//------------------------------// // 209. Negating Duck. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Saint Canard, Bakery Hidden Basement, Pom- The basement had three boxes in it near the entrance, I took a whiff and I could smell blood. I quickly moved over to the first box and looking inside it the kicked puppies inside shied away from me in fear. Looking into the second box, I saw a bunch of rabbits beaten to within an inch of their lives, some of them had broken legs and they were equally terrified. I saw flies around the third box and took a sniff of the air and looked at the floor that had drippings of blood leaking from it, after glancing inside the box. I looked around for a lid and once found I started to place the lid on the box. “What was in the third box?” Launchpad asked innocently. “Cats… you don’t want to know what Negaduck did to them.” I said quietly wishing I hadn’t seen that. “Hopefully they’re in a better place… along with their kittens.” I had heard Negaduck was cruel and vicious, but doing that to animals?! I was about to press the lid down when I heard a weak mewling noise… Not being able to ignore it, I moved the lid to the side and carefully dug into… the bodies. Apparently one of the pregnant cat’s kittens had barely survived Negaduck. I carefully took out the poor mewling baby and moved back over to the puppies. “Take care of this one please, they have had it far worse than you.” Have gently stated this in a canine growl, I carefully place the only surviving newborn kitten among the battered puppies and they didn’t do so much as twitch towards the kitten, but they were all looking up at me. Some with awe and others with some hope as they took up a slightly protective circle around the weakly mewling kitten. I slowly closed the lid on the third box and ultimately pressed down on it making sure it was closed and I tried to ignore the blood staining my hooves. This was the second time today… I really didn’t like any part of me being covered in blood. “To think I knew the guy when he was still mostly sane…” Launchpad lamented slightly, no one else had looked into the box and I wasn’t about to tell them what I saw. That one was going with me to the grave and someone had to bury or burn that box without looking inside. “Launchpad, please carry these two boxes and get these animals out of here… find some food for the kitten while you’re at it. It’s… it’s going to need a lot of help.” If I didn’t have a reason to state ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’ before, I certainly had a reason to call it now if I hadn’t already. If Negaduck did this to the animals… what would he do to a person? “Uh… right, just let me…” Launchpad carefully started to pick up the crate and carry them, the puppies whimpered. “It’ll be okay, your safe.” I softly yipped, the animals calmed down. The only sound from the boxes now was a kitten mewling for its mother’s milk as Launchpad went up the stairs. “Pom, am I right to believe that in the last box was…” Dormarch started before I cut him off in this dimly lit room where Negaduck gave his morning announcement from, he was likely in another room as I saw another door. “Don’t… don’t ask or think about it too hard Dormarch.” Turning to Maui, or Cold Shadow as he was now. I saw the red cloth blindfold was stained with tears. “Seeing all, missing none… may they rest.” That was all Cold Shadow had to say about the subject before he turned to me and nodded. “Where’s Banana Boy?” Dormarch looked around and finally noticed that he wasn’t here, I personally think he flew off to get help. “He went to get backup.” I answered calmly as I looked about the room full of torture implements and tried not to think about what had happened here. The smells in this room were fairly nauseating. “I don’t think he would abandon us, we might need the help if Negaduck is here.” Who knows what twisted reason Negaduck could have for what he did to those cats. “I have one question, the amount of blood I scanned to be in the crate does not match the relative amount of bodies…” Dormarch probably knows what I in the crate and was being very quiet about it, but what he said put me on high alert. “While I doubt Negaduck knows how to wield blood magic…” “I will look out for blood sigils.” Cold Shadow stated coolly. “What may be written by the foe you helped bring down, might be used by our foe here… if there was one hiding the entrance, then there may be others. I will take the lead. If he doesn’t know we’re here from the sounds and shaking from all the explosions above, then he’ll know soon enough either way.” Cold Shadow moved over to the doors and selected one, he looked at the