Authors Note: I'm sorry this took so long for me to finish, but I have a lot of stuff that kept me from completing it. 1) I didn't quite know how to start it off. I fiddled with a few different openings until I got this one. 2) I'm in college, so yeah, there's that. 3) I'm lazy. Let's face it, that's the bottom line of all things folks. 4) I had other fanfics that I wanted to complete. And 5) I got a lot more hits with my first fanfic I posted, 'Biker Women from Earth' so I spent more time on that than this. Sorry, but yeah, that's how it works. I do hope that you enjoy the fanfic and find that the time you've waited for this chapter is well worth the wait. Also, thank you for those people that favorited this and put it on alert. You won't be disappointed! At least, I hope you won't be…
Another Authors Note: I do not own the Mighty Ducks, yada, yada, yada; however the character Amy is mine.
The Reality Bender
As long as thought is able
As long as imagination is power
I am Immortal
Chapter 2, A Duck's Worst Nightmare
"Ah boy, 'Wing! I've been waiting for this day my whole life!"
"But you just got into watching this woman's cartoon show and reading her comic books a month ago!" Protested Wildwing as he and his baby brother, Nosedive, arrived outside the store for Captain Comics in their street garb. There was little reason for them to be wandering around in their battle armor all the time, not since their list of villains, along with Dragaunus and his goons, had been taken off. Things had become rather laxed, only with an odd loony human popping up every now and then to upset their peaceful lives here on Earth.
"Yeah, so." Nosedive proclaimed as they stopped in front of his favorite comic book store in all of Anaheim city. There was a faraway look in his eyes as he gazed up into the blue sky, broken up only by the occasional wisps of white, fluffy clouds as if looking into yesteryear. In an overdramatic pose he clasped his feathery hands together and held them up next to his head to lay it upon them, and batted his eyelids and sighed. He had a black binder tucked under his wing that contained the comic books that he had collected so far, ten in all, that comprised the continuing saga of Everums-Beginnings. "But it seems like an eternity!"
Wildwing couldn't help but laugh and shake his head. "Your crazy little bro. You and about everyone else that I've seen go into that store." And with that he slapped his younger brother across the back. Nosedive was jarred forward out of his pose but quickly righted himself. He shot a look across at his older brother and snapped out, "Hey! It's people like us that help society move along. Why, don't you know that statistics show that the kids that always stay in their rooms and don't hang out with friends and stuff and are eccentric are the geniuses of tomorrow?"
Wildwing threw his eyes to the heavens above as he crossed his well-muscled arms. "Where did you hear that trash?"
Nosedive cast his eyes around the place and noticed some rather reasonable parents escorting their ecstatic children to the shop. His eyes then fell on the growing line of humans and he became a little nervous. "Uh, I ah…I don't know. You know, around. Probably from Thrash and Mookie. Uh, see ya bro! I gotta get in line before it becomes a nightmare!"
"Yeah, okay! You do that!" Chuckled Wildwing as he watched Nosedive dart into the shop where the line was beginning to reach the door. The children, five of them - two of them belonging to one set a parents, one to another and two more to another set of parents, arrived a second later, but the fact that they were one more person behind in line didn't seem to bother them in the least. In fact three of them looked even more delighted, if that was possible.
As Wildwing began to walk away, intent on doing his own 'mail-crawling' as the humans said, he heard one of the children say, "Hey! Your one of the Mighty Ducks! Wow! I didn't know you guys would be here too!"
"Can I get your autograph, mister?" Inquired one of the boys.
"Are you here to see the creator of Wansa too?" Asked a little girl.
Wildwing disappeared into the next building over, intent on not being mugged by a band of zealous hockey fans. It wasn't so much that he hated fans, but the fact that, under normal circumstances back on Puckworld, he would have never of gotten this sort of attention and even though it had been three years already, going on four, being a celebrity because he was a duck and a duck alien hockey master at that, wasn't all that glamorous.
It was a little over thirty minutes later when Nosedive finally reached second too front of the table with the creator of his newest favorite cartoon show and comic line. The youngest member of the Mighty Ducks was rocking back on the ball of his heels waiting for the guy in front of him to finish up. As he waited impatiently for his turn he caught sight of Thrash and Mookie hanging out behind their rather busy counter and trying to observe the shop for any shoplifters or whatnot. Mookie was on lookout while Thrash was tending to one customer and caught sight of him. She waved, and he waved back, grinning excitedly. The tanned skinned, purple mohok woman elbowed her large, pot-belled messy red-haired friend. Thrash turned around, looking at her curiously, and she pointed towards Nosedive in line. Thrash looked over, caught sight of his feathered friend, grinned hugely and waved then gave Nosedive a thumbs up. Nosedive, once again, waved back, grinning uncontrollably. It had been them that had informed him of their special guest, what with him being a fan of hers, and could hardly contain himself then. He was at the point of boiling over the brim now that she was finally here in person.
Twenty seconds later, though it seemed like an eternity for Nosedive, the man finally moved off and Nosedive practically dived forward to the table. The two security guards flanking the writer/cartoonist eyed the duck suspiciously while the woman in particular gave him a raised eyebrow. One of the security guards was none other than Klegghorn, who took one look at the duck and sighed, rolling his eyes.
"Oh. It's you. Ya know, I probably should have figured you'd be here."
"Hey Kleggy!" Nosedive chirped to the short, orange-haired human before focusing his sole attention back on the woman. "Hi! I'm Nosedive!" Nosedive gushed out as held out his black binder for her to take. "Geez, heh! Can I say that it's an honor to meet you! I love your show! I think it's the best thing that's hit T.V. in a long time. Your comics are great too! I simply love them and can't get enough of --what? Have I got something on my beak?" The eager Nosedive inquired of a sudden as he noted the rather bemused look on the brunette's face. She sat there before him staring up at him with one eyebrow raised and her dark hazel eyes gleaming up at him in curiousness.
"Um…I'm sorry but, is that some sort of costume?" She asked, pointing her black pen up at him with her left hand while her other hand supported her head. She looked utterly bored but interested in her current fan nonetheless. "I thought the game for the next Mighty Ducks show wasn't until this Wednesday."
Nosedive's excitement washed from him and he placed the binder gently on the table. He looked irritated by her ignorance. "No, this isn't a costume. I'm Nosedive and I am one of the Mighty Ducks. I'm an alien, ya know, from Puckworld. We've been here for three years now already! Almost four! How can you not know? There was even a Disney cartoon show of us that was on! Right Klegghorn?" Nosedive could hardly believe that a cartoonist wouldn't know about the show. In his personal opinion it had been one of the coolest shows out during the time of its airing! Well, namely because he was in it.
The chief of police sighed in exasperation and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, there was. …Unfortunately." He grumbled, muttering the last word with bitterness.
The writer did a double take from Nosedive to Captain Klegghorn, the look on her face obviously portraying a mixture of doubts, but her willingness to believe. Especially if it was coming from the mouth of the chief of police. She turned her attention at last on Nosedive, blinked and finally said, after a long moment, "Your seriously Nosedive and that's not some real nice piece of Hollywood costume to support your local team?"
