#all that's really necessary is that louie has a plan that he thinks is good for everyone

[korkorali]

I think the worst bit for me about all Those Sorts (you know the type) of fics is that they always take Della extremely out of character in order to make her the 'antagonist.'

And that sucks because it's just not necessary! It's the worst because you can have Della & Louie angst where Della's the 'antagonist,' and it's in-character.

You just have to have Louie be wrong in the end (kind of).

The reason why Della and Louie clash in Timephoon and Glomtales! isn't because Della 'disapproves of scheming in entirety' or something, it's because she's done the same goddamn thing as him.

(And side note- Timephoon is honestly an amazing piece of storytelling, because it allows us to see Della's thought process for taking the Spear of Selene by showing us Louie doing pretty much the same thing.)

She's been through it all before, and she knows how it ends.

And that fucking terrifies her! The idea that one of her kids is making the same mistakes as her, could go through the same thing as she did, and she's the only one who can see it, is terrifying.

The way to start out a story like this is simple; have an adventure go wrong. Not in a deadly way, not in a way that's caused by Louie (at least, not that anyone but him notices), not in a way that costs anyone their life- but in a way that causes them to lose the treasure. The adventure is a failure, and they have to come back empty handed, like New Gods on the Block.

Maybe some people get hurt, maybe it's vaguely Louie's fault (and even then- it'd be better if it wasn't even his fault, it's just his brain connecting patterns where there aren't any), but the most important part is that they don't get the treasure, and it's like- one of those ones that can only be found once every hundred years or something.

Louie feels responsible (I mean all of the kids do, but as it'd be a Louie story he'd be the one focused on) and upset that they want to all that trouble and don't have anything to show for it, so he tries to figure out some way to go on the adventure again.

Turns out, after a bit of research, there is a way to get to the treasure again! Louie brings it to Scrooge's attention excitedly- but Scrooge turns it down. Says it's too dangerous, that they're not doing it, end of story.

...Not end of story- everyone's still obviously miserable. So Louie decides that 'okay, if it's 'too dangerous,' then I'll just go in secret. It'll be fine, Scrooge is just overreacting.'

So he starts trying to put a plan into place to get the treasure in secret- but Della, somehow, seems to know what he's doing (hint: it's because she knows what she'd do if she was in Louie's shoes). And is consistently getting in his way.

And there you go- a perfect setup to have Della consistently and purposefully stepping on Louie's toes, getting in his way, trying to stop him from doing things, and it's even in-character! It'd probably start out with the two acting like everything's perfectly hunky-dory, even though both of them know that the other knows that they know that the other knows why they did this one thing.

As plans get deeper, it'd escalate to Della trying to actively call Louie out, but he always manages to just barely weasel his way out of it, and eventually commence his plan.

It obviously goes wrong. But Della's there to help. And finally she'd actually explain why the fuck she's been something of a thorn in his side for the past few weeks, why it seems like she knows what he's thinking: because she does.

Because she's been through the same thing.

Because she fucked up, and left her stranded on the moon for ten years, and she does not want that for her kid. (And of course everything could've been solved if she'd just sat down and talked to Louie about that at the onset, but it's Della- she only likes to bring up the moon when it's funny. She would've thought 'nah it's fine, I can handle this, I don't need to bare my soul, I shouldn't burden anyone with that' without realizing that oh yeah, no, that's the exact same thought process she doesn't want Louie to think)

And of course they'd argue, because it'd be a high-stress situation and neither of them would have the composure to pretend that everything's alright and they haven't been sniping at each other for the past week or so, and eventually it'd finally come up; eventually, they'd finally bring up that they thought the exact same thing when Louie did this, when Louie took the Timetub, when Della took the Spear.

'...And if anything goes wrong, at least I'm the only one who'll get hurt.' (Because you cannot tell me that that was not the last thought running through both of their heads when they took the timetub/Spear of Selene, you cannot convince me that they didn't think they were doing right by their families in that moment, that they hadn't done their due diligence and minimized risk down to one person.)

And Louie wouldn't understand, because he did the right thing. He minimized risk, he made sure nobody else would get hurt. But that's wrong- because if he got hurt, then Della (Donald, Scrooge, their family, her kids) would get hurt too. That they could fly into a vacuum all they wanted, but at the end of the day, they still didn't exist in one.

Eventually, they'd get out of there and abandon the mission again. Maybe they'd succeed, but probably not. But that's not important- what'd be important is that they were both safe and alive and okay.

There- a Della & Louie thing, extremely angsty, well Della as the 'antagonist,' and it's all in-character. Easy.

[lazyrants]

Happy Brush Day (prod 110)

BoredJedi (youtube.com/user/LazyBlueHaze) gave me an .iso of the “Superhero” Australian DVD from 2008. To finally put the .iso to use, I decided to take all the screenshots in this episode myself. I also watched it using VLC.

Original airdate: August 25, 2004

Story by Magnus Scheving

Written by Noah Zachary, Cole Louie, Mo Williem, Magnus Scheving

Directed by Magnus Scheving

Executive producers - Magnus Scheving, Ragnheidur Melsted, Raymond P. Le Gue, Mark Read, Brown Johnson, Kay Wilson Stallings

Starring Magnus Scheving, Stefan Karl Steffanson, Julianna Rose Mauriello

Puppeteers - Ronald Binion, Gudmondor Thor Karason, Jodi Eichelberger, David Matthew Feldman, Julie Westwood, Amanda Maddock

Happy Brush Day is the first of two episodes focusing on Ziggy's birthday (not to mention the spinoff where he is the main star), so I guess the producers finally realized that Ziggy has some story potential.

The episode begins with some foreshadowing - Sportacus brushing his teeth in his airship. I call this foreshadowing because the episode is about brushing your teeth (kinda). Anyways, the citizens in LazyTown have just woken up happily (excluding Robbie who hilariously uses packing peanuts to drown the noise of his alarm).

Stingy is admiring his collection of four toothbrushes (Is it really necessary to own more than one toothbrush..??). Pixel is using one of his gadgets to brush his teeth (later on in the episode he has completely forgotten what it is) and Stingy keeps his in a lock. Meanwhile, Ziggy is still asleep using his lollipop as a cushion.

Anyways, Robbie is eating his scrumdiddlyumptious creamy cake (My god, I just want a bite of that), and Pixel walks over to Ziggy's to tell him it's his seventh birthday. This just aggravates me, WHO NEEDS TO BE WOKEN UP ON THEIR BIRTHDAY?! My birthday is in one of those 2 week school breaks, and in one of those days you couldn't blow a horn to get me to wake up before 11am. But on my birthday I wake up at 7am with no problem. Anyways, Ziggy is mailing a letter to Sportacus while eating taffy.

Anyways, when Ziggy mentions his birthday, Robbie spits out his cake. He has another devious plan. In my opinion, I never really liked the idea of ruining Ziggy's birthday. His plan was to make a machine that spewed taffy all over the place. 1 - Ziggy loves taffy. 2 - It's his birthday. 3 - Ziggy loves taffy. Meanwhile, the kids are deciding what to get him for his birthday.

Anyways, when Stingy mentions all he wants is taffy every year, he pops up looking for taffy. Now, forgive me, since Taffy was invented in the US, but, it is really that good??

Also, if you didn't notice (SOMEONE must have noticed), the background music for when he walks out the shot is a reprise of 'Siggi' from Afram Latibaer. Anyways, Robbie does his classic disguise time (I think this is the funniest of the first season).

Robbie decides that to accompany his outfit (that looks like something a fairy from a 2000s 3D animated straight-to-VHS movie classified "G" by the Australian Classification Board would wear) with a gift. Off camera he thinks up the perfect thing. Meanwhile, Sportacus has gotten Ziggy's letter, which is one of those cards that plays an undeniably catchy tune when you open it.

Sportacus is having some trouble deciding what to give Ziggy as a gift (his first two choices being balls). Anyways, the camera cuts off to Milford putting up the birthday stage for Ziggy. Everyone is excited for the party until Bessie comes with her birthday speech for little 'Wiggie', then everyone is seriously dreading it. (judging from a transcription Chris Crow made on the GL forums, Bessie possibly just wrote down random words on a piece of paper and lied to herself.)

Anyways, after a bit of begging, Milford is convinced to start the party with the presents. Very surprisingly, Stingy decides to go first. His gift is a quarter-bitten piece of taffy. A single one. You can see from the box there were supposed to be nine pieces.

Anyways, Stingy takes back the box & the lid. I don't know why it's so funny. "Happy birthday, here's my gift, gimme the packaging." So anyways, Trixie goes next, and HER gift is a jack in the box. (If I was Ziggy, personally I wouldn't take that kinda disrespect.) So anyways, Pixel gives him his gift which is in an envelope. Ziggy is thankful enough for the envelope (what a pure soul), until Pixel tells him to OPEN the envelope.

In the envelope is a piece of paper that reads "www.taffy.com" (it's a real website and is still up to this day, it's just not related to LazyTown at all). It turns out to be a website Pixel has made consisting of "jpegs of every taffy ever made!" I get this was written in 2004, but why JPEGS? PNG for the wiiiin!! (I'd geniunely enjoy that gift, but maybe with something else like LazyTown screenshots or old 80s action movie posters.)

So, anyways, Ziggy wants to eat the taffy and is kinda annoyed when Pixel says it isn't possible. Anyways, when Bessie announces she has added five more extra minutes to her speech, Milford gives HIS gift, which is a huge square of taffy flavoured taffy.

Stephanie's gift is her very own choreographed 'Taffy Cheer!' and everyone likes it so much Ziggy even says he could taste the victory taffy. Coming from a boy whose whole diet consists of candy, that is the highest compliment you can receive.

Anyways, Sportacus does a frontflip into the scene right about when Bessie is about to start her speech. (Is it just me or do the events if this show have TOO many coincidences some times?)

Sportacus is hyping his gift up very much. Ziggy guesses a truckload of different candies twice, but Sportacus does an amazing flip (he doesn't have the box in his hand in this shot), lands on his feet and shows Ziggy the toothbrush (now he is holding the toothbrush but there is no box to be seen?).

Anyways, everyone has some questions. Pixel wants to know where the remote control is and if you have to plug it in. Eventually he searches it up in his database, but Ziggy still has no idea what it is. Then he reveals that he keeps some of his favourite foods in his food. Everyone is disgusted. Including me.

Anyways, they sing a whole two minute (recommended length for brushing your teeth) song about brushing your teeth the Twenty Times way. After it's finished, Ziggy shows more interest in brushing his teeth until The Birthday Fairy (a disguised Robbie) shows up. Trixie makes fun of him, indirectly insulting Stephanie (you're girlier then she is, and that is saying a lot!)

Anyways, Robbie (or Pixel) introduces his (honestly really cool) gift, the Electro Ultra Voice Activated Candy Matic! Robbie then reveals that Ziggy and only Ziggy can tell it what to do which is a pretty dumb thing. What if Ziggy falls asleep and while he does he says that his friends can have some of his taffy?

Anyways, Ziggy throws Sportacus' gift on the floor, and I'm surprised Sportacus didn't get mad. You know how bratty you have to be to throw your birthday gift away in front of the gifter? Anyways, Ziggy calls for taffy a bunch of times and he catches most of it in his mouth. Stingy is kinda annoyed.

Or as the subtitles say.. (SEETHING WITH RAGE). Anyways, Stingy climbs right up to the thing and yells TAFFY as loud as he can. Then his face gets splattered. Robbie, the liar! Anyways, while nobody is looking, Robbie deviously puts the level of taffy up to 'red', and taffy starts flying all over the place.. really fast! However, Ziggy can't yell 'stop' because his mouth is full of yellow taffy.

Anyways, it's not long before the stage becomes a sea of taffy, Sportacus goes up to his airship to get some sports equipment to stop the machine and Robbie's advice is to just eat the candy. Milford announces it and everyone starts eating.

Anyways, Robbie quickly gets tired of the taffy and he decides to go back to his car, but unfortunately he cannot drive away. Totally your fault, dude. You started this by putting it on RED. Anyways, his car is basically underwater, except the taffy is the water.

Meanwhile, Sportacus is in his airship, carrying some tennis rackets in his shirt (some of the frames are slowed down, possibly to meet the 24:42 time limit or just look cooler), and the taffy is up to the chins of the puppets. So Bessie grabs onto the birthday banner (in real life that would've just ripped off). Anyways, Sportacus has arrived and he starts hitting every single piece of taffy that comes his way, and for a few seconds the machine stops working.

Sportacus puts on his goggles (it's taffy, not salty ass water) and he dives in to find Ziggy's toothbrush. He doesn't move for a few seconds and everyone thinks he's dead (I don't blame them) until he pops up with the toothbrush!

Stingy throws the toothbrush to Ziggy and he brushes his teeth the Twenty Times way. Finally, he gets the taffy out his mouth and yells STOP!!!

Finally! (: Anyways, Robbie puts his arm through the door and waves it out frantically so Sportacus notices him. Sportacus pulls off his hat and everybody realizes that it was Robbie all along!

Anyways, they sing the Bing Bang song while Bessie does her speech. Now this is the part I don't like because it just scraps what Bessie and the kids said earlier in the episode - the speech goes on and on and on (and this year she added five more minutes), but the Bing Bang song is only 53 seconds and somehow she finishes her speech in the span of the whole Bing Bang song. Anyways, good episode.

THE END.

So kids, what did we learn in this episode of LazyTown? Brush your teeth every day and night or a bunch of taffy will come flying out of nowhere and nearly drown you.

7/10

[dellyduck]

A Slipper of Glass

I missed writing the ducks so much 😊 This is just a drabble I made for fun, but if you’re reading this, I hope you enjoy it!

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Louie snorted, distractively juggling an apple from hand to hand as he watched his brothers’ fencing match.

“You know, I always thought Hubert was the hopeless romantic of us, but guess I was wrong. You definitely deserve the title, Dewey- I mean, deciding to marry a random girl because of a glass slipper?” He arched a skeptical eyebrow, taking a bite from the apple. “I can hear Uncle Scrooge making a list of reasons to marry someone, and them having a weird taste in shoes is not in it.”

“That is where you’re wrong, Louie,” Dewey responded his younger brother without an inch of doubt, while still battling his oldest brother in the same way. “It’s not about the slipper. It’s about the girl in the slipper. She was- ha!”

Dewey had to interrupt his explanation to make use of Huey’s opening and strike. He would have made point if it wasn’t for the oldest prince’s smart dodge.

“Nice parry!” Huey complimented.

“Thanks,” Dewey said with a hint of pride, before continuing both the match and the talk with his young brother. “She was… She was…”

“She was what??” Louie was losing his patience.

“Well, she was the one!”

As if getting strength from his own statement, Dewey was able to twist his blade on Huey’s and send his older brother’s sword flying away from his hand. With a proud smile and lifting his hands in defeat, Huey allowed his brother to make point.

As he went to take his blade back, Dewey used this moment to look at Louie, who was yet taking his third bite on the apple.

“She was the one, okay?” he repeated, certain of his words. “I know it.”

Louie remained skeptical, however. “Oh boy, you’re talking just like Huey before he met Shelly.”

“Hey! I happen to love my wife very much, thank you,” Huey defended, taking his time to approach his brothers again and start another match with Dewey. “Yes, I admit Shelly and I didn’t exactly start our relationship on a good note, but in the end what we built together is even better than my dreams while growing up.” He was now smiling; a happy, peaceful smile. “I’m happy. And that’s all I want to you two too.”

Louie’s only reaction was to roll his eyes. He appreciated his oldest brother’s worry and care, but being honest to himself, Louie had no desire to marry, and being the youngest prince of three he didn’t really have to.

Dewey, by other hand, just smiled back at his brother, in gratefulness for Huey’s support. At least, until he spoke again.

“I just fear there’s a rift in your plan, Dewey.”

His smile was dropped instantly, and the middle prince just had a second to proffer a confused ��what?” before he had to defend himself from Huey’s attack with the sword, starting a new match.

“You think there’s only one girl in all kingdom who wears a size four and a half?”

Dewey was able to block a strike with his own blade, but not without some struggle, “It’s all I have to go on her.”

“Yeah, we all know at this point.” Backing away for an instant, Huey broke his brother’s defense and started slashing again. Dewey would lie if he said he didn’t have a hard time holding back; Huey sounded more serious all of a sudden. “You don’t know her last name nor first name, neither do you have any idea who she can be or where she comes from. But you saw her, didn’t you?”

“Of course I saw her,” Dewey hardened his stance to fight back, now somewhat offended by his brother’s accusation.

But his blown wasn’t hard to be held by Huey, who now had a perfect position to be face to face with his brother. “So you do have more to go on here.”

In his corner, Louie would simply look from one to the other, a little unsure of what to do except maybe ringing for Beakley if necessary. It wasn’t rare for the older princes’ matches to grow intense, but it had never been tense.

“Her feathers, her hair, her eye color- you know these things,” Huey continued. “And yet your proclamation was that you would marry whoever the shoe fit on.”

“And so what? What’s your point here?” Dewey controlled himself not to sound exasperate.

Although still holding on the defense position, Huey sighed, and suddenly his face wasn’t pure seriousness anymore. Dewey knew that face. Huey was able to mimic perfectly their uncle’s wise yet tired expression, the expression of a leader who wasn’t being positive nor negative, but realistic.

“What if they bring in the wrong girl, Dewey?”

[breckstonevailskier]

Rewriting Cobra Kai Season 2 to eliminate the love triangles

There's a lot to love about Cobra Kai. But I have to admit season 2 is a bit of a weak season. And one of the areas that I view as a weak point is with the teen romance and love triangles.

Love triangles are one of the cheapest sources of conflict, given that you're either pitting two girls against each other in a competition for a guy's love, or two guys against each other for a girl's love. We see both of those in season 2 with Robby/Sam/Miguel and Sam/Miguel/Tory.

Obviously, the pairings for the season of Sam/Robby and Miguel/Tory were rebounds because it's typical in a show like this to break up an endgame couple early, then have them get back together later. Thing is, the rivalries of Sam and Tory, and Miguel and Robby, already have a lot of meat for them that doesn't hinge on the relationships.

With Sam and Tory, it's kinda ridiculous that the whole rivalry is basically over Miguel's heart when it could've been about so much more. It could've been built more upon the wrong perceptions that they had of each other from their first encounter at the beach club in 2x04: Sam viewing Tory as a thief, and Tory viewing Sam as a privileged rival who's never had to deal with hardship.

With Robby and Miguel, the show focuses a lot on how Miguel views Robby as a rival in their affections for Sam, but not really about another source to their rivalry: Johnny. It would've been interesting if the rivalry was built around Robby's resentment towards Miguel for getting Johnny's attention and affection, and in turn for Miguel to feel conflicted about his anger towards Robby because he's aware about Robby being Johnny's son.

There's also the fact that I don't think Sam/Robby and Miguel/Tory really have chemistry compared to Sam/Miguel and Robby/Tory. Sam and Robby have more sibling vibes than romantic ones. In the case of Miguel and Tory, Tory pursued Miguel and he went along with it because she was offering herself as a rebound girl, and the whole thing felt like a temporary relationship to tide him over before he got back together with Sam (and he was a pretty bad boyfriend to her in turn).

So my solution to the mess is to, well...to fix the problem, you have to go back into season 1 and not have Sam break up with Miguel at the tournament. Keep Sam and Miguel in a relationship for the duration of season 2, while having Tory get together with Robby in season 2. Here's how that would go.

SEASON 1

Episode 9:

In this episode, Sam returned home, planning to come clean to her dad about Miguel (and prepared to take the risk of him not approving of the relationship because Miguel is in Cobra Kai), only for her mom to confront her about the hit and run and ground her. Because her phone was confiscated, she can't reach out to Miguel, who is becoming paranoid in light of Johnny's biased stories to him about Daniel and seeing Sam being friendly with Robby. He gets drunk, and tries to take a swing at Robby when he brings Sam over so she can explain the situation, accidentally hitting Sam. Subsequently, they break up after he refuses to apologize for resorting to violence on Robby, and she leaves the tournament early, unable to bear what Miguel's turned into under the Cobra Kai teachings, while Miguel fights dirty against Robby in the finals and wins.

The change:

Sam returns home, planning to come clean to her dad about Miguel. Her mom confronts her about the hit-and-run...but she isn't quick to ground Sam. First, Amanda asks Sam for her side of the story about the hit-and-run. This, I think, is a very necessary change because, in the canon episode, Amanda's a bit of a hypocrite here. She's rushing to judgment based solely on Johnny's word without hearing Sam's side of the events or considering the possibility that Johnny's being biased, something that she had chided Daniel for doing earlier (regarding Johnny bringing to his attention what Kyler and his gang had been doing to Miguel).

So Sam explains what happened: Yasmine was texting while driving and they collided with a car that was parked illegally in the street outside the All-Valley Sports Arena. They were prepared to get out and leave contact information when a drunk Johnny began banging on the backseat window, making them drive off out of fear for their safety.

While Sam has told her side of things, she's still grounded for not coming clean sooner. But before Amanda can confiscate Sam's phone, Sam brings up that she has plans to see Miguel that night and he'll be worried sick if he can't contact her. She comes clean to her mom about how, "You know about that viral video of the kid who beat up Kyler and his crew in the cafeteria a few months back? Well, I've been dating that kid for the last few months." And she explains everything: his name is Miguel Diaz, and he's a student at Cobra Kai, and she was planning on telling Daniel about all this.

Of course, Amanda is aware Daniel will probably not take the news that their daughter is dating a Cobra Kai well, given Daniel's personal beef with Cobra Kai (what with getting Armand Zakarian to jack up the rent on the strip mall, and Louie hiring his biker buddies to destroy Johnny's car as retaliation for the billboard penis), and how he's not above intruding on his daughter's social life (given what happened with Kyler). But Sam insists Miguel's a good person, and that if Amanda gets to know Miguel through and through, then she can help Sam stand up to Daniel when Daniel inevitably blows up. More importantly, her best friend Aisha's in Cobra Kai, and can also vouch for Miguel's character. Amanda agrees to Sam's idea, and lets her call Miguel to invite him over.

So Miguel abandons the Cobra Kais' party and comes over to the LaRussos' house. He's already feeling jealous and insecure, because he knows Sam is hiding their relationship from Daniel, and the previous day, he went to her house uninvited and saw her laughing and talking to Robby. This was right after he'd heard Johnny's biased story about Daniel "stealing" Ali from him. So when Amanda lets Miguel in, he's a bit on edge, but Amanda mistakes it as him just being nervous at him coming over to his girlfriend's fancy house. Nonetheless, she's quickly won over by Miguel's personality, and when she asks him about "Why did you take up karate?" determines that he's the real deal, especially when he mentions how he took up karate to defend himself from bullies (much like Daniel did).

But things change when Robby arrives at the house for a training session with Daniel. Robby and Miguel recognize each other, and immediately Miguel's insecurities come to his head. He tries to attack Robby, but Sam steps between them, calms Miguel down, and explains that whatever Miguel saw, it's not what it looks like. Robby's just a friend and a teen working for the LaRussos' dealership who is also being trained by Daniel in the art of Miyagi-Do. Miguel listens to her, accepts what she's saying, and relaxes, no longer seeing Robby as a threat to his affections for Sam. However, Sam also notices the disdainful look Robby showed the moment he saw Miguel, but can't figure out why as she nor her parents are aware that Robby is Johnny's son.

When Johnny and Daniel return home from their day out, they agree to a "Rocky III-style" match in Daniel's dojo, but find Robby there waiting, and also find Sam with Miguel and Amanda. Things get heated, the altercation where Daniel's trophy gets broken happens, and ultimately everyone blows up at each other:

Daniel is mad over the fact that his daughter is dating a Cobra Kai boy and about the whole fact that Robby is Johnny's son.

Johnny's mad at Daniel because Daniel is training his son. He is also offended by the fact that Daniel is mad about Miguel being in Cobra Kai, causing him to get defensive of Miguel.

In Johnny's rush to defend Miguel, he only succeeds in angering Robby, who's now mad at him for showing his favoritism for Miguel. Robby is also mad at Miguel for the fact that Sam is already taken.

Miguel is mad at Daniel for not approving of him, and mad at Johnny for escalating the situation.

Sam is mad at her dad for not reacting well to Miguel, and mad at Miguel and Robby for letting there be bad blood between them.

Amanda is mad at Johnny for terrorizing Sam, and also mad at Daniel for flipping out at Miguel.

So the whole thing ends with Johnny driving away angrily with Miguel, Daniel banishing Robby from the house and the dealership, Sam storming off to her bedroom in tears, and Daniel also being banished to the couch by Amanda.

Episode 10:

At the LaRusso house, everyone broods over the events of the previous night. Amanda puts Daniel in his place and calls him out on his behavior towards Robby and Miguel, with her saying "You really want Sam to shut you out again?" He apologizes to Sam and Amanda for losing it, and reluctantly agrees to sit down and get to know Miguel after the tournament.

