#dt17 magic au

[mrgladstonegander]

for my return to duckblr may i offer my bootleg team magic (which doesnt include umbra/magica but shes here too)

team science here

umbra de mancy / magica = basically the same character / fills the same role as in dt17. wanted her to have an Evil Magical Girl look to spite lena's sorceress outfit.

luna de mancy / lena = also mostly the same character. wanted to lean more into what punk style she already had. i love her arc in dt17, but here she reclaims her shadow magic + never has to reconnect with umbra ever. both she and umbra are ruddy ducks

sunny vanderduck / webby = shares an arc with cherry(huey), and while she still has the same role of having luna realize she deserves to have a good life and isn't a bad person, luna helps her realize that valerie(beakley) isn't the best guardian either...

twilight costa / violet = meets luna + sunny earlier on. outwardly she's mostly the same, but she struggles with feeling connected with other communities. american culture and her heritage, being too weird to one of the smart kids, and too smart to be one of the weird kids, being outcased from the rest of the [junior woodchucks]. but once she finds her place with luna, sunny, and cherry, she opens up her silly side more :)

oliver oca / gladstone: despite getting people to be around him with his luck, he knew he was still alone. never really seeing a point in trying to do things, when he knew his luck would handle it for him. his passivity worsens after the casino, where his efforts didn't help him get out. luckily, someone is looking to fix him... (post-development design. spoilers! he loses his luck. mainly connected to the rest of team magic through umbra, luna, and Rorschach Specter]

[shadysubject06]

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, we're gettin' hit with the dregs of the hurricane right now djidgidgdg

BUT I LOVE THIS!!!

Dol shows up as some kind of ambassador/healer for St. Canard and probably doesn't make the *best* impression. This Dol wouldn't have done as much human interaction so she's probably included a few too many gore details when she discusses her work. And if NFenton responded with something like "I need to think about it" in response to sharing the cure, or even just a straight "no" she would NOT be happy.

I would assume something like that happens though, and while she stays at the castle she starts up her experiments again. Probably going down to the dungeons or even sneaking into town to raid graveyards just like back home. That gives her a chance to interact with Mads and Blue (maybe bully NGyro a bit), either trying to get them to donate some magic to her projects, or even directly take part in them. She's sharing her interest! Jdbdjdbdjd

Then when she finally is making connections the Blue capturing would happen and she would absolutely be tagging along with whatever rescue team was put together to get them back. I would assume that her magic siphoning thing, whether it's an enchanted machine or spell, she would have only tested on corpses, and she didn't think it could (or even would) work on live subjects.

BREAKING DOWN YOUR FUCKING DOOR ITS FITTING DOL INTO THE ROYALTY AU TIME.

Uhhh I have no idea how much you know about this AU so I wanna give you a rundown if thats okay and I was gonna do this in a dm but it felt too long so I'm doing it! in an ask!

I wanna go character by character of the main ones but first thing to know! Duckburg and St. Canard are different kingdoms, they're the two main kingdoms & St. Canard are. the bad guys pretty much. Their nobility is all basically F.O.W.L. and they're ruled by a certain King Starling. They've been teasing at war with Duckburg for years now.  Another thing is that clone and Negaverse characters all exist independently with the others, for clones they aren't clones they're just regular existing people like Mads has. a childhood he was a kid he doesn't even meet Gyro until he's in his mid 20s (ages are changed here too I think Gyro's like 35). And as for Negaverse people in this universe there just happens to be two people who look similar and sometimes have similar names and opposite personalities.  I was gonna say the last thing to know is about the magic but I already told you about that :3

Mads- pretty much like the main character of this au? St. Canard is known for their assassin cult, it's the reason nobody wants to go to war with them because they have these silent killers who have never ever missed a target. They're very shrouded in secret and nobody knows much about them.  Guess who is one of them! Mads! He grows up being horribly traumatized by the experience (everyone there is) but it's everything he knows and he doesn't realize how bad it is. so. one day he's given a mission into Duckburg, where he gets too big of a taste of freedom and decides to never go back. Through too long of a series of events to relay here he ends up in the duckburg king's prison where the king takes an interest in him as he's finally caught one of St. Canards famous assassins. Uhhhhhhh silly things ensue and. they end up married.

Nega Fenton- Named simply Fenton Crackshell here to distinguish him from the other Fenton, he's the king of Duckburg! He was formerly a lord under the previous king, Nega Scrooge (who I don't have a distinguishing in-universe name for yet), who was a horrible tyrant who ruled with a bloody iron fist. NFenton overthrows him and becomes king, and he's much better than the last, and he’s good, but not the greatest. He rules with absolute cold logic and does whatever for the Greater Good no matter the sacrifice, though he does what he can to minimize that sacrifice. He's also known for having a bit of a temper and being a little vain. Spending all day interrogating his captive assassin means the questions get more personal, and someoneeeee starts to fall in looove 👀

The Blue Phantom- I have most of their stuff on artfight but yeag they're second hand to the king, they'd inherit the throne if anything happened to him (before Mads shows up). They're the overpowered royal wizard (though they have witch magic as well) who is in charge of any of the castle's magical output (for example there's like. cleaning spells on the rivers all throughout the kingdom so it's drinkable, and that means Blue's in charge of stuff like that). They're not born royalty though.

Nega Gyro- Distinguished in-universe so far by just calling him Lord Gearloose, he was a lord who served under NScrooge alongside NFenton, and now is NFenton's advisor! He's nice but a little shady, in some versions of the au he ends up evil and betrays them all <333 He is the only one with a braincell in the nobility but nobody listens to him because they think he's uptight and controlling.

Gyro- A witch inventor (commoner!) who creates crazy new spells, he was causing such a ruckus in the kingdom with his spells going wrong that he eventually moved outside of the city (which is on the edge of the kingdom, so mostly outside the kingdom as well) for his safety. There he lives in the woods and is allowed to do whatever he wants to do with spells.

Fenton- Gyro's former apprentice turned partner who went with him when he left the city. Gyro doesn't go into the city much anymore so it's Fenton who does, he goes to the markets to sell their spells and they actually have a pretty good business going! Boyd lives with them too but I don't have a backstory for him yet, idk how they acquired this child.

Della- She was a knight who served under NScrooge, and when NFenton led an uprising against him, she stood with Scrooge. Not because she was loyal, he was horrible, but because she wanted to stay on the winning side and didn't think NFenton would win. He did, and he was mad that she went against him so he took away her title and sent her home. The triplets were little at the time (under the age of 5) and she was never around them with her work, so it let her go back home and be a mom. She lives on the edge of the city so she's close friends with Gyro!

Black Heron- she is just kind of. pure evil in this au and I love that for her. If Mads is the main character in this au then she's the main villain/antagonist. She was his old instructor back with the assassins and essentially where he gets most of his trauma from. He was her favorite pupil so she pushed him the hardest and wanted him to be the best, no matter what. Now that he's left she absolutely hates him, and will do whatever she can to get him back at her mercy.

Gandra- Also an assassin, Mads' childhood best friend! (she also may or may not be blind in this au im still thinking on it) She grew up in the same year as him, they shared a bunk bed. They were really close, but the assassin group forbids close relationships and even friendships are frowned upon. This is so they don’t form a closer alliance to each other over their instructors or their cause. Because of this the instructors started doing little things to force them apart, making them work different places or creating a rivalry between them.  By the time Mads leaves in his 20s they are very strained, they barley talk to each other. They really stopped talking when Mads was 18 and moved out of the girls’ sleeping quarters, which meant they couldn’t stay up late talking before bed anymore.  They still care for each other but again it’s incredibly strained. 

SO THOSE ARE THE MAIN CHARACTERS- that does give you some hints at the lore too- timeline wise it goes NSceooge is overthrown by NFenton, Blue is appointed royal wizard by him before he’s even coronated (he meets them in the castle dungeon, long story). Five years later Mads shows up and starts living in the castle, and two years after that there’s a big magic plague which introduces Gyro and Fenton who have a cure. They left the kingdom before NScrooge was overthrown, so they’ve been living in the woods for over 7 years at that point. Anything additional to the storyline will have to happen sometime after the plague fiasco. 

SO FEEL FREE TO FIT DOL IN THERE WHEREVER YOU WANT 💕💕💕 Literally however.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking for her, and ofc you can change however you want, but that when Gyro left the kingdom for causing problems Dol was right there with him.  However she wasn’t one for hiding out in the woods so she moves on into St. Canard, where she is also quickly caught by the nobility for her spell problems. There they realize rather than imprisoning her they can use her, and she becomes some kind of court inventor/witch/wizard/healer, either one or all three. It’s a cutthroat environment but she thrives there, and is given whatever kind of funding she wants. 7 years later, after the plague, she is sent on a kind of diplomatic trip back to Duckburg, and stays at the castle there for a while. She’s not really loyal to her kingdom but has it too good to defect (and mayyyyybe secretly is scared to) so she doesn’t want to leave but she knows how bad they are there, and in some ways she eventually becomes a double agent for Duckburg. So she wouldn’t entirely be a trickster character (probably a little tho-) but I feel like I would want her to be treated as such in the narrative? She’s kind of just a third party with a hand in each world, doing mostly her own thing without entirely bending to the whim of either party. She is just Hanging Out and meddling here and there. So technically she still has to behave according to st canard (because they have an evil king with an army of assassins), but acts in the story like she doesn’t. 

Anyway!!! That’s what I was thinking but ofc do whatever you want! I like the idea of her saying in the Duckburg castle for a few weeks on some kind of business, and I thought it would be funny if Mads doesn’t like her for some reason at first. XD Probably for petty reasons but they eventually become friends :3  Lmk if you have any questions or anything :3333

(One last thing- when Mads was captured by Duckburg he was scheduled for an execution, and as the interrogations kept going on it kept getting pushed back. It was never officially called off it was just rescheduled until no one cared anymore. So because of that everyone just thought he was killed eventually, and stopped caring. BECAUSE OF THAT. St. Canard think he’s dead too, so they’re not looking for him. So when Dol shows up he also has to do what he can to notttttt be recognized) 

SCREAMS AS YOU KICK IN MY DOOR WITH A HISTORY LESSON LDSKNLKDSFNL I was reading this and cross checking it with your dms on the magic system like I was studying for a polisci test. But probably better than I did for those because I failed that class…..

ANYWAYS!!! 

Firstly, congrats on writing three pages of lore in a Tumblr ask! I pasted it into Google docs to read it better cuz my eyes suck skdfnlsdf. I do really quick wanna drop some of the ideas I had for Dol, just in case there are any pieces that you might like to incorporate into the story somehow. I’ve been developing her a lot for the original story I’m working on and I can even finally share an old piece of her DT lore that I never got around to actually using in anything! 

QUICK OG LORE BACKGROUND:

In her DT lore I was eventually gonna reveal that she was either the lead researcher or one of the researchers that headed the cloning project that F.O.W.L did when they made Webby and then later May and June. She stayed on for a while because they said they had info on where Gyro was, but when she figured out that they had no intention of sharing it she escaped after a battle with Heron. Newton was also gonna be one of the cloning experiments, as they would have definitely have tested the clone tech/magic/whatever they used on some random dna first before going with their end game. Dol took him with her because she didn’t want to leave him behind in case F.O.W.L decided to get rid of him now that they knew the cloning stuff worked. 

I’ll try not to ramble too much on this one or I’ll end up writing like…20 pages. In my story Barely Baphomet the world is inhabited by toons of all kinds, but the world they live in has areas that are different genres, and certain toons can’t travel to genres that clash with what they are (example: if an object head toon went to an area that was non fiction, their head would turn unsentient and their body would have no head, killing them.) Dol ends up studying biology in a genre state where there are no slapstick toons (the name for object head, sentient object, and generally all rubberhose toons) and there’s a popular theory in those areas that slapstick toons aren’t truly sentient, but have learned how to mimic the behavior of sentient toons in order to play pranks and cause problems. Long story short, Dol ends up doing tons of experiments on these "unsentient" slapstick toons trying to find a way to transfer their long lives and logic-defying abilities to the more modern toons. She finds out she’s absolutely committing war crimes on sentient people, and then blows up the research facility when she discovers that the “director” of the place is something that…was never supposed to exist the way it does in the place they are.

So her heart’s in the right place, but ultimately she puts her goal before the people she’s supposedly chasing it for. Is what her character arc seems to always boil down to. 

