Duckman
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
He's back!
The original Quack-Attack!
The lost art of Duck-Fu was once an ancient combat method used by the Duck Clan of Scandinavia in 300 BC. The form of Duck-Fu resembled the Fujian Crane style martial art almost identically, yet better in every conceivable way. Feared for its unrivaled ferocity, those trained in its ways were all but assassinated by the cowardly Swan Tribe near the end of 100 AD, marking a dark and stagnant age of martial arts.
In the year 2008, enter the life of young activist Donovick Sheels, who would be the first soul to learn the forgotten art after thousands of years. At a young age, Don lost his father Dan “The Duckman” Sheels, a TV celebrity often touted as the “Waterfowl Steve Irwin” in a mysterious accident at a chemical lab thought to illegally test on ducks. Suspiciously, the investigation into his death came to a halt after big-wig chemical executives funding the lab donated a large charity to the local police force. During the following weeks, a dramatic improvement was seen on the utilities and equipment used by the local law enforcement. Officers parading around in Gucci designer work boots and Louis Vuitton branded gun holsters, red flags had begun to pop up everywhere surrounding the mysterious case of Dan Sheels’ death.
Don lived a relatively sheltered childhood following the death of his father, his mother becoming overprotective and vigilant in shielding him from the ideas that led to Dan Sheels’ activistic nature. Her efforts however ended in vain when at seventeen Don fell in with a group of delinquents from his high school that were known for meddling with the town’s dubious chemical labs. It was from this group that Don first learned of the real cause of his father’s death, not that he had drank too much sugary soft drinks and slipped into a coma as his mother had proclaimed, but that subsequent to his televised probing of the chemical company, his body had been mysteriously found at one of their main facilities.
This news prompted Don into an obsessive investigation, spending day and night vigorously finding out what he could behind the truth of his father’s death, as well as the nefarious actions the lab was conducting unbeknownst to the public. With the help of his fellow activist friends, Don was able to sneak into the central lab one evening and bypass security to reach what would ultimately reveal the truth behind his search. Don was alone in this infiltration, being the most slender and agile and not wanting to draw attention to a group, the rest of his friends stayed back to meddle with security and cameras within the complex.
Finally, Don had reached his destination within the building. In the centermost room within the lab, rows of hundreds of ducks lay confined in tiny cages stacked upon each other. The sight of these birds and their deafening, helpless quacks caused Don’s gentle heart to shatter and instill with rage. One by one Don took to unlocking every cage within the room, sending the frantic fowls into a chaotic, fluttery stampede as red lights and ear piercing alarm sounds shot throughout the room.
Upon releasing the last captive duck, Don was confronted by the man behind the lab and all its experiments. Billionaire wunderkind and genetic scientist Silvio Swanly had arrived in the main room, accompanied by a grotesque, genetically altered swan. This mutant bird stood nearly five feet tall beside him, its red eyes illuminated by a faint glow, with broad, bulging muscles, and a dagger-like beak.
Silvio and his freak pet’s arrival caused the room to come to a standstill, Don and the erratic ducks freezing in silence. It was at this moment Silvio took to addressing Don by name, explaining to him that he knew his father, and understood why he had come. Silvio told Don the tests at the lab would bring about the future for mankind and an endless amount of medical breakthroughs. Claiming he could help recage the ducks and join in on this lifesaving work, Silvio had almost persuaded him to a change of heart before Don broke free of his charm and began to press him about the death of his father.
Agitated, Silvio blurted the truth out to Don and told him that his father had meddled too far in the labs research and “for the sake of mankind” had to be dealt with. This sent Don into a blind rage, propelling him forward to attack Silvio. Before his fist could meet with the smug scientist’s face, Don was intercepted by the monstrous swan, who proceeded to pin him against the floor. Silvio and the army of ducks stood by for a moment watching as the overgrown beast began to viciously thrash its claws and peck its serrated beak at Don.
Silvio stood smiling over the brutal assault in triumph, as one by one the ducks with their limited intelligence began to comprehend the situation and its direness. This escalated the ducks to break into a stampede, rushing Silvio and the freak bird. The swarm of ducks in their savagery began to overpower the swan, tearing it apart with their sharp claws and crushing its bones with the blunt force of their beaks. Unfortunately for Silvio, the ducks held no restraint when inflicting the same kind of brutality against him.
After dealing with the scientist and his pet, the ducks formed a huddle and gently lifted Don’s injured body onto their backs as their carried him out of the facility. Their mistake, however, was in leaving Silvio and the swan alive, resulting in a turn of events that would ultimately create Don’s greatest nemesis. When the ducks had finally reached the outside of the lab, their loud and cheerful quacks could be heard for miles. Testing the strength of their wings, they began to lift themselves off the ground, flying east in the distance with Don resting on their backs.
After the liberation at the lab, Don awoke days later in an abandoned and ancient temple deep within the mountains of Norway. Lying on the ground, Don opened his eyes to the sight of the ducks he had rescued huddled closely around him. Using their wet beaks, the ducks appeared to be kneading his wounds with their open mouths as they coated his body in their slippery saliva. Although greatly disgusted at first, Don quickly noticed a soothing essence to their spittle. Contemplating what Silvio had said about the tests on the ducks and their potential medical breakthroughs, Don understood that genetic properties must have been altered within their slobber to create profound healing effects.
This realization made Don recall the horrible assault of the swan abomination, and that with the savage wounds inflicted upon him, no normal treatment would have otherwise saved his life. A few hours after waking, Don’s body was fully healed, and leaping to his feet he saw that the duck’s spit had done more than just heal his broken body.
The following few months, Don stayed at the temple with the ducks learning the scope of what had changed within his body, as well as studying ancient texts he had found within the temple. Don seemed to now possess a superhuman level of endurance, being able to run around the temple grounds playing with and chasing the ducks for hours on end. In addition to this, he was able to lift nearly three times his weight, and jump almost two stories high. He wasn’t superman, however, and testing his limits often resulted in an injury such as a broken arm when hitting a boulder too hard, or a fractured leg when landing from too high a height. Part of his new abilities gave him an accelerated recovery time, and it wasn’t long before he was at it again training himself with his new powers.
Within the first week of living in the temple, Don found ancient scrolls and texts buried within an underground tomb. Things started to click for him when he realized the correlation of the Duck themed warrior statues around the temple, and why the ducks had taken him there. A duck head insignia was found on nearly all the tomes Don found, and after a month of studying texts that resembled roman characters and waterfowl hieroglyphs, he had developed a basic understanding of the language the Duck Clan used thousands of years ago.
His training took on a new level when he found pictographic scrolls of illustrations drawn to show martial arts techniques and their proper form. This was the ancient and unrivaled art of Duck-Fu, and in the following months of rigorous study and training, Don had become a master.
When Don was ready, he knew he had to return home to aid in the battle against the chemical company and its cruelty to animals. Although sad to leave the ducks, Don knew he was destined for a greater purpose and vowed to use his new abilities to help the greater good of mostly animals, but also of mankind. The ducks took him once again on their backs, and flew him back to his hometown where he began his career in vigilante justice.