It was midnight in the city--a sultry, exotic, steamy midnight in late June. The summer heat of the day radiated off the baking streets in waves, and the air was alive with the sounds of the people of the night, going about their business--legal or otherwise. Danger, corruption and mystery were everywhere--in other words, it was a typical night in St. Canard.
Typical, that is, if your name was Darkwing Duck.
Skulking between the sizzling neon lights, Darkwing Duck crept from shadow to shadow as part of them, a piece of the darkness come alive, stalking his prey. Yet another criminal lowlife thought he could do what he liked in St. Canard without punishment.
Yet another criminal lowlife was about to be proven wrong.
The daring do-gooder definitively defied the devious denizens of darkness! No villian was too dangerous, no clue was too small, no--

"No ADJECTIVE is too ARROGANT, you mean, Dad. Geez, you're boring. NOBODY'S gonna want to read THIS."
"Oh, and I suppose they'd want to read your stories about giant mutant zombie slugs from Jupiter, hmmm? Yeah, like that's realistic, Gos."
"They were from Mars, not Jupiter, Dad, and at least I know how to keep an audience! Come on, tell an interesting story...Like, what about when we travelled back in time to when you were in school?" Gosalyn stopped and scratched her head, suddenly confused. "Funny....for some reason....I can't quite remember how that one ended...it must've turned out all right, 'cos we're here, but..."
Drake Mallard suppressed a shudder at the memory. He remembered what had happened...all too well. He wished he didn't.
"Some stories, Gosalyn...perhaps shouldn't be told." He sighed sadly and patted his adopted daughter on the shoulder. "Now, go upstairs and go to bed, it's way past your bedtime."
Gosalyn gave him a strange look, wondering what it was about his eyes that was bothering her...and then, shrugging, trotted upstairs two at a time and forgot all about it.
"Uh...you all right, DW?" asked Launchpad McQuack, who had been silent all this time, as he was busy watching the late-night news.
"Yeah...I'm all right...just...feeling kinda...thoughtful, is all. About...life, in general. I just...want some quiet time to be alone for a bit, LP."
Launchpad didn't often see his boss/best friend in this kind of mood, so he was a little unnerved. "Right-o, Boss", he said, faking his usual cheerfulness, and, grabbing his favourite popular mechanics magazine for some light reading, quietly stole out of the room.
Darkwing sat staring off into space at nothing much for a good five minutes. Then, slowly, he picked up a photograph of Gosalyn from a stand near the bookshelf and cradled it delicately in his hands.
"Yes, Gosalyn..." he whispered. "I remember what happened that time..."

* * *

SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER...

"Okay, Dad," said Gosalyn, in her best take-charge voice, "I've got my Christmas list allll set up. Just let me get it before we hit the mall..." She dashed upstairs.
Long before Gosalyn herself came back down, a long roll of paper started unravelling itself from the top of the stairs, bumping down each and every one, getting longer and longer with each step, until it rolled finally to a halt at Drake Mallard's feet--who was standing all the way across the living room, at the front door. He glared down at the paper, shaking his head.
"Whoops, uh...it kinda got away from me," said Gosalyn sheepishly, gathering up armfuls of paper as she akwardly made her way down the stairs. She was now dressed for the winter weather, in coat, scarf, mittens and boots. "Anyway, I'm asking for MUCH less this year than I did last year, as you can see, Dad, and since I was so good this year I'm sure to get all of it..."
"Good? HOW often have you cleaned your room, young lady?" said Drake, folding his arms.
"Uh....well, they say it's the THOUGHT that counts, and I must've THOUGHT about cleaning my room at least a jillion times this year alone. Well, half a jillion times, anyway. Now, come on, let's hit the mall, I wanna get there before they stop handing out the free candy canes!" She bounded through the doorway.
Shaking his head, Drake followed her. "Coming, Launchpad?" he called over his shoulder.
"Yep," said the huge pilot. He knew the main reason they were bringing him along was to carry the gifts, but he still loved Christmas anyway. "Ah, Christmas. My favourite time of the year." He smiled as he followed Drake out the door.

