#welcome honker to the bad childhood havers club we have matching jackets

[mighty-ant]

Not Superhero Material

ao3

Honker shifted on the mat, staying on the balls of his feet as he circled his opponent. His gloves creaked around the handle of his sword, and through the slats in his helmet he watched the eyes of the taller dog across from him. 

There, a flinch. 

At the same moment his opponent lunged, Honker darted to the side. He turned, planting one foot forward, and let out a battle cry that would have shocked anyone who hadn’t seen him in the dojo before. 

With a practiced thrust, he struck the top of his opponent’s helmet. 

“Yame!” Sensei Enaga barked, raising her hand. “Second point, red. The match goes to Muddlefoot.”

Honker and his opponent stepped back from one another, until they were at opposite ends of the mat. They bowed to each other, and only then did the rest of the class erupt in applause. 

“Whew!” Across from Honker, Dusty pulled off his helmet to reveal his great canine grin, his fur matted with sweat and sticking up in all directions. “You didn’t let up for a second!”

Honker smiled shyly as he took off his own helmet. “Your harai-waza almost got me the second time.”

Dusty scoffed. “Don’t even try that false modesty sh–stuff! I obviously need more practice before I try and take on the reigning champ again.” Despite the challenge, there was no malice in the doberman’s face, just a friendly sort of fierceness. It was such a juxtaposition from his classmates’ treatment that it still gave Honker mental whiplash. 

“You all need more practice,” Sensei Enaga interrupted sourly. “But not today. Training is done, everyone go home.”

The class broke up into laughter, already more than familiar with their teacher’s short, sharp, and to the point nature. With that, order dissolved as kids broke off into groups, gathering their belongings, and heading out the doors. 

Dusty stopped to fistbump Honker before moving off to the side to take off and store his gear. 

Honker moved much more slowly to do the same. Mom was at her book club and Dad was with his bowling league, and the bus he took to get home wouldn’t arrive for twenty minutes. He had time to think. Though, Gos would probably call it brooding . 

He’d just started taking off his gloves when Sensei Enaga ambled over to him. He respectfully hopped back to his feet, but she just waved him back down; he took her leave to keep putting his armor away as she spoke. 

“Not to give you a big head, but you are doing very well, Honker. You’re more than ready to test yourself in a real competition.” 

Sensei Enaga had a way of speaking where everything she said, even her opinion, sounded as if she was stating fact. It didn’t stop the heat from flooding Honker’s cheeks. 

“Th-thank you, Sensei,” he mumbled as he pulled off the padded fabric protecting his throat, neck and shoulders. “But…I don’t know if I am ready for something like that.”

Honker risked a glance. Sensei was so short that only when he knelt were they of a height. He found her pristine, white feathered face screwed up in a frown.

“Why not? Your strike is the fastest I've seen in ten years of training hapless children, and your defense is next to none. I’m lucky if I can land a hit on you.”

He looked away again, undoing the straps of his breastplate. “My…friends don’t think I’m strong enough for stuff like that. All they see when they look at me…all most people see, is this little, helpless geek who can’t take care of himself.” Honker didn’t mean for that to come out as bitterly as it did, but in the darkness behind his closed eyes as he pulled his armor off and over his head, he let the ball of frustration in his stomach roil and churn, just for a moment. 

When Honker reopened his eyes, Sensei Enaga was across the room, standing beside the racks of wooden weapons on the walls. 

“All people saw when they looked at me was a small, weak shima enaga,” she said thoughtfully, taking a katana-sized tachi off the wall and weighing it carefully. Short or not, in her black keikogi and hakama, holding a blade twice her size, she looked like a deadly spirit from one of Mr. McDuck’s stories. “But I trained, I strengthened myself, and I proved them all wrong.” She pointed at him with the end of her bokken.  

“You must show your friends what you are capable of.”

Honker struggled to speak, as usual. “I…maybe. If I ever g-get the chance.”

Sensei Enaga scowled, dissatisfied. “Hmph. Well right now, you’re getting a chance to practice your kata. Up, let’s see how you’ve improved with bokken.”

—

Honker had so little to do in the command center when the team went on patrol that he’d spread out his physics homework across WANDA’s console. 

Gos liked to joke that he was her ‘guy in the chair,’ and sure he was good with computers, but WANDA was a literal supercomputer with top-of-the-line artificial intelligence. There was nothing he could do that WANDA couldn’t do better. As long as access to opposable digits wasn’t required. 

Of course, he’d just started to settle in with Bernoulli's principle when the ‘Something’s Gone Horribly Wrong’ alarm sounded (Gos was also responsible for that name). 