Everything at the tournament is the same up until the conversation Sam has with Miguel right before the finals. She apologizes for her dad's behavior, and tells him that her dad wants to get to know him. Miguel accepts her apology, thanks her, and agrees that they'll talk after the tournament.

Subsequently, Sam stays for the finals rather than go home early. Miguel doesn't threaten to hurt Robby, and wanting to make the best impression for Daniel, he chooses to fight cleanly rather than exploit Robby's injury, an act that baffles Miguel's fellow Cobra Kai students. Even though the match ties at 2-2, Robby's injury puts him at too much of a disadvantage, and Miguel earns the winning point not by attacking Robby's shoulder, but by using the Crane Kick (to which he subsequently gives Daniel a bow of respect).

Subsequently, Sam is among those who run over to him, gives him an approving hug, and then goes over to check on Robby and Johnny. Meanwhile, Sam goes with Miguel to the victory celebration at Applebee's. And afterwards, he goes with her to her house for a sparring session of their own.

On the drive home, Robby is sullen about his second place finish, but Daniel assures him that he is as much of a winner as Miguel. Robby expresses concern that Cobra Kai is going to become the premier dojo in the Valley, but Daniel--bitter over Johnny's behavior towards his daughter, and Hawk's behavior in the semi-finals--replies, "Over my dead body", taking Robby to Mr. Miyagi's old house which he plans to convert into a full on dojo for Miyagi-Do.

The next day, Miguel comes over to the LaRussos' for dinner. He is hesitant, since besides what he's seen of Daniel, the only other things he knows about Daniel are from the biased narrative that Johnny gave him about what happened in 1984, and the way Daniel flipped out at seeing him. Daniel apologizes for his behavior the other day, but explains that the name Cobra Kai just brings up lots of bad memories with him. So we get the car scene from season 3 episode 9 where Daniel fills in the gaps about what Johnny didn't tell Miguel, and to further clarify why he doesn't trust Cobra Kai and Johnny, also brings up what happened when he was manipulated by Terry Silver and Mike Barnes. At the end of it, Daniel decides that he's okay with Miguel dating Sam, but this hasn't done anything to cool the blood between him and Johnny because of Hawk injuring Robby and Johnny's own actions with the hit-and-run.

SEASON 2:

Episodes 1 and 2:

So for season 2, Miguel's arc is about him being torn between Cobra Kai and his loyalty to Johnny, and his relationship with Sam and the new respect Daniel has for him. Sam and Miguel are still dating. Robby still doesn't like that Sam is with Miguel, and still dislikes Miguel because of Johnny's favoritism for him, but decides to stay friends with Sam after she convinces Daniel to take Robby in. Robby also tries to be civil to Miguel for Daniel's and Sam's sake. But with Miguel spending so much time with Sam and being practically a fixture at the LaRusso house, it's hard for Robby not to grow envious of him given all that other baggage.

Episode 3:

The season is mostly the same, up until episode 3 at Valley Fest. In canon, Daniel is having a hard time finding new students, who are put off by his chore-based training methods. To help get exposure, Daniel decides to hold a solemn karate demonstration with Sam and Robby at the upcoming Valley Fest fair. In canon, when Johnny hears about this, Cobra Kai interrupt them with a much more flashy demonstration of their own set to "Back in the Game" by Airbourne, winning over the crowd and stealing the spotlight from Miyagi-Do as Daniel and his students look on with contempt.

In this timeline, however, Valley Fest puts Miguel's loyalties to question. If nothing changes, and Cobra Kai hijacks the demo as happens in canon, Sam is mad at Miguel for raining on Miyagi-Do's parade and not telling her about it in advance. So Miguel, not wanting to jeopardize his relationship with Sam, or at the minimum interested in softening the blow, either gives Sam an advance tip-off and preemptive apology, or better yet, convinces Johnny to wait until Miyagi-Do has finished before they do their show (risking being called a pussy by Johnny). Sam still has some bitter feelings towards Cobra Kai for putting on a demo that overshadowed Miyagi-Do's, though accepts Miguel's apology about the matter, as happens in canon when she argues with Aisha about this at the beach club and they decide it's not worth fighting over.

Episode 4:

Episode 4 is where Sam's rivalry with Tory begins in canon. Daniel takes Robby and Sam to a beach club, where his attempts to promote Miyagi-Do to local parents are overshadowed by Cobra Kai's display at Valley Fest, with Aisha's mother praising the difference that Cobra Kai has made in her daughter's life. Meanwhile, Sam tries to make up with Aisha, who is upset about the slight against Cobra Kai in Daniel’s ad, but ends up in a quarrel with Tory, whom she accuses of stealing her mother's wallet (having witnessed Tory stealing liquor at the club beforehand). Tory responds by pushing Sam into a dessert table and walking away with Aisha.

Not much about this would change, especially where the rivalry between Sam and Tory is concerned, because it's important for me to note that in canon this inciting incident for the rivalry was before Tory hooked up with Miguel. That wasn't until the next episode.

Meanwhile, through circumstances, Tory also runs into Robby, befriends him, and enters into a relationship with him. In season 3, we see them form a connection after Robby joins Cobra Kai over how they're the ones who bore the blunt of the punishment for the school brawl, and their troubled home lives. So we see that here, with Tory also using elements of the playbook she used in the actual timeline to seduce Miguel, which in this case means convincing Robby that he needs to pretend that he's over Sam. Kreese finds out about the relationship between Robby and Tory, and since he's wanted to snag Robby this whole time, he decides to use Tory as a pawn to influence Robby, in hopes of both eventually getting Robby to join Cobra Kai while also getting revenge on Daniel for humiliating him and Terry Silver back in 1985.

Episode 5:

In episode 5, the mall fight still happens, but with Miguel taking Robby's place. It would work nicely since Miguel is Demetri's friend too. (Robby's on a date with Tory, which is why he's not here)

In this version of events, Sam and Miguel go to the mall with Demetri. Demetri is confronted and attacked by Hawk and several other Cobra Kai students as a reprisal for his Yelp review. Demetri flees into the food court, where Sam and Miguel come to his aid. Despite being outnumbered, they utilize the "wheel technique" to soundly defeat their opponents (Miguel knows it because Daniel, at Sam's request, agreed to give Miguel a private one-on-one lesson with him and Sam in the LaRussos' home dojo). Proud of his students, Daniel resolves to continue training Demetri at a slower pace, and also convinces Miguel to consider joining Miyagi-Do, saying that Miguel could use some new fighting moves for when he defends his title at the next All-Valley Tournament. Sam and Miguel have an intimate moment afterwards (either a passionate makeout session, or they make love in Sam's bedroom).

Hawk is infuriated by Moon breaking up with him AND the fact that Miguel is consorting with the enemy by aiding Sam (in fact, he's noticed Miguel growing distant from him and the rest of Cobra Kai ever since the tournament, having spent more time with Sam than with his friends from the dojo). So when Kreese notices Hawk blowing off steam, he encourages him to continue the fight. That night, Hawk and his Cobra Kai followers trash the Miyagi-Do dojo and steal Mr. Miyagi's Medal of Honor.

Enraged, Daniel confronts Johnny in front of the students at the Cobra Kai dojo. Although Johnny honestly denies any knowledge of the incident, the two nearly come to blows until Miguel steps in and forces them to stand down, getting Daniel to remember his promise not to alienate Miguel from him. While Daniel predictably fails to get any restitution out of Johnny, he nonetheless succeeds in convincing a number of Cobra Kai students to walk out and join Miyagi-Do instead...including Miguel. There's a small smirk on Kreese's face as Miguel leaves, since Miguel's no longer around to oppose him, and he hopes the friction between Robby and Miguel will get Robby to leave Miyagi-Do and come over to Cobra Kai.

Episode 6:

So for the next two episodes, Miguel is now at Miyagi-Do. Although Robby does not trust Miguel (thanks to Kreese using Tory to indirectly manipulate him), Daniel reveals that he himself used to be Cobra Kai before seeing the error of his ways, and tells the class that it doesn't matter who they were before — as of now, they are all Miyagi-Do. They work together to raise a heavy stone slab that Hawk's gang knocked over.

At the Cobra Kai dojo, Johnny punishes the students with strenuous exercises, seeking to root out who was responsible for trashing the Miyagi-Do dojo while also trying to reach out to Miguel, trying to get him to come back (with no success). He then receives a call which brings him to the hospital to visit his old friend Tommy, who is suffering from a terminal illness. Along with Bobby and Jimmy, the former Cobras resolve to treat Tommy to one last day of fun. His departure allows Kreese to corrupt the other Cobra Kais, moreso than in canon where Miguel was around to raise objections. The OG Cobra Kais, besides taking issue with Johnny for letting Kreese back in the picture, don't exactly help Johnny when they suggest that maybe it's for the best that Miguel is on the side of the LaRussos for now, as they've come to develop a lot of respect for Daniel and Mr. Miyagi since the tournament in 1984.

Episode 7:

I'd divide up the training sessions of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do to happen on separate days. Miguel participates with Sam in the meat locker training scene, taking Robby's place in the canon scene, while pairing Robby up with Demetri or Chris. Meanwhile, Hawk acts as Tory's partner in Coyote Creek instead of Miguel.

Meanwhile, Miguel suspects that Hawk was behind the trashing of Miyagi-Do and it was as payback for the mall fight. Finding out somehow that Cobra Kai are training the following day at Coyote Creek (because someone, maybe Stingray, was foolish enough to post it on social media), he decides to bring Sam and some of the other Miyagi-Dos to ambush the Cobra Kais. Miguel does the ambush on and beatdown of Hawk and takes back the medal of honor, while Sam attacks Tory and gives her a beating, even though Tory wasn't a participant in the vandalism of Miyagi-Do. Daniel's not happy with Sam or Miguel, but Sam counters that they have to show they won't stand for being picked on.

When Tory tells Robby about what happened, Robby is understandably torn on his loyalties. On the one hand, he's got to be loyal to Miyagi-Do, but Tory is his girlfriend, and his resentments towards Miguel begin to resurface. Tory is furious, recalls the same thing Kreese said to get Hawk to trash Miyagi-Do in the first place, and swears revenge on Sam. And for that matter, the Cobra Kais also want revenge on Miyagi-Do.

Episode 8:

Johnny gets Miguel to come back to Cobra Kai, now that Kreese has been expelled and isn't around to teach them in his old ways. Daniel is sad to see Miguel go, but tells Miguel that he's always welcome at their place for private sessions with Daniel and Sam. While Hawk is glad to see Miguel back, Miguel keeps him at arm's length in light of the vandalism and what happened at the mall, and Tory puts on a poker face to hide her hatred of him (which is another reason why she's targeting Sam: to hurt him by proxy).

80's night at the roller rink in canon is the first time Sam and Tory have crossed paths since episode 4.

In canon it goes like this: Tory invites Miguel to the roller rink, and Tory trips Sam for talking to Miguel, getting Sam and Robby ejected from the rink.

In the alternate timeline, it goes like this: Tory invites Robby to the roller rink, and she kisses Robby in front of Sam, something Sam doesn't react well to because she sees Tory as dragging Robby down and potentially undoing the hard work Robby has put into turning his life around ever since he entered the LaRussos' lives. Miguel tries to smooth things over with Tory for Coyote Creek, with little success because he doesn't realize just how deep Tory's hatred for him and Sam is. He starts to realize this when Tory trips Sam moments later, leading Sam to retaliate with a leg sweep, and Miguel also retaliates by getting in Tory's face. As a result, both Sam and Miguel are kicked out of the rink.

Episode 9:

Moon's party goes down a bit differently when it comes to Sam, Miguel, Robby, and Tory's actions.

In the show, while Miguel is by the pool kissing Sam, Robby's inside getting food for a very drunk Sam. However, he gets distracted as the summer-long tension between Hawk and Demetri escalates, and he has to step in and defend Demetri.

Here, due to circumstances, the roles are reversed and Miguel is the one inside defending Demetri from Hawk, while it's Robby who's outside by the pool with Sam, just making sure she's all right (after all, he's the son of two alcoholics). There's no drunk kiss, and instead, Robby and Sam are being friendly, talking, and Sam is raising her concerns about Tory being a bad influence on him. They're seen by Tory, and like when Miguel approached Sam at the roller rink in the actual timeline (or in canon when Miguel saw Sam being friendly with Robby at the LaRussos'), she misinterprets the whole thing in a way that fuels her hatred for Sam that has been festering ever since Sam beat her up at Coyote Creek.

When the police break up the party, Robby hastily decides to take Sam back to Johnny's apartment like in the show. Tory happens to see him getting Sam into his car, and decides that Robby isn't entirely over his feelings for Sam. Giving her another excuse for the school brawl.

Miguel isn't anywhere near them, so he reaches out to Johnny. Johnny calls back when he gets to his apartment and finds Robby and Sam there, or Miguel finds them together there. In either case, there's a short fight between Robby and Miguel (due to Miguel, who has been fully aware this whole time that Robby had a crush on Sam, fearing Robby was taking advantage of her) that Johnny quickly breaks up, with Johnny placating Miguel enough to get him to back down. Miguel takes a few deep breaths, focuses, goes over to his apartment to get his mother, and she quickly whips up a hangover cure for Sam. Carmen also sees fit to call Sam's parents to let them know that she's all right, and they can come pick her up in the morning.

Episode 10:

The Sunday morning after Moon's party, Daniel comes by to pick Sam up. Meanwhile, Robby begins to reconcile with his father. He is thankful for Johnny's help, and when Daniel shows up to take Sam home, Robby is willing to accept the blame to prevent further tension between the two men.

When Daniel arrives, there is no "rematch" between him and Johnny, and nothing of him disowning Robby (it's actually a bit redundant seeing as Robby's going to provide Daniel with a reason to hate him later). Johnny just hands Sam over to Daniel, Daniel takes her home. He's not happy that she seemingly turned to Johnny instead of him in her hour of need, but accepts that that's an issue for another day.

Over that Sunday, Robby and Johnny reconcile at Johnny's apartment, while Miguel goes over to the LaRussos' house and talks things over with Daniel, Amanda and Sam. He apologizes for not being more attentive to Sam, as he was busy trying to defend Demetri.

That Monday, Johnny takes Robby to school. Even as Johnny's attempts to be fatherly to him on his first day of school are awkward, Robby appreciates that he is trying, and encourages his father to make peace with Daniel, believing that the two of them could learn some things from each other.

Shortly into the morning announcements, Tory assaults the teacher and seizes control of the intercom to announce an ass-beating of Sam. Like in the show, the two girls circle each other in the hallway, with Robby and Miguel frantically racing to reach them. Miguel gets there first and manages to briefly separate them, only for Robby to arrive and — believing that Miguel is attacking Tory — start his own fight with him. With Miguel also giving his all, still pissed at Robby for (seemingly) trying to take advantage of Sam.

The brawl thus plays out the same. And the outcome of the Sam vs. Tory and Miguel vs. Robby fights are the same. In the girls' fight, Tory shifts her spiked bracelet to her knuckles, slashing Sam's arm before threatening to slice her face with it. Sam regains the upper hand and knocks her down a staircase. Meanwhile, Miguel pins Robby to the floor, but, remembering what Johnny said about the difference between having no mercy and no honor, shows mercy and apologizes. However, Robby’s anger at Miguel over having everything Robby doesn't have--the tournament trophy, the romance with Sam, Johnny's preferential treatment, Daniel's approval-- boils over and he seizes the opening to attack Miguel, inadvertently kicking him over the stairway balcony and paralyzing him.

In the aftermath, Daniel is furious that both his daughter and her boyfriend, who he's come to like ever since the tournament, are both in the hospital with injuries. He also blames Tory for corrupting Robby once he learns from Sam that Robby had been dating Tory.

Season 3:

Season 3 has some differences in the details, but otherwise stays mostly the same.

-----

At the end of the day, the rivalries amongst Sam, Miguel, Robby and Tory are made a bit stronger by cutting out the love triangles. With Sam vs. Tory, that rivalry is balanced out a bit by having Sam be a contributor to the increasing tensions between them, not just Tory doing everything. While Robby vs. Miguel is a bit stronger rivalry due to the fact that Robby has to interact with Miguel a lot more, all while having to bottle up his resentments of Miguel so he doesn't lose the LaRussos' hospitality.

[lettheladylead]

Not Your Aunt

Chapter 7: Huey [ao3 link]

It’d been two days since her chat with Dewey and Goldie found herself still in Scrooge’s home. Normally she would’ve left the morning after her little visit, but he’d been so busy with all of his family’s craziness that they hadn’t really had a chance to talk yet. Donald had apparently just left on a trip with his girlfriend and some clone children and everyone was adjusting to all the news and everything they’d been through.

So Goldie figured she would just...wait around. She’d informed the necessary people that she was alive, shockingly, after being missing for a few weeks, so she could take a few more days to herself. And it wasn’t like Scrooge didn’t know she was there; she’d still spent both nights in his bed, but he’d been falling asleep pretty quickly and getting up early and this whole situation they were in felt disturbingly domestic. She’d probably need to leave sooner or later, before anyone started to think she was moving in.

At that particular moment, Goldie was situated on the living room couch, wearing a tank top and sweatpants and flipping through the channels on the TV without much thought. Scrooge was at another meeting at the Money Bin and if she didn’t know any better she’d almost think he was avoiding her with all of his late night meetings. Actually, she didn’t really know better, since this was kind of a new situation for them, but...well...what was she supposed to do about it? Go with him? That sounded terribly boring.

A home redecorating show she liked came on and Goldie decided to forget everything else and just sit back and try to enjoy it. Overthinking things with Scrooge never worked out well for her. It was one of many reasons why after over a hundred years, she felt out of place just sitting in his home without him.

The pitter patter of tiny feet coming her way didn’t ease that feeling at all, either.

She glanced to the right as the other triplet - Huey, she was confident she had that right - picked himself up and plopped himself on the couch next to her. She’d never had a single conversation with this child, but she’d stolen from him and knew he kept a ridiculous number of things hidden under his tiny little hat. It was fascinating. But otherwise she didn’t know much about him or why he would be attempting to interact with her.

“I’d like to go over some scheduling issues,” he said suddenly, pulling a notebook and a pen out from under his hat.

Goldie glanced around the room briefly and then back at him. “...with me?”

“Yes,” Huey responded matter-of-factly. “If you’re going to be staying here for a while or living here or whatever’s happening with you, ideally I’d love to add you to the shared family calendar.”

“...what?”

“...but assuming you’re just here for a few days and then coming and going at your leisure, just knowing ahead of time when you and Uncle Scrooge are having your date nights would be perfect.” He took notes while he was talking, as if Goldie had given him even a single answer. “I like to know where he is in case we need him for anything. I’m sure you understand.”

“I, uh…” Goldie took a moment to go over everything he said and quickly shook her head. “Your uncle and I do not have ‘date nights’.”

“Well maybe not this time around since he’s been so busy, but isn’t that the plan?” Huey asked genuinely, still taking notes on who-knew-what. “Once he’s free I assume you’ll get dinner and have a talk about your relationship and our family. And other adult date stuff.”

Goldie responded to that with the most neutral, unemotional stare that Huey had ever received. She took the remote and muted the television before turning her whole body towards the nosy child next to her, lifting her feet up onto the couch. “And why exactly do you assume that?”

Huey tilted his head at her. “Oh...sorry, isn’t that right? Dewey said you’d been wandering around waiting to talk to Uncle Scrooge so that’s just the conclusion I drew. Plus you’re...y’know, still here even though he’s not. And you’re not stealing anything.”

“I have other hobbies.”

He pointed to the TV with his pen. “Like the Property Brothers?”

Goldie glanced at the screen and then back at the kid. “Even if, hypothetically, you were right about all of that, I am absolutely not ever joining your family calendar.”

Huey shook his head. “I don’t know why you’d say that like it’s a bad thing. Don’t you want to be organized?”

“I’m plenty organized by myself.”

“But if you were synced with us, then you’d know when Uncle Scrooge or Louie is available to spend time with.”

Goldie paused for a moment and stared at him. She’d barely spoken to her favorite of Della’s kids since arriving at the house and having him brought up felt like some kind of dig. She wasn’t sure how to respond to it without getting defensive and she wasn’t even sure what she’d be getting defensive about. “...I prefer the element of surprise. Keeps the boys on their toes.”

Huey shook his head and shrugged. “So how long are you staying here? Can I at least know that?”

“I’m not really sure,” Goldie answered, leaning fully against the back of the couch. It was pretty comfy. “Not too long. I’ve got other places to be.”

“...extremely vague and unhelpful,” Huey mumbled, jotting something down in his notebook. “You and Uncle Scrooge are quite the pair.”

Goldie only responded to that with a short hum, grabbing the remote to get back to her show.

“Can I ask you something else?”

She sighed and put the remote back down. “It’s not like I can stop you.”

Huey turned his body fully towards her, one leg up on the couch and one still dangling. “Well...if I’m making you really uncomfortable or anything, I can stop.”

Goldie raised an eyebrow at him, surprised by the suggestion, but quickly waved it off. “What’s your question?”

“Are you planning on marrying Uncle Scrooge?”

If she’d been drinking anything, she would’ve spit it out at that moment. Goldie could say with absolute certainty that she did not see that question coming. “What could I have possibly said to make you think that?”

“Not you,” Huey said earnestly. “I just noticed that everyone seems to call you Aunt Goldie and I remember in one of Uncle Scrooge’s journals he wrote about marriage when he wrote about you so I assumed you two have had a conversation about it at least once or twice. Right?”

Goldie’s eyes widened and she felt heat rising in her chest that she couldn’t explain away as simple heartburn. She hoped her face wasn’t red to match, because this kid was clearly observant and blunt and she didn’t need the whole family thinking she wanted to get married and move in. “I, uh…” Goldie cleared her throat awkwardly. “...no, it’s not something we’ve really talked about.”

Huey looked at her in confusion. “Not really or not at all?”

She grimaced and sighed and moved her hands around her face as she tried to put her thoughts together. “It’s not...I mean, it’s not never come up, it’s just...it’s complicated. It’d be hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

Goldie frowned and barely stopped herself from glaring at him. “...y’know what, if your uncle is the one writing Goldie McDuck in little hearts all over his workbooks, maybe you should talk to him about it, hm?”

Huey blinked up at her. “I guess I can do that. He’s just always very secretive when it comes to you.”

That got her attention a little more than it should’ve. Goldie sighed internally and didn’t bother trying to stop herself. “...what do you mean by that?”

“Well, like…” Huey moved so both of his legs were dangling again and he could swing them around. “I love romance a lot. I love to read about it and watch romantic movies...my friend Fenton and his girlfriend Gandra are so sweet together and Uncle Donald and his girlfriend are also really sweet together and I really love that for both of them. But then you and Uncle Scrooge seem like you’re happy sometimes but then when I ask him about you he gets all grumbly and doesn’t answer my questions, so that’s not a good sign. But I’m really curious about it because I know there’s all different types of romance out there and I don’t even know how the two of you met.”

Goldie hummed quietly and stared at the wall over the TV, considering her response. She definitely wouldn’t describe her and Scrooge’s relationship as ‘sweet,’ but she’d never tried to sum it up into one word before. “...the way we met is also very...complicated.”

“It seems like everything about you two is complicated.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” she said with a short, quiet laugh. “I do love your uncle, but it’s just-...!”

Huey gasped, and Goldie froze at the realization of what she’d just said. She stared directly at Huey who looked more excited than he’d been for any of the rest of their conversation. He was suddenly fully engaged thanks to her accidental use of the l-word. She glanced away from him and hoped she could stumble over that, but she’d paused for too long for them to simply move past it.

It wasn’t like she’d never said it before, but absolutely never to someone in his family. That would be...too much.

“You do?!” Huey asked - his notepad down and leaning towards her and putting his hands on his cheeks. “Does Uncle Scrooge know? Has he said it too? That’s so romantic!”

Goldie groaned and looked back at the TV, only to see the couple fixing up their house snuggling on the camera. “I mean, look. We’ve been...well, it’s been over a hundred years, so yeah these things are bound to be said at some point-”

Huey let out a tiny, adorable little squeal that Goldie refused to find endearing.

“Alright, I’ve changed my mind!” Huey announced, grabbing his pen and notepad again. “I’m completely fine to call you Aunt Goldie!”

“Wait, what?” Goldie stared at him, feeling very confused like she’d missed a whole big part of their conversation. “You know we’re still not getting married, right?”

“Well, Aunt Goldie,” Huey said with a smirk. “I now know that you’re mutually in love and probably have been for a very long time, so whether you want to be or not, that means you’re part of the family!”

She sighed and lightly scratched her neck.

“Do you have any other family?”

Goldie looked surprised at the sudden question, not expecting this child to suddenly change conversation topics like his brother. “...no, I don’t.”

