Enough Chapter 21: "Perfect June? What?!"
You can already tell something's gonna happen to June, can't you? XD
Now officially having completed his battle training for the week, Louie ducked around the corner of the hallway to where the egghead quarters were. In this part of the vast and wide FOWL HQ, the walls were red with black floors. The doors were white with room numbers on them. A large potted fern bush sat next to one of the rooms.
Eggheads were probably the stupidest of FOWL workers, so Louie figured it would be the easiest to get something out of them.
"Guess what?" One of them bragged to the other one, "Look at me! Remember the kids who discovered the fake versions of the videos on Bradford's phone? He gave it to me for me to keep it temporarily. But he never took it back. Look at the cool games on here!" he showed it to his buddy, who grabbed it with his mouth and slobbered on it like a dog. The obviously smarter (though by a small degree) egghead grabbed the phone, "hey!"
Louie watched as he pocketed it and started walking away. Louie, noticing he was getting away, stealthily moved closer and hid behind the fern plant, then reached from behind one of its leaves and pickpocketed the egghead.
"Yes!" Louie cheered silently. Just then, the plant tipped over. Louie immediately took action and stopped it from hitting the ground and making a loud noise.
The egghead looked right and left at the movement, but later shrugged and kept walking, making Louie sigh in relief. He took the phone into his room.
- Time Skip-
Louie fidgeted nervously with the phone in his hand, rubbing his fingers on the black the black case. He was inside his room, sitting on the red rug on the floor, legs extended out for comfort.
Bradford would kill him if he found out that he had gained access to his phone, and Louie was sure of it. Day after day Louie was just growing colder from the buzzard, and it wasn't helping that he had pickpocketed one of his henchmen for…what? Because June said so?! He winced at the name, remembering the last time when he saw her a few days ago when Bradford had taken her away.
What had happened to her? Had Bradford done something to her?! Louie nervously brought his finger to the phone screen, ready to look at what hidden secrets Bradford had on here that he didn't want him to find. Not being called a "Sharpie" without reason, Louie found the camera app in Bradford's phone and decided to look through the video files. Nothing really piqued his curiosity, until he came across two suspicious-looking videos.
"Louie! What did you do?" Donald squawked furiously at him. He was standing in the hallway of McDuck manor, Louie whining like a puppy next to him.
Louie curled his beak in interest at where this video was going.
"Look, I didn't mean to-"
Donald moved a couple inches to reveal a broken vase on the floor, "You broke this!"
"But I didn't mean to-!"
"To your room! Now!" Donald seethed.
Louie played the other video, which was nearly identical to the first one, except for a big twist, which was that everyone hadn't taken things that seriously. The duckling in black thought for a second that maybe these two events were separate events, but he scrapped the idea since they were way too alike to be separate events.
One of the videos was real, and the other one was clearly fake. Louie could see Donald slightly glitching in the first video, and he blinked, knowing that one was fake. Why hadn't he seen this before?! Anger bubbled inside the duckling like bubbling hot lava ready to erupt out of a volcano.
Bradford had faked the footage.
He thought it over for a minute, why would Bradford do this? Was he trying to use him?
"If I didn't fake the footage you'd probably still be suffering."
Louie stiffened, realizing that was still a valid concern. What if Bradford did it for good?
This wasn't enough evidence, so Louie decided to risk it for the biscuit and go back to Bradford's office. He trotted down the hallway, trying not be too fast since he didn't want to get himself in trouble for running and etiquette rule violations. At the same time, he tried to hurry because he knew Bradford might come into his office any minute, and this time he wasn't sure if he could come up with a proper excuse to get away. Finally finding the door leading to Bradford's office, he looked then right to make sure that no one was there, and pushed it open.
Rushing, the duckling threw open all the drawers attached to the large desk. His eyes caught on a small recording device in the shape of a cylinder. Knowing that it might be of use to him, Louie grabbed it and stuffed it in his pocket. Sheepishly stepping around the mess he made, Louie was just about to exit when he heard muffled speaking. At first, he thought that Bradford was here and spun around, latter to find out that he was the only person inside.
