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aftermathfanfic · 1 year ago

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Você viu essa pessoa? Filomena Cardoso Visto pela última vez perto dos penhascos ocidentais Desaparecido desde 11/03/24 Se você tiver informações, ligue para 116-000

Dewey slowly removed the poster from the wall, staring at it and frowning.

-------------------------------------

Jack stared up at Ma Beagle, her crowbar pushed under his chin, a wicked smile on her face. Around him, he could hear the dark chuckling of the Beagle Boys, no doubt plotting to bury him when this was over. His hands and feet were still strung together behind his back, and his mind was racing to string thoughts together coherently.

“…Um…” He croaked. “Could I ask to be untied before I explain myself?”

“Nah. I reckon you’re good to talk where you are.” Ma Beagle sneered. “In fact… let’s both get comfortable.”

She snapped her fingers, and one of the nearby beagles darted forward with an unfolded lawn chair. Ma Beagle sat down upon it, waiting expectantly for Jack to start talking.

“…Well…” Jack began nervously. “Credit where it’s due, you’ve… done your research. I… did used to be a FOWL agent. Emphasis on used to be!” He added quickly, in response to the chorus of jeering from his surrounding captors. “I’m not with them anymore!”

“Course you’re not! FOWL’s gone!” Snarled one of the brutes who’d captured him, the short, squat one. “Hard to be a part of somethin’ that doesn’t exist!”

“Granted, but I left FOWL long before they fell apart!” Turning to Ma Beagle, he said imploringly, “I had nothin’ to do with… whatever the hell happened at the Library of Alexandria! I didn’t know nothin’ about anyone bein’ brainwashed, or anyone plottin’ anythin’ against you!”

His accent was coming out. He cursed inwardly, knowing it was exposing his panic to her. The crime lord barely batted an eye at his desperate pleas, reaching into her purse and calmly pulling out a carton of cigarettes. “I’m hearin’ a lot of words, Fed, but I need a bit more convincin’ to know that they mean anything.” She told him, putting the roll of carcinogens into her mouth and lighting it. “You were playin’ both sides, weren’t ya? Spyin’ on the FBI?”

Jack forced himself to calm down. Fear was going to kill him, not save him. Swallowing his pride and anxiety, he answered reluctantly, “…Aye. I was their mole.”

Ma Beagle chuckled. “And you were talkin’ to me about playin’ things by the book.”

“Yeah, well… suppose you can call that ‘learning from your mistakes’.”

Ma Beagle leant back in her chair, remarking, “Trustin’ you with a job like that… how’d that happen?”

“…I was already in the agency by the time FOWL got to me.” Nickel started to explain. “I was an up-and-comer, see. I had skill and drive, but I wasn’t much more than an ambitious trainee. And a right prick, too.”

“More so than you are now?”

Jack forced himself to laugh. “If you can believe that… I joined up with this idea that I’d be servin’ America, protectin’ the people and bein’ some noble hero… only to find out that some of my buddies were takin’ bribes from the mafia and my boss was divertin’ funds to buy himself a swimmin’ pool. I learned the hard way that the FBI was no less corrupt than the cops, or the CIA, or… everything else, really. And, instead of acceptin’ that was just the way the world worked, I chose to mope around and angst about it… and that’s when Buzzard found me.

“Buzzard saw that I was clever, skilled and disillusioned – the perfect soldier for his war. He came to me and gave me this pretty speech about how the world was corrupt, chaos reigned supreme, how McDuck was the catalyst for all of it and that FOWL was here to bring order and stability back to the world. I’m sure he gave you a similar speech, he was full of them.”

“Mm.”

“Well, I was young back then, and-”

“The hell do you mean ‘young’? What, were you fifteen when they took you in?”

“I was twenty-two.” Jack replied, annoyed.

Ma Beagle raised an eyebrow. “And how old are you now?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“You look like you’re twenty-one.” One of the nearby beagles said confusedly.