“Oh,” Huey responded, looking a little sad. “Did they...I mean, you’re as old as Uncle Scrooge, right? So they’re...uh…”

“Dead, yeah,” Goldie said with a shrug.

“I’m sorry!” Huey looked down at his hands. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

She watched him look like he was about to go into some shame spiral and Goldie quickly reached out a hand and plopped it on his head. “Don’t worry about it, it was a long time ago. And we were never close to begin with,” she added with another shrug.

Huey glanced back up at her, blushing a bit from the unexpected physical affection. “Does that mean you never introduced them to Uncle Scrooge?”

Goldie couldn’t stop herself and let out a short laugh, moving her hand from Huey’s head to cover her beak. “Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled as she collected herself. “No, God no, absolutely not.”

He moved his hat back to the position he preferred it in. “Have you met Uncle Scrooge’s parents?”

“Ah...sort of-” Goldie started, but suddenly she froze. She thought about his line of questioning for a second before turning to glare at Huey completely. “What are you writing?”

Huey looked up from his notebook and let out a small chirp as he noticed Goldie’s expression. “Um...I’m just taking notes…”

“Taking notes about what?” Goldie asked as she reached out and grabbed the notebook away from him. Huey struggled to grab it back but Goldie held him down with her other hand.

She scanned over the open page and saw that he’d written notes on all the information she’d given him (about herself, about her and Scrooge’s relationship) and her tone of voice and expression when talking about them. She flipped to another page to see similar notes and rolled her eyes before throwing the notepad back at Huey.

Huey caught it and did his best to avoid her gaze.

“Should I even ask?”

He shoved the notepad and pen under his hat again and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Goldie pinched the bridge of her beak. “I’m not upset, I’m just confused. Did Scrooge tell you to come talk to me?”

“Huh?” Huey mirrored her confusion. “No, of course not! It was nothing like that!”

“Then…?”

He sighed awkwardly. “Dewey said he got an interview with you and I didn’t believe him and then we got into an argument about it and he said he had the best interviewing skills in the family, but I’m the one with the Interviewing Badge which I’ve had for several years so I wanted to...prove him wrong, I guess.” Huey covered his eyes with his hands and sighed. “Ugh, this is so stupid. I’m really sorry.”

Goldie raised an eyebrow and reached over to tug his hands away from his eyes. “Kid, it’s fine. I can always understand the urge to prove you’re better than someone else,” she said with a smirk.

Huey looked at her for a few moments before smiling. “So it’s okay if I show this to Dewey?”

She glanced at his hat and then back down at his eyes, which were sparkling and genuine and he was just a very cute kid and Goldie hated how that seemed to be something that affected her these days. She held back a sigh and let go of his arms. “Yeah, it’s fine. It’s not like I said anything that’s a secret.”

“Thank you, Aunt Goldie!” Huey said happily right before he jumped forward and wrapped his arms around her neck.

Goldie let out a surprised OOF! and didn’t hug back, just stared off towards the wall on the other side of the room.

Huey moved back away from her and kept smiling. “Louie’s right, you’re a lot nicer than Uncle Scrooge says you are!” he said as he hopped off the couch. “Thanks for talking to me! I hope you didn’t miss anything important on your show.”

“...nothing important ever happens on this show,” Goldie mumbled as Huey waddled away - probably towards the boys’ shared bedroom. She frowned and tried to will away the blush on her cheeks from the light physical affection. It was disturbing to her how much a little hand-hold or a hug made her feel like she had butterflies in her stomach. It was more than disturbing! She was practically going soft.

She sighed and thought about what Huey said before he left. Maybe she needed to have a chat with Sharpie.

[popculturebuffet]

Of Moons, Millionares and Mothers (Ducktales Season 2 Arcs)  Part 12: Happy Birthday Doofus Drake! (Commissioned by Weirdkev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to MMM, my look at the ducktales season 2 story arc! And after a long absence, even longer because I had to move “The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck” up a few slots for scheduling reasons, the Louie Inc arc is back... for the rest of the arc minus the finale! 

Yeah as i’ve mentioned before for this last stretch the various plot lines sorta glom onto one another. Though ironically enough despite this Glomgold being in this one his appearance has nothing directly to do with his bet with scrooge.  I mean he probably DID think he could win the bet if he was the last one standing, but his plan probably began and ended at “Make Dummy of myself, con teenager, ????? HAHAHAHAHA I BEAT YOU THIS TIME SCROOGIE”. and it wasn’t necessary to mention said bet when it’d come to an end in a few episodes anyway. We’ll discuss how underserved his arc is then. 

Whlie that plot dosen’t get any real mention, the other two are key to this one: Louie’s call to Goldie is finally paid off and Della gets to bond with another one of her sons, this time my boy Huebert. Aka what this dude was like as a child. 

Search your feelings you know it to be true. So how horribly with Louie’s desire to learn from Goldie backfire? How much will Doofus creep me right the fuck out? How adorably wholesomely nerdy will my boy be? These questions will be answered, along with a full review under the cut!

In short: about as much as you’d expect, way more than you’d expect despite being ready for it this time, and very much he’s a good good boy. 

But for the longer answer, we start at the manor where Scrooge senses a disturbance in the force... and the Darth Vader reference will only be all too relevant later today. For now he decides to see what’s making his Spider-Sense act up. And so we get two short glimpses of what I WISH were episodes: Team Magic fighting either a direbear or a werewolf, or possibly a bearwolf, and Dewey and Beakley dealing with a literal tempest in a teapot. 

What he sees next IS actually in the episode as Huey and Della psyche themself up to play Epic Legends of Legendquest, an everquest style mmo, saying a geektsatic chant together. It’s adorable as all hell. We’ll get back to them in a moment as they disturb scrooge but it’s not what he’s looking for.. no what he’s looking for is Goldie who as you’d expect is sitting in his chair throwing some coins in the air like she’s two face, and we get a great lead in to our opening as when Scrooge asks how she got in Louie simply says “She’s with me”. Cue the theme song:

Okay so now we have the intro down as usual let’s split up gang and look at both plots. First the really easy to cover one

THE REALLY EASY TO COVER ONE:

The reason is not that it’s bad, in fact as the last part of this retrospective showed a bad or incredibly flawed in that case plot is even harder to cover because I have more to pick apart and more to make fun of. 

No this one’s easy simply because the plot is incredibly simple. And that’s not a BAD thing. Sometimes all you need for a plot is “A chubby man is putting animals in robots go put a stop to it” or “stab this tower to death with a trading card game. “ You can put complexity in that and still have the journey be pretty easy to follow. 

In this case as said, Della and Huey are gaming together, bonding over having the same intrest as mother and son. And some of you may nitpick and say “well how is this mmo still up after eleven years? Surely it would’ve closed out by now.” And to that I point you to my friend Glen, who STILL plays the classic versoin of Runescape on a daily basis. Or to the fact Everquest is STILL online, I checked.. I might actually start an account. Not the point. Or the fact that while World of Warcraft changed massively, the original version was just relaunched last year. So an old game that requires little server matinece and still makes gobs of money STILL being online and still having Della’s account available is surprisingly the LEAST farfetched thing this series has done. 

It’s also the second of three plots focusing on Della and one of her boys, each one following the order they accepted her in. Said order is pure logic: Dewey accepted her instantly becaues he was the most obessed with her absence and as shown by the christmas episode was the one most bothered by her still being gone by then. So of course he’d be the first to get an episode, and of course Louie would be last because he’s the most difficult and has his own plot this season this ends up tying into. 

Thus Huey ends up snugly in the middle of the two extremes: Like Dewey he accepts his mom and wants her in his life and like Louie he still struggles with her. But his struggle is less dramatic: Louie struggles because his shifty nature clashes with Della trying to be responsible with her newly reunited kids, as we’ll see next week. Huey.. is just very diffrent from his mom. Sure both are woodchucks, both like prepearation and both are nerds... but Della is more the cool nerd who does a dooby behind the school and rides a motorcycle while Huey is happy riding a total dad van, logging time on his switch and getting as in everything. Both like d n d but one plays a fighter and the other a mage. It’s a struggle I have in a diffrent way with my mom: it’s always hard when you zig in places your parents zag even when it’s something you both love. 

And this plot hinges on it as Della quickly finds out that her son is grass nerd and is forging and shiz, planting crops behind a dome and refusing to level up, instead just gathering experince. The first part I get.. but in general experince the higher level you are in a game the more shit you can do, so I’d at lest got ot the check point, become an outer god and then grow tulips. 

Della naturally is bored silly.. but in a nice twist dosen’t STOP playing the game or trying to play with her son and gardens with him. She wants to play with him and try his way even if it bores her because a good mom sometimes just tries. But Huey is likewise a good son in return and when Launchapd shows up on a dragon, because of course he plays this and of course he has a dragon, and clearly has more exciting stuff going on, Huey tells her she can go with him and dosen’t begrudge her wnating to do thigns HER way. He gets that while they ARE playing together.. questing is just what she plays this for the same way painstakingly farming is the way he plays this. Neither way is bad and Della simply wants Huey to TRY new things, but isn’t going to force it on him.

In the end i’ts HUEY���S decision to step outside the bubble and go to the checkpoint.. which being a part of the duck family naturally goes comically wrong as a monster immeditly destroys all his hard work and sends the poor boy into a panic spiral. 

But we do get a really sweet moment as what snaps Huey out of his panic attack? Seeing his mom about to be crushed by the monsters tentacles.

So to save her he hits the save point and his level goes OVER 90000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000...

Sorry got a cramp there. 

00000000000000000000000000000000000000!

Complete with him looking like he just turned into broly and did the kaoiken at the same time and kills the thing.. a bit too much as della has to drag him away from the keyboard to calm hhim down before he kills everyone. 

FAMILY BONDING!

Why Did Louie Apologize To This Sociopath Again?:

Moving back to our A-Plot, Louie admits to Scrooge’s face he’s going with Goldie because Scrooge’s whole thing about having “ethics” and “working hard” isn’t doing it for him. Scrooge warns him to be careful and Louie says he’s got this handelded and... one jumpcut later he’s locked in a treasure chest in his room while Goldie loots all his things because she has no qualms stealing from a childrens. 

She is impressed with Louie’s attempted crocodile tears.. and does end up finding a use for him when she passes across an invitation to doofus eleventeenth birthday ceremony. Louie’s reaction is understandable...

As you all know in the original series Doofus.. was pretty obnoxious, meant to be an adorably dorky friend to the boys.. who instead was a mixture of fat shaming jokes and stupidity.  But while the crew updated other weak characters like Beakly, Bubba and Djon to be actually good, likeable, intresting folks, with Doofus... they just didn’t like Doofus NEARLY enough for that and decided to make him into the billionare version of Anthony Fremont, aka that kid from the twilight zone who liked to send people to “the cornfiled” and used his massive and horrifying godlike powers to make everyone else do whatever he wanted. And if you haven’t seen that twilight zone episode, do it’s REALLY good horror and i’ts sequel from the UPN version, following a grown up Anthony and his daughter, played by Anthony’s actor’s Bill Mumy’s real daughter Liliania Mummy aka Panini and Leni Lou, is also REALLY good and worth a watch.

So yeah Doofus is instead an abusive billionare whose mentally abused his parents into being his butler and maid and cultishly worships his departed “Gameemama” whose death gave him the money to abuse his parents in the first place. He also tried to enslave Louie and left a lot of mental scars so shockingly the boy DOSEN’T want to go back there and just as unsuprisingly, Goldie dosen’t get how immensley dangerous and fucked up this kid is. But Louie needs a mentor in cons so he has little choice. 

Doofus’ birthday.. is as horrifingly and hilariously fucked up as you’d expect, with mouse traps as horderves and a cake that on the outside says “Not Full of Hair”. Guess what it’s full offf?

It is hair... though that is a close guest Dormammu WAS in next years cake. 

So our heroes plan is to pose as aunt and nephew, and infilatrate the party, and while Louie understandably given who we’re dealing with just wants to grab a goodie bag , containing gold, herilooms and headless mickey mouse dolls, and run but Goldie points out that’s not the con. That’s just being a bad party guest. She wants to heist all of them by being the last one standing, as it turns out naturally the party for a greedy, abusive, sociopath who needs either therapy or  Dr. Loomis to put a stake through his heart like he tried to do with Micheal Meyers before having to pass it off as a joke, is only stocked with rich assholes pretending to have children so they can get more rich. And the bagle boys who aren’t rich but do like free money. 

Doofus then makes his entrance, seemingly going to show up in a clam like the painting of venus, but thankfully we’re spared a naked 10 year old boy. No instead he pops up behind Louie like he’s micheal fucking meyers in case you thought I was kidding with that halloween refrence. 

Doofus also proves that in addition to being the kind of villian Jordan Peele wished he’d thought of first and had to go with “weird cloud kite thing” as plan b for his next movie, he’s not SO out of touch with reality that he dosen’t see the beagle boys aren’t childrens or that Percivil B Peppington, that willy wonka looking guy, brought Johnny from ottoman empire. Look i’ve seen older people still play teenagers. He drops them all into his honey bin.. which naturally contains bees. 

So yeah the stakes are high if they get caught but now it’s been widdled down to three pairs: Our anti-heroes, Glomgold who has brought his son Sharkbomb along who given glomgold can’t conceive after a shark blew up his privates, is naturally a puppet he carries around and Mark Beaks with everyone’s faviorite goodest boy, BOYD!

Yeah I love BOYD and we’ll get more into him later. We’ll also get into Sharkbomb whose just.. objectively one of the most insane and hilaroius things they ever did with glomgold. Just everything about him: the fact that everything Glomgold learned about children clearly begins and ends with 90′s sitcoms, the fact he’s named after the two things he loves more, their photos with each other clearly shot at an old sears studio glomgold keeps in his basement, and the fact that even when glomgold MAKES AN IMAGINARY SON FOR HIMSELF, said son can’t stand him in any way shape or form becaue he clearly can’t picture anyone loving him deep down but can’t realize this and wow this got deep. 

But their heartwearming family photos bring up an issue: Goldie has none and Beaks is willing to press that weak point. Louie quickly covers with a photo booth impressing goldie. 

Fear has now given way to overconfidence, Louie’s other natural state, so now the boy is ready to scam and with Goldie now treating him as an equal, she asks him to pick the target.. which is naturally Glomgold since in any situatoni he’s the weakest link. Even when looking in the mirror as he usually just punches it after getting pissed off at his own reflection then yells curse you mirrorrrrrrrr. 

So naturally he goes down easy. It’s pool time and after talking to shark bomb alone for a second and telling “him” that goldie has a crush on glomgold, all she has to do is make some eyes and Glomgold naturally thinks the woman who dispises him for good reason is suddenly into him because of course he does. And.. louie has to do nothing else. My boy ends up fighting with his own fictoinal child because natural order of things and ends up taking his head off because this is why Glomgold dosen’t have children. That and no one wants to. He goes into the bin leaving our heroes with just one more obstacle. 

BOYD is a bit trickier because as far as Louie can tell he’s clean: he’s a good kid who just happens to be the son of a skinny weiner. It’s not until he tries to log onto the wifi that he finds a weird one “Beaks Osomething Youth Dorid” and then puts the dots together: there are NO photos of Boyd as a baby or before the last two days, and Beaks would never reisist baby’s first click bait. Granted that’s a bit of a stretch as that would’ve been ten years ago and probably on facebeak instead of Instagull. 

Point is BOYD’s a robot and Louie easily takes him out by asking what he did two days ago... and is then horrified by the results as BOYD has a mental breakdown from the reilziation he’s not a real boy and goes beserk before ending up in the pool. While Louie DID want to get rid of the kid he didn’t want to BREAK him, literally and figuratively: he just wanted to prove he was a robot. Louie clearly didn’t realize that BOYD didn’t know that, and that said revelation would drive the poor child to a mental and physical breakdown. Mark’s reaction is as you’d expect “I’m going to need a really big bag of rice”. 

Hilariously given what’s about to happen and how Doofus is going to treat BOYD from here on out, Doofus is pissed off and wants to know who did this and Goldie, naturally throws a child under a bus. Metaphorcially.... she’s only done it for realises twice. 

However while Goldie is more than willing to do a treason to get by, she’s not prepared for just how horrific doofus REALLY is. She was expecting one of those greedy kids from Willy Wonka who die horribly in candy related nightmares.  Not one of the villians of Get Out: The Preschool Years. Coming this fall to Crackle!

So when Doofus has BOYD attack Louie and then string him up as the most dangerous pinata of all man, Goldie shows she DOES care deep down and shields the boy.. which convinces Doofus she passes the test and he makes the woman into his new Gameemama and Ejects Louie. Louie is content to leave with the loot... but realizes he cares too much. Sure she betrayed him and sure she’s a theif.. but she still tried to sav ehim when the chips are down and even if she hadn’t... no one, NO ONE deserves to be trapped with Doofus. 

So we cut to Doofus having Goldie in a transparent box and arm chair because of course, when Louie uses BOYD to burst in and cut her loose. However he also realizes that as effed up as Doofus is, he gets that at his core.. the kid is lonely> It dosen’t excuse his actions.. but not having ANYONE around but his parents who he abuses horribly, to the point the only children at her body were a super fighting robot and a former victim trying to swindle him. What he needs it he thing that keeps louie himself grounded and what ultimately gave him his own concsience: he needs a brother. So he sets BOYD for child mode and makes the drakes his parents, the three warmly embracin geach other, BOYD, after what we’ll later learn is a decade of hardship, rejection and being treate dand used like a tool, finally gets parents who treat him like what he is: a child. And for the drakes they FINALLY get a child who love them and isn’t an abusive nightmare from the darkest pits of my nightmares. 

Doofus dosen’t take this well... but BOYD unteitonally serves up some Karma as apparently Gameemama’s will was nonspecific enough it means all her descendants get some.. and that means he’s entitled to half the fortune and being a sweetheart, that means he puts it in his parents account. The Drakes are now truly free... and Doofus, after two episodes of getting away with being a creepy absuive monster, finally gets grounded. 

This is a good satisfying ending, showing that while Louie can lack compasion and be selifsh at the end of the day he’s a good kid. He might, much like his uncle, deny he has a heart sometimes... but in truth he can’t help but help people evne if it directly costs him because he was rasied right. Donald taugh thim empathy and Scrooge is trying his best to teach him respect and hard work. And while he likes to pretend those lessons didn’t sink in and he can do whatever he wants deep down.. the kid has limits. 

Before we wrap up I do have to bring up the life and crimes of scrooge mcduck, i.e. the episode tha tFORCES louie to apologize for this.. depsite the fact he did NOTHING wrong when it came to making BOYD doofus’ brother. he did so SOLEY so Doofus could have someone to hopefully teach the kid empathy and keep him company, and to give to badly abused people a child who loved them back. He didn’t likely KNOW BOYD would rightly redistribute the wealth, not that he’s opposed to it nor does Doofus not deserve it and even if he did again.. Doofus deserved it. The kid abused his parents for god knows how long, fincially, mentally and god knows how else. While i’ts mostly played for laughs it dosen’t change the fact of what he did to them or how badly he was. The kid can change, he’s only 12 he’s got time, but it dosen’t mean he dosen’t have to or get sa free pass fo rbeing THIS monsterous. And even then.. all his parents did was GROUND HIM, and as Astro BOYD shows, it only lasted a few months at most. Louie being the bigger man is fine but th eepisode tries to put it on the same level of Scrooge you know, leaving someone’s brother to fly off non sentient and making one of his worst enemeis an even WORSE person simply because he couldn’t be arsed and letting some people remain goats for profit. It’s not the same and watching this episode again shows how BADLY they misread the room. 

Anyway naturally Goldie bolted with the money and Louie mopes home.. not over the money but over thinking she cared, with Scrooge, naturally consoling him. The old man admits it dosen’t get easier.. but does , without overly pushing it, show that Louie did learn something: He can’t be like goldie. When your like her you have to shove everyone else aside to keep getting ahead, to keep finding an angle and to be ready to betray even the people you love most. Louie simply isn’t that bad and that’s good... and as Scrooge put sit maybe he had more of an impact than he thought... and is proven right as Goldie puts one of the photo booth pics in her wallet. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is excellent and a highlight of the season. Allison Janey as always is fantastic, both plots are engaging and the main plot has some of the best jokes in the series from Glomgold’s dead gay puppet son, to Mark’s need for a bag of rice to Doofus over the top insane creepy shenanigans, i’ts just funny and the second plot is light and sweet and a nice compliment, breaking up  American Psycho Juinor to give us some fun bonding> It’s an excellent episode. 

Next Time: Louie nearly destroys all of space and time and Huey slowly goes insane as a caveman proves his reasearch wrong. All this and a studied the blade joke too!

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[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter nine: pleasures of the flesh

Sam boarded that plane with Chuck, Tiffany, Alex, Eric, Greg, and Louie at about ten minutes to the hour.

On one hand, it almost felt wrong to do that when she should be on the plane back to Los Angeles. Bill awaited her and she knew that she would have to face the music with him at some point anyway. She figured that the sooner she would have to see him, the better, and as far as she knew, he had ruined his own house.

But then again, as far as she knew, he had ruined his own house. She would have to return home to nothing.

She settled back in the seat next to Louie, and right next to the window as well.

Given it was so early in the morning, she peered out the window at the stretch of mainland United States under the veil of darkness. Clouds dotted the lower part of the sky beneath them: the soft orange and pink shades that kissed the tops made her think of watercolor. Despite it being so early in the morning, she was still wide awake from that latte that Eric had bought for her. A three hour flight back to San Francisco and there was no way in which she could fall back asleep.

Louie stayed wide awake as well, and she realized that was the first time in literal months that she and him had been alone together as well. He turned his head and showed her a wistful little smile.

“Almost home,” he said in a broken voice.

“Almost home,” she echoed him; if nothing, she could make her way down the Central Valley into Los Angeles and then Lake Elsinore, but that was for another day when it deemed necessary. Louie sighed through his nose and turned his head back to where he stared straight ahead at the seats in front of them: Greg and Alex were right behind them and had long fallen asleep once again, while Chuck, Eric, and Tiffany were right across the aisle, all asleep as well.

“My dad's gonna be here eventually,” she told him.

“It'd be nice to see him, wouldn't it?” Louie replied with a twinkle in his eye.

If only there was a way. If only there was a way she could convince him that he and Zelda belonged together, but if only there was a way she could tell him that he had a family in the background somewhere there.

“Absolutely. Especially after moving out here, too.” She fell silent for a moment. “Have you talked to Zelda lately?”

“I haven't, no,” he confessed. “I mean, we did see her and the girls back in Europe but I didn't really get alone with her and talked to her, though. Probably should, though, don't ya think?”

“Absolutely,” Sam replied and she nestled down in the seat some more.

“You know, Sam, if I'm being perfectly honest with you—I love how concerned you are about these sorts of things.”

“I just try to be a good friend,” she confessed.

“Well—and this is something I've learned from being around Zelda, too—sometimes you have to let people live. Sometimes some things are just better left unsaid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well—” He turned his head to the row right across from them, and the three of them sound asleep. Neither Greg nor Alex made a peep since they left the airport. “I told you she got it out of me, right?” he asked her in a near whisper.

“How could I forget.”

“I figured that there are times where it's better to keep secrets so no one can use them against you because that's—kind of what happened between me and her.”

“Oh, really?”

“Oh, yeah. She told me that if the secret gets out between us—and that includes you, too—there will be hell to pay. If Testament is going anywhere in the world, and we probably will, just knowing these two fellas right behind us right and Chuck's searing vocals, there are some things that need to stay private.”

“It's none of people's business anyways,” she pointed out.

“Exactly, right! So that said, I hope to god that things will stay under wraps with us—you, me, and her. I trust you, Sam. I trust you and I trust Zelda, too. I trust that these things will stay between us.”

Sam extended her pinky finger for him.

“Excellent,” Louie remarked as he hooked his finger around hers.

“I should ask—where should I stay when we get back to the Bay Area?”

“You can stay with me,” he offered her.

“For real?”

“Yeah, I'm kinda—by myself now.”

“Aw.” She tilted her head at that and he nodded with a solemn look on his face.

“Yeah—but I'll take good care of you, though. When we touch down there, I'll do the first thing I did for Zelda after I started frequenting Rhode Island more and I'll take you out to breakfast. I'll ask Thing One and Thing Two back here if they wanna join us.”

She giggled at that.

“If there's one thing I couldn't do for my old girlfriend but I learned to do, though, it's that. It's treating you girls right.”

“I just think of that sentiment Charlie told me when I was hanging out with Anthrax back home in New York: you guys embrace your female fans.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “We absolutely love our female fans—mainly because there's not a lot of you running around, especially with us and this... I wanna say it's a second wave of thrash coming out of the Bay Area in particular. There's us and Death Angel, and there's a few others—we'll have to introduce you to them once we land.”

“There's Exodus, too,” she pointed out.