He was so startled he almost fell out of his chair, scattering his notebook with all the loose papers he kept meaning to put into a proper folder. 

“What’s going on?” he yelled over the alarm, pressing one hand over his ear while he stooped to gather his papers with the other. WANDA silenced the racket almost as soon as he raised his voice, making sure his shout sounded extra loud in the ensuing, ringing silence. 

But as the words left his beak, he understood why things had gone horribly wrong. 

The comm channel that the team always left open during patrol was choked with interference, harsh static rendering everyone’s voices nearly unintelligible. The signal was being jammed, and for it to interfere with WANDA’s comm lines, it had to be deliberate. 

Through the interference, the team was shouting, Gos louder than the rest. 

“It—trap!”

“Quiverwing?” Honker cried, his stomach swooping in alarm. 

“FOWL is here! Oh crap—”

“Arrow!” That was Darkwing. “Call—anyone but Gizmoduck—”

The line went dead. 

Honker stood frozen at the console, hands poised uselessly over the keys. Blood rushed through his head, deafening him, and his heart pounded with sickening fervor, as if it was about to leap right up his throat and out his beak. 

Despite his panic, his mind was racing. 

The team was just supposed to be out on a stakeout, breaking up a minor arms deal between local gang leaders. Nothing too dangerous, per Darkwing’s own words. But still enough not to let him join them. 

For FOWL to be there, it meant they had to have been lying in wait. Waiting for Darkwing Duck and his team. 

There was no love lost between Darkwing and the tattered remains of FOWL, especially their new shadowy figurehead, who they strongly suspected to be Taurus Bulba. He’d escaped from prison some months ago with the help of Steelbeak and a few dozen Eggheads, and promptly disappeared (but not before trying to take Gos with him and almost drowning Honker in the ensuing fight). 

The best course of action, the smart course of action, would be to call the ‘We’re Not All Ducks’ Justice Ducks for backup. FOWL was a threat worthy of Darkwing Duck, Gizmoduck, Penumbra. Not three and a half foot tall Herbert “Honker” Muddlefoot with a stutter and deadly nut allergy.

Honker moved his hand over the console, over to the series of switches that would tap him into the Justice Ducks emergency line. But he didn’t press any of them yet. 

He still had the team’s last known location locked on the GPS. If he hurried, took the underwater tunnel and borrowed Dr. Bellum’s experimental winged jetpack she’d loaned to Gos after Darkwing lost one in the bay and Launchpad crashed into various buildings with his….

This was such a bad idea. This was such a potentially disastrous idea. 

Still standing in his frozen tableau, Honker glanced over his shoulder to where he and Gos had dumped their school gear a few hours ago. He’d taken to carrying his kendo armor and uniform with him when he left the house; he didn’t trust Tank not to find and destroy it in some new, creative way. He was extra grateful for his paranoia now.

Honker didn’t have the ill fated Arrow costume anymore, thanks gods for that. Instead, he borrowed one of Darkwing’s masks and slipped on the breastplate of his armor, as well as both kote, adjusting the long, thickly padded fabric gloves to make sure he could still grip his new bokken. It was specially made by Fenton under the guise of it being for Darkwing. 

Yes, he’d lied to Gizmoduck. He tried to think about it too much. 

Strapping on the jetpack and hoping he didn’t explode, Honker glanced over at the screen they all considered to be WANDA’s digital ‘face.’ 

“WANDA, if you don’t hear from me in an hour, please contact Gizmoduck.”

WANDA affected the sound of a sigh. “You’re about to do something needlessly dangerous, aren’t you?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“You superheroes are all the same.”

-

Honker knew that the team meant well, not letting him join on patrol. They weren’t like Tank, or the kids at school who singled him out because he was smaller than them, smarter than them, and apparently hatched with ‘bully me to feel better about yourself’ stamped across his forehead. 

The Mallard-McQuack family had welcomed him wholeheartedly, and it wasn’t their fault that he’d needed rescuing when he met each of them. 

Even though they lived on the same block, he and Gosalyn didn’t meet until the second week of sixth grade, when a pack of eleventh graders tossed his backpack into a tree and stomped on his glasses. Gosalyn raced down the sidewalk screaming her head off like a banshee and chased them all off with her hockey stick. 

A week later, Launchpad met him on a rainy afternoon when his parents forgot to pick him up from school, and Gosalyn was just getting out of detention. He sat in the backseat of their dented minivan, shivering and sneezing, swallowed under Launchpad’s huge jacket. 

About two weeks after that , Mr. Mallard walked into his kitchen one afternoon in full Darkwing Duck getup to find Honker sitting at his table with a black eye and a bloody gash over his eyebrow, courtesy of Tank, who’d bounced a basketball off the back of his head and knocked him face first into the concrete. 