door and simply opened it, it lead into a large hallway with a solid steel door at the far end of it. What looked like various metal doors with small barred windows lined the hall. I heard some kind of noise come from Dormarch and he quickly looked to me. “Life sign detected on scanner, size matches with that of… Rubber Chicken… and his life signs estimated to be close to critical health. He’s in the third cell on the left.” Dormarch announced with a worried tone. We were about to burst forward towards the cell when Cold Shadow’s staff moved in front of us both… he had a grim frown on his face. “Don’t rush… traps… we need to disable them if we are to save this Rubber Chicken while we still can, we endanger all our lives by rushing to his aid.” Cold Shadow was cold, calculating and could see more than he let on at a first glance. Whatever he was seeing… he wasn’t about to let us walk into that danger. He moved forward looking to the left and right, he lashed out at the floor and a pair of nozzles popped out of the wall before we even reached the first two cells. Powerful flames filled the area in front of us. “There is worse than that waiting for us… wait a moment.” Ripping of the blindfold his form twirled and Cold Shadow disappeared leaving Maui in his place. “I’ve got it.” Maui aimed his Beetle Blaster forward and fire two shots, both the flamethrowers were destroyed in a shower of green slightly acidic gunk snuffing out the flames and destroying the nozzles shooting them. Maui quickly spun and stopped. He was once again equipped with the blindfold and staff, having become Cold Shadow once more. “We both have our talents.” Cold Shadow said simply. “Maui will always be more than I, but that does not make me less.” “Is he answering our questions before we even ask them?” It seemed this spooked Dormarch somewhat. “Do not worry Pom, Dormarch, I am an ally through and through.” As Cold Shadow said this he held the staff in a defensive manner and slowly inched forward using Maui’s form as if it were his own. Two arms popped out of the ceiling and swung by Cold Shadow, he held his position as both saws missed his beak and the back of his head and swung around to hit him between the eyes and the center of the back of his skull. Yet he still didn’t move, he didn’t so much as flinch as they came at him. When the saws came close he twisted and with a single swing, both saw blades slapped again the walls to the left and right and the bladed disks shattered to pieces. Making very little noise as they did so. “Wow…” Dormarch was impressed, as was I. That kind of quiet concentration doesn’t come naturally, I’m getting a better read of Cold Shadow and what he may be capable of. I was quite certain he wasn’t a threat to us and wasn’t like a magical nightmare parasite slowly twisting someone into something they weren’t through the desires of that person. “Thank you.” Cold Shadow responded without turning his head to look back at me, it was definitely directed at me and not Dormarch. He was seeing far more than either Dormarch or I could with his eyes covered. “But, we are not done yet...” Cold Shadow continued looking ahead and took an offensive stance with the staff, we passed by the second cells on our left and right and two round black bombs with lit fuses flew out of two holes that suddenly appeared in the ceiling. Cold Shadow swung twice and both the bombs hit the floor, he didn’t even touch them… he didn’t need to… their fuses were no longer lit. “You can reignite them again. Take them upon you’re wool, we may have need of them much later.” Listening to Cold Shadow I picked up the two small bombs with short fuses and stuck them into pockets in my wool. “A lesson for the young one, one can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. You are not that which was. Now, can you get into the cell? It will be easier to open from the other side, you will see what I mean.” “…” Dormarch looked to me and hopped onto my back. Taking this as a cue, I propped myself up on the door and climbed up slightly to get a look into the barred window. Dormarch also looked with me and we saw Rubber Chicken on the floor and not in a good condition. “Search Hunter.” With a flash Dormarch appeared in the room and looked at the door with a tilted head. “An alarm on the door? Ah… I see what Cold Shadow means now.” Dormarch made his way up to the door where I could see him and I back away from it. “Give me a minute.” “Should I carry him to safety so that you may continue onward with your inevitable fight against the malignance?” That Cold Shadow directed the question at me made me look back at him in concern. “Remember to stay true, that is what