“Exodus has been around almost ten years now,” he corrected her. “Formed in the last gasp of the Seventies straight outta high school like us and Death Angel. And of course, Anthrax have some now, mainly with the help of the Cherry Suicides, but they've got some. I've seen a few women at our shows wearing Among the Living shirts and shirts with 'NOT' written on the front in big letters. I dunno if you've seen them throw that word around lately, but they have, though.”

“Like a catch phrase of some sort?”

“Kinda, yeah. I don't know if you seen Scott with that word shaved into his chest hair before but it's kinda funny, actually.”

“I don't remember,” she confessed.

“And it's a select few women, too. Between you, the four of them, and Marla, I haven't really seen any for Testament aside from the odd small bunch over in Europe.”

“Yeah, I probably counted all of five women in the crowd last night,” Sam recalled.

“Exactly!” Louie chuckled.

Sam then reached down between her legs for her purse and she took out her journal, her pencil, and a couple of her pens.

“Ah, you wanna draw for me!” he declared.

“Well, I also wanna show you the thing I made for Greg last night on the night flight,” she told him, and she flicked open to that one page. He gaped at the sight of the black ink on the page before him.

“Wow! What is it?”

“It's Joey and Alex on either side of one of the trees from the Black Forest. They're like praying to the tree together.”

“Oh, yeah, that's Alex and the little bit of gray upon his head—and the one with the curls is Joey.”

“It needs a little more touching up, but that's what I get for drawing so late at night and being partially asleep all the while, too.”

Louie chuckled at that when a low guttural noise cut him off. Sam stopped right in her tracks.

“Was that you or me?” he asked her in a low voice.

One of them in the seat behind groaned in his throat: Sam craned her neck back at the sight of Alex shifting his weight in his seat. Even though he was still asleep, nothing could deny the pained look on his face.

“The young buck,” she told Louie with a nod of her head back behind them.

“Aw—oh, yeah, he's not quite yet a full grown man so he's still suffering from that teenage hunger.”

“You ever get that hunger where it feels like you're about to puke?”

“All the time! You ever get the kind that sneaks up on you? Like you're fine one minute and then all of a sudden, you're like, 'holy hell, I'm hungry.' I used to get it all the time even when I hit twenty years old. I had my daughter then, too.”

“So that's why you were always struggling for money,” Sam noted.

“Nah, I was struggling for money because there was no money to be made yet. Zelda was only making enough to pay our rent and buy groceries and that was it—no idea what they must be making now. There still really isn't at the moment, not with us. Our label isn't giving us squat and touring is only really keeping our lights on. Seriously, Sam, it's only every so often we can splurge on something like going out to eat—and in Alex's case, it's to keep him at his parents' house still. I figured I have enough for a cab ride back to my place and then I can get something to eat after that, but that's about it. Really, that's why we're all on this plane and not a private one like Metallica are.”

“Metallica have their own plane now?” She was stunned by that, and Louie nodded his head and tucked a piece of flat hair behind his ear.

“Yeah. Surprised me, too. But as we were leaving Munich for the first night, Alex was talking to Lars over the phone and they had flown to Copenhagen via their private jet.”

Sam brought her gaze down to the floor. To think Metallica were making enough money to have their own flight plan, and Cliff wasn't even there to witness it himself.

“Did he say how they got it?” she asked him.

“Nah, Alex was just like 'how in the world did you manage that one?' and Lars said they were just making enough money from their touring at this point that they were finally able to get it for themselves. Touring in the wake of losing Cliff, too.”

Sam shook her head. There was no way she could hold it against them for making money off of their dead friend because it wasn't their fault. But at the same time, merely addressing that the thing was a thing and going no further than that left her unsettled.

“I think it's interesting that Alex started wearing that skull ring, too,” Louie continued.

“Why's that?”

“'Cause Cliff had one himself. Remember that?”

Sam paused for a moment. Even though she only got to see him a handful of times prior to his death, it was such a vague little detail for her to remember altogether.

“By the way, when's everyone's birthdays again?” she spoke again. “I know Alex's is on the twenty ninth of September, and you're two days after me in January. I remember Chuck and Eric telling me once but it's escaped me.”

“Chuck is right after the summer solstice, June twenty third. Eric is May fourteenth and Greg is April twenty ninth.”

“All of us born later in the month, my goodness!” she declared.

“I know, right? Us Aquarians know how to throw people, you know?”

“We bear the water, after all,” Sam pointed out, “I bear the goat horns, too. I'm on the cusp.”

“I ain't getting in an argument with you,” Louie joked, “the goat horns and the bones, too.”

She giggled at that, and then she remembered the skull ring in question. And she began to wonder Alex's exact intent as the sun's first rays followed them all the way back to California.

They touched down in the Bay Area, right as the first wisps of that thick fog gathered right outside of the coast, and Sam was eager to step outside and feel the fog on her face and the crown of her head. Greg and Alex trudged behind her and Louie all the way to the area outside of the gate.

“Hey, you guys wanna join us for breakfast?” she offered them as she adjusted the straps on her purse and her overnight bag. “Lewis here is gonna take me out in a few minutes.”

“I'm ready for a nap,” Greg told her.

“Yeah, I'm probably just gonna mosey on back home and curl up in my bed,” Alex added as he rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. “Get on home and eat something, too. But I kinda miss my bed.”

“Exodus is playing tomorrow night, though,” Greg pointed out.

“Yeah, that's right!” Louie recalled. “Right across the street from me, too.”

“Oh, well, lucky us,” Sam proclaimed.

“Yeah, c'mon, Sam I am—I'll take ya home with me.”

She followed him out to the parking lot and towards the sidewalk on the far side of the black top. And then she realized that he didn't have a car.

“Are we taking the bus or—?” she asked him, but then her voice trailed off as he raised his arm up for a taxi, and the little green car pulled up to the curb before them.

“You know, the entire time I've lived in New York, I've only seen a few taxi cabs,” she told him as he held the door for her.

“Really? Well, you lived in the Bronx most of the time, though. Most of the cabs I've seen were down in Manhattan or over in Brooklyn. Like more so in the inner city part of it all rather than a straight up neighborhood such as that.”

“Right, and we lived in Hell's Kitchen, too! Down by the water and it was more like that, too. I always either hitched a ride with Charlie and Marla, or I took the subway or the bus with Bel, or I walked places.”

They climbed into the back seat together and Louie told the driver they were headed for Hayward.

“That's a name I haven't heard in ages,” she noted as they got rolling along the streets.

“What, Hayward?”

“Yeah. All the names out here on the West Coast, actually. It's astonishing, really. A few weeks ago, Chuck, Tiffany, Alex, Greg, and I all went to see Death Angel in Alhambra and the four of them were staying in Corona. When Cliff and I were together, and we visited my parents in Reno, it was kind of surreal, almost like a dream of sorts. To see all the street names and all the old neighborhoods again. And it's like visiting an old friend to an extent.”

“When Zelda and I split up, and I moved back here,” Louie explained, “the exact same thing happened to me, too. Like, wow, I can't believe I'm actually telling someone to take the 880 Freeway down to Fremont and San Jose, and the 92 bridge across the Bay over to San Mateo. Like, it wasn't that long ago, I was looking up directions from Narragansett to Boston. We're going to be a block away from the cemetery, too.”

The driver nodded in response: meanwhile, Sam peered out the window at the early morning fog as it collected all around the sky overhead. So much that Cliff hadn't shown her when he was alive, and at that moment, in the back of that cab, she witnessed it for herself. All the little shops that lined the streets and the small slivers of parks throughout the place all the way over to All Soul's Cemetery and the ramshackle apartment complex right across the way.

Louie kept his promise and paid the fare for them.

The two of them stood on the sidewalk together and he groaned.

“What's up?” she asked him.

“The place I wanna take you isn't open yet,” he explained.

“It is still pretty early,” she pointed out.

“True, true.” He led her up the sidewalk to the apartments: after he held the door for her, and she stepped inside, the fatigue of having traveled so much settled over her right then.

“We're just on the ground floor here,” he guided her down the hallway to the fourth room on the right and he unlocked the door for her.

A cozy one bedroom apartment with a small couch tucked in one corner and across from that was a small television upon a milk crate. To the right of her stood a large wooden armoir that looked as though it hadn't been painted with a coat of veneer once in its lifetime. Before her was a short hallway that led back to the bedroom in question as well as a bathroom and a closet: to the left was the small kitchenette with a narrow shabby table that needed a paint job in and of itself.

“Well, at least this place isn't dirty,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, I mean, it's just me here now—it's not like there's much to clean here anyway. You can set your things in my room if you wish.”

“You're gonna make me sleep on the couch, aren't you?” she asked him.

“Nah, you can sleep head to toe with me in my bed,” he offered her. “It's a comfy bed, I promise you that.”

Indeed, Sam showed a little grin and then she made her way into that little bedroom so as to set her things down. In one corner of the room was a small pile of laundry: on top was a black T shirt and inscribed on the front, in swirled sparkled red letters, read “The Cherry Suicides”. Right within the name was a pair of cherries with the stem split apart by a butcher knife: on the handle of the knife was a white bow.

“You have a Cherry Suicides shirt?” she called out to him.

“Oh, yeah!” he called back to her from the front room.

“I didn't know they sold shirts!” she declared. “All the times I saw them, there was like no merch to be seen.”

“Yeah, Zelda gave that to me when we were going out,” he explained as he stood in the doorway behind her. “She actually made that for me because they couldn't get a thing to make merch for themselves—well, they probably can now, but a few years ago, they weren't able to so she made her own. You can have that if you'd like. It doesn't fit me.”

“Aw, thank you. Yet another sleep shirt.” She picked up the shirt from the pile: indeed, she knew it would be a bit of a snug fit for her given she had far more curves than Louie at that point.

“I should ask you,” he began again, “have you shown Alex that drawing?”

“I haven't, no. I haven't shown him any of my art so far.”

“Oh, man, you should. You know those drawings you made for Charlie for this past tour? He was awestruck by them. Whenever Chuck and I asked him about it, he was like, 'dude, that's some of the best art I've ever seen in my life.'”

She gaped at that.

“But he couldn't put two and two together and realize that it was me who made them, though?” she asked him, to which Louie shook his head.

“Seeing as you're back out here on the West Coast, you ought to catch a moment alone with him when you can. Really show him your art, like do a demo for him.”

“He was heart broken when Jean Michel Basquiat passed away recently,” she recalled.

“Oh, I bet he was! He's more of an art nut than Lars and Charlie both. So you ought to do it for him. Anyways, I'm gonna change my clothes and I'll take you over to the place I want to take you for breakfast. You'll love this place, Sam. Best coffee and pancakes in town.”

“We'll be the judge of that,” she told him as she peeled off her shirt right there in front of him, much to his gasping. But she put on that homemade Cherry Suicides shirt for herself: the body hugged her breasts and her belly a little bit but it fit her as if Zelda had crafted it just for her. The neckline hung low upon her chest so it accentuated a bit of skin, and Louie nodded at that.

“My turn!” he said, and he took off his shirt as well. Sam kept her eye on his slender drummer's body as he stepped past her for a plain dark gray sweatshirt himself. He fixed his hair and then he gestured for her to follow him back outside to the restaurant in question.

Cozy and warm and a slice of life away from the deathly feeling right up the block from them, and Sam soon saw that he was right about the coffee and the pancakes: she helped herself to a large fat stack of five of them, each of them light and fluffy and loaded up with butter and a small kiss of fresh blackberries.

“So where are we seeing Exodus at tonight?” she asked him as she mopped up the rest of the blackberry syrup with a final bite of pancakes.

“Right over there—” He pointed out the window to the block on the other side of the cemetery, where she spotted a low but bright lit bar with dark stained glass windows. “Doors open at about five o'clock so we'll be meeting Alex and Greg over there around then. Since we're friends of Exodus, we get in for free. You'll probably have to pay five bucks, though.”

“Sounds good, though,” she assured him, and then she raised her coffee mug for him and they made a toast to one another. “Wait a minute, it's a bar, though,” she pointed out. “What's Alex gonna do there?”

“They sell food until about eleven,” he told her. “So he can go in there.”

“All the food his tummy could ever wish for,” she said as she took another sip of coffee. After breakfast, Sam settled into the apartment for a few hours with her journal and her pencil until Louie put on his Chuck Taylors and then his watch. She figured she had enough to not enough to cover the way into the bar as well as a drink for herself. She ran a brush through her hair and then she followed him back outside to the cool afternoon: most of the fog had burned off at that point, but a few wisps and thick clouds dotted the otherwise rich blue canopy overhead.

“The girls also played there,” he told her.

“Really?”

“When Zelda and I were first going out and I was trying to hide my old life from her, yeah. That was where she treated me to a show and she offered to take me home to Rhode Island with her.”

“So this is like coming full circle here,” she followed along as she put on her sunglasses; even though they weren't going very far up the street, she decided to wear them regardless of anythin g.

“Exactly! Right up the street, too, so it's oh so close to home.”

He led her up the sidewalk and all the way around the circumference of the cemetery, to the furthest point and under a row of tall oak trees. She thought about that night in Brooklyn and the Day of the Dead ceremony. She knew she would have to do it again for Cliff as they crossed the four lane road together: he reached the sidewalk first. A gust of cool oceanic wind sent a shiver down her spine but she figured the pancakes from that morning would keep her warm enough until they reached the bar.

“Hey, there's Eric!” Louie pointed out. Up ahead, wrapped in thin black leather and with his inky black hair down so it freely twirled in the wind, Eric lingered outside of the front door of the bar and shuffled his feet about. As they came closer to him, and Sam realized she had made a mistake by not bringing a coat with her, he flashed them a grin.

“Not in the Big Apple anymore,” he declared to her. “Bitchin' shirt, by the way.”

“Not even close,” she said over the whistle of the winds, “I literally forgot how cold and dry California is, even up here. And thank you! This is courtesy of Zelda herself.”

Eric held the door for them and she stepped into the big spacious room first. Given they were right across the street from a cemetery, small sugar skulls lined the walls around them. Old names from years and decades past there in the San Francisco Bay Area lined the phony bricks that were plastered upon the main wall to the left, all in thick calligraphy and block letters like the names in obituaries. Posted up at one of the tables by the wall was Alex and Greg, the latter of whom waved at her. Meanwhile, Alex adjusted the skull ring on his right hand and leaned back in the chair. He had dyed his hair jet black once more, albeit with a bit of haste, however this time around, it was hard to tell that he even had a gray streak there over his brow to begin with.

“Really, who says you can't be girly and badass at the same time?” Greg asked her as part of his greeting.

“I thought being girly was a part of being badass, dude,” Alex pointed out.

“It's badass to be manly, too,” Sam assured as she took her seat there next to him.

“Right?” He clenched his fist to show her the silver skull on his ring finger.

“I'm gonna check on the guys,” Louie told them.

“I have to pay the cover charge,” she retorted to him.

“Oh, yeah, do that,” Alex advised her.

But lucky for her, she found out that she could have half price for a drink, and thus she treated herself to an Irish coffee. A thick frosted glass of that light brown coffee with a thick foam up top and so early in the evening to boot, and she knew that the party would start. She returned to Alex and Greg, right as the former put his hands around a glass of root beer and the latter sipped on some actual beer.

“Why would you do that?” Alex was asking him once she returned within earshot.

“Why not? I could probably do it with one ball first and then work my way up to two.”

“You do that, it's just throwing a single thing in the air,” he pointed out.

“You're still doing it, though,” said Greg.

“No—?” Alex chuckled at that.

“What're you guys talking about?” she asked them with a bit of laughter herself.

“Juggling,” Alex replied, “apparently, he wants a shot at it. He wants to start I tout with one object, too.”

“That's not juggling, though,” she pointed out.

“See what I mean, dude?” He took a sip of his root beer when Eric returned with a plate with a slice of pepperoni pizza.

“Oh, yeah, you get pizza and I just get root beer,” Alex scoffed at him.

“Courtesy of the guys, little man,” Eric advised him and he gestured to the other side of the room behind him.

“I'll be right back,” Alex told the three of them and he bowed over to the table there by the bathrooms, where Louie was helping himself to a plate full as well. Indeed, Sam brought her attention over there and she spotted the man right in front of Louie. She almost didn't even recognize him from his now shorn hair and the fact his face looked as though it had been boiled in a vat of water.

“Oh, man, Zetro doesn't look good,” Sam remarked.

“I guess they haven't been doing too well,” Eric told her as he covered his mouth with one hand. “This last record they put out—last October, I think? It was a total flop—I thought it was pretty good, though. The guitars sound like chainsaws and Zetro's vocal delivery is just not for the faint of heart. I mean you heard him, when he was with us.”

“Oh, right, right! Real screechy, high vocals.”

“Indicative of thrash! But yeah, everyone hated it upon release, though.”

“Do you think maybe Zelda might have something to do with it?” she asked him.

“No clue, to be honest. Could just be nerves—you know, the sophomore slump thing, but who knows, really. That is a possibility, though, 'cause he was a wreck when she and him split and she made amends with Louie. One can only hope that their next one will be a bonafide masterpiece.”

Within time, Alex and Louie returned with plates, for themselves and for Greg and Sam in that respective fashion.

Within the hour, more and more people filed into the bar and Exodus prepared to take to the stage. Eric and Louie made their way over to the stage to check in on the band themselves, and Greg had gone off to the men's room. Thus, Sam and Alex were left alone yet again, that time with empty plates before them. He lifted his glass of root beer to his lips but he didn't take a drink for himself.

“Samantha, when you turned twenty, how'd you react to it?” he asked her.

“How'd I react to it?”

“Yeah, like—what was going through your mind then?”

“I just kind of—resigned to the fact that I was going to be twenty years old soon, like I wasn't going to be a teenager anymore.”

She dropped her gaze to his fingers as they curled around the base of his glass of root beer. She wondered what was going through his mind right then.

“Why?” she asked him as she leaned her head in closer to him. “Alex? Is there something you want to tell me?” She peered over her shoulder once again. They were alone yet again; she returned to him. “You can tell me. You are my best kept secret—you can tell me if something is troubling you.” He sighed through his nose.

“I'm just—kinda—realizing the fact that I'm not a kid anymore,” he confessed, to which he knitted his eyebrows together. “I haven't really felt like a kid in a long time, either. You know? I feel like I've had to grow up a great deal in the past six years. Hell, the past three years, I feel like I've had to grow up a great deal.”

“Well—you're still Alex, though,” she pointed out in a low voice. “You're just—a little older is all. My mom told me that when I turned eighteen in fact. She said, 'you're still my little girl regardless of how old you are.' So to that, you're still little boy Alex to me. You're still that chubby sixteen year old with the yarmulke, the one whom I first met in New York City.”

He raised his head at that and he raised his eyebrows: the softest she had ever seen him at that point.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I bet your parents feel the same way about you.”

He paused for a second. “They do, actually. In particular my mom. They did a lot for me—they still do, actually. My mom helps me do laundry and sometimes there's just something about coming home and feeling her hug me. Feeling my dad hug me, too. You know?”

“Oh, yeah! That's one thing I miss about living close to my parents is hugs from them, especially my dad.”

He ran the tip of his finger around the rim of his glass.

“So do you know at all when he's coming out here?” he asked her.

“Who, my dad? I don't, no.” She paused herself. “Why, you wanna meet him?”

“If it's not too much trouble,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “I always introduced my friends to my parents growing up. That was actually the first time I really heard the word 'meshuggah' was when I brought one of my friends over to jam guitars with. My dad was like 'my kid's meshuggah!' to their parents. And I mean—you know, it's all of us out here in the Bay Area together now—it just—kinda makes sense that we all get together and hang out together when we're not on the road.”

“Which is quite often,” she followed along.

“Oh, my god, yes! We're supposed to be back in the studio soon, too. And we've got those shows down in Reseda before Christmas.”

“By the way, when's Hanukkah this year?” she asked him without a moment's hesitation.

“Hanukkah? Oh, god, I dunno. I do know Rosh Hashana is coming up here in like two weeks or something like that, but that's where it starts and ends with me, though. I couldn't tell you when Yom Kippur is or even—almost twenty years old and I know for a fact my mom's gonna take me over her knee and I'm gonna get spanked for this—Passover. Besides my family's non traditional Jewish. I don't always wear my yarmulke or my Star of David.”

“Still a Jew boy, though,” she pointed out with a giggle.

“Oh, yeah. This last name is definitely indicative of that. There's not a lot of us running around but it's there, though. I mean, if my dad utilizing a word like 'meshuggah' isn't enough indication, I dunno what to tell ya.”

He shrugged his shoulders and rolled those deep eyes a bit, and she giggled some more at him.

“Do you celebrate Hanukkah at all?” she asked him.

“We did when I was little! Like when I was a toddler and when I first started school, but like I said, my parents are non traditional. So it doesn't bother them in the least if we miss any of the holidays at any given time, and they usually do, too.” He picked up his glass and sipped on the rest of his root beer, and then he turned his attention back to her, that time with a thoughtful look on his face. “We do have a menorah, though,” he said in a low voice.

“A real menorah?”

He nodded.

“Oh, yeah, it's as real as the black dye on my head right now.” She giggled at that. “And I'll tell you what. When Hanukkah starts—whenever it does this year—you ought to come on over. We'll light up the candles for each of the eight nights, and I'll do it for you, too.”

Someone up on stage laughed out laughing right at that moment.

“It's not that funny,” Sam cracked, and Alex cackled at that. Someone else up there addressed Alex by name, and he turned his attention towards them with a twinkle in his eye.

“I dunno, man, why you asking me!” he called out in that big bold voice, and Zetro made his way to the middle of the stage with the microphone in hand. He pointed in their direction and Sam sank down away from the look of mischief on his face.

“I see exactly one Alex Skolnick out there in the audience,” he declared and his speaking voice filled up the entire room, “—twenty years old in a few weeks time—you know, he's only in here 'cause there's food.”

People in the audience chuckled at that. Alex bowed his head and closed his eyes, to which Zetro stuck out his tongue and flashed Sam a wink. She peered over at him and before she could even so much as put her hand on his arm, Zetro spoke again.

“Anyways, come on up here, little man—come on up here and give us a li'l kick in the ass and give the cherry a good poppin'. We could use it right about now to start us out.”

Sam and Alex glanced at one another, and she shrugged her shoulders at him. He rolled his eyes and downed the rest of his root beer, and then he stood to his feet. People applauded him as he took the walkway on the other side of the room. Soon, over the small sea of heads, Sam recognized his head of jet black hair against the overhead lights. One of their stage hands gave him a big white flying V guitar, much like the guitar which Dave gave Joey for auditions.

Her jaw dropped as she watched him take center stage next to Zetro.

Alex absolutely dwarfed the five of them. He didn't even need the gray streak upon his head for Sam to recognize him from clear across the room: he had that handsome oval face and those prominent features. Indeed, there was that indication she had for him: his hair could turn completely gray and she could still recognize him, but she made that sentiment when she locked eyes with him. But as she watched him up there on stage with Exodus, she realized that it was more than that.

The kid literally stood out like a monolith. Long lanky legs wrapped in those fitted black jeans and his slender little body accentuated by that black button up: at some point on the way up there, he had undone the top two buttons and revealed a sliver of his chest to the audience. He ran his fingers through his inky black curls and showed off a bit more of his neck.

She had never seen him like that before, such that it was almost too much for her to bear right then. She wanted another slice of pizza but she wanted to pay more attention to him.

Thus, she climbed off the stool and almost ran right into Greg, who gasped at the sight of her.

“Oh, my—hi,” she muttered to him.

“Hi,” Greg said back to her. One inch of clearance separated them. “Do you know where Alex is?”

“I don't, no—I was—I was just gonna ask you.” Sam peered down at his narrow legs and his belt as it poked out from underneath the hem of his shirt. “Oh, no, wait, he's up there with them.”

“Oh, yeah!” Greg clapped his hands over his head as Alex let his fingers do the talking on the guitar's fret board.

“Oh, my,” she muttered, to which she fanned herself.

“Practice it, man!” Zetro bellow into the microphone.

“Yeah, practice what you preach!” he shouted into the microphone right behind him, and his voice was even bigger for that room in comparison to that of Zetro. All Sam could think about right then was Soundgarden, the Seattle band at the show in Dusseldorf.

Her heart fluttered inside of her chest all the while. The way Alex stood there with that white guitar pressed against his body.

“Watch my purse for me, Greg?” she asked him.

“Sam, I will walk up and down the street with your purse over my shoulder if I have to,” Greg replied, and she bowed away from there, but then she doubled back for her glass.

The fact she was legally married to a man and the fact that she had a boyfriend back home in New York. It was almost too much for her to bear.

Sam shook her head. No amount of Irish coffee could soothe the warm feeling in her face: if anything, it only added to the feeling within her. That fluttery feeling in her chest and the way her hips wanted to sway about with his rhythms.

She sipped on the glass again and then she bolted from the table.

She couldn't even make it to bathroom when Alex himself bumped into her there at the corridor's entrance.

