Chapter 7: Gathering Clouds
In a remote little cottage somewhere in the northern hemisphere – somewhere north of the polar circle, in fact – a phone rang. Its owner, a lanky mallard in his late twenties, froze. Then, once he overcame his surprise he bolted towards the little black device. There was no dial plate, no keypad. Only a receiver. With shaking hands he picked it up.
"Who's calling?" he asked carefully.
"Who do you think has this number, idiot?" replied a voice that was dripping with acid. Before he could respond, the caller continued, "Start packing. There'll be a plane to pick you up in five hours. There is a job you have to do."
For a moment, the mallard feared he had misheard. "I can come home?" he asked hoarsely. "They said I can come home?"
"So it seems," came the dry reply. "Apparently they decided that it has been long enough for people to forget about that last screw-up of yours."
"Hey, don't give me that." Unfortunately for him, the tenant of the little shack didn't realize just how much he sounded like a petulant child. "They were four unidentified people, knocking on the front door of a stake-out, wearing uniforms. What was I supposed to do?"
"Ah yes, those damnable girl-scouts", said the voice on the phone with thinly veiled distaste. "Just be ready when the plane comes, you will be briefed on the way." With that the connection died.
Unable to keep the big smile off his beak, the mallard hurried to pack the few personal possessions he had been allowed to bring along. When he carefully wrapped the tools of his trade - half a dozen firearms, lovingly maintained - he absent-mindedly hummed to himself. Home. Finally he was going to get home.
.* * *.
A crime-fighter's work was never done – the same was true for a homemaker. While Gosalyn was outside, practicing roller-skate hockey, Drake Mallard stood in the kitchen, doing dishes, relating the events of his 'date' to a toweling Launchpad.
"Do you believe her?" the pilot finally asked.
Drake kept his eyes firmly on Gosalyn as he answered, he didn't want to risk her sneaking up on them, and hear things he didn't want to burden her with. "I don't know," he replied after a few seconds. "What she told me makes sense – but I'm certain there's much she didn't tell me."
"So we're back to square one, huh?"
"Not quite." He handed Launchpad another dish and reached for a saucepan. "She admitted to having met criminals – in person. And she'll probably do so again – probably tomorrow or the day after, or why else would she be in town until Tuesday?" Frowning, Drake looked at his friend. "Say, did anybody try to fry rubber duckies while I was out?"
The pilot gave a sheepish grin. "No, only those do-it-yourself Hamburger Hippo burgers from the supermarket..."
"Close enough," the shorter mallard sighed and continued to scrub at the stubborn grease film. "Anyway, I was thinking that we'd best watch her, see where she goes and who she meets. It's our best shot at getting a hold of her contacts."
Launchpad looked unconvinced. "Do you know where she's staying?"
"Yes, at the Red Carpet Inn. We'll have to be careful, though. If she realizes that we're that close on her tail she might just freak and dig a hole," Drake muttered. He refrained from pointing out who else might do the hole-digging in this case. "So we'd best leave her alone for today. Tomorrow I'll call the desk clerk and ask if one Bea Muddlefoot is in..."
"Feathersworth."
Drake blinked. "What?"
"Her last name is Feathersworth," Launchpad repeated patiently. "Just like Binky's maiden name."
"Uh... yes. Obviously." The shorter mallard gave an embarrassed cough, feeling like a fool. "Checking that would have been the next thing on my list." He hesitated. "How come you know that, anyway?"
"Herb told me," the pilot explained. "When I went over last week, to tell them that I'd be in Duckburg the day of the barbecue."
Giving up on the saucepan for the moment – it definitely needed a good soak – Drake grabbed one of the pots instead. "You never mentioned that."
"That's because you always get this twitch whenever someone mentions the Muddlefoots," Launchpad pointed out, gesturing at his face for visualization.
"That's not-" the mallard began indignantly, but he interrupted himself when he felt the familiar tremor around his right eye. "Well, it's not entirely true," he muttered. When his friend tactfully left that uncommented, he continued, "So, like I said, I'll just call under a harmless pretense and see if she's in. Once we are sure she is we can tail her until she leads us to the big players."