“That’s the power of moisturiser, lad.” Jack retorted. “Point is that I was impressionable back then. And I’m sorry to say that I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. How could I not? It all made sense! Everythin’ McDuck does causes trouble further down the line! Pissin’ off Magica? That led to her stealin’ people’s shadows back in 2018! That space rocket he made? Led to us bein’ invaded by moon people! And Glomgold? If it weren’t for McDuck, that moron would’ve remained some nobody in South Africa! He had me sold, so I joined him.

“For eight months, I fed him and FOWL information on what the FBI was doing. I gave him case data, redirected investigations for him, I made sure that nobody in the FBI could get so much of a whiff of what he was doing. I protected the man and his followin’ of crooks, all for the perfect world he’d told me he was building in place of this one.”

Ma Beagle just looked at him impassively. “How’d that work out?”

Jack didn’t say anything. For a moment, he was lost in his own memories, remembering the humiliation he’d felt upon realising how easily he’d been manipulated. The retributive anger that had surged through him upon realising the truth.

“…Do you know what FOWL’s plan was?” He asked quietly. “For what they’d do after they took down McDuck?”

“…They didn’t have one?” Ma Beagle guessed.

“Didn’t even have sticky notes on the whiteboard.” Jack shook his head sadly. “No, FOWL’s plan for world domination began and ended with defeating McDuck, and everythin’ else was a big fat question mark, because guess what? FOWL was never established to take over the world, or to bring order to society, or to do any of that grandiose nonsense that Buzzard went on about! It was created because the old man had some unresolved childhood trauma and the man decided to play at bein’ a supervillain instead of goin’ to therapy like everyone else!”

The younger Beagle Boys backed away slightly as Jack rambled. He couldn’t help but let some old bitterness into his voice. Ma Beagle didn’t seem phased, so he sighed, calmed down, and continued, “Well… once I came to that realisation, protectin’ FOWL didn’t make much sense anymore. So, I leaked a bunch of FOWL’s info to the FBI, changed my name and went off the grid for six months before Buzzard realised what I’d done. I only came back to the Bureau after I heard what went down at the Lost Library.”

“I thought you didn’t like the FBI ‘cause they were corrupt?” Said one of the larger Beagle Boys.

“Corruption’s everywhere.” Jack replied bluntly. “You can’t get rid of it. But what I realised is that you can manage it. And that’s exactly what I did for the next three years of my career – gettin’ rid of my less scrupulous fellows and makin’ sure that the ones I couldn’t get ousted were watched very carefully.”

“How noble of you.” Ma Beagle grunted sarcastically.

Jack shrugged, casually remarking, “Well, I had to do somethin’ on the side while we were hunting FOWL.”

For the first time this encounter, Jack saw confusion emerge in Ma Beagle’s eyes. She frowned at him, demanding, “The hell do you mean? FOWL was gone.”

“Yeah, McDuck beat ‘em!” Shouted one of the Beagle Boys.

Jack laughed again. “No, McDuck beat Bradford. Sure, he knocked down FOWL’s figurehead, left ‘em crippled, but once his family was safe, Scrooge did what he always does – retreat back to his Duckburg bubble and leave the rest of the world to figure it out. FOWL still existed in splinter groups and rogue agents, and it wasn’t McDuck who put them all behind bars. It was me.

“I knew all of FOWL’s hideaways. I knew who the bigwigs were and what they’d do in a power vacuum, and I caught them all!” Jack bragged, speaking with confidence now that the Boys were listening to him intensely. “Steelbeak, Phantom Blot, Rockerduck, all servin’ life sentences in Washington State prison!” He gestured to the FOWL document that Ma Beagle had thrown at him. “That dossier that you caught me on? I had it released to the public. I… had to scrub my own records from it. For my own protection, of course. But apart from that, it was completely undoctored. And do you know…”

Jack leant forward toward Ma Beagle, saying, “In that dossier – and you can check it out for yourself – FOWL had written up a list of magical relics that McDuck had been gathering over the years. Items of untold destructive power, arcane superweapons, all at the fingertips of the Richest Duck in the World.”

“…The names you had me look at.” Ma Beagle said in realisation.

