From the Outside Looking In
By: americananime
Chapter Two
A/N: AA's been a bad girl, making people beg and wait. *head hangs* *hands all her virtucookies over to the great virtucookie master of the internet* Bad Llama. *slaps self on hand* Happy V-Day + Valentine's Day. If you celebrate neither, happy day anyway. :) Oh, yes, there's a bit of religion in this chapter; Christian religion. If you don't like that, I suppose you could either skip it or hit the back button, but I'd recommend you'd read it; you might learn something.
Disclaimer: *sounding something like a zombie* I own nothing. Disney and Coca Cola own everything. Jean Gray is the weakest link. Good Bye
* * *
Nosedive's eyes opened slowly, and waking sense came even slower. For a while, all he knew was that he was in pain. He saw some sort of foggy dream world in front of his eyes, which seemed to be covered in glaze and smudged all over.
"I know the brat has to be around here somewhere. I saw 'em come in," Said a voice above him. Dive then tried to wake himself, and soon he could hear footsteps above him.
He crawled into the darkest corner of the hideout, pushing some old, dusty comics out of his way. He held his breath as Wraith opened the door with magic, and Chameleon climbed inside.
"I don't see nothin' down here," The green Saurian said. Wraith's head poked down, showing distaste for the low ceilinged room that spanned for most of the length of Dive's room.
"In that corner, the comic books. Get them!" Wraith barked. Nosedive, with some sort of animal instinct new that they would catch him in a matter of minutes.
"They've been recently disturbed." Chameleon crept nearer to Nosedive's dark hiding spot, and grabbed his ankle.
"I got 'em!" The Saurian shouted.
Nosedive twisted away, trying at all costs to get away from both Saurians. He knew it was hopeless to resist, but somehow it was impossible not to.
They caught him in a number of minutes, putting him in front of Dragonus. The large red saurian smiled in sheer pleasure, the malice of his thoughts written all over his face.
Nosedive maintained a harsh glare that showed he wasn't giving up as his insides turned within him. Panic struggled with reason inside his head; reason and willpower won over, for once. Thank Heaven.
"You honestly thought you could get away hiding in the same building as one such as myself?" Dragonus leered, a self-satisfied smirk written over his face. Nosedive growled, and tried to lung forward and out of Siege's grip.
"So, where are your other ducky teammates? I suppose they're in here somewhere too? Oh, wait, they're dead." Dragonus's smile grew larger as shock resistered on Nosedive's face.
"They were stupid enough to all stand outside in one place, right where I had bombs and everything else, the idiots. Quite a few cops were taken out with them, too." Another smirk that Nosedive couldn't stand. Now he was blind with fury, knowing that he had nothing left and he had to either put a stop to the dictator's plans or die trying.
"The rest of the earth, and the miserable humans that inhabit it, will all soon be gone to make way for a better, more powerful race to rule it!"
"Only to destroy it, like you did your own planet?" Dive spat. He'd learned a good deal of history; he was a lot smarter than most people would think by glancing at him. The Saurians had constantly been having civil wars braking out over the entire planet of Saurina, until the race virtually destroyed themselves, and the once beautiful planet had become no more than a shadow of what it had once been. Thus, the Saurians had set out on their first venture, eventually becoming feared conquers throughout the Galaxy.
"If it is my pleasure!" He roared, fire coming out his nostrils and lunging at Dive. Siege, wisely, stepped away as his master flew into a fit of rage, knocking the boy around with all his might, shoving drones out of the way and destroying unimportant pieces of equipment.
Nosedive, by the time Dragonus was through, was nothing more than a live rag doll. Actually, it was hard to say if he even was alive at the point when the Saurian was through. He had passed out during the beating, and he was bleeding in several places that didn't look good.
"Lord Dragonus," Wraith appeared out of the shadows, bringing the musty smell of old books and scrolls with him.
Dragonus turned to him, growling and giving looks that threatened a second fit of rage on his most trusted advisor.
"What?" He ask.
"Lord Dragonus, the boy is the weak link; we must keep him alive." Finally Dragonus nodded in consent.
"Keep him in comfort," He commanded his two other minions. Chameleon and Siege were extremely confused, but they roughly dragged Nosedive back to a guest room that housed nothing that could possibly be dangerous. They checked all around for secret passages and the like, but none turned up. So, feeling they had done their duty, they left and locked the door soundly behind them.
