General Disclaimer: The Mighty Ducks, Wildwing, Nosedive, Tanya, Grin, Duke, Mallory, Police Chief Klegghorn, and Thrash are all property of Disney, and used without permission. Lestat, Amber, and Mara are copyright © Amber VanDrake, and used with permission. The story and all other characters are copyright © JetherWing 2003.
Author's Note: first of all, I wanna extend a big thank you to Amber VanDrake for helping me edit this story and getting my feet wet in co-authoring with someone. And as such, the typical angst of encountering a fan character is usually the question, "Just who the bloody hell are they?" Well, to avoid confusion, there is a brief description of Amber Vandrake's three fan characters in the story—they're at the end. YAY!!! You can look back at this for reference or pretend it is not there, tee-hee!
Okay, then people…hope that cleared up some confusion…and without further ado, here is part one of the story…please read and review—that means helpful suggestions, flames, compliments, wisecracks…mm…or those tangy raspberry tart people that you have to catch with jars!!!
Oh yeah…this story is rated R for language and mature themes. Enjoy!
Echoes of the Unspoken, Part One
The Mighty Ducks had received a weird phone call that day.
Wildwing had almost hung up on the person, thinking it was a wrong number. But the voice on the other line wanted to speak to Nosedive. Since Thrash had never called the base, Wildwing had not recognized the voice and then thought that it was a prank call. But he got Nosedive anyway.
As soon as Nosedive picked up the line, the video-phone system on Drake One blinked with an incoming call. It was Police Chief Klegghorn.
A body had been found on the street that day. People thought that it might have been a huge case of road kill. Then they thought it was a dead hobo. Whatever it was, it was something that they would rather not see in their clean streets. No one knew where it had come from, and no one had a mind to consider any possibilities. They only gathered around it; some people were even bold enough to poke at it.
"Look, I don't know what the hell's going on, man," Thrash had stated on the phone earlier. "But it was bringing a lot of attention!"
"Things like this can drive the public crazy, Wildwing," Klegghorn had said. Wildwing wanted to tell Nosedive to stop talking with his friends and get ready to go to the hospital.
But Nosedive ignored his hand gestures.
"No kiddin, man," Dive had said, between swapping looks of puzzlement to Wildwing. He put his other hand to his ear so he could drown out Klegghorn's loud echoing on the Drake One.
There was a pause and a disgruntled sigh from Thrash on the phone. "But man, ya shoulda seen it, Dive! Someone was about to call the ambulance, but then I guess they saw it—uncovered it I mean—and no one really knew what to do. It was like that…twilighty—show…ya know about that zone?"
"What is the condition?" Wildwing asked Klegghorn. "Is it alright?"
"Um…So what the hell did ya do, Thrash-miester?" Nosedive asked at the same time.
The ambulance and the police had arrived in less than an hour.
"Well, Wing, quite frankly it looks pretty bad," Klegghorn answered.
"Heh…I guess I thought you guys would wanna know something like this," Thrash had said. "I mean, it ain't every day you see something like this, baby! Hoo! But I tell ya what, man, everybody was just sitting there on their asses and I'm all like, ok fuck this, so I call the ambulance natch!"
Klegghorn had looked away from the screen for a brief second, rubbing the back of his neck. "But whatever the situation, I thought it was only reasonable—and respectful—to let you guys be the first visitors." That said, Klegghorn had given the location of the hospital and Wildwing had signed off. Wildwing sighed and contacted Tanya with his wrist communicator.
"But I took one look at it, man…one look at it…" Thrash went on. His tone had changed already. There was something serious in it, something that made Nosedive doubt that Thrash was high or drunk.
"And something just told me, I mean, I guess it was obvious, but sorry man, I said to myself…Shit, dude…Dive has GOT to see this."
There was an awkward silence, something that Thrash had never done before. It scared Nosedive.
"Thrash? You there, brutha?"
"Aw weak, man!" Thrash answered suddenly. "Turn on the TV! It's already on the fucking news, dude!"
Nosedive carried the phone over to the recreation room, and flipped on the news channel. He had only seen a few seconds of it before he realized that Wildwing and Tanya had gone.
Tanya and Wildwing arrived at the hospital about ten minutes after they had received the call. Klegghorn stood waiting outside the entrance. He was strangely alone. Wildwing and Tanya thought that the silence was…dizzying. They were too used to the barrage of camera flashes questions. Later on, Wildwing could not recall how they got into the hospital.
"Guess the press must have been scared off, huh Tanya?" Wildwing had said, trying to alleviate some of the anxiety.
"Well, yeah, Wildwing...virtually no one is allowed here," Klegghorn had answered for her over his shoulder, and Wildwing realized that they had gone below the ground level of the hospital—to the morgue.
When Tanya and Wildwing returned to the Pond, they were not surprised to see the rest of their teammates waiting at the entrance. But the other teammates were surprised to see them wheeling in what looked like a small black body bag, strapped down to the metal slab.