ROYALTY AU THOUGHTS I HAD BEFORE AND DURING MY EDUCATION ON THE LORE:

For royalty au I was thinking of something definitely with a plague doctor kind of vibe. I was going off of the assumption that you might not want to have her be related to any of your gang since she’s not a canon character (also I thought that NGyro was Gyro because I totally didn’t catch that you had multiples in there lksdnflsndf) so I had this kinda half-baked idea that she either grew up in a village that was wiped out by plague, or she was working to try and stop the spread of them (normal plagues, not magical). Dol decides that if they can’t stop disease, why not just figure out how to bring people back to life? So she starts experimenting with spells and potions and such on dead bodies, usually resulting in an undead situation or something worse. Maybe she’s found a way to siphon magic out of people and is mixing lots of magic together for more powerful (and unstable) spells/potions, if that’s possible. I thought it would be funny if either she was found by any of the cast either because there were reports of graveyards being dug up and they went out to investigate, or she’s been secretly experimenting in the dungeons somehow for who knows how long (assuming that people in the dungeon die there a lot, because then she has a great, close-by supply of research cadavers!) I would think that a magic plague, even if it was over when she showed up, would have her working more out in the open to a point where she’d draw attention to herself.

I see her as either being disillusioned with healing as a practice, or she needs to be reminded of how big of an impact healing has on someone(s), even if it can’t fix everything. Either she’d only have witch magic, or she would have both but primarily focus her attention on using witch magic to tamper with potion ingredients and such. I don’t wanna make her too overpowered or anything!

Also yes, I would love for her and Mads to be friends, especially if he’s still as sassy as he is in your main aus kdsnfklndsf. 

If she's not an agent then she'd at the very least be some kinf od person of interest. I can imagine that St. Canard would see potential in having a witch on their side that seems pretty blase about what you can and can't do with magic and flesh. For Duckburg...maybe they'd just try to keep her busy (they could never keep her busy in a way that is not concerning skdfldnflksnf)

Those are all of my thoughts and things and odds and ends, let me know if any of these sound good, and if not I hope it was at least a fun read!

[zhenni12]

so…these are sketchy ideas for a cover of a dt17 fancomic I could make, but I can’t pick one, so I’m letting fate decide through the magic of polls. I already planned out most of them (or some of most of them)…but i probably wont make them all because of time…

ik the cover options are rlly messy, so explanations of them under the cut.

A: I love all the parenting dynamics that happen in the show and the newer ones with Scrooge and Daisy, so this one would be about Dewey trying to make a reality tv show about all the adults in the mansion. B: MAY AND JUNE DESERVE TO BE A PART OF THIS FAMILY OK 😭 😭 but yeah, this one’s about webby’s sisters trying to make themselves at home.

C: It’s a Dwd comic about DarkWing and Gos and LP living and fighting crime and all the stuff that should’ve happened in the spin-off. Or most of it, anyways. D: Reality gets warped and the Ducks lose their memories, thinking they’re fairy tale characters. They have to find each other, somehow remember everything, and escape (like that quam pack episode of dt17) (but fantasy).

[rimarkka]

DT17 x Encanto AU

I already see some Ducktales x Encanto AUs and they were really good

But I want to present my version of this AU

I want to bring dt17 characters into the Encanto’s world. It’s still a family concept with magical gifts in a magical house.

Could Duckworth move into the house and revive it?

Speaking of assigning roles

♪ Wait, who’s a sister and who’s a cousin? There’s so many people How do you keep them all straight? ♪

Scrooge as Abuela 

Have you noticed that the Miracle Candle and the Number One Dime play a similar role in the plot?

♪ We swear to always Help those around us And earn the miracle That somehow found us The town keeps growing The world keeps turning But work and dedication will keep the miracle burning And each new generation must keep the miracle burning ♪

I think he’s more concerned with the Number One Dime the Miracle Candle by helping the townspeople through deeds and adventures than by helping people itself

Donald as Pepa

Pepa is emotional and with her mood changes nature. Donald is no less emotional

♪ My tía Pepa My tío Donald

Her mood affects the weather When she’s unhappy Well, the temperature gets weird ♪

Daisy as Félix

She has no gift, she became part of the family by marrying Donald

♪ She fell in love with Family Madrigal McDuck And now she’s part of the Family Madrigal McDuck ♪

June and May as Dolores and Antonio

The biological daughters of Daisy and Donald

♪ Cousin Dolores can hear a pin drop <…> Antonio gets his gift today ♪

Huey as Luisa

They both take greater responsibility for the well-being of their family

♪ I’m the strong one, I’m not nervous I’m as tough as the crust of the Earth is I move mountains, I move churches And I glow ’cause I know what my worth is ♪

But for both of them, this responsibility is a cause for concern. Their gift weighs heavily on them. Luisa has it as a nervous tick and a song

♪ Give it to your sister, your sister’s older Give her all the heavy things we can’t shoulder Who am I if I can’t run with the ball? If I fold to ♪

And Huey has the Duke of Making a Mess

Dewey as Isabela

They both focus more on image than on gift.

♪ My older sisters brothers <…> one graceful Perfect in every way ♪

He acts like he’s good at everything, but he’s really worried that his gift isn’t enough

♪ I’ve been stuck being perfect my whole life ♪

Louie as Camilo

Louis in the series is shown as a skilled manipulator, actually (not in a bad way). He knows what to say when to smile and so on

♪ Camilo shapeshifts ♪

I believe it’s his gift

Della as Bruno

♪ We don’t talk about Bruno Della! ♪

I want to see this song in the context of «don’t talk about her so as not to piss off Scrooge», and not «don’t talk about her so as not to cause trouble from her»

♪ They say she saw the future, one day she disappeared ♪

It’s all canon. Della is gone. They don’t talk about her. The end.

Just kidding, I’ll tell you about her fate later

Beakley as Julieta or Agustín

Beakley is not bound to this family by blood, she entered it like Agustín, but not by marriage, but as an approximation.

I couldn’t choose one character, as I found it interesting that even without the gift Beakley would have the skills of cooking and «magic» to even be able to prepare healing food

Webby as Mirabel

Mirabel has no gift, and Webby is not tied to the McDuck family in blood, so she has no gift either. In fact, nobody even allowed such a thought, so they even didn’t try. I’d like to end the story with Webby’s becoming the new the Number One Dime the Miracle Candle’s keeper. 

As far as their family ties are concerned, everything here remains like the cartoon, and does not change under the state of affairs in Encanto. Beakley is still Webby’s grandmother. Scrooge has just become the father of Della and Donald. Donald and Daisy are the parents of May and June. Dell is the mother of triplets.

It’s not that the relationship between Webby and Scrooge is that important. I love this storyline twist in dt17 and it can be in this au too, but I can’t say that it is absolutely necessary, it seems to be superfluous

The main character will be Webby. On the day of receiving gifts, May and June, born on the same day, were afraid to go alone and refused to do it without Webby.

Ugh, going all the way up to two doors knowing that she would never be a part of the family and get any gift... it must hurt

It was Webby who noticed how the house began to collapse, because there was discord in the family. With their quarrels, the gifts weaken. So she intended to help everyone.

Their main conflict was Della, or rather her disappearance. So the Webby began to reveal this secret.

She found a prophecy by which Della flew away and suffered a plane crash. Unlike Bruno, whose poor predictions were not believed, Della herself did not believe her predictions. She believed she had the right to change her fate with her gift.

I don’t really want to take a flight into space because a rocket crash is too much

Why did Scrooge cover it up and get angry at every mention of his daughter? Because he kept Della’s faith in the ability to change her destiny. But after the crash, he changed his mind. For this reason, he ignored Webby’s words about the destruction of the house because he had seen the prophecy about it, and he was convinced that fate cannot be changed.

Scrooge broke it. But Webby collected it and saw herself in the end against the background of the destruction of the house.

Webby loved her family so much, so she decided to go out on emotion to prevent it. But during the escape, Della caught her. She was quite alive, ha

Della had indeed crashed the plane, but she had survived with the loss of her leg. She lived inside the walls of the house, unwilling to return.

She gave an answer to Webby’s questions. It was not only Scrooge who looked at the prediction incomplete. Della dropped the memory first, splintered from it a small piece that did not allow one to look beyond the image of Webby. There was Della too. And just like Webby, she loves her family too, but she thought it’s better without her

Kinda similar, right?

It’s only then Webby realized how stupid and wrong they both are when they run away

They rerun Della’s gift and watch the entire memory to learn how to prevent it.

Della looked at the girl condescendingly, seeing herself in her, but allowed her to. Because if the outcome is predetermined, her efforts will not make it worse.

Webby really saw how she helped her family, in particular, the triplets who first quarrelled when they began to slowly discover the secret of Della.

At this time, Gosalyn as Mariano came to court with Dewey.

I don’t mind them as a couple, but I just want them to feel like friends in that au

Later, Webby extorted the confession that Dewey did not want to marry, he did not know if he loves Gosalyn in that way

So… Webby was trying to make up with everyone and she’s even doing it well until Scrooge told her that he didn’t see the good in her actions

How do those words of Abuela resemble those of Scrooge "you are not part of the family!"

And the house collapsed…

Webby escaped. Scrooge talked to her heart-in-heart. They found an understanding. Della jumped on the donkey, said it’s her fault, she had predicted it. Tearful reunion of father and daughter. Repair of the house. Webby is a new keeper.

The end :з

SORRY IS IT TOO MUCH, HUH?

[fantasticenthusiasttale]

AU idea: In the last episode from DT17 s3, Donald really fell into the portal but, instead killing him or annul his existence, he went to another dimension alongside with the people who worked with Bradford (his brothers and Black Heron), especifically the Legend of The Three Caballeros (Lottc) World. The villans fell in a different place than Donald, planning their way to return to their dimension while he was trying to return too and having adventures with José, Panchito and Xandra in the most of the time.

In the other side, Scrooge and Della almost killed Bradford for the happened, he's bad but alive in the hospital now just because they need him to find Donald. The kids, Gyro, Fenton and Manny are trying to do a portal to rescue Donald, but they doesn't know even if he's still alive.

Scrooge feels soooo guilty about this and he's working hard to be a good parent for his clone daughter Webby. Daisy is totally devastated, but putting all of her strongness in May and June's rearing, because adopting the girls was the last thing Donald talked about with her in the phone.

The season 4 is totally about Donald having magical adventures with his friends, Black Heron trying to dominate the lottc world and return home, Webby, Beakley and Scrooge's relationship and the Duck Family having adventures and doing the pretty impossible to find Donald, because these ducks don't back down!

[astro-b-o-y-d]

God, one of these days I WILL get back to DTLS AU. I love it so so much, you guys don't even know. A DT17/RWBY crossover, where the latter are a bunch of furries from a city near Duckburg, all started because Roman and I wanted to make Boyd and James friends. Centuries-long drama between immortal magical chickens. Gyro loses an arm (thanks to Akita) and dates a werewolf. Fenton kills a woman to protect his fiancé and future father-in-law. Dewey and Whitley win a battle of the bands while the former has a swordfight with Don Karnage and the latter sings 'I Need A Hero'. Skittles exists and we're all so much better off for it.

[cherrydott]

Long winded mad ducktor post

Or my version anyway

Yelling in an empty auditorium abt this. FIRST one of the core things about MD for me is that at his core, his purpose is to protect Gyro. No matter how irrationally or dangerously he chooses to do so. His origin is literally going to get back at scrooge for not paying gyro enough for his services. There is nothing in MD that wasn't already present in Gyro, albeit greatly exaggerated in his case. My personal view on most jekyll and hyde situations is that there isn't an Evil half, just a half comprised of everything someone tries or can't help but to suppress, like standing up for themselves. MD in this case is a defense system.

Dt17 Gyro already comes gift-wrapped with a bunch of angst and insecurities from his past that y'all already know about. I trust that anyone that's gotten this far has watched astro boyd at least 7 times, so I don't need to go into it. We can throw worrying about Gizmoduck in there too (both for Fentons safety and the overall success of his invention). You've also got the spear. Why not something for both the duck twins? Duck avenger is a large part of this AU, Gyro supplying his gadgets and various intel on his missions like your "guy in the chair" trope.

While PK is on missions, often Gyro is holed up in the bins security room with a live feed from his suit, contact lense cameras and earpieces etc. Eventually Donald gets into the habit of disabling his feed/communication when things get nasty in the field, out of embarrassment or not wanting to make Gyro worried about him.

To no ones surprise, sitting in a room of static while god knows what happens is a hundred times worse for him. Mad Ducktor is born from helplessness.

Magic does a great job exaggerating things, desires or feelings, and someone who's not level headed should not go near powerful magic artifacts no matter what. [Enter the DeSpell amulet]

It starts off more as a casual project at the lab too get more of an understanding on the amulet. Not necessarily how to use it or some new invention with it, just a study so they're less in the dark. It doesn't take long for a little obsession to creep up and for Gyro to insist on taking this project solo. Long term exposure to it does not so great things to him, leading up to a big outburst in the lab where some people get hurt. Some windows break, and everyone barely makes it up the emergency stairs before the lab floods. Coincidentally, Gyro's magic signature is pink :)

MD becomes Gyro's magical defense protocol that mainly comes out when he becomes extremely emotionally distressed. It gets bad enough that the amulet doesn't even need to be present.

