Darkwing's clothes changed back to Drake Mallard's civillian attire, as the new timeline finally closed in on him. Mentally, however, the change took a little longer. He didn't know quite what was going on...it was all starting to fog and blur, but he knew there was something...something horribly wrong...that needed to be fixed...in time. Time! The time machine! Yes! He needed to get back to the time machine..fix this...
Gosalyn.
The thought blazed across his mind. He had to save Gosalyn!
...whoever she was.
But she was IMPORTANT. That was the important thing. Gosalyn. Get to time machine. Save Gosalyn. Important.
Thinking those thoughts over and over again as hard as he could to keep them from fading, Drake Mallard forced himself out the door, across town to the high school, and into the Algebra classroom. He almost wandered off his course and completely forgot where, who, and even WHY he was at least a dozen times on his way there, but he eventually made it and somehow managed to set off the correct sequence to put the time top into auto-return mode. There was a dizzying sensation--as there ALWAYS was, considering the machine relied on rapid spinning to trigger the time-warp--and he was there.
Noise pounded in all around him as the top reappeared at a few minutes after the same time and place it had left from--the shopping mall, during Christmastime, with a big, chaotic, panicky crowd all around. With a difference--now the huge toys from underneath the tree were moving about as if under their own power and attacking the populace. Which explained why the crowd was panicky, of course.
A strangely-dressed duck, done up like some kind of old-fashioned jester from Renaissance times, flew over to the time-top and bounced up and down impatiently as Darkwing staggered out. "You're back! Don't EVER run off with my property again and...say....who are you? ARE you the same guy who got into it a few minutes ago....you sound like him, and you're about the right size, but he was wearing different clothes..." The jester duck looked suddenly very confused--well, more so than usual. "And..weren't there other people with you? A big guy, and a little girl, both with...red hair, I think....and...and another guy, skinny, wearing yellow..." The duck looked off into the air, totally dazed. "Friend...I think...he was my friend...wasn't he?"
Drake Mallard had more important things to do than to waste time talking to--suddenly the face snapped into focus in his memory. "QUACKERJACK?!" he yelled, backing away very fast. "You....you're one of the most dangerous criminals in St. Canard! One of the Fearsome Four! Nobody's ever been able to take you guys down! Please...please just leave me alone! I've...I've had a very bad day already!" and he leapt away from him, plunging out the door of the mall.
"Okay, I won't hurt you," said Quackerjack, distracted by looking over the time-top for damage, "but...should I know you?"