Nosedive was awake in a few hours, or at least what tone might vaguely considered being awake. He was caught somewhere in a dream world, seeing past events; or maybe they were events yet to come.
It was just like Puckworld, just like it, only they were humans, so many of them. He shuddered again, afraid, unconsciously curling into a small ball as his head bled onto his pillow.
He rocked back and forth, wishing only for the comfort of his brother. Coughs came out of his mouth, coughs and blood. He remained in that state for hours, or days, rocking back and forth and dreaming of some sort of Holocaust, mixed with memories and longings for his brother and his parents. He hadn't wished for his parents in a very long time, nor had he been homesick for a very long time.
But right now, his family looked like the best thing in the world to him, beside God. How he would like to be with Jesus and his mother and father, and Wildwing too. Maybe even Canard.
He swallowed again, and knew he had to be brave. He sat up, feeling things spin until they snapped into place. He saw what room he was in, and gasp. It was the guest room; the soundproof, shock proof, completely locked guest room.
The very small, very white guest room. He knew he was trapped. He locked over to the window, which was covered in a pane that was bolted to the wall.
He gulped, looking out over the city and the woods toward the back of the pond. He shook his head, holding it slowly and gently inspecting each of his wounds in the little blurred reflection that showed him himself in a little blurred way. In a far away way. In a different, happier place, maybe.
He called his thoughts back to the present, and set about ripping sheets. He wrapped one around his head, which had been gashed, thanking God and Tanya that he had taken those medical lessons from his scientific friend. While he worked, he looked and thought about any way that he could possibly get out.
This room was a sound place, one that would be hard to escape if Dragonus didn't want him too. Before he could come up with any sort of a plan, the doors opened with a hiss and Wraith stood in front of him. The old Saurian inspected Nosedive's crude medical work, shaking his head and muttering something that Nosedive thought was either a spell or a prayer.
Nosedive backed against the wall, hoping that Wraith didn't try anything on him. 'Please God, help me,' He thought, in the back of his head, offering up his own prayer to Heaven.
Wraith grabbed Nosedive gently and sat him down on the bed, tending to him in a more old fashioned way of medicine than Nosedive would think. Slowly the cuts and bruises were cleaned.
"Why are you keeping me alive?" Nosedive wasn't sure why he ask the question. Somehow, he wasn't even sure that it was him who ask the question.
Wraith glanced up from his work on Nosedive's arm, staring at the young duck hard.
"You are worth more than any singular member of the team. Because, don't you know, a weakness is more important to the enemy than the strength."
Nosedive didn't know what Wraith meant, and it made him feel uneasy.
* * *
The rain fell down outside the cafe that the ducks had gone to get some rest. Mallory looked uneasy; Tanya looked stressed, Duke had lost his smooth talk, Grin was acting like a normal person, and Wildwing was crying in the back booth.
Tanya leaned against a wall, breathing deeply, trying to order her thoughts. She shook her head several times, to some thought unknown to even herself, and her nerves were as ruffled as her feathers. Dragonus could attack at any time, anywhere he wanted. Out of security measures, she had installed a program to hack into national databases any time out of defense or boredom. Arguably, DrakeOne was a better hacking computer than America's main data base.
She chewed on her nails as a waitress brought her some coffee, which was complimentary.
Duke watched out the windows as the restlessness in him began to grow. He drank his black coffee slowly, feeling feelings that he had locked away for a long time. He tasted salt with his coffee, and realized that a tear had dropped into his cup. He was reliving the last couple of weeks, how he had kind of taken Nosedive in as a brother, or maybe a son.
He heard muffled sobs coming from the booth behind him; he knew it was Wildwing. He found it extremely scary that one of his best friends -- and his leader -- was now having a mental breakdown. He stood up, stretching his limbs, and realized that the cafe was cleared out.
It was somewhere around midnight, and he knew it was way passed closing time for the small restaurant; the staff didn't want to kick them out. The fact was, this was truly a crisis, and it was on every news station. Duke saw by looking at the door that it was locked; the cafe staff knew that it wasn't a good idea to let the press go wild on a very, very stressed team.