those three words mean to you.” After a few seconds to think it over, I finally decided on a response. “I’m aware.” “Good, do not let rage lead, for the mind is far more dangerous, but do not hold rage back or let it build to ever overtake your heart.” A few seconds of hearing something on the other side of the door from Dormarch grunting, Cold Shadow added. “Whether or not you believe me, you are a personification of strength by perseverance. Persevere through what comes and be careful with your limits.” Not being given much more time to think about that, Dormarch finally got the door open. “He’s really…” Dormarch started, only for Cold Shadow to move past him swiftly and quietly heaved Rubber Chicken onto a shoulder. The rubber hero was just shy of being absolutely mutilated, what had Negaduck done to him and why? “If he needs help, then I shall remove him from danger. Darts, boulder, spikes… dive, jump up and walk on the wall.” With that Cold Shadow quickly made haste back the way we came. “What did he mean by…” Instead of listening to Dormarch ponder on it, I ran forward and dove into a roll as darts flew out and hit both walls. “One time deadly traps?” “Yes.” We didn’t need Cold Shadow to keep pushing forward. Launchpad would have gotten back to us if he probably wasn’t doing a more important job of saving a poor animals life. “On my back.” Dormarch quickly made his way to me and hopped up onto my back, I ran forward and a boulder dropped to the floor and started rolling for us from behind. I jumped up and grappled the ceiling and pulled us up against it. The boulder passed by beneath and then fell into a dark hole that closed up at where we were going. Well that was the one trap beyond the spikes that Cold Shadow didn’t have to worry about. I clambered to the wall and started moving forward, the last trap triggered. The pit of spikes wasn’t dangerous, but the reason we were on the wall became known as the ceiling swung out too revealing a mass of spikes above. I’m sure that if you avoided getting skewered by spikes below the floor, then the ceiling spikes would drop down and… yeah. I made it to the other side and stayed on the wall, I opened the door and the floor where the boulder was fell open again. Once it closed up I pushed the door open and hopped to the floor to enter a large open room. Off to the left was a bed, off to the right was a lot of strange humming equipment and in front of us… was a wide open space. A red carpet leading up to a red hat in a chair with its back to us. “Well, well… someone got into my inner sanctum, I wonder who it could be? Don’t tell me, let me guess before I turn around and make mincemeat out of the first person to get here. My plan is just about done building up, it’s interesting that someone managed to get this far without getting hit by any of the traps. I thought most people wouldn’t even think twice about the floor after the boulder fell into the pit.” The chair sat up and Negaduck took his webbed feet off the desk he was sitting at, calmly watching the news and laughing dementedly at a number of children in another country coming down with some form of terminal illness. “The only heroic buffoons still active in the city are Neptunia and Darkwing… I don’t smell fish, but I do smell duck. There’s also the TOON Division stooges, but they never get quite this close to catching me. I remember when I set up The Collector for a fall, one of my more brilliant schemes… took them months to fix the damages I dealt while they were bringing him in after nearly killing that piece of crap bobcat. Now answer me this, who is the number one villain in all of Saint Canard?” “Records show it to be Dr. Slug.” Dormarch stated and I started to run forward if Negaduck was about to do what I think he was. “What, he is not better than…!” My hoof plowed a hole into the middle of the chair where Negaduck had been sitting. He reacted to me faster than I could almost follow by flipping backwards out of the chair and pushed off the monitor to leap over me and land on his feet facing me in the middle of the room. “Who the… you! Huh… was expecting Darkwing, so there are heroes who are more brains than brawn and luck, go figure. At least I know who iced Splatter Phoenix now, didn’t think you had it in you… maybe we can start a working relationship.” He was surprised to see me, he was equally surprised that I went with a near lethal amount of force considering I just put my hoof straight through his swivel chair. I pulled my hoof free and turned to look at him. “After what you did to those poor cats, I’m never going to agree to that and never would have to begin with.” At my cool demeanor Negaduck snorted