Chapter Four

Darkwing Tower

Gosalyn spent the rest of her evening cleaning up the mess she made in the attic, and left the attic looking like it had when she had entered. Quietly, she walked down to her bedroom and placed the letter she had discovered back in it's envelope and setting it down on her bedside table.

She then walked into the living room and flopped down on the couch, staring at the far wall, contemplating everything that had happened today. She then realized something about what she was staring at. Not the wall, but what sat directly in front of it. Two identical armchairs and a small, three-legged table, that sat between them with a small, wooden figurine sitting on top of that table.

Suddenly, a loud crash rang outside, announcing Launchpad's return. Moments later he walked inside, carrying the empty punch bowl and trailing confetti behind him.

"Man, what a party." he remarked, walking past Gosalyn and into the dining room. "Too bad you didn't come, Gos, you missed out on a lot of fun!"

"I still don't see how a memorial party like that could be fun." Gosalyn pointed out, turning around in her seat to watch Launchpad.

"Well, really, all you need is some silly string, some confetti, some spare time, and..." he trailed off, noting how bare the dining room table was. "Have you eaten anything while I was gone, Gos?" he asked, shaking confetti from his hair.

Gosalyn realized with a start that she hadn't, and told Launchpad that.

"Boy, DW wouldn't let me sleep if he found out I almost let you off without any dinner." Launchpad said, entering the kitchen. "Tell you what, let's have some of that instant spaghetti stuff that you like so much."

He quickly pulled two trays out of the freezer and pulled off their plastic coverings. Popping them into the microwave, he started to enter in the needed cooking time, rubbing the underside of his beak.

"Gos, how many zeros are there in three minutes?" he asked.

"Two." Gosalyn answered promptly, sitting at the table.

"You sure? I thought there was three."

"Three would make thirty minutes. If we cooked those things for that long, we'd end up with charcoal and melted plastic for dinner."

"Okay..." Launchpad said, starting the microwave. It was clear he was still skeptical.

However, after the three minutes where up, the meals came out looking as perfect as could be. Grinning, Launchpad set one tray down in front of Gosalyn, and then set one down for himself, and they began eating.

Gosalyn watched Launchpad eat with twice the gusto that she had. "How can you eat so much after you just went to an all-you-can-eat party?" she asked, bewildered at Launchpad's appetite.

"I'm hungry." Launchpad answered simply in-between bites. "So, what did you do while I was gone?" he then asked, wiping the tip of his beak with a napkin.

"I started cleaning the attic, like I said I would." Gosalyn answered. "Then there was a little mishap that I had to resolve and ended with the attic looking like it had when I entered."

"Ah, that's okay, we'll do it together this Saturday." Launchpad stated. "At least, if I don't forget it by then. You'll help me remember, right Gos?"

"Oh sure." Gosalyn said half-heartedly. She looked back into the living room. "Launchpad." she began. "When was the last time you were in Darkwing Tower?"

Launchpad seemed to be caught off guard at this question, for he looked mildly stunned and took several moments to answer. "Not for a couple years." he admitted. "I was last in there to make sure everything was packed up and ready for storing and wasn't there for much longer than five minutes. Haven't been back there since. Hasn't ever really been a need."

Gosalyn eyed the two armchairs she had been studying earlier. "Does that mean that the chairs no longer work?" she jerked her head in their direction.

Launchpad stared at the chairs for a long moment. "I don't know." He said curiously, "They're still connected to the tower and could be used as such, if that's what you mean, but they themselves haven't been used for anything more than sitting in for years, so I don't know if they'd work right." he suddenly gave Gosalyn an odd look. "Uh, why do you ask?"

"No reason." Gosalyn quickly lied.

Launchpad studied the chairs for a moment longer. "You know, I ought to disconnect those things. Someone might stumble upon their secret someday."

"No!" Gosalyn exclaimed, louder than she intended. "Er, no, I don't think you should. I mean, it's not like anyone's discovered them yet over the years. Besides, what if there's an emergency?"