"Want me to pull out a feather to prove it." The teenager wisecrack said, grinning as he held out his hands to either side, giving her a raised eyebrow in turn and looking absolutely honest in his joke.
Nosedive was more than a little taken aback by the sudden life that overcame the writer. Her dark hazel eyes, previously marked by shadows from the lighting in the room and her deep chocolate brown hair hanging over her face due to her loose ponytail, and looking worn and exhausted, took on a life of their own. They sparkled pleasantly as if a light had been lit within them. A warm smile graced her pale skin just before she half stood from her seat, her right hand stretching toward him. "Heh! I'm sorry for the skepticism, but what with the capabilities of costume production nowadays and well, given the overzealousness of fans, you can understand why I was a bit doubtful. My apologies Nosedive. It was Nosedive right?"
"Yeah!" The teen eagerly said, taking her hand and shaking it.
If at all possible Nosedive's latest favorite cartoon/comic producer beamed even brighter as she shook his feathered hand generously. "Good. I'm Amy by the way. You look different then you do in the show, but then again it was a cartoon show. Such things often have a far cry from real life."
Which was the truth. The cartoon shows of the time usually portrayed the characters with four fingers, Nosedive actually had five. And their hair wasn't what one would have thought it would be. It was in fact feathers too, but just really fine and long, and compacted and interwoven in such a way that it could be mistaken for actual hair such as humans are used to from a distance. It was actually quite beautiful. Their faces too, much to the writer's immense surprise and pleasure, wasn't exactly like a ducks face at all. It was sort of like a human's in that the eyes were about as large as such and spaced about how a humans was, only the beak started about where the bridge of the nose did on a humans and then turned into the hard beak of their species. He wasn't even as skinny as the cartoon show had portrayed him. He was rather quite well built with muscle tone showing beneath his padding of glossy feathers.
"You have seen the show?" Nosedive said, looking relived. "Wooh! You had me a bit worried there."
"Why's that?" Amy inquired as she took her seat and picked up her black pen.
"I couldn't imagine a cartoonist that hadn't seen one of the coolest shows on at the time!"
Amy chuckled at that as she pulled out the first issue that Nosedive had sealed off in his binder. Her eyes kept jumping from him to the first issue, trying to listen intently on what he was saying but also knowing that she had to do her job and carry on with this book-signing gig. "Oh I saw it. Not all of the episodes mind you, but a few. That was one of my favorite shows besides The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Ninja Turtles, but when I moved and the shows were taken off the air I ended up falling for Transformers." A huge grin split her face and a bit of a mischievous glint took over her eyes. She chuckled as she finished her name with a finale and moved to put it back into its protective seal. "I'm such a total Transfan. Have you seen any of the series?"
Nosedive's face lit up as if it had become the sun itself. "Have I?! Tch! Is Optimus the greatest Autobot of all time?"
Amy laughed at that as she signed off yet another of his comics with flare. "Hahaha! Wow! It's so great to meet another Transfan. I sometimes feel like its some sort of extinct branch, ya know? The only ones I've ever really met have been online."
"Seriously? It was such a good show."
Amy's face took on a more somber look as she glanced at him and said, "Yeah, but which series are you talking about?"
Nosedive even became serious at that and nodded his agreement. "Oh yeah. I see what you mean."
Klegghorn rolled his eyes for what seemed the billionth time that day, and sighed audioably, cutting off any further conversation with the two. It had been the most he'd heard all day from the writer, but it was enough to drive him off the edge. "My God!" He croaked out, his mind reeling at their conversation. "How do you people do it? Really? How can somebody actually have an engaging conversation over bits of moving pictures, colors, and pure fictional nonsense?"
Amy lifted an eyebrow at the short man and bit back, her tone instantly changing from eager and chirpy to a reprimanding older, wiser, almost motherly tone. "Fictional nonsense? That's a bit rude! Tell me then Captain Klegghorn, do you consider the story of the Roman and Greek empires bits of fictional nonsense? I mean the ones with the Cyclopes, Hades' three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hell and the involvement of the gods in everyday affairs? What about the story of Beowulf and Grendal from the Celts, or the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table from Britain, among other such stories of old? Yes, we may look back upon them now and consider them such – stories, pure fictional nonsense, no possible way it could have been. But even still, those stories, however fictional or non-fictional they had been, still hold a special story to them, a moral to be learned and perhaps even a grain of truth to be gained from it. Why else would they have had persisted, against any other stories told during their times, to remain with us today? Because they meant something, and so do cartoons of now. They are the same as the elder stories, just told in a different way, but they still mean something to people, they teach kids the morals of life, right and wrong, just and wickedness. Sometimes they even bring inspiration and life to someone who is ill and helps them to get better. I've heard such stories happen from the G1 Transformer series itself."
She ended her speech, her rant, right there and then. So suddenly, and with such force, with such a gleam in her eye that dared him to challenge her words, that it left Klegghorn stunned. He stood transfixed, staring at her with wide eyes and an open mouth. The sudden change in her tone, even in her mannerisms and speech was astounding. He could hardly believe that the woman, who had just chastised him, with such an obvious extensive knowledge of ancient history and lore, had been the eager young woman gabbing on to the off-worlder as if she were a little girl. It simply boggled his mind. It looked like it had boggled Nosedive's mind too.
"I…eh…" Klegghorn cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. When he had first been assigned this boring watch job he had figured she was just another brain-dead, fantasy obsessed writer seeking escape from real life. Now he saw her a bit differently. "I see your point, Ms. Taber. I…uh, I apologize." Klegghorn's face narrowed though and his voice took on its usual temperamental edge as he said, shoving his hands further down into his coat, "But not all shows are really worth anything!"
Amy smiled softly at him as she rolled her gaze back over to Nosedive. "I already stated that! Those stories that matter will persist in the minds and hearts of all, those that don't, well… you know."
"Uh, she is so right, ya know?" Mookie said, leaning in over to Thrash.
Thrash just bobbed his head, agreeing completely. "Yeah. Totally. Only the best stories survive. I mean, that's how it works with comics too!"
"Hey yeah! And public items too! Like clothes and food, well, maybe not so much those. But definitely tools and toys!"
"And games!" Thrash eagerly added in.
"How else would economy work without public picking?"
The two ended up getting so worked up in their own conversation that they completely ignored – or simply didn't realize- that everyone else was staring at them, including their guest Amy, Nosedive, Klegghorn, the other, taller, police officer and the rest of their customers who were in hearing range.
Amy slowly turned her head back to its proper position, mostly because it was starting to get an ache in it from looking back over her shoulder, and up at Nosedive. She looked a bit… well, blank. She was just opening up her mouth to say something to Nosedive when something caught her eye. She leaned over, trying to see around him. Nosedive twisted around himself, at that moment the commotion coming from outside of the shop catching his ears.
Namely the commotion of people screaming.