loudly. “Well I had a good reason for that, aside from the enjoyment of being the one to eviscerate them all myself… well that was just a bonus, as was letting Splatter Phoenix off a few of those fogies from the nearby nursing home for that switch to enter my lair.” Negaduck reached behind his back and, with an ominous red glow, he pulled out and tossed a lit bomb at me. My eyes widened and I leapt to the ceiling before leaping at Negaduck, he dropped under my attempt to tackle and I soared over him to land on the floor near the entrance. As the monitor and chair were damaged by the explosion, Negaduck turned to me with a sadistic grin. “Do you know how hard it is to get powerful blood magic seals permanently tattooed onto your body without anyone asking questions? It was fucking painful, why finding enough pregnant cats for the ‘blood of the innocent’ was hard work. The results even took a while to get settled, but once they were…” I charged towards him as he began reaching for something else, he was ready for me… unfortunately he didn’t seem to have paid attention to the other being in the room. “Wild-Bark!” Dormarch hit Negaduck from behind freezing him in place as I lunged for an overhead left hoof strike. A twitch of his visible hand let me know what to do next, I sent Dormarch a warning through our bond. Before my hoof could connected, Negaduck managed to regain control of himself through sheer force of will and pulled out a running chainsaw with his right hand. I inflated my wool and narrowly avoid it biting into my unprotected cheeks or face as I fluttered backwards in the air by flailing my hooves, the swing also narrowly missed Dormarch who avoided it as Negaduck finished his wing by going low for him. Okay so Negaduck had a strong will and can break Dormarch’s stunning attack in under five seconds. “Not Caper Canine then?" As he said this he pulled the chord on the chainsaw and it went into overdrive as he held it with both hands. "Just how many sidekicks do you have?!” “They aren’t sidekicks, they are friends and partners.” I returned while staring him down. “Friends? Yuck! It’s all potato patato for me anyway, they will all be the same thing at the end of the day they meet me… DEAD!” Taking his left hand off the chainsaw he reached behind himself and pulled out a rocket launcher and fired it at me. “I’ll use their skulls to decorate my toilet, or I’ll use them as the toilet, depends on how I'm feeling really!” As I avoided the rocket by leaping to the left, while I did so he managed to both predict and slap Dormarch out of the air and into the far right wall with the launcher as Dormarch appeared in a flash going for Negaduck’s neck. Dormarch yelped and hit the floor with weak whine and I heard an explosion down the hallway as the rocket had flown through the entrance to this room. “You two are much more interesting than the usual yahoos I deal with, and this is the first time I’m testing out my new permanently inked in ability that I made sure was impossible to alter by getting it settled in." Discarding the rocket launcher he pulled out a gun with his left hand and I inhaled as soon as I saw it. "You know, in case someone magical even thinks about trying to disarm it or me completely, you'd have to kill me to stop me now!” Six rounds were fire in rapid succession from the gun, I exhaled explosively and moved around the bullets that were trying to put me into the path of the next bullet and so on as I evaded at speeds where the bullets looked to be moving through liquid. As time started to speed up to normal I noted he hadn’t discarded the gun yet and crouched. I leapt before the Dancing Flame ended and avoided a seventh shot going straight into my heart. “Darn it, a genuine bullet dodger, well it was worth all that money to carry an entire arsenal on my person!” Negaduck stated as he tossed the gun away and went back to holding the chainsaw with both hands and charged for me with it raised high in the air as I came back down from floating in the air. He was about to swing when Dormarch fired a Retriever Bark forcing him to duck it, I landed and fired a Bark Blast into his chest a second later sending him skidding back a bit. He didn’t fall over despite the force I hit him, it led me to think about just how tough and sure footed this mad duck was. Also we needed to land a few solid hits, that couldn’t be too hard even if he could pull out all sorts of weapons. “Huh, you’re bark was actually hurt me, makes me wonder what you’re bites are like!” Oh great, not only was Negaduck almost pure evil… he was possibly a masochist as well judging by the smile on his beak. “Can you tell me what you’re final plan