I don't have specifics, but his main weapon is inspired by this belt from the comics.

Amulet as the buckle/power source and two artificial ones on the gloves, smaller and mostly for control/amplification and if we're completely honest, aesthetics. From the accident at the lab it becomes clear that either of them are not great at controlling the amulet at all, it's volatile and dangerous in their hands. MD needs and invented the gloves and belt to be able to direct it. Even with it, if he's successfully taunted enough during a fight, the magic quickly gets unstable as he'd get angrier.

He sees the duck avenger as his top threat, the thing first on the list that disturbs Gyros peace. The one thing stopping him from finding Akita and ripping him to shreds is the fact that Gyro knows he's in prison and isn't a top priority.

His hairstyle is reminiscent of Scrooge and Fenton 100% on purpose. They're important people in Gyro's life and md. Is. Emotional. Sentimental even, though he'd never admit that. Gyro keeps his emotions on lockdown, and what he suppresses comes out in MD in one form or another, in this case appearance. I would argue that the first time Scrooge or Donald met Gyro, he had circular frames. As they inhabit the same body, the trickiest thing about fighting him is well. not doing that, attempting capture instead or at least saying the right things to get gyro back in the pilots seat. He chose circular shades on purpose to be able to manipulate PK further, as well as being a little symbol of his past and how he wants to defend his younger self.

He's not evil, just wildly misunderstood

[pidayforpi]

Confession Time

[...about the "settings" in my Ducktales/Duckverse fan fics]

(If you have been following my "headcanon-heavy" Ducktales stories (such as this, this or this), or my random thoughts/infodump from time to time, you may see that I often refer to something as "my settings". Or, in case of characters, "my Donald"/"my José"/"my Scrooge" etc.

You may also notice various cringy outlandish additional details in some of my Ducktales works (such as the fact that Donald is absolutely mentally unstable, and can and will commit murder; or the fact that Donald (among others) has literal magic for some reason).

So, uh...here's the thing...

[Super embarrassing self-indulgent infodump below]

Before I even started writing fan fics, I have actually already thought out an entire plot and settings for my Ducktales story.

This is something that I...sometimes do (especially in the past). Whenever I get invested in a new production, my brain may automatically generate a "fan" plot and settings using that production as a background, which may get developed more as I got to know the production better (as well as a possibility of adding crossovers).

(Yes DT is not the only one subjected to my cringy mind, but I'm still too embarrassed to share the others at the moment. If you must know, another example is Skyrim)

Now that I realise it, that Undertale story idea is actually an example of that. Personally, I call these ideas "Projects".

These Projects:

→ Are developed to different extents. "Developments" include a complete plot (e.g. an ending?), a comprehensive world-building/settings, and possible messages and themes of the story

[Ducktales has been rather developed]

→ Are of different lengths (Long, Medium, Short)

[Ducktales is a Long Project]

→ Are thought out automatically in my mind. A plot will just pop up, and I will use it, with only adjustments and add-ons. (In other words, once a plot is generated, it stays. I may make modifications as I am thinking it out, but the plot direction largely stays the same)

→ Are thought out in an...anime episode fashion (instead of words). I visualise the scenes in my mind, with music, visual effects and such things that I can't possibly portray in a written story

→ Are...also very anime-y (most of them are Fantasy/Adventure, with power systems and yes, skill names)

[Like Ducktales has its own "Magic" power system, with different categories of magic]

→ May involve "crossovers". Crossovers are usually other productions that are canonly or non-canonly related to the base productions

[For example, my Ducktales Project uses DT17 as the base, but has crossovers from LotTC, Paperinik and Kingdom Hearts. There is also a bit of Goof Troop (or the Goof-verse in general), because Max/Goofy/Pete/PJ are in the story]

[For the Skyrim example, the "other productions" are actually Skyrim mods]

[They may also involve other fanworks/personnel but obviously I can't share them publicly. Not any for Ducktales though]

→ Are 80% non-lore-friendly (I redefine what is lore-friendly lol)

[In my Ducktales Project, the entire event of Season 3 is non-existent, because when I thought of the plot Season 3 had not been aired yet logically it cannot happen under my story]

→ Are something I never thought I could ever share with absolutely any other human being. I have a ton of ideas in my mind that, from the moment of creation, I have prepared to die without anyone knowing it (Because they are just...so crazy or I legally cannot share them due to copyright. It's like your sketchbook of OCs you've created when you are like 12)

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

So. What am I trying to say?

When I started legit writing stories, sometimes, I used some of the settings in my Ducktales Project. At that time, I called those settings "headcanons", rather than the entire story being set in an AU.

This is due to me wanting to actually create something for my very much self-indulgent Ducktales Project, as well as share my (very crazy) ideas with someone else. Therefore, I have integrated bits and pieces of my settings into my published works.

...but then here's the problem. I was (is) too embarrassed to fully reveal my AU. As a result, there are now weird, half-canon (to my Ducktales Project) stories that I have written. (which is worse than completely non-canon, to be honest)

For example...

→ That "Wish" story linked above, which is supposed to be an alternate scenario of the Season 3 "Quack Pack!" episode? Is not canon. Simply because anything from Season 3 does not exist in my AU. Goofy also does not inform Donald of the war this way, nor is the war "a war between Light and Darkness" this actually sounds so forced and cringy. It is not even a "conventional war" in technical terms (not a two-sided war, at least), more like an insurgency.

(The entire Kingdom Hearts plot and concept has been basically taken apart and reshaped into something else. Sora isn't even in the picture, for example. It's a completely different story. Another AU, if you may.)

What is canon are the involvement of Goofy, Mickey and Donald in the war (both past and present), as well as everything in the headcanon page in that story.

→ Another example is the "Power of Berserk" story. That is 100% not canon (sorry shippers, donro isn't a thing in my AU). This is extremely embarrassing, because there is a chapter/scene in my Ducktales Project that is called "Power of Berserk", with a somewhat similar but also very different plot.

What is canon are Donald's violent tendencies, and the idea of an Evronian apocalypse. Otherwise that story is super non-canon.

→ The most "canon" story I have written is probably "Ice on Fire" (yes Donald canonly beats up Lunaris in my universe). The only things not that accurate is Panchito's reaction/personality (I made him too dumb/distant from Donald. He's supposed to be rational but sympathetic), and some points in the headcanon page afterwards (e.g. Scrooge and the kids do know that Donald has magic (because magic is very common in my universe; also why would Scrooge need Donald on their adventures otherwise?). They just don't know what Donald is doing with his magic).

Also there's more to that scene, because that is actually an ending of the first part of my Ducktales Project.

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

I...cannot rewrite/delete those stories. I may add a label about what is canon or not.

But the most important thing I am going to do is to make an info sheet about my Ducktales Project. This is getting confusing that even I have to write one, if only for myself to read.

It is going to be super long...and super self-indulgent. But I have become less embarrassed to share my ideas, after seeing others share theirs (such as Cursegirl's Furious Revenge AU I mentioned in the last infodump). I feel like, even if it's only my Ducktales AU, I can share it.

I just have to write it out...which may take a while. (But this is like the "2023 Summer of Infodump", where I keep writing these passages instead of actual stories. So the momentum is here...for now)

If I have the time, I will also produce a character sheet besides the info sheet. The info sheet is going to be about world-building, settings and the plot, while the character sheet will focus on...character information.

Yea. Let's see how it goes.)

(7-8-2023)

[staarshiine]

“Louie’s was… cold and glittering, shining, something that screamed precious. Like gemstones, like gold.” - (Call Upon The Sea // twilighteve)

I’m in love with @twilighteve-writes DT17 Magic AU so much, I’ve read every fic in the series like three times over already <3

[twilighteve-writes]

Call Upon the Sea

Summary: The ocean responded to his calls and there was a push and pull, push and pull that settled at the back of his mind, always there no matter how far away he went from the shore.

The ocean calls and loves Donald. He loves it back.

(Also available in AO3)

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

He didn’t remember when he first heard the call of the sea, but he knew he was little then.

He was playing around at the pier with Della, with Gladstone and Fethry walking on the sand underneath the wooden boards. The pier was built low enough and Gladstone was tall enough to be able to knock the boards from down under if he stood on his tiptoes. The sea had been ebbing but was starting to rise, and he could see rocks big and small littering the damp sand.

Della jumped from the pier to the damp sand, and he followed. At that age, they revolve around each other and followed one another, like twin planets caught in each other’s orbits dancing around themselves eternally. Della was the more adventurous one, and he ran after her relentlessly. He was the one more careful and tactful, like Momma told them to be, and Della looked at him for cues whether to jump up and down in excitement or behaving to avoid adults’ ire.

They ran around laughing, kicking wet sand and splashing water, and their cousins soon joined in. Not long after, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that big waves would come soon, and he warned the others of it. Fethry listened to him pretty much immediately and began whining to get back, and Gladstone, being the oldest and feeling responsible of the bunch, told him and Della to get to shore soon as he walked the fussing Fethry back to the pier.

Della… well, it wasn’t like Della never listened to him, but Della was headstrong even at that age. She wanted to play at the beach, so that was what she was going to do.

“Come on, Don!” Della whined when he made it clear that they had to get back to shore. “The tide’s still low. We can play a bit longer.”

“No, it’s not going to be low for long!” he insisted. “Let’s just go back, come on – “

“We have time,” Della bargained with a pout and splashed his face. Annoyance burst in his chest, and suddenly a big wave rose and loomed over them.

From far away, he could hear Fethry squawking in fear and Gladstone shrieking his and Della’s name in horror. It was drowned out by the wave pouncing on him and Della both, and they only had time to reach and hugged each other in a futile attempt to stay safe.

The seawater drenched them, but they weren’t harmed in any way. It felt more like plunging into a pool than being swallowed by angry wave. The seawater caressed his feathers and kissed his cheek, lifting him and Della both and carried them to shore. It receded and left them on the sand, with Della coughing out seawater and him blinking in a mix of surprise and confusion. She stared at him with shock, and it was immediately clear to him that she was a lot more shaken than he was.

Gladstone and Fethry ran to them, and Fethry threw himself at him. He assured the younger duck that he was fine, pouted at Gladstone’s remark that it was good that his bad luck didn’t pounce on him then, and grabbed Della’s hand to ground her to the world. The four of them agreed to get back home, then.

He chanced a look at the sea as he walked away. Sunlight twinkled on the surface of the water, like it was winking at him. He ignored the feeling in his chest that made him want to dive back into the blue and turned away.

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

It didn’t take long for him to realize that he felt most at home at sea.

He didn’t go to the sea a lot, but he enjoyed it when he was there. The breeze caressed him feathers and the waves welcomed him home. The water lapped at his feet and he would look down, smiling, when he found yet another pretty shell washed up right in front of him. He’d take it and admire it, but he’d always return it to the sand. He wasn’t the best Junior Woodchuck, but he’d spent enough time among the Woodchucks to know that one of the rules when exploring was to not take anything and leave nothing behind.

Della wasn’t as enthusiastic with the sea as he was.

“It’s just a lot of water, Don,” she’d said one day.

He frowned, not even trying to hide that the simple words hurt. “That just a lot of water is mostly unexplored. You said you like exploring.”

“Yeah, but it’s just. There.” Della shrugged. “It’s not going anywhere.”

“Plenty of time to explore, then.”

“Hm. I guess.” Della kicked a rock and watched it sink into sand once more. “I guess I’m just bored.”

And that was just plain unfathomable to him, because the sea was abundant with things to discover and daring adventures, just like what Della liked. It gave and it took, and it had so many cool things living and not in it ready to great the explorers when they gathered enough courage to dive deeper.

At that point, he had yet to understand that not everyone loved, and was loved, by the sea just as he had. But he could respect Della’s feelings, and he let her choose what to play. At the end of the day, building a sand castle as ridiculously as possible was just as good as letting the sea lazily lap at his feet, as if trying to communicate with him but was content to let him relax.

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

When his parents died and he and Della were carted off to Scrooge’s care, the first thing he noticed was that the lack of the closeness to sea was somehow just as hurtful as the loss of his loved ones. Scrooge was surprisingly attentive and a good parent figure, and Della being there with him helped soften the blow, and music became a part of his life that begged attention nearly as much as the ocean was, but there was still a hollow in his chest that refused to patch itself up no matter how much he tried.