Instead, he could hear someone speaking from the room next to him. Despite having stayed at FOWL for a pretty long time now, Louie knew only some, more distinct rooms, (ie the study, library, training arena, lunchroom, etc) since FOWL was a very large organization. Pressing his face against the walls, he could tell that the person speaking was Bradford. Looking around, Louie found a small crack in the wall just big enough for his hand to fit through. He pulled out his phone and connected the recorder to it so that he could listen to the audio. Slipping the recorder through the hole and pushing it into the other room, he stepped away from it and held his phone up to his ear, turning the volume higher.
"…And that will be all of our budget-cuts." He heard Bradford conclude.
"Uh, one question? How come donuts don't count as a mandatory supply?" An egghead asked.
Louie pictured Bradford rubbing his temple in annoyance at that remark.
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." He snapped.
Louie listened as they talked about boring business stuff, and he rolled his eyes, thinking this was hopeless.
"…Wait, shouldn't you get the training rooms ready? You know, for the agents?" Another egghead asked.
"Oh yeah, like the emo kid!" The other one laughed and elbowed his friend.
Bradford's hands curled into fists. (or at least Louie thought they would, obviously not being able to see him had disadvantages)
"Don't call him that, he might hear you! And that would ruin everything I've done." Bradford chuckled, "It's easy, really. He's so easy to manipulate. The boy's essentially my puppet. He does everything I want, and doesn't even question me."
Louie tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it stayed there, hard as a rock. Not being able to contain himself, the duckling burst into the meeting room.
"L-Louie?" Bradford stammered, yellow eyes widening in alarm. Now that Louie could actually see them now, he noticed they were in a room with white walls and a large marbled desk in the middle where two other vultures and a few eggheads sat seated on brown leather chairs, "H-how much did you hear?"
"I…" Louie lied, "Nothing. I didn't hear anything." Louie watched as the evil buzzard's tense face expression relaxed.
"Well, alright. Oh! And I'm going to see what the prisoners are doing, would you like to go with me." His eyes gleamed, "We could teach them a little…lesson." The last word sent a shiver down his spine.
Louie forced himself to agree, feeling sick to his stomach while he walked out of the room and into the hallway with the person he once looked up to greatly. Now, all of his respect and admiration was gone.
Bradford led the way, pausing in front of the automated doors, which opened to reveal his brothers and Webby crammed together in a cell. Della was in the one next to them.
The only duck who wasn't in the room, was June.
Louie started to panic, though trying not to show it visibly, "Where's June?!"
"The yellow one?" Bradford raised an eyebrow then chuckled as three eggheads shouldered her into the room. To Louie's surprise, June didn't fight the eggheads. Her hood was pulled all the way down, covering her face. Only her bill showed.
"She put up so much of a fight, I had to get three eggheads to wrangle her instead of two." Bradford's voice was silky-sounding, and it made Louie's heart pound inside him just wondering what would happen next.
Put. As in past-tense.
Bradford looked around, doing this movement ever so slowly. He reached for the nearest shelf, where a diamond rested on a nearby shelf.
"I'd never tried this gimmick on a child before. So you want to know what I did?" Bradford smirked. Louie wanted to talk, but he couldn't. He wanted to move, but he felt paralyzed.
Bradford blissfully played with the diamond in his hands. He abruptly stopped, and his smirk widened as he pulled down June's hood. Her eyes were bright green, glowing like Della's.
"Isn't this awesome?!" Bradford let out a maniacal laugh, his calm demeanor suddenly disappearing, "We can control EVERYONE and EVERYTHING! The whole WORLD will do what I say! What WE say!"
June smiled and grabbed the edge of her hoodie like a skirt, speaking in a high-pitched tone of voice, "Oh gosh Louie, you're so handsome and talented and smart! I'm just a little girl, ladadadadada- or whatever-" Bradford rolled his eyes then continued, "Don't you like me better this way? I'm the June that'll never let you down! I'm the June that'll always compliment you, that'll ALWAYS be your friend no matter what!"
Tears streamed down Louie's face, "I hate you!"
Bradford furrowed his brow, "What do you mean? Isn't this what you wanted all along?"
Louie ignored him, "They were right! You manipulated me! You-!" In a state of fury, Louie threw himself onto Bradford, only to be dragged off by two eggheads.
"I QUIT!" Louie screamed.
Bradford clicked his tongue, "It's bit too late for that now, Llewellyn Duck."
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