A "Darkwing Duck" Fanfic by Rydia Erdrick Landale (aka Captain Chaotica!!)
Chapter Two: "Only a Lad"
"Well, I was looking for something destructive to do...and here comes the perfect idea, right into my lap! Tonight I'll get to have the fun of destroying a school all over again! BWAHAHAHA! Ah, just like old times..." The homicidal maniac sat back in a beat-up old armchair as memory overtook him.
TWENTY YEARS EARLIER (AGAIN)...
Drake Mallard didn't have many friends and was generally disliked by the school population, thought of as a loser, a jerk, and a wimp--but he had always insisted, to himself and anybody else who would listen, that it wasn't really HIS fault--it was society's. To a certain extent, this was true. Growing up in the Negaverse hadn't been easy for "Drake the Dweeb", either...
The long slide downhill started in grade school, when he was beat up often, because he was small and therefore just made for hurting. Drake was basically a decent kid--a bit cowardly, but decent--but he had a hot temper lurking underneath his whimpering scaredy-cat exterior, and it kept getting him into trouble. If only he had kept his anger under control more of the time, things would've gotten better by the time he was further along in school. He was, after all, an intelligent boy--good in science and shop classes especially, and fairly athletic. He could have made something decent of his life.
But he was just too belligerent to know when he was beaten, too stubborn to know when to quit...and so the bullying continued. And got worse every year.
Moody and irritable pretty much all the time by this point, Drake only rarely bothered to do his homework, barely talked to anyone, and scraped through his classes only by the skin of his teeth. His parents became angry and lectured him frequently, but he refused to listen. They don't know what it's LIKE, he used to think, sulkily. THEY had FRIENDS when they were in school. THEY were NORMAL. And so, young Drake became thought of as a loser, a washout, a hopeless case, a lost cause--by EVERYBODY. Including his own parents.
Including himself.
That was what drove him to the brink of insanity, what made his anger so very intense--the fact that he considered HIMSELF to be a loser. He was deeply ashamed of himself, and the shame ate him up inside, causing him to become the jerk that everybody thought he was. Instead of fighting back against his bad image, he just gave up, stopped even trying anymore. If a foul-tempered creep who slacks off at everything was what they wanted, then that's what they would get.
One day, when he was a freshman in high school, Drake made his first contact with the criminal underground of St. Canard--not hard to do, as the criminals were basically in charge and made no attempt to hide themselves. Why should they? The police were totally inept, after all. He managed to buy some black-market hand-grenades with his saved-up allowance and took them home, intending to blow up the stadium during the school's next football game--but had an attack of conscience--or "chickened out", as his current-day self would put it--and hid the grenades in a box in the basement of his house, instead.
Over the years, there were many times when he got mad enough to want to blow something up, and went and bought some more weaponry from the black-market shops...but every time, he just couldn't go through with it. By his senior year in high school, he had quite the arsenal built up.
"And TONIGHT'S the time to use it!" snarled the 17-year-old Drake Mallard, as he stormed around his bedroom. The walls were painted black just because it annoyed his mom, adorned with posters of his favourite hard rock bands, and the floor was half-covered with old pizza boxes, but he didn't care. "Tonight, at the prom, when everybody will be having a great old time--everybody except ME that is--dancing slowly to cheesy pop songs, looking into each other's eyes, being all romantic and lovey-duvey in their fanciest clothes...THAT'S when I'll strike! When they'll least expect it! BWAHAHAHAHA!!"
Drake tromped into the basement and dragged the box of weaponry out from its hiding place behind old mattresses that the family had never gotten around to throwing out, panting as he did so, as the box was quite heavy. He started to strap a bandolier of bullets around himself...and stopped, thinking. "But of course, I'm just Drake the Dweeb, they probably won't take ME seriously, even if I DO show up with weapons blazing." His eye fell upon a piece of black cloth sticking out of another box, and he dropped the bandolier and went over to it. He tugged on the cloth, pulling more of it out--it was a black cape with a deep maroon lining. Drake then opened the box and discovered that it was full of old Halloween costumes. Interesting...
"Maybe I don't have to be Drake the Dweeb tonight. Maybe tonight, the school will be blown up by..." and his voice dropped to a truly chilling growl, "someone else..."