“Exactly!” Jack exclaimed. “I couldn’t just let that knowledge slide… but I couldn’t exactly go and arrest him neither. The dossier’s info on these things was incomplete, and mostly speculative. There was no proof that McDuck even owned them. But I knew he did. And I knew I could prove it. My bosses were reluctant to approve my investigation – McDuck’s not someone you can just fuck around with – but they were hardly going to refuse to the man who brought in the most prolific terrorists in America!

“After that, I came here and set up my investigation. I got one of my informants to slip McDuck a bit of info on this magic cloak, hidden in some Middle Eastern ruin. Figured he’d take the bait to get back into his old habits, and so he did. I’ve been watching him ever since, waitin’ for him to slip up and once he does…”

“You’ll do what?” Ma Beagle questioned him.

Jack smirked. “Well… if the dossier was correct, some of these items are the magical equivalents of an atom bomb. Once I’ve got proof that he has one of these things, definitive proof that he has something magical and dangerous, I come down with a warrant and thirty guys to search that house back to front. Only for that one item, of course, but once we find one, we find the others.

“We charge him with hoardin’ weapons of mass destruction, concealin’ them from the US government, hell, we could hit him with plottin’ against the government if we wanted to. And sure, maybe he won’t go to jail in the end, or not for very long, but he’ll be ruined. His reputation will be shot to pieces, he’ll have to spend a fortune in court, and all of his fancy magic relics go from him to the government, where they belong! The man will never be able to adventure, ever again.”

“��Alright.” Ma Beagle leant back, peering at him suspiciously. “Here’s my question – why? If you’re not a FOWL stooge, why go after McDuck?”

Jack stared at her like she had asked him to explain what was wrong with murder.

“Because he’s Scrooge McDuck!” Jack cried. “Buzzard might have been full of shite, but he was absolutely on point about McDuck! The man flies across the world nickin’ treasures from other countries, hoards magic and superweapons like some doomsday survivalist, hiring lunatics to build robots and time machines and all kinds of insane nonsense-” He strained against his restraints, hissing, “The man takes his nephews to ruins filled with deathtraps! Brainwashes them into believin’ his own insanity when they’re as young as ten! That’s not the work of a hero, or whatever the papers have made him out to be, it’s the work of a bloody megalomaniac!

“I mean-” Nickel spluttered in fury, forgetting he was a prisoner for a moment. “Think of all the chaos and destruction that Magica and Glomgold have caused! Neither of them would even exist if it weren’t for McDuck! And at the end of it all, does he try to make up for what he’s done? Does he use the money he’s made to help people, or to change things? No! He just goes back to his mansion, throws some token amount of money at the problem, and acts like none of it matters! Like he’s above it all! The man is greed and selfishness incarnate!”

He ran out of breath, panting as the Beagle Boys around him stared at him in shock. Even Ma Beagle had been stunned into silence by his outburst. Jack took a deep breath, then straightened himself as much as he could, trying to regain his composure.

“…I love this country.” Jack told her quietly. “But it’s built on a mountain of problems, and McDuck symbolises the worst of them. You want to know why I’m doin’ this? It’s because I want to do something that’ll change things for the better.” He shrugged, adding, “Someone has to.”

Ma Beagle didn’t say anything. Her cigarette was resting in her fingers as she peered at him, a pensive frown on her muzzle. Any number of thoughts could be going through her head, and it was all Jack could hope that mercy was among them.

Finally, she gestured at one of the nearby Boys. “Cut ‘im loose.” She muttered reluctantly.

The thug approached Jack, whipping out a folding knife from his belt as he knelt down behind him.

“Let me make this clear to you, Fed.” Ma Beagle declared as the knife started to saw through his bonds. “The only reason I’m lettin’ you go is because you’re more a threat to McDuck than you are to me. But you’re only foolin’ yourself with your good-cop bullshit. You already know that you can’t beat Scrooge by the book. That’s why you pulled that stunt in his brats’ school. Fact is, in order to bring him down, you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty.”

With a snap, the ropes broke loose. Jack winced and nursed his wrists where the rope had been rubbing against it, then began to stand up.

“When that time comes…” Ma Beagle continued, stepping up to him with a scrutinous glare. “…are you gonna be a man? Or are you goin’ to be a mutt?”

