The Duck Avenger starts out as a joke.

Well, maybe not a joke so much as a way to blow off steam. Or a weird hobby, like soap carving. Maybe it’s even a byproduct of Uncle’s Scrooge’s big headedness finally rubbing off on him and deluding him into thinking he can become some sort of neo-Robin Hood. 

Donald really couldn't say what led him here: to the mask and the voice modulator and the alien tech, to fighting profoundly powerful, profoundly evil beings because they’re threatening innocent lives, not because they’re hoarding treasure. To become a superhero, at least for a little while. 

(That’s a lie, of course. Donald has adventure sewn into his DNA, daring sprouting from the marrow of his bones—just like Della and Scrooge. But their adventures begin and end at the front door, too fantastical, too dangerous for the likes of dreary, ordinary Duckburg. Duckburg, where the Beagles control the streets and St. Canard’ supervillains are starting to try their luck. And Donald, poor angry, orphan Donald, the jinx and constant screw up, who’s only ever been good at adventuring and wouldn’t know a normal life if it walked up and introduced itself, looks at all the mess and sees an opportunity to prove himself.

And he does. He does, and it’s wonderful and terrifying and then it’s over, it’s over and his name is ground into the dirt and spat upon and buried because nothing, nothing good in his life can last for long.) 

(But he’s getting ahead of himself). 

So, the Duck Avenger starts out as a joke. 

At least that was Gloria Cabrera’s view of things. 

He appears out of nowhere, practically falling out of the bright blue sky and into their collective laps. Gloria is a rookie detective when the prankster that will become known as the Duck Avenger first shows up in a police report for letting the air out of the tires of every vehicle owned by all of Duckburg’s billionaires. 

Glomgold and Rockerduck pitch fits immediately, but McDuck has to be given a call to ascertain whether it even happened to him too, though he’s just as unlikely to inform them of an attempt on his life by one of his many, colorful enemies as he is minor vandalism. The report describes a short white duck in a mask and red and blue outfit, whom none of the victims recognize. So it gets a good laugh around the bullpen and a few uniformed officers are spared to camp outside the billionaires’ garages for a handful of nights, and the entire incident is forgotten. 

Until it happens again. 

Or rather, the situation escalates. The perpetrator seems to be following a theme, because on the very night the officers stop watching the garages he vandalizes the cars again. Only this time in a much more pointed fashion. 

On the entirety of Rockerduck’s vintage Bentley and Glomgold’s stretch limo the masked duck spray paints “SCROOGE MCDUCK RULEZ” in fluorescent pink. Meanwhile, McDuck’s limo seems to have had an industrial-sized tub of confetti dumped on it, and spray painted in lime green across the side are the words “KISS ME IM IRISH”. 

The masked duck is caught on film this time, though it helps very little. All three billionaires are properly piqued, and Rockerduck practically orders a full-scale manhunt, but again there isn’t much Duckburg’s police department can do. On the scale of Duckburg weirdness and attacks on their resident billionaires, the vandalism ranks relatively low. Practically nonexistent really, considering that same scale often includes interdimensional beings and literal supervillains. 

After a week without further sightings of the masked duck, the whole situation becomes conversation fodder around the water cooler, and Gloria, who wasn’t even assigned to the case, almost forgets about it. But then one of Glomgold Industries’ subsidiaries, Glomcare Insurance, defrauds hundreds of its customers, and everything changes. 

Glomgold’s lawyers are too well paid, his customers too underpaid, and the lawsuit ends before it can even begin. There’s nothing the police can do, and though it makes resentment burn low and bitter in her gut to see far too many of her neighbors be robbed by a company that doesn’t need their money, she swallows the bitter pill and reminds herself to be grateful she chose to invest in McDuck’s agency (his premiums may be higher, but at least she trusts where her money’s going). 

Then the impossible happens. 

Glomcare is accused of tax fraud by an anonymous whistleblower, an ordeal that’ll leave Glomgold tied up in the courts for months, possibly years. And, even more miraculously, the money that was stolen from every single one of their customers, reappears in their bank accounts overnight. Nobody knows who the source is, certainly not the police. Not until Glomgold gives a pitiable press conference in an attempt to save face, only to be egged on live television. The cameras catch a glimpse of a red and blue cape on a nearby rooftop, and the news explodes with the reveal of Duckburg’s personal Robin Hood. 

Channel 00 calls him “The Duck Avenger,” and for a while he lives up to the name. 