Have to...get information, Drake told himself, when he got home to 537 Avian Way. Somehow he knew it WAS his home..that was one piece of information, at least, that he was still sure of. However, he seemed to also have muddled impressions of something to do with living in...a tower? At the Audobon Bay bridge? That's ridiculous, that place is an abandoned wreck with big holes in the walls, nobody could live there... Archives. Or something. Gosalyn. Got to find out what happened to Gosalyn. (Who's Gosalyn?) Got to find out. What happened. Shouldn't there be more furniture and things around, such as, for three people, not one? What a ridiculous thought, I've always lived alone!
Finally, he found the cabinet where he kept his newspaper clippings--something he'd always done since--well--actually, he wasn't sure WHY he'd always done it, exactly...he just had. To keep well informed on things in general, he supposed. He riffled through them desperately, trying to find some clue, SOMEthing that was familiar...and stopped.
There she was. A black and white photo of a little girl stared at him out of a paper, underneath a banner headline. That was it. That was HER. He KNEW her. This was Gosalyn! His hands shaking, Drake read the story to himself. Maybe now he could find out why she was evidently so important...
It was dated roughly two years ago, and told about how a very dangerous criminal, Taurus Bulba--oh, yes! He remembered hearing about this guy, now, it had been all over the news!--had wanted the secret code to start some doomsday device, but the only living person who even had the possibility of knowing the code was the granddaughter of the scientist who had invented it. The scientist himself had already been murdered by Bulba's hired goons, before they could get the code. Bulba had wasted no time in tracking down and kidnapping the little girl, Gosalyn Waddlemeyer, and then...
Drake's eyes filled with tears and his hands, clenching automatically into fists of rage, crumpled the paper. She had refused to give him the code, and...and...he'd KILLED her! That little girl! Taurus Bulba had murdered her!
Tragedies like this happened every day, however...why was this one bothering him so much...as if it were somehow personal...?
He smoothed out the paper as well as he could and looked into the little girl's eyes one time time.
And then, it ALL came flooding back.
"I...I am...Darkwing Duck!" he whispered. "Or...or I SHOULD be. And...I had a sidekick...that big guy with red hair that Quackerjack mentioned...Runway or something like that. Some nickname to do with planes...And...and I defend the city of St. Canard from criminals, like...like..." he paced the room, desperately trying to hold onto the shred of memory. "Like...the Fearsome Four. No.......the Fearsome FIVE? Negaduck, Liquidator, Bushroot, Quackerjack and....and....um....something to do with electricity. Lightning Man? Bolt? Mr. Electron? Gigawatt?"
He stopped as the realisation hit him.
"Megavolt", Drake Mallard whispered. "That's his name. It's all...it's because of HIM. My oldest enemy. The one I've been fighting since...high school...when he had that...accident...and..."
And Gosalyn HERSELF saved him! his brain pointed out. SHE stopped the accident from happening! But that wasn't a bad thing...it was actually heroic...she...she saved his mind...she saved a LOT of people...
She also, without meaning to....killed herself.
Drake was truly reeling now. He was suffering from a bombardment of TWO, totally conflicting, sets of memories about exactly the same person. On the one hand, he remembered Elmo Sputterspark, his friend from high school and college, who had become a brilliant scientist and figured out a way to make inexpensive, reliable electric-powered cars, among many other achievements. A friendly, somewhat absent-minded professor in his late thirties with long brown hair worn in a ponytail down the back--just because he liked to be a bit unconventional--with a little streak of grey in it at one temple...and AWFUL fashion sense, but otherwise basically blameless. There were rumours that he worked for SHUSH, the secret organisation, making odd inventions for them, but obviously plain old civillian Drake Mallard wouldn't know anything about that.
On the other hand, he ALSO remembered 20 years' worth of being Darkwing Duck, costumed superhero, and fighting Megavolt, a crazed, supercharged supervillian who was able to shoot electricity from his hands at will and was basically a living battery...a man whose mind was GONE...a man who talked to light bulbs and honestly believed they talked back...a man who was, however, still a bona-fide GENIUS in some ways, underneath...
"A man who COULD have been so much more..." Drake whispered to himself, shocked at the full implications. "Who...who IS so much more...now. But...shouldn't be...should he? Since...since Elmo Sputterspark never became Megavolt, because the accident never happened, that means he never attacked at the prom...I remember the prom now!" (But he remembered TWO versions: a crazy, chaotic one in which some weirdo proclaiming himself to be "Megawatt" had stormed in, shooting up the place...and at the same time, he also knew--KNEW, mind you--that it had been a more or less normal affair, with maybe one or two people talking about some rumour that Elmo Sputterspark the science dweeb was in the hospital). "Since Megavolt never formed, he never attacked, and because he never attacked...because...he..." Drake Mallard swallowed and forced himself to continue on.
"Because he never attacked, I...never quite got the courage to be the superhero that I had always dreamed of being...I didn't have the excuse...and...Darkwing Duck never formed, either.
"And because Darkwing Duck never existed...." tears dripped off his bill and onto the newspaper clipping, smudging the photograph, "because Darkwing Duck never existed, there was nobody there, at exactly the right time, and the right place, to SAVE that little girl...and she died."
He came to a conclusion.
"Strange as it may sound," he muttered to himself, "it seems...the city actually NEEDS Megavolt. He's...he's an important part of the ecology, you could say. You NEED predators; otherwise the prey gets too soft and lazy and when danger does threaten, they can't defend themselves..."
He stood up slowly, walking out the door, headed back to the mall. Hopefully the time-top would still be there. He didn't know, or care, how he'd deal with Quackerjack. Supposedly he had an almost-superhero inside him somewhere, so perhaps he'd be able to do more than he thought he could...But he HAD to get to that time machine. No way some clown was gonna stop him.

Drake checked his watch. 5:00 pm, June 10, 1973. He still had a bit of time before his other self, with Gosalyn and his sidekick, showed up. Still a bit of time to...to...
He felt so ashamed. He couldn't BELIEVE he was doing this. He was the good guy, after all.
Drake snuck through the deserted corridors of St. Canard High, the decorations for the prom blowing eerily above his head as before...er, after. I HATE temporal mechanics thought Drake to himself. He continued resolutely on, until he found the closed door of the science lab.
He knew perfectly well what was going on in there.
And he also knew that if St. Canard was to have its guardian, and if one little girl was to have a chance at life....what was going on in that room...would HAVE to play out to its dreadful conclusion.
"Forgive me, Elmo." he whispered. "I'm so sorry. But it seems that, to make things be the way they should...I'll have to have you as my old enemy, rather than my old friend. I hate to do this...but I can't let my own daughter die. No parent worth their salt could."
He clicked a big, heavy iron padlock onto the door.