Launchpad pondered on that for a moment. "I suppose you have a point there, Gos." he admitted. "I guess there wouldn't be any harm in leaving them as is. Of course, what if DW comes back to the tower and tries to come home that way, only to find the path blocked? Wouldn't want that, now would we?"

Gosalyn didn't answer. Instead she stared at her food until it was all gone. When he saw that she was finished, Launchpad gathered up their trays and put them in the trash.

"I must admit, Gos, those instant meal things are pretty good." he commented, glancing at his watch. "It's getting late. Time for all of us to go to bed."

He started up the stairs for his room. Gosalyn started to follow, but stopped long enough to glance back at the unsuspecting armchairs, half of her not believing what she was planning to do.

"You coming, Gos?" Launchpad called from the top of the stairs, having noticed she had stopped.

"Yes." Gosalyn called back, turning her back to the chairs and marching up the stairs to her own bedroom.

The house fell silent and dark for a couple of hours. Then, about an hour before midnight, a small light flickered on in one of the upstairs room. Squinting against the difference between the two differences in lighting, Gosalyn got up out of up, still dressed. Slipping some sneakers on, she took her flashlight and tiptoed out of her bedroom. Quietly heading over to Launchpad's bedroom, she cracked open the door and peered inside. Launchpad was sound asleep.

Satisfied, she made her way downstairs, going slightly faster, and came to stand in front of the two armchairs. The second thoughts that had been nagging her for the past two hours while she waited until Launchpad was asleep began to nag at her harder, but Gosalyn knew that her mind was pretty much made up now.

Still, she didn't have to do this. There was still time to turn back. Debating against herself, she half-turned to head back tot eh stair, only to half-turn back. Facing the front window, she peered out it. Only a few blocks away and complete visible from that window was the Audubon Bay Bridge, a large suspension bridge that divided the utopian part St. Canard from the suburb part, and from nearby Duckburg, only a half mile past that.

It, and everything that it held within it, seemed so close, and yet, at the same time, were so far away. Gosalyn knew that the choice that had been rather unkindly dropped before her made it that way. Had it been anytime before tonight, it wouldn't have made much difference to her. But now, it made all the difference.

She sorted through her thoughts once again, debated which side of the conflicting thoughts she would root for. Looking at the chairs again, she gently set the flashlight down so that it was balanced on it's end and shone upward at the ceiling on the small table that sat between the two chairs.

She hesitated again, realizing that if she kept this up, she could be here all night and still haven't acted. Sighing, she squeezed her eyes shut, and carefully lowered herself into one of the armchairs, tensing up like something would happen the moment she had fully sat in the chair.

But nothing did, for the chair was nothing more that your ordinary armchair, blue in color, and slightly overstuffed. Forcing herself to relax, Gosalyn looked over at the little figurine that sat unmoving on the table. She had forgotten just who the figurine was depicting, other than the fact it was of some famous dead guy and that she was never interested enough to listen to the stories her dad had to tell of the guy.

She looked down at her feathered hand, and balled it up into a fist, bringing it to hover above the figurine. She stared at the figurine for several long moments. It was wooden, brown in color, and was bolted to the table. No one in the household wanted it to be moved, and for good reason. Just like the armchairs, although there was more reason from them to be bolted to the floor than the figurine.

Shoving her debating thoughts to the back of her mind, Gosalyn brought her fist hard down on the figurine's head. It wobbled slightly, then everything fell silent. For a spilt second, nothing more happened, then the two armchairs began to spin violently, tipping over in place from end to end, with Gosalyn trapped somewhere in the middle of it.

Right at that point, Gosalyn's seconds thoughts finally won out and began to scream at her to bail out, now, and Gosalyn was all too inclined to agree, but it was too late. The momentum of the spinning chair threw her out of the chair, and downward, into a long dark shaft that sat directly below the armchair she was in a moment earlier.

Getting sucked along it like a dustball in a vacuum, Gosalyn spun around and around, mentally screaming, since she was unable to tell if she was screaming physically. Instantly regretting her choice, she felt her downward fall suddenly shift to a sideways fall for a moment, then just as suddenly, shift to an upward fall. Then she found herself in another spinning armchair that spun for another moment longer, before finally coming to a stop in the middle of the thick cloud of dust. Panting heavily and gagging on the dust, Gosalyn fought down the effects of her adrenaline rush.