"What's going on?" Amy asked rather puzzled as Nosedive hit the quick change on his two-way com.line. His street garb clothes were enveloped in a quick flash of light that gave way to his battle armor. Amy's eyes snapped on him, her mouth drawing open in surprise as the teenager pulled out his puck launcher. "Wow!" The writer breathed. "I didn't know you guys actually had that!"
Nosedive grinned at her as Klegghorn and the police officer ran by, their pistols already in hand. "Hey, some things in the show might have been exaggerated, like the four fingers," he said, twiddling his five fingers in front of her, "but our tech wasn't!"
With that came an explosion that ripped apart the front part of Captain Comics. A number of screams ensued from the terrified public, who either dropped for cover or began trying to run away. Nosedive twisted on his heel and truly lived up to his name as he dived over the table for the brunette, and grabbed her, wrapping her head around his hand and pressing her into the safety of the nap of his neck and pushing her to the floor. As he performed his daring act he cried out into her ear above the exploding concrete, "Sorry, Amy! I know there's the 'no-touching' rule on the first date, but I can't help it!"
As the incinerated bits of concrete and wood dust from support beams in the walls, and what remained of the rest of the shattered wall rained down upon them. When the fleeing public had either taken refuge behind some sort of cover or fled, Nosedive heard the distinct high, nasal voice of a certain small, green-scaled lizard that he had thought dead these last few months.
"We heard there was a party going on down here and we were rather flustered that we weren't invited…"
"So we invited ourselves!" Came the deep go-ready voice of Siege. One of the Saurian's, Nosedive guessed Siege, who else? Fired off a round from his weapon that blasted the wall some feet off over to their left. Nosedive looked away, shielding Amy's face as well, as the bits of concrete, wood, and other building materials used in the construction of buildings, including dust and other small particles, rained down on them.
Siege's voice rang out across the stiff-fear filled air. "Alright people! We've come for the writer A.M. Taber! Hand her over and nobody gets hurt!"
"Me!" Amy hissed out, her eyes widening in surprise. She glanced as best as she could at Nosedive, who was on top of her, and he looked at her with as much confusion as she was aiming at him. "Is this what writers most often fear at book-signings? Crazed religious fans that would do anything to get them, including armed assault?"
Nosedive gritted his teeth together as he cast a look towards the front of the store. He could see Siege, Chameleon, and Wraith's feet, well, Siege and Chameleon's at least. He could only see the end of Wraith's depressing dark blue and purple robes. He could also see the feet of about a dozen or more drones.
Great.
"I can tell you right now these aren't your half-crazed religious fans. These guys are much more dangerous!"
Siege shot off another laser bullet, blasting another hole in Captain Comics. Somewhere behind the register Nosedive heard Thrash and Mookie whine piteously and couldn't help but get angry. "I'm warning ya! You spineless humans have till the count of five to fork over A.M. Taber or I start blastin' ya! Starting with you!"
Nosedive could only imagine the poor defenseless human that Siege must have been pointing his over-sized blaster at. He felt sorry for them, not that he planned on having it be that way for long.
"Hold it right there, you prehistoric lizard! Drop your weapons or I'll shoot!"
Nosedive gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. Klegghorn had just stepped up. As he took a quick glance over his shoulder he could catch the human's feet just underneath the table.
For all the bad rap that he got from the others, Mallory especially, Nosedive wasn't as brain-dead as they thought – or as Disney had portrayed him. His mind shot off on the scenario that was about to take place, and he could only see one outcome for Klegghorn. Certain death. Unless of course he could do something…
Siege, Chameleon, and Wraith laughed at Klegghorn. Siege rumbled out, laughing, "You think you can stop me with that ancient piece of scrap metal you got, law man?"
Nosedive glanced back at Amy beneath him, catching her stunned gaze with his own brown alien eyes. "Stay low." He hissed at her as he went on his elbows and turned off the safety on his gun. "I'll handle them till the guys get here. Nobody trashes my favorite comic book store and gets away with it!"
Amy's eyes grew larger, either because she couldn't believe that he was actually going to fend off these crazed maniacs by himself or because of what he had just said. Not that she had time to protest, as she had been about to do. Nosedive had already moved.
In one fluid, graceful movement he jumped up onto his feet and spun around, kicking the table over and using it as cover. He dropped his arms down on it, steadying his aim as he shouted, "Hey Saurian-sushi's! EAT PUCK!!"
He fired off several blasts and destroyed two drones near Siege, and shot three more off at the offending three Saurian's. The pucks cracked and smashed against them with a sickening blow. Wraith immediately disappeared into a puff of mist and vanished while Chameleon screamed out and ran for cover behind Siege, who had lifted up his beefy arm and was using it as cover. Unfortunately, unlike Wraith and Chameleon, Siege's thick hide absorbed most of the shock from the hard pucks.
"We got us a duck!" Chameleon whined out as he cowered behind Siege. Another drone exploded nearby, but it was soon replaced by another that materialized in from the Raptor. Like always, Dragaunus was watching them and sending more reinforcements when he could.
"No kidding!" No sooner had the words left his mouth than the scaly lizard dropped his arm and fired off a volley at Nosedive. People took this chance to run for safety, screaming past the evil crimson drones as they themselves returned fire at the wooden table and duck. Klegghorn and the police officer occupied themselves with getting them to safety.
"Duck!" Nosedive cried out, not realizing the irony of the word in and of itself, as he threw himself back over the writer, who promptly went 'ouf!' as his armor smacked into her ribs. Not exactly a pleasant experience. It hurt. Bad.
Laser fire ripped across the area Nosedive had been previously kneeling. The laser fire disintegrated a neat semi-circle into the table and a few pop shots into where his gut would have been had he simply ducked his head, not that he had. And good thing too. After about five seconds of hearing nothing but screams, gun fire, watching the stands that held the comic books explode in a puff of tattered paper and wood, he at last heard Siege shout out, "Hold fire! I said hold fire!"
"Did we get 'em? Did we get 'em?" Came Chameleon's nasally voice over the settling smoke and popping of over heated wood and paper.
"Not sure. I don't see any feathers flying…" Everything drew deathly quiet once more, except for the distant screaming as the residents of the Anaheim Mall ran for their homes. Nosedive slightly lifted and turned his head so that his beak was touching the cheek of the startled writer. She looked back up into his own brown eyes, her fear all too evident. He also saw her grimacing and realized that he was hurting her. He slightly lifted himself off of her and whispered back, "Sorry."
Amy offered him a weak smile as an acceptance to his apology and mouthed back, 'What do we do?'
That was a very good question. They wanted her, though he couldn't grasp or understand why. Well, for whatever evil purpose they had planned he wasn't going to let them get her. Even if it was for nothing more than to force her to write better lines for these creeps. Nosedive laughed at that idea, though not physically, just mentally.
