The white walls echoed with the clicking of low heel shoes against the slate gray linoleum floor. Unadorned lamps hung from the ceiling in frequent intervals, spending only very little brightness in this otherwise desaturated place. Every once in a while a heavy metal door would appear and remain ignored and occasionally a corner would be turned.

This was the polar opposite of a place you would imagine to go to for a "date"and truth be told, she had never entirely gotten used to it. Yet every time Eleanor walked down the endless corridors, she felt her heart grow with excitement. Because at the end of this labyrinth, she would see him.

She reached her destination. An officer registered her arrival and gave her visitor pass a nod. They knew her around here and, depending who was on duty that day, she would exchange a few words with the staff before he entered the other side of the glass-enclosed room. But not today. The employees seemed to be preoccupied with something.

She heard noises and looked up from the table in front of her. A tall rat walked through the door, his orange uniform a bright spot in all the drabness. He walked up to her, leaving the officer who escorted him at the back of the room, and sat down on his designated chair behind the glass.

A heartfelt smile lit up his face and made his blue eyes shine. "Hej, pumpkin."

Eleanor's features mirrored his, her fingers reaching out until they touched the barrier that separated them from each other. "Hej, Pappa."

As always, the female rat suppressed the desire to continue their dialogue in the language he had taught her, to withdraw from the world around them for the hour they had and feel the way they had left off fifteen years ago. However, English was the only language they tolerated, so Eleanor inquired, "How was your week?"

Martin Johansson nodded his head slowly. "Pretty decent. I got to finish my paper on the association of low GABA levels with mood disorders."

"Oh, that's great!" She asked him to proceed, and so he did. This was how it usually went. He would tell her about his projects and she would listen. Not to do him a favor, she was genuinely interested. Eleanor had grown up with her father's expertise in molecular biology and even here, with limited access to source material and equipment, Martin managed to conduct research. He had to. It distracted him. He had lost so much, it was only fair that they didn't take his calling away from him.

It was hard. Before his imprisonment, Martin was an influential personality in his field. But then things had started happening very fast, and of course word had spread. His reputation wasn't what it used to be, but his strong will was. Eleanor's father kept himself informed. He worked hard, always accurate, often foreseeing what would be of importance in his research domain, and submitted paper after paper. Most of them were not published, but he didn't care. This was his purpose. It kept him busy and healthy.

"How about you?" he suddenly said. A curious expression appeared on the male rat's face. "You look stressed."

Eleanor felt caught. She had never been able to hide her feelings from her father. "Well, it's been a rough day."

"What happened?" Martin adjusted his glasses and clasped his hands. No pressure, no impatience. His wait and see attitude was what always brought her out of her shell. It had always been like that.

So she told him about the loss of her clients. Her father listened, his eyes fastened on her, giving her all the time and space she needed. It had always been like that.

But the more she talked, the more she felt her heart tighten. Yet she couldn't stop. It all came crashing down. The facts, the consequences. Her feelings. And more things surfaced, things Eleanor didn't want to confront. Not here, not now.

A scowl touched her face. This wasn't how she wanted this visit to unfold.

"Pumpkin." For a split second, Martin's expression resembled hers, then softened again. He was acknowledging her feelings. It had always been like that.

This time, he reached out his fingers and touched the glass. Eleanor looked at her own hands, hesitating. This feeling, this undefined resistance, held her back. She wanted to fight it, choke it down, so bad.

"Don't blame yourself," her father went on. "There will always be situations that are beyond our control, situations that will leave us feeling like helpless spectators. But there's no need for you to feel that way. You don't turn your back on others. You never did, and you never will."

He's wrong, her head told her.

He's right, her heart objected.

The female rat looked up again, at the man who was responsible for so much – her strengths, her insecurities, her life choices.

"Jag saknar dig," he whispered. I miss you.

Maybe it was the tone he used, maybe the circumstances, maybe the seventeen-year-old girl who wanted her father back. The sob that forced its way up her throat was unlike anything she had ever uttered before. Eleanor quickly covered her mouth, surprised and embarrassed by the sudden outburst, and averted her eyes.

"Eleanor." Martin spread his fingers, his entire palm now pushing against the invisible wall between them. "I'm sorry."

What she'd give to reach his hand, squeeze it, wrap her arms around him and hold him.

Hold him back.

Open her mouth and talk. Make him talk. Make him listen. Act. Before it's too late.

Undo everything.

"I miss you, too."

Eleanor closed her eyes, allowed the past to linger for a moment and then let it pass by. She kissed her fingers and met her fathers', tried to feel his warmth through the cold pane. The goodness she had grown up with. The safe haven for her vulnerability. The unconditional love.

The way it had always been.