He missed the sea nearly as much as he missed his parents, and in the end he basically begged Scrooge to let him go to the beach. The older duck complied, and the presence of the sea greeting him like an old friend soothed the hurt in his heart until calm begin to fold in. The hollow was still there, but instead of a gaping void gnawing him from the inside out, it was simply a place where coral began to grow and life started to take over. It was there; there was no hiding that. But it gave way to other things to grow and nurture, and he let out a sigh of relief.

Seawater lapped at his feet, and it felt like coming home.

He didn’t know how long, exactly, he stayed at the beach, but when Scrooge called him to get back to the mansion the sun had dipped into the horizon. If Scrooge noticed how much lighter he felt after spending time at shore, he didn’t say anything. All he knew was that Scrooge regularly took him to the sea, after that.

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

He and Della went with Scrooge on one of his adventures when they were teenagers, and they somehow ended up escaping landslide on the side of a rocky mountain by hang gliders. He didn’t really like it, finding the controls hard to grapple with, the wind too hard to predict and ride through, and the risk of falling too great.

Della, on the other hand, loved it.

She glided with the grace of a seagull riding the ocean wind, rising higher with each gust and dipping lower with each small, nearly imperceptible press; she rode the wind as if she had done it for years, as if she was born to do it. She landed gracefully – a complete contrast to himself who sort of just flopped to the sand with all the daintiness of soggy paper plane – and ran around the sand, hair frizzy and stiff from the wind. Her smile was as wide as a ripe banana.

“Can we do that again?” she asked. Her eyes were twinkling like the stars, and it dawned on him that he hadn’t seen her that happy since their parents were gone.

Scrooge must have realized the same, because he gave a weak smile and answered, “Sure, sure, but not now, okay, Lass? I’m not the biggest fan of doing that.” He paused with a thought, knowing how Della’s face fell and opting to ignore it in lieu of thinking. “But we can do that again sometime! If you’d like, I can get you a weekly paragliding class with the best paragliders in the world!”

Della’s face lit up again. She looked up at the sky with an achingly familiar longing, and it suddenly struck him, how the sky was for Della what the sea was for him.

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

He ended up taking boating lessons, and he soon realized that he wasn’t as unlucky at sea.

He tripped on his own feet and fell into his own face on the regular. Losing pennies, pencils and pens, and other small knick-knacks was his everyday life. Getting splashed by mud by oncoming vehicles and nearly getting run over happened basically every other week. It was a very clear contrast to Gladstone, whose hair was always perfect, who kept finding twenty dollars just casually lying on the ground, who stood right next to him when mud splashed but never getting a speck of dirt on him. Misfortune followed him just as fortune shadowed Gladstone; never bad enough to harm him but always enough to make everything just a tad more annoying, more tiring.

The moment he was at sea, it was as if his misfortune vanished.

He didn’t turn lucky. That would have been eerie. But he was wonderfully normal. He didn’t lose things, he didn’t fall even when the boat rocked and tipped, and getting splashed by seawater wasn’t an unlucky accident, that was just how water behaved. Asking to be dry 24/7 at sea was like asking for snow at Sahara Desert.

As Della’s paragliding lesson branched out to plane-flying lessons, his own branched out to several naval areas. Boating was practically second nature, managing a small ship slowly became more natural, maintaining naval vessels became ridiculously easy, and at one point manning a submarine became awkward but welcome. Swimming and diving were as easy as breathing and walking – even easier, at times, since he wouldn’t trip and fall in the water – and once more he was struck by how it felt like he was most at home when the sea was all around him. As his misfortune at sea lessened, his skill grew, and before he knew it Scrooge had entrusted him to chart their course at sea just as he trusted Della to chart their flight when they were looking for more treasure to find.

At one point, he decided to join the Navy. Scrooge was reluctant to let him go, but he was never one to force him or Della to do as he said – he usually just went ahead and expected them to follow, and when it was them who was in the lead he struggled to let them take charge. Della was adamant on keeping him out of the Navy, but he was just as stubborn as her and when he said he was going, he was going. They exchanged stiff goodbyes, but time eventually soothed the jagged edges into longing, and soon they were calling each other and exchanging letters and swapping stories once more. It was hard to stay mad when they were practically inseparable at heart, and losing one meant losing your other half.

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

He came back home with nightmares haunting his steps and phantom screams in his ears and a connection to the sea he never realized he had before. The ocean responded to his calls and there was a push and pull, push and pull that settled at the back of his mind, always there no matter how far away he went from the shore.

Della asked him for details, but he refused. He kept the experience tightly under proverbial lock and key and let it sink into the bottom of the seemingly bottomless ocean and never spoke of it. Della prodded him again and again but he refused to budge – you can try to move the sea but it would never bow to your will. At one point, Della gave up and stopped prodding, and gently asked him if he wanted to go to an adventure, just the two of them, in a small island where she knew Scrooge had planned to get a buried treasure.

“We’ll be just one step ahead,” she said with a mischievous wink. “He’ll be so mad we got that treasure before him. It’ll be hilarious.”

He didn’t need a lot of time to think of it. A grin overtook his beak and he nodded enthusiastically. “Okay.”

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

Scrooge wasn’t mad, per se, but he was definitely sulking (and denying that he was sulking) when he saw the twins getting back bringing the very treasure he’d planned on getting. Della gave her signature shit-eating grin and slung her arm around Scrooge’s shoulder.

“Cheer up, Uncle Scrooge! You don’t have to wade through sand and muddy waters for this!” she said cheerily.

“Yeah, we did all the work for you,” he added. “But I expect to have half the amount of the treasure in my bank account by next week, thank you!”

“Then you very well didn’t do the work for me, did you?” Scrooge bit back scathingly. For his part, that just made him cackle; as much as Scrooge loved treasures he knew the old zillionaire still loved the twins more. Though maybe just a smidgen more. Scrooge still loved treasures so, so very much.

“Oh come on, you still get to display this in the mansion,” Della said with the same shit-eating grin. “Besides, I won’t be able to join trips for a while, so I wanted to bring back something.”

“What? Why won’t you be able to join trips?” Scrooge asked. For once, the ire gave way to confusion.

“Oh right, I was actually getting the treasure as a buffer before I’m telling you two,” Della muttered, mostly to herself but loud enough for the other two to hear. She looked at both of them in the eyes and smiled, nervously jittering hands forced still for a moment as her demeanor changed into something akin of hopeful nervousness. “I’m pregnant. Surprise!”

His jaw dropped, as did Scrooge’s. The treasure was all but forgotten in the ensuing mayhem, but all three were equally excited for what was coming.

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

The eggs lay quietly in front of him, and he couldn’t help the smile that overtook his face. The sea rose up when he took a walk on the shore in response to the giddiness in his chest, but if Scrooge or Della noticed neither of them said anything.

(Part of him wondered – longed – to tell them that the sea responded to his call, as he would respond to it. Part of him told him to stay silent and leave them unaware, too afraid of how they’d respond. All part of him wondered if he was a coward for it.)

Scrooge pulled him aside, once, to show him a blueprint of a rocketship. “It’s going to be the best gift,” the uncle said. “I’ll – we’ll – give them the stars, all of them.”

He blinked at the blueprint, then. “They’re babies, Uncle Scrooge. And Dell has to raise them.”

“For later, then!” Scrooge said. “But this is what I’ll give them.”

“I’m not sure, Uncle Scrooge,” he said, tasting unease in his tongue. “Is it safe?”

“We’ll make sure it is.”

But the project progressed too fast, and suddenly the Spear was there, and all he knew was that it was untested and probably unsafe and it was just sitting there. He’d confronted Uncle Scrooge then, it’s untested, it’s unsafe, too risky, pull out, pull out, pull out.

But of course Scrooge argued, because when did he ever listen to him when it came to safety and adventure? Scrooge knew best, Scrooge could and would survive everything thrown in his way. If Scrooge said it was safe then it was safe, it was fine, where is your sense of adventure?

It wasn’t even about adventure. It was about safety and family and them being together, and with babies on the way they couldn’t just recklessly dive headfirst into whatever they thought was interesting. He asked, he begged, pull out. Safety first; the babies have to be the priority.

Scrooge conceded.

Della found out and decided to throw caution to the wind and took the Spear for a joyride, only to be caught in a cosmic storm.

She didn’t come back.

Anger and hurt of the loss he had to bear turned and stabbed themselves to the nearest target available: Scrooge. The equilibrium he’d had for years, the constant push and pull of twin planets caught in each other’s orbit, the other half of his bleeding, beating heart that had been around since forever ago, gone in an instant. Suddenly he was an unanchored boat drifting aimlessly in stormy sea, and he blamed Scrooge because he couldn’t, wouldn’t, blame himself.

(He wondered if he was a coward for that. He wondered if he was something worse, to shift the blame to someone else when he could have done so much more.)

He took the three eggs and bought a houseboat with the money from an account Scrooge made for him. It was the last time he took something from Scrooge, and from then on out he was on his own.

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

(Sometimes, when he closed his eyes at night, too weary to do anything else after a long day of grueling work, he thought of how the sea called him and how he thought the sky was for Della what the sea was for him. He wondered if Della felt the same call he felt whenever he looked to the expanse of blue when she looked up at the endless sky, if she longed to wrap herself in wind and trust it to catch her when she fell.

Sometimes, he wondered if he’d ever give in to the call and disappear much like her, leaving behind three kids who depended on him, an uncle hellbent on pretending he didn’t exist, distant friends he held dear but could never meet, and unsatisfactory jobs he could never keep. Sometimes, he wondered who’d even care.

Sometimes, the thoughts left the taste of bitter anger and denial in his mouth and he’d turn over and forced his eyes to close and go to sleep. Sometimes he’d feel longing and wonder who’d miss him, and that scared him more than the thought of dying ever could.)

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

He chose the sea because it felt like home, because his ill luck lessened when he was at the domain of the blue, because if anything else, it was the one thing he knew he was good at. He chose the sea because he knew it was the safest option both for him and for the babies.

Huey hatched first, then Dewey, then, after an uncomfortably long time, Louie. He color-coded them just as Della did, but ditched the names she picked for something less… her. Something that wouldn’t get them picked on, if other kids decided to be mean.

(Something that wouldn’t make him tear up whenever he heard them because the sound of it made him thought of the Spear of Selene and how Della eventually disappeared into the ether.)

All three ended up being the joy of his life, the shimmering beacon of hope and happiness when things got so hard not even the rocking of the calming sea could soothe him. The sea helped him take care of the kids; rocking the boat just so to help them sleep and softening their fall when they inevitably fell. All three were soon expert swimmers, and not because the sea helped them or because he taught them. It was sort of a given, with where they lived and how curious and adventurous the boys were. He still had them wear lifejackets, just in case.

There was so much of Della in the boys. As much as he loved them, there were times when he saw them smile and heard them laugh and thought of a sister he lost to the stars.

(He failed to see himself in them, and Uncle Scrooge would one day stare at him with fondness in his eyes while he shook his head, pointing at the boys and telling him that they were as much him as they were her.)

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

He knew the sea called to him and the sky called to Della. He didn’t realize the kids would also have something with them.

Honestly, why was he even surprised anymore? He was of clan Duck and McDuck. Nothing ordinary was going to come out of his family.

He wasn’t sure if they were called, the same way he was – or, if she was, the way Della was. But they had something, and that was pretty much obvious when they hit about six years old or so. He could feel them like the push and pull of the sea at the back of his mind, weak powers reaching out to his more experienced call, soft little things that he would have dismissed if he hadn’t realized they had them.

Dewey was the most obvious one. His was the most flitting, but when it was present, it made itself known. It gave him a buzz when he felt intense emotion, and every now and then he’d think there was a white-blue spark at the tips of the boy’s fingers. They were always too quick to pinpoint, but he was fairly sure they were there.

With it being the most obvious, Dewey’s little jumps of electricity was the first to made itself known. It happened one day when the boys came home from school, with Dewey pouting and crossing his arms and refusing to answer any question.

“Come on, Dewey,” he’d coax the boy. “Is something wrong? Talk to me.”

Dewey looked away. “It’s fine.”

“If it is you won’t be sulking right here instead of hanging out with your brothers,” he pointed out. Said brothers were pretending to be watching TV while glancing awkwardly at them – the downside of the houseboat was that it was small and there wasn’t much space for more private conversations. “Come on. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Dewey snapped.

Oh boy, he thought just as the boy started to yell. Oh fuck my life, he thought again when sparks of blue-white jumped from Dewey’s fingers and zapped around wildly and caused the lamps to flicker and the TV’s audio to blare out white noise. A buzz made all his feathers stand on end, and his surprise made him squawk while the other two kids yelped.

For his part, it was painfully clear that the electric discharge surprised Dewey just as it had him and the other kids. Then surprise turned into panic, then into fright, and suddenly the boy was frozen where he stood, glowing white-blue with sparking electricity that jumped off his skin, eyes aglow and beak slightly apart. Even from his distance he could see electricity dancing in between Dewey’s teeth.