He turned to the booth behind him, and slid down in it, across from Wildwing. For a moment, the younger drake didn't look up, but then he met Duke's eyes.
They both understood how the other was feeling, because they were feeling the same, on different levels.
"Wildwing?" Duke's normally smooth, velvety voice was raspy, and at the edge of breaking. Wildwing's blue eyes had rims of red and his shoulders shook slightly.
"C'mon, you know the kid," The older drake continued.
"You know the Saurians," Wildwing replied in a broken voice. Duke shook his head, slowly.
"Ye of little faith; C'mon, Dive's got wild angels and you know it. He always makes it without even getting a scar to show from it."
The two looked at each other with a wide grin.
"You know, there was this one time when we were really little and Nosedive jumped off a two story roof for five bucks," Wildwing laughed as Duke paled.
"He jumped, and he landed on the lawn furniture. He's always had that kind of weird luck," Wildwing shrugged. They both looked at each other, grinning. The same weird luck had also taught him how to manage their plane within minutes and had gotten him with Wildwing at the exact right time in the work camps; Maybe there were angels involved.
"So, did he get the five bucks?"
"Yup; and blew it all on Drake Ducain comics." Wildwing grinned and sighed.
"Sounds true," Duke grinned back, and gave Wildwing a firm squeeze on the arm, and then he walked back to his own booth, leaning against it with a deep, worried sigh. Were Dive's "Wild Angels" with him now?
* * *
Nosedive was brought before Dragonus again a few hours after Wraith had tended to his wounds properly.
"So, your brother is dead. If you ever escape, what do you plan to do, Nosedive Dawson Drake?" Dragonus demanded. Nosedive mentally wondered why Dragonus knew his middle name, and then dismissed the thought as unimportant.
"I plan to defeat you," Nosedive said, defiantly, diving for a small space that was just between DrakeOne and the wall. He shimmied through the crack in the wall, loosing a shoe in the process.
His loose Mortal Combat shirt clung to him as sweat and dust gathered on his body as he continued to travel right and down. If he kept heading this way ... he felt the texture change under him, all though he couldn't see anything through the darkness.
It was a place where the insulation had failed; a fault in the HQ's seemingly faultless plans. He was miles below the city of Anaheim, in a place that Duke had discovered weeks ago.
There was a small room, something like a cavern, and he entered it soon. There were matches, dry wood, and an extra commlink stashed here.
The commlink, as well as the wood, had gotten wet by the recent hurricane. Nosedive closed his eyes, trying to maintain his temper.
'What would Wing do?' He ask himself, wiping the sweat from his brow. He dug around some more, and he hit pay dirt; batteries in an undamaged container, flashlights that hadn't been wet, and something that looked like army rations packs.
He opened the packs, realizing that he hadn't eaten since early morning sometime yesterday, and ate hungrily whatever he could find. He slowed as he realized that he might be here a while, and turned on the flashlight.
Someone had been here recently, or so it appeared. The cave's dirt walls had been smoothed, and there were a few pictures and trinkets ornamenting it. He knew that this must be the little retreat Duke slipped into his conversations every once and a while.
He leaned on his back, grabbing the commlink and staring at it. He had run a broken ArowWing before; why couldn't he fix a commlink? He saw that the wires weren't connected properly, and that the batteries were overloaded.
He tried to think of a powersorce, and looked at the second flashlight he had found. It only took a few seconds to remove the batteries from that and he rewired it ... the only problem was, he didn't have a connection with Wildwing or any of the other ducks -- he was talking to every live television and radio station on the planet!
"Hello, this is Nosedive Drake. I repeat, this is Nosedive Drake. I have been held hostage for some time in The Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks (Hey, yo, if you're ever in town, come watch us play! The divester rules!). I am currently in a small underground room directly below the Anaheim mall. If anyone can find me or rescue me, please do. Tell my brother Wildwing that I am all right." He watched the comm for any response, but the news stations apparently couldn't respond to him.
Instead, as they usually did, the press had a field day.
* * *
Wildwing watched the screen as his little brother's earnest, dirty, ragged and injured face appeared on the screen.
"Hello, this is Nosedive Drake," He began. Wildwing listened to his brother's message. "Tell my brother Wildwing that am all right." It ended. There were traces of tears on Nosedive's face as he peered into what must be a commlink rewired to a television network.