Launchpad had cleaned the cut over the sink and given Honker a napkin to staunch the bleeding while he went to ‘hunt down the real big band-aids.’ Mr. Mallard was actually sporting similar injuries: cuts on his cheek, already bandaged (from the glass of a store window exploding in his face), and singed feathers, plus an impressive bruise blossoming on his temple. 

For an endless, surreal minute, as brilliant sunlight spilled through the window and reflecting off the tile backsplash, they stared at each other in increasingly stunned silence, Honker’s confusion growing as Mr. Mallard’s horrified expression became more and more dire. 

Honker finally dared to ask, “Are you…”

“A cosplayer!” Mr. Mallard blurted too loudly. “That's right, uh, strange kid that’s in my house. I’m way into cosplay! Made this Darkwing costume myself.”

Honker frowned, unsure what to do. He knew better than to call an adult out for lying, but that was a bit much, even for him. 

Launchpad then breezed into the kitchen behind Mr. Mallard, carrying an almost comically oversized first aid kit, with Gosalyn in tow. “C’mon, DW, the kid’s not gonna buy that,” he said, nudging Mr. Mallard as he passed. “Honker here’s a real smart cookie.”

Gosalyn latched onto Mr. Mallard’s arm, laughing at him as he sputtered, “Who –Honker? What’s this kid doing in our kitchen?”

“Daaad,” Gosalyn drawled, long-suffering as she swung back and forth. “Honker, my friend from school? The one I told you was coming over to hang out today?”

Mr. Mallard scowled. “I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

Launchpad had opened up the first aid kit on the kitchen table by then, and he glanced over his shoulder with a breath of laughter. “I’m not surprised, babe. Calendar Cluck clocked you good around the noggin. I told you to get some more rest.” He refocused his attention and reassuring smile on Honker, moving to take the makeshift wound dressing above his eye. “Now, I’m just gonna take a quick look, okay, Honk-man? See what we’re dealing with here.”

Gosalyn let go of Mr. Mallard and crossed the kitchen to sit next to Honker. Under cover of the table, she reached out and silently took his hand. 

Even with Gosalyn’s steadying presence, Honker had to swallow and take a few shaky breaths before he nodded at Launchpad, his mouth gone dry with nervousness. He lowered the napkin, and Launchpad leaned forward to look closely at the cut, not touching, his face scrunched up in its utmost seriousness. 

After another endless handful of seconds, Launchpad’ expression broke into a smile. “Good news! It doesn't look like you’ll need stitches.” He turned back to the first aid kit, pulling out butterfly bandages, gauze, and antibacterial ointment. “I’ll just patch you up, okay? Won’t hurt a bit.”

Honker nodded again, relief nearly making him lightheaded. The last thing he wanted was to convince his parents to take him to the emergency room. “Thank you.”

Launchpad shook his head. “No thanks needed, little man.”

Mr. Mallard stepped into the kitchen proper then, lowering himself into the chair beside Launchpad with the careful movements of someone nursing various aching limbs. “You’re in luck,” he said, the calmest he’d been since he appeared in the doorway. “LP’s the best nurse there is.”

Launchpad scoffed, slanting Mr. Mallard a wry, fond sort of look as he gently nudged him with his shoulder. “Nah, you and Gos are just trouble magnets.”

Before now, Honker had only ever seen photos and video footage of Darkwing Duck in full costume, his face obscured by a mask and the shadowed brim of his hat. Mr. Mallard leaned forward then, barefaced and hatless, but his shoulders were broad beneath the fall of his cape. Without anything to hide it, Honker watched the lingering smile in his eyes melt away into a far steelier expression. 

 “Who did this to you?” he asked, resolute in all the ways high-strung Mr. Mallard wasn’t. This was the superhero talking.  

“Uh, it was my brother, Mr. uh…Darkwing,” Honker stammered.

Mr. Mallard’s eyes widened, the superhero staunchness dropping as quickly as he’d donned it. “I’m not—” he started to backpedal.

Launchpad interrupted with a quick smile over his shoulder. “You can trust him, Drake. Right, Gos?”

“Heck yeah!” Gosalyn said at once, squeezing Honker’s hand that much tighter. “Honk’s the best at keeping secrets.”

Drake fixed her with a look, though the suspicion was tempered by a quirk of a smile. “That so? Any of them have to do with the call I got from your school about a pig in the boys’ bathroom?”

“Uhhhh, no?” Gosalyn replied unconvincingly. 