It would've been easy for Megavolt to get rid of that stupid thing. Just one hearty kick with his boots. Down the cliffs, into the water. Watch it float, then sink, out of this world and out of his mind.

But no.

He hated to admit it, but he was curious. He felt challenged.

The first time one of the parcels had arrived, he had promptly forgotten about it, only being reminded of its existence when the next one appeared. Back then – when had that been? - he hadn't paid much attention to them. Someone was playing tricks on him, or so it seemed.

At first he assumed it was Quackerjack, then Darkwing, but neither of them struck him to be much into this kind of jokes. His best friend got bored so quickly he'd lose interest before Megavolt even bothered to react. Furthermore, the toymaker would never have managed to keep his excitement to himself. And his archenemy wasn't exactly subtle. Not when there was a chance to make his presence known with much fanfare.

Then, one day, while working on a project that required a Van de Graaff generator, he had literally stumbled over both packages in search for the required material. Deciding that he could at least see what was inside those tripping hazards before eventually disposing of them, he had opened them ...

… to find a Van de Graaff generator in one of them.

For a moment Megavolt had thought that he actually possessed one and had just forgotten that it existed, but soon enough a nagging feeling had told him that this wasn't true. Or at least something he couldn't be sure about.

The same feeling had trickled into his mind upon seeing a gyroscope in the other cardboard box.

As time went on and more "gifts" arrived, he began to draw the conclusion that this couldn't be a prank. The sender was too careful, too meticulous. And there was a pattern.

The parcels where never addressed to him personally. But the items they contained appealed to him. Scientific gadgets, some of them rather dated, evoked a sense of nostalgia in him. Tools that were extremely hard to obtain made him feel elated, and the spare parts had saved him every so often. It was too good to be true, like someone wanted to do him a favor.

Despite the delight and wonder he experienced given all these courtesies, other things left him confused. They seemed unrelated to the rest, not corresponding to the pattern.

There were aged photos of places he didn't recognize and, in one case, of a cat. Sketches. Crumpled remains of a tiny flower bouquet. Books. An unfashionably colored tie. And other oddities. Some things made him laugh, others made him cringe, and still others aroused a tinge of non-attributable familiarity. But most of all they made him shake his head. It was like a riddle he couldn't solve, and that annoyed him.

And then there were the notebooks. Thumbing through them with great interest, the male rat found himself confronted with a vast amount of scientific knowledge, theories and concepts for nifty inventions. The fascination subsided, however, at the sight of all the crossed out paragraphs, torn-out pages and self-reprimanding comments.

It hit home in a way that made Megavolt extremely uncomfortable. This frustration felt too personal. It reminded him of all his failed experiments and useless devices, not to mention the humiliation it brought upon him when one of his inventions backfired.

That was when he swore to himself he wouldn't open these darned packages ever again.

But here he was, cursing his curiosity and his bad memory that he hadn't gotten rid of all the other stuff before. So much for the vow he had made.

For the past few hours, he had circled the newest arrival. It was small, but all the more intimidating. Megavolt had tried to distract himself. He had cleaned the alternator and mused what he could do with it, he had sorted the nuts and bolts in his toolbox by size and taken a shower. But nothing had quite helped.

At last he turned to one of his light bulbs for advice. Meredith was one of his most trusted friends, a gentle soul with a lot of life experience.

"Well, it's a heads or tails situation," she explained. "Just flip a coin and see what your reaction to the result is."

That made sense. Except for that he didn't have a coin.

Before he could lapse into a frantic search for another item to use, Meredith softly reminded him that he could just do it mentally. The result was not what he had hoped, so he did the opposite. No one challenged Megavolt, especially not some obscure paperboard.

This time, there were neither pleasant surprises nor personal items inside, just various kinds of paper. Another notebook, letters, more sketches perhaps. The rodent felt relieved and surprisingly disappointed. He didn't feel like sifting through all of this stuff and got up to put the package aside when the envelope on top of the stack caught his eye.

It had an address, which was new. And a name.

Elmo Sputterspark.

A puzzling sensation washed over him. He was almost certain he had heard that name before. Megavolt tried to search his memory for a connection, but other than a vague notion nothing came to him. Maybe the content of the letter helped. It had already been opened, so he unfolded the formal-looking paper and began to read.

"Join us to celebrate the 15 year reunion of St. Canard High School, Class of 197-"

He wasn't prepared for the reaction that came rushing in. It was as if someone poured a bucket full of water over him to jolt him out of his sleep. A moment of disorientation dragged him away from where he currently was, leaving his mind to struggle for awareness and his lungs for air. His heart rate increased and brought a whooshing to his ears, a white noise that slowly turned into an echo, then a vocal murmur. At last he was pulled back, feeling upset, but otherwise awake. Very awake.