“Dewey,” he called cautiously, raising his voice above the white noise and the wheezing neon lights that dimmed and brightened like a pulse. “Dewey, can you hear me?”

Dewey turned slowly, like he was afraid to move. If his blood hadn’t run cold, the way fear made itself known in the glowing blank white of Dewey’s eyes certainly did the job.

“…Uncle?” Dewey’s voice was soft, so soft, and he was suddenly reminded of the small baby that almost gave him a heart attack with how he ran amok before he could even properly crawl. “Uncle Donald, what’s happening?”

He moved forward and grabbed Dewey’s hands against his better judgement. Electricity surged through him and almost flung him back, but here at sea he was right in his element, and the ocean surged in his veins and strengthened his stance. He let the crackling buzz ran through him, and after a while it was bearable. Water was a conductor and sea was water, and he let the electricity pass through. “It’s okay, Dewey. I’m here.”

“I – I don’t know what’s going on,” Dewey stammered. “I just, I don’t… Uncle Donald, please help me.”

He wrapped his arms around Dewey’s small form, and the young duck immediately responded in kind. He was trembling against his frame, as if he could shelter him from oncoming storm. The buzz was still running through them.

“It’s okay, Dewey. Don’t be scared,” he coaxed.

“People���s been telling me to not get close to them all day,” Dewey said, muffled against his shirt. He sounded strangled, like he was fighting not to let himself be heard but knowing he needed to let it out anyway. “They say they keep getting zapped. I didn’t know. I was just mad, I thought they were being mean. I didn’t know I’d zap you.”

“Oh, Dewey,” he sighed. “I’m okay, see? I’m still here. I’m holding you. I’m perfectly fine.” Mostly, anyway. He hoped. At the very least, he knew the sea would help him recover.

“But I zapped you,” Dewey muttered quietly. “I don’t wanna hurt you. I don’t wanna hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything, and suddenly I’m a freak who zaps everyone.”

“You’re not a freak,” he chastised. “This is just new. You’re surprised. It happens.” He unraveled the hug to cup Dewey’s face in his hands. “You’re a good person, Dewey. You don’t want to hurt people. You’re not hurting me. It’s okay.”

“But what if it’s not?” The white in Dewey’s eyes seemed to glow stronger, bluish and harsh. His fear was still so palpable it hurt.

“Then we’ll figure it out,” he promised. “We always do.”

With that, the glow in Dewey’s eyes dimmed until his eyes turned normal. The surge of electricity receded, and the lights stopped flickering. The TV’s static gave way to the sounds of people buying ottomans before abruptly cutting off. The rest of the buzzing electricity from Dewey disappeared.

His finger kept twitching. But he knew he’d have been worse off if the sea didn’t help him, so he let that be and wondered if the twitching would ever be gone. His musings were cut short when Huey and Louie tackled him and Dewey, chattering up a storm about are you okay, what just happened, did you make the lights flicker that was so cool, no but seriously are you two okay one after another until the words blurred together into a buzz that he couldn’t make a head or tail of.

Dewey, for his part, blinked at them. “…you’re not mad at me for screwing up the houseboat?” he glanced at both him and the kids, unsure.

“No, I’m not,” he assured his nephew. “You were scared and you couldn’t control the electricity. That’s alright.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah!” he answered with a smile. “We’ll fix the houseboat, and we’ll find a way for you to control that superpower of yours. That way we can make sure things don’t go haywire again, ‘kay?”

Dewey’s relief was obvious in his face. “’kay. Thanks, Uncle Donald.”

“Now let’s get us some dinner, then you three can rest up,” he said. “Especially Dewey. I’m sure you’re tired.”

The twitching did go away, after two weeks or so. It still appeared now and then, but for the most part it was gone.

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

With Dewey sparking and buzzing electricity, he knew immediately it was only a matter of time before the other two began showing signs of something otherworldly in their veins. He was proven right when Huey caught fire in the most literal sense of the word.

His mind flashed to the times he took hold of Huey’s hand and thought to himself, the boy sure was warm. But hey, people are like that sometimes, right? Well, his hindsight was always clearer than foresight and he suppressed the urge to slap himself in the forehead.

Flames wreathed and blanketed Huey from head to toe, but he didn’t seem burned. He’d screamed in surprise, but once he realized he was alright, the screams died and he just stared  blankly at his fiery hands.

He was still breathing really fast, though. It was probably best to get to him and calm him down before the fire spread. They were in the woods doing some camping so Huey could get his Junior Woodchuck badges, and forest fire was not in the list of things they’d hope to happen.

“Huey?” he called softly. “You okay there, buddy?”

“Is this like Dewey and his lightning?” Huey asked instead of answering.

“Probably,” he replied as he glanced at the other two of the triplets. Dewey had opened his mouth to chatter excitedly, but Louie, bless his attention to social cues and tact, placed a hand on Dewey’s shoulder and shook his head, letting their uncle work on calming Huey first.

“Is this why it’s always been easy to light a campfire?” Huey asked, sounding dreamy.

He blinked at the question. That wasn’t something he expected. “Uh.” Dewey and Louie stared at him and Huey, watching for any reaction. Well, Louie did. Dewey just looked impatient, mostly.

The dreamy tone Huey had used vanished, giving way to indignation. “Have I been wasting my time with friction and sticks when I can just make wood catch fire?!”

The surprised guffaw broke through his beaks before he could stop it. He smothered it before it could truly bloom, but it had been heard, and Huey glared at him with all the indignation of a cat whose tail had accidentally been stepped on. He gulped and tried to find words, but all that came out was, “Um.”

Dewey just grinned at his spot. He had given up trying to be patient. “I know, right? This has so many uses! We both have superpowers, woohoo!”

The word superpower seemed to trip Huey into surprise again, and this time, panic grew in his eyes. “I can do fire. I can do fire.”

He blinked at the young duck. “Yes, I think the fact that you’re on fire makes it obvious…?”

Huey shot him a look. “Uncle Donald, I have no idea how to not be on fire.”

Oh. He stared at Huey, studying him. Flames wreathed around him like a blanket, but he was obviously not pained, and his clothes and hat were okay. Hesitantly, he reached out. When he felt the feathers around his fingers began to singe with heat, he pulled back.

“You know you’re safe, right?” he asked slowly. “It’s okay. You don’t need fire to fend off anything.”

“I know that,” Huey said. His voice was beginning to tinge with hysteria. “But the fire just. Won’t go away.”

“What set it off?” Louie asked. “No judgement here, but I don’t think you can turn it off unless you know for sure what caused it in the first place.”

“I don’t know!” Huey yelled. “I’ve been convincing myself it’s okay! I’m safe! I know these woods, I should be afraid, but the fire keeps – “ He stopped and looked away, gulping. Any other time his eyes might shimmer with unshed tears, but the fire evaporated the water in an instant.

“Sometimes my brain gets all stupid and annoying,” Dewey said slowly. “I tell myself it’s okay but my brain is still convinced it’s not. Is it like that?” His fingers sparked with electricity as his eyes flashed blue-white for a split second.

“Uh, sort of? Maybe?” Huey gulped and wrung his hands together. “I don’t know. This is – this is a lot.”

It clicked, then, because he’d felt the same before, if only flittingly. “Is it scary?” he asked gently. “To suddenly burst flames everywhere. It’s kind of freaky, isn’t it? You’re not sure what triggers it, and that means you don’t know how to keep it under control.”

Huey choked on what might have been a sob. He sniffed, nodded jerkily, and wrung his hands again. The flames flared brightly before settling, but didn’t go out.

“Then we find out about it,” he said. “It’s okay. We live at sea anyway. We can take a risk to explore this. You’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, and we can do that together,” Dewey added. “I still zap you and Louie from time to time, too. We can deal with it together.”

Louie tilted his head in thought. “I… could bring drinks and snacks?” At his brothers’ questioning look, he shrugged. “I mean. I don’t have anything, but at least I can try to help.”

“Is it safe?” Huey turned his gaze to him.

He shrugged. “You two can use the lifeboat while Louie and I watch over from the houseboat. We’ll figure it out.” He levelled a smile at Huey. “We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

Huey sniffed and nodded. Slowly, the fire dimmed and grew weaker until it was finally a small lick at the palm of the boy’s hand. He palmed it, effectively snuffing it out. Dewey immediately slung his arms around his frame while Louie leaned on him.

“So, Huey,” he began, “what badges are you gonna get today?”

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

The thing was, it was obvious. It was hard not to notice how Louie ended up feeling isolated from his brothers, being the only one out of three to not exhibit any obvious supernormal abilities. He ducked out of view when lightning crackled between Dewey’s knuckles or when warmth seeped through Huey’s clothes until light flitted about his fingers. He used his phone much more, and he didn’t chat as much with the other two. He still did, enough to not be immediately obvious, but not as much as before.

Ending up under Uncle Scrooge’s care helped things out a bit. Uncle Scrooge didn’t like magic and it was so much easier to coax the boys to keep their abilities a secret rather than letting it out, and the absence of controlled fire and lightning eased Louie into talking, but the distance was still present. There was only so much he could do to bridge the gap when he was mostly busy repairing the houseboat, and he was at a loss of what he should do.

And then Magica happened, and he had to prioritize. Gotta deal with the old witch to ensure the safety of his family first. There would be no gap to bridge if the people he wanted to bridge didn’t even exist.

Pulling the kids away from the danger while fully expecting them to show up at the center of it was painful, but sadly necessary. They were short on manpower and he knew the kids were smart, they’d know how to get there safe. He was proven right when they showed up at Uncle Scrooge’s office, and he couldn’t help eyeing Louie’s golden khopesh he strapped to his back. Didn’t the triplets throw it to sea earlier?

The kids went into the money bin while he turned to deal with the shadows. When he was finished brawling Magica’s underlings, he dashed into the money bin, and his feet was locked in place. The voice he had recently technologically gained buzzed uncomfortably in his throat as his feathers stood on end – from sudden burst of electricity the Modulator emitted or from fear, he didn’t know for sure.

The kids were scattered, each held by liquid shadows or purple lights that locked them in place. At the center of the money bin, Uncle Scrooge’s gold coins had created a throne, and above it Magica de Spell hovered in midair. One of her hands held a silver coin, while the other held her staff, which she held in front of her as she maintained her spells. Her shadow had liquefied under her, leaking to the feet of the throne and gathered and rose in shape of a familiar girl – Lena? – who seemed to be pleading at Magica. And, in front of Magica, held airborne by the clutches of glowing purple hand, was Louie. The spell held him tightly and kept a finger over his beak, keeping him from speaking. He struggled and glared hotly at Magica. The golden khopesh he had tugged along lay untouched on the bed of gold below.

Magica beckoned, and the purple hand moved to hold Louie closer to her. “My, what’s this?” she mused. He couldn’t see her eyes from behind, but he could imagine them sparking with hungry interest. “A fledgling gold-touched child. Well, well, well, Scrooge! I can’t believe you’ve been hiding such interesting things from me!” She moved to stare at the dime in her hand.

It struck him, then, that his uncle was trapped within the dime. He had to get there, had to help, had to do something, but he wasn’t sure what, and he wasn’t sure the sea could help him here. Slowly, carefully, he descended the stairs to reach the gold below, trying to get the jump on Magica. She didn’t see him, of course, but her sentient shadow did. Her eyes strayed at him for a split second, then returned to Magica.

“Please, Aunt Magica,” she pleaded again, pretending he didn’t exist. “Let them go. You have the dime and you’ve got Scrooge in your hands, literally. Why do you still do this?”

“Oh shush, Lena,” Magica said. “Your mushy friendship magic – “ oh boy, he could hear the eye roll even without seeing it “ – may have given you some power to break out from being my shadow, but you’re not here to babble about my plan. Besides, it’s changed now.”

That seemed to have given Lena some pause. “It has?”

“Yes, well, at first I thought enacting my revenge on Scrooge and his family and taking control over the city is enough,” she whirled excitedly at Louie, “but that’s before I learned the existence of a gold-touched child! The potential! The raw power I could get with the right ritual! Forget Scrooge’s dime, with this child’s blood I can get as much power as I want!”

His feet touched the cold floor of gold. He tiptoed carefully, trying as hard as he could to keep from making any noise. For the most part he was successful, for the rest Magica’s monologuing kept her from noticing him, even though the rest of the kids had noticed him by now. He held a finger to his beak to signal them to stay silent, and Huey, bless him, gave him another distraction.

“What kind of nonsense are you babbling?” he asked. “Louie’s just a kid, same as any of us! Give him back!”

“Yeah, and give Uncle Scrooge back, too!” Dewey added.