in all of this is at least before we continue this?” I was wary of attacking him and Dormarch was keeping his distance and eyeing the chainsaw. “Hm, let me think, nah!” He swung his chainsaw for me and I backpedaled a bit. “I’ll only give you one hint… total carnage incarnated!” “If nothing else is to be expected than that, then you will surely fail!” Cold Shadow came down swinging his staff and Negaduck took a single step back and, taking his left hand off the chainsaw, he pulled out a much longer gun. I quickly rolled to the left as he aimed it forward, Cold Shadow rolled to the right as it discharged sending the barrel towards the ceiling and the floor was pockmarked by the many projectiles that spewed forth. “A shotgun?!” Dormarch said with disbelief. “Not just any shotgun, say hello to Mr. Splatter, this thing makes hunting squirrels fun!” He tossed the gun up little, grabbing a specific portion, he shook it downward to make a double clicking sound and then he tossed it up to catch it by the handle again before aiming it at Dormarch and firing. Dormarch disappeared before it discharged and appeared near me in the air and fired a Retriever Bark, the blast of energy was sliced in half by Negaduck swinging the chainsaw upwards. “He is far more dangerous than we could have anticipated.” Cold Shadow stated bluntly. “You think I’m bad now? Wait until you what happens when my plan fully comes into action!” It gets worse than he is already? He was wielding that projectile weapon with ludicrous recoil one handed and doing the same with the chainsaw that seemed to be running at full power after being revved once. “As of right now, I’m just playing with you. Tonight is going to be my night!” I lunged into standing on my hind legs and then charged forward aiming to go low. Dormarch circled behind him and fired another retriever bark at the middle of his back. Cold Shadow charged forward holding his staff in a defensive position, looking to aim for a high strike. “Heh.” He swung his chainsaw outwards and let it go sending it spinning at Dormarch, incidentally blowing apart the retriever bark. As Negaduck did that he brought Mr. Splatter around and fired at me, forcing me to doing a sideways backflip. I felt several projectiles impact my wool and one pierce through my wool and rip across the outer portion of my right hip, this sent me spinning and tumbling in the air to slam painfully into the floor back first. Having thrown his chainsaw and shot at me. Negaduck reached behind himself with his right hand and pulled out another weapon, which was a rapier. He tossed Mr. Splatter up in the air pulled out what I recognized as flashbang to throw at Dormarch, before catching Mr. Splatter in to shake it. After deftly deflecting and riposting every single one of Cold Shadow’s swirling staff attacks with his rapier, Negaduck nicked Cold Shadow in the left shoulder before trying to blow his head off with Mr. Splatter. Cold Shadow narrowly avoided the conical blast from the weapon by looking like he almost broke his spine with how hard he leaned back. I quickly closed my eyes before the blinding flash from the grenade filled the room. Once my vision cleared, I saw that despite being moderately disoriented by the flashbang, Dormarch had teleported to being in front of me protectively. Meanwhile Negaduck had Kicked Cold Shadow onto his back, things quieted when we heard a loud ringing noise as Negaduck was about to shake Mr. Splatter downwards again for another shot at killing Cold Shadow in a messier manner than just running him through with the rapier. “Ah, now I can stop playing around with you losers, you certainly were interesting though!” Negaduck grinned devilishly as he stowed away his weapons and calmly made his way over the chainsaw, hefting it up he stowed it away too and then moved towards his swivel chair and monitor. He hit something and the damaged monitor lifted into the ceiling revealing a passageway behind it. Reaching behind his back Negaduck walked into the passage and hit a red button on a small silver box with an antenna that he pulled out while smirking at us. “Hope you don’t mind self-destruct explosions! If you survive this, I will have fun bringing you all down ;ater. Tata for now, I’m off to set off some fireworks and then hunt down Darkwing Duck!” The moderately broken monitor slammed down into position and there was a timer of sixty seconds on the screen. A quick use of Dancing Flame gave us plenty of time to escape the explosion which totalled the, thankfully empty, bakery. It also caused me to get stuck in an accelerated state for the next two minutes afterwards, it was getting much worse and harder to stop.