"I don't remember much of what happened right after I first woke up," said Megavolt, coming back to his own tale, "in fact, that's a big part of the problem--that I couldn't remember."
"Couldn't remember what?" questioned the Liquidator.
"Much of anything." responded Megavolt. He rinsed the empty coffee cup out in the sink. "Parts of it gradually came back to me later on, over the years, but...when I first woke up after that massive shock--there wasn't much of 'me' left..."
Darkness.
Fractured images.
Heat.
Pain.
Light...
Elmo Sputterspark clawed his way back to consciousness with much difficulty. It would have been easier to stay under forever...but the annoying tingling sensation in his hands and feet, which had fallen asleep due to the cable tied tightly around them, wouldn't leave him alone. The rat-boy's eyes fluttered open and he sat up, dizzily, in what was left of the science lab. Which...wasn't much. Most of the desks were incinerated into ashes or at the very least, smashed into pieces of kindling, there were blackened, twisted hunks of metal (whose original purpose it was impossible to tell) strewn about the room, and shattered glass from all the broken beakers and test tubes all over the floor. The distinctive smell of scorched carpet filled the air, and a giant hole in the wall was still smoking around the edges. The classroom had definitely seen better days.
"Where am I?" said Elmo, totally dazed. His memory was all foggy, it was hard to think. "How did I get here?" And then, finally: "WHO am I?"
Frightened, the young rat searched desperately back in his memory, thinking to himself, Of COURSE I know my own name, I mean, amnesia like that only happens in cheesy soap-operas, ha ha, I'm just a little confused at the moment, it'll pass...
It didn't. Try as he might, he just couldn't remember his own name, or...much of anything else. Panicked by now, he kept thinking harder, trying to remember. But no...not only could he not remember his name, he couldn't remember his family, where he lived, or anything of his past life! He vaguely remembered being different from others somehow...but that was it.
"Why am I tied up?" he said aloud, in alarm, as he finally noticed the electrical cable tied around himself. "Oh, no! Maybe I'm a dangerous lunatic! I could be ANYbody, after all! Well, I can't find out anything lying here...I have to get loose."
Elmo struggled as hard as he could, but it was no use--whoever had tied these things around him had known what they were doing. "Oh, come on!" he said, irritably, as he struggled one last time. "There's nobody else around to help me, I could be here for days for all I know! I HAVE to get loose!"
And suddenly, to his amazement, the wires unwound themselves and flew across the room.
"WHOAH!" said Elmo, staring at the wires as he stood up and brushed a few small metal objects off his clothes. "How did I DO that?" He put a hand to his head in thought, and felt...wait, his hair was poofy. He had a vague recollection of it being long and straight... He walked over to the nearest metal object that was still unburned/melted enough to have a reflective surface, and looked into it. Sure enough, the huge blast of electricity (which he DID remember--after all, it'd be hard to forget something like THAT) had somehow curled his hair, giving him a rather large Afro...but he had other things to worry about besides his appearance right now...like the fact that his clothes were on fire!
Quickly, Elmo threw himself to the ground and rolled back and forth to put out the flames. That's odd, he wondered. How'd THAT happen? This is all very peculiar...
He leaned against one of the metal objects...and leapt backwards in alarm as a bright arc of electricity suddenly leapt from him to the metal! "Yeesh, how much static did I build up for THAT to happen...?" he wondered. "But...it didn't hurt..."
Elmo leaned against the wall to collect his thoughts, lifting one hand to scratch his head, as that always helped him think--and a bolt of electricity arced out of his raised fingers to hit the light fixture in the ceiling. "WHAT the?!" He looked at his hand, suddenly frightened of his own body. "I...I seem to have the power to store electricity in myself like a battery, and..." he picked a piece of wreckage across the room for target practice, pointed his finger at it and the object completely disentegrated. "...release it at will...and maybe other abilities, too?"
He concentrated on the cable that had been used to tie him up, seeing if he could make it move as before, or had that been a fluke? Sure enough, the conducting copper wire responded to a combination of the electricity inside Elmo's body and his thoughts (telekinesis? he wondered) and snaked gracefully through the air. Now completely freaked out, Elmo raised his head and cried out, "What AM I?!"
Of course, there was no answer.
