Chapter Text
"Couldn't you make this out of something more comfortable?" Donald grumbled, cramming his feathers into a tight sleeve.
From across the room, Gizmo scoffed without looking up from his monitors. The screens were positioned between two massive vats glowing with an ominous fluid. "Comfort is the enemy of performance! Besides, the material is highly reactive. It needs to expand dynamically with your muscle mass. Your retraining has made you stronger - the suit must accommodate you!”
Retraining, Donald shivered at the word. It was his own personal nightmare.
All that knowledge crammed into his head in less than a day - now he knew what it felt like to be Miss Beakley! To further butter his toast, Gizmo had flat out refused to make him a clone but had apparently no moral qualms about supplying him with dangerous weapons.
Instead, they all agreed to settle on a doppelganger to take his place in therapy. How many small white ducks were there in Calisota? Turns out, quite a lot.
“Are you almost done?” Gizmo asked, finally swivelling his chair around to face him.
“Behold!” Dramatically, Donald leaped onto a nearby footstool, kicked his cape out, and spread his arms wide. “Prepare yourselves for the despicable! The dastardly! The diabolical..Duck Avenger!”
Gizmo slowly looked him up and down, “Fascinating. Tell me, Double Duck...is the exposed tail feather port supposed to be on your chest?”
Donald's dramatic posture instantly deflated. He looked down at his own torso. “I was wondering why there was a hole here.” He stepped off the footstool, turning the suit around with an embarrassed gripe.
Once he finally had it on the right way, Gizmo tossed a heavy metallic strap across the room “Here is your utility belt. You’ll need it for the mission.”
Donald caught it, adjusting the weight around his waist as Gizmo continued the briefing.
“I’ve packed it with earbud amplifiers, a paralyzing pistol, your personal Avenger Analyzer for scanning enemy bases, and three Coco Nonos for emergencies.”
Donald had to admit, the tech was impressive. Back when he was pulling solo vigilante gigs, he’d operated on a budget of basic gadgets and sheer luck. “And how do I contact you if things go south?”
“Contact me?” Gizmo let out a mocking gasp, turning abruptly back to his glowing vats. "Oh, Double Duck. No, no, no. I am not your 'guy in the chair.' For this operation and going forward, you are an independent variable! Take this mission as practice."
Donald’s voice cracked. “Wak! I’m going into F.O.W.L. solo?!”
"If you're captured, a live communication feed is a tracking beacon straight to my laboratory.” Gizmo shook his head. “F.O.W.L. has signal intercept tech that could map our entire network, and I am certainly not risking my beautiful electronic babies out there.”
"So if I get into trouble…?”
"You get yourself out of it." Gizmo raised his eyebrow, “Did you even read your contract? Page forty-two, subsection B, paragraph nine: 'In the event of capture, the agency shall pretend you are a figment of their collective imagination.'”
Donald had mostly skimmed it. He remembered the bits stating that if he were caught or terminated, S.H.U.S.H. would completely disavow him. By signing, he had agreed to let them wash their hands clean of his existence. Government agencies, am I right?
Not that he actually cared all that much; he’d penned Gladstone’s name on the signature line instead of his own.
“Oh! Almost forgot…” Gizmo dug frantically into his pockets full of half-eaten candy wrappers before pulling out a small microchip. “This is a voice modulator. Swallow it, and you’ll sound like a completely different person.
Donald recoiled, swatting at the air between them. “I’m not swallowing that! It's been bouncing around in your pockets next to loose lint and Barks knows what else.”
Gizmo didn't lower his hand. He just stared at Donald, his unblinking expression making it clear he wasn't going to argue.
“...Fine.” Donald grumbled and glared at the chip, snatching it and shoving it down his throat with a harsh swallow.
“Just don’t smoke, drink, eat, or breathe too heavily. We don’t want you to choke to death while we are trying to save the world."
“The world's not really my problem. It’s my family I’m worried about..” Donald rasped. He stopped, his eyes widening as a silky resonance vibrated from his throat. “-Woah. Is that my voice?”
His usually grumbled voice was now clear and, most importantly, powerful. The kind of voice that could command a room without raising itself. It was, if he was being completely honest with himself, kind of cool.
It was also very similar to the voice modulator Gyro had made him swallow during Magica's shadow war, which meant either Gizmo and Gyro had been working from the same blueprint or the technology had a fairly limited range of outcomes.
“That’s why they picked you,” Gizmo said casually. “By the way, if you want to deactivate it, just smack your chest until you purge the capsule.”