Recently Duckburg has almost started to resemble St. Canard in terms of corruption; in other words, levels of crime far above Gloria’s pay grade. Late at night, talking heads endlessly debate the cause, alternating from blaming Scrooge McDuck for paying more attention to his adventures than what’s going on in his own backyard, to citing an underfunded police force, and even accusing Mayor Bud Flood of embezzlement. 

The Duck Avenger reveals all of them to be true. 

A strategically placed camera records Flood having an full-fledged conversation regarding the use of public funds meant for a new municipal park to build an Olympic sized swimming pool for himself, all while clad in nothing but his boxers (Flood retreats to his hometown of St. Canard in the wake of hearings). 

Scrooge McDuck returns from a two month long expedition in the Amazon to be promptly kidnapped, a feat unto itself. Notoriously, and perhaps justifiably, paranoid McDuck is not an easy mark. Gloria was still in grade school the last time such an attempt had been successful. But the culprit is one of the new villains cropping up in Duckburg, presumably foreign to McDuck, and results in the humiliation of him being tied to the side of a water tower while his captor demands a ransom. 

Meanwhile, Gloria, a sergeant from her precinct, and a handful of officers loiter on the street below the building. She doesn’t have the authority to do anything but keep civilians back, and the rest of them are less than eager to screw up the rescue of the Richest Duck in the World. 

It’s her first time seeing the Duck Avenger in person and not from the other side of a screen. She’s not sure what to expect, but it’s certainly not to see him swan onto the scene with all the subtlety of a thief and the gravity of a birthday clown. 

The new villain calls himself “The Blot” or something, who can keep track at this point. He has some measure of control over shadows, bending them to his will. It’s how he kidnapped McDuck in the first place. Neither Gloria or the other officers can be certain whether it’s some form of technology that allows him to do this or if it’s magic, which just provides more incentive to stay out of the way. But the Duck Avenger, appearing out of nowhere, hardly lets that stop him. 

With a grappling hook latched onto a nearby building, he sweeps up and delivers a flying kick to The Blot’s head, dislodging the black, sackcloth mask he’s wearing. He proceeds to lay out the villain with startling, rapid efficiency, a blur of black, red, and blue on the rooftop above them. He’s clearly here to save McDuck, but he keeps up a litany of childish barbs against both captor and captive, almost as if it’s his goal to distract from his altruistic actions. 

In the end, The Blot is taken away in handcuffs and McDuck is left dangling off the roof by the same rope he was trapped by, after the Avenger’s attempt to untie him was cut short. 

Gloria learns what the Duck Avenger sounds like as he laughs at the dangling, profusely swearing, multi-gajillionaire. 

“Hang in there, Un—Mr. McDuck! Help’s on the way.”

“Help me yourself, you dawdling dobber!”

“Whoa, watch it! There could be children present.”

The Duck Avenger’s voice is deep and bold, with the confident tone befitting a superhero and the wry inflection of a trickster. It suits his persona, clearly carefully crafted. Which makes it all the stranger when something about it doesn't sit right with Gloria. 

She isn’t given much time to dwell on the subject right then, the Duck Avenger vanishing off the roof as quickly as he appeared. But his mockery of the Richest Duck in the World, never mind that he saves McDuck’s life and leaves The Blot to the police, earns him the most scathing of reviews from Channel 00, who have controlled the Duck Avenger narrative since they gave him his name. It’s maybe the most public the Duck Avenger has ever been, or at least the most media coverage he’s ever received. Giving money back to poor people is one thing, but getting on Scrooge McDuck’s bad side? That’s what the city considers news. 

Such as it is, a week following the incident Gloria comes in to work and learns that she’s been assigned to a task force with only one directive: hunting down the Duck Avenger. 

While McDuck hadn’t publicly complained about his encounter with the Duck Avenger, it’s no secret that he hasn’t accepted the apology of the (new) mayor or the chief of police. Channel 00 went so far as to use it as garnish for their Duck Avenger roast on the Thursday evening news. Nevermind that McDuck has been through worse than an aborted kidnapping and a little mockery; no one’s forgetting about the wormhole that opened up over McDuck Manor anytime soon. His pride has been hurt more than anything else. But the public at large has been turned against the Duck Avenger, and it’s so much easier to create a scapegoat than address the real problem. 

The criminal element in Duckburg isn’t going anywhere. Instead, it’s devolving more and more into full blown villains, and the police still needs more funds to combat the rising tide. But that problem is multilayered and complex and less likely to generate viewers for Channel 00, or drum up votes for Mayor MacBridge (or get her on McDuck’s good side). So when the end result is the mayor putting what little pocket change they have sitting around city hall into the organization of a manhunt for the one duck who’s only a criminal on paper, well, what can Gloria do but follow orders?