The cafe's TV was turned up to its full sound.
"This was the message transmitted by underage NHL star, Nosedive Drake, who had been held hostage for the past twenty-four hours by some sort of Alien. We are puzzled about his current locations, but reporters are trying to contact Wildwing Drake, Nosedive's older brother, for details."
Wildwing didn't even hear the end of the broadcast as he dove out the door, with the rest of the ducks close behind.
The migrator felt a bit empty without Nosedive when they flew down the streets to the mall, deciding to first look under Captain Comics.
The FBI's HR team was already there, taking the store apart. Wildwing didn't have to do so -- he knew exactly where to look.
He walked over to the shelf that held Archie Comics, and knocked them away, sending issues of Sonic the Hedgehog reeling out of the way. There it was. A large gaping staircase that he had once overheard Thrash and Mookie talking about. No one had ever gone down it before because it was rumored to be haunted, but Wildwing knew that that would be where his little brother was. This decision wasn't only based on the fact that he knew logically that this was the only passage in the Mall, but also by some primitive instinct that he had for finding his brother. He dove down the dirt staircase, as the rest of the team (except Grin) followed.
Grin, who was much too big for the tunnel, stood guard.
Wildwing's thundering footsteps and choked sobs could be heard by Nosedive a mile away.
His older brother came dashing down the stairs, and the two met with a firm, grasping hug. Nosedive cried as much as Wildwing, and they were both too glad to see each other for words.
Duke grinned, secretly congratulating himself for creating this secret place where Nosedive had taken refuge.
"Now," Mallory said, her hands on her hips.
Nosedive grinned through his tears.
"We have to kick some lizard butt."
TBC
A/N: No, it's not the end. Only the reuniting between Nosedive and Wildwing. I think this chapter is a little lame, but then that's me. BTW, Thank Nightbloom (I can't remember what she goes as here on FF.net) for planting the idea of Nosedive beening the weakness in my head; I've been trying to play that point in some of my fics without looking like I'm ripping her off. TTFN.
Preview: How will the ducks regain their HQ? Is Dive out of the woods yet? Find out in the conclusion of "From the Outside Looking In".
By: americananime
Chapter Two
A/N: AA's been a bad girl, making people beg and wait. *head hangs* *hands all her virtucookies over to the great virtucookie master of the internet* Bad Llama. *slaps self on hand* Happy V-Day + Valentine's Day. If you celebrate neither, happy day anyway. :) Oh, yes, there's a bit of religion in this chapter; Christian religion. If you don't like that, I suppose you could either skip it or hit the back button, but I'd recommend you'd read it; you might learn something.
Disclaimer: *sounding something like a zombie* I own nothing. Disney and Coca Cola own everything. Jean Gray is the weakest link. Good Bye
* * *
Nosedive's eyes opened slowly, and waking sense came even slower. For a while, all he knew was that he was in pain. He saw some sort of foggy dream world in front of his eyes, which seemed to be covered in glaze and smudged all over.
"I know the brat has to be around here somewhere. I saw 'em come in," Said a voice above him. Dive then tried to wake himself, and soon he could hear footsteps above him.
He crawled into the darkest corner of the hideout, pushing some old, dusty comics out of his way. He held his breath as Wraith opened the door with magic, and Chameleon climbed inside.
"I don't see nothin' down here," The green Saurian said. Wraith's head poked down, showing distaste for the low ceilinged room that spanned for most of the length of Dive's room.
"In that corner, the comic books. Get them!" Wraith barked. Nosedive, with some sort of animal instinct new that they would catch him in a matter of minutes.
"They've been recently disturbed." Chameleon crept nearer to Nosedive's dark hiding spot, and grabbed his ankle.
"I got 'em!" The Saurian shouted.
Nosedive twisted away, trying at all costs to get away from both Saurians. He knew it was hopeless to resist, but somehow it was impossible not to.
They caught him in a number of minutes, putting him in front of Dragonus. The large red saurian smiled in sheer pleasure, the malice of his thoughts written all over his face.
Nosedive maintained a harsh glare that showed he wasn't giving up as his insides turned within him. Panic struggled with reason inside his head; reason and willpower won over, for once. Thank Heaven.