Okay, now it was significantly less cool - wait what?
“..Dare I ask what you are jabbering about? What do you mean, picked me?”
Gizmo shrugged, entirely unbothered. “Well, after the Navy, you were the ideal candidate. S.H.U.S.H. always recruits guys with families. You have the most to lose, which means you'll do whatever it takes to win.”
“Huh,” Donald muttered to himself, but it wasn't really a "Huh?" like a question – it was more like a "Huh." as a statement. It was like the kind of ‘Huh’ that came when something clicked into place that you couldn't really believe but had to, because it made too much sense not to be real.
Gizmo clapped a hand on his back, "Well, let's get you in a pod to go. Remember, you're infiltrating a headquarters in Omelet. At night, as you prefer…"
But as Gizmo kept talking and steered him into the hallway, it was just noise. Donald was still turning it over. Did S.H.U.S.H. expect him to die when they first recruited him?
As terrifying as that probably should have sounded, it didn't really scare him. When he joined the military he'd known (maybe even accepted) that dying was part of the arrangement. But back then, it wasn't expected of him. Was he supposed to just sacrifice himself to save the world?
He wasn't naive. He knew S.H.U.S.H. wasn’t an organization focused on the individual - their priority was the entire globe! For them, it was a greater good situation, and in their math, one duck's life didn't weigh much against eight billion others.
Letting out a quiet sigh, Donald tuned back into reality as Gizmo led him to the front of the transport pod. This day just kept hitting him while he was down.
“This localized transport capsule will rapidly facilitate your ascent to the surface,” Gizmo explained, gesturing dramatically to the pod. “When you retrieve the file, proceed directly home as planned.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He stepped inside and the door sealed behind him, and as the pod began to move he kept coming back to the same line, turning it over and over like something he couldn't put down.
They target guys with families because they have everything to lose.
It was hard to keep track of all the S.H.U.S.H. headquarters they had lying around. One in St. Canard, one in Goosetown right under his nose, and those were just the ones he knew about personally, which meant there were probably a dozen more scattered across the globe that he'd never even heard of.
This one wasn't exactly inconspicuous, either.
Omelet had clearly grown into a sprawling city after the rebuild and last Donald heard it had become the world's leading seller in chicken eggs. Even this high up he could smell it faintly, something warm and faintly animal carried on the wind underneath the usual city smell of exhaust.
He wasn't expecting a massive glass skyscraper as S.H.U.S.H. 's HQ but he supposed it was so implausible that it looped back around to being the most inconspicuous thing in the city, just another piece of skyline that nobody thought twice about.
It was just past midnight, and Donald was scaling the side of the building, his fingers gripping tightly against the grappling hook rope. The glass felt freezing through his suit, and the wind cut hard at this height.
He pulled the Avenger Analyzer from his utility belt and suctioned it against the glass. It hummed to life under his palm, vibrating faintly as it swept the building and pulled out a dozen heat signatures, mapping them until he had a clear picture of where he needed to go.
The forty-fifth floor had the files, but where he was now - the fortieth - had the perfect entry point. He had the Analyzer cut through the glass in a neat circle that came away clean and without a sound before squeezing through into the dark on the other side.
The storage area smelled like cardboard, most likely due to the rows of boxes stacked in the dark with the only light a thin strip bleeding in from under the door. He stood there a moment, listening.
When he heard nothing, Donald cracked the door open and slipped into the hallway.
This should be a walk in the park, he thought, falling into the familiar pattern of moving through an office building. All Donald had to do was take an elevator to forty-five, steal the file and rough-house a few agents to get F.O.W.L. 's attention. He could do this with his eyes closed.
He was almost to the elevator when he heard footsteps around the corner. Donald pressed himself flat against the wall, the wood paneling cool and solid against his back, and waited.
The agent came around the intersection and they saw each other at the exact same moment, and for one suspended second neither of them moved.
“Hey?” Donald’s voice modulator said, which was not his most intimidating opener.
"H-huh?" The agent's voice cracked, his hand flying to his holster. "What are you doing here? Who are you–"
He was staring at Donald like he was some sort of villain. Well, Donald supposed he was. He definitely looked like he had just crawled out of a storm drain, all dark cape and mask, and the general aura of a lunatic.
Before Donald could de-escalate, the agent’s gun cleared the holster. Donald’s stomach dropped.
Crack! Crack!