Megavolt inhaled audibly. He looked around, ready to see Quackerjack with the bucket in his hands, cracking up about his baffled face. But he was alone. He turned back to the letter in his hands and read it again. He blinked, still stunned, but then a door in his memory opened. A light was shining through the crack and he decided to step in.

"That's my school."

The villain sat down, running his fingers absentmindedly through his tousled hair. Megavolt hadn't thought of his schooldays in a long time. In fact, he hadn't thought of anything from his past in a long time. It wasn't so much that he couldn't remember anyway, he hardly ever actively searched for any information. Doing so gave him an uneasy feeling. But this invitation made him feel quite excited. Images of past days played back in his mind's eye, and, different than usual, these images looked very clear.

The rodent jumped up again. In a fit of jittery agitation, he lamented to Meredith that he had nothing to wear for the reunion, but of course she had a suggestion up her sleeve. He thanked her with a smooch.

If the school sent out invitations for a reunion, there had to be a yearbook. He remembered holding one in his hands a while ago, but like most of the things that had been sent to him it hadn't made much sense and thus been left off to gather dust in one of his bookcases. But now he had an incentive and he was curious what other memories he could conjure up.

There it was. Megavolt produced a heavy blue and golden book from one of the shelves and flipped it open.

"Aaah, high school. I remember those golden days." Recollections of being a science club member, of getting to shine with his scientific genius flooded him. He just knew he had always been one of the smartest students with a bright future ahead of him. It would be such a delight to tell his former classmates what a career he had made.

As he was searching for photos that showed how he had enriched the school community, he realized that the club activities and especially the academic teams took up surprisingly little space in the yearbook. Instead, his old high school seemed to place much greater value on sports. Knitting his brows, he flicked through all the pages with smug football players and broadly grinning cheerleaders.

Where was he? Was this not his yearbook after all? Yet another mysterious object the sender had given him to rack his brains about?

A thought crossed his mind. Megavolt picked up the envelope again and then proceeded to the student portraits. The boy that looked up from the photo labeled "Elmo Sputterspark" was a mousy, nerdy kid.

He shook his head. This couldn't be.

The villain stepped up to the mirror. The boy and him had the same hair color, same nose, same frown.

The scenes he had just visualized unfolded all over again. He saw Elmo Sputterspark, saw himself with his nose stuck in his science book. He saw himself pushing his way through the crowd of students who were taller, stronger, more popular than him. He saw himself being laughed at, pushed around and falling.

"Days of constant degradation and torment," Megavolt said to himself. The memories kept coming, memories of an endless stream of abuse. No rest. He lowered the book, feeling incredibly lousy, and sighed, "Those were the days."

The male rat stood there for a moment, his mismatched eyes looking for a calming spot to rest upon. Then the yearbook went flying through the room, rebounded off the wall and ended up on the floor, face up, in bold proximity to him. That darned thing wasn't done with him yet. Vicious cackling sounded in his head.

"Whatcha lookin' at, Sparky?" a shadow bending over him barked.

"It's static electricity. Static! It can't be done!" those fools screeched in unison.

"Go on, go on, Hamm! Trash the little monkey!" a sickeningly sweet voice demanded.

"Remember, Elmo: No pain, no gain."

Pain.

Once again, a wild dance of mental pictures carried him off and took him back to a distant day in January. Or maybe June. It was a detail he couldn't specify, but the rest had imprinted on his memory with such dramatic clarity that it felt like he was living through it all over again. He could literally feel the tape on his hands, his aching legs, his racing heart, his mortal fear. And the pain that changed him.

Enough!

Megavolt closed his eyes and backed off, out of the room and down the stairs. This was too much to handle all at once. He needed to calm his mind, right now. Stepping out of the lighthouse, he tried to focus on something else. The rushing of the bay beneath him did the trick for now, so he remained standing close to the building, watching the ripple on the water surface.

After a while, he had collected himself. His brain was used to episodes of overactivity and rapid streams of thought, but what he had experienced just now was something entirely different. At last the rodent turned away from the water and his home and headed towards town. He needed to get away from here for a while. Then he'd decide what to do next.

"Don't just stand there, help me with this!"

"Ow!" Megavolt exclaimed as the bag was shoved into his stomach roughly. He expected Quackerjack's toys to be pointy, sharp or otherwise hazardous, but not ordinary ones. The rat wrapped his arms around the burlap sack and helped his friend store the loot in his car.

Megavolt smiled to himself. This was the exact same store where he had first run into Quackerjack, quite literally, at Christmas time a few years ago. Christmas was the worst time for St. Canard's supervillains, for different reasons (light pollution, children going crazy about the newest video games, excessive tree felling, frost, and just generally happy people), but this chance encounter had gifted him his best friend – and that made the holiday season a little easier every year.