He heard the sound of the drones moving in to circle them and his heart began to race inside his chest. His eyes frantically glanced around the area seeking for a way of escape. That was when he caught sight of Thrash and Mookie. The two hadn't escaped yet and his eyes, like his anxiety, grew even larger. They were peeking around the corner of the counter at him and waving at him to get his attention.
"Psst! Psst! Nosedive!" Mookie hissed as softly as she could at him, trying not to draw attention. Thrash was doing the same. "'Dive! 'Dive-man!"
When he caught sight of them they frantically began pointing to the back of the counter where they were hiding. "Get over here, man!" Thrash hissed, or mouthed, one of the two.
"The back door!" Mookie was trying desperately to tell him despite the rather confused and frightened looks he was giving them. They were about twenty feet away with nothing to block them from getting hit once they broke cover except the comic stands. There wasn't any real cover that could actually help. He frantically waved his feathered hand at them, signaling them to go on. To save themselves.
They didn't go.
"Come out; come out, duckie-wucky! We won't hurt you…much!" Chanted Chameleon. Nosedive got goose bumps at the sound. Heavens above, it was like he was right behind him. He threw a cautionary glance over his shoulders, but he couldn't see anybody. Though the sound of the drone's gears wearing and twirling, their heavy feet padding against the wooden floor of the comic store, was enough to get his blood pumping even louder.
And Thrash and Mookie weren't leaving.
"'Dive!" They both hissed at him together, their looks of terror and horror speaking volumes in and of itself.
Nosedive tried signaling for them to leave again but they refused to go. Growing desperate, he quickly glanced down to Amy, who was trying to shift out from under him to see who he was signaling at, and then around him. The drones hadn't cut them off yet, but they were damn close. He could see one of their feet starting to crop up in the holes they had blasted in the table.
Grinding his teeth together in frustration, Nosedive finally made up his mind. They had to make a break for it or they'd be caught. He looked down at Amy and whispered quickly, "Alright, when I say go you run for Thrash and Mookie around the counter okay? They'll help you get out of here."
"What about you?" Amy hissed back, her eyes large and worried.
"I'll be right behind you. Kay?" He didn't wait for her to respond and looked up to Thrash and Mookie, signaling them that all was good. They nodded, biting their lips, and disappeared around the corner. Nosedive glanced back down to his charge and said, "Alright," he shifted his weight off of her, giving her a chance to turn over and prepare to pounce to her feet and run for it. The cranking and whirling of the mechanical drones were almost upon them. Nosedive could feel sweat pouring down his face, collecting on his feathers. He knew they were going to start shooting as soon as they saw him, he knew that. But he had to get her out of here. He couldn't let Amy, Thrash, or Mookie get hurt.
"GO!" Nosedive screamed out and Amy, for all the woman was worth, jumped up and ran as fast as she could, crouching as she went, for the counter. Damn, for a human, she was fast.
But not as fast as his lighter-boned people. He was right on her ass, shielding her with his own body as he fired back into the stunned Saurian's and emotionless drones.
They had been just right around the table, a second or two from jumping them before they had ran.
Damn. That had been close.
Chameleon shrieked once more and dived for the cover of the table that Nosedive had formally been using himself while Siege lifted his arm again, letting the fired pucks bash against his thick arm and the metallic shielding he had there. "There he goes! And he's got the girl! Get him! Stop them!"
Everything seemed to happen so fast, and everything to happen at once.
Amy was aware of the fact that they were getting shot at. Lord, she'd never had anyone shoot at her before and the sensation sent a burst of adrenaline through her that made her step lighter and quicker. She was more or less aware of Nosedive right behind her, practically breathing down her throat as he fired back into the crowd that had attacked the building. She didn't know who, having not seen them for herself, but if those voices had sounded anything familiar from the Disney show, and if she recognized the sound of gears twirling and hissing at all, then she had a very good guess who it was.
And that made her heart pound all the more fiercely against her ribcage.
She was a mere few feet away from the counter, an arms reach away from safety, and she dived. She jumped and dived like she was in some sort of baseball game, as if she were a player trying to steal home plate. She dived, hit the wooden ground and rolled. She only stopped as her body collided with the wall just behind the counter entrance, and that nearly knocked the air out of her lungs. It was at that same moment too that she heard Nosedive scream out and then everything went deathly quiet. Time returned to normal as Nosedive's body fell and connected with the floor. Blood, alien blood, splattered her across her face and shirt. She jerked against the wall from the contact of the warm liquid, staring wide-eyed at Nosedive's body as the alien Puckworldian groaned and whined pitifully on the floor. The gunfire had ceased. He shifted, rolling onto his left side as his hands went to hold his right side at the waist. She could see blood, red blood, staining his green clothes underneath his battle armor, and his brownish-yellowish sort of feathers on his hands quickly became stained in the red fluid.
His gun clattered to the floor and skidded forward, coming to a stop only as it bounced off her brown sandals.
She didn't even notice the gun however. Her mind was just trained on one thing and one thing only. Nosedive. Her mind kept screaming at her in rapid succession, 'OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD'
Thrash and Mookie poked their heads out from around the counter and caught sight of their friend. Mookie's mouth dropped open and her eyes got larger. She slapped her hands to her mouth in horror while Thrash released a shocked, short scream of alarm
"Alllright!" Siege cheered out lustily and pumped his arm. "One duck down! Five more to go! Let's bag the brod and go!"
"We should take the duck with us! Oooh! Dragaunus would love to see him! Imagine the bonus we'll get!"
"Hmm, you have a point. Alright, bag the woman and the duck! We'll take 'em both!"
Amy's eyes slowly wandered up from Nosedive's fetal position form and to the two voices she kept hearing. And wished she hadn't. The cartoon show fell far from the mark in portraying just how terrifying and gruesome the Saurian's really were, well, gruesome only if you weren't a reptile lover, and Amy had never been fond of reptiles, except fish. She liked fish, but snakes? Lizards? Eh…no. Not exactly. Siege's scaly hide wasn't all orange as the 'Mighty Ducks' show had portrayed. It was speckled with a multicolor of browns, oranges, and reds that really brought to life just how real this individual really was. The black mask that he had worn in the show wasn't a mask at all, but in fact part of the coloration of his scales, sort of how like a raccoon had a black mask around its eyes, only this Saurian had a black scaly mask around his head, making him look a bit like an executioner. His fingers and toes sported rather disturbing thick blunted claws, while the thorns flanking his jaw and running along the length of his head to his spine were all too real and frightening. Just as were his intimidating yellow and black eyes. Eyes that meant harm. Pain. Death. His armor was different from the show as well, there were more spikes on his shoulders than Disney had portrayed, giving those once odd-shoulder pointed pads a more sinister look. The guarding on his knees, legs, and arms were also spiked with sharp, deadly pointed spikes, while his body armor sported intricate designs and accents that she could only guess meant something of value in his race. His skin was dry and flaky, a bit dirty as well, and it was that dry, wrinkled, stern disposition of his Saurian birth that made her pull a face at the alien life form.
