Act III, chapter 2
A/N: Last chapter took me forever to finish and I didn't really care for the end result. I've had this one done for a while though and mostly am pretty pleased with it. I love writing Herb Muddlefoot. I love him so. Just as a note for those wondering how much longer this story can possibly BE, I'm hoping it'll be sixteen chapters total, four acts with four chapters each. I don't know how the final act will end up going. But that's what I'm aiming for. Let's cross our fingers. ;)
"Mission accomplished!" said Darkwing triumphantly, tossing the slim folder onto the desk near his computer at the Tower.
"Great work, DW!" Launchpad could always be counted on for his cheerleading skills. Good ol' Launchpad. Darkwing realized, in a quiet way, that he was incredibly tired. "So, uh, now what?"
Darkwing shook his head. "We'll use this info later, to track Licky down. This is going to simplify things a hundred fold, LP, mark my words!"
Launchpad nodded. "And what do we do when we find him? He's kinda tricky to hang onto."
"That," said Darkwing, maneuvering his way to the armchairs, "is where Step Two of my plan comes into play." As Launchpad got settled in the opposite chair, Darkwing activated the mechanism that sent them back to their house on Avian Way.
Continuing the conversation from a moment ago, Launchpad asked, "What's Step Two?"
Darkwing stood up, and took off his hat and mask. "Step Two is creating the perfect counterpoint to Licky's powers and permutability!" He started up the steps to his room to change his outfit.
"But how're we gonna do that?"
"We're not," said Darkwing, pausing halfway up the stairs. "We're going to visit the resident Mad Scientist instead."
"I don't think 'Mad Scientist' is really fair," said Launchpad as they walked along the sidewalk. "She's not mad."
"Yeah, she's not really a scientist either," said Drake, eyeing the small van coming up the street. It had a distinct "electronics store" look to it. It pulled to a stop in the Muddlefoots' driveway, as Drake and Launchpad reached the door of their destination. "It was just a line, LP, give it up already."
"She could be a scientist," Launchpad said, slightly defensively.
Drake grimaced; he should really have known better than to start this. He knocked on Beth's door once, then turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Beth, who was already on her feet and heading for the door, stopped suddenly as if surprised. Then she smiled, her face lighting up. "Hi!" she said brightly. She stepped forward again, then backward towards the table she'd obviously been working at a moment before, and put a hand down on the papers that were strewn over it. "Um, come in!"
Drake waited for Launchpad to step over the threshold, then slowly closed the door. He had no idea what was going on, but Beth had her hair up in a bun at the back of her head and she had woven what were clearly, even at a distance, three pens into the hairstyle. He shot a look at Launchpad, his eyebrows raised, and his sidekick shrugged a little in response. The shrug clearly said, "Well, she's not USUALLY like a mad scientist."
"Busy?" asked Drake, approaching the table. The papers that covered its surface were all filled with scribbled equations.
Beth, grinning widely at him with the clear elation of a person looking at the sunshine of her life, waved dismissively. "Oh, work stuff. Nothing much. You guys remember that promotion I got a little while ago?" She didn't give them time to even nod before she went on. "Um, basically now I'm going to be doing some behind-the-scenes programming kind of things, and they wanted me to work on a compression standard for the information on the discs, and I was just..." She trailed off, noticing that they looked blank. "It's... nothing, really. What's up?"
"Beth," said Drake importantly, "I need your help."
Her reaction was perfect. "You do?" she asked, with a kind of quiet awe. "My help?" Her eyes flicked towards Launchpad, who nodded.
"As you know, we're up against the Liquidator." Drake pulled a chair up to the table, and had a seat. "And what we need is a weapon - something defensive - something that can incapacitate him before he even sees it coming."
"Oh." Beth sounded less enthusiastic. Drake gave a shot at talking up the assignment.
"This is the key in breaking the case!" he said, trying not to sound as if he were manipulating her. "Going up against water isn't exactly a piece of cake, you know, and with all the investigation stuff going on I don't have the time or energy to devote to every aspect of this -"
"Um, Drake?"