Jack glared back down at her, trying to assert some measure of authority over her. He patted his jacket down to confirm what he already assumed, then turned to the crowd of Beagle Boys.

“Whoever stole my phone and wallet, give ‘em back.” He requested them exhaustedly. “I need to call a cab to get home, and a tow truck for what you did to my car.”

Ma Beagle scoffed, a smirk returning to her lips. “Lead him out, boys.” She ordered, turning back around with the cigarette in her mouth.

With that, the boys grabbed Jack by the arm and started to drag him out of the junkyard.

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It was decided, in the end, that the family would delve into the castle in the evening, with the rest of the day dedicated to whatever one pleased. Donald had opted to spend most of his day relaxing in his motel room, quietly napping away the day. Scrooge spent his day resting too, saying that he had somehow thrown his back out in his sleep. That left the kids with the entire town to explore on their own.

Truthfully, there was not much to do in Galinha. The town was small, with the only tourist destination being the one they’d be going to later this day, though they still found some amusement. Wandering around the back streets and scaling the rough cliffs and hills that enclosed the city. Goldie didn’t make another appearance, to May and June’s satisfaction, and their day as a whole was quite pleasant.

Towards the end of their exploration, as they were walking through one of the side streets of town, Dewey slowed down and stopped as he noticed a poster, plastered on the alley wall. He’d seen these things all over town, but now that he was getting a good look at it, he found himself stopping to read it.

The poster was dominated by a picture of a young, smiling duck girl with brown feathers and messy black headfeathers. She looked to be around the same age as him. Around the photo was blocky red text that read,

Você viu essa pessoa? Filomena Cardoso Visto pela última vez perto dos penhascos ocidentais Desaparecido desde 11/03/24 Se você tiver informações, ligue para 116-000

Dewey slowly removed the poster from the wall, staring at it and frowning.

“Looks like a missing person poster.” May commented when he showed to the group later, hanging around a soccer field on the town outskirts. “Filomena Cardoso… I guess that’s her name.”

“Is that when she went missing?” Dewey asked, pointing at the date. “The eleventh?”

The others bunched around the poster, sitting in a circle on the grass. Louie peered at the sentence near the bottom, then confirmed, “Yeah, ‘Missing since the eleventh of April.’ That was over a week ago.”

“You speak Portuguese?” June inquired.

“Nah, Spanish.” Louie corrected her, shaking his head. “Portuguese crosses over with it sometimes, but that part there’s the only bit I can understand.”

“You speak Spanish?” Webby asked hesitantly.

Everyone turned to look at Louie. He faltered for a moment, then muttered uncomfortably, “Uh… yeah. Through an online course.”

“…Why Spanish?”

Louie exhaled sharply, then answered frustratedly, “I dunno, I guess I just felt like it.”

Dewey looked between Webby and Louie, the tension blindingly obvious. Knowing that the next question would be ‘when did this happen’ and ‘why keep it a secret’, he wondered aloud, “Isn’t this weird, though? A missing person in a tiny little town like this?”

“I mean, a little, I guess… But stuff like this happens all the time.” May pointed out. “What got you about this one?”

“I dunno, I just… I don’t like seeing people in trouble, you know?” Dewey told her. “And something about this girl being missing, maybe even hurt… it doesn’t feel right to me.”

“It’s because she’s pretty, isn’t it?” Webby deadpanned.

Dewey stared blankly at her.

“I-I mean, she is pretty, but that’s- that’s not why-” Dewey stammered. “I mean, come on, guys! There’s a mystery here! What happened to her? How’s she been missing for a whole week?”

“I think she just ran away from home.” May countered. “It’s not uncommon.”

“To where? There’s nothing but grass and rock for miles!”

“She could’ve had an accident.” Louie suggested. “I saw some kids scaling the cliffs around here. It isn’t nice to think about, but…”

“They would have found a body by now.” June pointed out, frowning. “Dewey’s right, there’s something weird about this.”

“You know what I think? I think this chick’s been kidnapped.” Dewey declared. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

The kids were quiet for a moment. May sighed and folded her arms, asking, “Okay… so what do we do about it?”