Chameleon, the short, funny green Saurian from the show that she had come to know was nothing what Disney had portrayed him as either. The small Saurian was just as terrifying as Siege was. Perhaps even more so with his long spindly neck, bulging eyes and lanky, small form. It was almost unnatural and disturbed her on a level she could not even fathom. His scales, like Siege, were varying shades of green ranging from the typical shade of green to yellow-green. He didn't even have the liverworts on his hands and chin, although his fingers and feet were shaped in a suction-cup sort of way, like an octopus's suckers on its legs. She knew a bit about octopus's too, she knew about a lot things in order to write believable experiences for the characters in her stories, and knew that from those suction cups some octopus's, she didn't know if all did, but poisoned needles were known to shoot out and stick to their victims. Or was that squids? She mentally shook her head, realizing that it didn't matter but that it only mattered in the case of this little green alien creature. His tail that he so famously sported was curled and lined along the spine with a tiny set of spikes, and hundreds of them. His armor was similar to what it was in the show, only that the metal carapace that he wore as a chest armor wasn't orange but a sinister metallic crimson red, or was it black? She wasn't sure, the coloring of the spiked shell kept changing as the creature moved about in the light.
The two Saurian's began to advance on her and her mind reeled. Chameleon pointed one of his suction-cup fingers towards Thrash and Mookie, who he'd noticed once Thrash had screamed and looked over to Siege, "What about those two?"
"Who cares about those two. Leave them, kill them. I don't care."
Those few words caused the two comic-geeks to pale visibly, even Mookie, whose skin was brown and not peach. She still paled and the two shook visibly. Thrash started grabbing for Amy, trying to pull her into cover where they could escape out the back door behind their place and too safety, but the writer's mind finally clicked back into place and she swatted his hands away.
She needed to save Nosedive. He was still alive. She needed to save him!
"No, what are you doing! The bad guys are that way!" Thrash said, stunned as she scrambled forward toward her advancing enemies, only she didn't go to Siege and Chameleon. She'd have to be completely mad to do that. She stopped at Nosedive, even as Thrash was trying to grab her feet and pull her back around the counter, and grabbed his shoulder pads, trying desperately to get a good grip and pull him and his one-hundred-something pound carcass along with her.
Nosedive blinked his brown eyes, looking up at her through the tears that were pouring out of them because of the pain. She could see clearly his look of disbelief in them, as if he thought that she wasn't even going to help him. She couldn't understand why he though that, why he looked that way and didn't give much thought to it. She tried pulling him back as Thrash tried pulling her.
"Leave me alone!" She finally shrieked back at Thrash and a wide-eyed Mookie, and kicked Thrash's hands away. The two humans looked at one another, unsure of exactly what they wanted to do. They honestly wanted to help their friend, and get this crazy woman out of there too, but there was their own safety they had to consider.
Nosedive finally managed to find his own voice and chocked out through the pain and sobs that were constricting his throat, "Wha-what are you doing? Run!"
Amy looked at him and then to the Saurian's, who were smirking and laughing at her antics, then back to Nosedive. Siege and Chameleon could have just walked forward and grabbed her, but they were standing there, enjoying this little show. She vaguely wondered why and realized that they were just sadistic pigs, that this was how they got their kicks. Hadn't she written villains like that before in her own stories? Lord, she somehow had never thought those types of people were real.
She stared down at Nosedive in confusion, trying to figure out why he was so damn confused himself, and spluttered out, "N-no. No! Your coming with me!"
Nosedive didn't respond. Couldn't respond. He stared up at the human in utter surprise. In the three years time that he and his brother and the other ducks had been on Earth they had undergone a lot of hell from the humans, had fought off crazy ones, like Dr. Droid. They had put up with the disgusted and condemning stares, the sometimes religious nuts that called them devils and wanted them dead, still had to track down Dragaunus to get the Dimensional Portal to get back to Puckworld and even stop his mad schemes to take over their world. There was no human on the face of this planet, asides from Phil, but he was only interested in them because of the money, that was willing to risk their neck for them. Not even Klegghorn. The only reason why he even put up with them was because he knew that, without them, Dragaunus would take over the Earth. If one of them died though he very much doubted the chief of police would have cared much.
And yet here he was, right now. This human, who he didn't even know, was trying to save him. Yes, granted, he knew that she wrote some damn good comic books and cartoons, books even that he very much enjoyed, but that didn't warrant anything on who she actually was. The Saurian's wanted her, evil alien outsiders, and as a writer he guessed that her mind must have grasped the bare meaning of that horrid path if they got her. And yet she didn't run, she stayed. She stayed to save his life.
He couldn't believe it.
"How adorable. She's wants to take the duck home with her!" Chameleon taunted from where he stood, and then started laughing. Siege himself chuckled a bit, but not much. His heavy, spiked tail dragged across the floor for a second, pushing debris and trash out of its path, before he said, "Alright, shows over. Drones, grab her and the duck! We can't waste time! The ducks'll show up any moment, remember?"
"Oh yeah!" Chameleon squeaked out, apparently he had forgotten all about the other ducks and how close they were to the Pond. The little Saurian visibly paled, mostly due to a drop in the coloration of his scales as they went from several shades of green to yellowish-green and white. He looked around worriedly, his tail lashing the air behind him as he said, "Neeehu-hee. We better hurry!"
The glossy, crimson and black drones, their armor much the same as the one Chameleon sported, began to advance on her and Nosedive. Several retracted their weapons into the palms of their metallic hands while their fingers, yes fingers, Disney had fudged up on them too, began to reach for her and the young Puckworldian. They were five-fingered like her own, that sported sharp claws at the ends. Amy gave a heartfelt pull on Nosedive's armor pads, pulling him further along the floor. He tried to help, pushing with her with his legs until they were in range of Thrash and Mookie, who, to Nosedive's amazement once again, hadn't fled. That amazed him to no end because typically the two humans would have already been long gone by now in such situations, as circumstances had proven before.
As Thrash and Mookie laid their hands on Nosedive and began to pull him back behind the counter, Amy felt something bump into her butt and she glanced behind her, finding Nosedive's gun.
The full shock of her situation wore off just then.
She snatched her hand behind her and grabbed it, but just as she was about to whip it around and fire it off at the drones advancing on them, who were only a few feet away, a rapid succession of gunfire went off from the front of the demolished comic book store. None of the shots missed, and exploded five of the twenty some drones while the others smacked and collided with the backs of Siege and Chameleon. She heard someone shout something from at the front of the store but could neither hear them above their own gunfire or the clattering of the drones as their bodies collapsed onto the floor, the pucks having melted straight through their chassis and destroyed their main power core.
Taking advantage of the situation and confusion, since Siege and Chameleon had dived for cover before the much beat-up table and exposed their own backs to her, she fired off her own few shots at the drones that had been advancing on her that had instead began to turn to address the new situation. All she managed to do however, as the fires from the gun blasted their arms and waists, was tick them off.