"You're probably worried about living up to my standards of gadgets," he said reassuringly, "but don't worry! I don't need anything fancy. Just - creative! Something that will just suck the moisture right out of the air, maybe, and if you can make it sort of streamlined and metallic that would be great - I wouldn't expect you to paint it purple, in fact if you leave it gray I think I have some paint left over so I can do that part myself -"
"Drake? Before you get carried away -"
"Say!" he said, having a flash of inspiration. "How do those extra-absorbent paper towels work? Maybe you could design something based on that! We had luck with those the other night."
Beth sat down, looking serious. "They use more fibers."
"Oh." That wasn't as keenly scientific as he'd hoped. "Well, whatever works, right?"
"Drake, um..." She looked downright unhappy now. "The thing is, I'm really no good with machines."
"Huh?" This took Drake so much by surprise that he was stopped cold.
"I just... I'm not really that kind of, um... Well, I don't know how to put it. Building things - engineering, that's not really my, um, strong suit." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I really want to help you, but I'm just kind of useless with machinery. If you needed any algorithms or something, that would be different..."
"Oh." Drake shot a glare at Launchpad, who was peering at one of the sheets of paper on the table. "Why didn't you tell me?" he hissed.
"Well, you didn't tell me what you wanted to ask her until we got here," said Launchpad in a quiet voice. Drake crossed his arms and sulked.
"Um," said Beth hesitantly, "do you guys want anything to drink?"
Drake nodded. "Yeah, sure, whatever."
"I'll give you a hand," said Launchpad, as Beth stood up. She thanked him, and they left for the kitchen, leaving Drake alone at the table. He had a seat, poked sullenly at the mess of papers, and grumbled to himself. "Honestly. If she's going to be a genius, the least she can do is to make some decent inventions." The papers nearest him were covered in illegible scribbles that vaguely resembled numbers and the occasional letter. How, exactly, this could translate into a computer program was lost on him.
When Beth and Launchpad returned, he did his best to keep from looking too put out. Beth presented him with a large glass of iced tea, and raced to pull some papers off the middle of the table as Launchpad put down a pitcher of the same. There were leaves of mint at the top of the glass. "Where'd you get this?" Drake asked, crushing them a little and then stirring them into the tea.
"She grows 'em in her kitchen," said Launchpad, sounding as delighted and proud as if Beth had cured the common cold. Next to him, Beth looked both pleased and embarrassed.
"Oh," said Drake; it wasn't that big a deal. He caught Beth's face as it fell a little bit, and winced inwardly. It dawned on him, at last, that if his opinion on kitchen herbs was that important to her, then everyone was right: he really was going to have to talk to her. And it wasn't something he could just rush into, either; he'd have to say it in just the right way. As if he didn't have enough to worry about. He sighed. "Good tea, Beth," he offered, and sure enough, her face lit up again. Sheesh.
"Old family recipe," she said, and laughed as if it were some kind of joke. Drake, who wasn't much with cold drinks and didn't consider iced tea his forte, saw nothing funny in the remark but laughed politely to keep her from going mopey again. She pulled a chair out slightly, indicating to Launchpad that he should sit, and said, "Listen, Drake, um - these things you want. Do they need to be gadgets? I mean, like, did you have your heart set on a ray gun, or...?"
"I was just hoping for something that could help us fight the Liquidator, with bonus points if it looks cool. Why?" This sounded like an opening, and Drake's interest was piqued.
"Well..." Beth looked briefly at Launchpad, for no reason that Drake could discern, then turned back to Drake. She wound her fingers together and tapped her hand on the tabletop nervously. "Um, I might - might be able to pull something together."
"Really?" Drake pounced forward, knocking a few sheafs of paper to the floor. Launchpad stooped to get them, and Beth looked startled and put her hands on the table to steady it. "Er - sorry. You mean it, though?"
If anything, this made Beth even more nervous. "I - I think so. But how soon do you need them?"
"Tonight!"
She frowned. "Would Friday work?"
Drake was a good hand at haggling. "That's two days away! The longer the Liquidator is on the loose -"
"I just - I have all this, this stuff, and..." Beth gestured helplessly. "I guess... I could have it by tomorrow night..."
"Deal!" Drake sprang forward again, and grasped Beth's hands in a strong shake. "Thanks, Beth, I owe you a big one!"
"Oh, you don't..." She said, blushing, and broke the double handshake to push her glasses back up her face before they slid off. "It's my pleasure, really."