Orders that don’t sit right with her, she realizes later that night, in the quiet dark of her home. She’s back before Fenton’s bedtime for once and is able to tuck her son into bed herself rather than relying on Doña Ave Nueva from next door to watch him. 

“Okay, pollito, es la hora de mimis,” Gloria says, once the street lights are shining especially bright through the window. 

Fenton sighs, but closes Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot with no further complaints. Rather than Gloria reading a bedtime story, Fenton is often the one to pick a book to read aloud from. It’s been a nightly routine of theirs since he was six years old and skipped grades for the first time. Now Fenton is eight and in the fifth grade, and his thirst for knowledge is thus far an unquenchable reserve, barely supplemented by the science and science fiction books he begs Gloria to buy. 

As Fenton sets his latest read on the nightstand and makes himself comfortable under the blankets, Gloria rises from the foot of the bed. She pulls his comforter up over his shoulders and sweeps a gentle hand through his riotous hair. 

“Duerme con los angelitos,” Gloria murmurs, bending down to kiss his forehead. She reaches over to his nightstand and twists the knob on his lamp, making the room go dark. Before she's turned around Fenton pipes up, hesitant. 

“M’ma, is the Duck Avenger a bad guy?”

Gloria resists the urge to sit down again. She compromises, gripping the door frame with jutting knuckles. Fenton is curled up on his side, bundled up in his comforter, looking back at her with wide, inquisitive eyes. 

“What do you think?” she responds quietly, as if she hasn’t been asking herself the same question. 

He shrugs. “The news is always saying bad things about him, that he’s hurting people. But...I think he only hurts bad people, right M’ma? And only good people hurt bad people. Like you.”

It feels as though a fist has reached into her chest, wrapping around her heart and squeezing. Gloria can’t explain vigilante laws to her son, the intricacies of who can and cannot carry out justice against against the powerful and evil, against those who are above the law. Fenton’s logic is simple, it’s a child’s understanding, but he’s not wrong. 

“That’s right, dulzura," she says, because she doesn’t lie to her son, and she won’t start now. 

The Duck Avenger may not be a hero, but he isn’t bad either. 

Of course, he just has to go and prove her wrong on the first count. 

Gloria doesn’t know what changes, can barely narrow down the when, but the Duck Avenger’s pranks become less common, less grandiose. He’s still egging city hall and tormenting the city’s billionaires and determined to be a headache for the task force assigned with his arrest. But they begin to receive reports of muggings, assaults in the night, that are stopped by a duck in red, black and blue. Beagle Boys and other gang members show up on the steps of the police station trussed up with rope like it’s the Wild West, with a note pinned to their shirts reading, your friendly neighborhood Avenger! 

The Duck Avenger’s grown up, and the face of Duckburg starts to change. 

Gloria will learn later that while Channel 00 was running an hour long “This Week’s Reason You Should Hate the Duck Avenger,” hosted by the Avenger’s biggest fan, Angus Fangus, the Avenger was saving people from a burning building.

It’s raining as flames consume an apartment building on the same street Gloria grew up on, so she heads over in her squad car even though they haven’t called her in. There are barricades and dozens of onlookers as the ten-store building burns, voluminous black smoke rising into the air that nearly vanishes into the thick dark of night. The firefighters have cleared out most of the residents who didn’t evacuate the moment the fire started, but there are still some who are trapped inside, lost in the thick of it where the firefighters could not find them. 

There are people around her screaming, sobbing, on their knees and disconsolate. Like so many others, Gloria can only look on horror, sick with the realization that people are going to die in the worst way imaginable. 

Above the crackling flames, above the roar of the fire hoses and the sirens, there is the tell-tale rush of air that heralds the Duck Avenger’s X-Transformer shield, long theorized by Angus Fangus to have been stolen. But now the Avenger steals onto the scene in a black and white blur, flying through the air like one of the superheroes in the cartoons Fenton watches. A cry rises at the sight of him, rippling through the crowd, and even Gloria has some trouble staunching her instinctive burst of childish hope. She doesn’t imagine there’s anything he can do to help here. 

She doesn’t imagine he’d enter the burning building at the tallest floor, diving headfirst through the blasted out window, but that’s what he does. It happens in a handful of seconds, the motion a smooth arc as he rounds the buildings and finally vanishes inside the building. Screams rend the air again, because the Avenger has essentially plunged to his death before their very eyes.