There were a few reactions from the team, and random exclamations all around.
"You gotta be kidding me…"
Tanya looked at her other teammates soberly. "They wanted to put the body in the crematory…there…at their hospital…but…we just thought that…uh…" She trailed off, shaking her head.
"What the hell is going on?"
She nodded to Wildwing, then motioned to Grin. "Uh, Grin?…It's heavy."
Grin silently nodded back and went to help her wheel the cart into the medical room. Lestat paused only a moment before tightening his belt a notch and followed them as well.
"Alright, will someone please just spit it out?!" Duke said irritably, approaching Wildwing. "There's no need to hide anything from us; we saw it on TV. But why did you bring it here?"
"First of all, Duke, we're pretty sure that it's female," answered Wildwing. "And secondly, it's too late…she was already in the morgue by the time we got there."
After a few seconds of looking back and forth between Duke and Wildwing, Nosedive wrinkled his beak. "Well…if she's dead, then why is she here?"
Wildwing sighed. "Well, baby bro, that's the only part that I think might be good news. I'm sure you all wondered how she got here…So Tanya has volunteered to do an autopsy…but we need a few of you to go back and see if you can find anything….I mean, anything that would give us a clue as to where she came from….Besides, I think whoever she is, she deserves a proper burial."
Nosedive immediately stepped up to volunteer to go back to the mall, and Mallory raised her hand as well. Amber hesitated but Nosedive put a hand on her shoulder and she nodded her head also. Wildwing gave them leave to go.
As they were leaving, he turned in Duke's direction. "Heh, almost forgot about you, old timer." Duke smiled back and put his arm around Mara's waist.
"Old timer, I think not," Duke replied.
"If you'd like, you two can go and see if they need anymore help with uh—'' He did a quick gesture of his hand.
"With all due respect Wildwing," Mara started, but Wildwing had raised his hand.
"I know…I think we're all thinking the same thing, guys. I hate this as much as you do."
When they opened up the body bag, the girl duckling's eyes were half open, glazing over a strange blue color. Tanya reached out a gloved hand and shut them. She tried hard not to remember how Grin, Lestat and Duke had lifted the body from the bag and placed it on another clean metal slab, and how the body had made a strange thunk that had made Tanya's eye water. It was still so small…about four feet at most, but still heavy. Death had a way of doing that.
It had been a while since she had encountered this…not that it hadn't brought back any unpleasant memories when she was back on Puckworld. Shit…kids died all the time, she knew that, but this…
The dead duckling had been found with no clothes on…only a few garbage bags wrapped around her. Mara closed her eyes for a moment before walking to Tanya's side. She put on medical gloves, ready to assist in any way that she could.
Just then, Wildwing had come in. There was no way he could wait outside—there had been a strange nausea that developed in his gut as soon as he arrived back at the Pond.
Tanya turned to Grin, Lestat, and Duke. "Ok, uh listen up… anyone who gets edgy around dead bodies, ya know you can just ya know—uh…you don't have to help if you don't want to you guys, okay?"
By Grin's unmoving fray and Duke's lifting of an eyebrow, she knew otherwise. She didn't know why she bothered asking Lestat since he was probably the most comfortable around death…but sometimes dead children brought up hidden feelings.
"Ok…so what does this involve?" Duke asked, leaning over Mara's shoulder to see the array of surgical instruments she had set out. "I mean, how do we know that she came from our world?"
"That's not why we're doing this, Duke," Tanya answered calmly, getting out a tape recorder. "I think it is pretty obvious where she came from, besides, but uh—that's why Nosedive, Amber and Mallory went out just in case. I'm here to mainly find out the cause of death. The Earth hospitals didn't even bother with it. Uh, not that it's gonna be easy…from what I already saw, there are no signs of bruising, no trauma, nothing." She switched a button on the tape recorder, then handed it to Duke. "You know how this works?"
Duke started suddenly, a little embarrassed.
Tanya sighed. "Ok, here's what I want you to do…just record the date, the time, and the description of the…uh ya know, the subject. That means things like uh, height, weight, gender, species…um…time of death….Here." She handed Duke a clipboard with a yellow piece of paper, then looked at the body thoughtfully. "Lestat recorded all of those things before you came here…"
Trying to make light of an already grim situation, Lestat made a thumbs up sign. "As usual, buddy boy, ya got your work cut out for ya." He blushed slightly when he noticed his unintentional pun and gave a careful glance over at Tanya. She was wiping a scalpel so hard that he was sure she would take the lacquer right off.
Duke tried to laugh, but only gulped. "Guess this won't be so bad…there's hardly any smell."
Mara took out five surgical masks and handed one to everyone.
"Just in case," she murmured, adjusting her mask over her face.