Drake stood, and gestured to Launchpad, who was finishing off his glass of iced tea. "C'mon, LP, we'd better get back to work. Beth, I'll leave you to your brilliance; if by any chance you finish up early..."
"I'll be by as soon as I'm done," she said, smiling. She looked down to the table, and frowned. "Um... shoot, where'd I put my pen? That's the third one I've lost!"
"I'm sure it'll turn up," said Drake, rolling his eyes. He made for the door, but turned back upon realizing Launchpad wasn't with him.
His sidekick gently pulled one of the pens out of Beth's up-do and handed it to her. "Here ya go. You got two others up there, too," he said, and winked.
"Oh." She became slightly flustered. "Th-thanks. Heh." She pulled the other two pens out, dislodging a few sections of hair in the process, and blushed. "Well..."
"See ya," Launchpad offered, and joined Drake at the door. Beth stared for a moment before waving at them both, and Drake returned it sharply as he left.
The van was still outside the Muddlefoots' house as they made their way back home. So, by this point, was Herb; he stood with a supervisory air, watching a pair of men on a ladder as they placed wiring around the outside of the house.
"Maybe we can sneak by," Drake whispered to Launchpad as they drew closer. But he had no such luck; Herb turned as they approached, and gave them both a hearty wave.
"Howdy, neighbours!" he bellowed, and waddled up to meet them. "Boy, you two sure picked a nice day for a walk, huh? Weatherman said it's s'posed ta get up near a hunnerd degrees today an' that's too hot fer me!"
"Yeah, it's hot alright, Herb," Drake agreed quickly. "Probably best if we both get inside to our separate residences and just crank up the air conditioners without wasting time socializing." He moved to step past his portly neighbour, but met with little success. "Uh... s'cuse me."
"Well, I'm gettin' some security systems put in, m'self," said Herb, as though they'd been talking home renovation prior to that statement. He indicated the front of his house. "All those wire doohickeys. Thought I oughta have it done by perfessionals, make sure it's done right, ya know? You heard about all those burglaries, huh Spud?"
"Yeah, the Liquidator ones?" Launchpad chimed in, and failed to notice the dirty look Drake gave him. "Sure, they've been all over the news!"
"That's what I'm talkin' about!" said Herb cheerfully. "An' so I went out an' got one o' those little waterproof babies, ya know? An' guess how many times it went off last week. G'wan, guess, Drakester!"
He elbowed Drake in what was evidently meant as an encouragement. Drake, his face set in sullen gloom, stumbled and then regained his balance. "Tell me. I'm dying to know," he deadpanned.
"Three times!" It was hard to tell, but Herb seemed oddly proud of this fact. "Neighbourhood just ain't safe anymore, Spud, I tell ya! If we hadn't'a had that alarm goin' off, who knows who mighta broken in!" Herb turned and pointed at his house again, nodding a mite. "So I figgered, time to go the whole twelve yards an' get the Tuo 2.0!"
"The what?" Drake snapped to attention.
"Latest in Tuo technology, Drakester! Sure, it costs a pretty penny but it covers yer whole house, an' you can rest easy knowin' nobody, but nobody is gettin' in without yer say-so! Can't put a price on safety, am I right?"
"Let me get this straight," said Drake, noticing for the first time the bars on the inside of Herb's windows and the metal plating that was being affixed to the walls. "'Horace Tuo' has released a new home security system?"
"The Tuo 2.0," Herb said, nodding.
"And it's a whole-house system that - what, puts the building on lock-down?"
"Nobody gets in when that baby's activated, that's what they say on the commercial!"
"When did this come out?" Drake demanded.
Herb shrugged. "Oh, I just saw the commercial this mornin', but after the last alarm went off I'd been thinkin' 'bout gettin' somethin' like this anyway. An' Tuo's a name ya can trust, ya know?"
Drake bit back his comment so hard that his teeth ground together. Launchpad patted him on the back. "Easy, DW," he said in a low voice.
"Excuse me, Herb," said Drake, after a few deep breaths. He pushed his way past the body blocking the sidewalk, and stalked towards his house.
"Hey, Drakester! If you wanna get one'a these yerself, I can getcha a referral discount! Gimme a call an' I'll give ya my customer number!" Herb yelled after him. Drake slammed the door open and, if Launchpad hadn't been following him, would have slammed it shut with equal ferocity.