"Ah, Christmas. My LEAST favourite time of the year." snarled a raspy, cracked voice, but since the speaker was all alone in the Audobon Bay lighthouse, nobody else could hear him. Well, nobody else that NORMAL people would consider as being able to hear, anyway. There was, however, a large audience of very attentive light bulbs and various electrical devices, lined up in neat rows on the floor and the simple furniture.
"Every year, people enslave TONS of innocent light bulbs and force them to work for hours on end, sometimes days, even, and for WHAT?" Megavolt ranted, stomping back and forth across the bare wooden floorboards. "They don't even really NEED them--it's not for light to see by, it's for...for...mere DECORATION!" The skinny rat supervillian clenched his gloved fists angrily. "Some people almost entirely COVER their houses and roofs, just to out-do the neighbors..it's criminal, I tells ya! CRIMINAL!"
A sudden thought struck him, sparked from whatever random combination of synapses counted for his "mind" these days. "Well, I'm not going to let them get away with this barbarism any longer! I shall SAVE the light bulbs from their Christmas enslavement!" A small line of current travelled from one prong of his plug-shaped hat to the other for a moment, as he paced the floor faster in his excitement. "Wait for me, my dear little sixty-watt friends--soon I shall be bringing many of your bretheren home for you to play with! You can all romp and frolic and have a merry Christmas just like you deserve! I'll even bake homemade gingerbread cookies for everyone; won't that be yummy? DON'T worry, I won't make them too spicy again this time..." this last was addressed to a blender, as if it had spoken up.
Megavolt snapped his fingers, causing sparks to fly from them briefly. "Yes...and I know just where to start. Where is the biggest display of so-called 'merry' Christmas decorating to be found in this rotten city? The St. Canard shopping mall!"
Putting a heavy, fur-trimmed red coat over his usual outfit and slinging a huge sack over his shoulder, so that he looked for all the world like some demented parody of Santa Claus, Megavolt headed out into the freezing cold winter afternoon.

"Whoah, cool, look at THAT!" yelled Gosalyn, dragging her unwilling father along by the hand so hard that she almost ripped his arm out of its socket. She charged towards the mall's gigantic Christmas tree. Every year, they put up a HUGE tree that stretched up for both of the mall's stories and then into the sky-dome at the very top, so that it was about 50 feet tall, and decorated out to the nines, but it seemed they had overdone themselves this year. Drake looked sideways at the tree; it was entirely too gaudy for his taste. The tree itself was covered with ropes of tinsel as thick around as Drake's waist; glass ornaments bigger than his head, etc. Underneath its boughs were gigantic versions of traditional children's toys--ballerina dolls, toy soldiers, jack-in-the-boxes, spinning tops, teddy bears, etc. It was supposed to be charming and cute, but Drake had always found it more than a bit creepy.
"Nice tree," he said vaguely. "I like the silver tinsel. Really UGLY toys, though." He indicated a jack-in-the-box out of which was lolling a life-sized toy duck in a gaudy jester's outfit, its head hanging down and the face hidden by the long tails of the belled hat it was wearing. "Come on, Gosalyn, if you really expect me to get to even a FRACTION of the things on this list, we can't hang around all day admiring the decor..."
"Oh, lighten up, Dad," sniffed Gosalyn. "It's CHRISTMAS! Ya gotta get into the experience! And the decorations are part of it. KEEN GEAR, there's a sale on the latest Whiffle Boy video game cartridge!" and she yanked him across the hallway to the Electronics Boutique near the mall's entrance.
Launchpad followed along stoically. Personally, he liked these decorations...the gigantic strings of tinsel that decorated the ceiling...the tons of multicoloured blinking lights everywhere...Christmas was always so pretty. Tiring, but pretty.