The shots cracked sharp and enormous in the narrow hallway and Donald snapped his cape up between them on instinct, feeling the rounds hit the fabric and fall away, his heart going loud in his ears. He stood there for just a second behind the cape thinking somebody is definitely going to hear that before his legs caught up with the rest of him.
“You know, most people just say hello back.”
The agent was already scrambling backwards, probably going for a radio, and Donald couldn't allow that. If this one got word out, the whole floor would know before he made it to the forty-fifth floor, and then his clean break in would become more than rough-housing a few agents.
Donald caught the guy’s wrist, yanking him off balance, and they went into the wall together with a muffled thud, the wood paneling rattling in its frame. The agent got a knee up between them and shoved, creating just enough space to throw a punch that Donald slipped sideways, feeling the air of it brush past his ear, and then he had the agent's arm twisted behind his back and his face pressed into the wall and it was over, just like that, the agent still straining and breathing hard through his beak but going nowhere.
Donald sighed through his nose. I thought S.H.U.S.H. was supposed to warn these guys he was coming, he thought bitterly. Of all the asinine, stupid, crazy, useless stuff S.H.U.S.H. has ever done, this has to be at least top ten.
Finding the pressure point at the base of the agent's neck, Donald applied a firm, two finger press. He caught the agent on the way down before the body could hit the floor too loudly, lowering him the rest of the way with considerable care.
He pulled the radio off the agent's belt, checked the hallway in both directions, and looked back at the elevator.
Taking it now would be stupid. Somebody had probably heard the gunshots, or they’d find the unconscious agent eventually. By the time they did, he needed to already be on forty-five.
Donald couldn't help but feel a sudden pang of annoyance, and even a bit of rising anger. Internally, he cursed S.H.U.S.H. to the moon and back. When Gizmo told him to "take this mission as practice," he wasn’t kidding around.
Scanning the hallway, Donald spotted a vent intake tucked neatly into a camera's blind spot. “Ho Ho! Said the spider to the fly,” he smirked, hoisting himself up into the narrow metal shaft.
Shimmery heat waves still drafty from the lower levels brushed past him as he began to scale upwards, wedging his back against one side of the metal casing and his webbed feet against the other. Step by painstaking step, he shimmied his way vertically up the exhaust shaft, muscles straining to maintain friction while trying not to let his belt or buttons clatter against the resonant metal.
He was halfway between the forty-first and forty-second floors when the stolen radio clipped to his belt crackled sharply to life.
"Found Trooper on the fortieth, he's out cold." the voice was drowned by static, "Repeat, we have an intruder in the building, fortieth floor, unknown–"
A burst of static, and then another voice, "Copy. Lock down floors forty through forty-six. Nobody in or out of the stairwells, I want eyes on every vent access point!"
Donald looked at the vent access point directly above his head and immediately started climbing faster.
"-pull the security footage, I want to know how he got in–"
"Already on it. Whoever this is, they cut through the glass on forty. Clean entry, probably a professional. We might be looking at an Egghead."
The radio went quiet for a moment and Donald kept climbing, the metal groaning faintly under him with every move.
He was starting to suspect S.H.U.S.H. had gone easy on him. The agents had been competent enough but not exceptional, they'd been communicating over unsecured lines, and nobody had thought to check whether the unconscious body on the fortieth floor still had his radio.
Donald scoffed in his mind. One more floor. He could hear footsteps somewhere below him now, muffled through the ductwork.
Soon, he reached the forty-fifth floor access grate. He pressed his palm flat against it and listened.
There were agents out there but he couldn't tell how many or where exactly, their voices too low and too far to make out clearly. He reached into his utility belt and pulled out the earbud amps, two small chips that he pressed to either side of his head and held down.
The floor rushed into his ears all at once and he stood there a moment letting his brain sort through the noise until the voices separated themselves out. From the voices, he deduced it was about two agents.
“Seal off anything highly confidential, files, records, don't let anyone near them."
"What if we see the guy?"
"If he's armed and dangerous, take the shot, but it's better to keep him alive for interrogation. Make your rounds on this floor, don't go anywhere without your partner. We're treating this as a mid-level threat."
Their footsteps moved away down the hall.
Mid-level threat? They were lucky he didn't blow up the building. Donald pulled the chips off, tucked them away, and checked the Analyzer. On the scanner it read: file room, left, two hallways down.
He eased the grate open and dropped into the hallway.
