Danny woke up with a jerk. He laid in bed for a long moment, staring at the ceiling and listening to the chaos downstairs. He could hear something running around the house honking, his dad yelling, and the sound of a gun going off. He didn’t have enough sleep to deal with this. All he had wanted was to sleep before school, but was that ever going to happen? No! Why was it always him that had to deal with everything?
“GRAB IT MADDIE, IT’S GETTING AWAY!” Dad yelled.
“I KNOW, JACK!” Mom yelled, shooting her gun again.
Danny rubbed his eyes with a deep sigh, tossing the covers off of him and putting his feet onto the floor. Just as he was about to get up, he heard thumping coming up the stairs. Great! Now he would get in trouble if he didn’t try to head off whatever was running around their house. He ran over to his bedroom door and yanked it open, running down the hall until he was face to face with a black duck. It wasn’t even a ghost! The duck had a patch of blue around its eyes that looked like a mask, and blue markings down the side of it. In his confusion, the duck slipped between his legs and kept running down the hall.
Jazz screamed from somewhere downstairs. “There’s another one!”
“IVE GOT IT!” Dad yelled.
Cursing, he ran after the duck just as his Mom ran up the stairs. He grabbed the duck off of the ground, ignoring it as it hissed at him and tried to bite him.
“What the fuck?” He asked Mom.
“Language, sweetie.” Maddie said while she aimed the gun at the duck in Danny’s hands.
“What’s going on?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the duck squealing.
They both ignored the sounds coming from downstairs. Danny decided it wasn’t his immediate problem, so he said nothing on what sounded like Dad plowing through a wall at top speed while running.
“We thought these ducks were ghosts at first, but they’re not. We don’t know where they came from.” Maddie took a step towards him, a frown on her face. “They came out of the portal.”
The duck was still trying to bite him. It couldn’t even break the skin of his hand, so he didn’t try to fight it.
“Weird looking duck.” He commented. “Ducks aren’t blue.”
The duck squawked loudly in protest.
“GOT IT!” Jack yelled from downstairs.
“Can we like… throw it back in the portal?” He asked.
“It could come back in. We don’t know where in the portal it came from.” Mom said, lowering the gun now that the duck had stopped trying to escape.
“You think another dimension?” He asked as they walked downstairs.
“Perhaps. For now we’ll put them in the holding pod and figure out what to do next.” Mom led him down to the lab.
When they got down there, he added the duck in his hands to the cell that housed the other duck. The other duck was differently colored from the first. It was black, with green feet, a green mask around its eyes, and red markings along its body. The duck seemed to be howling bloody murder.
“This one put up a fight!” Dad said proudly. “Too bad it’s not a ghost.”
“Great. I can go back to sleep now, right?” He asked tiredly.
“You sure you don’t want to help with the interdimensional search? You’ve always been the best at this.” Mom offered.
“No thanks.” He declined, yawning. “But if they’re still here when I wake up then I’ll help.”
“Okay. Good night, sweetie.” Mom kissed his forehead.
“Night mom, Night dad.” He waved as he walked back upstairs.
As soon as he got back upstairs, he found Clockwork sitting on his bed. He screamed in frustration.