"That imbecillic Launchpad and that annoying little brat who always hangs out with Darkwing for some reason...I thought they'd NEVER leave", muttered the jack-in-the-box to itself, suddenly becoming a Jack OUT of the box--and seeming totally oblivious to the screams and pointing that resulted among the watching crowd from this. "That was getting really uncomfortable. Ugly, am I?! And how many beauty contests have THEY won lately, hmm? No matter. With my time-top hidden here as an innocent toy among the Christmas decorations," Quackerjack burst out into an insane, high-pitched laugh and leaned against the colourful, gigantic top that was underneath the tree, "I'll...I'll....um."
He capered wildly around the room for a minute, bumping into many people, and then sat down underneath the tree again, inside his box--it felt kind of like..home, in a strange way, and folded his legs Indian-fashion. He put his chin into his white-gloved hands and pouted pensively. "Well...I'm sure I'll think of SOMEthing dastardly and, above all, FUN! to do! Isn't that right, Mr. Banana Brain?" he asked a banana-shaped puppet that he produced from inside one of his voluminous, poofy mismatching sleeves.
"'Course you will, Bill," "said" Mr. Banana Brain, in a higher-pitched version of Quackerjack's own voice.
Quackerjack sighed happily. It was so nice to have a friend like Mr. Banana Brain to talk to.

Drake Mallard whipped his head around quickly as a loud SHRIEK echoed from the hallway outside. Gosalyn, busy trying to explain to him why she really, truly NEEDED a pair of black rollerblades with neon-green skulls painted on the sides, at first didn't notice. "Dad, you're not listen--"
"GET DOWN FROM THERE!!" came a roar from the hallway outside the sports shop. Gosalyn broke off in mid-sentence and looked out the door of the shop. "Gee, wonder what that crowd is looking at?" she mused aloud.
"I don't know," said Drake grimly, shoving his way out the door and into the even more tightly-packed than normal, for the Christmas season, mall proper. "Come on, Launchpad, I have a bad feeling about this..."
"What is that man DOING?!" yelled a distraught fat pig woman with red hair. Her equally overweight, freckled, redheaded daughter burst into tears for no apparent reason, hitting notes that until now, Drake had thought were possible only for dog-whistles. He attempted to put his hands over his ear-holes, but quickly found that he could not fight his way through the crowd and do that at the same time, so he gritted his teeth and shoved onwards.
Cries of "What's going on?" and "Is he CRAZY?" and "COME DOWN THIS INSTANT, MISTER!" sounded all around the trio as they struggled towards...whatever it was the crowd was looking at. The last statements were said by mall security, who were all looking up at the ceiling. Finally, Drake realised that EVERYBODY was looking up, so he turned his gaze that way, too.
Calmly straddling a fluffy strand of mulberry-purple tinsel as if it was the strongest, sturdiest beam in the world, was a slender rodent man in a tight yellow rubber jumpsuit, accessorised with various electrical accoutrements. He was carefully and methodically unscrewing each and every single last light from the Christmas display on that part of the mall's ceiling and putting them into a large bag slung over his shoulder. Even without the telltale outfit, Drake would have instantly known who that was. Only ONE person could--or WOULD--unscrew light bulbs from a hot, high voltage display while it was still ON and not get hurt...
"Megavolt!" he yelled out loud. "That power-hungry plug-headed pilferer is at it AGAIN! Geez, can't we ever have a quiet Christmas around here in St. Canard without some supervillian or another RUINING it?!" On the one hand, he was annoyed, as he really had wanted a quiet family outing with Gosalyn and Launchpad. But underneath, he was secretly glad to see Megavolt, his oldest enemy, here. Too many days without any crime to fight made him soft--and, more importantly, bored. Darkwing Duck was going to ride again! Finally, something interesting to do!
His shout must have carried up to the rafters, because Megavolt paused in his lightbulb liberation for a moment. "What?" he muttered to himself, putting another blue bulb into the sack. "For a second there, I thought I heard...it sounded kinda familiar..." He scanned the crowd, but saw no caped and masked figure. "Whatever." He went back to his task, completely ignoring the screaming and the pointing.
Drake posed dramatically, hand over his chest. "THIS is a job for--"
"DAD!" hissed Gosalyn between clenched teeth, lunging up to place her hand over Drake's beak. "Not in front of all these people! Or have you forgotten...?"
