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Above the 150th floor of Ducklair’s, a bird paces.

“Feeling antsy?” Uno had gotten good at reading him, and Donald was sure it wasn’t just procedural learning algorithms doing the work.

“How could you tell.” Pure sarcasm.

“The tense muscles, that look. And the obsessive pacing helped a little.”

“Just tough when it’s this quiet this long, you know?”

Donald slumps onto a chair, hand on chin. He watches the technological alchemy of code plaster the screens like it’ll force a local emergency. Uno watches him in turn.

“Chamomile?” A metal hand offers him a cup and Donald takes it with a grateful tilt upwards. He sips.

Duckburg’s regular helter skelter had been seized by an uncharacteristic lull of placidity. Workbound drivers caffeinated onward, cafes sporadically filled and dispersed crowds, and the cool relief of Autumn approached.

Earth, despite hitches, persisted. Business as usual, as if Duck Avenger had been an urban legend from an old era. The fact digs under Donald’s skin and he needs something big to fight against to make it go away.

“But you know what they say, Uno - calm before the storm. If there’s not something happening downtown, there’s something brewing under it.” His fingers trace slow lines along the mug.

“Well, don’t go all Fangus on me now.”

That gets a laugh. Always worth a bad joke to hear that. Uno continues: “And if there was, indeed, badness ‘brewing’, the surveillance cameras would find something. Anything. So you can be assured there very much isn’t.”

“Anything, though?”

“And I thought you had faith in my abilities. My cooling fans ache. Want to make your own calculations and we can compare notes?”

“Now you’re just being a gasbag. Or bragging.”

“Both?”

Donald grunts. Uno smiles sincerely. The duck sets the cup down and goes back to the screens. He doesn’t doubt Uno’s abilities, but his mind and body crave action. Stagnance pricks him like an electric shock. Time passes and besides a few 'Anxieties’ intermissions, he returns to pacing, chatting, mulling.

But sleep wins.

Donald’s back in the chair, body closer to laying than sitting. The wild blaze of computer screens glaze over his eyes until they shut completely. Another tinny hand drapes a blanket over him. And for all the immediate information Uno’s state-of-the-art processors can churn, right now Donald’s presence occupies them all.