The meteors soared through the darkness, cutting through it with incandescent brilliance. There was a rush of sudden light as the biggest flash yet exploded above them. Unlike the others in the sky, it seemed to almost glimmer with a golden red hue.

"That's quite something ain't it Mr. White?" Gerfungle said, looking where Walter had been. "Mr. White?" He did a complete three-sixty sweep of the area without spotting the wizard. "He's gone!" he concluded. "The wizard's gone, Boss," he repeated, tapping an enthralled Duck on the shoulder.

"What?"

"Mr. White's gone."

Duck pried himself begrudgingly away from the telescope. "What do you mean he's gone?" he said, looking around for himself. "Where did he... how did he move so fast?"

Gerfungle puffed himself up with unusual pride. "I would think he leap... leapi..." His brow knotted and then unfurled excitedly. "Leapitated."

Duck squinted at his assistant suspiciously. "That's a four syllable word."

Gerfungle beamed back at him.

"Well, good riddance," Duck said while returning to his telescope. "The last thing we need is some Brotherhood wizard on a mission, hanging around thinking of ways he can blame us for the missing sceptre."

"He could have said bye," Gerfungle said, sitting down on the empty picnic basket. "I hope he manages to catch that thief."

"Humph," Duck said. "Good luck to the thief is what I say; serves the Brotherhood right."

"Yeah, but Mr. White seemed alright. Quite nice actually."

Duck paused as a horrible feeling started to sprout somewhere in his stomach. "He did seem quite nice for a member of the Brotherhood."

"Never had a chat with a wizard before," Gerfungle continued.

An idea formed in the back of Duck's mind and began scratching its way forward. "Why didn't he just Leapitate out of the hole, or even straight to Tersa?"

"Imagine him telling the likes of me all about the sceptre," Gerfungle carried on, firmly aboard his own thought train.

A synapse fired, a light was turned on and Duck almost had a heart attack. "He said no one alive had seen the sceptre," he said turning to Gerfungle, who nodded dully. "He said that the sceptre's very description was unknown to anyone," he added to a second dull nod from Gerfungle. "Then how was it that he was able to describe it to us?" Duck hyperventilated. "Unless..."

He quickly adjusted his telescope and brought it to bear directly overhead. The shower was still in progress, the dazzling lights streaming along. Amongst the orgy of radiance, hovering about as inconspicuous as a needle in a haystack, was the brilliant aurora with a golden red glow. To the untrained eye it would have gone completely unnoticed, but to a lifelong astronomer it stood out like... well, like a magical flare in a night sky.

Duck let the telescope drop from his eye. He sat completely still as he approached an unwanted conclusion. The name Walter White floated about in his head, the letters danced around each other, the words inverted and the name Hewit Wartle glowed red at him.

The ground will be scorched on the path that Hewit Wartle treads, he recalled.

"Pack up the things. We have to go," Duck said hurriedly.

"But it hasn't finished yet."

Duck collapsed his tripod with one well placed prod. "If we don't move now then we will be the ones finished," he said. "What do you think the Brotherhood will do to two idiots who had a nice picnic and a chat with the thief?"

Gerfungle's brow began to knot before Duck grabbed him suddenly by the collar. "Don't you dare frown at me, not now," he said. "I'll carry the basket and tripod, you throw the telescope on your back and we'll start running in that direction." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

"Okay," Gerfungle said.

By the time the last meteor had left a forlorn trail across the sky, Duck and Gerfungle had put their campsite into the distant artificial horizon behind them. Duck's legs and arms pumped up and down like defective pistons as his assistant jogged along behind him.

"You know... what... I hope," an out of breath Gerfungle managed.

Duck grunted.

"I... hope we get... to see Mr White again... some day."

After an erratic out of breath count to ten, that skipped a few numbers along the way, Gerfungle's world went dark in a blur of picnic basket and tripod poles.