"Oh, uh. Yeah." said Drake sheepishly. "But, well, I can't let Megavolt get AWAY with this...."
"Well, I dunno, DW..." shrugged Launchpad. "Looks to me like he's not really hurting anybody, or nothin'. I mean, it's just cheap lightbulbs, you can get a hundred of 'em on a string for five bucks or so...no big deal. If we bother him, we might just make him mad, and then he'd start zappin' around. Maybe we should just leave him alone...?"
Drake turned imperiously to his sidekick, beak held high in the air. "THAT kind of thinking, dear Launchpad, is why YOU will never be a true superhero! No crime is too small, no wrong too insignificant, no--"
"What's THAT?!" shrieked the horrible little redheaded pig girl, pointing off in the opposite direction, towards the giant tree at the mall's entrance. Bright, strange multicoloured lights and loud, off-key music were coming from that direction. Curious, the crowd stomped off as one entity to gawk at this new diversion. One thing you could say about St. Canardian crowds--they had refined gawking into a high art.
This left Drake, Gosalyn and Launchpad alone with Megavolt. "Aha!" said Drake, ducking behind a smaller Christmas tree. A moment later, a puff of blue smoke appeared directly in front of Megavolt's face, on the same rope of tinsel he was straddling. From the smoke, a mysterious voice spoke the following:
"I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am that burned-out bulb at the very top that forces you to re-do the entire house! I am...DARKWING....DUCK!!" And out stepped Darkwing, dressed in his usual double-breasted blazer, turtleneck, cape, mask and fedora, all in fashionably matching shades of purple and pink.
"Ya-ha!" Megavolt leaped backwards suddenly, which, considering his precarious position 30 feet above the floor, was perhaps not the best thing to do, but he narrowly avoided falling. "Darkwing Duck, ooooh, I'm sooooo impressed. How'd you get up here without a ladder, anyway?" He held out his right hand, and pulled back his right thumb with the fingers on his left hand, as if "cocking" a gun. "But it doesn't matter, because you won't be up here for long! A HEE hee hee hee hee!" and he giggled insanely while zapping over and over again at Darkwing in rapid-fire. The ricochets of his electrical bolts bounced all over the mall, setting various items aflame and adding to the general chaos. The security guards left off yelling at Megavolt and ran for the fire extinguishers instead.
Darkwing himself, however, was completely unaffected--he danced agilely out of the way of each blast, and also managed to somehow keep his balance on the strand of tinsel. "Your seasonal stealing spree stops here, battery-acid for brains," he growled menacingly, advancing slowly towards Megavolt, balancing as on a high-wire.
"Well," Megavolt paused for a moment and put his hand to his chin thoughtfully, which surprised Darkwing so much that he stop in mid-step, with one foot frozen in the air, "technically, we ALL have battery acid for brains, or something similar. I mean, it's fluid that makes up the gap between synapses, and what actually makes the thoughts flow from one synapse to another is very small-voltage electrical impulses--"
"ENOUGH with the science lesson!" yelled Darkwing, windmilling his arms in disbelief. "The point IS, I'm gonna toss you out like last year's fruitcake and.....er....what's that...um...ripping sound...?"
"I know that sound! That's a bad sound!" shrieked Megavolt, putting his hands to his rubber-hatted head. "You idiot--the tinsel is ripping! It's not meant to hold all this weight! And I thought I was the nutty one!" He tied the ends of his sack of light bulbs around his neck, grabbed the tinsel, and turned to face the floor. "This is gonna hurt..."
Darkwing looked around desperately for something, anything, to break his fall, but it was too late. He bent down and grasped hold of the tinsel at the last second, as it gave way right in the middle, between the superhero and supervillian...
and, swinging like a pair of indoor Tarzans, Darkwing and Megavolt whistled through the air to SLAM violently into opposite sides of the corridor. They slid down their respective walls, slowly, flattened.
Gosalyn peeked out through her fingers. "Ouch." she muttered.