Not again. He hadn't even broken out in a sweat for a second. But his body lingered there before her, all big and tall and with two buttons undone, as if he had done it all for her.

Not again.

“Oh—hi,” she sputtered and he raised his eyebrows at her.

“Hi,” Alex retorted back to her. One inch of clearance separated them, just like with her and Greg. “Uh—I need a drink of water, I'm like dying of thirst right now.”

“And I gotta use the ladies' room—” He tried to bow past her but she went in the same direction as him. She went the other way and he followed her as well.

“Damn it—” he chuckled at that.

“Pardon me,” she told him as she finally bowed past him and into the women's bathroom. She shut the door behind her and she peered into the mirror in front of her. A light touch of pink crossed her face. She shook her head about and let out a long low whistle, even though that did nothing to settle the nervous sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Yet another moment where she hadn't seen Alex without that stoic expression on his face.

She didn't even have to use the bathroom but she needed to be away from the table, away from Greg's prying eyes. She washed her hands and splashed a little cold water on her face before she returned back out to the bar. Greg had gone off, and Alex was back in his spot there at the table. His face was flushed and he pushed his bangs right off of his face so as to keep himself cool.

“Are you okay?” she asked him once she took her seat again.

“Yeah. I just—wasn't expecting to see you over there.”

“I see.”

“What about you? You look like you're about as red as a cherry tomato.”

“It's this Irish coffee,” she told him with a tap of the glass. “I almost wanna Jew it up.”

“Jew it up?” he echoed her. “Why would you wanna Jew it up?”

“What's wrong—with Jewing it up?”

“You Jew it up, you make it kosher and dry. And you don't wanna do that to coffee.”

“Maybe I do,” she teased him. “Make coffee nice and dry.”

Alex shook his head and stuck out his tongue at that, and then he gave her that hearty laugh once again.

“I don't think I'm ready to understand you, Alex Skolnick,” she teased him once again.

“A lot of people don't,” he promised her. “I'm just gonna tell you this right now—really, listen to me, Samantha. A lot of people don't understand me, especially my parents.”

And yet a part of her told her that it was only just the beginning with him.

[rocksandrobots]

Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 14 - Bot Fighting

Varian stood outside the convenience store next to the trolley stop, bags in hand. He had run out of minutes on his cell phone and Wasabi had lent him some money to buy a new phone card and a few other items he needed. 

Varian gave a frustrated sigh and looked at his watch. The tram was running late and he was getting tired of standing in the heat of the day. But he was even more annoyed that he had to ask to borough money again. 

Varian had been in this new world for three weeks now, and while the full scholarship Professor Granville had given him granted most of the necessities he needed, such as student housing, free meals at the school cafeteria, free credit at the college store for school supplies and textbooks, and even a student pass for the city's public transit, it didn't cover extras like his phone bill or anything else he might want to buy. 

He had tried to get a part-time job like his friends, but that was proving to be a difficult task. Most of the applications he'd had put in online he wouldn't ever hear back from and the few he'd applied to in person got turned down almost immediately. Usually either citing his age or his student visa as cause for not hiring him. 

He was just thinking of some other options to make money when a man dressed in leather and riding on a motorcycle pulled up. The man parked the bike, got up, and taped a piece of paper to the pole of the bus sign. 

Curious Varian peered over the man's shoulder to read the flier.

BOT FIGHT TONIGHT 

WINNER

$5,000 GRAND PRIZE 

Call 'Louie' for details. 

"Uh, excuse me, but are you 'Louie?' Varian politely asked.

"Who wants to know?" Was the man's reply. 

"Well, umm, what's a bot fight?" 

The man looked surprised. "You really don't know?"

Varian shook his head.

The other man narrowed his eyes. "You wouldn't be pulling my leg now would ya?" 

Varian shook his head no a second time.

"It's a competition. Competitors pit the robots they've built against each other. First robot down or destroyed loses." 

"Can anyone join?" 

"So long as you got a ‘bot and some cash you can." 

"Cash? You mean like for an entry fee?" Varian grew disappointed. He was sure he could win a competition like that with ease but he didn't have much money left. "How much money do you need?" Varian asked against all hope.

"Depends, how much do ya got?" 

Varian dug into his pocket. "Uh… Ten dollars." 

"Hmm… well that's a start anyways. Here ya go kid and good luck." 

The man gave Varian a small business card with the name of a restaurant, directions, and a phone number. 

"It starts at 6 PM, but get there earlier if possible to sign up." And with that the man got back on his bike and drove away.

                                                     ------------------

Varian raced back to his lab as soon as the bus let him off. He had called the number on the business card and the woman over the phone told him the rules of the game. Turns out there was a height and weight limit  to the robots allowed to enter, so he would only need to build a small automaton to fight with. He could whip one up in a couple of hours, he was sure. 

Once he had finished crafting the miniaturized war machine he headed back to the dorms to drop off his purchases and prepare to head out. Wasabi wasn’t there when Varian arrived, otherwise Varian would have invited him along. His friend apparently had a group project that he was working on after school. So Varian simply left him a note telling the other teen where he had gone. 

“Hey Ruddgier, sorry to keep you cooped up here all day but I’m afraid they won't allow raccoons at the bot fight.” Varian scratched behind his pet’s ears. “But I did get you a present while I was out.” 

Varian pulled out a bag full of apples and Ruddiger practically crawled all over him trying to get at his favorite treat. 

“Okay, Okay,” Varian laughed. “You can have some.” He put the bag inside the kennel. He didn’t have the heart to lock the cage’s door though. He hoped the fruit would be enough to keep his pet busy and out of trouble until Wasabi returned that afternoon. 

“I gotta go now, so be good, okay, buddy.” Varian ordered, and with that he grabbed his coat and mini automaton and headed out the door.

                                                    ------------------

“Guys, we have a problem!” Wasabi burst through the Big Hero Six headquarters waving a note in the air.  

“I’ll say, Roddy still hasn’t finished the wiring!” Fred said ruefully, not paying attention to his friend. 

“Hey, you can’t rush fine craftsmanship.” Said a large man hanging from the rafters. He was dressed in overalls and had a bushy red beard. In his hands were wires and a soldering iron. 

Fred had been insisting that the gang needed a HQ to work out of for months. None of the other members had thought it necessary, but they finally relented when Fred offered to pay for the whole thing using an old abandoned candy factory his family owned and a well respected architect known for building superhero lairs named Roddy. The jury was still out on whether or not this was a good decision but it tended to keep Fred out of trouble so the gang thought it worth it in the end. 

“No not that! This!” Wasabi yelled and shoved the note into Fred’s face. 

“Dear Wasabi, gone to a bot fight. Would have invited you but you were busy. See you later tonight. Signed Varian.” Fred read. 

“Oh no.” Gogo groaned. “He doesn't know ‘bot fights are illegal.” 

‘We have to find him,” Hiro said with determination, ”before he gets himself into trouble.”  

“Should we suit up?” Honey Lemon asked. 

Hiro turned down the idea. “No, we don't wanna start a fight and risk having Varian or others caught in the middle.” 

The rest of the gang huddled around him as he strategized a plan. “Now they tend to rotate where the fights are held into order to evade the police so we’re going to need to split up. There’s at least five possible places in Good Luck Alley alone so, Gogo you take the Red Room. Wasabi hit up the Union Sports Bar. Honey Lemon, I need you to check out the Koi; that’s like a spa but it’s got a hidden arena underneath. Fred there’s the usual warehouse on second street and Baymax and I will head to Louie’s. They know me there so it’ll be easier for me to get in.” 

“And remember, we’re only going there to get Varian, so find him and then leave. Nothing else.” Gogo admonished looking right at Hiro when she said this. 

Hiro looked hurt but he understood where Gogo was coming from. He loved the sport, but it had caused enough trouble in his life and he didn't need any more of that.   

“Okay, any more questions? Good. Then we’ll meet back up in front of the Good Luck Arcade and then go from there.” And with that the gang headed out to search for their friend.

                                                    ------------------

Hiro peered around the corner of the building and down a short alleyway to see the flashing neon sign advertising the restaurant. A burly man guarded the doorway and was checking individuals over before allowing them in. 

“Okay, Baymax,” Hiro said turning back to his faithful companion, “I don't think the bouncer is going to let you in so you wait right here and if I’m not out in an hour call the others, alright?” 

“I do not think it is a good idea for you to go in alone, but if you insist I will wait right here.” The robot blinked his coal black eyes and dutifully stood to attention on the sidewalk. 

“Don’t worry, they know me here, it’ll be fine. Thanks Baymax.” And with that Hiro walked over towards the guard.

“Ya here to fight or to watch?” Asked the tall man. 

“Watch; I wanna get to know the competition.” Hiro lied. This seemed to satisfy the bouncer and after paying the man ten bucks Hiro was allowed entrance.        

The restaurant was crowded with spectators and dimly lit. Chairs were sacked and tables were pushed out of the way to make room for the event, with a single spot light hanging down on a short stage at the back. Though Hiro couldn’t see who was competing at the moment due to all the people standing in the way. 

“What are you doing here?” came an annoyed voice behind him, and Hiro turned around to see who it was. A tall, lanky woman with an eye patch and hair piled high up on her head in a bun glowered over him. 

“Hi Fujita.” Hiro gulped. “Look I’m not here to cause any trouble, I’m just looking for a friend. Have you seen him? He’s about my age, so high, has black hair with a blue streak in it, and he usually wears goggles.” 

The woman rolled her eyes as she recognized the description. “You mean the new champ? He’s on stage right now.” She stuck her thumb out and gestured towards the back before walking off to collect bets for the next match. 

Hiro thanked her and started to push his way through the crowd. He saw Varian sitting cross legged on the small stage, with a pile of cash next to him and fiddling with a bot. Varian spotted him as soon as he made it to the edge of the platform. 

‘Oh, Hiro! Hey!” Varian exclaimed a huge grin splitting his face. “I’m glad you could make it. Look how much money I made!” He gleefully held up a wad of cash. “Now I got a enough money to pay everyone back; for everything, the phone, the clothes, and even that book you bought me. Here.”  

Varian handed Hiro the money and Hiro was at a loss for words. His new friend was so earnest, so sincere, and so completely oblivious to the den of debauchery he was currently in. It would have been comical if not for the fact that Hiro knew first hand just how quickly things could go wrong here. 

“What!? No! First, that was a present, you don't need to pay me back, and second we need to get out of here, now.” Hiro said firmly. 

Varian looked at him with wide eyes. ”But why? I’m winning!” He laughed.      

Hiro, made to answer, but was interrupted by Fujita coming up on stage and announcing the next match. 

“Now folks, it’s time for the final round!’ She enthusiastically yelled. “Yama versus the new kid, Varian!” The crowd cheered as a large heavy set man dressed in a sweat suit appeared from behind the curtain.

Hiro’s heart skipped a beat as he recognized the mob boss. Things were getting out of hand now; time to call back up. Hiro stepped off to the side and pulled out his phone to text Wasabi when a muscle bound goon stanched it out of his hand. 

“Hey! Give it back!” He yelled and jumped up to make a grab for it. But the thug was too tall for the short teen and held the device high above his head. 

“No cell phones.” He growled and Hiro slunk back over to the stage.      

His despondent mood turned quickly to curiosity though when he saw what Varian was up to. 

The time-displaced teen was winding up a crank on the back of his robot. He set the machine down and it began to jerkily walk forward as a creepy music box like melody played.  

Yama stared at the dinky looking bot for a moment before bursting out in raucous laughter. “You gotta be kidding me. You’re going to fight me with a little wind up doll!? Bwahaha. What is this a bot fight or a toy tournament!? Someone get me a real competitor.”   

Varian gave the man a smirk. “What’s the matter? A big man like you afraid of a little toy?” He sarcastically taunted and Yama looked like he was about to burst a vein in anger. 

“It’s on, you little twerp!” The mob boss roared and Hiro grimaced. This wasn’t going to end well.

                                                    ------------------

Baymax stood dutifully on the sidewalk corner. His internal clock ticked down the minutes until the hour was up, when he would then be needed to call upon the others. Hiro still had a good twenty minutes left though and Baymax's hadn't been alerted to any other emergencies. 

Just then the robot's auditory sensors picked up the whirring sound of sirens coming closer. Three patrol cars pulled up to the sidewalk in front of the restaurant he was standing next to. 

"Oh no." Baymax bemoaned.

                                                    ------------------

Hiro was beside himself. On the one hand, Varian was winning. On the other hand, Varian was winning. 

Yama was a sore loser who got to the top by stepping on others. If Varian lost the fight he would owe money that he simply didn't have. If he won, then Yama would probably tell his goons to beat them both up and take the money anyway. Either outcome more or less ended with a trip to the emergency room for one of them unless Hiro could get his friend out of there quickly. 

That was easier said than done since all eyes were on the young alchemist at the moment, including Hiro's. 

Varian's robot was a marvel. Hiro didn't know what the thing was made of but it was near indestructible. It ran on pre-programmed instructions and didn't need the use of a remote unlike the other bots. Therefore it's movements were more clunky but it's blows hit harder. Just chipping away chucks of its opponent with each connecting hit. Moreover, on the rare occasions Yama's bot was able to land in it's own blow, it would only wind up damaging itself in the process while Varian's bot remained unscathed. 

Soon enough Yama's robot sputtered and sparked and then shut down and Varian was proclaimed the winner. 

"Awe, too bad." The goggle wearing teen gloated while he shoveled money into his pockets. "Maybe you'll win next time, hun?"  

Yama just glared at Varian from across the stage and Hiro could sense the mob boss's thugs crowding closer around them. Hiro climbed up on the stage and started to tug at his friend's sleeve. 

"Okaay. Time to get going then." He nervously said while his friend still gathered up his things. 

“What’s the rush?” Said the minion who had stolen Hiro’s phone earlier. He now stood right behind the two boys blocking their exit.

“Oh no rush, but it’s not like he has anything left to fight with?” Varian snickered, still unaware of the danger they were in. 

“Oh don’t I?” Yama replied, cracking his knuckles into a fist and standing to his full height.

Varian visibly shrank at the sight, “Heeey, now, I thought this was just a friendly competition.” He nervously laughed. “No need to get bent out of shape. Am I right, Louie?” Varian turned to the tall goon behind them, looking for backup. None came. 

Varian gulped, “Fujita?”. But the tall woman made no move to help either. He looked around wide eyed, desperately hunting for a friendly face. 

“Sorry, kid nothing personal,” said ‘Louie’, “but Yama pays the light bill.” 

“Oh.” Varian hollowly said as realization finally dawned on him. 

Hiro stepped in, “Look, you can keep the money. We just don't want any trouble.”

“Awe, too bad,” Yama threw back Varian’s words, “but, hey maybe next time you’ll know better?” And with that Varian and Hiro braced themselves as the gang started to surround them. 

Just when Hiro thought things couldn’t get worse, the cops busted down the door. 

“Everyone, hands up! This is a raid!”

[drummergirl231-2]

A Recap on the Buzzards

Now that we officially know the Buzzards are the heads of F.O.W.L. as @astrodances​ speculated, I think it’s time we review their actions from the show so far (and of course  I have to add my own commentary afterwards).

“Woo-oo!”

Episode notes:

Bentley Buzzard informs Scrooge business is expanding in the Spoonerville and St. Canard markets.

Bentley informs Scrooge they are cutting funding to “unnecessary departments,” including Historical Research, Experimental Tech, and Deep Sea Exploration.

Scrooge, devoid of all enthusiasm, sarcastically replies, “Fantastic...”

DG notes:

In one of the earliest scenes in the show, we see Scrooge isn’t making the financial decisions in his own company. The Buzzards were cutting funding from departments for things he once cared about, and he raised no objections. Once he got his family back though, he also regained his enthusiasm for adventure and life in general, and those departments became necessary again. Within a few hours of meeting his great-nephews, he decided to take them on a deep sea exploration adventure, and I’m sure the Buzzards didn’t like that at all. They would have had to come up with a new strategy to maintain control of his company since his grief as a bereaved parent wasn’t enough anymore.

“The Great Dime Chase!”

Episode notes:

They call an unscheduled meeting with Scrooge shortly after his nephews move back in.

Bradford informs Scrooge that, as he knows, revenues are down in several international markets. He lists four of them and says, “We feel that...” before Gyro bursts in.

After Gyro’s spiel, Bradford asks him how he plans to ensure Li’l Bulb won’t achieve sentience and turn evil like all his other inventions. 

Li’l Bulb shakes his fist and runs a finger under his “throat,” to threaten Bradford. Bradford asks what it’s doing and Gyro says, “Waving. It likes you.”

Bradford shares a glance with each of his colleagues and then denies Gyro’s request for funding.

Scrooge tells Louie his board are the only people cheaper than he is, and he trusts them completely to make good financial decisions.

Bradford interrupts Scrooge and says they are calling the meeting “to discuss cutting your unnecessary spending here at the... money bin.”

The first cut they propose is on Scrooge’s $15,000,000 he’s spending on magical defense, to which Scrooge replies, “Do you have any idea how many vengeance curses I have on my head?!”

Bradford asks Scrooge how he can justify spending $5,000 on a velvet pillow for a dime.

Scrooge calls them “ya penny-pinching Buzzards!”

Scrooge says if they can find him 3,000 gallons of silver polish for cheaper, he’d love to hear about it. Bradford replies by saying this is getting them nowhere, and if Scrooge refuses to make cuts, they’ll be forced to fire bin employees to save money. 

Bradford says the obvious first choice is the archivist. Scrooge argues Quackfaster has kept his archives secure and orderly for 50 years. Bradford says, “Fine, Quackfaster stays.”

Bradford then says Gyro is “definitely unnecessary.” Scrooge argues Gyro is one of the most brilliant minds of their time.

 Scrooge sarcastically says if they’re going to fire all the employees, why not shut the whole bin down? And Bradford points out he does have a perfectly good office downtown before asking:

Scrooge tells the Buzzards if they fire his crazy employees, they’ll definitely seek revenge. Bradford asks for a vote: “All those in favor of keeping the bin and everyone in it far away from our offices?” The other two reply, “Aye.”

DG notes:

Isn’t it interesting that once Scrooge’s nephews moved back in, the Buzzards held an unscheduled meeting to try and get him to cut funding to his defenses and/or fire Quackfaster and Gyro? And possibly even shut down the money bin?

I’m sure the Buzzards knew exactly what they were doing in asking Scrooge to cut funding on magical defense. They knew there was something dangerous he was keeping locked up on an island somewhere. They also likely knew he had vengeance curses on his head and they wanted him defenseless. 

When they questioned him about the velvet pillow under the dime, it’s possible they were fishing for information about his dime, which we now know is more than just sentimental.

Then they tried to get him to fire Quackfaster, who keeps Scrooge’s records... even any existing records of the Spear of Selene. They probably figured since Scrooge’s family was back in his life, the event that drove them apart was bound to come up again, and if you’re familiar with this blog or @alliterative-albatross’, you’ll know we have reason to believe the Buzzards have something to hide when it comes to the incident. We believe they may have threatened Gyro to sabotage the rocket (and Gyro would have pretended to go along with their plans to buy himself time, but not actually plant real bombs on the rocket).

After they failed to convince Scrooge to fire Quackfaster, they tried to get Scrooge to fire Gyro, who built the Spear of Selene and would definitely have information to spill to the nephews if they came asking.

Then they tried to get the whole bin shut down, and deep inside Scrooge’s archives at the bin is the shrine he built in Della’s memory to process his grief in his own way.

Fortunately, with Scrooge’s family back in his life, we see a drastic change from the bored, depressed, broken, and submissive man he appeared to be in the pilot episode. With his family back, he has the strength to fight back against how the Buzzards want to run things. He said he trusted them completely to make good financial decisions - a sign they’ve had him under their thumb for years - but this was his first meeting post-reunion, and he’s not the doormat they’re used to anymore.

“Jaw$!”

Episode notes:

The Buzzards called to say Scrooge’s adventures were causing costly damages to Duckburg.

They also had Beakley pass along the message that they had set up a television interview for Scrooge with Roxanne Featherly to help boost his character.

DG notes:

Either they really did want Scrooge’s reputation to get a boost because that’d be good for the company and therefore good for them if they could regain control, or they knew Scrooge would make a fool of himself and they hoped he’d come to the conclusion again that he needed to listen to them.

“The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!”

Episode notes:

In Scrooge’s flashback of the events following Della’s disappearance, we see the Buzzards telling Scrooge his spending on the search for Della has far exceeded its budget and every other area of spending in the company. This is followed by a clip of his own private funds from the money bin draining drastically.

We see another clip of the bin draining again, followed by a clip of two of the Buzzards dragging a frantic Scrooge away from the control panel and out the door while the other stands in the background.

DG notes:

I’m willing to bet the Buzzards - while they had possibly hoped to get Scrooge killed with this rocket - found Della’s disappearance just as useful, if not more. If Scrooge had died on the rocket, that could have led to an investigation of what went wrong mechanically. But with Della lost in a cosmic storm, and with Scrooge believing she stole her own present for a test run (rather than knowing she discovered the conspiracy and was confident she could bust it on her own), the whole thing could look like a tragic accident... no one to blame but Della herself. And with Scrooge a broken and grieving man, he was easily manipulated.

The Buzzards would have known all they had to do was occasionally tell Scrooge he was spending far too much to look for Della when it was hopeless, knowing he wouldn’t listen to them, and only when Scrooge was “nearly bankrupt,” as Beakley said he was, would the Buzzards swoop in and put a stop to Scrooge’s search efforts, making them look like the heroes who saved his company and pulled him back from the brink of the abyss. From then on they had his trust and cooperation... until he reunited with his nephews.

“Last Christmas!”

Episode notes:

The Buzzards attended Scrooge’s first annual McDuck Enterprises Christmas Party in the 1960s.

Duckworth pushes present-day Scrooge toward the Buzzards to talk business. Scrooge asks them if they are enjoying the party and they huddle up to discuss the question for a moment before answering him in unison, “No.”

Bradford tells Scrooge with the economic downturn, having a Christmas that is both holly and jolly isn’t fiscally responsible. 

DG notes:

Calling a holly jolly Christmas fiscally irresponsible should have convinced more fans of their evilness. 

That aside, let’s look at the timeline a bit. This party took place after the events of the flashbacks in “The Confidential Casefiles of Agent 22!” Beakley was at the party, so she and Scrooge were already friends, so Scrooge had already worked as a freelance operative on a S.H.U.S.H. mission where they thwarted the F.O.W.L. agent, Black Heron.  When present-day Scrooge arrives at this Christmas party in the past, we find out it was the first one for McDuck Enterprises because he’d just started his company. The Buzzards, who have since been revealed as the heads of F.O.W.L., have been stationed in his company since it began because he was already an enemy of F.O.W.L.

“The 87 Cent Solution!”

Episode notes: 

They attended Scrooge’s staged funeral.

DG notes:

How much d’you wanna bet the whole time they were thinking, my gosh, the things we have to put up with to play the long game... 

“The Richest Duck in the World!”

Episode notes:

The Buzzards called a meeting after Louie spent $100,000,000 on an ottoman. Brandford asked him how exactly the ottoman benefits the company. 

Bradford tells Louie McDuck Enterprises is a business, not a bank account, and the money has to come from somewhere. Louie tells him to figure it out, since that’s what he pays him to do.

Bradford brings up the money spent on magical defense that he tried to have Scrooge cut in Season 1. He says it’s spent on a dark, mysterious island. Louie, not knowing what’s on the island, tells him to cut that. Bradford pulls a device with a single red button right out of his suit jacket and presses it, releasing the Bombie.

While on the island and trying to escape the Bombie, Louie calls Bradford and tells him to cut the funding to the McDuck satellite system immediately and drop them all on his location. Bradford asks him if he’s sure he knows what he’s doing, and he tells him he does. Bradford drops the satellites on the island and they explode. 

At the end of the episode, we find out the McDuck satellite system was a series of defense satellites, and once they went down, Lunaris was ready to invade.

DG notes:

Scrooge may have known all the ins and outs of McDuck Enterprises, but Louie did not. Scrooge knew that 15 million on magical defense was important and he knew why. Bradford probably also knew exactly what he was doing when he suggested cutting the funding to magical defense again, even though this time he didn’t bring up how much the company was spending on it and, if he had, Louie would have realized the 15 million wouldn’t have made up for the 100 million he just spent. It wasn’t about making up for the money he’d lost at all. They just wanted to get rid of Louie and get control of the company again, whether it was through becoming the heads of McDuck Enterprises themselves, or manipulating a grieving Scrooge again.

They also would have known those satellites were defense satellites, and while they’re evil, they’re not out to destroy the whole world (as Bradford later said in the finale, “...without the world, who would we larceny against?”). Bradford asked Louie if he knew what he was doing and while Louie said he did, of course he didn’t. (“The ducks almost cost us the world today...”)

“Moonvasion!”

