Darkwing saw pixie dust. His vision clashed into a burnished white. His hands suspended in the air, snatching at a mystical leverage. A jounce shivered through his core. Then, there was an undeniable sensation of pain. Pain was hardly even the word to describe it.
Darkwing grunted a slur of curses, cowering his stance to a more stable one: he had been gone with the shadows before the duck could blink. "That stout headed-"
"DW!" He shook himself out of a daze that had already imprinted itself on his consciousness, swerving to observe a battered pilot panting his way. "Man, I didn't think I could catch up to you…" Launchpad spoke in meager terms, with sparse gusts of wind. He shirked under Darkwing's tainted gaze, as it lingered over his transgressions. The duck spat his words, each one brimmed with a spice of anguish. "Well, that doesn't really do us any good now. He got away." The vigilante faced back down the black street: wise buildings moped in the same spots their parents once had, the glass moon had traced river waves against the concrete roads, while a single street light flickered like a fly on its fifth day. Darkwing creviced his sight, as if the very gesture could summon his culprit back into his brutish arms. Launchpad blinked at the attainment, shriveling a petty gaze down the same shadows of paths. "Then that's a first. How did a squirt like him even get that far?"
Darkwing stimulated a finger, scratching it against his sleeve in a considerate gloom. His ribs cracked, bringing him out of his thoughts. "Maybe because you're out of shape, and just don't wanna admit it." Much to a father's dismay, Gosalyn glistened a smile from his cape. The duck already felt a headache coming on.
"Didn't I tell you to stay home?"
"I did, and then I came here."
"You know that's not what I meant." The girl shrugged off the blame, her gaze whisking her father's own. "You weren't very specific. Who was the guy anyway?" The young duck stared down a surviving alleyway, her legs vibrating at the temptation to bolt down a tempo. Darkwing took hold at the back of her collar, retaining her on an invisible leash. Gosalyn witch-eyed him, creases burrowed in her brow as they surfaced.
Launchpad wiped a few sweat marks, his chest still heaving from the prior, unplanned for, marathon. "Moliarty."
"That short-stack?" Gosalyn withdrew the urge to crack a few chuckles, a scorning smile already playing itself upon her beak. "You couldn't even keep up with him? And you say I eat too much junk." Darkwing felt a faint part of his ego crumble at the sights of his daughter, but still persisted in watering his pride. He blinked out of his stone humor, a foreshadow one likely could predict. "Hey, hey, hey! I'd watch that mouth."
"Truth hurts, Dad." Darkwing swallowed his tongue, already pondering a silent consequence Gosalyn wouldn't laugh about later. "I hit a sign. That's why I lost him, not because of my prowess in endurance."
"Riiight." The mockery in her attitude of words was unmistakable.
"Well, maybe you need glasses." Darkwing nearly gawked at Launchpad's betrayal, as Gosalyn choked back a laugh. The pilot, in context, didn't seem to understand his failure at intelligence. His eyes wore an authentic thought as an overcoat in winter months. "You know, so you stop running into signs…?"
"Launchpad?"
"Yeah, DW?"
Darkwing's words were deafening through the dry tension, bells chiming at a midnight hour. Black paint smothered against a white canvas. A mark left on Launchpad's dashboard.
The duck slapped a dead smile across his features, and Launchpad couldn't help but to grant a cowardly one in return. "You wanna know what the meaning of the "hazard" sign is?"
Moliarty never was a very good jock, nor had he been a very proactive thinker. Of course, both of the very attributes he scrambled head-away for had nicked him in the behind for the keeping. He would have burrowed underground in replication of the idea for running, but the generous offer would have spiked havoc he didn't wish to relish himself in. That, and Isis would have nailed him to an ice-pick.
It was almost a celestial miracle when Moliarty caught a glimpse of his assailant's head slapping against the road sign. The night truly had been well to him, if the shadows honored his favor.
The night seemed to thicken into a malt cake, as a sailor-salty aroma flattened itself against the skies and rubble below it. The mole paused, gazing up at the stars that now began to hide in slumber under black sheets. "Just my luck for it to rain." The professor scuffed his nose before huffing down the sidewalk, the air already dampening sweat against his clothes. How he dearly despised the surface way of things.
By the time he was able to reach his destination, the clouds had already grown heavy with grief, and began to weep over the city. The bitter smells of nature became smothering, as a drizzle commenced. "Oh, I hope I'm not too late." He patted against his wear, still feeling for the documents he thrived to conserve against the brutality of the earth.
He didn't think a theater could look so desolate, so dangerous, so serene, so sacrificing. The carpet floors had been a golden brick road to bloodshed. A pistol trigger away from shooting a fat pinata. Moliarty steadied his trembling breaths, hugging his sweaty hands into warmth. Dull lamps decorated the lobby, kissing it into a false sense of tranquility. The carpet sprinkled brand new, despite dust already feasting upon its remains, dancing a show no bystander cared to observe. The shadows had grown heavier and distant than the streets St. Canard beheld.
Moliarty's intuition knew the map, but his feet refused to take a steering wheel. With a painful force, he began to trail his footsteps against where the floor had clashed against the wall in a foreboding bond.
The hallway he entered had been aligned with a march of rooms, each one designed as abandoned theater rooms. Moliarty persisted against the whispers that told him to value his life, and took the designated room his mind rang to.
The room wasn't a watching area, but an old office of a sort. The word MANAGER had blasted itself against the trifling glass that spied through the burdened door. Moliarty chuckled at his own discrimination, still patting to ensure the existence of the papers his body had molded against. "Hardly the word. I would say more of a morgue." He cracked the door into submission.
"About time." A woman spoke out, a pudgy figure, who had clearly seen better summer days. Isis didn't bother the tedious work of looking at the doorway, her confidence striving in the presence of such a petite male. Moliarty envied women of such nature.
The iceberg had been paging through playing cards, a possession abandoned to time and rot, each one shimmering into a sleek, crystal, blue upon the touch. Isis' brutish arm hovered over her sparkling pile, tipping a card over the table it slept upon, crashing it into ice bits against the witnessing floor. She glanced at it, and continued her paging.
Moliarty came to the senses of approaching, eyeing the mess melting against the floor. "In the back, that ith, if you got them." A smear of mockery sketched itself upon the woman's face, as Moliarty fumed into a sun. He knew better than to prolong her antics with his retorts, but the temptation still haunted him like a dog eyeing a food bowl. "I did, in case you were wondering."
"Good, tho you get to keep your head tonight."
"I wouldn't have to sacrifice it if it you had been the one to get them."
"Such a gentleman. Making a lady do a man's work." Moliarty wished to anguish himself no longer, gritted his tooth to a chisel as he faced off in a direction. He could still hear her clucking chuckle, sifting through each card in abundance. The puerility of the mind.
Despite the dire, Moliarty's soul collapsed at the sights of whom he seeked. Peering out through a window, the pale light shifting through a sleeping manifestation, a face deader than a corpse, a face colder than the latter that presented herself prior.
"I've got them." The professor fumbled the papers, that now cemented against his torso, gently peeling it away from his clothes as if it were a children's sticker. With jittering hands, he shoved the documents into the hands of the silhouette. After a few deafening moments of silence, Moliarty tugged at his collar. "So…shall the plan proceed?"
Morgana's eyes dragged themselves from the documents she scrutinized, dictating a fate Moliarty dreaded she could fruition into reality. "You humor me."