She pushed Nosedive squarely into Thrash and Mookie's arms and shouted, "Get him to safety!" Thrash and Mookie could only nod and began to drag him behind the counter and through the back door, but Nosedive wasn't out of the fight yet. He tried struggling against them but they held him firm.
"Stay still, Nosedive!" Mookie berated as she held him firmly by his left arm.
"Yeah man! We're trying to help!" Thrash threw in.
Nosedive managed to wrestle himself out of their grips long enough to bend over, despite the pain that shot up through his abdomen like fire, and grabbed Amy's left wrist with his bloody hand. She turned and looked at him, grim determination in her dark hazel eyes.
"You have to shot them in the chest! Right in the middle or blast their heads off! They won't stop for anything else!" He told her, practically having to yell to be heard above all the racket of the battle.
Amy's face brightened at this enlightenment. As the drones turned about back to her, retracting out their guns, she took aim and blasted the head off of three of them and holes in the chests of two more. Nosedive, Mookie, and Thrash stared wide-eyed, amazed at her accuracy, and looked back at her with their puzzlement. The writer turned, her wrist still held firmly in Nosedive's grip, and grinned.
"I'm an archer, and bit good with a gun myself. Now come on, we need to get out of here!" She shouted back, clearing up any surprise and puzzlement they had. Thrash and Mookie began to haul Nosedive's feathery ass out through the back door with Amy following close behind, gun at the ready as she guarded their backs. Nosedive still held her wrist in a tight death hold however and she had to look at the alien pointedly before he hesitantly let go. She had noted the look in his brown eyes again though, a look that simply begged one question. Why?
She didn't answer his unspoken question and instead shut the back door, considerably dulling the racket coming from the other end. She threw a look at Thrash and Mookie and demanded, "Is there a chair in here or something that we can use to block the door?"
"Uh, we have a small latter." Thrash supplied. "I don't know if it'll hold though."
The human female waved her empty hand, and the one with Nosedive's blood on it, off into the maze of the storage room that was filled with tones of boxes and crates. "Then help me move one of the boxes in front of the door! God knows paper weighs as much as the tree it was made from! So help me!"
Thrash and Mookie both edged to help but hesitated and they both glanced down at Nosedive in their arms. The duck smiled as best he could up at them, still clutching his bleeding side with both his hands. "I'll… be fine…just set me over there, on that box…"
"Okay 'Dive-man, if you say so." Thrash was saying, but no sooner had they settled Nosedive on a nearby box than Mookie turned to him and said, "Watch him. I'll be right back."
Thrash opened his mouth to say something but closed it right back up and glanced at Nosedive. The duck looked very ill and leaned his head up against the stack of boxes next to the one he was sitting on. His long, yellow feathery hair slipped across his face, obscuring one of this two eyes, but it didn't matter. His pain was all too evident, as was his moaning.
Thrash bit his lower lip as he looked back over and Amy and Mookie as they both heaved a box of comics down from a stack and began carrying it over to the door. Amy had shoved Nosedive's gun into a decorative belt she had hanging loosely around her waist. His gaze jumped back to Nosedive and then down to the wound he was clutching at desperately. His hands were practically covered in his own blood and quickly staining the entire right side.
"Oh man!" Thrash said helplessly and looked about the maze of boxes as if searching for a doctor, or a First Aid kit. Giving up, he began to remove his favorite brown vest from his shoulders. Nosedive caught the motion and weakly looked up at him, wondering what he was doing.
"Thrash…?" Nosedive began to say weakly, but the human was already kneeling down before him, vest in one hand and his other reaching down for his boot. Nosedive watched, stunned, as he pulled up his flabby pant leg and pulled out a rather large hunting knife from his boot. Nosedive's eyes went wide at that. He hadn't known that Thrash carried a weapon on him. With it he ripped his vest in two piece and then slipped it back into his hiding spot. Nosedive could only watch, surprised for what seemed the billionth time that day, as Thrash reached out and began moving his hands.
"I need to see the wound, Nosedive." Thrash said, sounding the most concerned that Nosedive had ever heard him in his life. Or at least in the three years he'd known him. There was a look of absolute concentration and grim determination there as he moved aside his blood soaked hands to see the laser wound. Upon getting a glance at it Thrash pulled a face, his lips pulling up into a grimace. The human hissed and then quickly took one piece of his torn vest and began folding it several times until it became a thick padding of cloth.
"Thrash…" Nosedive muttered, clearly out of it. "Your vest…."
"I don't care about the vest, Nosedive." The red headed human said distinctly as he hit his brown leather boot down on the ground. A small compartment fell open on the back of his heel and he tilted his boot, grabbing one of the two small vials of luminescent blue liquid that slipped out of it. Nosedive watched him with distant eyes as his human friend popped the cork off of the small vial and spilled its contents all over one side of the brown cloth vest. The liquid soaked in, leaving the cloth to glow strangely as it interacted with the substance. Thrash then glanced up at Nosedive, noted his confused expression but lack of serious concentration and then over his shoulder. Mookie or Amy hadn't seen, but it wasn't really Mookie who he was concerned about who had seen. Noting that Amy was too busy moving another box in front of the door he quickly discarded the empty vial next to Nosedive for the time, slapped the folded cloth over the new hole burned into the side of Nosedive's gut and then quickly took up the other one and tied it around his waist, making sure that the padding would hold still.
Nosedive could only utter a low groan of protest to the affect, or to Thrash's comment. Whichever it was Thrash didn't know and wasn't too concerned about it. "You'll be alright now, 'Dive-man." Thrash said as his eyes jumped from the wound on Nosedive's side and then up into the anguished ducks face. A few seconds ticked on by and slowly that looked disappeared, and the note of Nosedive's regular breathing assured the human he was out cold. "You'll be okay." He whispered softly again.
"Thrash, we're done!" Mookie called out sharply, catching his attention. The beefy, pot-bellied human glanced in their direction then stood up hastily, moving his foot at an odd angle to close the secret compartment on his boot. Amy didn't notice, but she did notice Thrash's lack of a vest and the new makeshift wound around Nosedive's waist. The writer smiled as she took out Nosedive's gun and then bent down to help him onto his feet. She didn't say anything, she didn't know what she would if she did, but Thrash understood and simply smiled back as he bent down to help Nosedive up himself.
Mookie noticed the small empty glass vial on the box and quickly glanced up to Thrash, who met her sudden stern glare. He sent her back a 'what-else-could-I-have-done' look over Amy's head and Mookie rolled her eyes, but understood as she noted Nosedive's side. "Here, honey, let me get that. Your on guard-duty after all." Mookie offered as she traded places with the writer and slipped her arm underneath his arm instead.
Amy stood back, offering her position and began looking around the room. "Alright. Well, how do we get out of here?" She could still here the battle going on in the front of the store, and bullet holes were starting to appear in the cement wall.
Mookie nodded down the clear-cut path in the center of the room with her head. "This way, it leads to the back door." Amy only nodded and followed them towards the back, Nosedive's puck launcher clutched firmly in her sweating hand. She'd never been so terrified in her life, but then she'd never been in a gunfight in her life or met aliens either.