Seconds pass with excruciating slowness, the world muted even as the chaos reigns on. Then, a smattering of shattering glass as the Avenger dives out of another window, with a child hanging off his back and a young teen under his free arm. His face is already soot stained, but his costume is undamaged, and he has some sort of protective mask over his eyes and beak. He leaves them with the paramedics, coughing and shaking but alive. Everyone stares at him, unsure of his presence after months of slander and mere seconds of witnessing his heroic actions. 

Gloria steps out past the barricade and flashes her badge. 

“Let him help you!” she demands of the firefighters, though she has absolutely no authority to do so. 

But they listen; because there are at least eight more people still trapped; because they just watched the Duck Avenger risk his life to save two.  

A handful of firefighters stay to fight the blaze, while others set up their ladders as high as they will go. The Duck Avenger uses that as a jumping off point, leaping through the windows on the highest floors and searching them one at a time. It takes the better part of an hour, and many of the victims he carries are already unconscious, but he does it. The Duck Avenger saves them all. 

The rain grows in strength as he drops off the last person with a waiting paramedic, and his soaked cape hangs heavily on his shoulders. Firefighters and onlookers alike go to surround him the moment he’s free, shouting words of praise, of thanks. The Avenger waits to accept none of it.

 He rockets up over their heads, vanishing around the edge of a building, but Gloria tracks his progress. She doesn’t even need her car to follow him two blocks down, to the roof of the bodega he’s perched upon. 

There’s a ladder leading to the roof out back by the dumpsters, and Gloria scales it as quickly as she is able, the rungs slick with rain. She reaches the top and he’s still there, hunched over by the edge. His X-Transformer shield lies beside him as he unlatches the protective mask he’s been wearing, and even from two dozen feet away she can already hear his hacking coughs. Without the mask, his wheezing becomes more evident, almost alarmingly loud in the dead quiet of night. The chaos and fire could be two or twenty blocks away, it is so far removed from the fragile quiet they now inhabit. 

Gloria approaches as silently as she is able as the Duck Avenger pounds on his chest, his coughing gradually losing its ferocity. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a water bottle. 

“You should have let the paramedics look you over,” she says. 

The Avenger stiffens, whirls around with naked surprise on his face. But his posture relaxes when he takes her in, plain clothed and alone. 

From this angle she can see his face in the glow of a nearby streetlight, glistening in the drizzle. He was wearing his regular mask beneath the other one and it’s crooked now, the parts of his face the latter didn’t cover nearly black with ash. 

He clears his throat, though his bold, deep voice comes out hoarser than she’s ever heard it. “Officer Cabrera,” he says. 

She’s not surprised that he knows who she is. She’s one of the cops assigned to hunt him down, after all. 

“Avenger,” she replies. 

Gloria tosses him the water bottle. 

He snatches it out of the air at a speed that astounds her, clearly down out of reflex and not recognizing what she had in her hand. When he does look down at what he’s caught, his brows raise comically. 

“Smoke and cold weather aren’t good for your lungs,” she says. “In case you didn’t know that.”

He laughs, and again he sounds off to her. It’s not the rasp of a throat damaged by smoke; his voice sounds more like a scratchy record player, cutting in and out. 

He opens the water bottle and swallows half of it in one go. The rest he leaves on the edge and he stands up, tipping his hat to her. He means to vanish again. 

Gloria takes a step forward before she can help herself. A question that has pressed on her mind for months, ever since the Duck Avenger’s debut, rises in the back of her throat like a balloon. 

“How old are you?” she asks. 

The Avenger hesitates, donning his X-Transformer shield. He locks it in place, flexing his hand in his glove. When he looks over his shoulder at her, his expression is wry. He says, “I’ll be eighteen next month," and Gloria’s blood runs cold.

He soars off, the X-Transformer shield streaming across the sky until the darkness swallows him up.

Gloria never comes face to face with the Duck Avenger again, but she doesn’t stop thinking about their conversation on the roof.

 A month comes and goes and she wonders how he spent his eighteenth birthday. Did he celebrate with family and friends or was he patrolling the city that throws his help back in his face? Was he alone, bruised and beaten from a fight? She wonders where his parents are, if they know what he does every day and night. She can’t imagine allowing Fenton to do anything even remotely that dangerous, to go through life with no one on his side. 

Time passes, and her work in the task force becomes more consuming the longer they go without catching the Duck Avenger. She works late nights, organizes stakeouts, stings, earns a promotion, and still they are no closer to an arrest. She’s hardly ever home anymore, barely manages to wake herself up and make breakfast for Fenton before seeing him to the bus and going back to work to do it all over again. She knows that this can’t go on forever—her son needs his mother, and she needs her son—but she could’ve done with a less dire catalyst for this change. 