It took Honker an embarrassing amount of time to stop staring at the way Gosalyn interacted with her father, all comfortable jibes and open affection that was utterly foreign to him. He was lucky if he received a blank stare from his parents when tried to tell them about his day. 

He glanced up at Launchpad instead. The pilot had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his beak as he concentrated, spreading antibacterial ointment over Honker’s cut with a sterile Q-tip. When he turned to pick up the butterfly bandages, Honker mustered his courage enough to whisper, “Is he really…? I mean, is Mr. Mallard actually…?”

Launchpad smiled, with an understanding in his eyes like he’d been in the same place Honker was now. “Welcome to Team Darkwing, Honk-man,” he said with feeling. 

The moment would be further cemented when Gosalyn slapped a bag of frozen peas over his face to, quote, ‘deal with his messed up eye,’ while her fathers yelled over each other for her to be more careful.

That was then. 

But now, months later, after megalomaniacal moles tried to sink St. Canard, evil doppelgangers emerged from a rift in space-time, and Gos recruited him as her sidekick just in time for Taurus Bulba to break out of prison, one would think that they’d trust him as a full fledged member of the team and not just some innocent they had to protect. 

Gos had been on his side at first—even coming up with his sidekick name, which Honker honestly could’ve done without—but Bulba’s return had scared her badly. Where before she’d try wheedling her dad to let Honker join them on patrol and missions, now she agreed with Mr. Mallard and Launchpad when they shut him down.

“But-but you let Gosalyn go with you!” It was utterly unlike Honker to raise a fuss, much less argue with an adult, but the hypocrisy was galling 

As ever, Launchpad tried to play the mediator. “Gos has got training that you don’t. Give it some time. Right now, Honk-man, you’re just not ready.”

Mr. Mallard was more circumspect. “Honker, I appreciate where you’re coming from, but you never should’ve been involved in the first place. It was an accident that you discovered my secret identity, one I won’t have you paying for.”

After living through the terrifying ordeal that was Bulba’s attempted kidnapping, Gos clung to his arm, her green eyes almost painfully wide and for once doing nothing to hide the depth of her fear. 

“We need you here, Honk,” she’d muttered, staring like she expected him to be wrenched out of her hands. 

Honker knew about her grandfather and the part Bulba had played in his disappearance—at this point, maybe even his death. He didn’t want to be another person Gos was afraid of losing. He’d never had a best friend before, and he didn’t want to hurt her. 

But he’d seen what Darkwing Duck could do. What all of them did: saving lives, helping strangers, trying to make things better. 

Seeing real superheroes in action, not just a man in a high tech suit of armor, awakened something in Honker. A desire not to be helpless, maybe. A glimpse into what his future might look like, perhaps, outside of his brains and bookishness. A calling greater than he’d ever known before, when he watched Darkwing force himself back to his feet, fists raised, no matter how many times he got knocked down, when Launchpad stood in front of someone who couldn’t defend themselves and refused to be moved, when Gosayn donned her own mask and hood and rappelled through the air with her grappling hook, proving there wasn’t an age requirement to be a hero. 

Only superficial rules, apparently. 

He’d practiced kendo for an entire year before he met Gos, after stumbling into Sensei Enaga’s dojo while running from his usual gang of tormentors. But the thing was…the team didn’t know. About any of it. Not the competitions he’d won, the first and second dan he’d achieved. When he left for practice, he told them he was going to Geography Club. 

At this point, he’d lied about it for so long he was resigned to lying about it for the rest of his life. Or at least the rest of middle school. 

Though, after tonight, there might not be much of a secret to keep anymore. 

-

Honker landed on the roof of a brick warehouse across the street from the team’s last known location, stumbling a bit as the jetpack’s engines cut out. It had been a jerky, terrifying flight from the Audubon Bay Bridge, but at least Gos and her family had only ventured as far as the south dockyard and not the opposite end of the city. 

Clipped to his belt were a set of night vision goggles, and he put them up to his masked face. Laying low, he searched for any sign that the tall warehouse across from him was guarded. 

Because the goggles were certainly a Gearloose invention, they also displayed heat signatures, and a handful immediately popped up around the warehouse perimeter. Whatever material the building was made of, it was too thick for the goggles to get a reading through it. But judging by the way moonlight bounced off a portion of the roof, there seemed to be a skylight he could use to get a look inside the warehouse. All he had to do was get past one, two…six Eggheads without any of them raising an alarm. 

Easy peasy, right?

He gathered a handful of small rocks from the rooftop, snuck over to the opposite side overlooking an alley directly in front of the warehouse. He threw a few at the dumpsters below, knocking over a garbage can with a clatter. Like he’d hoped, two of the Eggheads peeled out of the darkness and went to investigate the disturbance. 

