After Dragaunus and the strike team were swept out of their universe, Canard re-appeared in southern Keltor, and made his way up to DuCaine Metropolis, where he was elected in the quickly following polls to be the new President of Puckworld. His surviving best friends in the Resistance - General Tomas MacMallard, Captains Bill Rosy and Crimson Pintail, and a BOTB thief Jedar Stormwing - became the rest of the Council. But Canard wasn't the same drake who had left on the mission; the electromagnetic worm had left a portion of itself inside him, making him more twisted and evil as every day went past. At first it was unnoticeable, but laws grew tighter and tighter until it was unsafe to walk the streets for fear of being taken to prison for jaywalking. Jedar, disgusted at the way things were becoming, left the Council and started up a new Resistance, this time to fight an internal threat: the Government.
The street was iced over, and the lone figure walked slowly, arms clutching around his chest and shoulders to try to keep out the biting winter wind. It helped only a little. The snow-clouded breeze ruffled his pale tan feathers with its freezing tendrils and he shivered, leaning against the brick wall, closing his eyes. He knew that if he did not find a place to get warm he would die, but all the houses were shut off to him; no one dared open their doors to strangers any more.
He was not wearing the right sort of clothes for winter travel, a white t-shirt with the Medicinal Doctors’ emblem over the right breast, a pair of faded jeans and shoes now in bad need of a cobbler’s attention.
He looked up blearily through the snow, squinting to see. He knew where he was, or at least the general area; somewhere on Netta Road, heading north toward Altrhein Square, where the statue of Drake DuCaine had once stood, before the Saurians came.
And went.
Gritting his teeth he pushed off from the wall and continued his aimless trudge down the street. He’d had a place to stay, for a while, in the broken-down warehouses along Crossfire Street, with the other homeless, until the Authority came and turfed them out to die in the winter snowfall.
The square was not far ahead of him, but at that moment his legs gave way and he fell down onto his knees in the snow, shivering uncontrollably. The snow was warm, at least in comparison to the chill, biting wind, and he had to fight the urge to lie down and sleep. Sleep... how he needed it. He couldn’t have it.
Alarmed that he was beginning to nod off even through his determination not to, the pale brown drake forced himself back onto his feet and pressed on through the thickening drifts of snow. He found the wide stone steps by accident, and landed hard on the ground at the bottom, too tired to even bother with an agonised yelp. Getting his hands underneath his chest he heaved himself up onto his knees again, and once more the cold wind struck him in the face and neck.
Hunching up into a ball he contemplated whether dying at the sight of the old statue was any better than dying somewhere else. Drake DuCaine had become almost a God to some, yet he’d never been one of them; in any case Drake was supposed to watch over Puckworld from on high... fat lot of use that was, watching, when the world now had a new, internal, threat to give people nightmares...
He’d slipped over onto his side in the snow, which was already making a soft blanket for him to sleep under. Sleep... a wonderful invention but also a deadly enemy at this moment; one that could not be beat. Closing his eyes, he decided to let his life slip away peacefully, if frozenly.
“Hey, you!” The snow muffled the words, and he couldn’t even open his beak to answer. “Hey?” He was being shaken, and then the shaker swore. “Hell, this guy’s almost frozen solid! Yo, Jedar! Jedar, we’ve got a cold-victim here!”
The figure’s eyes struggled to open.
“Jedar?” he croaked.
“Eh? You know him?” Footsteps were coming closer, quickly.
“Okay,” said the new voice, “who’s so suicidal as to come out in... TARRIN!”
“So... you do know each other?”
“Explanations are for later, Mayhem, we’ve got to get him inside, now!”
Tarrin Avias felt himself being lifted up off the snow, and he managed to open one eye to see his friend’s face, before closing both and blacking out.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Tarrin carefully sat up. He had a sharp ache in his head, and the sudden lightning strike of pain made him give a small groan, before cautiously looking around. It was a hospital, of sorts, and certainly not a great one but the equipment was in pretty good order, all labelled neatly for those who shouldn’t really be using a syringe...