On the days Gloria can’t pick Fenton up from his robotics club herself, she sends his babysitter. She’s at the station one afternoon when the babysitter calls to tell her Fenton has disappeared. 

Gloria knows her son wouldn’t run off on a whim, so either he ran to protect himself or he was taken. The former is more likely—Fenton skipped grades again, and twelve year olds can be cruel—and the latter doesn’t bear thinking about. But she’s inundated by terror, even as her captain mobilizes nearly half the precinct in order to find her son. 

Uniforms are sent to the school, others patrol the area between it and her home, and they consider putting out an amber alert. Frustratingly, they don’t allow Gloria to help. Her captain sends her home with the promise to call her the moment they have news. 

Before she knows it four hours have gone by and her phone hasn’t rung once. 

She sits on the couch as late afternoon dwindles into evening and the streetlights flicker on one by one. She turns on the television so the silence doesn’t suffocate her, and she lets her novelas play without looking at them. 

It’s nearly passed the five hour mark when there’s a knock at her door. With her heart in her throat, Gloria nearly trips in her haste to answer it. 

On the other side of the door is a young duck so disheveled he’s either drunk or a college student, and judging by the bags under his eyes it’s probably the latter. He’s wearing a loose plaid shirt over a black band shirt, and looks familiar in a way she can’t place. And anyway, what really arrests her attention is the much more familiar head of messy brown hair peeking over his shoulder, where Fenton has laid his head in sleep as the young man carries him piggyback style.

“Pollito,” Gloria gasps, reaching for her son. 

The young duck exhales heavily in relief. “Thank God, this is the right place.” His voice is garbled and raspy, and at first she doesn’t understand him. 

He turns, loosening his hold enough for Gloria gently tug Fenton into her arms. He doesn't wake, instead turns and nuzzles into her, perfectly content with the change. She looks him over closely but he seems unhurt. 

“Where did you find him?” she asks, glancing back up. 

The young man is setting down Fenton’s backpack, which she hadn’t realized he was also carrying. 

“I was going by Coot Park when I saw him sitting alone on a bench,” he explains, “I thought that was kinda weird, so I went over to see if he needed help. Said that some kids were chasing him, so he ran away and got lost.”

Fear over what might’ve happened to Fenton courses through her, but she reassures herself with the feeling of him heavy and warm and safe in her arms. 

“That was very kind of you,” she says, “I can’t...I can’t thank you enough.”

He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, averting his gaze. “I just did what anyone would’ve done.”

“I don’t think so,” she replies. 

The young man shrugs, his smile self-effacing. “I’m just glad I could help.” He goes to leave, when Gloria's déjà vu is replaced by realization. 

“Wait! I know you,” she exclaims. 

He stiffens, shoulders going straight with shock. “Sorry?" 

“You’re Scrooge McDuck’s nephew,” she says. “I recognize you from the news.”

He visibly relaxes. “Uh, yeah. Yeah that’s me. Have a good night, ma’am.”

He hurries down the steps and swiftly turns the corner, but Gloria closes the front door with her foot before she can watch him disappear from sight. As she sets Fenton down in his bed, something not unlike easiness settles in her gut. He might be Scrooge McDuck’s nephew, but she’s certain that isn’t the reason she recognized him. 

But she doesn’t know what other reason there could be. 

Years go by. 

Fenton graduates high school at fourteen. 

The task force is shut down. 

The Duck Avenger’s name is run into the ground, but he doesn’t stop saving people, pranking Scrooge McDuck, or exposing corruption in the city. 

The face of Duckburg changes. The supervillains return to St. Canard and the crime in Duckburg becomes manageable again. 

If his name being literal mud didn’t deter him, if every officer in the city having arrest on sight orders didn’t make him change his tune, Gloria doesn’t think anything will stop the Duck Avenger’s avenging. 

But seven years after she speaks to the Avenger, several strange things happen in quick succession. 

Scrooge McDuck retires from adventuring, and disappears from the public eye entirely. 

Then the Duck Avenger vanishes. 

And she means vanishes. Reported sightings go from a hundred to zero in single day, and stay that way, for weeks and months and then years. 

At the beginning, Gloria spends long nights agonizing over what might have happened to him. He would’ve only been twenty-five when he disappeared, barely a young man. He dedicated so much of his life to the city, to being the Avenger. She almost doesn’t want to know what horrible event made him have to leave all of that behind. 