“Just a kid?” Magica repeated, and she zoomed to Huey. The boy struggled against the liquid shadows that bound him to get more distance between him and the witch.

“Just a kid?” Magica said again as she circled Huey.

He ducked behind a chest to hide and peeked out to see. Magica was still circling Huey. She looked almost comically insulted.

“What do you mean, just a kid?” Magica bit. “You of all people should know better. I can feel your heat, little duck. You’re flame-born, just as your brother in blue is lightning-kissed, just as your other brother is gold-touched. You have magic coursing in your veins, and you have the gall to say you and your brothers are just kids?”

Huey blinked at her, as Dewey did. Louie had stopped struggling, and from his peripheral, he could see Webby stopped shaking the glowing purple bars of the cage Magica placed her in. He wondered how she could tell. With a frown, he dug deep and let the sea sweep at him, enveloping him with cool surety and safety and power.

Sure enough, he could feel the magic in the bin flaring wildly. Magica’s was the strongest, reeking of shadows, gloom, and something burnt and rotten. Huey’s was the warmth of campfire, braving cold nights and battling it with light and heat. Dewey’s was a jumping, sparking buzz, flitting and blitzing and zapping restlessly. Lena’s was shadows like Magica’s but brighter somehow, and linked to Webby. Webby herself didn’t really have anything, not really, but the woven bracelet on her wrist shone love and affection like sunshine on summer day. Louie’s was… cold and glittering, shining, something that screamed precious. Like gemstones, like gold.

As soon as he reached out to feel the magic around him, Magica whipped around and locked her sight at him. Purple glow rushed at him and caught him by the ankle, and pulled him up until he was dangling upside down.

“Oh, so we have a newcomer now,” Magica purred. “Welcome, little sea-called. I thought I saw you hovering around here. We were just talking about how the kid in green is special.”

“I’ll show you special!” he yelled as he struggled against the spell that held him. To his frustration, Magica just laughed. It made his blood boil, and he could feel the sea’s push and pull, push and pull strengthening around the bin.

“Oh, no, believe me, the kid is so much more special than you’d think,” Magica grinned and floated back to Louie. “You see, he’s a fledging gold-touched. He hasn’t yet come to his own like Scrooge has. All he has is potential.” She pinched Louie’s cheek lightly. “And that’s exactly what makes him valuable. If all he has is potential, then there’s no limit. That means there is no limit on what sort of power I could gather.” She giggled giddily. “Just imagine! The potential of a gold-touched who was born alongside a flame-born and a lightning kissed, borne from a sky-called and protected by a sea-called! His blood will spill, and Scrooge will watch, and I will grow to be the strongest mage in the world!”

“You’re crazy if you think we’ll let you kill our brother just like that!” Dewey spat.

“Well, that’s easy,” Magica said flippantly, “I’m just going to kill all of you so I don’t need to deal with you. I’m sure there are rituals to make sure I’ll end up having your fire and lightning powers.”

Magica’s words made him see red, and the push and pull of the sea turned into a roar as a wave rose high enough to slap the side of the money bin. He could feel the ocean rise within him, around him, ready to pounce. He could feel something start within his throat – the Modulator was fried from the rising magic, that was for sure. He coughed it out of his throat and spat it gracelessly down.

Apparently, Magica’s words also made Louie angry, because instead of water gold coins rose around them.

Shock stilled the sea’s anger and he stared at his nephew, eyes wide. Louie was glaring hotly at Magica, gritting his teeth and growling softly. His dark irises were gone, overtaken by shining yellow-gold speckled with emerald green that enveloped his eyes fully, and his hood billowed in unseen wind. Gold was pulled to his side like giant metal whips, and they rushed to Magica.

Magica’s binding spells broke in an instant as the witch pulled her magic to shield herself. He fell gracelessly and turned to look around, just in time to see Louie crash to the ground. He dashed to him immediately, as did Huey, Dewey, and Webby. Lena hovered around them, oozing uncertainty.

He gathered Louie into his arms. “Louie? Louie, talk to me.”

The youngest of the triplets didn’t answer. His eyes were still fully gold, almost like discs. He slumped bonelessly into his hold, staring at seemingly nothing.

“Louie, please,” Huey whispered. “Please tell us you’re okay.”

Louie was still silent, but he reached out with both hands toward Magica. The golden whips were still lashing out. He closed his fists and pulled, and Magica screamed an enraged no.

He looked up to see what made her scream. Dewey saw it before he did, and the boy dashed out, hands outstretched, and caught the dime Uncle Scrooge was trapped in, babbling apologies at it. Magica saw it and fired a spell at him, and Dewey lit up with crackling blue-white that shone brightly and smashed through Magica’s spell. Moonlight shone through the cloud of shadows as Magica’s control of it stuttered, and the beam hit the dime just so and released Uncle Scrooge from his prison. He crowed victoriously and held up his cane to Magica.

She screamed in anger, seeing Uncle Scrooge free. Her magic, oozing of darkness and shadows, flared and lashed blindly, and Huey cried out a no and threw his arm out. Fire spread from his fingers and formed a barrier from Magica’s wild magic, protecting them from her blind rage.

“I had you!” Magica screamed. “I had you, in my hands! I will not let myself be defeated again!”

“Then fight me!” Uncle Scrooge challenged. “See if you can win fair and square. Were I a betting man, I daresay you will not.”

Rage made Magica reckless, and she charged at Uncle Scrooge. It took him laughingly short time to defeat her, and Webby snatched her staff and broke the deep purple jewel adorning it. The effect was instantaneous; her shadow blasted to all direction, and Webby yelped in surprise, holding her hands in front of her to shield herself from the blast. A glowing, translucent blue shield materialized as Lena flared bright enough to seem solid despite being a shadow. Huey’s shield of flames hadn’t dissipated, and it was enough to protect them from the lashing shadows.

When the shadows dispersed, so did Lena, but she managed to slip in a smile for Webby as she melted into Webby’s shadow. The girl stared blankly at her own shadow, then at her bracelet, and a glint of steel made itself known her eyes. Then it was gone as Magica declared her promise for revenge and ran away in a poof of smoke – parlor tricks this time instead of deadly magic.

He decided that would be more easily dealt with later. He redirected his attention to Louie, whose eyes were still glowing softly gold, whose whole being still looked like he was speckled with emeralds. He shook the boy carefully, calling him softly.

“We’re okay now,” he assured. “Do you hear me, Louie?”

Louie blinked at him a few times as the golden glow dissipated. “Uncle Donald, your voice is back to being scratchy.”

He smiled. “I know. I think being around magic just isn’t good for tech pieces. How do you feel, Louie?”

“I’m so tired,” Louie admitted. He looked around sluggishly. “Where’s my khopesh?”

Dewey searched with his eyes for a bit and found it almost immediately. He jogged to get it and gave it to Louie. “Here.”

Louie held it like a lifeline and huffed a laugh. “Of all things, I sure didn’t think I’d be able to control gold, but I’m not complaining.”

“Yeah, and to think we had Magica of all people telling us about it,” Webby muttered.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Uncle Scrooge cut in. “What matters is that we are here now, and we are safe. Let’s go home and rest. We’ll need it after all that. I certainly do.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Louie agreed. “I feel like I could sleep for a week straight, maybe more.”

He fell asleep against his side on the car ride home despite Launchpad’s rough driving, and soon the other kids followed suit, so that just drove the point home even more.

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

Despite everything Magica had said, somehow no one realized his connection to sea. It baffled him at first, but then he remembered all the things that went down that day – shadows rising, Magica making herself a throne in the money bin, Uncle Scrooge captured and released, Louie exhausting himself from making a show with all the gold he controlled at once… and yeah, that checked out. He’d probably forget about a small remark some crazy magic lady said, too.

Uncle Scrooge took the kids’ abilities surprisingly well, and accommodated Webby’s sudden interest in magic without much complaining about how magic was cheating, somehow. With how Lena sometimes flitted in and out of view from her shadow, he could see why. Her usual drive and excitement over treasure hunting didn’t change anyhow; she still went after treasures and helped solve puzzles all the same, and her mastery over different languages were still as critically useful as ever. The triplets’ abilities had also proven useful, with Huey providing light and warmth, Dewey jumpstarting the plane when needed, and Louie feeling out where the treasures lay. And he…

Well, he helped in any way he could without actually telling anyone his abilities. He didn’t really hide it, not really. It was just that his was a lot less flashy compared to the kids’. The sea pushes and pulls all the same whether or not he was there. The sea was unpredictable and a sudden slap of wave wouldn’t make any difference. There was never really any reason to call upon the sea’s rage, not without risking washing away his family, so he never did. He never really hid it, so really, it wasn’t really his fault if no one connected the dots.

(That was what he told himself, anyway. Part of him wondered if that was just him trying to hold off telling people about it. The sea was special to him, it loved him just as he loved it, and part of him wanted that to stay private, to keep that precious connection to himself.)

That didn’t stop the stress. That didn’t stop the molting.

He worried, of course. Who wouldn’t, with family like his? He worried so much until the seizing in his heart became a constant, until sleep eluded him even with the help of calming tapes and aromatherapy, until he lost all feather and he looked more like a raw Thanksgiving turkey than a living, walking duck. When his family presented him the option to go on the cruise, he took it because he knew he’d die an untimely death with him pushing on like this.

And then he saw the Spear, and for the first time in such a long time, hope seized him like vice.

For the first time, what rushed in his veins and forced his feet to move wasn’t desperation for getting enough for next month’s supplies, or getting something for the kids’ lunch, or seizing terror at seeing something dangerous about to happen to the kids. For the first time, it was blind hope, screaming in his ears with an unbroken chant of Della, Della, Della, and he didn’t even register how his muscles burn as he slipped into the ship.

He wasn’t at sea. His bad luck reared its head at the worst possible moment, and the rocket launched itself to space. The sea’s reach felt alarmed when it tried to grab him, to feel him, to keep him in place, but there was only so much a mass of water could do, and there was only so much he could do, not even understanding which button did what.

When he found himself surrounded by Moonlanders pointing their golden spears at him, he knew well that he was truly alone.

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

When he was a child first learning of how the moon pulled on the sea to create tides, he used to imagine a story about two people, missing each other, one stranded on sea and one on moon. Maybe they were best friends, or families, or lovers, and their longing for each other was so great the sea and the moon were moved.

He very much felt like that, now. Only, his family most likely didn’t know he was gone, and he was all that did the longing.

Well, he and the sea. He could feel his heart ache for the familiar push and pull, push and pull at the back of his mind that had disappeared the moment he left Earth’s atmosphere. But he could feel the sea longing for him, even so far away. He missed the sea nearly as much as he missed Della, and part of him was reminded of the tale of Princess Kaguya. He wondered if this is how she felt, longing for the moon while staying on Earth, so similar to how he longed for the sea while stranded on the moon.

He’d learned early on that struggling against the gold band across his beak and the golden cuffs around his wrists was useless, but that didn’t stop him from trying when the Moonlanders’ backs were turned. It still stung, how Lunaris didn’t understand his words and decided to steal his voice then and there.

His heart leapt to his throat with hope when Penumbra came and released him from his prison, but it sank back into the sewers when Lunaris caught them both. When Lunaris attacked, he was immediately on the defensive; he could fight, and he fought well, but Lunaris was far stronger and held so much more advantage over him. The moon’s gravity, especially, threw him off so much that fighting became even harder than it already was.

Then Lunaris threatened his family, and his blood boiled so much the gold band around his beak shattered as she flew into a rage and went for Lunaris. The second wind didn’t last long, but it was enough to give him the chance he needed to board the death trap Lunaris had made in hope of getting to Earth.

It was a risk, of course. But wasn’t everything, at this point?

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

Against all odds, the bad luck that had haunted him since birth relented, and Lady Fortune allowed him to land on Earth in one piece.

He crashed into an island. It was small and uninhabited, but it was land, and surrounded by the sea that lapped at his feet as if embracing and welcoming him back home it almost felt enough. Almost, because it still wasn’t; he had to go to his family to warn them of the danger.

If only the sea would aid him to get back.

It refused to let him go from the island. It threw fish and mollusks at him so he wouldn’t starve to death, and the coconuts in the island was sufficient to keep him hydrated, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He needed to get back home, to tell the others to prepare, and the sea. Wouldn’t. Let him.

He kicked the water in a fit of anger. “Come on!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Isn’t it enough that I got thrown to moon and back? Let me get back home!” He jumped to the raft he’d made and started rowing, but just like before, the sea pushed him back to shore.

“Why won’t you let me go back home?” he pleaded, voice cracked with desperation. “My family needs me. Please.”

The sea offered no answer. It only resumed its routine. Push and pull and push and pull and push him back to shore.