Duke cleared his throat. "Autopsy date: February 9, 2003. Time 7:24 pm…subject is a young female duck—''
A little yelp cut him off. He looked up to see Tanya staring wide eyed at the body, scalpel raised, panting a little. Duke stopped the tape recorder. "You ok there, kid?" His voice was gentle. Wildwing leaned forward, but there was a feeling that made him dizzy, tingling.
Tanya blinked and then looked at them, and they could see a slight blush come up her cheeks. "Uh, I'm sorry, it's been a while ya know, heh…I thought I saw her—I mean uh, saw it—move a bit. Heh…sorry if I gave you guys the, ya know, the heebie jeebies, heh."
Grin had his gloved fingers to his chin, a doubtful look on his face. Lestat leaned over the body and shrugged his shoulders, unimpressed.
"Looks pretty dead to me."
"Uh, guys…think I'm gonna go right here and watch ya okay?" Wildwing said softly, feeling somewhat out of breath. He leaned on the cold steel of the counters.
Duke turned the tape recorder back on. "Ok…where was I? Oh…subject is a young fem—''
"Holy mother of ducks—''
Duke looked up again and saw that Grin, Lestat, and Tanya were stepping backwards from the body. He looked down at the slab and then dropped the tape recorder. He, Mara, and Lestat then reached by their sides for their sabers.
"He-hey guys… is it hot in here? Aren't there… supposed… fans in this room?" Wildwing panted.
"But—but—that's impossible," Tanya was saying softly. "I thought they said she was dead—''
They all saw that the little duck's white chest began to move slowly, up and down. The closed eyes twitched, and then they slowly opened. There was the sound of an inhaling, and then the eyes opened wider. Those eyes, a strange maroon color, stared numbly at the light. When she slowly sat up, the light bathed her ghostly white feathers so intensely that they almost looked transparent. She turned her intensely alive maroon eyes on Wildwing.
Duke shouted something, there was a strange groan coming from Grin, a whimper from Tanya, a curse from Lestat, and a whisper from Mara.
Wildwing started forward, but there was a fatigue and an invisible pressure somewhere about him that made him grip the sides of the cold steel counter.
The duckling's long black hair, knotty and disheveled, covered her back. She opened her mouth to speak, but she seemed to be struggling with words as much as everyone else. Wildwing cupped his throat, emitting gagging sounds.
"Whuh-why are we here?" she said, her voice coming out groggy, then clear. They could see her trembling.
Wildwing's beak drooped open, trembling at the bottom, and the female duck inquired softly again through her tears, "Why are we here? Why did you—"
When Wildwing groped for the shiny black oxygen tank, he only saw yellow.
Wildwing started out of bed then, there was a small crash of something and then he heard himself gasping for breath, gasping, gasping—
He stopped abruptly when he saw the gold mask glinting on the floor.
"Hey Wing, you okay?" Wildwing jerked his head at the door to where Lestat's voice came from.
"Uh, yeah, Lestat…don't worry about anything," Wildwing called out before clearing his throat several times.
Lestat stood there for a few long seconds outside the door to Wildwing's room. Wildwing thought to himself, Please don't let him come in here and see me like this…last thing I wanna do is tell him that I got scared because of a stupid little dream!
He sighed with relief as he heard Lestat's soft footsteps walk away. He squinted his eyes at the amber tint of the predawn that set in through his window. He got up and scooped the gold mask up from the floor, placing it in the drawer of the night stand. He tried to go back to sleep; he was already forgetting about the dream.
But he found that in those last few hours before the rest of the world awoke, he could not.
To Be Continued…
Okay, like I promised, here are the three descriptions:
Lestat: 21-year-old drake, copper hair, yellow eyes, patch on beak, vertical white scar over right eye. This guy is very lanky, and has been best friends with Duke since he was 16. He ranked number 3 in the Smuggler's Guild, an organization of professional thieves back on Puckworld. Now for the gossip: he has been in love with Mara (below) for years and wants nothing more than his best friends to be happy…so he pretends he doesn't care that Mara and Duke are going out. Since the dude is a confused bisexual, he also denies feelings he has toward Duke but at the same time has a secret crush on Wildwing.
Mara: 24-year-old (just a month older than duke), short black hair, glowing green eyes, grey feathers. She is relatively shy and very sweet, but has a sarcastic tone like duke (just less corny jokes). She is also a member of the Smuggler's Guild. She is very maternal toward Amber but afraid to give her little sister too many rules for fear of losing her.
Amber: no one knows how old she is, assumed around 16-18, medium to long brown hair, cold yellow eyes, tattoo of heart on outside of upper right thigh. This duck is way too skinny, has no figure and is really flat—think somewhere along the lines of Sally the Ragdoll from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Amber is very self-conscious about her appearance, and can be a real crybaby. But this girl is all bark and no bite: she tends to come off as bitter and cruel but she mostly wants others to notice her. And once she has their friendship, she is a friend for life.