Five years after his disappearance a group of very stubborn lobbyists finally get the city to change its stance on vigilante laws, using the Avenger’s impact on the city’s crime rate as evidence of its success. It’s thirteen years too late, would’ve saved the Avenger eight years of grief, but something in Gloria eases all the same. If another young hero wants to take up the mantle he’ll receive support rather than vitriol and ridicule. 

Of course, Gloria doesn’t expect her son to be that hero. 

Fenton is Gizmoduck, and Gloria feigns ignorance. 

It’s almost cute that he thinks she doesn’t know. She may not have seen him don the suit but she would recognize her son’s voice anywhere, any place, even with a billboard poised to crush her. Por Dios, she’s the one who dragged him off the dock and into an ambulance. 

She lets him continue to think he’s pulled the wool over her eyes, because Fenton can be painfully obvious when he thinks he’s successfully tricked someone.  When he’s called away suddenly at odd hours of the night for “emergency lab work” she gives the station a call and tells them to keep a lookout for any supervillain activity. She has té de manzanilla waiting for him when he gets home, beside aspirin and an ice pack, and hopes that one day he’ll be honest with her before she has to reveal what she already knows. 

But after that first awful incident with Mark Beaks, Gloria is lucky in that she doesn’t have to worry too much about Fenton, not like she did the Duck Avenger. The Avenger was so much younger, for starters, still just a child when he first donned the cape and cowl. He wore no protective armor beside the X-Transformer shield and he fought supervillains, real supervillains, St. Canard supervillains, on a near daily basis. He almost died more times that Gloria could count. 

In contrast, Fenton has the Gizmosuit. It’s hardly infallible—she’ll never forget it exploding with her son still inside—but it protects him better than anything ever could. He fights weather villains, who are more of a public nuisance than a threat, and the occasional bank robber, and even more rarely threats like living shadows. If her son had to go and become a superhero, these are the best circumstances she could ask for. 

Of course, that’s when aliens have to go and invade Duckburg. 

The actual invasion is rather brief and unremarkable for being the Earth’s introduction to extraterrestrial life. There isn’t even much fighting involved when it’s all said and done. But it’s what comes of the invasion that changes everything. 

All of a sudden, Fenton isn’t the only superhero around.

 St. Canard has its own Darkwing Duck, the genuine article this time, who’s very quickly and almost aggressively building as big a name for himself as Gizmoduck’s. 

Another hero sweeps in on the tail of the shining, alien ships, trading fists and trailing cosmic dust and while his beak may be latched shut, his eyes burn with the fury of thousands. He arrives clothed in gleaming gold that at first renders him unrecognizable, but then the entire city watches him soar across the sky in an X-Transformer shield made of cobbled together engine parts, and she know that their first protector has returned to them.

“He's a joke!”

“His tactics are underhanded, we knew that going in. We need to get better at anticipating him, and not letting him goad us. You especially.”

“Me? If I remember correctly, you were the one who got offended when he asked which one of us was the sidekick!”

Gloria breezes back into the living room when the voices begin to increase in volume, three mugs held artfully in her hands. 

“Indoor voices, please,” she bids simply as the two men on the couch immediately fall silent in her presence. 

Fenton’s friend, muscled and lean where her son is gangly, with a profile very similar to St. Canard’s resident hero, makes a face like he’s eaten a lemon. Beside him, Fenton looks as though he would very much like the ground to swallow him up. Neither of them seems very happy to be overheard, and she wonders what deep, dark secrets they think she’s gleaned. 

Stamping down the urge to laugh, because honestly how dense do they think she is, Gloria goes to set the three mugs down on the coffee table—coffee for herself and Drake, tea for Fenton who, bless him, handles caffeine with the metabolism of a ten-year-old. 

“It’s so nice to finally meet some of pollito’s friends,” she enthuses cheerfully for maximum effect and Fenton slouches into the couch accordingly, as if trying to bury himself in the cushions. “It’s Drake, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Drake replies, standing to take his mug from her before she can put it down in front of him. “But you didn’t need to trouble yourself on my account. I meant to leave before you got back from work; I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Gloria takes a seat in the armchair across from the couch, crossing one bent knee over the other and making herself comfortable. “No, no apologies necessary,” she says, waving a hand, “any friend of Fenton’s is welcome here.” 

She takes a long sip of her coffee, and watches Drake and Fenton do the same with their own drinks. 

“What do you boys think of the Duck Avenger coming back?” she asks before they’ve finished. 