Launchpad shuddered, and shook his head. "THAT'S gonna leave a mark..." He turned to the two limp bodies on the floor. "You okay?"
"I've had better days, but I think I'll be all right, thanks for asking." said Megavolt politely. Darkwing just groaned.
The electrical rodent was the first to recover. Staggering to his feet with the sack still around his neck--the fact that it was over his back and he had hit the wall FACE-first had saved the light bulbs inside from being broken--Megavolt wobbled unsteadily towards the nearest exit. "I think..that's enough...rescuing for one day..." he panted. "Don't worry, my little low-watt friends...I will save...the rest of you...tomorrow..."
"No you won't!" Megavolt's progress forward was suddenly halted by a hand gripping his blue rubber boot by the ankle. "I...don't think so...Sparky..." panted Darkwing, who had gotten the worst of the fall--the last ten feet of his plunge had taken him straight through one of the mall's many smaller Christmas trees. He was still coughing up pine needles. "I...Darkwing Duck...shall stop you..."
Megavolt rolled his eyes. "Oh, give it UP already. Please. You're just embarrassing yourself at this point, you know." He continued to walk forwards, although much more slowly, dragging Darkwing behind him.
Gosalyn elbowed Launchpad in the ribs to get his attention. "Launchpad, I'm going to create a diversion. As soon as Megavolt's looking at me, I want you to run over there to the food court, grab the first cup of soda you see, and throw it on him! That'll short-circuit his plans!"
Launchpad nodded, then frowned as something occurred to him. "But, Gosalyn...won't that be stealing?"
Gos rolled her eyes. "LAUNCHpad, it's for a good cause! Now be alert!"
But just then--of all things--a small army of toy soldiers came marching out, in strict formation. "Oh. How cute." said Darkwing from his position on the floor. "How Christmasy. Somebody shoot me now."
Tbe soldiers seemed happy to oblige--they raised their toy guns to their shoulders and fired, all in perfect unison. Several hot, solid, and definitely _real_ tiny balls of lead sprayed into Gosalyn, who was closest to them. "Ow! Ee! Ack! QUIT it!" She raised her foot to stomp on a few of the soldiers, but was cut off by another all-too-familiar voice.
"It's PLAAAYYYYYYTIME!!" Behind the toy soldiers, as if they were some strange parody of an honour guard--and to his way of thinking, they probably WERE--a tall duck in a colourful, clashing jester's outfit turned handsprings and cartwheels towards them, giggling insanely all the while. Gosalyn groaned. She should have expected this.
"Quackerjack, too?!" said Darkwing muzzily, finally getting to his feet. "Great, just what I needed..."
"SPARKY, my friend, fancy meeting YOU here!" beamed Quackerjack, skipping over to the yellow-clad rat and rubbing his hands vigorously. "You're just in time! I had the best idea to make Christmas WAY more fun...hoo hoo, ha ha! Actually it was Mr. Banana Brain's idea but I came up with the details. Come on!" He grabbed Megavolt's hand and skipped back to the giant Christmas tree at the mall's entrance.
"Why do I always have to go along with YOUR diabolical schemes, I wanna do MY diabolical scheme for a change..." whined Megavolt as he was dragged along, but he didn't put up much resistance, as Quackerjack was dragging him in the direction he originally wanted to go anyway. "And would everybody please STOP calling me SPARKY!!"
"Come on, guys," said Darkwing, brushing the last bits of holly out of his feathers. "Let's put a crimp in their criminal Christmas caper!" The three charged after the supervillians.

The lights and noises were getting more and more chaotic the closer they got to the gigantic tree, and Darkwing finally saw why. One of the huge spinning tops under the tree was spinning and making a loud, off-key humming noise...spinning faster and faster, as if gathering power for something. The lights on the gigantic tree were all flickering...as were all the lights in the entire mall, after a moment. Obviously the device was sucking up all available power...and it still wasn't quite enough.
"Quackerjack's time-top", he cursed himself for not recognising it earlier. "I don't know what piece of paradoxical plundering that pair of paranoid pirates are up to, but I intend to stop them before they even start!" He plunged through the crowd--which was frozen out of a combination of fear and fascination--towards the top, which was spinning disturbingly fast by now. It made him dizzy if he looked at it for too long, so he stopped looking at it.