“Doc, you’re awake!” the rich Thrainian accent came from the doors, and he looked over, smiling weakly as he recognised the speaker.
“Jedar, nice to see you again. It’s been a few months.”
“You say it so calmly. It’s been almost a year, actually.” Jedar’s storm grey eyes darkened as he walked over. “Where’d you appear from? I last saw you just before leaving the Brotherhood base that day the Saurians attacked.” He sat down on the chair beside the bed. “I’d given you up for dead long ago.”
Tarrin gave a faint laugh.
“I was a lucky duck, Jedar. A call of nature saved my life. The beams above the latrine stayed put when the building fell in, unlike a lot of the others in the base. I thought I was the only one who survived.”
“Quite a few of us survived, Doc, at least those who were out at the time, or were dragged out.” He sighed, checking them off on his fingers. “Let’s see, there was Leila, Amethyst, Lyric, Nylessa, Shendra...”
“All girls?”
“No... me, of course, also Gaudeamus, Dalin, and Falcone, although we lost track of him some time back. Probably a few others got out but until we get the Brotherhood back up we’ll never know for sure.”
“What about Duke?”
“He joined the Resistance, was on the special team who chased the Saurians off Puckworld. And some say both the Saurians and the team were destroyed.”
Tarrin slumped. “Great, you talk of forming the Brotherhood again, how? We don’t have a leader! The only one who could have taken up the position was Falcone, and he’s apparently gone into hiding.”
“We can’t reform the Brotherhood properly until after the Authority is put down.”
Frowning, Tarrin cocked his head to one side, studying his friend’s face. Jedar had hardened greatly from the young man he’d known, with audacious demeanour and a wicked sense of humour. It probably wasn’t for the better.
“Put down the Authority? Impossible.”
“Not impossible,” Jedar said, waving a hand to dismiss the idea. “Just difficult.”
Okay, perhaps he hadn’t changed so much, inside.
“By yourself?”
“Of course not, what do you take me for, an idiot?” Jedar grinned, but only momentarily. “The military formed a Resistance to get rid of the Saurians, and now they’re in power it’s our turn to become the Resistance.”
“So you’ll take over?” Tarrin asked. “Once this Resistance has quelled the Authority.”
His friend was evasive. “Doc, I hate politics. The Authority is worse than the Saurians, because despite the murder and assassination going on world-over it’s very hard for civilians to kill another Duck.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
Jedar didn’t reply for quite a few moments. He seemed troubled by something, but it did not seem likely that he’d tell. “Yes, I am, but no, I wouldn’t take over. I can barely lead a Resistance, let alone a world. Being a leader is no job for me, which is also why I haven’t made any move on the currently open position of Brotherhood Leader. I have a feeling that Leila may.”
“She’s a girl.” Tarrin noted that Jedar had switched topics, but let it rest.
“You’re not allowed to be anti-feminist any more.”
“I’m not, it’s just never happened before through the whole history, not since...” Tarrin paused. “Not since Loreleia DuCaine.”
“Who?”
“No one special, really.” Only the Founder of the Brotherhood, whose rules have been passed down and only changed to make sure we didn’t get stagnant. The Founder who was the ancestor of Drake DuCaine...
“No one special,” he repeated, pointedly ignoring the look on Jedar’s face. He flopped back down onto the pillow. “I think I might go to sleep again, I have a migraine enough to cause an earthquake.”
“We need your help here as soon as possible, there are quite a few injuries that we’ve been unable to treat.”
Tarrin groaned.
“Back to work so soon? All right, all right; after all, a doctor’s work is never done, especially in a war.”
“That’s why you’re called Doc, Doc.”
“Tell me one thing, Jedar,” he said as his friend stood up. “Why you?”
The question was vague at the very least, but Jedar Stormwing seemed to understand him perfectly, and the thief sighed.
“Because, Doc,” he replied, “it’s either fight or flee. And sooner or later, if we keep fleeing, one day we’ll run out of places to hide in.”
He turned, and walked out, and closed the door behind him.
The End