“We find her.” Dewey responded, without a moment of hesitation.

“How?” May asked flatly. “We go to the castle tonight and head back home tomorrow morning. How do we find the time to solve a missing persons case?”

“Uh…”

“We could convince my dad and Uncle Donald to let us stay here a bit longer.” Webby answered, jumping to Dewey’s rescue. “They could even help us!”

“This sounds good to you?” May asked with a raised eyebrow.

“What? We’re McDucks!” Webby exclaimed. “Saving people and beating bad guys is what we do! And you can bet that whoever abducted her is some world-class creep who deserves to be punched!”

“Yeah, like, think of what her family’s going through!” Dewey exclaimed. “If police haven’t found anything, after a whole week, then it’s gotta be us!”

“I dunno, man.” Louie muttered, visibly uncomfortable. “I feel like this is too dangerous.”

“How could it be any more dangerous than the stuff we’ve done before?”

“Uh…” Louie stumbled for a response. “…Okay, I don’t have a good answer for that. It’s just… we’re not superheroes, Dewey. Or cops. Right now, we’re a bunch of foreigners. This isn’t our business, and we’re not gonna be thanked for poking our beaks into it.”

“I’m with Louie.” May agreed. “We’re not going to find anything the cops haven’t already found, it’s just stupid to insert ourselves into this.”

Dewey looked down at the ground awkwardly, then turned towards June, the only one who hadn’t thrown her opinion into the ring. June seemed to flounder for a moment before saying timidly, “Um… I mean, if we find anything that could help, we should pass it on, but… I think May and Louie are right.”

“…Yeah. I guess so.” Dewey mumbled, looking down at the poster.

Webby looked around at her family in disbelief. “We can’t just do nothing!” She exclaimed. “That girl-!”

“Webby, this isn’t our country!” May said exasperatedly. “When we get back to Duckburg, we can solve all the kidnappings you want, but playing ‘white saviour’ is not gonna help anyone!”

“That isn’t what I’m-” Webby spluttered. She looked around at them again, then conceded reluctantly, “Look, I’ll let this go if you guys don’t think it’s a good idea, but I don’t feel okay ignoring someone in trouble. That’s all.”

“Yeah, well, the right thing to do doesn’t always feel good.” May replied. She pulled out her phone and checked the time, saying, “Ah, shit, it’s getting late. We should head back to the inn.”

“Yeah. Don’t want Scrooge taking off without us.” Louie joked as they left.

Webby and Dewey hung back for a moment, sharing a conflicted look with each other. Dewey sighed, folding the poster and putting it in his jacket. Then, they both followed after them.

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It was around six o’clock when the family arrived at the castle. The sun was setting behind the walls of the fortress, casting a long shadow over the McDucks as they stood before the open archway where the castle’s portcullis might have once stood. Before them lied a vast courtyard, similarly draped in darkness, with not a soul in sight. To anyone else, the scene might have been too ominous to consider approaching.

“Flashlights, kids.” Scrooge ordered.

One by one, the kids turned on their torches. Scrooge and Donald passed the threshold first, leading the kids as they entered. The girls stuck close to Donald, who was carrying the rope, first aid and other supplies in his rucksack, while the boys hovered around Scrooge.

Castelo de Cristo was a far cry from the fantasy castles of yore. The inner courtyard was largely unworked dirt, rock and grass, bordered by a low stone wall only ten or so feet high. Flashlight beams swung back and forth across the castle yard as they scanned the area, with the only protruding elements being a couple of boulders and a single stone building. It very much felt like it was merely a medieval military camp, rather than a place where people had lived in.

“So… we’re looking for a secret entrance, right?” Louie asked.

“Aye.” Scrooge replied, his eye peering through the darkness ahead. “A trapdoor, secret lever, anything. The original builders of this place wouldn’t have put the idol where anyone could find it.”

“I don’t know…” June questioned as she searched, speaking a little louder so she could be heard by everyone. “There have been tourists in this place all day. Wouldn’t something like that been found by now?”

“Never underestimate a good hidden door.” Scrooge replied. “If it’s built right, it can stand undetected for centuries! You could search the same place for hours and never-”

“Found it!” Dewey called out.