Drake chokes, covering his beak so he doesn’t spray coffee everywhere. 

Fenton nearly upends his mug of tea before clumsily setting it down and hurrying to pat Drake on the back. “Why would we think anything?” Fenton says, almost too hastily to be understood, “I mean, he’s a superhero, M’ma, and more of those is always a good thing.”

Drake just nods, still coughing too much to offer any proper response. 

Gloria shrugs innocently. “You probably don’t remember, but you used to be a big fan of the Duck Avenger when you were little. Even back when vigilantes were still illegal. You’d sneak out of your room to watch him on the news.”

Fenton blushes to the roots of his feathers and Drake manages a muffled laugh at his expense. 

“What about you?” Gloria asks sharply, locking eyes with Drake. “Launchpad tells me you’re quite the superhero fan. There are a lot of people who say the Duck Avenger paved the way for all the new heroes who’ve been showing up.”

Drake’s voice is still a bit hoarse when he responds, speaking slowly and guardedly. “I’m not denying the Avenger’s positive impact on superhero society. But the fact is that he started as little more than a prankster that concerns me. How can anyone trust him when he does all of his work from the shadows, disappears before he can be questioned, and refuses to work with anyone?”

Gloria doesn’t look away when she says, “You mean like Darkwing Duck?”

He looks taken aback for a brief second before a more neutral expression takes its place. But Gloria has been interrogating suspects for the better part of a decade, and she knows what she saw. 

“I actually agree with Drake,” Fenton pipes up, always eager to throw himself upon someone else’s sword. “How do we know this is even the same Duck Avenger? That was over ten years ago, who knows how old the guy even is by now.”

Gloria knows all too well how old the Duck Avenger would be. But all the same, she acquiesces with a nod. “I suppose that’s true,” she says, standing back up with her coffee. “But lately I’ve had more faith in these new heroes. They’re tontos , but they’re tontos trying to do the right thing.”

Fenton looks back up at her with wide eyes. “I-I guess so, M’ma.”

She hums lightly, stepping forward kiss Fenton’s forehead briefly. “You two can go back to whatever you were talking about, but do it in your room. I need the couch to watch Patos.”

A month later, Gloria is awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of a jet landing on her front lawn. 

It’s been storming heavily the past two days, and this night is no exception. Rain plummets against the roof in a thunderous deluge, and it’s a miracle she hears anything at all. But as Gloria is roused from bed and sits up in the muffled dark of her room, taking in the steady patter of raindrops, she wonders if she’s perhaps imagining things.

Then her front door bangs open, and Fenton’s voice pierces the sanctity of night, strident and strained,"M’ma!”

Gloria rushes out of her bedroom, her robe scarcely slung over one shoulder by the time she bursts into the living room. None of the lights are on and it’s still black as pitch inside, save for the porchlight, whose glow alights on the group clustered near the front door. Gloria fumbles turning on the nearby light, her heart in her throat, already drowning in nightmarish scenarios of her son coming to harm. 

The light clicks on with disconcerting mundanity, revealing the identities of the assemblage. 

She seeks out Fenton’s face first and breathes a sigh of relief when she finds him standing, paler than she’d like, blood crusted at his temple, but otherwise unharmed. Drake is there too, grim-faced, and Launchpad behind the pair of them, looking uncertain and anxious. They’re all soaked to the bone. 

Supported between the three of them is the Duck Avenger’s limp body. 

“M’ma,” Fenton begins shakily, “I can’t explain right now, but-but he’s hurt, and before he passed out he insisted that we couldn’t take him to the hospital—”

“Put him on the couch,” Gloria orders briskly, her shock already fading. “On his side, vamonos! Fenton, get my first aid kit.”

Fenton shuts his beak with a snap. With movements more self-assured than before, he helps Drake and Launchpad maneuver the Duck Avenger before dashing off to her bathroom where she keeps the industrial-sized first aid kit. 

“What happened?” Gloria demands of the other two men as she walks around to the front of the couch. This close, she can see Launchpad’s bruised knuckles and the purple mask tails hanging out of the front pocket of Drake’s shirt, and she can imagine him barely remembering to yank it off as he stepped through her doorway. 

“He took a bad hit,” Drake says.

Gloria kneels in front of the couch, scrutinizing the Avenger. It’s been a decade, but she still recognizes the teenager she first met. There are lines and shadows on his face now, even when slackened in unresponsiveness, and there’s some bruises visible on his cheekbone where his mask is slipping. 

“How long has he been unconscious?” she asks, making short work of checking his pulse and airways. 

