Surreal-Life Story
"It’s Monday, isn’t it?"
The alarm on Drake 1 blared that morning around nine. "Jeez, we need a new alarm clock," Nosedive complained, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he shuffled in to join the rest of the team. But the realization that there was an intruder in the Pond woke them all up. "Oh no…" Tanya moaned. "Whoever they are, they’re near the lab! Who knows what they could be after?"
"We should let them go in there," Duke said teasingly. "No tellin’ what they could do to themselves with some’a that stuff." He adroitly dodged a swipe from the offended Tanya, only to be caught by Wildwing’s glare. "Jeez, ya know, it was only a joke."
Before that line of discussion could continue any further, Wildwing gestured the team out and down the short corridor. The blonde tapped her combination into the lock outside the door and immediately pressed herself against the wall as the door slid open. Her teammates followed her example. After about thirty seconds, when no implements of mass destruction seemed to be headed their way, the ducks passed through the doorway.
"And precisely what took you folks so long to get your tails in here? I thought I was going to have to send wake-up calls to all your rooms to get some attention around here." The speaker looked extremely irritated. She was a duck who stood about five-ten. Her hair fell all the way to the floor and was a deep brown, the color of truffles. Her eyes were an eerie amber, almost seeming to glow with an internal light. Her feathers were beige, with a reddish tinge. She wasn’t beautiful, but rather plain. She had a full figure and a fighter’s stance. She wore a loose hot pink shirt with short sleeves, and blue pants with various pockets. At each hip she had a dagger, one shining gold and one as dark as congealed shadow. She stood with her hands at her waist, seeking an answer.
"Excuse me, but who are you and what are you doing here?" Wildwing asked, seeking to distract her long enough for him to scan her with the Mask.
She glanced at him as if she could not believe his stupidity. But she delayed her reply long enough for him to verify her reality. Finally, she said, "I’m Dreva the blade. As for my purpose in being here, I should think that would be pathetically obvious. You’re battling evil, aren’t you? That’s my purpose in life these days. It’s not like I have anything else to do." For a moment, the hardness in her face that protected her pain came down, and her emotional agony showed through. The moment passed, and the fire in her eyes brought her under control.
"Ah, why did you come out in my lab? I’d have thought you’d be more comfortable in, y’know, less technological parts of this place."
Dreva smiled, thinking of what she had known in her girlhood that made the Pond look like a Neanderthal cave. "I was raised with both magic and science, and I feel a little wistful here. It reminds me of one of the places back home. A place that I knew well." She shook herself. Suddenly, she snapped, "I sense trouble!" a split second before Drake 1’s second alarm of the hour came over their comms.
"Stars… teleportation energy in the warehouse district," Mallory said crisply.
"It’s Monday, isn’t it?" Nosedive inquired as the team changed into battle gear and headed for the Migrator. After a quick peek at the calendar confirmed his suspicions, he groaned. "Man oh man, why am I not surprised?"
"The name of the day does not affect the actions that take place during it," Grin intoned. "In that regard, all days are alike." He pondered a bit more deeply on that one. "Except game days."
Duke cast a suspicious glance at Dreva. "So ya comin’with us on this one, kid?" he asked warily.
The flames of Dreva’s eyes flickered again. If he only knew how old she was. "Did I not say that I came to fight evil? Odds are that if it makes you guys react, it’s a bad-guy thing. You’re the good guys, so whatever causes you to react is evil. So I go fight evil." Without further ado, she followed him into the Migrator and grabbed tight to a handhold. They took off quickly, the land vehicle bumping roughly along the road. Somehow, Dreva managed to hang on to her handle despite all the buffeting.
"We’re here," Wildwing announced tensely. They disembarked. Duke looked at Dreva and slipped behind her- she seemed to be playing straight with them, but he’d rather not have his fate and that of the team in the hands of a strange arrival that had just showed up that morning.
Everyone was nervous. Mallory had a death grip on her puck launcher. Tanya was anxiously stroking her Omnitool for reassurance. Wildwing, while the motion wasn’t visible, was casting glances throughout the place. Duke reached over and lightly brushed the hilt of his saber. Nosedive hadn’t cracked a joke since they’d entered the warehouse, and even Grin seemed to be affected. The sign above the doorway had read ‘Toy Box Storage- Current Season,’ and Wildwing hadn’t detected a cloak around the place. It didn’t make any sense for the Saurians to attack a toy warehouse unless…
"This is probably a trap. A really mean, nasty, sneaky one with lots of really unpleasant surprises involved in it," Nosedive muttered. He tapped his fingers against his armor with the continuing case of nerves.
"The danger’s real," Dreva informed him. "If it’s a trap, at least our enemies are within it as well. If we do things right, we can turn it upon them." She pinned him with a penetrating look. "Do you think you can do things right, Nosedive Flashblade?"
He stared at her, shocked at both her rudeness and the fact that she knew his name without being introduced. "I’m planning to," he said sarcastically.
"Could we please keep the peace here?" Mallory hissed. "The two of you are making more noise than a whole army of people."
As if on cue, a dozen hunter drones popped up and started peppering the team with laser fire. The ducks fired back, their pucks bouncing off the robots’ armor. "This isn’t good," Tanya declared, as she dodged behind a crate to avoid fire. She raised her voice to continue. "Draguanus must have somehow reinforced their armor!"
"And this is supposed to be reassuring how?" Nosedive demanded. To make matters worse, the terrible trio of henchmen had joined the fray. The blond leaped up to evade Siege’s sweeping tail and almost got nailed by a stray laser.