"You honestly thought you could get away hiding in the same building as one such as myself?" Dragonus leered, a self-satisfied smirk written over his face. Nosedive growled, and tried to lung forward and out of Siege's grip.
"So, where are your other ducky teammates? I suppose they're in here somewhere too? Oh, wait, they're dead." Dragonus's smile grew larger as shock resistered on Nosedive's face.
"They were stupid enough to all stand outside in one place, right where I had bombs and everything else, the idiots. Quite a few cops were taken out with them, too." Another smirk that Nosedive couldn't stand. Now he was blind with fury, knowing that he had nothing left and he had to either put a stop to the dictator's plans or die trying.
"The rest of the earth, and the miserable humans that inhabit it, will all soon be gone to make way for a better, more powerful race to rule it!"
"Only to destroy it, like you did your own planet?" Dive spat. He'd learned a good deal of history; he was a lot smarter than most people would think by glancing at him. The Saurians had constantly been having civil wars braking out over the entire planet of Saurina, until the race virtually destroyed themselves, and the once beautiful planet had become no more than a shadow of what it had once been. Thus, the Saurians had set out on their first venture, eventually becoming feared conquers throughout the Galaxy.
"If it is my pleasure!" He roared, fire coming out his nostrils and lunging at Dive. Siege, wisely, stepped away as his master flew into a fit of rage, knocking the boy around with all his might, shoving drones out of the way and destroying unimportant pieces of equipment.
Nosedive, by the time Dragonus was through, was nothing more than a live rag doll. Actually, it was hard to say if he even was alive at the point when the Saurian was through. He had passed out during the beating, and he was bleeding in several places that didn't look good.
"Lord Dragonus," Wraith appeared out of the shadows, bringing the musty smell of old books and scrolls with him.
Dragonus turned to him, growling and giving looks that threatened a second fit of rage on his most trusted advisor.
"What?" He ask.
"Lord Dragonus, the boy is the weak link; we must keep him alive." Finally Dragonus nodded in consent.
"Keep him in comfort," He commanded his two other minions. Chameleon and Siege were extremely confused, but they roughly dragged Nosedive back to a guest room that housed nothing that could possibly be dangerous. They checked all around for secret passages and the like, but none turned up. So, feeling they had done their duty, they left and locked the door soundly behind them.
Nosedive was awake in a few hours, or at least what tone might vaguely considered being awake. He was caught somewhere in a dream world, seeing past events; or maybe they were events yet to come.
It was just like Puckworld, just like it, only they were humans, so many of them. He shuddered again, afraid, unconsciously curling into a small ball as his head bled onto his pillow.
He rocked back and forth, wishing only for the comfort of his brother. Coughs came out of his mouth, coughs and blood. He remained in that state for hours, or days, rocking back and forth and dreaming of some sort of Holocaust, mixed with memories and longings for his brother and his parents. He hadn't wished for his parents in a very long time, nor had he been homesick for a very long time.
But right now, his family looked like the best thing in the world to him, beside God. How he would like to be with Jesus and his mother and father, and Wildwing too. Maybe even Canard.
He swallowed again, and knew he had to be brave. He sat up, feeling things spin until they snapped into place. He saw what room he was in, and gasp. It was the guest room; the soundproof, shock proof, completely locked guest room.
The very small, very white guest room. He knew he was trapped. He locked over to the window, which was covered in a pane that was bolted to the wall.
He gulped, looking out over the city and the woods toward the back of the pond. He shook his head, holding it slowly and gently inspecting each of his wounds in the little blurred reflection that showed him himself in a little blurred way. In a far away way. In a different, happier place, maybe.
He called his thoughts back to the present, and set about ripping sheets. He wrapped one around his head, which had been gashed, thanking God and Tanya that he had taken those medical lessons from his scientific friend. While he worked, he looked and thought about any way that he could possibly get out.
This room was a sound place, one that would be hard to escape if Dragonus didn't want him too. Before he could come up with any sort of a plan, the doors opened with a hiss and Wraith stood in front of him. The old Saurian inspected Nosedive's crude medical work, shaking his head and muttering something that Nosedive thought was either a spell or a prayer.
Nosedive backed against the wall, hoping that Wraith didn't try anything on him. 'Please God, help me,' He thought, in the back of his head, offering up his own prayer to Heaven.