Episode notes:

We find out the defense satellites were also useful for communication.

At the end of the episode, it is revealed the Buzzards are the head of F.O.W.L., and Bradford gives the following speech: “This has gone too far. The ducks almost cost us the world today, and without the world, who would we larceny against? The pieces are finally in place. Time to come out of the shadows, take control, and end Clan McDuck. If the McDuck family wants an adventure... we’ll give them their last.”

DG notes:

While I was certain the Buzzards were evil (we even had that IDW comic panel that proved they were trying to get rid of Scrooge), it still feels unreal that their evilness has been revealed in the show. #BlametheBuzzards2019 is officially valid.

There’s a lot to unpack and unravel when it comes to enemy spies being planted in Scrooge’s company from the beginning. Our new little conspiracy theorist Huey will have his hands full. 

And while Season 1 showed the parallels between Della and Dewey (their personalities, confidence, and love of adventure), and Season 2 showed the parallels between Della and Louie (seeing the angles and stressing out when their plans don’t go the way they thought), Season 3 will almost certainly show parallels between Della and Huey. And if Della did take the rocket because she tripped the wire while investigating a conspiracy, that would definitely parallel Huey’s search for answers. Seeing Huey try to bust a conspiracy on his own could be quite triggering for Della. She may try to stop him before he gets hurt.

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what the Buzzards have been up to and how the family will find out about it all.

[twilighteve-writes]

Feather One Divided -- Chapter 7: The Search

Fic Summary:

Feather one divided, fate’s ties frayed, Fractured and wedged, scattered and gone.

After sharing an unsettling dream of Felldrake, the Three Caballeros decided to join back together with Xandra to form a stronghold in case the sorcerer returned. But Felldrake’s plans proved to be bigger than they expected, and when he struck so close to home, it was all Donald could do to keep his family – and himself – together.

(Also available in AO3)

(Chapter 1)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fractured and wedged, scattered and gone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The box Gyro and Fenton presented them didn’t look like much. It was small, about as big as a tennis ball, and made of metal, with sci-fi looking lines and blinking lights that Dewey was almost sure were there as much for aesthetics as they were for function. It had no screen, but Gyro and Fenton had found a way to wirelessly and automatically have the box connect to the tracking bracelets so they could track each other more easily, with it being able to amplify and catch signal in a much bigger area. They had also managed to make it magic-proof to a degree, though not as effectively as the bracelets themselves.

Which was helpful, considering they didn’t know where to find Louie, yet. Dewey flexed his wrist – it had been stiff for a whole night, now – and allowed hope to bloom in his chest.

“We made four of these,” Gyro said as he gestured to the table before them. “The prototype can’t make the bracelets broadcast the signal as strongly, but it’s functional. My advice is to have teams going with the better three and just don’t use the prototype.”

“Three teams, you say?” Uncle Scrooge muttered in something akin of displeasure.

Fenton seemed to sense it and shrugged. “I mean, we’d make more, but considering it’s only been about a day and a half it’s really a miracle we even managed to make three at all.”

Uncle Scrooge opened his mouth, looked at Fenton more closely, and closed it again. He probably noticed the dark circles around Fenton’s eyes and the way his fingers trembled.

Uncle Donald didn’t let it go. He squinted at Fenton and asked, “Fenton, how much coffee did you drink?”

Gyro jabbed a thumb at Fenton, looking unimpressed. “No, no, he didn’t drink much coffee. That was me who drank off all the bin’s coffee reserves. He’s been surviving off energy drinks.”

“Energy drinks gives me a really good boost,” Fenton said in monotone. He sounded like he wanted to boast but couldn’t muster the energy to. Which was ironic, to say the least, if Dewey had to say.

“And how much energy drinks have you drank while you worked on the… boxes?” Mom questioned.

Fenton blinked. “Uhhh.”

“The problem wasn’t how much he’s been drinking. It’s that he’s been surviving off energy drink for about three days because he’s been patrolling all night for a few days before we started working on these amplifiers,” Gyro answered nonchalantly as he opened his briefcase and took out more bracelets, a bit longer than the one Dewey already had. Fenton threw him a look of utter betrayal. He ignored it in favor of distributing the bracelets to the adults.

Uncle Donald stared at Fenton. He showed the scientist a look that Dewey had dubbed as his I’m-disappointed-in-you-and-I-don’t-want-to-tell-you-because-you’ll-be-sad-but-I’m-going-to-make-you-feel-guilty-with-my-eyes look. Louie had put it succinctly as the disappointed-dad look. Except not really because Uncle Donald was their uncle, but Dewey could see the point.

Fenton’s reaction was immediate – apparently, like most people, he was helpless to Uncle Donald’s look. “I had to patrol! There were weather villains. And I can’t not help with the amplifier!”

“Uh, I didn’t hear anything about any weather villain,” Huey commented skeptically.

Fenton huffed hotly. “Well, you’re welcome!”

Uncle Donald slapped his forehead and shook his head. “Go to sleep, Fenton,” he said forcefully. “And can we go back to the search? How do we do this?”

“I’m good with people,” José said with a meaningful glint in his eyes. “I can take more urban areas.”

“I’m good with people too! I’ll go with José,” Panchito said cheerfully. He slung his arm around José’s shoulders, and the two shared a brief grin.

Uncle Donald hummed. “I’ll take coastal areas, then,” he said at last.

“I’ll go with you,” Xandra offered. “It’s best not to go alone.”

“I suppose… I can reach the more mountainous areas and fly up when necessary,” Mom mused. She glanced at Uncle Scrooge. “Will you go with me, Uncle Scrooge?”

“Of course, Lass,” Uncle Scrooge agreed easily. “As for the last one…” He glanced at Gyro.

Gyro sighed. “I’m going to monitor it here, in case the green nephew approaches.”

“Good. I’ll find it easier to leave the children here with Gizmoduck guarding.” He glanced at Fenton, frowned at how he nodded off and immediately shook his head to wake himself up. Uncle Scrooge shook his head and focused on the triplets and Webby instead. “With all of you monitoring the manor, I’m sure things will be fine here.”

“Wait, what?” Dewey blinked and stood up. “You want us to stay here while you all go out to track Louie down? We want to help find him!”

“Dewey – “

“We’ve gone with you in adventures before,” Huey cut in with a scowl. “We’re not useless.”

“I know,” Uncle Scrooge assured, “but nevertheless, we need people here.”

Webby chewed the inside of her cheek. “Well, leaving home base empty is reckless and risky… but Gyro’s already here.”

Uncle Scrooge snorted. “Does he look like he can fight a sorcerer?”

Huey gave out an uncertain um at the same time as Dewey’s begrudging no and Webby’s quick I don’t think so.

“No offense, Gyro,” Huey added sheepishly.

The scientist just shrugged. “You’re not wrong. I haven’t magic-proofed my tech.”

“Oh.” Huey tilted his head. “Is that why you haven’t been bringing Lil’ Bulb around? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Partly,” Gyro admitted. “I’ve noticed he kept going offline around you kids even before you told me about the magic stuff. It’s easier to leave him at the lab instead.” He glared. “Try not to use your magic in my lab. I have a lot of delicate machineries there.”

“In any case, I want you kids to stay here,” Uncle Donald said, approaching. “We know Felldrake is dangerous. I’m not going to risk getting you kids hurt.”

“But Louie is – “

“I know Louie is with him,” Uncle Donald cut in, and Dewey’s mouth snapped close. “And I want him back as much as you. But I’m not going to risk your safety, alright?”

Dewey gritted his teeth and looked at Mom, hoping for her to support him. Instead, Mom grimaced and shook her head. “I’m sorry, honey, but I agree. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s dangerous for you, too,” Huey protested.

“More dangerous for you, since your control over your magic is still… shaky,” Mom said gently. “And now that we know Louie’s awake, too, we don’t want to risk anything. There’s always a chance of all your magic going haywire because one of you get panicked…”

Dewey stomped his feet and ignored how childish it made him felt. “You wouldn’t even know he’s awake if it wasn’t for us!”

“We can help. I have tracking badge from Junior Woodchuck!” Huey added.

José stepped in, a green glint in his eyes. “Now, now, children. I know it’s not fun to stay home, but we want you to be safe. So stay put until we’re back, okay?”

Something snaked its way in and gripped Dewey, tying off his protests and letting it wilt by his teeth before the words even formed. He gulped and said nothing, but he was aware of Huey frowning and Webby nodding jerkily.

“There’s no guarantee we will find Felldrake today, anyway,” Xandra mused, looking out the window. “If there’s anything we’ve learned about him by now, it’s that he’s slippery.”

“We’ll do our best, though! I can promise you that!” Panchito added cheerfully.

Mom knelt in front of him and cupped Dewey’s face in her hands. “We just want you to be safe,” she said, voice soft. “I know it’s hard, but please just stay. I promise it’s not because we think you’re useless.”

Dewey squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. He leaned into Mom’s touch, and she pulled him into a hug. Huey joined soon, his warmth seeping through Dewey’s clothes and feathers; and then, with hesitation, Webby, too, joined.

When Mom let go, she smiled at them. “We’ll be back soon.”

“And, Fenton, rest,” Uncle Donald said as he pointed at Fenton’s beak.

“But Scrooge said he needs Gizmoduck to guard – “

José sighed. “Go to bed, Fenton.”

Fenton didn’t put up much fight, then. “ – yeah, okay,” he said, flopping to the couch and snoring almost immediately. Dewey and Huey both stared at Fenton, then at José, suddenly realizing that they didn’t know what sort of magic José had and how he used it.

“Oh, wait,” Webby said suddenly, rummaging her pockets and pulling out three bracelets. She offered them to José, Panchito, and Xandra. “I made these yesterday. Please stay safe.”

Xandra blinked in surprise, but Panchito reacted immediately. “Aww, you didn’t have to!” he said as he knelt down in front of Webby.

“But I wanted to,” Webby insisted. “These are for you, and José, and Xandra. Uncle Donald has one already.”

Panchito smiled warmly and took the red-and-cream bracelet, in which Webby had put in slivers of the same sea blue of Donald’s bracelet and a single green thread. “Muchas gracias, chiquita. It’s beautiful.”

José stepped in and picked the green bracelet with slivers of red and blue. “Thank you so much, Webby. I’ll treasure this.”

When Xandra didn’t step forward to take the black-and-gold bracelet, Webby looked up at her, expectant. She jolted when Uncle Donald nudged her forward, and she took the bracelet. “I’m surprised you’re giving me this. People don’t usually bother making charms for me,” she admitted.

Webby huffed. “Well, maybe they’re wrong.”

Xandra laughed in response. “Thanks a lot, Webby. You’re really sweet.” She put on the bracelet immediately, and the woven threads clashed with the metal cuffs, but she didn’t seem to care much about it.

They watched as the adults leave, Dewey gripping the doorframe so tightly that his fingers hurt. A part of him wanted to sprint to the gate and follow them to town, helping the search however he could, but something held him back. Judging from Huey’s ever-present frown, he felt the same.

With a huff, Dewey marched inside and all but throw himself to a free seat at a sofa, glaring at the floor. Soon, Webby joined him, while Huey made himself comfortable at the foot of the couch Fenton was sleeping on. He opened his Junior Woodchucks Guidebook and started flipping the pages, though Dewey could tell he couldn’t concentrate enough to read.

Gyro poked at the box he had in front of him. It hummed to life, the lines and circles glowing softly. Dewey found himself staring at the box.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Gyro spoke up. “It’s not that bad, being here.”

Huey closed his guidebook with a snap. “We want to help,” he said.

“It’s not like we’re useless,” Dewey added. “We’ve helped, when we go with Uncle Scrooge to get treasure and whatever.”

Webby huffed. “It’s annoying. I know we’re young, but that doesn’t mean we can’t contribute.” She threw up her hands in frustration. “And after Lena, Violet, and I went to get information, too! I haven’t told the adults, but still – “

“I’m not saying you kids are useless,” Gyro said. “It’s not my intention at all. You’ve managed to stay alive while adventuring with Scrooge; clearly you’re not incapable.”

“Well clearly they don’t see it that way,” Huey huffed.

Gyro stared at them and took a deep breath. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and for the first time, Dewey realized how tired he seemed. It was hard to tell, with the perpetual listlessness in his gaze, but when he really looked, he could see the slightest tremble in the scientist’ fingers and the extra blink he took every other blink, as if trying to steal blinks could equal a millisecond of sleep.

Gyro put the glasses back on. “Look, your family won’t be happy that I’m framing it this way, and I’m sure they don’t see it this way either, but here’s the thing. You’re going against a sorcerer, right? A really powerful one. And you can’t fight him with technology, because unless magic-proofed, tech will just go offline around him, and that’s if he doesn’t outright fry them first. So the only way to fight him will be with magic. Are you with me so far?”

Huey nodded warily. “What does that have to do with this?”

“Magic is rare, correct? And as far as we know, the people who we know for sure can use magic are out there looking for your brother, and you two.”

Dewey swallowed his discomfort and snapped, “Get to the point, Gyro. What are you trying to say?”

“If worse comes to worst and they all fail, who else can use magic to fight this sorcerer if not you?”

Webby sharply inhaled. Dewey ignored the sudden cold that snaked through his limbs, and knew without needing to look or probe Huey’s magic that he felt the same as him.

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Louie’s hand hurt.

He knew he had been injured when he tried to run away. He just wasn’t sure on how badly he was injured. Now, looking at how his wrist had swollen, he knew how bad it was.

“I can’t believe I got my wrist sprained the moment I tried to run,” he muttered under his breath. He ignored the pain as much as he could, ripped a portion of the once-blanket he had been tearing to slivers, and wrapped it around the sprain. For once, he was grateful of the first aid lessons Huey got from Junior Woodchuck that he then drilled into both Louie and Dewey’s head under Uncle Donald’s keen eyes.

He’d been ripping the blanket and bedsheet into strips that he tied together to form a long rope for a while, now. He wasn’t sure how strong the makeshift rope would be, but he was willing to risk it. He stuffed the dry bread Felldrake had pushed into the room through a latch at the door into his mouth and gulped in the thin soup with the sorry looking veggies floating about in it, snatched the bottled water provided with the food and stuffed it into his pocket, and considered.

Okay. Okay.

He tied the bedsheet rope to the radiator, and he inwardly thanked whatever higher being was out there that he was put in a small room. He prayed to the same higher being that the radiator would be able to support his weight.

Right. Now the window problem.

He already checked before, but he pulled at the handles of the window anyway, trying to open it. The window only rattled, and Louie clicked his tongue. How to do this…

There was a thin spoon that was slipped in together with the food. With nothing else he could see that could potentially help, Louie took the spoon, inserted the flat end of it into the gap between the window and the frame, and did whatever he could to break the lock somehow. He was unsuccessful; the crappy spoon bent instead and the window was still closed.

Though, Felldrake had put a metal bucket in the room before, most likely so Louie could pee if he needed to. The bucket was still empty – he’d slept for a few hours and made his rope for a few hours more, ignoring his dinner all the while. The bucket would be useful for this, though.

He peered at the darkness outside. Dawn had yet to break, though he could tell the darkness was beginning to dissipate. Hoping the bucket wouldn’t make too much noise and Felldrake and Leopold both were heavy sleepers, Louie held the bucket, grimaced, and swung it as hard as he could to the glass.

It cracked upon impact, which Louie was surprised of. He thought it would take a lot more than that. He gritted his teeth and swung again, and this time, the window shattered.

He winced at the noise and tried to break as much of the leftover shards at the frame as he could, put down the now-dented bucket, then quickly threw the rope out. He wrapped his hands and feet sloppily with the some strips of cloth from the blanket and climbed out the window.

The rope was still too short, in the end. Louie took in a deep breath and let go of the rope, letting gravity help him traverse the leftover height – maybe about five to six feet, if Louie’s estimate was right – and he managed to land relatively harmlessly, all things considered. He put his hand wrong, though, and he bit back a cry when the pain in his wrist flared angrily.

There was no time to worry about that. He looked around, realized he was standing basically at a roadside, and ran parallel to the road as far as he was able.

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Donald hadn’t realized how agitated he was until he stepped closer to the sea, hearing the crashing waves and feeling the push and pull of the water like a physical force, and let the ocean soothe his mind.

He noticed Xandra staring at him when he turned to look at the sea, seeing her peering at him from the edge of his vision. He stared back, asking, “What?”

“You needed this,” Xandra said simply. “I just realized, you need to be closer to the sea to get more stable. I forgot elementals like you need to be close to their respective elements.”

Donald scoffed. “It’s nothing that serious. I’m just calmer when I hear the waves.” He looked down and tinkered with the amplifier, and it hummed as it blinked to life. He checked the signals at the bracelet he wore, and sighed when he realized he didn’t see any sign of Louie.

“That’s another sign you need to be closer to the sea anyway, but okay,” Xandra muttered. “In any case, are you okay?”

Donald looked at her strangely. “What do you mean? Of course I am.”

“Donald, I’m a goddess. Magic is basically my bread and butter.” She tilted her head. “You magic hasn’t been stable since that last confrontation with Felldrake. Not even after you healed yourself with the orb.”

“It’s really not that bad. I’m just pissed he took my nephew.”

“Your angry doesn’t feel like this,” Xandra said, chasing the thread relentlessly. “When I first got here, you felt like calm sea. Your angry feels like coastal storm, usually. This time it feels more like the sea trying to build up a tidal wave.”

“Well they’ve never gone for my family before,” Donald said, walking off along the road by the coastline. “Once I get Louie back, Felldrake will get a pounding.”

“That’s not the only thing I want to talk to you about, Donald.” Xandra stopped him by gripping his shoulder and pulling back, forcing him to turn to look at her. “I’m not fully convinced Felldrake’s influence is wholly purged from you.”

“What? Do you still feel his magic wriggling about in mine or something?”

Xandra frowned. “Not… really…”

Donald shrugged her off irritably. “Then it’s gone. I mean, sure, I’m kind of more angry than usual, but that’s mostly because Felldrake took my nephew.”

“You weren’t like this before,” Xandra protested weakly.

“I didn’t have the kids, before,” Donald answered without missing a beat. He took a deep breath and let the sound of crashing waves calm him down. “Look, Xandra, it’s been a while since we last met. A lot of things have changed. And what you should know is, I’ll do anything to keep my family safe. I’ll do anything to keep my kids safe. I don’t care at what cost.”

Xandra stared. “You don’t care at what cost,” she echoed softly.

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t your sister have problem with that?”

Donald’s beak snapped shut. The sea roared.

Xandra stared silently in wait.

“…let’s check that way,” Donald said instead, pointing away to the farther end of the coastline. “Maybe we’ll have better luck farther away from downtown. If Sheldgoose kept his house in New Quackmore, we’ll be better off looking around that way.”

Xandra sighed. “Alright,” she said, following Donald’s lead as he walked and kept an eye on the signals displayed by the bracelet.

They kept mostly silent, with Donald directing their way and Xandra asking the occasional questions as they walked. Just as they turned a corner, Donald stopped, and Xandra bumped into him.

“What? What is it?” Xandra asked, peering down to look at the bracelet’s display.

“I think it’s Louie’s signal,” Donald breathed, then took off.

He ran as fast as his feet could carry him, the roar of the sea empowering him until he was too far from the coastline to hear the crash of the waves. He could hear Xandra following, but his focus was on the blinking dot at the bracelet’s display and how the box seemed to whirr louder with each step he took.

A voice rang and broke his focus. “Donal’!”

He glanced to see José and Panchito running to him, and he lifted a brow as they joined his frantic sprint. “I thought you were looking in downtown,” he said between breaths.

“We saw the signal and followed it,” Panchito explained. “But I don’t think Scrooge and Della is around here.”

“We should be able to locate Louie soon – there!” José pointed, and Donald turned.

His eyes widened when he saw the small boy in green hoodie peering nervously at the streets. “Louie!” he all but screamed.

Louie’s head snapped up and he looked at Donald with what he knew, from the bottom of his heart, was genuine surprise and relief. Even from afar, he could see Louie’s eyes water as he pulled at his hoodie, and Donald saw the tattered bandages around his hands and feet. He ran faster to the boy, just as the boy stumbled forward to meet him.

A shadow flew overhead. Hands grabbed Louie by the head and pushed him down, and he crashed into asphalt with a pained grunt, Leopold holding him down.

“Foolish boy,” Felldrake growled from Leopold’s back. “Do you honestly believe I wouldn’t have a way of tracking you down?”

“Get away from him, Felldrake!” Donald yelled, letting the ocean build in his chest and calling forth its power. The ocean was far away, but close enough to call – he could feel the seawater snake into the streets and rush to them.

Felldrake stared at Donald, blinking. Then his eyes grew hard. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The seawater reached them at last. It towered behind Donald like a wall. “And why not? What’s stopping me from washing you away right now?”

Felldrake glanced down. “Leopold.”

Leopold tightened his hold on Louie’s head. The boy cried in pain into the asphalt. With a growl, Donald let go of his control over the water, and the wall fell around them, sloshing and splashing angrily.

“Give him back,” Donald demanded.

“Careful,” Felldrake practically purred, “I can have his head crushed if I don’t like your tone.”

“Hey, let’s all calm down here,” José said, taking a tentative step ahead. “We only want the boy back, so we’ll appreciate it if you release – “

“If you try to compel me, the boy gets it,” Felldrake cut in coldly. José’s beak snapped shut immediately. When Panchito took in a deep breath, Felldrake glanced at him and added, “It’s the same with you.”

“Felldrake, you’d better get your pet to release the boy now or I’ll make him,” Xandra threatened.

In turn, Felldrake simply clicked his tongue. “Careful, goddess. You wouldn’t want a young boy’s blood on your hands, would you?”

Under Leopold, Louie stilled, pure fear in his eyes. Xandra scowled, but backed down when Donald pulled her back.

“What do you want with me?” Louie asked quietly. His voice trembled, and Donald felt his heart clench at the sight of him trying to keep himself from outright crying.

Felldrake leaned in to look at Louie in the eyes, and Leopold shifted to accommodate it. “Do you know how hard it is to find a gold touched child?” he asked back. “There aren’t a lot of you. And the ones that I found are incompatible. You’re the closest match I can find.”

Louie blinked at him. “…what?”

“No matter,” Felldrake dismissed, jumping off Leopold’s back. “You’re staying under this time. I won’t have you run away again.”

Donald could feel his feathers standing on end when the wind around Felldrake picked up with smoggy undertones in a cloudy night. The choking air intensified as light shone between Felldrake’s fingers, creating ribbon-like length that he threw at Louie. Louie flinched, but a part of Donald was relieved instead when he saw a translucent shield enveloping Louie. Webby’s charm had been effective. He rushed forward, wanting to take advantage of the bracelet’s shield to knock Felldrake and Leopold off so he could grab Louie.

Felldrake had another idea. He growled, and smoggy night sky bled to the ground around him, then it rose, rose, rose, forming the distant stars and rotting nebulas that soon swallowed the smoggy sky in its wake. He glared at Louie. “I am sick of that charm of yours,” he rumbled.

His hand struck out, and Louie tried to scramble away, but Leopold’s hold kept him in place. Felldrake’s hand hit the shield with a muted thump, but then the dying stars blazed and the shield melted around his fingers, allowing him access to Louie’s person.

Louie slapped Felldrake’s hand away as much as he could, but stopped with a whimpered squeak when Felldrake gripped his wrist and squeezed. His free hand grabbed the woven bracelet Webby made.

“Stop it, that’s a gift,” Louie protested weakly.

Felldrake didn’t respond. Ominous purple streaks bled through his feathers and dripped to Louie. The boy winced.

“I didn’t want to do this, but the situation called for it,” Felldrake said instead. His hand blazed with purple flames and he pulled.

Donald was close. Not close enough.

A blast of wind accompanied the booming magic Felldrake emitted. Faraway space swallowed the deserted streets and muffled the call of the sea Donald always felt deep in his bones. Blooming poisonous nebulas loomed and dying stars shone like silent judges. The blast of magic threw Donald back.

Felldrake looped a finger around the bracelet, hand blazing. He pulled with a grunt, and the bracelet was reduced into ashes.

The effect was immediate. Another blast, weaker this time, slapped Donald in the face. It felt distinctly like Webby in the inexplicable way it also didn’t. Webby may not have magic the way Donald had it, but he could feel her intention to protect in the now-destroyed bracelet scattering as it was reduced to ashes.

Louie cried in pain, feathers stained by dripped purple. Felldrake’s fingers trembled as he stood and breathed, the purple streaking his feathers darkening like blood.

Felldrake called on the ribbon-like spell again. Louie struggled under Leopold’s weight, trying to get away, and he began to flow gold – he emitted so much fear and panic through his magic that Donald knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was calling his magic from pure instinct alone. The undercurrent of terror in Louie’s magic had him scrambling again to reach him.

Louie turned to look at him. “Uncle Donald – “ he called, voice strangled, hand outstretched to reach him. Donald reached back.