This information was among the few he could easily retrieve from his long-term memory. There was little Megavolt could actively remember without cues, but those memories he held dear. He knew how important they were, that they gave him an understanding of who he was. Yet he also knew that there was a lot more he should know. How had he grown up? Who were his parents, did he have siblings? What about friends, role models, crushes maybe? Trying to remember his past always resulted in frustration. Sometimes fleeting images or muffled voices sought to enter his consciousness in flashbacks and dreams, but they kept slipping through his fingers like sand. And – to be honest – remembering his schooldays had shown him that his fractured memory could be a blessing. Because why should he want to be reminded of a life that hurt? He enjoyed living in the here and now. It was reliable.

He hadn't told Quackerjack about the ghosts from his past. Neither did his best friend know that he had been getting mysterious mail for the longest time. He trusted the toymaker, more than anybody else, but there were things that the rat had to sort out on his own.

"Yoo-hoo! Earth to Megavolt!" Quackerjack was waving his hand. "What's wrong, buddy?"

"Nothing," the rodent assured him, maybe a little too hastily. So he added, "Hey, do you remember how we first met here?"

"Sure!" The duck beamed. Obviously he was responsive to the change of subject. "I was robbing this place of all its Whiffle Boy games."

Megavolt nodded. "And I was freeing those poor Christmas lights in the store window."

"And then we bumped into each other."

"A classic."

"You were talking to that one light bulb like a mother who had just been reunited with her long-lost child. I thought you were the biggest weirdo in the universe," Quackerjack reminisced, leaving the store behind his friend.

"And my first impression was that you didn't have all your marbles," Megavolt replied, chuckling at the pun.

"It was love at first sight," the duck sighed and closed the door before falling into the rat's arms theatrically. The giggling fit that erupted from the two villains was cut short by a growl that originated from the direction of Megavolt's car.

"Good evening, ladies."

Quackerjack yelped and let go of his friend before jumping into his arms instead. "Negaduck!"

On the hood of the car stood the leader of the Fearsome Five, clothed in yellow, red and black, his arms crossed in front of his chest. "The one and only. I hate to interrupt your billing and cooing, but I've got news for you."

"News?" Megavolt gulped. "Oh, news! That's good! I mean, it's good to see you again, we haven't heard from you in a while and -"

"That's because I had things to do." Negaduck jumped from the car with as much gracility and soundlessness as a cat. He approached the other two villains, and even though he was shorter than both of them his mere presence made them shudder. "Important things. Things I needed to attend to myself so you knobs wouldn't mess them up."

The rodent put the jester down and straightened his back. He hated being called that. But he let Negaduck get away with it, as usual, even though he was the one without superpowers. The duck was cruel and dangerous in a different way. He was a master of psychological terror, and he was the one who knew the ropes of St. Canard's underground the best. Therefore it was wise not to provoke him.

But Quackerjack, innocent as he was, did just that. "Well then, spit it out, boss!" The jester struck the same pose as their leader. "We too have more important things to do, you know?"

Megavolt tried to indicate to his friend to cut it out, but without success. Within milliseconds, Negaduck was in the toymaker's face. "Do you really think I'm gonna spill important information right here, in the middle of the street?"

"Um, boss?" Quackerjack smiled uncertainly. "Nobody else is here-"

"See? This is why I'm the boss and you're the henchmen!" Negaduck hissed in a low, thrusting voice. He grabbed the jester by the collar, their foreheads still painfully squished against each other. "You have to keep your eyes, ears and mind open all the time! Otherwise everyone and their mother would know about your schemes and practices as we speak!"

He threw the taller duck against Megavolt. Quackerjack rubbed his head, moaning.

"This is just a save the date." Negaduck adjusted his red fedora and smoothed out his cape. "I'll see you guys on Friday. You know when and where."

With that, he mounted his motorcycle and drove off, leaving the other two behind.

"Well, that was short and snappy," Megavolt muttered, watching the exhaust cloud the vehicle spat out.

"Yeah, and here I was thinking that he came back relaxed from a nice long vacation." Quackerjack accepted the hand his partner offered him and got up from the floor. He followed the rodent to his car. "At least we're not left in limbo any longer."

Megavolt nodded thoughtfully. Any kind of distraction was fine by him. He closed the driver's door and zapped the ignition once Quackerjack sat next to him.

Leaving the place in the opposite direction, none of the villains witnessed the gas canister explode at the back exit of the toy store.

"I am the terror that-" The blue smoke evaporated to reveal a deserted street. Darkwing looked around, his billowing cape slumping down instantly.

"-is too late, the rodent has bolted."