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

A plane crashed at the shore. It carried the kids and Della with it.

When her eyes fell on him, she dashed to him. There was so much to take in – the metal leg, the way she bounded like the wind itself supported her, like she was gliding instead of ripping through the air as she dashed, the way sunny-cloud-white hovered around her like puffs of smoke, the way her eyes blazed with something so suspiciously alike to concerned anger – but it was undoubtedly her, and he would never be wrong about this. The twin planets were back in orbit and almost immediately they pulled on each other’s force of gravity until the eternal dance that was cut short resumed again.

They fought almost immediately after they set eyes upon each other – typical – but the overlaying deception of anger melted immediately to reveal the longing underneath, and they exchanged teary-eyed hug that seemed to last forever. The moment was ruined when his sculpted melon companion made appearance, but hey, he’d been alone for a long time. He had to make do. There was only so much communicating the ocean could do.

Fethry and Gladstone came riding Mitzy, and all of them left the island to catch up with dear old Scrooge. The sea was rough, but Mitzy’s course was true. There was a spike in his mind, like the sea was adamant to keep him in the island with no way out. There was also an underlying of fear he couldn’t understand.

He was Scrooge McDuck’s nephew, dammit. Safety was never a sure thing. The only thing guaranteed to be around was adventure, and that was about it. Weird amulets, interdimensional beings hungry for power, witches hell-bent on revenge, and a plethora of weirdness followed him as easily as it did anyone in his family. To be honest, Della getting to the moon and getting back with a metal leg was probably the least weird thing to ever happen in the long history of Duck-McDuck family.

(Okay, scratch that, that was plenty weird. Was it the weirdest, though?

Considering Scrooge has been frozen in ice for literal years and survived and got stuck in some weird timeless dimension… yeah, it wasn’t the weirdest by a long shot.)

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

Okay, he did say there was a lot of weird stuff happening to the Duck-McDuck family, but sharks wearing parkas were plenty bizarre on their own right. Glomgold may not have the sharpest mind, but even he had to admit the man’s ingenuity was genuinely brilliant.

Or maybe it was just him being his usual oddly smart dumbass self. He couldn’t decide.

Lunaris was a strong opponent, that was for sure, but even he didn’t have magic at his side. Surely, against Gladstone’s supernatural good luck, Fethry’s connection with animals, Della’s affinity with the wind and sky, Huey’s fire, Dewey’s lightning, and Louie’s ability to mold gold into his will, he’d have no chance of winning. His ship was made of gold, for God’s sake. All Louie had to do was crumple it up like oily wrapping paper about to be tossed to the trash can, and that was it.

That’s what he thought, at least. Then he saw the blue alien prick holding Scrooge hostage, and he knew instantly they were at a disadvantage. Damn these villains and their ideas to take people’s loved ones hostage.

Scrooge smiled at them all the same, greeting, “Hello, kids.”

“Hi, Uncle Scrooge,” said ‘kids’ – Scrooge’s collection of relatives he practically adopted both young and old – chorused at him. He didn’t know for sure, but he thought he heard an undercurrent of anger in their combined voices. He knew his had it.

Lunaris was clearly in shock when seeing a giant krill towering above him, but to his credit he regained his composure quickly.

“Lunaris,” Della seethed, and he could almost feel her anger as if it was his. “Let go of my uncle.”

“And lose any potential advantage I might have?” Lunaris shot back as he tightened his grip on Scrooge’s collar. “I don’t think so.”

Della growled. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “You helped me when I was in the moon. I thought we were friends! And then you turn around and do this?”

“Friends?” Lunaris repeated with a bark of laughter. “Do you even hear yourself? Are you so foolish that you don’t even realize people can lie?” He levelled a cold gaze at her. “We are not friends,” he spat. “You are but a lowly Earthling. I am General Lunaris of the Moon. For you to even consider the possibility of us being friends is an insult to my name.”

Della recoiled though slapped and let out a snarl. Wind picked up around her and made her hair dance as white plumes materialized around her, thin but undoubtedly present. She narrowed her eyes at the Moonlander. “You lied to me. All this time, all you wanted to do was just to get here.”

“Oh, so you finally realized after all,” Lunaris said with a mocking smile. “I honestly thought it would take you longer to understand.”

Della took a deep breath, but the anger in her eyes blazed brighter. “I had high opinions about you,” she said. “You helped me in the Moon. Was that all a lie? All of it?”

Lunaris didn’t even hesitate. “All of it.”

A sudden gust of strong wind blasted him in the face, making him flinch back while his cape was blown. He squinted at Della but made no move otherwise.

“I will give you to a count of three,” Della began, “and if by then you have not released my uncle, I will make you sorry for being born.” She narrowed her eyes at Lunaris. “One.”

“Do you honestly think that meager threat is enough to scare me?” Lunaris asked.

“Two!”

“I do not care for your countings, Della Duck.”

“Three!” Della paused, eyeing Lunaris closely. When he made no move to release Scrooge, she rushed ahead and jumped off Mitzy’s head. The wind carried her and she glided effortlessly like a feather riding on a breeze, seemingly weightless. Then she shot like an arrow to Lunaris, leaving a trail of white while her metal leg aimed at his head as she spun a kick. Lunaris dropped Scrooge to block her kick.

It triggered a wave of motions among the family. Mitzy lowered her head so the remaining ducks on top of her head could get down, and the kids immediately jumped off. A heat haze had already blurred the air around Huey, and sparks of lightning jumped off the tips of Dewey’s fingers. Louie kept his center of gravity low as he took his khopesh from his back – he never left home without it anymore, which was more than a little hard to explain to other people – as he ran straight for the ship. Webby brandished her grappling hook and took a shot, shooting ahead to Scrooge’s side.

Huey and Dewey went for Lunaris, flames blanketing Huey’s hands and lightning following Dewey’s wake, and it clearly surprised Lunaris. That didn’t stop him long, however, as he managed to block Della’s kick still.

“Kids, I’ll handle this,” Della told the boys. “Go help Louie deal with the spaceship so he can’t get back to outer space!”

“Are you sure?” Huey asked.

“We can take him together!” Dewey protested.

“Yes! Go wreck the ship!” Della insisted, and the boys complied.

He didn’t spend more time dawdling. He slid off Mitzy’s head, landed on his feet, tripped, and fell on his face. He grumbled inwardly at Gladstone’s impeccable landing as he got up and ran ahead. He passed Della and Lunaris and joined the kids – Della could handle the Moonlander, and the kids probably had already made a plan of sorts. They were smart, they’d know to make plans.

Webby was helping Scrooge up, and the old duck immediately straightened and twirled his cane, rocked on his heels, and joined Della’s attempt to bring Lunaris down. Seeing the situation well taken care of, he turned to check on the kids and found himself grinning.

Louie had put his hands on the ship’s outer wall, glowing gold and glimmering emerald. The metal was slowly crumpling in his hands as he tried to pull it down. A few ways off of him, Huey was doing a similar thing, only his hands were white-hot and he was trying to melt the gold away. He peeked into the ship’s interior and had to stop himself from laughing out loud – Webby, with her technical know-how, was trying to damage the ship’s system as much as possible while Dewey pressed random buttons while frying each of them with electricity from his fingers. The whole board was starting to spark dangerously.

He dashed inside and looked around. “Okay, what can I do to damage the ship more?” he asked aloud to no one in particular.

“Well, I assume the rocket would need some sort of vacuum to make sure no one dies,” Webby answered. “So if you do something to compromise that, Lunaris will probably not be able to use this ship anymore.”

His sight zeroed in on the cockpit. More importantly, the glass wall of the cockpit that allowed the pilot to look out into the ether. He rolled his sleeves with purpose and stomped ahead while casting his gaze to find something he could use to break the glass. “Alright, thanks Webby. I’ll try to smash the window.” He caught Webby nodding an OK before he located a golden spear on the floor, and he took it and started jabbing its end to the glass panel.

It took a while, far longer than he’d like it to, but the panel finally started to gain spiderwebs of cracks. Just as he prepared himself for another vicious jab, he caught sight of another, smaller ship careening into the sea just by the dock, and saw Penumbra jumping off the pod before it nosedived into the ice, creating a hole as it sank to the frigid waters. He jabbed the spear in and the glass gave out, then he turned and ran out of the ship, leaving the spear at the window.

He got out just in time to see Penumbra throwing a punch at Lunaris, joining Della’s assault. She threw Della a quick smile and greeted, “Hi, roomie.”

“Penny!” Della squealed in delight. “You came here!”

“I wanted to warn you, but I suppose I’m late,” Penumbra mused. She turned back to Lunaris. “But I think we can save this conversation for another time.”

Lunaris threw her a dirty look. “First you helped a prisoner escape, and now you’re defying orders to fight the Earthlings. I never thought you of all people would turn your back to the Moon.”

“This is wrong and you know it,” Penumbra shot back. “If you want to invade Earth, then fine. But I can’t let you push our fellow Moonlanders into this. Earthlings have us outnumbered by the thousands, and if you keep doing this sooner or later they’ll meet their doom.”

“The Moon will not fall!” Lunaris snapped. “I will not fall!”

“Perhaps not you,” Penumbra answered solemnly, “but as much as it pains me to say this, other Moonlanders will, if you keep going like this.” She straightened and lowered her spear. “Think about it, Sir. It would be so much better for both our sides to sign a peace treaty. There will be no casualty, there will be no more fear, our civilization can thrive and we can help these backwater Earthlings grow. It doesn’t have to be a war. We can advance together.”

“How naïve of you to think the Earthlings will not desert you,” Lunaris said instead. “War is the only path we can take.”

With an exhale that sounded like she had accepted the burden of carrying the weight of the world upon her shoulders, Penumbra lifted her spear again. “Then stopping you is the only path I can take, Lunaris.”

Lunaris snorted. “Traitor.” He took a step back and assumed a fighting stance, then paused as a shadow covered him. He looked up to see Mitzy’s massive legs coming for him, and he jumped back, watching in silent fascination as the wooden panels of the dock was smashed to smithereens. He landed lightly on his feet.

Others weren’t as lucky. He fell into his face again, and he could see Huey and Louie losing their balance and falling to the ice. Penumbra and Della were luckier, with Penumbra being much more fit and Della easily floating to avoid falling. He looked around, trying to find the rest of his family – Dewey and Webby were at the door of the ship, gripping the wall to keep themselves upright, and Gladstone, Fethry, and Scrooge had found themselves atop Mitzy’s head, with Scrooge directing Fethry what to tell Mitzy to do.

Mitzy moved again, aiming for Lunaris and missing by a hair’s breadth when Lunaris jumped away again. The dock was basically ruined at that point, floating on the water that peeked from cracked ice that Mitzy created.

He found himself growling from frustration and yelled, “Be careful up there! You’re destroying the docks!”

“Mitzy’s too big to be careful, you’ll have to dodge! Sorry!” Fethry yelled back.

“Oh, for the love of – “ he dodged a falling wooden debris with a squawk and landed on hard ice. He mumbled a cuss or two and dashed ahead to join Della and Penumbra in their attempt to beat up Lunaris, but skidded to a halt and fell on his butt when he saw that Lunaris had grabbed Louie by the collar and was holding him up. His other hand held a golden dagger against Louie’s neck. Louie’s own khopesh had fallen, too far away for the boy to grab.

“Stand back or I will stab him,” Lunaris threatened.

“This is rich coming from the guy who yelled I will not fall!” Louie mocked.

Lunaris frowned. “I have you at bladepoint. Don’t you realize what position you’re in?”

“Oh, sure, go ahead, get the guy who seems like he can’t defend himself and take him as hostage, why don’t you?” Louie grumbled. “If you’re so high and mighty I would’ve thought you’d think or a nobler plan.”

Lunaris’ frown deepened into a scowl. “I hope you realize I am perfectly capable of slitting your throat right now, if I so choose.”

This time, it was Huey who answered. “No you won’t,” he said, matter-of-fact, tone dry enough to rival a desert.

“You see, about that,” Louie spoke up again, “I’m sure you’ve seen my brother conjure fire and my other brother conjure electricity. You’ve seen my mom fly, too. Haven’t you considered I might have something up my sleeve, too?” With that, he lifted a hand and jabbed up, glimmering gold all over, and the fallen khopesh lifted up on its own and slashed through the air to Lunaris.

The Moonlander moved to block the attack with his dagger, and Louie took advantage of the distraction by biting Lunaris’ hand so he’d be released. As Lunaris did in surprise, Louie shimmered brighter and made a pulling gesture. The dagger in Lunaris’ hand was ripped away and clanged to the ice.

“You filthy Earthling!” Lunaris spat. He slapped Louie backhanded, hard enough to send him reeling and falling to ice and landing on his face. He grazed his cheek on a rough patch and came out with red welts.