Wraith grabbed Nosedive gently and sat him down on the bed, tending to him in a more old fashioned way of medicine than Nosedive would think. Slowly the cuts and bruises were cleaned.
"Why are you keeping me alive?" Nosedive wasn't sure why he ask the question. Somehow, he wasn't even sure that it was him who ask the question.
Wraith glanced up from his work on Nosedive's arm, staring at the young duck hard.
"You are worth more than any singular member of the team. Because, don't you know, a weakness is more important to the enemy than the strength."
Nosedive didn't know what Wraith meant, and it made him feel uneasy.
* * *
The rain fell down outside the cafe that the ducks had gone to get some rest. Mallory looked uneasy; Tanya looked stressed, Duke had lost his smooth talk, Grin was acting like a normal person, and Wildwing was crying in the back booth.
Tanya leaned against a wall, breathing deeply, trying to order her thoughts. She shook her head several times, to some thought unknown to even herself, and her nerves were as ruffled as her feathers. Dragonus could attack at any time, anywhere he wanted. Out of security measures, she had installed a program to hack into national databases any time out of defense or boredom. Arguably, DrakeOne was a better hacking computer than America's main data base.
She chewed on her nails as a waitress brought her some coffee, which was complimentary.
Duke watched out the windows as the restlessness in him began to grow. He drank his black coffee slowly, feeling feelings that he had locked away for a long time. He tasted salt with his coffee, and realized that a tear had dropped into his cup. He was reliving the last couple of weeks, how he had kind of taken Nosedive in as a brother, or maybe a son.
He heard muffled sobs coming from the booth behind him; he knew it was Wildwing. He found it extremely scary that one of his best friends -- and his leader -- was now having a mental breakdown. He stood up, stretching his limbs, and realized that the cafe was cleared out.
It was somewhere around midnight, and he knew it was way passed closing time for the small restaurant; the staff didn't want to kick them out. The fact was, this was truly a crisis, and it was on every news station. Duke saw by looking at the door that it was locked; the cafe staff knew that it wasn't a good idea to let the press go wild on a very, very stressed team.
He turned to the booth behind him, and slid down in it, across from Wildwing. For a moment, the younger drake didn't look up, but then he met Duke's eyes.
They both understood how the other was feeling, because they were feeling the same, on different levels.
"Wildwing?" Duke's normally smooth, velvety voice was raspy, and at the edge of breaking. Wildwing's blue eyes had rims of red and his shoulders shook slightly.
"C'mon, you know the kid," The older drake continued.
"You know the Saurians," Wildwing replied in a broken voice. Duke shook his head, slowly.
"Ye of little faith; C'mon, Dive's got wild angels and you know it. He always makes it without even getting a scar to show from it."
The two looked at each other with a wide grin.
"You know, there was this one time when we were really little and Nosedive jumped off a two story roof for five bucks," Wildwing laughed as Duke paled.
"He jumped, and he landed on the lawn furniture. He's always had that kind of weird luck," Wildwing shrugged. They both looked at each other, grinning. The same weird luck had also taught him how to manage their plane within minutes and had gotten him with Wildwing at the exact right time in the work camps; Maybe there were angels involved.
"So, did he get the five bucks?"
"Yup; and blew it all on Drake Ducain comics." Wildwing grinned and sighed.
"Sounds true," Duke grinned back, and gave Wildwing a firm squeeze on the arm, and then he walked back to his own booth, leaning against it with a deep, worried sigh. Were Dive's "Wild Angels" with him now?
* * *
Nosedive was brought before Dragonus again a few hours after Wraith had tended to his wounds properly.
"So, your brother is dead. If you ever escape, what do you plan to do, Nosedive Dawson Drake?" Dragonus demanded. Nosedive mentally wondered why Dragonus knew his middle name, and then dismissed the thought as unimportant.
"I plan to defeat you," Nosedive said, defiantly, diving for a small space that was just between DrakeOne and the wall. He shimmied through the crack in the wall, loosing a shoe in the process.
His loose Mortal Combat shirt clung to him as sweat and dust gathered on his body as he continued to travel right and down. If he kept heading this way ... he felt the texture change under him, all though he couldn't see anything through the darkness.
It was a place where the insulation had failed; a fault in the HQ's seemingly faultless plans. He was miles below the city of Anaheim, in a place that Duke had discovered weeks ago.