"You got it, D.W.," Launchpad said with a grin. "So, tonight's patrol as usual?"
"No, not tonight," the Drake said firmly and looked out of the window, regarding his daughter. "Tonight I have more important business to attend to."
.* * *.
On a desk in the Duckburg prison a phone rang. The warder who was on duty for the weekend was a kind and considerate person, so when the caller politely requested to talk to one of the inmates – a sudden death in the family, she shouldn't learn about it from the newspapers – he didn't have the heart to say no. All the calls were monitored anyway, so what harm could it do?
In his defense, this jail hosted mostly small-time criminals – burglars, thieves, tax-offenders and the like. The most dangerous felons he ever had to deal with were the Beagle Boys. Violent madmen and criminal masterminds were usually shipped to St Canard where they were used to that kind of thing, and the scrawny magpie in question appeared to be neither. While being a repeat offender the avian was also a model inmate and usually kept to herself.
When she was led to the phone she was glad for the diversion, although she suspected a mix-up.
"Hello?" she said carefully, while the guard politely went to the other side of the room to give her at least the illusion of privacy.
"It's me," said a voice she had never heard before. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, your uncle Fred Owl passed away recently."
"Oh?" she made, confused. Then realization hit. "Oh!"
"At least you remember him," the caller remarked dryly. "And it looks like he left you a little something in his will."
"Really," the magpie murmured slowly. "See, I thought he was kinda angry with me. You know." She coughed nervously. "For getting arrested so much."
"You mean for getting arrested every single time," the voice on the phone said snidely. "But it seems he got over it. Will you attend the cremation?"
The magpie hastily turned to hide her eager smile from the guard. "Sure. If they let me out, that is..."
"I'm sure nobody could object to giving you a day's leave, under the circumstances. The formalities will be taken care of tomorrow."
"Great. So... what's the date of the, uh, cremation?"
"Monday. You'll meet us at the cemetery in the morning." With that the connection broke.
It was all she could do to suppress her wide smirk until she was back in her cell. Her fingers itched, like they always did when she was agitated. There was an easy way to calm them again, but of course they didn't let her have matches in here. However, for the first time in months, that didn't bother her. She had the feeling that, come Monday, she'd have all the matches she could wish for. And maybe some gasoline, too...
.* * *.
Crime never rested, so in theory, neither should crime-fighters. While it was virtually impossible to be always there, to save everybody, Drake had always firmly believed that that was no reason to stop trying – else he would have never donned the mantle of Darkwing Duck. He had sacrificed a lot to protect the citizens of St Canard, he still did. But every now and again even the masked mallard drew the line. Sometimes he decided that the happiness of one loved person outweighed a hundred faceless strangers by a whole lot.
Which was why, on this Saturday evening, crime was welcome to wait. Drake Mallard was spending some quality time with his daughter.
"Oh pu-lease," he griped. "Who ever heard of a green atomic slug?"
Gosalyn rolled her eyes. "Here we go..."
"Green isn't even a natural color for slugs!"
"It got mutated, Dad..."
Drake folded his arms. "Yes, into a very huge slug. Extreme growth is a contortion of a natural biological function. Changing color doesn't even make sense."
"It got mutated by green nuclear waste," the red-headed duckling retorted. "And if you have a gigantic, chainsaw-swinging slug running amok in a gray city you want a contrasting color."
"Nuclear waste isn't green, either," her father muttered.
"It's art, Dad, not science class." Gosalyn leaned over to get herself another handful of popcorn. "Anyway, you're just cranky because we're watching the colorized version."
While that wasn't entirely untrue, it was beside the point. "Well, if we were watching the original, you'd see that the slug was obviously meant to be rust red." His daughter gave him a skeptical look, so he turned around to look for backup. "Am I right, Launchpad? Hey, where'd he go?"
