Captain Francis Klegghorn had the honor of being the first person the ducks thought to bother.

Really, it was his own fault. That’s what he told them they were supposed to do. He had gotten himself involved. Gave them a nice long lecture about responsibility and deference to proper authority, and then found himself no better off when they followed through. Everything was still as upside down, but now he got to be in the middle of disaster instead of the cleanup crew.

Good job, Francis, you fucked yourself good.

It wasn’t like he didn’t understand the severity of the situation. The best thing for him to have done would have been to put down the phone after their first call, take a deep breath, find the most important looking office door he had access to, and knock furiously until it became someone else’s problem. It didn’t work like that, though, because it didn’t matter how many years of force experience he had behind him, the second he started raving about space aliens, he would be gently recommended for retirement.

Klegghorn had no idea if Wildwing going missing was normal. The ducks had evaded the question, and he could have reheated his stale coffee with his searing irritation. He did not hate Wildwing. Of the bunch, he thought he disliked Wildwing the least. Perhaps as what passed for authority for the little gang, Wildwing understood his predicament enough to give him a modicum of respect. The gang were immediately upset with him for having asked.

Of course they were impatient, they were used to charging after something on impulse. They could get away with that. They answered to no one. Actual investigation, actual footwork, that took time. Unless you had a stealth jet to fly up and down the west coast, terrorizing old ladies and offshore oil rigs, then you could do that instead.

Jesus Christ.

Klegghorn was also extremely skeptical of their insistence that Dragaunus had suddenly learned the art of stealth. The lizard could hide, sure, but any fool could hide in Los Angeles, even something as strange as a dinosaur was easily played off as practical effects for film, and anything less was just the local color. But, actual cunning and stealth? From the guy who had to steal a lens from an observatory with a giant robot? That guy?

He refused to give up sleep for them. There were other things that he needed to be a whole person for—thank you very, very much—but he give it the best of his full attention in his waking hours, between all the other, more immediate problems of existing. He was not being negligent, he was being smart.

He did his duty and put out the feelers he thought best. There were private security folk that were fired or retired police, who watched the spaces Dragaunus liked—Biotech, substations, software. There were a few people he knew in shipping, from investigations into freight frauds, who were happy enough to supply information about strange goings on in late night warehouse meetings. There was even one woman, an overly enthusiastic and aging realtor, who had scratched her head in confusion, but agreed vigorously to let him know if a new mansion spontaneously appeared somewhere overnight, in exchange for periodic boxes of wine.

Yep, that was just about every stupid goofy possibility handled.

Still, he had a sneaking suspicion that his network was going to be completely unnecessary.

It was not normal procedure for him to be out on street patrol, but he had done it periodically enough that no one batted an eye when he declared that was what he was doing. He took the squad car, parked it, halfheartedly ran plates, bought more cheap coffee and a sandwich, listened to the dispatch radio, and waited. Actually, it was not a half-bad place to nap.

The dispatcher had the absolute right to sound baffled when they had to chirp what appeared to be an explosion that seemed to originate at a middle-end jewelry store, and some sort of large low-flying aircraft that may have been the cause, all adjacent to a construction zone that was slated to be turned into apartment buildings.

See? No reason for all the panic and complaining. All it took was a little bit of patience.

He didn’t even make it as far as the fire. The intersection was blocked by traffic that had stopped entirely, and a chorus of people who would not shut up about it. They would not move for him, even with the siren blaring and leaning on the horn, and he gave up, hoping the fire brigade had better luck. Or would simply push its way through.

He stepped out of the car, stood up straight, made sure his firearm was in its holster, closed the car door, and made it three steps when a large, gnarled beam of dark steel slammed through the engine block, lodging perfectly vertical through the hood, skewering it. Every pane of safety glass shattered. The front bumper fell off.

Klegghorn gawked for a moment, then looked upward, as if he would be able to see where the piece had fallen from, and could not see anything in the haze of the sky. He wasn’t angry, exactly, so much as deeply offended that the universe had just taken a pot shot at him. He looked to the people around him, who were now admiring his worthless car, and bellowed something to the effect of “GET BACK”  before pushing through them and working his way toward the fire.

There was a hole in the ground across from the burning storefront, with fresh scorch marks along the bottom and up the sides, spilling over to the street and the walls of the buildings that lined it. The storefront was destroyed, the blaze still contained to the front room, but people pouring out of the apartments adjacent. The crowd gathering outnumbered the first-responders, peering at the fire, the giant hole where a building had been, and up at the sky, presumably where it had disappeared to. There was the unmistakable sound of closing sirens in the distance that would hopefully even the odds.

Most of the crowd had not even noticed the gaggle of especially obvious idiots standing in one of the nearby alleyways.

Wildwing stopped him with a gesture before he came within more than a few yards, but did not explain.

“No, no, no, let me guess,” Klegghorn said. “Let me guess your motive.” He considered deeply, and pulled up most ridiculous thing he could think of. “The jewelry had mind-controlling chips in it.”

Wildwing looked at the fire, visibly exhausted, and then back to Klegghorn. “Close enough.”

A fire truck and two ambulances appeared. Finally, some of his force started blocking off the street and pushing the crowd back, as they should.

“Anyone see you do it?” Klegghorn asked.

“I mean, that was kind of the point.”

He wiped his face with a hand. “Jesus, you are dumb as hell.”