Lord, she knew she shouldn't have bought that ticket to see the next Mighty Ducks show this Wednesday. She knew she shouldn't have agreed with her manager to set up a book-signing while she was in town too. Damn it, why didn't she ever listen to her gut instincts?
They found the back door easily enough and marched right through it, only to stop short as soon as they had it open. Their hearts practically stopped dead as soon as they found Wraith with ten more drones surrounding the back door.
"Hello, Ms. Taber." Wraith languished in his grim and woeful voice as he caught eye contact with the woman. Thrash and Mookie grinned sheepishly at the ugly, wrinkled, grey and white flecked scaled creature while Amy stared at him in shock and horror. Mookie said, "Sorry, wrong door!"
Thrash went to close it, only Wraith thrust his staff out with the duck skull slammed on top of it and stopped the human from doing so. The tall, gnarled Saurian was stronger than he looked and Thrash looked up at him with a note or worry creasing his brow.
"Oh, I don't think that this is the wrong door." And with that they heard a snap and crackle behind them. Amy, Thrash and Mookie turned around, glancing back over their shoulders, only to find that ten more crimson-black drones had warped in from behind, blocking their path. Their guns were out and exposed at the three of them, same as the ten hunter drones that ringed Wraith. "I don't think I have the wrong door at all."
Thrash and Mookie backed up as quickly and as best as they could as they dragged Nosedive between them as Wraith stayed true to this name and floated into the room. It was almost as if he had hovered in on the air itself, like he was some sort of ghost. The three humans cringed away from the imposing, ancient Saurian and the twisting, curving horns that wrapped out from his head. The way that he stood towering over him, his bloodshot eyes piercing them and his dark blue and purple robes bellowing with a wind that they could not feel, they got the sense that perhaps he would gore them with his horns, or that simply put, their time was up.
Wraith pointed toward Amy with one of his long, skeletal, talon fingers and demanded in his mind-numbing voice, "Drop the weapon."
She hesitated, her eyes dancing about the area and at the drones. Wraith could practically see her trying to think out some sort of plan to get them out of here, and he almost chuckled at her foolhardiness. Almost. He hadn't expected the woman to be so brave, or so stubborn. "I said drop it, or you'll find these three dead within a minute."
Amy's eyes widened at that and almost instantly the gun dropped from her numbed hand.
"Good." The ancient Saurian said, smiling. An act that sent chills jolting up their spines. "Now if you two would be so kind as too hand over the duck, I'll leave, along with my dull-witted companions, and leave your shop standing."
Mookie and Thrash glanced at each other. They dared not betray their friend, hand over Nosedive to his enemies, but neither did they want to risk the wrath of the Saurian warlock.
"I mean what I said earlier." Wraith warned and he bent forward, his dry, leathery face pushing into both of theirs. "I'll see you two pretenders dead if you don't hand the two over this instant."
Thrash and Mookie's eyes got wide at that and, regretfully, handed Nosedive over to the Saurian. Amy didn't say a word, couldn't, as two drones stepped up and grabbed her wrists. She snapped out a smart 'ow!' as their warm, metallic clawed fingers dug into her skin, making any prospect of escape a rather painful idea. Wraith took Nosedive and floated back a step, grinning his cruel, unnatural grin as he bowed a bit to Mookie and Thrash and said, "Thank you for your cooperation. Now, I'll be leaving."
And with that, Wraith disappeared, teleporting away with the drones. The two owners of Captain Comics spun around just in time to see Amy try a last minute ditch, frantically trying to wrestle herself free from the drones, but it was too late. Her last words died on the air around Thrash and Mookie's ears like the hollow whispering of a sirens cry upon a misty, night shore.
"Help meee….!"
The sinister crimson drones that had teleported into the midst of their warehouse disappeared, each teleporting away back to their master, Lord Dragaunus, Last of the Saurian Overlords. And Amy went with them.
Thrash and Mookie stood staring at their storage house, not really seeing the piles and piles of boxes that were stacked within. They were seeing things that no longer stood there and feeling the full wrath of their emotions as it played the guilty cords of biting instruments within their whole bodies.
Thrash was the first to break. Tears started swelling up in his eyes as Mookie started to move, covering her lips with her two frail brown hands. "What have we done?" Thrash choked out, a look of horror playing over his face.
Mookie knelt down and picked up Nosedive's weapon while tears starting running down the length of Thrash's face. "Oh Nosedive! We'll never see your feathery face again!"
"We have to tell the others." Thrash choked out. Mookie glanced up with him, agreeing upon the instant. She was opening her mouth to concur when both of them paused and shifted their attention over in the direction of the front of the store.
The sounds of gun fire, of threats being sent back and forth… it was gone.
The two humans glanced to each other. Mookie bit down on her lower lips while Thrash looked like he was close to breaking down. As if they had both agreed upon some unspoken conversation, they both turned, stood up, and marched back to see what damage had been done to their remaining store.
And to tell the Mighty Ducks, specifically Wildwing, what had happened.
"I don't get it." Mallory said as she kicked what was left of the front of the Captain Comic's wall. "Why in the name of DuCaine would Dragaunus attack the most worthless place on Earth?"
Wildwing stomped his way pass the red head, almost shoving her aside as he began scouring the ruins of the store for a familiar feathery individual. "It wasn't the place, it was Nosedive!" Wildwing informed her as he grabbed a piece of the fallen ceiling and threw it aside. He found nothing underneath it but some torn and crumbled comic book pieces. Comic books littered the floor everywhere, a few pieces were still floating through the air while others burnt silently on the ground. Some were even burning as they floated to the floor like little ghosts. Wildwing looked frantically about the place while the team, his team, stood back looking on at the demolished building with fallen spirits. It was more than painfully apparent that there was no living thing that could possibly hide within it. Mallory herself felt very bad. Nosedive had been here? Well, that wasn't much of a surprise in and of itself, the place was like a second home to the teen, but he had been here previously? As in, just before the fight?
She watched helplessly, as did everyone else, as their commander threw aside another chuck of something that could have concealed a person, though not likely. Finding nothing again but debris, ruined comics and dust, Wildwing lifted his head and searched the demolished store over with his eyes. He was breathing heavy, his heart was racing, his blood speeding through his veins. His baby brother… his little annoying Nosedive…. Gone?
"Nosedive!" Wildwing shouted, then clasped his hands to his beak and screamed out, "NOSEDIVE!!"
"He's going to become hysteric." Tanya warned and Mallory nodded in agreement.
Duke acted quickly and calmly walked into the demolished room, stepping up and over the debris-ridden area as if it were little more than a sidewalk. "Wildwing, calm down. Nosedive probably wasn't even here when they hit."
Wildwing didn't even look at him. He started towards the counter, which was one of the few standing things left. Maybe Nosedive was…. "No. No! He was here! There was a comic-signing for one of his comics he loves! He was here!"
"Maybe he got his comics signed before they struck?" Duke suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.