The time top came to a dizzying stop. Gosalyn Mallard was the first to pop out of it, feeling almost as woozy as she had the last time...the last time? When had that been? When she had gone to the future and all that business with Dark Warrior Duck had happened? But she hadn't been sick then...she tossed it out of her mind in favour of more important things, such as Christmas shopping. "Phew, glad THAT'S over with." she staggered out into the mall, completely ignoring the ravingly angry Quackerjack. "Now, on to business! We still got a LOOOOOOOT of presents left to buy, Dad, so let's get to it!"
"Now, now, Gosalyn, we are on a budget, you know," said Darkwing Duck, climbing out after her. Launchpad followed soon after, and last out was Megavolt...why he was there, Darkwing wasn't certain. But suddenly, for no good reason that he was aware of, and without warning, he stepped back from Gosalyn and Launchpad, lunged towards the brain-fried, electrical rodent, and--
--gave him the HUG of his life!
"I'm SO glad to see you!" he babbled, holding the rat at arm's length. "My dear old pal...my old enemy...Megavolt. I'm SO glad you're here." Those loopy mismatching eyes, that fried hair, that strange outfit...it was all...all so wonderfully right, somehow.
"Uh...that's...er...great..." said Megavolt, feeling embarrassed. Being hugged by a superhero in public was bad enough, but this was happening right in front of Quackerjack, too! Boy, was he ever gonna lose Supervillian Credibility Points over this one. "Er...why are ya glad to see me, exactly?"
The spell broke suddenly. "I....don't know." said Darkwing, very confused. He let go of the supervillian, feeling equally embarrassed. "I....just am. I guess..it's just good...to see that things are back to normal?" Even as he said it, he could tell that it was a very odd thing to say. Back to normal--as if having a team of five mutants, freaks and crazies running around the town was NORMAL! Shaking his head, he followed off after Gosalyn and Launchpad.
Quackerjack materialised right at Megavolt's side, almost as if by magic. "What was THAT all about, Sparky?" he demanded, tossing the belled tails of his hat over his shoulder, jauntily.
"I...don't know...Jinglebells." said Megavolt, shaking his head. "But for some reason, it gave me the creepiest deja vu feeling..."

* * *

Drake put the photo down, and, stretching, looked at the clock. 2:30, wow, how time could fly when you were reminiscing. Definitely time for bed--even if it WAS still ungodsly hot. He took one last look at the picture.
Yes, indeed. There were some stories that it was better far that Gosalyn never know.

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Author's Notes: This is just my rambling. If you don't want to read it, don't go any further; the story's over. Go on, go have fun in the sunlight. (Run, run into the wilderness, to romp and play!) There's nothing else here of particular interest, unless you actually WANT to hear me ramble about the whys and wherefores of this thing...

First of all, the title. It's paraphrased from an Erasure song's title: "Phantom Bride (The Innocents)". It has NOTHING to do with the song itself, but the title--most of it--works pretty well, as Darkwing would fade into nothing but a "phantom" hero, and there are two "innocents" in danger--Elmo and Gosalyn. But only ONE can be saved, not both. Saving one automatically dooms the other.

The idea for this story hit me the other day. I'm sure many fans of Megavolt have thought of having someone (in a fanfic) go back in time and rescue Elmo Sputterspark before he has The Accident...I thought of it, too. Hey, who _wouldn't_ want to save the poor little guy some misery? But then I thought...WAIT a minute...that sounds nice on the _surface_, but let's look at what would REALLY happen here. _All_ the consequences that would result. Because, after all, Megavolt wasn't the ONLY new person who showed up at the prom for the first time...it was Darkwing Duck's introduction, too! And if Megavolt hadn't shown up, would Darkwing have formed? Not then, certainly. Maybe later? Or maybe not. Sometimes an event has only ONE exact moment in time in which everything is exactly right for it to happen, and no other set of circumstances will quite trigger it off. But let's just say that, since Drake had always wanted to be a superhero, it would've happened eventually. Fine, fine. But let's say it happened...just five years later. Or ten. Or MAYBE, hearing about the thing with Taurus Bulba itself could've made ordinary civillian Drake Mallard angry enough to put on a cape and mask and go fight crime. But WOULD he have been able to rescue Gosalyn? A brand new superhero with NO experience under his belt? That was a pretty dangerous opponent...maybe even a Darkwing with 10 or 15 years worth experience wouldn't be quite good enough. I'm thinking he pretty much woulda HAD to become Darkwing for the first time at that prom, or near it anyway, in order to rescue Gosalyn and get himself out of there safely, himself, as well.

Couple other notes:

Naturally all the "science" stuff about electricity was pure hogwash. Like I KNOW this stuff. Yeah. Right. :P The idea was just to make it sound as if perhaps _Elmo_ knew what he was saying...

If you were thinking that the huge Christmas tree in the mall, with the fake, big "toys" underneath it, was just TOOOOO convenient because it allowed Quackerjack and the time-top to blend in, and if you were thinking it sounded like Quackerjack's typical setting and I had made it up/copied it out of the episodes he's in....NO. Nope. That's based off of reality! The actual mall that's right down the street from me--just a couple blocks away!--puts up a display just like that for Christmas every year. Actually some of the "toys", such as the toy soldiers and so forth, are BIGGER than real people. The time-top could definitely hide under that thing as part of the display, it really is that huge, and that gaudy. And all big, sorta parody, sorta...scary versions of old-fashioned, traditional toys like Quackerjack loves to build. (Which makes me wonder something about the people who design the mall's Christmas presentation, but that's a question for another day. ;)) The giant strands of tinsel that look as if they are big enough to hold a relatively light adult person's weight (they probably aren't, but hey--this is taking place in a cartoon universe, after all) are real too, and so is the fact that there's an Electronics Boutique right by the entrance.
They don't sell Whiffle Boy games as far as I'm aware, though...

Hope you enjoyed this, my first Darkwing fanfic! I know I'm very late getting into the fandom, but...better late than never, what?

No light bulbs were harmed in the making of this story.