it turned its attention to the survivors, the goat crawled on all his four to him. As they were next to each other face to face, the goat told him that since time wasn't in their favour, he would tell him now what he knew about his arch-enemy. He immediately got butterflies in his stomach. Now finally he would hear the information about his arch-enemy, information he would surly had use of in this war of St. Canard. He didn't cared about the firefight or the sounds of gunshots or the explosions or the screams of death that surrounded him, all that didn't meant anything to him, he wanted the knowledge of the being that surly was flying the thing above him. Like a child on Christmas he waited for the goat to talk. The goat first asked him if he was familliar with the girl he arch-enemy used to bring with to his missions. He answered spitefully yes. Of course he was familliar with that brat. She always hung around with his arch-enemy along with the dumb pilot like some parasite refusing to let go of its host. An annoying and filthy parasite no less. But what did she had to do with all this? The goat told him that he knew her personally, what her name was and where she lived. Now it got interesting. He was sure that the brat lived with his arch-enemy's civilian identity but he never knew where. If the goat told him where she lived, his arch-enemy should be there too and then he didn't need this so called "alliance", he could storm his home by himself, or atleast sneak inside and then slit his throat while he was sleeping. It had worked very well before, why should his arch-enemy be any different?
The goat told him that after his first encounter with his arch-enemy, back than when he worked under the bull, the girl had changed her last name to something else and that it took him a very long time finding her on the city's records before he finally did. After he did it, he claimed that he spent months spying on her new home and her guardian before he putted two with two together and was sure that her adoptive guardian was his arch-enemy in civilian clothes. Now he got extremly excited of what he told him. Now he just needed to tell him where the place was and the war will end with him as the winner. As the goat was about to say where and who, he suddenly found himself covered in blood and stared at what once was the goat's head. All his excitement was turned into shock. Right as the key information was about to be told to him, it slipped right in front of him.
Speechless.
That what he was: speechless.
It wasn't true, couldn't be true. He couldn't had died right on, couldn't he? Not when he was about to reveal the answer? Then his shock turned into anger. Why? Why?! Why DARN IT?! Couldn't he had died AFTER he told him such importent knowledge, huh?! HUH?!
Then he looked up. That hellish aircraft did it. It had killed off the goons and then killed off the goat in front of him. Surly just to mess with him. It just hovered above him, mocked him for what he just lost. He couldn't see him behind the eyes-formed cockpit-windowns but he was sure his arch-enemy was inside and looked down at him with a smirk, maybe even laughted at him. His anger then turned into such rage that he pulled a rocket launcher out of nowhere and tried to shot that forsaken thing down. However, it just danced away from the rockets, none of them hit it. Soon he found that all his ammo were out. He didn't had any to fight with, his arch-enemy could kill him right there, right now. Nothing to do but hope for some miracle.
But it didn't do anything, just continued hover above him. It was obviously that his arch-enemy was just being busy mocking him, reminded him of his mortality, made sure who was standing superior now and who was on the ground beaten. His minions couldn't help him; the treehugger was too wounded to fight and the waterguy's powers surely were useless against this thing, unless he used all his might but that would kill him as well. It hovered above him for some few seconds before it turned around and flew away.
...what?
He just left him there without take the shot? What the..! Why did he spared him? No less, he was glad that he was still alive and quickly got up and walked back to his base, his minions followed him. As he got inside his base, he found a note taiped on the door. On it, it was written that it was to him. He took it off the door and turned it around. On the back of the note, it was written: "You'll be the last one".
When he read this, he immediately knew what kind of game his arch-enemy played with him: he was the last one on his death list to be crossed. He wanted his final act in this war to be one of satifactional nature, and that meant that he would kill him last, his enemy of his enemies, the climatic last battle between "good" and evil, one that this city would remember in ages. A battle that would make sure to everyone that he would be in total control of the city and no one else. Meanwhile, he prepared himself, trained himself by clean up the city and kill the other scums one by one, become more and more stronger and better, while he toyed with him, played with him, deliberately allowed him to be one step ahead just to make it more challenging. As the sayings goes "Save the best for the last" and "The more you wait for it, the more satifiying it will taste". Now his slight anxiety started to turn into both panic and rage. The knowledge what he was doing to him scared him, and that the only reason why he still lived was because his arch-enemy found it amusing to toy with him when he could just try to waste him anytime he wanted got him enraged. Now he wasn't even sure if his plans were gonna work against this creature. He personally saw that he both was (as much he hated to admit it) surperior in both technology, planning, spying and now, stealth, and his only key to victory slipped right out of his hands was a giant setback. He had to re-organize his entire delimma because it was proven it would not work against him.