His eyes fell on one of the objects in the room that was still more or less intact--a comic book. He picked it up and vaguely started to read. "I get it..." murmured Elmo to himself, as he paged through the book. "I have superpowers, so I must be...a superHERO! Like this 'Captain Electron' character! Yes! That's it! And I must've been tied up here by an evil supervillian--YIKES!" He paused to throw the merrily blazing comic book on the floor and stomp on it.
"I don't know what I WAS, but that doesn't matter! What matters is how you live your life from now on, and from now on, MY life is going to be spent--" here Elmo struck a heroic pose, with his hand over his chest--"defending the innocent from the forces of evil!" He relaxed into a more normal pose. "Now, where's a good place to start defending..."
Elmo walked out into the corridor of the school as he thought, and saw that there were colourful decorations everywhere. "What's this?" he wondered. "Some kind of party going on here?" He looked around for clues, and finally noticed one of the posters for the prom. "Oh, yes! The prom! I remember something now! Yes...that's tonight, isn't it?" He looked at the nearest clock. It said 4:30 pm, but that meant nothing, as all the electricity in the school had been drained out by the experiment--he could've been unconscious for hours, for all he knew. Something else was nagging at the back of his brain, too, some recent memory...
"Wait!" he snapped his fingers, causing sparks to fly from them, "Didn't Drake Mallard say something about how soon, he was going to get everybody back, earlier today...? And if he's serious about that, then the perfect place for him to attack will be...at the prom! But I, Electron, will be there to foil his evil schemes--YOWEE!"
Elmo looked down at his clothes, which were now on fire again from when he had gestured with his hand on his chest. He stopped, dropped, and rolled--again--then stood up. It seemed he didn't have much control over the huge amount of electricity inside his body yet--it leaked out continuously, flared up on its own every time he felt a strong emotion--and quite frankly, gave him the heebie-jeebies. "But before the forces of good can thwart the forces of evil, they'll need some new clothes." Rubber ones, preferably...
"Drake, what are you doing down there?" came Mrs. Mallard's voice from up the basement stairs.
Drake Mallard quickly threw a bright yellow tuxedo blazer on over the bandolier of bullets he was wearing, stuffed the grenades in his pockets, and tossed the black, maroon-lined cape over the Tommy-gun, rifles, chainsaw, and bombs. "Just taking some old junk out of the basement, Mom." he called back.
"Good--that place could do with a little cleaning up, anyway." responded Mrs. Mallard, and went back to watching her favourite game show--having no idea that, later on that night, her son was to become a wanted criminal.
"No, not Electron, that's no good," murmured Elmo to himself as he walked through the halls of the school. A search of the premises had helped him somewhat--he was now wearing a pair of purple-tinted goggles that he'd found in the Shop class (to protect his eyes from all the bright sparks he was likely to give off from now on), and a pair of elbow-length, blue-green rubber gloves from the cupboard in the Home Ec. room. He still needed rubber clothes for his body, as what was left of his original outfit was now starting to smoulder without his touching it with ungloved hands, but he had no idea where to find something so bizzarre... "I can't just copy an existing superhero's name, I need my OWN name. Something to do with electricity, still, though...hmmm..."
He paused outside a door he didn't recognise and, curious, tried it. Locked. "Well, I hate to cause destruction like this, but--" he zapped the doors and they fell into dust. He walked through the door and down a stairwell into what turned out to be the school's fallout shelter. It hadn't been used much since the Red Scare of the '50s, so the door had been locked to keep the more degenerate type of students from running off and hiding in it.
Elmo searched idly through the old supplies, not expecting to find anything of interest. "New name..." he went back to his original train of thought as he searched. "Spark? Zap? Bolt? Nah, I don't really like any of those...hey, what's this?" He pulled out a bright yellow radiation suit, complete with helmet. For some reason, the entire thing was made of rubber--because it was better at blocking harmful things in general, he supposed. "Hmm, THIS is promising..."
Curiously, he tried the body part of the suit on, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it fit him perfectly--although it was a bit more form-fitting than you'd expect an environmental suit to be. "Must've been a prototype design. No wonder it was stored down here--nobody'd WANT it. And boy, talk about uncomfortable." He stood up, pulled at the jumpsuit a few times in a futile attempt to make it feel a little looser, tried very hard to ignore the weird feeling of rubber directly against his fur, then turned around and surveyed himself from all angles. "Not a bad effect, though...I really LOOK like a comic book superhero now. The only thing left is footwear." He kicked off what was left of his own smouldering socks and shoes and tried on the matching yellow boots that came with the radiation suit. To to his annoyance, they didn't fit--but a pair of boots from another suit, a blue-green one, did. Geez, who designed these things, a psychedelic clown? he wondered. He looked down at himself again. "No, wait, it still needs something else..."