There was a small room, something like a cavern, and he entered it soon. There were matches, dry wood, and an extra commlink stashed here.
The commlink, as well as the wood, had gotten wet by the recent hurricane. Nosedive closed his eyes, trying to maintain his temper.
'What would Wing do?' He ask himself, wiping the sweat from his brow. He dug around some more, and he hit pay dirt; batteries in an undamaged container, flashlights that hadn't been wet, and something that looked like army rations packs.
He opened the packs, realizing that he hadn't eaten since early morning sometime yesterday, and ate hungrily whatever he could find. He slowed as he realized that he might be here a while, and turned on the flashlight.
Someone had been here recently, or so it appeared. The cave's dirt walls had been smoothed, and there were a few pictures and trinkets ornamenting it. He knew that this must be the little retreat Duke slipped into his conversations every once and a while.
He leaned on his back, grabbing the commlink and staring at it. He had run a broken ArowWing before; why couldn't he fix a commlink? He saw that the wires weren't connected properly, and that the batteries were overloaded.
He tried to think of a powersorce, and looked at the second flashlight he had found. It only took a few seconds to remove the batteries from that and he rewired it ... the only problem was, he didn't have a connection with Wildwing or any of the other ducks -- he was talking to every live television and radio station on the planet!
"Hello, this is Nosedive Drake. I repeat, this is Nosedive Drake. I have been held hostage for some time in The Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks (Hey, yo, if you're ever in town, come watch us play! The divester rules!). I am currently in a small underground room directly below the Anaheim mall. If anyone can find me or rescue me, please do. Tell my brother Wildwing that I am all right." He watched the comm for any response, but the news stations apparently couldn't respond to him.
Instead, as they usually did, the press had a field day.
* * *
Wildwing watched the screen as his little brother's earnest, dirty, ragged and injured face appeared on the screen.
"Hello, this is Nosedive Drake," He began. Wildwing listened to his brother's message. "Tell my brother Wildwing that am all right." It ended. There were traces of tears on Nosedive's face as he peered into what must be a commlink rewired to a television network.
The cafe's TV was turned up to its full sound.
"This was the message transmitted by underage NHL star, Nosedive Drake, who had been held hostage for the past twenty-four hours by some sort of Alien. We are puzzled about his current locations, but reporters are trying to contact Wildwing Drake, Nosedive's older brother, for details."
Wildwing didn't even hear the end of the broadcast as he dove out the door, with the rest of the ducks close behind.
The migrator felt a bit empty without Nosedive when they flew down the streets to the mall, deciding to first look under Captain Comics.
The FBI's HR team was already there, taking the store apart. Wildwing didn't have to do so -- he knew exactly where to look.
He walked over to the shelf that held Archie Comics, and knocked them away, sending issues of Sonic the Hedgehog reeling out of the way. There it was. A large gaping staircase that he had once overheard Thrash and Mookie talking about. No one had ever gone down it before because it was rumored to be haunted, but Wildwing knew that that would be where his little brother was. This decision wasn't only based on the fact that he knew logically that this was the only passage in the Mall, but also by some primitive instinct that he had for finding his brother. He dove down the dirt staircase, as the rest of the team (except Grin) followed.
Grin, who was much too big for the tunnel, stood guard.
Wildwing's thundering footsteps and choked sobs could be heard by Nosedive a mile away.
His older brother came dashing down the stairs, and the two met with a firm, grasping hug. Nosedive cried as much as Wildwing, and they were both too glad to see each other for words.
Duke grinned, secretly congratulating himself for creating this secret place where Nosedive had taken refuge.
"Now," Mallory said, her hands on her hips.
Nosedive grinned through his tears.
"We have to kick some lizard butt."
TBC
A/N: No, it's not the end. Only the reuniting between Nosedive and Wildwing. I think this chapter is a little lame, but then that's me. BTW, Thank Nightbloom (I can't remember what she goes as here on FF.net) for planting the idea of Nosedive beening the weakness in my head; I've been trying to play that point in some of my fics without looking like I'm ripping her off. TTFN.
Preview: How will the ducks regain their HQ? Is Dive out of the woods yet? Find out in the conclusion of "From the Outside Looking In".