"Come on, Launchpad!" said Gosalyn, dragging the large duck behind her by his aviator's scarf. Launchpad was carrying a jumbo-sized Coo-Coo Cola with ice, since he thought he was still supposed to carry out the plan Gosalyn had outlined earlier. Being thirsty, he took occasional sips from the straw as he stumbled forward.
"With this time machine, we can bring back toys that will become next year's biggest Christmas craze...BEFORE they become famous...and make ourselves a fortune by getting in ahead of the trend!" giggled Quackerjack gleefully, standing on his hands in front of the top. "Come on, Megsy, give it your magic touch. It only needs a little more power to take off..."
Megavolt grumbled, but walked up the ladder that led into the entrance hatch at the roof of the time-top, put his hands near, but not touching, the plunger that activated the device's motor, and concentrated. Waves of energy surged out of his body as visible sparks and flowed into the machine, causing it to spin even faster. The high-pitched humming sound changed pitch abruptly and became an ear-splitting whine.
"Maybe I should take this thing into the shop, it's never done THAT before..." mused Quackerjack.
"You're not taking ANYthing ANYwhere...except your own sorry carcass, to JAIL!" snarled Darkwing, bursting through the crowd and whipping out his trusty gas-gun. "One false move, clown, and it's Bedtime for Bozo."
"Oooh." said Quackerjack, sarcastically. "Believe me, I AM worried. But, YOU should be more worried about Megavolt..." he trilled this last line in a high sing-song voice and pointed up towards the top of the ladder. Megavolt seemed to have decided that he had enough charge left in the gigantic battery strapped to his back to fry a few people and still finish energizing the time-top--he had turned away from the machine and was aiming his fingers at the crowd.
"I'll take care of YOU later," said Darkwing, and lunged up the ladder.
"DAD!" yelled Gosalyn, following him. "Wait up!"
"Uh...Gosalyn...?" questioned Launchpad. He followed more akwardly, since he was determined to hold onto his soft drink and climb at the same time, but he made it up the ladder.
"What?!" roared Megavolt, waving his hands frantically to ward the three of them off. "No...I'm too busy for this right now--it's about to--"
And just then, several things happened at once.
Darkwing crashed bodily into Megavolt, sending the sparking rat plunging headfirst and backwards through the open hatchway of the time-top.
Unable to stop themselves, Gosalyn and Launchpad followed shortly afterwards, Launchpad landing heavily on top of everyone else.
The flimsy lid popped off of his drink and ice-cold, sticky brown liquid spilled all over the inside of the cramped cockpit. It splashed on Megavolt, causing him to yelp with pain as his remaining power was expended in a shower of violent green sparks. Weak and singed, the skinny rat collapsed in a heap.
The soda splashed on the delicate, sophisticated controls and machinery on the time-top, too. The gaudily-painted device went into its take-off sequence, automatically.
Quackerjack finally caught up with what was happening. "NOOOO!!!" he shrieked, dancing around the top with rage and pulling at the ends of his jester's cap, causing the bells to ring in a muffled, sort of strangled way. "NO!! STOP! Get out of there! I haven't set the time or space coordinates yet..."
And, with a great, ear-splitting POP and a silence that was somehow louder than the noise before it, the time-top...disappeared.
"I hate when this happens." said Quackerjack, in a petulant tone. "Come on, Mr. Banana Brain. I feel like being alone. This isn't FUN anymore." He climbed back inside "his" box and slammed the lid.
"Phew...this Christmas is turning out to be even more chaotic than last year's--and I oughta know." panted a tall, slender, green duck at the front of the crowd, wiping his forehead with a mittened hand. His hat slid backwards slightly, revealing pinkish-purple petals where hair should have been, and a stamen or two. "Just once, I'd like to have a nice QUIET Christmas."
The tree nodded the top of its trunk in sympathy and patted him on the shoulder with a branch.