The last four were in pairs of two, too, but so separated that they were nearly on opposite sides of the warehouse. Honker engaged the jetpack and rose over the heads of the two facing the north side. He’d taken more than goggles from Darkwing’s endless supply of gadgets, and dropped two pellets of knockout gas from fifty feet up. They struck the Eggheads in a cloud of clear mist and they slumped over almost at once. 

The two Eggheads on the west side heard the hiss of the gas escaping, or maybe the thump of their bodies hitting the floor, and made to engage with their guns raised. But Honker was already hovering over them.

He descended rapidly, throwing a smoke bomb as he went. In the confusion, with his night vision goggles still on, he was able to strike with unerring precision. His new bokken, made of titanium, unfolded smoothly to its full length, and was more than a match for the Egghead’s unprotected stomachs, knees, and the backs of their ugly armored heads. 

All that remained were the two Eggheads just barely leaving the mouth of the alley, and Honker tossed down another smoke bomb before launching himself at them. 

The first he downed with a swipe at their ankles and a blow to the top of their head. The other came up on him with fists rather than a weapon, and Honker swung out one arm, his bokken shattering their visor. 

They fell on their back with a startled swear, and Honker stood over them, ready to deliver the blow that would render him unconscious. 

The Egghead sneered at him, fury in their exposed eyes, but Honker didn’t feel a lick of fear. “Who’re you supposed to be?” they spit out, deriding. 

Honker tilted his head to the side. “Not sure yet.” With a neat little swipe, he knocked out the last Egghead. 

Or at least, the last one that was outside. 

Beneath the skylight was a web of catwalks that Honker took ruthless advantage of. The only lights in the warehouse were the ones pointed straight down in the center of the building, and when Honker disabled the night vision setting on the goggles and zoomed in, he saw the whole team tied together against some rusted canning machinery. 

Relief swam through him intense enough to leave him lightheaded. Even if closer on inspection Gos was more bruised than he last saw her, and Darkwing had a bleeding cut over one eye, at least they were all conscious. Honker supposed that needed to be the case, for Steelbeak to monologue at them like he was. 

 As he tallied up the number of Eggheads, he wondered if Steelbeak was still under the effects of the Intelli-ray. Honker’s intuition told him no, because no smart supervillain would make the mistake of monologuing for so long. 

Honker counted twenty Eggheads. Too many for him to take on without help. 

Fortunately, help was located down below. They just happened to be a bit tied up at the moment. 

Stealing his nerves, he pulled another gadget out of his pack: a set of bolas. Calculating the angle he would need, he positioned himself and swung, letting the bolas go flying out of his hand in a blur. They knocked out the lights with a smash, hailing broken glass on the unsuspecting FOWL agents below. In almost the same moment, he reactivated the night vision setting on his goggles. 

With assistance from the jetpack, Honker rose in the air as chaos exploded on the ground, only made worse by the smoke bombs he tossed at various clusters of Eggheads. He spotted Steelbeak furiously waving his arms through the smoke, coughing and shouting, “No! No way! No way there’s any more of these bozos hanging around!”

Honker descended rapidly with his bokken fully extended, batting away a cluster of Eggheads nearest to where the team was imprisoned with a series of precise strikes. 

He hurried over to the pile he recognized as Gos, Darkwing and Launchpad, the three of them bound together and already struggling to free themselves. But with them pressed that close, Honker knew that Darkwing wouldn’t be able to activate his buzzsaw cufflinks. Instead, he pulled out his own swiss army knife, a gift from Mr. Mallard for his last birthday, and set to sawing through the knot binding them to the old equipment. 

When all three of them went abruptly quiet, Honker quickly raised his head to make sure they were alright. 

He met three identical stares of bewilderment. 

“Uh. Thanks for the save,” Darkwing said slowly. 

“Seriously!” Launchpad added. 

“But who the heck are you?” Gos demanded. 

If Steelbeak and a whole host of Eggheads weren’t about to pounce on his head, Honker might’ve burst into laughter. All that time insisting he couldn’t join them on missions, and they didn’t even recognize him. 

He went back to sawing through the ropes. 

“Let’s just say,” Honker said, knowing his nasal voice would give him away in an instant. “I got tired of being the guy in the chair.”

Gos’ beak dropped open. “Keen gear,” she breathed. 

Darkwing sputtered incoherently, but beside him, Launchpad was grinning. “Sorry for saying you weren’t ready. That was my bad.”

“When it comes to solo missions, you might be right,” Honker huffed, tugging on the rope. “I’d rather be out here with all of Team Darkwing.”