Everyone rushed over to him, looking over where he was pointing his light. The door of the building was ajar, leading into what seemed to be a small chapel. In the middle of the floor of this structure, they could see that a trapdoor had been raised, old stone stairs leading down into a tunnel.

“Curse me kilts!” Scrooge growled. “Goldie’s already here!”

“How did she find the entrance before us?” Donald demanded.

“She has her ways. Come on! We haven’t got a second to lose!”

“Great…” May muttered as the team rushed forward. “I was afraid this would be about us for a moment.”

The steps descended down into an unlit hallway, cobwebs strung between the ceiling and the walls, and a musty earthen smell hanging in the air. They crept down the corridor in double file, Scrooge and Webby taking the lead, the boys walking in the middle, and Donald and the twins watching the rear.

They didn’t have to walk long before the corridor ended at an old wooden door, featureless and unremarkable. Webby and Scrooge stopped five or so feet before it, sharing a look with each other before kneeling down and inspecting the area around it.

“…What are you doing?” June asked curiously.

“Doors are the most common places to put a trap.” Scrooge replied as he inspected the floor before him. “Most adventurers see a door and don’t think twice before openin’ it… ah, here.”

He pointed at one of the flagstones directly before the doorway, saying, “This one here. This is a pressure plate, I’m sure of it.”

Webby knelt down to inspect the stone closely. “Hmm… Do you think Goldie would’ve disarmed it?”

“Knowing her, probably not. Just watch your step around it.”

“So… what, she just left it unmarked so we could trigger it?” May asked concernedly.

“Oh, don’t go thinkin’ less of her for it.” Scrooge replied casually. “She knew we’d stumble upon it.”

“Yeah, I don’t feel like that’s something you should leave to chance.”

Stepping around the pressure plate, Webby gingerly pushed open the door to the next room, and the family made their way inside. This square-shaped room had two passages that branched off to the left and right, both indistinguishable from one another. Against the wall of the room was a stone altar, draped in a decaying, moth-eaten cloth runner.

“…Hm.” Scrooge looked between the two paths, frowning. “Alright, everyone look for tracks. We need to know which way she went.”

“Wouldn’t Goldie be just as lost as we are?” Dewey asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. I’d prefer to know where she is either way, so I can get me guard up before she backstabs us.”

“Urgh.” Louie groaned as the family began to search the room. “The one time Huey’s track-finding skills would’ve been useful…”

Scrooge remained at the altar, inspecting the old stone table carefully. He noted the empty alcoves behind the altar, where once might have been statuettes or crosses. He inspected the empty candlestick holders, seeing nothing of interest, and lifted up the runner upon it to look at the surface underneath it. No sign of a hidden compartment or mechanism, which disappointed him. Altars like this were usually a good spot for something like that.

“Hey, Mister Scrooge?” June piped up after a moment. “Does Miss Goldie smoke?”

“Not since our Klondike days, no.” Scrooge replied, turning around. “Why?”

“Well, then, this probably wasn’t hers.”

June stood up from the passage she’d been investigating, picking up an old cigarette butt as she did. Everyone else gathered around to take a closer look.

“…Ew.” Dewey scrunched up his beak in disgust. Then, he said in realisation, “Wait, but then that means…”

“Someone else has been down here.” Donald quacked worriedly.

“That cannae be!” Scrooge proclaimed. “The book that Goldie stole was the only source that details the location of the idol! Nobody else should know about this crypt!”

“Well, someone clearly does.” Louie murmured.

June flicked the old butt away, a thoughtful frown on her beak. Webby turned to Scrooge, asking him, “What now? If someone else is down here, they’re probably after the idol too.”

“Or they’re guarding it.” June suggested quietly.

Scrooge frowned, thinking to himself for a moment.

“…We keep goin’.” He decided. “But carefully and quietly. You found that thin’ down this way?” He asked June, pointing down the corridor with his cane.

“At the entrance, yeah.”

“Then this is the way we’ll go.” Scrooge declared, stepping into the hall. “Donald, you take the lead with me. Everyone else, stay behind us. There’re eyes on us now.”

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