Wildwing looked less than convinced. His foot came down on some uneven ground and he slipped forward, almost falling but he managed to correct his balance before he hit the floor. He turned sharply around and spied a familiar black binder that Nosedive had brought to the place. It was open with its cover glaring painfully back up at him. Eyes wide, he knelt down slowly, his hand reaching for the binder. Duke watched, a sinking feeling in his gut as Wildwing grabbed the binder and turned it over. Inside was a familiar looking comic that Nosedive collected, and the first and second ones had been signed. The third wasn't even in the protective casing.
Wildwing's crimson eyes, made such a way by the golden mask he wore, went large in condemned sorrow and anxiety. "They have him." He choked out silently. His heart gave a painful lunge at the realization of it, so great and so painful that it shook the rest of his body. Wildwing crumbled onto both of his knees instead of just one. He snapped the black binder shut and pressed it with a crushing embrace against his marked and scorched armor chest plate. He bowed his head and choked on a sob that threatened to wrench itself from his scratchy throat.
The sight touched the remaining ducks deeply. Duke stood there in the midst of the rubble, unsure of what to do as his friend and commander starting breaking down before him. First his best friend Canard, and now his younger brother, Nosedive. Wonderful. Simply wonderful.
Grin stood back behind Mallory and Tanya, feeling the force of his pain perhaps as greatly as he while the two female Puckworldian's felt their own emotions prick at his disposition. Mallory couldn't do little else besides stand there and shake her head back and forth in shock, unwilling to believe that Nosedive was actually gone. Tanya bit her lower beak and then covered her soft, brownish-yellow hand over her beak. "Oh, Wildwing…" She choked out through her own throat and started forward, her other hand half-way rising as if she meant to pick him up from where she stood and cradle him close.
Just then the back door, perhaps one of the few things remaining asides from the back wall, pushed open. Everyone's attention snapped in their direction, including Wildwing's. His eyes took on hope for a moment, as did his voice, as he asked out through his grief-ridden voice, "Nosedive?"
Thrash and Mookie stepped out and Wildwing's hope crumbled. Duke lifted an eyebrow at them and said, "Thrash? Mookie? What are you two still doing here?"
"Where's Nosedive?" Wildwing blurted out and lunged to his feet. Everyone was a bit surprised where their grief-stricken leader had even found the strength to pull off such an act. He shoved the black binder in the two distraught human's general direction, making sure that they saw it. "This was his!" He stated, his words and actions bordering on hysteria. "He was here! Where is he? Did he escape? Is he back there?"
Thrash and Mookie pushed themselves up against the pot-ridden wall under the force of his multitude of questions as if they held a weight to them. Duke came to their rescue, oddly enough, and grabbed Wildwing's shoulder, forcing him to turn around and face the elder drake.
"Wildwing, you need to calm down!" Duke told him sternly. "Getting worked up isn't going to bring Nosedive back! Now let me handle this." He said and waited for Wildwing to agree with a silent nod.
Duke gently patted his friend on the shoulder, gave him one last reassuring look, and turned on Thrash and Mookie, who had regathered themselves a bit but still looked distraught. He fixed his eyes on them and cleared his throat, saying calmly and smoothly. "Was Nosedive here when the Saurian's struck?"
"Yes." Mookie replied quickly.
"Wonderful." Duke said, being sarcastic as he shot Wildwing a glance over his shoulder. The white drake stood by silently, though the look of dismay on his face spoke volumes. "Okay, so where is our wayward drake now?"
Thrash was the one who replied. The man broke down into a fit of tears and spat out helplessly, "They took him man! And the girl! We couldn't do anything! He threatened to kill us if we didn't!"
Mookie shot her friend a look but didn't say anything. She looked back to Duke and the rest of the team, who stood by in shocked dismay, and held out Nosedive's gun for them to take. "Here, it was his."
Duke took the puck launcher weakly, his own emotions stirring up in a rampage. As much as the younger duck had gotten on his nerves he had grown on him, somehow. Perhaps it was his wisecracks after every battle that had always managed to take the edge off of the reality of it all. He always managed to make them laugh, or bring their spirits up with his antics, even if they were ridiculous and not at all hilarious.
Duke looked sadly at the weapon, then back up at Thrash and Mookie. Something they had said had just clicked in his brain. He looked at them quizzically, at Thrash as he continued his crying fit and as Mookie tried to comfort him, and asked, "What girl?"
Mookie looked back up at grey-feathered duck and said, "The lady that was here signing the comics and stuff. They wanted her. …And they got her too."
Duke blinked at that then slowly turned and looked at Wildwing. "What would Dragaunus want with a comic-book writer?"
But Wildwing wasn't even listening, or if he was he had ignored the former ex-jewel thief. He stood there looking sick and clutching Nosedive's black binder to his chest as if it were a lover. His gaze was focused on the ground where he watched a page from a comic book quickly burn up. He watched, as one by one, the separate panels were dissolved, the pictures, and words, and characters, and landscapes and story, were destroyed, gone forever. It kind of struck him then that comic books were more than just a child's thing, more than just a cheap way of reading a story. It was a world in itself, portrayed through visual as well as verbal communication. True, not always was it a good story, but those never really mattered did they? The good stories, the good pictures, the good storylines, those lasted.
It was those stories that Nosedive clung too. That he kept coming back to read.
As Wildwing watched the comic page burn, he glimpsed a bit of his brother, not literally, but his reasoning, his obsession with the flimsy paper stories. He was looking for another world, another reality to live in, someplace where he could depend on good always winning and evil failing every time. He was looking for stability, an escape from the horrors, neutrality, and unpredictability of life.
Wildwing pressed the black binder and its precious cargo all the more closer to his battered chest plate, if it were at all possible. He was beginning to see how good these things were. How something such as his worst nightmare would somehow turn out okay, that Nosedive would be returned to him in the end. Of course, that was in the comics, in a world, place, and time that didn't really exist. A place where things were predictable.
He knew better. Life wasn't so easy, nice, or predictable…
He knew he was never going to see his baby brother again.
Then it struck him, another thought. Another reason why Nosedive read these silly things. From that predictability came hope. A reason to continue to turn the page. Because there was hope in knowing that things were going to follow through. That the writers for the comics would follow the code of telling a story.
Nosedive relied on that hope.
Now Wildwing was going to have to rely on it too.
But of course for him to have hope he needed Dragaunus to do something really stupid, something really, really incredible stupid. Something like move his ship so Drake-1 could pick up on its energies, or something of that sort of stupidity.
But Dragaunus wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to do something as stupid as that.
The last bit of the burning comic page burned up in a thin wisp of smoke. Nosedive was gone.
Well, there's the first chapter to this tale. Don't worry, there's more! Much more:) I do need a bit of help from you though, the readers. I don't know much about the characters Thrash and Mookie and any information on them would be wonderful. I'm aware that they own Captain Comics, duh I kind of stated that, but any else on them would be wonderful! Personalities, how they talk and act, and so forth. Thanks!