"Would you please be careful?" Wildwing asked sharply of his younger brother. He put up his shield quickly as Wraith sent a spate of fireballs after him.
Chameleon morphed into a slightly greener version of a certain famous chef. "Bam!" he announced as he fired at Duke. The duck rolled and engaged the shape-shifting annoyance with his glowing saber, forcing Chameleon to change again into something more suited to the position he was in.
Dreva decided that it was time to spring herself on the enemy. With an ear-splitting war cry, she emerged from her hiding place and pressed back to back with Mallory, who was beset by a half-dozen of the hunter drones. Her quick hand drew out the dagger at her right hip. As she pulled it, it grew until it was a full-length sword that shimmered with an unearthly light. "Mallory, scoot!" she commanded. "I can handle this bunch." When the redhead refused to move, Dreva pushed her with her free hand. "If you stay over here, you’re going to get hurt, and I’ll not have that on my shoulders. Now go, you’re needed elsewhere."
Mallory realized that she had finally found someone more stubborn than she was and reluctantly abandoned Dreva to her fight. The brunette found herself unencumbered and drew her dark dagger, watching as it lengthened to the same size as her other one. She raised her hands, a sword in each, and crossed the two blades. In a voice of doom, she intoned, "Chalx’ahi’hal…These are the crossroads of light and darkness, this is the place where you will meet your fate!" The X formed by the swords shone with a dark light, which reached out to engulf the hunter drones and left them as rusting ruins. She sheathed the dark sword and felt it shrink down to its convenient carrying size.
Duke was having far too much trouble with Chameleon- the irritating green lizard had transformed himself into a master swordsman and was holding his own, and then some, against the duck. Duke called for help, but the rest of his teammates had prior engagements that they had to take care of first. Suddenly Dreva’s glittering blade darted into the fray to support him. "Is there enough here for me to have some?" she inquired lightly.
Chameleon got lucky with the next swipe, catching Duke across the middle and forestalling any smart replies. Dreva’s eyes flickered again with their flame. "You’ve made a great mistake," she spat at the Saurian. "You don’t know the half of who you’re facing now, and you’ll pay for hurting one of my allies."
What happened next was only seen by Chameleon, and only known to him and Dreva. Whatever she did, it absolutely terrified him. He whimpered and ran. Dreva sheathed her sword and went to check up on Duke. He was bleeding, but it wasn’t as serious as it had seemed initially. But he was unconscious, so she stood guard over him, fending off a stray hunter drone or two. At that point, it was mostly mop-up work and the all-important question of what Dragaunus’s goons had been doing there.
What no one knew was that during the fight, Dragaunus himself had been in the building, feverishly searching through the stacks of toys to find what he needed for his latest diabolical plan. It had been a close call, but he found the one stuffed toy that would complete the scheme he had in mind just before the fight came to an end. "The job is done!" he roared to his henchmen. In a blaze of green energy, the four Saurians were gone.
As the civilian employees crept out of their hiding places, Wildwing asked himself and the team, "Why would Dragaunus want to rob a toy warehouse?"
"Shopping for the family?" Nosedive cracked. "You never know, maybe Draggy’s got a bunch of little nieces and nephews that he plays Santy Claus for."
"Somehow, I don’t think that’s the reason," Mallory said. "We’ve got to get to the bottom of this."
"Yeah, but can we do it elsewhere? Duke’s kinda, y’know, injured," Tanya pointed out.
As the ducks filed out, with Grin carrying Duke, Dreva whispered to herself, "How can you be kind of injured? Cel’ahi’greae, it’s amazing what gets lost in translation sometimes." She brushed her hand through some of her hair and checked the time. "Eleven o’clock… and her shift would end at twelve… yes, I’ve got time. I just hope that this works out right…"
Back at the Pond, Tanya scanned Duke and said, "It’s deep but clean. Just a couple of days here, and you’ll be okay. But don’t try to, y’know, do anything too quickly, or you’re going to be, ah, stuck here a little longer, okay?" She gave him a warning look through her glasses, and he nodded nervously.
Phil ran into the room, waving papers in the air. "Boobies-" he started. Wildwing gave him a dirty look. "Phil, whatever it is, no way," Mallory told him abruptly. The rest of the team was in agreement. He was shocked, and also curious when he spotted Dreva. "Well, who are you?" he asked.
"My name’s Dreva, and whatever you want, I’m not interested, so leave me alone before I turn you into shish kabob, okay?" she said in a rush. "I don’t do tricks, I don’t do publicity stunts, and unfortunately for all of us, I don’t play hockey very well. Oh, and I’m in a bad mood."
Phil backed away quickly. Looking down the hallway, Nosedive snickered. "I’ve never seen Phil move so fast!" he chortled. "Hey, I didn’t even know he could move that fast!"
"Practice this afternoon is cancelled, so feel free to go out," Wildwing said. "Keep in touch, and don’t forget to contact the rest of the team in case you run into trouble."
Nosedive rolled his eyes at his brother’s over-protectiveness, but he was happy with the break. He, Mallory, Grin, and Dreva all headed quickly out of the infirmary, with different destinations in mind. At least, the final destination was different for each of them, but they were all headed towards the mall.
"Hey, Dreva, do you need a lift?" Mallory asked as she mounted a Duckcycle. "It’s not that far a walk, but it’s a lot faster just to take one of the cycles."
"Thanks but no thanks, Mal. I need to clear my head. The walk would do me a lot of good." Dreva hated the lie, but it was something she had to say. She watched the trio of ducks leave, then set off on foot. But while she walked, she was slowly fading away until she was completely out of sight.