She had forgotten how intense that ride was.

The dust finally began to settle, giving Gosalyn a chance to study her dim surroundings. There admittably wasn't much to see, for it was too dark to see clearly, but it wasn't home. A faint beam of light shone through a wide and extremely tall window sitting in the wall opposite from Gosalyn, and she walked over to the window and peered out, drawn to the light.

Directly below her was the silent road that stretched across the Audubon Bay Bridge. From this angle, most of her view was dominated by the Audubon Bay itself, but to one side the many lights of St. Canard could be seen, while on the other side was St. Canard's suburbs and the faint glow in the distance that Duckburg produced. She was in the top of one of the bridge's support towers.

Exactly as planned.

Gosalyn had forgotten who pretty the view was from here, and mentally added it to her growing list of the other things she had also forgotten about Darkwing Tower. Drawing her eyes away from the view, she moved along the wall to where she knew the light switch would be, and flipped it. The dim ceiling lights came one, bright enough to reveal what was in the room and allow one to move around, but dim enough to not be seen from afar.

Dust coated the entire room more than the stuff had lined the attic, telling Gosalyn just how long it really had been since someone was here. Making a mental note to dust the place if she didn't live to regret her final choice to come here, she looked around. Mostly everything had been draped over with white cloths, probably there to protect it from the worse of the passing time.

Lifting one cover, Gosalyn found the Thunderquack, right where Launchpad had left it, useless to her, since she could not fly it. Under another cover was the Ratcatcher, but she too left it alone. For the next five minutes, she went around the large room in the tower looking around, but ultimately failed in finding what she came for.

A clue as to where her dad had gone.

Obviously, it wasn't going to be that simple, but Gosalyn had to try. But, now what? Clearly, the clues she was searching for weren't here, and it was unlikely there would be more in the house. Which meant that the clues were somewhere out there in St. Canard. And the only chance she would get to really look for them on her own time, able to go wherever she wanted with no one standing in her way, was to...

No, she had told herself to stay out of this years ago, and that was a promise she was going to keep.

Right?

Again, her thoughts began to debate with one another again, but this time for different reasons. Frowning on the outside, but grinning inwardly, Gosalyn turned to face a small dresser that had been set in one corner.

When she was younger and Darkwing was still around, she would often assist in the crime fighting in her own costume and disguise, going under the name of Quiverwing Quack, in reference to the Quiverwing's use of a bow and arrows. It was clearly a childhood things of hers, something she had grown out of. As a result, Quiverwing was a thing of the past in her mind. She hated the name now, anyway.

What she needed was something with a bit more flare...

The thief slowly sneaked across the empty diamond store, almost too giddy with excitement to think straight. Nothing could dampen his good mood tonight. First, he had escaped from prison so well, that when he was well on his way to freedom, the prison still didn't know he was gone.

He blamed that on St. Canard's lack of security measures as of late, which was the second reason he was so happy. Since crime was virtually an endangered species these days, the city had gone lax in it's security measures, meaning that places where easier to break into now without getting caught. The city thought it was safe from that.

The thief chuckled at that thought, thus leading him into the third reason he was so happy. Since places were so easy to break into now, he could easily break into several places every night and start up the first crime wave in St. Canard in seven years. And with a good hideout, he could be virtually unstoppable for months on end until St. Canard whipped itself back into shape.

And he could have gotten all he wanted out of the place and be long gone by that point.

Giggling, he reached the store's vault where the most valuable jewels were being stored and began to pick the lock. Not surprisingly, it quickly popped open, and rejoicing, the thief began to shovel the priceless jewels into the sack he had snatched off of a grocery store down the street.

He suddenly froze when he heard a creaking noise from behind him. Whipping around, he looked for the cause. All he saw was the store's front door bouncing slightly in the wind. He had simply left it open when he forced his way in. Relaxing, he went back to what he was doing.

Then he heard a loud bang. Whipping around again, this time he saw a large cloud of billowing blue smoke spread outward from the middle of the room.

"I am the terror that flaps in the night."