“He kept waking up and passing out again on the Thunder—on the way here,” Launchpad replies quickly. 

Gloria frowns. “That sounds like blood loss. You didn’t find any injuries?”

“No, Mrs. Fenton’s Mom.”

Fenton returns with the first aid kit. “Here, M’ma.”

“Thank you, pollito.” She pulls out the scissors to cut through the Avenger’s costume so she can look him over for injuries, but the blades bend comically against the deceptively thin-looking material when she attempts to make an incision. 

“ Tijeras chafas,” she grouses. 

Fenton leaves her side for a moment, only to return with his laser cutter. 

Gloria gives him a grateful look before resuming her previous actions and cutting open the Avenger’s costume. She’s so focused on keeping her hand still and not burning him as she leans over the couch that she doesn’t notice that the Avenger has opened his eyes with a start until he’s sitting up so abruptly that their foreheads collide with a loud, painful thwok! 

Gloria bites off curses in Spanish as she falls back on her heels, clutching at her head with the hand that isn’t holding the laser cutter (now deactivated).

The Duck Avenger stays sitting up, pupils blown wide in the way of concussion sufferers, but it’s clearly an effort for him to do so, judging by the trembling, jutting knuckles of the hand he has wrapped around the back of the couch. 

“What are you trying to do, fricassée me?” he demands in a sonorous bass, that sits ill with Gloria as much as his old voice used to. 

“More like trying to save your life, idiota!” Gloria snapped, “these boys had me thinking you were bleeding out.”

“It’s only a little bit of head hurt,” the Avenger grumbles, blinking hard. His head lolls forward for a moment before jerking back up. 

“Maybe it’s his brain that’s bleeding out,” Drake mutters uncharitably. 

“Enough,” Gloria says forcefully. “Fenton, show your friends to your room, you can all camp out there. Launchpad, that plane of yours better not be crushing any of my roses. Park it on my neighbor’s geraniums if you must.”

“Sí, M’ma.”

“Yessir, ma’am!”

In short order, Gloria has been left alone with the Duck Avenger for the first time in a decade. The silence between them stretches, as Gloria remains kneeling where she is and the Avenger clenches his eyes shut as though in pain (which he likely is). 

“Should I ask if you know what day it is? Your name? Birthday?” she asks wryly. 

The Avenger huffs a laugh, propping himself up against the couch cushions with careful movements. “I don’t think I could remember any of those even without the concussion.”

The rain hasn’t stopped, has perhaps grown in intensity. She hears the whir of Darkwing Duck’s plane takeoff and the thud of it landing again. Launchpad shuffles back inside, dripping more water than before, and Gloria wordlessly points him in the direction of the bathroom. 

She retrieves the Avenger a blanket and a spare pillow and some pain reliever before telling him, “I wanted to thank you, again, for saving my son.”

He snorts, and immediately clutches his head in pain. “Ugh. Cat’s out of the bag where Gizmoduck’s concerned, huh? I told him that I was the one who pushed him out of the way of Steelbeak’s catapult, but—”

“No,” Gloria says shortly, but gently, “I wanted to thank you for bringing him home when you found him alone in Coot Park when he was nine years old.” 

The Avenger blinks hard, though this time she doesn’t think it’s on account of the concussion. “You—Fenton told you!” he blurts. 

Gloria can’t help but laugh. “Fenton can’t keep a secret. If he knew, half the city would too.”

“Then how?”

Gloria gives him an amused look. “There aren’t many ducks who have to go to such lengths to disguise their voices.”

He groans. “Great. So I just made my identity even more obvious.”

“Only to someone who knows where to look,” Gloria says. She pushes herself to her feet. “Now if you don’t mind, I was sleeping very comfortably before the three of you showed up at my door, and I’d like to go back to that.”

“There are four of us,” the Avenger replies in confusion. 

“Launchpad is the politest out of all of you, he doesn’t count.”

The Avenger’s laugh is a quiet thing, but the smile on his face is one of the brightest she’s seen. 

Gloria crosses the room to switch off the lamp. But she looks at the back of the couch for a brief moment first and says, if no one else will, “I’m glad you’re back, Avenger.”

She tugs the cord on the lamp, and the living room immediately darkens. Without even the porch light on, the only available illumination is the moon, casting a pale rectangular glow through the windows. 

Out of the dark arises a voice she hasn’t heard in a decade, not since its scruffy owner appeared on her doorstep and delivered her son back to her. 

“Thanks,” Donald Duck breathes into the quiet of the room.