The ribbon-like spell circled around Louie’s neck and collared him once more. The boy gasped and squeezed his eyes shut, recoiling and curling into himself. Felldrake laid a hand over his eyes, and he went slack.

Donald called his magic once more, determined to get Louie back. Leopold flapped his wings once and slammed his tail into Donald’s midsection and had him thrown back, and he would have slammed into a wall if Xandra hadn’t caught him in time.

Felldrake grabbed Louie by the scruff of his hoodie and put him on Leopold’s back. “We’re going, Leopold,” he said.

“Wait!” José yelled. Felldrake froze for a moment, but then the nebulas around them shone brighter and he shook off the effects of José’s magic and glared disdainfully.

“If any of you try to stop me, I’ll cut the boy’s fingers one by one,” he threatened. The looming nebulas and dying stars seemed to retract into him and disappeared as he climbed onto Leopold and had him flap his wings again.

“Get down here and fight us, you coward!” Xandra snarled.

“Xandra, stop,” Panchito said warily. “We don’t know if he’ll go through with it.”

Felldrake snorted. He patted Leopold’s arm. “Let’s go.”

“No – wait, no! Louie!” Donald pulled himself free of Xandra’s hold and ran ahead, his magic rising as his desperation grew. He gasped when José and Panchito grabbed him by the arms and pulled him back.

“Donal’, calm down! He’s already holding Louie by the neck!” José hissed in warning. Donald felt his breath hitch when he realized that, like José said, Felldrake had his hand on Louie’s neck. It creeped up to his head, grabbing a fistful of hair, as the other hand blazed purple. The purple light morphed into a blade of sorts.

Donald tamped down on his magic and forced it to still. The roar of the sea calmed into a whisper of uneasy waves in the eye of a hurricane.

Felldrake threw his hand down, and the purple blaze around it fell and bloomed around Leopold. It covered them as the swallowing sensation of the dying stars rose once more, then dissipated into nothing.

Donald wrenched himself out of his friends’ hold and let the hurricane out as he screamed and pounded at the asphalt.

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In the manor, Webby stilled mid-word and she gripped her wrist, feeling her bracelet. Her eyes widened, then she frowned, breath shallow.

“Webby? What is it?” Huey asked, while Dewey stood and walked over to her. He jerked midstride with a gasp, eyes rolling back as he fell to the floor. From his spot, Huey let out a whimper as he, too, slumped over.

From his spot, Gyro scrambled to his feet and stepped closer to Dewey, who was closest to him. He glanced at Fenton, who was still out cold, wishing he was awake so he would have help with the kids. For the first time, it truly struck him how out of depth he was in this.

[nidhoggssoultrap]

Headcanon Part 4

I am the storm sent to wake you from your dream.My "Headcanon" (Nidhogg, Louie, and Yvette. Mostly Nidhogg) Part 1 This one is a long one, so I'll be splitting it into parts. I don't thinkI AM THE STORM SENT TO WAKE YOU FROM YOUR DREAM.

Headcanons/Vingettes/snippets part 2Oh lordy...this is it. Love Nikki has the longest list of headcanons EVER...or well, that I’ve written. Jesus...never thought a dress-up gamI AM THE STORM SENT TO WAKE YOU FROM YOUR DREAM.

Headcanon Part 3Dress up game...one character...inspired all this...wow. But, I was able to dig up some old “flames” because of this, so it’s all good. PrevI AM THE STORM SENT TO WAKE YOU FROM YOUR DREAM.

And now, page 4. I don’t think this record will ever be surpassed by any other fandom. Geez..Also, spoilers for the CN Dawn Front event that happened around Sept 15th.

1. When it comes to the human trafficking for Grey Raven situation, there is plenty of blame to go around. I believe that because Regent 7 is found necessary, Grey Raven has a lot more leverage in the Night Order than he should. Both Reid and Nidhogg balked at the idea the way Johnny Lawrence did when his sensei told him to “Sweep the leg” in the Karate Kid. Both used arguments similar to what I used in the Discord along with Reid saying that he has plenty of money for clothes/designers to use as a means of breaking the Curse through Styling Contests. However, Grey Raven was successful at manipulating both of them to gather prisoners and use them for his experiments/more Shade people. “Are you not the King of Swords?” Grey Raven asked. Nidhogg makes it clear that he would only do this when Regent 7 no longer works and “not a moment before”. Guess what conveniently happened? So, Nidhogg gives the order to send prisoners to Grey Raven. The Blood Curse mutates to resist any drug to counteract it, but it’s still convenient for Grey Raven, who has ulterior motives.

He actually has the GALL to blame Louie for this. The Nameless Knights hold the key to breaking the Blood Curse so the kidnappings for Grey Raven could have been prevented if Louie would simply give up the Key/NOT destroy shipments of Regent 7. I predict that someone in the Night Order(most likely Nidhogg) will use the victims as leverage against Louie in order to obtain the Key.

2. Speaking of Louie, when he rescued someone from the “holding camps”/Grey Raven, he was beside himself with rage. You could have heard him on another planet and he was especially vocal when fingers were pointed at him.

3. Nidhogg has pursued Louie twice by car. First instance, Louie tells him “you’re not man enough for me and even if you were, I WON’T STICK MY DICK IN CRAZY” before speeding off. Second time was after Louie rescues a victim who “lived among fields of gold.” The second time is where Louie goes off on him and he has other people in a “three way call”/eavesdrop. He knows that people might think he is crazy, but since the trafficking has become widespread with many escapees/whistleblowers, he is certain that people won’t easily believe that “it’s all made up”.

4. Grey Raven loves teasing Nidhogg. His other hobbies include slamming fingers in car doors and setting his hair on fire. Anyway, he views Nidhogg’s conscience as a “taint” and tells him often that “I can change that. I can make it go away. Things would be much easier then.” Nidhogg constantly refuses saying that “I am strong enough to bear the burden.” However, he admits only to himself that he has been tempted to let Gray Raven take away all feeling/conscience, but knew that doing so would mean losing a lot more.

5. Confession Bear: Grey Raven is a riot and I ADORE him. I don’t quite ship him with Nidhogg, but I love the teasing and Grey Raven being very much aware of the leverage he has in the Order.

6. The reason why Nidhogg killed Lunar was because Grey Raven wanted her for experiments as a means of getting back at Louie for ruining his reputation. He intended to make sure that she suffered immensely before making her into a “better version of Shade.” Nidhogg made it clear “that is not going to happen.” Since Louie claimed the body, Grey Raven would be hard pressed to find it, much less take it for himself.

7. The Night Order is on the hunt for butterfly jewelry. So is Nikki. Louie has one of the butterfly items(his veil), but that wasn’t made by Sayet. Still, he’s not surprised that Night Order would want it.

8. Louie has a lot of white wigs and some of them make him look more beautiful than he already is. But, like Griffith, he has the “hawk eye” along with a hard edge when provoked. The difference is that Louie’s temperament is well, a bit more hot and he can be frightening to witness. He has an astonishing amount of clothes and a lot of that is due to Blue Bird packages sent by Lunar. He tried to “ghost her”, but found that he couldn’t. He often joked about changing the name of the Nameless Knights.

9. He has two lieutenants: a young woman and a young man. Both are considered “voices of reason” to Louie’s occasional outbursts.

10. The trafficking situation is where everything started to “slip away” for Nidhogg and finally decided to do what needed to be done to gain the “great power.”

11. There were multiple whistleblowers in the trafficking and not one of them were found out. It is, however, known that they were appalled at what was happening and blew the whistle as soon as they had the chance. Everyone has their limits.

12. Louie didn’t ultimately leave because of the “kiss”, but because he didn’t want to go to Lilith to help with Nidhogg’s plans and he was not about to defer to Nidhogg. At first, they argued about it with Louie being shut down. He appeared “deferential”, but on the day they were supposed to leave, Louie packed up his things and left to become a mercenary—something Nidhogg never approved of him doing.

Louie was the one who tore up the picture of him and Nidhogg and left a torn half on the bed. That’s what Nidhogg came home to and it devastated him as he felt very much betrayed(ironic considering what he later on did in Lilith/Yvette).

13. Louie hated the fact that Nidhogg seemed to conflate understanding with agreement and repeatedly called him on, especially at the final car chase. He went so far as to call Nidhogg, “A victim piece of shit!” and that he was understood “ALL TOO WELL!” That’s the CHARITABLE way to put it. Please keep in mind that the drama between these two men were in front of a young woman, three teenage girls(Bobo was actually with them. I made a booboo in one of the parts) and a talking cat.

14. While a lot of what Louie claimed about Nidhogg was largely true, it doesn’t change my headcanon “fact” that he had a distorted view of his adopted brother. According to Reid, Louie was “blinded by hate”. ALL of the Night Order viewed Louie as the greatest threat with Nikki at a very close second(really, it’s Nikki, but Louie has a louder personality, a stronger Dawnblade, and ties to Nidhogg). They found it baffling that Nidhogg was willing to kill Nikki, but not Louie. After all, Nidhogg is “The King of Swords”, right?

15. Liliana was supposed to be the “alternative bunny” if Yvette didn’t work out. He wanted to take Liliana instead of Yvette, but the former was deemed “unacceptable.” Liliana would have been way more cooperative as she wasn’t fond of styling contests either and didn’t like the Blood Curse either as she felt that Styling Contests were imposed on everyone, regardless of their ability. Those with other talents were basically screwed unless they had support from those with “the clothes”. As for the Blood Curse, she has been affected by it on more than one occasion due to her constant misgivings about how disputes on Miraland are settled and the occasional refusal to do what is required should she lose. She loves Yvette’s school and appreciates the non violent revolution Yvette is leading.

16. This is really more of an odd theory, but I think that Hostess L may have been a Nikki lookalike who was part of the Nameless Knights, hence her name. Because of this, the Nameless Knights have “the key to the Blood Curse” if not one of them. I actually came up with this quite suddenly. Would be an interesting twist for sure and it would explain the suit she was wearing when she won(black dress with a sun pendant).

17. Despite what the current Lore says, I still consider Nidhogg a Scorpio. I have him born on November 13th(number of the Tarot Death). He shares the same birthday as Leatherstrip(industrial/ebm musician), ftr. Coincidence. Also, this year, it falls on Friday the 13th. But, since I still adore him, I guess he gets two Bdays. :) He really should have been an Air sign though. Gemini would have been perfect, especially since Bobo is currently the only one.

18. I also hold on to Nidhogg being 4 years older than Louie. At least I got the OLDER part right. :p I just fee like being under 30 is too young, but too much into the 30’s would be too old. 31 is just right, imo.

19. Before the black Camaro(aka, Maro) and the white Mustang(White Horsey), Nidhogg and Louie shared a Jeep. It was known as a “Rubicon” or “Rubi”. When Louie left, Nidhogg drove in that jeep to Lilith and Pigeon. He ended up eventually giving away for “image” reasons. He purchased the Camaro right before he became Prime Minister.

20. Glossing Rose was inspired by an abstract art piece done by Liliana. When he first arrived at Cicia Design School, Liliana, who was around 11 at the time, was among the first people he met and he knew her for years. He was accused of stealing from her when the Pink Bunny stockings were introduced “That’s not his style!” He admitted that they were inspired by one of Liliana’s drawings and she often was an inspiration. Emperor’s Woman, otoh, is clearly his actual design style and he does have a similar suit. He never actually stole from her nor did he ever claim credit for any of her works.

[mysterymaybe]

While I’m at it here’s my take on Donald as the Duck Avenger as set in Ducktales’17. It kinda became a rambling essay by accident so it’s under a readmore lol

So like I’ve seen posts about how Donald became the Duck Avenger and was superhero-ing in the past and then eventually retired to raise the boys. And that is very very good, and in line so far with the character of Donald Duck and the world of ducktales’17…

But I like the idea of a Donald that hasn’t become the Duck Avenger yet even more.

So far, Donald hasn’t had a whole lot of character development other than backstory and has had more of a passive role in influencing the plot (moonvasion) and even other characters. While this was necessary given the importance of what the crew wanted to do with this franchise (coughcoughdelladuckcough), there are plenty of interesting ways to reintroduce him in season three that can actively drive the major and minor plots forward in a way that is authentic to the writing of the show and interesting to viewers unfamiliar with the more niche sides of Donald Duck.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Dad Donald and definitely want to see more of him and Della reconnecting, and clashing, over how to raise the boys.

But now that Della IS back, Donald is, from the narrative’s perspective, allowed to take a backseat and go his own path, one that isn’t centered on his responsibility as the triplet’s only parent. Donald can explore, have adventures, and make friends, as seen with Daisy and Goofy’s official inclusion in season three. But this isn’t about any of that stuff; this is about the DUCK AVENGER.

So here’s my evidence:

In the season one finale, when Gyro gave Donald the voice modulator, it can be reasonably assumed by the audience through the rest of the scene (making the rescue plan) and later scenes (with Beakley) that 1. Donald and Gyro aren’t friendly as friendly as this Gyro allows anyone to be with him, that is so that leaves room for future character interaction (which will be important for DA gadgets and stuff) and 2. this is the first time that Donald, and the others, hear and understand him without his speech impediment (Donald uses a voice modulator as DA to protect his secret identity) (also this)

In the season two finale, Donald’s anger issues are addressed and given context with how he has felt misunderstood, picked on, even powerless; but the turning point for him is channeling that anger into protective instincts for his family. So far in ducktales’17, the desire to help out of pure selflessness is a shared characteristic of Duckburg heroes. BUT ALSO, in the finale, after the day is saved, he finds out that all his hard work, fighting for his life on the moon and then his struggle for survival on that deserted island, was all for naught. And he is, understandably, upset and pissed. (Probably feeling something similar to what drove him to be the prankster known as the Duck Avenger in the first place, before he used those skills for crimefighting.)

(and well, now that Della’s back, the family doesn’t really need Donald Duck anymore, do they? they didn’t even know he was gone)

Not all character development is positive, after all.

So now Donald’s got the backstory and the tools, but he still doesn’t have the proper motivation yet. What’s stopping him from just hanging out with Daisy and Goofy all the time instead?

Enter season three, aka the season of superheros, to provide Donald with inspiration. But also, this season will (most likely) focus on Huey, and out of all the triplets he is the one that’s closest to his Uncle Donald (as show throughout seasons one and two). At this point Huey and Donald share one major thing in common: by the current narrative’s perspective, they are both severely undeveloped in the show when compared to other major characters. Coincidence? I THINK NOT! So if we bank on all that, then we have a conspiracy that is unraveling a major threat to the world, an Uncle drifting away from his family, and several new but key players entering the game.

This is what drives Huey’s character development, and if we believe that Donald’s influence (or lack thereof) will play a key role in that development like Scrooge did for Dewey or Della for Louie, then to have Donald be a superhero would be the cherry on top of the metaphorical sundae that is the writing teams’ love for interlocking themes and motifs. Someone for Huey to look up to and/or despise while feeling the opposite way towards his uncle.

Or maybe Huey’s love for superheros helps convince Donald to take up the mask in an attempt to remain relevant to his family. idk im just rambling now lol

ALSO this show loves things that come in pairs of three and so far we only have two superheroes…

In conclusion Donald Duck can, should, will, and must become the Duck Avenger in season three and im angsty about it

[a-merman-not-a-guppy]

CHINESE HOROSCOPES 2020! Fruits Basket Style

The Rat - “You're done. Put that down and get out.” - Yuki Sohma

Other Rats: Lymantria Khan, Mateo De Alva

Congrats. It is the year of the rat. The Rat horoscope 2020 predicts that you may be filled with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction even though things will go quite well.He is loyal and devoted to his friends and rather protective of them. He is not really romantic and often is really good friends with his lover. At times he can be mean, stubborn, and narrow-minded in his view but it is merely his way of being a perfectionist and his need to live by his own rules.

Don’t listen, then, to the insidious little voice that will incite you to see things in black. Look at your life with serenity: You’ll realize that, in fact, you’ve absolutely no serious reason to complain or even to worry. Celebrate the many good things you’ve been given.

The Ox - “A mystery...” - Hatsuharu Sohma

Other Oxen: Perry Flynn, Merida Dunbroch, Berlioz Bonfamille, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Charlie Little, Alana Triton, Keaton “Buster” Palmerteri 

2020 will certainly be a lucky year for those born in the Year of the Ox. You’ll be relaxed and feel good about yourself, The Ox chinese horoscope 2020 predicts that in order to amplify the good celestial influences of the year and lessen the negative impacts, it will be in your best interests to take stock of your life and to hatch out new projects. and this beautiful balance will have happy repercussions on your love life.

Some of you might accidentally encounter some supernatural events that are beyond one’s imagination. Whether such meeting is a good omen or not is to be established in the near future. But certainly it brings a new chapter into one’s life. As long as one has an open mind and does not keep thinking of negative consequences, then the situation should be under control. If still in doubt, then one can choose to totally ignore it.

The Tiger - “When I’m...with Onee-chan...I feel warm inside...” - Kisa Sohma

Other Tigers: Kanga DeRosa, Thomas O’Malley, Calliope Harper, Olafur Önnuson, Gregory Eeyore, Marian May, Sindri Dyrsson

Tigers are set to reap the benefits of the Year of the Rat; career and education, in particular, will be the areas to focus on for the next few months. Be confident in your abilities. Use your talents for good; loyalty and intelligence will get you far. On the other hand, health and relationships will not have such a positive outlook. You will need to be sensitive to your well-being and others’ if you want to have a good year.

The Rabbit - “But...I think...I want to live with all my memories. Even if they're sad memories.” - Momiji Sohma

Other Rabbits: Kiara Lyons, Shannon “Shock” Adamson, Bambi Basurto, Sora Hamasaki/Roxas, Reed Fisch, Elyon Brown

The Rabbit horoscope 2020 predicts that in general, the outlook is positive. However, the year will be marked with some tense configurations. In order to preserve your serenity, it would be in your best interest to adopt a well-balanced lifestyle at the very start of the year.Be careful about your diet, and think of getting more fresh air; indeed, you’ll tend to live too much indoors, forgetting to walk or to maintain contact with nature. There’s a whole world out there for you to explore.

The Dragon -  “No I was simply too amazed by your stupidity to say anything.” - Hatori Sohma

Other Dragons: Imelda Rivera, Sun Park, Roscoe Sykes, Jake Long, Marie Bonfamille, Deb DamselBu, Oliver Twistes, Fflewddur Fflam

The Dragon horoscope 2020 predicts that this year, you will become more sure of yourself and assert your originality, especially in your career, where your qualities will be acknowledged by your superiors and colleagues. But you’ll also have the tendency to adopt overly radical positions at times; try to be more moderate.Beware: By refusing to make concessions, you’ll antagonize even those who only want to help you! Expect luck to smile upon you.

The Snake - “So send me your desire. In the service of my fellow students, I am prepared to receive!” - Ayame Sohma

Other Snakes: Kristoff Bjorgman, Violet Parr, Isabel Flores 

The Snake horoscope 2020 predicts that your personal evolution will be highlighted by the Stars this year. You’ll discover new things that interest you and you’ll better understand the direction of your destiny. Many of you will be attracted by all that is related to spirituality. Your natural generosity will express itself usefully in the service of others. Think about this if ever you have an important career choice to make.

The Horse - “And if when everything ends, nothing is left in my hands...that's alright.” - Rin Sohma

Other Horses: Willis Tibbs, Marzel of Coronado, Marisa of Coronado, Gaston Lacarriere, Ralph O’Reilly, Lucius “Lock” Adamson, Ashley Spinelli, Mei Qin, Dash Parr, Haley Long, Urchin Owens, Ashle Boulet, Ashleigh Quinlan, Ariel Triton

The horse horoscope 2020 predicts that the year may be marked with important surprises. Now, as a native of this Sign, you abhor the unforeseen. Nevertheless, it will be in your best interest to act quickly if changes come to disrupt your career schedule. Given the favorable astral configurations of the year, such modifications will play in your favor, on the condition that you take up the challenge. Don’t be doubtful of your abilities; you’ll find the necessary resources within yourself to make the most of changing conditions.

The Goat - "STUPID WOMAN! Always stealing our alone time." - Hiro Sohma

Other Goats: Terra, Nala, Terence, Attina, Ella, Simba, Meg, Finn, Roo, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Ashlee T, Nemo, Wilbur

The year of the Rat will be full of highs and lows for Goats. Having enjoyed a relatively stable previous year, they should expect 2020 to be more dramatic.Goats will have to work harder than usual to capitalize on great financial opportunities during the first half of the year. These resources should then be saved to prepare for the difficult years of the Ox, Tiger, and Rabbit.

In the second half, Goats may face some serious problems that can last a while. These obstacles will require strong persistence and commitment from them. However, they should see this as an opportunity to grow and bring out the best in them. As long as Goats remain optimistic throughout the year, everything should turn out fine.

The Monkey -  "I'm a complete failure. At everything I do, I'm absolutely worthless. I know this, and yet I continue to burden the human race with my presence. “ - Ritsu Sohma

Other Monkeys: Celia, Henry, Jake Rogers

The Monkey horoscope 2020 predicts that this year, you’ll have to make concerted efforts in order to get what you want. Important changes can take place at home or at work, so you need to be prepared. It would be ideal if you could remain confident when you actually feel like sweating. If you act rather than panic, you’ll find brilliant solutions and you’ll triumph over difficulties. Be convinced that life is made of renewals and that upheavals are useful because they allow you to make progress.

The Rooster - “I alone am free. I could go anywhere I please. I could love whomever I wish.” - Kureno Sohma

Other Roosters:  Marlin, Iseul, Adella, Belle, Artemis, Apollo, Jim, Sally, Georgette, Chase

The Rooster chinese horoscope 2020 predicts that this year, your focus will be on the sectors related to relations with others. Thus, it will be in your best interest to think of other people more. Whether in your work, love affairs or family life, don’t make any decisions without foreseeing its consequences on those around you. Good fortune will smile upon you if you put your family and friends first.

The Dog -  “Sometimes I think the whole world is conspiring to destroy my house.” - Shigure Sohma

Other Dogs: Reza, Hera, Minnie, Sarina, Melody, John, Elena

People born in the year of the Dog won’t have to complain about the stars in the year of the Rat 2020, for they will have good luck in most areas of their life. You will need to be patient and tenacious at work. If you’re wise enough to adapt yourself to new challenges that arise, you’ll strengthen your character and develop two key qualities — the art of negotiating and the ability to make sensible choices.

The Pig - “I will forgive him right after I kill him!” - Kagura Sohma

Other Pigs: Hercules, Dodger, Mitte, Jane, Wendy

2020 will be an extremely lucky year for all the people born in the year of the Pig.The pig has the last position among the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac. The Pig horoscope 2020 predicts that the astral climate will lighten. After a rather chaotic year, you’ll begin to feel better about yourself. However, there are still lessons to learn. First of all, show yourself to be extremely reasonable in all domains of your life. Next, vow to be more selfless. Finally, the more willing you are to modify your plans at the last minute, the better you’ll fare in all aspects of your life.

[rubbersoles19]

“The Team Vs. King Louie” Issue 1

Don’t get too excited, @raidenraccoon​ and @aj-the-bluejay​. I’m not making a full comic series. Just wanted to do a little something in honor of this Evil!Louie AU that’s got us all loosing our minds.

“The Team” is not a very super-hero group sounding name, but did you know that a group of waterfowl is called a “team”? And I figured these kids would be accepting of all flocks and feathers. But these three, Huey Duck as Gizmoduck, Webby Vanderquack as Agent 23, and Dewey Duck as Captain Selene, are the core leaders. Plus, who else is going to take down their sibling-turned-evil?

Fun headcanons that are in no way canon but I just came up with will working on this: (THEY ARE VERY LONG)

Huey was reluctantly donned the Gizmoduck suit after Fenton Crackshell, Huey’s idol and mentor, fled Duckburg. Since learning that Fenton was his armor-wielding hero, Huey began to assist Fenton in the lab, and the two grew close, working incredibly well together and sharing new discoveries and ideas. Huey even became, after months of begging, Gizmoduck’s unofficial sidekick, helping Fenton upgrade the armor and being his “guy in the chair” back at the hero’s headquarters. Fenton, however, was still a scientist before a hero, and he and Gyro Gearloose had begun to tamper with mystical forces when disaster struck. The “white-hole” the scientists were attempting a make, a portal between dimensions, was pre-maturely activated by Louie, an immeasurable wave of unknown energy was released. Dewey, who was actively pursuing the disappearance of his mother involving the Sphere of Selene, was radiated when the energy struck the Sphere, Louie was sucked into the portal, and half of Duckburg collapsed. Fenton, blaming himself for the premature activation and accident, gave up Gizmoduck completely, fleeing from Duckburg as a failure and murderer.