On a whim, he pulled a contrasting dark blue belt off yet another of the strange suits and fastened around his waist. Perfect! he thought, looking at the full outfit.
"Now, I just need to find some formal-looking clothes to wear over this so I can be incognito at the prom until such time as I might be needed. And then, watch out, evildoers!" he gestured dramatically "GIGAWATT will be there!"
He stopped, and put his hand down. "No, that's too powerful. Sounds like I'm being arrogant--a billion watts, indeed. Maybe I should tone it down a notch..."
Elmo wandered out into the corridor, heading for where he could vaguely remember the drama classroom was (the longer he was in the school, the more he could remember about its layout--although he had no emotional connection to the knowledge) but the sound of voices came from around a corner. With a yipe, he zapped open a locker and leapt inside it, hoping the noise would go unnoticed.
"Oh, this is going to be the BEST prom ever, Hamm!" giggled Prina Lott, as she came sweeping by in a blue sequinned gown, her hair piled high atop her head. "You'll see! Nothing can spoil this special night!" Then she paused, and looked around, confused. "Wait a minute...why are all the lights off?"
"Well, at least it's summer, so the sun hasn't set yet..." said Hamm, shrugging. Thinking nothing more of it, the two continued on their way to the auditorium.
Elmo waited she and the tuxedo-clad Hamm String turned the corner out of sight and cautiously opened the locker. No, nothing WILL spoil this night...if MEGAWATT has anything to say about it! He paused again. Megawatt..is that quite right? Oh, who cares, people are already arriving for the prom--if I want to be there to save everybody but keep from blowing my cover until the right moment, I have to find something normal to wear over this get-up, FAST!
Then he became suddenly, extremely aware of the fact that it was, indeed, summer...and the fact that the air conditioning of the school was also powered by electricity. "Oh, MAN!" Elmo leaned against the nearest wall, wiping sweat off his forehead. He tugged at the collar of the jumpsuit, trying desperately to fan some air into it, but this didn't help much...as materials went, rubber wasn't exactly known for "breathing" very well. "WHY couldn't I have suddenly turned into an electrically-powered freak in January? Or while visiting the North Pole...?"
Staggering a bit, he set off on his way towards the drama classroom again.
"You know, Megsy, I like fashion-talk as much as anybody else," said Quackerjack, kicking back on the couch and handing one of the last two doughnuts to Gosalyn (taking the very last for himself), "but we KNOW you've got this costume, we see you wear it all the time. Get to the good part!"
"YEAH!" chorused Liquidator, Bushroot, and Gosalyn.
"Hey, I'm just trying to establish how I built my new self from the ground up!" protested Megavolt, but he was secretly flattered by the way they had gotten so into his old story. They're just DYING to know what happenes next... he thought to himself, smiling slightly. Heh...maybe I should try going into writing professionally. I bet I could do a pretty decent comic book, for example...
"Okay. Flash forward to about two hours later. I'd found a somewhat old-fashioned, but not too bad, formal suit in the drama classroom's costuming supplies, and had gone to the prom. My rubber outfit was covered uup, except for the gloves. However, everybody was used to Elmo Sputterspark being weird, so nobody thought much of them.
"They were also unaware of the fact that the only reason the auditorium HAD electricity for the lights and the band members' equipment, that night, was because I had gone to the school's fuse-box and given it a jolt that would last a few hours at least. The fuses weren't actually damaged, you see, just drained. After all, that huge surge of energy had gone OUT of the school's cables, into ME. What alarmed me was how EASY it had been to power the school back up, even for a short time...I had more trouble with holding back than USING my power. It's lucky I didn't melt the fusebox...
"Anyway. I was hanging out by the punchbowl, getting pretty darn bored. For the sake of looking as if I was there for the prom itself like anybody else, I asked girls to dance a few times--but wasn't terribly surprised when they all turned me down. A lot of people were laughing at my new hairstyle, too. But just as I was beginning to think that nothing was going to happen and I could safely go home..."