"Into the kitchen, to make more popcorn."
Both ducks exchanged a knowing smile. Nobody could doubt Launchpad's courage; during the last months he had faced the worst villains St Canard had to offer. He had saved Darkwing's life on numerous occasions, as well as Gosalyn's. In their nightly battle against crime he had never once flinched from the dangers. Yet whenever they watched a horror movie the broad-shouldered mallard found excuses to hide in the kitchen during the gory scenes.
"Somehow I don't think we'll get that popcorn until the movie's over," Drake murmured with a good-natured chuckle.
Gosalyn gave him a mischievous look. "I guess that means we'll have to watch another one," she replied and shrugged in mock resignedness.
Sternly raising his eyebrow, the mallard managed to keep a straight face for about five seconds, before he cracked a smile. "It looks that way, doesn't it?" With a glance towards the kitchen he added, "Maybe one that's a little tamer, though."
"How about the Mutant Mechanics from Mars?"
Before he could answer, out of the corner of his eye he noticed Launchpad standing in the door. Drake gave his friend a rueful shrug, but the pilot just nodded encouragingly, his beak turned into a warm smile.
Oblivious to the wordless exchange, Gosalyn frowned. "Dad?"
With a last grateful look at Launchpad, Drake put an arm around the little redhead. "Sure, Gos," he said and gently ruffled her hair. "Whatever you want."
.* * *.
In a rundown warehouse, somewhere in the northern outskirts of St Canard, Ammonia Pine was cleaning. Or, to be precise, she was looking for dirt. Nevermind the fact that the cold room was probably sterile enough to host brain surgery, there had to be some dirt in here. It stood to reason, even for a person who had abandoned reason years ago and was now firmly entrenched in her own personal world of madness. There had to be dirt; it came in through the door, the ventilation – even her own body produced it, chipping dead cells all the time. It made the roots of her feathers itch, just thinking about it.
Before contemplating this dilemma sent her into another one of her fits, however, a sharp beep reached her ears. It took Ammonia a few seconds to sufficiently disentangle herself from her twisted thought-process to place the sound. After realizing that High Command was calling her, she quickly donned a rubber glove – no point in cleaning if you're just going to smudge everything again – and pressed a button on her videophone to accept the call. The three familiar silhouettes appeared on the screen.
"Agent Pine", came the husky voice of the female High Commander, the one she was almost certain was a duck.
"Oh, High Command", she said with a grin that was a little too wide to be genuine. "How nice to see you. You got another mission for me?" The organization had graciously busted her out of prison after her rendition of money laundering had gone sour. After all the mission had technically been a success – when the de-facto annihilation of several billion dollars had been revealed, F.O.W.L. had made a fortune during the confusion. Still, they had not been pleased about her arrest, even less so about Hooter's survival, and so Ammonia was eager to get back into her bosses' good graces.
"Not quite", the silhouette hissed. "We want you to do what you do best – clean up."
"Really." The biddy's smile turned a shade more enthusiastic. "Clean up what, exactly?"
"Not what. Who." There was no trace of emotion in that voice when it continued: "Two lambda-class agents have been activated. As soon as their assignments are completed we might require you to take care of the leftovers, so consider yourself on standby until further notice."
Not quite certain whether her participating in a lambda-class operation was a good sign or not, Ammonia nevertheless nodded eagerly. "Sure thing, High Command. You can count on me."
Without further comment shadowy figures broke the connection.
The biddy mused over the situation. Either this was a genuine assignment or a sick joke that would resolve in her being on the receiving end of a clean-up. Luckily her superiors had yet to display one ounce of humor between the three of them, so Ammonia figured that she was reasonably safe. Which meant the best bet was to deliver a spotless performance. The cleaning lady chuckled to herself. No worries there; she had yet to encounter a problem that couldn't be solved by a high enough concentration of drain pipe cleaner.
Author's Note: This one was one stubborn piece of work. It's a bit of an interlude, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. I can promise that the next one will have more action. Until then.