With Gizmoduck gone, and the city in ruins, it was up to someone to help rebuild it, and Huey reluctantly accepted the armor. Soon after the accident, Donald took Dewey to the safety of Italy to work with Professor Ludwig Von Duck, Webby was accepted into SHUSH, and the two worked together for the next several years to rebuild their home, and try to rebuild their family. Gyro continued to obsessively work on the portal, trying to reactivate it and repeat the experiment.

Now, with Louie returned and bad guys and heroes running around Duckburg, Huey has joined The Team as the tech specialist and researcher, but will wear the Gizmoduck armor only when absolutely necessary.

None of the children ever knew Donald was a super-hero once, until the accident. When Dewey was radiated by the Sphere, Donald took him and returned to Italy to work closely with Ludwig Von Duck. The scientist was not only the only duck with a chance to finding Louie, but was the only duck who could help Dewey control the affects of the Sphere. Mainly, his new super-powers.

The two stayed in Italy until Dewey was an adult, training and working with him to control and channel the chaotic energy the Sphere had filled him with. When Louie returned years later, so did Dewey and Donald, each donning their own personas: Donald as The Duck Avenger, and Dewey as his partner, an unnamed hero. It wasn’t until Donald gave up his cape, refusing to fight Louie that Dewey earned his place as leader among the group, and his title: Captain Selene, for it’s the sacred Sphere of Selene that powers his Gauntlet, and himself. The lab accident linked Dewey and the Sphere in impossible ways, granting him enhanced abilities and certain super-powers, though only in small measures, until he learns to properly channel and control of the Sphere’s powers. Now, after using his still untapped powers to banish Negaduck, he leads his siblings, and other heroes, against Kind Louie and his minions.

Louie, known as “King Louie,” vanished when he was young. It wasn’t until years later, when he and his siblings were all adults and carrying the mantels of their past heroes, that he returned, ruthless, scheming, and insatiably greedy. Louie’s sudden return and rise to power, as he almost effortlessly toppled the crime rings in Duckburg and took power for himself, drove the remaining triplets, and their adopted sister Webby, to team up to try to stop him. With Louie, however, came new villains and bad characters, and more and more heroes were needed to fight them all.

Eventually, Louie would reveal to his family that he - after being sucked into another dimension in the same freak accident that caused Fenton’s demise and gave Dewey his powers - was apprenticed by Negaduck, leader of that dimension and blood-thirty crime lord. Since the triplets in his dimension had long since vanished (not so mysteriously since Scrooge McDuck and Negaduck had never really seen eye to eye), and had apparently inherited his uncle’s good luck, Negaduck was happy to kidnap the young duck and use him as a bargaining ship towards Scrooge. Scrooge, however, had no interest in Louie, nor did the rest of his family, and while Louie was heart-broken, Negaduck was merely disappointed. He was ready to throw Louie out, until the duck pleaded with him to help Louie get back home to his own dimension, promising Negaduck Scrooge’s wealth in his own dimension as payment. This, of course, was an offer Negaduck couldn’t refuse, so he allowed Louie to be one of his very mistreated and underappreciated stooges.

Over the years, however, Louie’s skills and cruelty grew, fed by his bitterness towards his family, and learned by living around criminals for most of his young adult life. Eventually, Negaduck realized that he had a chaotic force on his hands, and decided to use Louie - who had apparently inherited his uncle Gladstone’s good luck - as his new “partner.” But Louie was never one to be tricked, and after stealing a considerable amount from Negaduck, was able to secure his place in the Negaverse as “Linchpin Louie”, and became Negaduck’s apprentice.

The two fought constantly and never trusted each other even in the slightest, and it turned Louie cold and calculating, and an even better manipulator than Negaduck, what with his tragic backstory and all. The first bug job the two did together was to finally topple Scrooge’s mafia like empire, which Louie’s intimate knowledge of his uncle made possible. Having secured Scrooge and all his resources, Louie tracked down Fenton and/or Gyro in that universe, and when he realized they had never began work on the portal like Negaduck had promised all those years ago, Louie snapped.

It wasn’t long after that the the “white-hole” opened up in Louie’s home dimension once more, and the young adult, ruthless, cold, and filled with bitterness, emerged, ready to take control of the Duckburg that had abandoned him. Negaduck, however, having been back-stabbed by Louie - who not only used the portal without him but took some of Negaduck’s best villains - chased the kid down across the dimensions, finally landing on the primeverse, where Louie was already fighting with his family for control.

Negaduck’s arrival prompted Louie to work together with his estranged family to defeat Negaduck and banish him. Huey, who had still been keeping careful tabs on Gyro behind Webby and SHUSH’s back, enlisted his help to get their own portal working, and Louie provided the plans he had stolen from the negaverse. With Dewey’s powers able to fuel and power the portal, they were able to banish Negaduck for good, trapping him in “Oblivion,” a lifeless dimension. The portal, however, nearly killed Dewey and once again nearly destroyed most of Duckburg, which Louie quickly took command over. Now, it’s him versus his own family, as they try to take their home back.

PS I was literally up until 7 AM making this I think that’s a new record for me

[gearlooses]

@nightshine629 I'm your secret Santa! Sorry it's so late, writers block hit and I've been sort of busy. But it's done now! You said your favorite character was Donald, so have some Donald-centric fic! Hope you like it and happy holidays! @ducktalessecretsanta2018

--

When you’re eleven, you get a guitar for Christmas.

It’s bright red, electric, and from your uncle Scrooge. Your parents are more concerned with the crossbow he got Della, leaving you to fumble with frets and chords without an audience.

“Do you even know how to play that thing?” Della asks later that night after your parents have gone to bed. She's absentmindedly playing with her crossbow like it was a toy instead of the deadly weapon it is.

“Duh,” you snipe. You really only know one chord, and you can barely strum without dropping your pick, but whatever. It still counts as knowing how to play.

“Whatever you say, dork,” she says, clearly not falling for your less-than-believable lie. She nudges your shoulder as she leaves the room. “Merry Christmas"

“Merry Christmas"

_

“Well, that was weird,” Della says, which may just be the understatement of the century.

You’re thirteen now and you just fought a wendigo, who turned into some kind of little green bug man, with your future relative, “”Bluey""

“Who do you think he was anyway?” Della asks as the two of you make your way into the mansion. “Great-great nephew? Third cousin? Creepily devoted family friend?”

“I bet he was your grandkid or something. Did you see how obsessed he was with finding you?”

“Maybe he's your kid and he wanted to meet me because he knows how cool I am compared to you.”

“Wh—I’m cool! I’m in a band!” You protest.

“A band you made up. With a guitar that's broken now.”

Your face falls at the mention of your poor guitar's fate.

Della notices and tries to cheer you up “But I’m sure you can get a new one! We can bother Uncle Scrooge until he gets you another one!”

Even though you want to keep mourning your guitar, her plan makes you crack a reluctant grin.

--

After that, Christmas becomes you and Della's thing.

It’s impromptu snowball fights and Della making elaborate schemes to figure out what you bought her. It's hot chocolate just hot enough to burn your tongue and you always wearing that bright green snowman sweater Della bought you (it'd been way too big when Della gave it to you, but with every passing year it fits just a little better)

Even after the two of you leave for college and flight school respectively, you still make plans to meet up every year for Christmas. You tell her about Jose and Panchito and all your band stories, and in return she recounts her solo adventures and everything about flight school.

When you start adventuring with Scrooge more often, you see each other all the time, but Christmas is still special. Everything is great.

And then it isn't.

Because then the Spear of Selene happens and you can't tell who you’re more angry at; Della for taking the rocket or Scrooge for building it, but you don’t even have time to dwell on it because you have Della's boys to raise.

You fumble through parenting books, sing croaking lullabies when they cry and try to be the best uncle for them since their mother is dead missing. (You refuse to believe she’s dead. Not yet.)

You've been so busy juggling the boys and your latest job that when that specific date comes to be, you hardly notice it.

You're rocking Dewey, desperately trying to coax him into a nap, when the calendar hanging the houseboat wall catches your eye. You pause, the realization of the date hitting you like a truck.

You’re 23 and it's your first Christmas without your sister.

--

You desperately put that thought out of your mind and focus on raising the boys to the best of your abilities.

You make it through one year, and then five, and then you realize you’re pretty good at this parenting thing.

(Somewhere along the way, they stop being “her" boys and you think of them as entirely yours)

Jobs are difficult to come by and even harder to keep, with your temper and bad luck, so money is always a little scarce.

But you manage to always save up enough for the boys. Enough to enroll them in Junior Woodchucks (and, later, just Huey when Dewey and Louie drop out). Enough to get Louie a phone (that was a little costly, but Louie seems to love the thing, so to you it’s money well spent)

But, the day comes when you finally have to meet Scrooge again. You reluctantly leave the boys in his care, and that snowballs into you moving in somewhat permanently.

(It was supposed to be short-term basis, but with every passing day and adventure with Scrooge, you know it’ll be that much harder for the boys to leave)

After you fight Magica in the Money Bin, you realize that you could never tear the boys from their family.

Christmas rolls around again, and unsurprisingly for your family, it’s pretty chaotic.

Launchpad is playing the piano, awkwardly mangling Christmas carols in a way you know you'll never be able to get out of your head. Beakley is in the corner of the room, talking to the Ghost of Christmas Future. Flirting, maybe? You don’t know and frankly, you don’t think you want to. Louie has already opened all his presents and is methodically inspecting each one. Huey and Webby are re-decorating the Christmas tree for what must be the third time, Huey reading from his guidebook while Webby incorporates more martial arts moves into it than strictly necessary. Dewey had disappeared for a little bit (and, remembering your wendigo fight so many years ago, you have a pretty good idea of where he went), but now he's excitedly reenacting some sort of battle for the Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present, using a candy cane as a sword.

You lean back against the wall and smile contentedly.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reviews: The Battle for Castle McDuck!

How to sum up how I feel about this episode.... 

Yeah that’ll do it. This wasn’t a BAD episode. It flowed nicely, had two great new additions to the cast.. but after weeks of really good episodes, warts and all.. this one was just.. okay. Part of the problem isn’t the episode’s fault as I went in expecting the answers to scrooge’s immortality, the answers to hortense we didn’t get last week, and you know donald and della actually getting to interact with their grandparents. I got.. pretty much none of that, though I did get some answer as to how Hortense lived long enough to have donald. But we’ll get to that. Point is part of the episodes baggage is on setting my expectations too high, the same happened with “Astro B.O.Y.D.” earlier this season and in hindsight, that one is really excellent even if it wasn’t the fenton episode I was hoping for, it’s still really damn good. THis one... even if it’s not what I was hoping ofr, while not bad it’s still pretty medicore. Let’s get into why shall we? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We open at Castle McDuck, where Webby’s narrating for people who didn’t see the last episode set here and aren’t obsessive about watching the show like you or I. And also because this time she’s not so starstruck that she can’t actually speak or function, so she can actually get all the lore she wants in. The family is here because while the Druid stones seem to be working, the mists protecting the castle, and keeping it out of lockstep with reality every 5 years, have suddenly vanished.  Naturally Fergus blames Scrooge for that. I’m mixed on this version of Fergus. While i’m fine with chanigng things up from life and times, having him live and having him resent scrooge on some level, it worked better last time as there was emotional weight and a reason behind it: Scrooge and him didn’t get along becasue Fergus missed his boy and resented that his sucess lost him a son and made him cold and bitter like Fergus himself. It fit both men to just be too damn proud to talk it out. So while Fergus being a bit crotchety still isn’t ENITRELY out of character him still being a dick to his son for no real reason and given no new one for being an asshole to him just annoys me. The character last time was three dimensional, understandable and likeable. This one is just a bitter old man constantly yelling at his son and doting on his daughter. More on that bit in a bit. 

Downy meanwhile is just as lovely as last time: Since she lived long enough to see her grand children this time, I love seeing her as a wonderful doting grandmother to her great grandbabies. She’s wonderful and I’m thrilled to see her again. It does however bring up one of this episodes biggest issues: Donald and Della are absent and this time for no good reason. Last time, it was fair enough to exclude Donald as there was no real space for him in the narrative, and he likely , even if he loved grandma and grandpa, didn’t want to have to explain his estrangment with scrooge to them and break his poor gram-gram’s heart. That’s fair.  This time though? Their not there because.. frank didn’t want to use them. That’s.. literally it. They could’ve fit fine into the family fued narrative epseically since we’ve seen them sibling squabble, and unlike other adventures they’ve been absent, where they clearly just wanted scrooge to have time with the kids, or in the case of rumble for ragnarok scrooge had valid reason for not using them, this time? There’s no good excuse. Della would want to see her grandparents, Donald would get drug along. They only appear every 5 years. WHy the hell wouldn’t they be here?! I get trying to have character ballance but we’ve had several episodes this season of just scrooge and the kids. We DIDN’T need it this time and the lack of characters dosen’t really change anything. It instead wastes plots like getting to see what Donald and Della’s relationships with their grandparents is like, or their aunt, or finding out how their mother died or at least fucking MENTIONING hortense outside of one word and a photo. YOu think the fact their sister is dead would be important to Scrooge and Matilda but it just.. never comes up. Their niece and nephew never come up and my patince comes up short. I’m fine with character ballance but i’m not fine with wasting a golden opportunity for character interactions we haven’t gotten. I get we just had two weeks of donald and della I do, but it dosen’t make this any less frustrating or nonsensical. Having characters appear two episodes in a row dosen’t magically make them irrelevant or we’d be seeing less of Huey or Louie or Dewey and outside of last week, we REALLY haven’t. If they can show up once an episode why can’t their parents?

Point is a mystery’s afoot, and so is THE PHANTOM BLOT.. to no one’s suprise as he was both in the episode’s description and frankly magic being drained is his mo, this time using a portable generator. Webby dosen’t catch on to this.. but  I let it slide as while she’s the only one to have really met and fought the blot.. she’s also busy with mc duck family stuff and frankly while a missing mystery is here, given how deep the mcduck rouge’s gallery goes, it’s not a stretch to say it could be any one of them. Especially Glomgold, who while not magic is willing to pay for rediculous shit why would “dispersing scrooge’s family castle’s mists to bug his parents” be any diffrent. Or possibly replace them as their son because he’s kind of nuts and entirely made of stupid and that’s why we love him. And Magica has the obvious motives of revenge on scrooge, as this isn’t her first set of dead parents, and a castle full of mystic wonders. It’s plausable to wait and see who it is first instead of just assuming it’s one guy. 

And yup there’s a mysterin town:A set of mystical bagpipes of the clan mcduck that can bring life to where there is none. We don’t know if they can raise the dead but they can bring inanimate objects to life so there’s that. But seriously Donald should take them to his parents graves just to be safe. But before we can get to duck necormancy we have to find them so we get... (checks notes) a Louie and Huey team up again where Louie is an abrasive jackass to his brother for planning ahead, despite the fact he’s been proven wrong on that front twice now, and is entirely insufferable and has learned nothing about trying to find a quick and easy way of doing things depsit elearning this lesson 80 times already. 

As you can tell I hate this subplot and am getting it out of the way NOW because it’s not good and treads ground we’ve tread THREE TIMES ALREADY. and you did it right the first time, you did it okay if sloppiily with let’s get dangerous. Why this ? Louie learns nothing, Huey learns nothing and it’s not funny.The two just search for the mystery, and Louie is impatient. Though talking with a friend in a ducktales server, i’m in one now and it actually really helps with these, did make me realize that Louie’s character development has stalled like I thought... it’s simply a Marco Diaz situation. Like the third season of star vs the forces of evil, it’s basically a coin flip if your getting a well developed verison of the character that’s been built up over multiple seasons.. or a jackass whose learned nothing and treats other people badly. Their different FLAVORS of jackass but jackass still tastes awful no matter who it is. It’s not as BAD as it was there as while it’s not helpign the character, it’s not actively having him do the worst things possible, but it still makes Louie’s plots a chore to sit through at times as when he’s not well written like with split sword, rumble for ragnarok or tickening, he’s just a 2 dimensional greedy jerkhole and I don’t want to spend time with him. And the other brothers have had times of being written one dimensional, not going to lie, but all I get from Louie in these plots is this:

After almost getting his family killed, after getting scrooge’s fortune overnight with minimal effort and having everything he wanted only to learn, suprise, it takes a lot of work to maintain.. and he still just dosent’ get that the easy way isn’t always the way, and after the trickining and let’s get dangerous hasn’t learned his brother is usually right when he’s being anal retentive. This was fine in the last 2 seasons but too much has happened for him to get away with this shit and not come off as obnoxious. It just drags any episode it’s in down with it. I”ll leave the rest of the review under the cut. 

One more subplot before we dig into the main one: The Phantom Blot and his new partner, Pepper! If you don’t remember her it’s fine as she wasn’t named but she was the egghead voiced by Amy Sedaris who showed up for one scene back in the Blot’s first apperance and who frank said they had more plans for. Well we see those plans now as Pepper has been paired with the Blot for this mission as Bradford’s policy for missing mystery missions now is the buddy system. No going solo, despite the Blot really not liking any of this. Which honestly both fits Bradford, as he’s endlessly practical, and is just a good idea: most of his agents are kind of wild cards and have their own agends so forcing them to work together not only gives them better odds with scrooge, but prevents them from working their own angles against FOWLS better instrests. IN this case having the peppy, energetic and talkative pepper go with the closed off and dogmatic blot keeps him from going overboard, as Castle McDuck is basically one large magical nightmare for him to destroy and Blot keeps pepper on task and on stealth since, as we learn now we get to know her, she’s a bit overly excitable and not all that subtle, if not to dewey or della levels. She can stealth when necessary. She’s also DETERMINED to get the blot to bond with her and work with her, and is delighted to work with him, getting the job because.. no one else wanted it becasue the blot scares people and puts them off with his intensity, which he’s shocked about but really shoudln’t be. 

IT’s just a nice dynamic, he helps her be a better agent and she helps him realize he can’t do EVERYTHING alone and that blindly destroying all magic in his path, as much as he’d like to isn’t the option, using some runes to track them. Sure pepper makes their presence obvious once or twice, btu she’s also essential to the mission more often than not and by the end, even if they loose, we’ll get to that, Blot has fully accepted his partner. It’s.. honestly heartwarming when you think about it: The blot’s probably closed him off from personal relationships of any kind because A) his family got brutally murdered by the person he’s hutning and B), he has a mission he can never rest in. He likely wanted to work alone because it’s how he rolls nad i’t sonly through seeing someone who genuinely WANTS to be around him and wants his missiong ot succeed that he realizes he dosen’t have to push everyone away and allies are more useful than none. It’s a warped way of thinking but for someone with as much baggage as blotty, it’s progresss and it’s a really sweet story. HOpefully this relationship will go farther.. I mean strange relationships have happened than a dogmatic dog who hates magic and a peppy go getter both working for an obliviously evil businessman. 

So onto the main plot: Turns out Scrooge wasn’t the first person Fergus called this episode as we meet the DT17 version of Matilda! Horay! She’s voice by Michelle Gomez who like David Tennant and Catherine Tate before her is a doctor who alumnus.. though this time she’s past my time watching the show. I really gotta get on catching up. She played Missy, the female regneration of the master. Gomez is spectacular in the part here, and while I have no past experince with her I certainly want to see more of her work as she’s a delight.  Matilda is Scrooge’s sister. In the comics she was the duitful sister who looked up to her big brother as he left Scotland to make his fortune, sending money and mementio’s back she scrapbooked. She eventually went with Scrooge to america with him... but this didn’t end well as Scrooge took advantage of his sisters as help and when he finally did take them along on an adventure, it was his lowest point, going from an honest buisness man to a cruel robber baron for one moment and left him and his company. She and Hortense TRIED building a bridge with a suprise party.. but by that point while Scrooge had backed away from being a monster, he was still such a dick things blew up. As far as we know he never saw hortense alive again, and he only saw matilda in her old age with the two reconcliing. I’ll get more into ALL of this when I get to those pieces of life and times obviously. Point is she’s a good character.  And so is her reboot version.. but the reboot version did catch me off guard as, much like her dad she’s not really much like the sensible sweet woman from the comics. But given DT17 tends to really play fast and loose with previous versions of characters, and it often works out i’m not going to gripe about it: what  they did here works. As for what EXACTLY they did here, this version of Matilda is more flighty: not incomptient or lacking in charm, but due to sort of bouncing from one improable venture to the next and staying at her parents between ventures. She’s sort of a female version of Jubal Pomp, an itallian duck comics character who modelded himself after Scrooge, but dosen’t have the common sense or work ethic scrooge does. That’s really matilda here minus the looking up to scrooge part: she dosen’t seem untalented, just a bit footloose. She also likes needling her brother and is unsuprisingly her dad’s faviorite since she’s around more.  The two naturally get under each others skin, and we get our main conflict... not just because of their fighting.. but because Webby can’t help but mettle. She’s what makes this plot work: Webby can’t help but try to interfere because she dosen’t get siblings sometimes fight and have long standing resentments, something I relate to, and that stepping in or trying to end it sometimes just makes it worse. Granted sometimes’ it’s necessary, but in this casey Dewey, whose trying to inch her away is right on the money and after the awful plot with these two in SPlit Sword, it’s nice to see Dewey be in the right, but for actually good reason instead of just because the episode says so. Here he’s right that her getting involved will only escalate and her attempt to do so only reveals Matilda kidnapped scrooge’s pet hair clump and died it. She also has something resembling an emu.  This only makes things worse and starts to escalate tensions leading to some between both sides, as Fergus takes Matilda’s and Downy takes scrooges. Again REALLY could’ve used the twins. We do get a nice bit where Webby coaxe Dewey, who understandably dosen’t want to help her further spiral into her own issues by helping mend family issues she really isn’t qualified to solve.. because she’s you know... 13. I mean granted Steven Universe did this sort of thing at her age.. but given he eventually repressed his issues so much he had a mental breakdown and turned into a giant angst monster, and only got better with therapy.. maybe get some therapy instead Webby. Just saying. Therapy everyone? Therapy? But yeah she coaxes Dewey with a statdew, and yes she says that exactly.  This gets the family breifly united, as Dewey fakes an injury.. but finding out it’s fakkkke combined with Huey and Louie coming in just causes the enitre family to spiral into squabbling and webby to shut down a bit, with Scrooge planning to form his own clan after bickering iwth his parents and sister. Oh and it only gets worse when Pepper accidently brings some statues to life, and they get in on it too while Webby’s convinced the families over and she just wanted a place in it. And even if this isnt’ the BEST episdoe the show’s ever done, i’ll get to why in a second, I do like this. Webby’s nearly LOST this family once, way back at the end of season 1 when no one but beakly thought of her feelings about her best friends and surrogate uncle all leaving her after her other surrogate uncle you know.. said some pretty unforgivable things. She’s trying SO hard to force it to fit, so hard to fix things because she can’t stand them being broken, something I PAINFULLY relate to given my own personal issues with not being able to stand people being upset with me. She just wanted a family and i’ts gone.  Of course it isn’t and webby’s sad words coupled with some house crashers get the clan mcduck statues included to kick Blot and Pepper out and get the bagpipes back, while Scrooge points out it’s the good families that can withstand a squabble. So the mystery’’s gotten, Scrooge and Matilda are squareish... and this episodes thankfully over. Happy day! Final Thoughts: This episode is okay. I very clearly have my problems with it.. but it’s a fine half hour of television and funny enough to bounce through it with some good character stuff. It’s just after the last few weeks, and really this whole season.. I expect more. There was no real emotional core besides webby this episode and her issues wer eboiled down to “Families fight but it’s fine”.. which itself is a pretty uncomplicated message when family dyanmics can be complciated messy and painful. My family is thankfully fairly stable, if not without issues because hey no one is, but given other people watching might come from far worse homes where the bickering is far worse and far more toxic.. yeah maybe have some nuance here.  And this is from a show that usualy does that WELL: We saw it with Fergus last time before he was hollowed out for this episode and reduced to an angry dick. We’ve seen it with Donald and Scrooge’s estrangment or Donald and Della’s relationship: Family is complicated , messy and even good ones have problems. That should’ve been the message: family can squabble or even have serious issues but they come back together. Instead we just got a bunch of bickering for a cheesy message that dosen’t quite fit with what the series done. It fits for thanksgiving: family , the good kind, can last arugments and is there for you regardless.. and I know my family is. I just feel they could’ve done the message better. Basically the episode was fine... it just wasn’t up to the high standard this season has set even in it’s down turn and is easily the weakest epseically since Matilda really dosen’t feel all that fleshed out even though what we got of her was great. Basically not a BAD episode.. but it could’ve been a great one, and i’m disapointed the series didn’t try harder.  NEXT TIME: regular coverage for the year concludes as we go back a few months chronlogically to find out why Santa and Scrooge hate each other. IT’s christmas time ya’ll! Until then if there’s an episode of ducktales or another disney series you’d like me to take a look at, suggest it in the comments or comission it outright for give bucks via my direct messages on here or send an ask for my discord. Until we meet agian, there’s always another rainbow.