The security camera at the end of the corridor swiveled slowly on its mount, and Donald ran right past it without breaking a sprint. Originally he had thought S.H.U.S.H. was going to brief the agents, so he didn’t care about getting caught.
Now he didn't care for a different reason entirely. It would take time for someone to notice and send agents up here, and he intended to be gone well before that happened, and after this whole fiasco he knew S.H.U.S.H. would pull the footage themselves before anyone else got near it.
Amateurs, he turned left and kept running.
He stealthily made his way down the corridor, keeping low, until he neared the file room. Peeking around the corner, he saw two agents (probably the two from the conversation earlier) guarding the doors.
From his belt, Donald drew the paralyzing pistol. He didn't love the idea of using the paralyzer indoors, the range was unpredictable in tight spaces and he'd had exactly one unpleasant experience with ricocheted paralysis that he didn't particularly want to repeat.
But two armed agents back to back with nowhere to maneuver was a worse option, and he was running out of time. “It’s time for the Duck Avenger to enter stage left,” He took a steadying breath, letting the voice modulator activate in his throat.
Donald lunged out from behind the corner, leveling the weapon.
"Hands where I can see them."
Before they could even register the booming voice, Donald pulled the trigger twice. Two blue rings of electrical energy snapped through the air, hitting both agents squarely in the chest. Their eyes widened in sheer shock as their muscles instantly locked up, and they went down like felled trees, crashing onto the carpeted floor with a heavy thud.
“Should’ve been better guards!” Donald jumped over them and went straight for the door, earning a pathetic groan from the agents.
Whoops, might’ve been too harsh.
The lock on the entrance was a keycard reader, which would have been a problem for most people but was a minor inconvenience for the Duck Avenger. He had the Analyzer on it in under ten seconds, watched the light flip from red to green, and slipped inside.
The room was cold with rows of metal shelving stretching back into the dark, each one packed tight with labeled binders and sealed folders. He used the Analyzer again and swept it across the shelving until it found what he was looking for. The device emitted a soft ping, directing him three rows back and two shelves up.
He found it exactly where the Analyzer said it would be, slid it out, and tucked it inside his cape without looking at it.
He could hear them rushing in the hallway now, getting closer. Donald looked around the room until he found the window at the far end, floor to ceiling glass with the city glittering beyond it forty-five stories down.
Suddenly, heavy pounding rattled the door frame, followed an instant later by metal bending and groaning as the door burst open.
Two agents, guns already up, rushed inside. For one suspended second all three of them just looked at each other across the rows of metal shelving: Donald standing at the far end of the room with a stolen file tucked inside his cape and forty-five stories of open air behind him, the agents with their guns trained on him.
"Don't–" one of them started.
Donald took a running start, threw his arms up over his face, and hit the glass shoulder first.
The window came apart in a spectacular crash, cold air rushing in immediately to replace the recycled warmth of the room, and then he was falling. The city wheeling up around him, wind screaming past his ears, and he threw his cape wide and felt it catch, snapping taut like a kite.
The descent went from a plummet to something that was almost graceful. From his hip, the radio on his belt erupted.
"He jumped, he actually jumped from forty-five–"
"Get eyes on the street! Move, move!"
Donald shifted his weight, banking hard to the left to pull away from the building’s searchlights, the egg scented air of Omelet rushing up to meet him. The city noise swelled around him as he dropped below the roofline and leveled out, gliding in a long slow arc toward the darker end of the block where the streetlights had gone out.
Down on the pavement, civilians were pointing and shouting. Their voices blending into a distant, chaotic murmur. Donald glanced down, a brief string of confusion crossing his mind. Why on earth were there so many people out at this hour?
Before he could process it, the gravel roof of a low warehouse rushed up. He hit the rooftop hard and rolled, coming up in a crouch with one hand flat against the gravel, the city spreading out around him in every direction and the S.H.U.S.H. skyscraper glittering a few blocks over, a neat hole punched through the forty-fifth floor glass still visible from here if you squinted.
Donald stood up, brushing the grit from his suit.
He knew S.H.U.S.H. wouldn't make a scene out of this, which meant a few squads with whatever agents they had left that weren't currently unconscious. They'd started with twelve and ended with nine. Donald didn’t want to sound cocky, but out here in the open with the whole city to work with, nine average agents wasn't exactly a problem he was losing sleep over.
But, he shouldn’t antagonize them. He'd done his job. The file was secure against his chest, the building was behind him, and now it was all up to F.O.W.L to take the bait.
It was finally time to go home.