Lunaris wasn’t done. He marched with purpose, eyes locked at Louie. The boy in question called the golden dagger for help, shimmering gold with brilliant emerald in his eyes. The dagger shot to Lunaris, but he simply slapped it away. He lifted his hand.

He saw red.

He could hear Della yelling at Lunaris to stop, but it didn’t register in his mind. All he could see was Louie and his wound and Lunaris still trying to hurt him. Rage filled him to the brim, and his vision went blue, blue, deep ocean blue, with specks of seafoam white glittering like stars. Ice around him cracked and burst and seawater shot up like geysers, creating pillars that twisted together into one. They swirled up, up, up to the sky and dived down, slamming into Lunaris and pinning him down under a torrent of water.

“Stop hurting my family!” he yelled at the Moonlander. His voice sounded deeper to his ears, reverberating in a way that had never happened to him before. Lunaris didn’t answer, but it wasn’t surprising; he was, after all, more or less drowned within a pillar of his making. He could feel Lunaris choking for breath and decided to have mercy, letting the surging sea in his veins recede into familiar push and pull, push and pull that soothed his rage like a balm. The deep ocean blue faded from his vision.

He looked up to see Lunaris sprawled on wet ice, coughing for air while Penumbra cuffed him. relief washed over him when he realized that with Lunaris defeated his family was safe.

There was a creak and crack, and Della screamed “Look out!” to someone, and a gust of wind slapped him by his side and blew him away, though not by much. He looked up to see the towering golden ship tipping and beginning to fall at the cluster of Duck-McDuck family (plus honorary members of the family and two aliens), the ice under it cracked and giving way after the stunt the family had pulled.

Louie blazed gold and emerald green at once as he threw out his hands and willed the ship to maintain its position, but gravity was a cruel mistress that refused to bargain with anyone. The ship barely even slowed its descent to sea.

Dewey and Webby ran out of the ship and snagged Louie by the elbow on each side, dragging him away from danger. The gold-and-emerald-green faded almost immediately from Louie, and the ship creaked loudly as it fell. The three escaped by a hair’s breadth, and he exhaled a breath he wasn’t even aware he’d been holding. The golden ship sank into the deep and the ice slowly settled while the ducks scrambled away from the hole and cracks to avoid tipping any ice that might lead them to falling into the sea.

When the gurgling of the ship was gone, Della rounded on him. “You can control water?”

“You can fly,” he protested.

“You never told me you can control water!”

“It never came up! And I can only do the sea! What am I supposed to say, anyway? Hi, Dell, remember how I always loved to be by the sea since we were little? That’s cause I can make some waterworks a little, no biggie!”

“That would have been better than radio silence!”

Glomgold broke the budding argument with a loud, confused, “What in the world just happened?”

Scrooge let out a laugh at that. “Oh, nothing serious,” he said, “just my long lost niece and nephew having a good old fashioned banter. Nothing to see here.”

“Wha – no! What was all that light show and fire and thunder and water? Your niece flew! And if your nephew hurt my sharkas, I swear to every piece of gold I earned and swindled – “

That made him laugh. He forgot, sometimes, that the hijinks the Duck-McDuck family got into were so far beyond the average person’s normality range that it was bordering on being absurd. Then again, who would believe that basically everyone in the family was someone anyone else would consider unnatural?

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

He couldn’t remember how, exactly, but this became his new normal.

They would go treasure hunting together, Scrooge, himself, Della, and the kids – Lena accompanied them sometimes, now that she was out of Webby’s shadow, and it surprised him enough that the kids took turns regaling him with the tale of how Lena came out of the shadow realm and the dream world fiasco that followed. He’d have to meet Violet sometime, she sounded like the steady anchor his kids seemed to need.

Or she’d end up just driving them off their hinges and all kids would just end up in more trouble. He hadn’t decided. He wasn’t sure if he wanted the worst case scenario to happen either, but at least he knew the kids were capable of handling themselves.

Penumbra came with them a lot, too, under the guise of learning the culture of the Earth. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Duck-McDuck clan was possibly the worst people she could learn Earth culture from, but she was a Moonlander. It wasn’t like anyone would treat her normally, especially given how other Moonlanders called her Captain and treated her as the de facto leader after Lunaris’ fall. Though, honestly, he suspected she cared less about learning culture and more about getting a vacation. She looked like she needed it desperately.

By the third week of adventuring, they’d found their footing of their roles. They flitted around each other seamlessly, with Scrooge trusting Launchpad to get them to their destination safely, Della to help ease the wind and weather, and him to coax the sea to allow safe passage. Fortunately for him, they went to the sea a lot. Unfortunately for him, when they went to lakes or rivers instead of the ocean, Scrooge still expected him to be able to ensure safe passage.

“I already told you, I don’t do water. You can expect me to help when we’re at sea,” he insisted when they braved a particularly stormy lake. It wasn’t much of a surprise considering there was a large lake monster currently wreaking havoc within the ship’s radius.

“They’re both bodies of water! And all water end up in the sea eventually!” Scrooge protested.

“Well the water’s not in the sea yet!” he said with a scowl.

Scrooge growled and turned away, glaring at the lake monster and twirling his cane in his hand, looking murderous and ready to join Della, who was fighting the monster with wind as her aid, plumes of white puffing around her like a cloud. “I have to do everything by myself around here,” Scrooge grumbled. “Not the sea, he says. It’s all water. You’ll end up wet anyway.”

“The lake doesn’t have as much salt as the sea, for one thing,” he sniped.

“Oh, should I dump salt in all rivers and lakes so you can be useful for once, then?” Scrooge asked, throwing a glare at him.

“Hey, I help whenever we’re at the sea,” he said. “If you want to constantly have me help you that way, do more expeditions at sea.”

“Do more expedition at sea, he says,” Scrooge grumbled as he ditched the cane for a harpoon gun and set it on his shoulder, taking aim. “How many treasures does he think is in the ocean?”

“Tons, Uncle Scrooge,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, I agree! I felt for some treasure the last time we took sail at sea!” Louie piped up from the safety of the wheelhouse.

“Get inside, Louie!” he and Scrooge yelled at the same time.

“Instead of getting outside, grab a map and point out some parts of the ocean where you felt the treasure,” Scrooge added. Then he jabbed a finger at him. “And you! Make use of all those boating lessons I paid for you and steer us to safety!”

Well, that, he could do. He threw a quick salute and dashed to the wheelhouse to join the kids and to take control of the wheel. He may not be at sea, but the lake was forgiving enough to let him lead his family to safety.

The lake monster screeched loudly, the sound overlapping with Scrooge’s taunts and Della’s self-censored curses. He couldn’t help the grin that overtook his face as he spun the wheel around and barked at the kids to hang on to something.

Ah, yes. This was definitely normal.

[alittlesliceofcucumber]

once upon a time au where everything is the same except instead of rumpelstiltskin, mr gold is actually revealed to be scrooge mcduck.

[cinnabuntastic]

Got my vax booster and got TRUCKED so now y’all are stuck with me, and it’s time to ramble about how I think that Bradford’s plan would have been inevitably doomed to... not failure. I do think had it not been for Loopholes he could have succeeded. Doomed to make things worse is a good way of putting it.

See, the PROBLEM is that had he succeeded, things would have potentially been catastrophic. On a cataclysmic scale.

Looking at the world that Ducktales takes place in, it feels inherently magical. Enough so that people aren’t surprised when Scrooge McDuck comes rocking up to port with a magical power crystal from the lost city of Atlantis.

It may be an infuriating/frightening inconvenience, but it feels like regardless of Scrooge’s intervention, Magic Will Find A Way. (Magica and Poe would have existed either way, for example... and Poe likely wouldn’t have been turned into a raven. I don’t think Poe was a tempering force for Magica, either, meaning things could’ve been so much worse had Scrooge not effed up right there.)

These things in the world that are chaotic or contain some form of magic existed well before Scrooge. It’s safe to say that they would exist after, even if he wasn’t an adventurer. The existence of people like Isabella Finch proves that there will always be someone seeking to FIND those mysteries.

So going on the assumption that the world of Ducktales is inherently magical, what would happen if you then removed magic, magical items, chaos, artifacts, or people who are magical/deities/altered by the virtue of their birth/etc completely from the world?

Assuming that magic is an element similar to anything else in the world, my general theory is that removing it would cause an apocalyptic collapse. Creation is naturally chaotic. Being alive at all may be science, but there’s something magical about it too. Without the building blocks of a world that has magic threaded through it like a tapestry, there would be a massive breakdown of the natural order of things.

Like Mad Max but people seeking the last remnants of magic instead of water.

And this is all without saying that Bradford’s reasons for wanting to temper these things is invalid. He was traumatized; it’s completely natural for him to want to control what hurt him so badly. And Scrooge is reckless, we know this. He does things without thinking about the consequences it may have on the people around him (the Beanstalk Incident is a great example).

But that being said, Bradford himself created his own form of chaos without realizing it. Not being able to see the forest for the trees sort of thing. I’ve talked about it before, but look at some of the things he blames Scrooge for- the Moonvasion, Magica’s shadow war, etc. The people of the Moon may have invaded eventually anyway (we know it was Lunaris’s end goal regardless of whether Della ended up there), and Bradford’s decision to tell Della about the Spear in secret led to them accessing plans for a spacecraft much earlier (something that had, up until that point, hindered him). Magica never would have been able to gain access to the Number One Dime so easily had it not been for Bradford’s repeated attempts to drive a wedge into the family (being the cause for Della’s disappearance and such), and while she may have eventually been able to escape by other means, Scrooge being weakened and worn down by the loss of his family gave her an edge.

And more than that- he wasn’t able to actually succeed at his plan without some chaotic force or the use of magical influences. Using the natural resources of the world around him to enact a plan to get rid of those very resources. Cutting off one’s nose to spite their face, kind of.

All that to say I fully believe if Bradford had succeeded, the result would’ve been apocalyptic, leaving a desolate wasteland in its wake that very likely would have been even more chaotic for very different reasons.

[arianna-creates]

I love @transdonaldduck 's Quack Magic AU so I decided to kick off the new year with this

(I'm so sorry for the bad quality i have the worst habit of drawing things really small and then forgetting that the quality is worse that way)

[mai-fanblog]

"My Editions of Ducktales of my AU (DT17 of the 70's)" 

It cost me a lot...it will come sooner. 

If you want me to edit based on my AU, give me the reference in the comments. 

[korkorali]

The Beginning

Alright, I wanna talk about the Hp au, so all my my followers are going to be subjected to another post about it!

Today, I think I’m gonna talk about some plot points for what the beginning of the ‘First Book’ would be! (From the beginning up to the collecting of the wand)

First, a few fun facts to get you interested, though

- The first fic’s title would be The Brothers Who Lived (Maybe, I’m not too sold on any title yet)

- It would mainly be told with Dewey at the focus

- Though this doesn’t mean his story would be an exact replica of Harry Potters

- Specifically, he lives with Gosalyn and Drake, who love him a lot

- Though his stay at Hogwarts would be a different story

Caught your interest? Well, continue reading under the cut for more ;) (be warned: it’s a bit long)

-  We start off with Drake Mallard going about town

- He keeps running into weird people saying that ‘She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is dead!’

- This confuses him but he’s seen weirder, they don’t seem to be hurting anyone, so let them be odd, as far as he’s concerned

- He ends up running into this old man, who strikes him as one of those weird people. yet he seems a little sadder than the rest of them

- He is holding a bundle in his arms

- Drake talks to the old man, and he seems nice enough

- They part ways, and later Drake the bundle the old man was carrying in his kitchen

- He opens the bundle to reveal a one year old child, with a note that says ‘His name is Dewey Duck’

- He knows he should contact the authorities, and try to find that old man, but until then, he’ll take care of the kid.

- Fast forward about ten years (specifically about a week before then) and Dewey and his sister Gosalyn are enjoying their summer break by playing video games

- The mail comes and Drake goes to collect it

- He’s surprised when he sees a letter for Dewey tucked into the usual junk mail

- The surprise turns into concern and worry when the address has Dewey’s bedroom on it

- He decides to just it away and pretend it doesn’t exist

- Cuz that’ll solve all his problems

- He ‘nonchalantly’  talks to Dew and Gos about whether or not they’d like to go on a small vacation for Dewey’s birthday

- The next day he gets two of those creepy letters

- He once again pretends that they don’t exist and burns them

- Dewey and Gosalyn start getting a little suspicious

- A day goes by without any letters

- Drake thinks that’s the end of it.

- Then they get a full eight letters

- Cue Panic

- He makes Dew and Gos make a pack and then they head out for ‘vacation’

- They are thoroughly suspicious of him by now

- Gos calls Drake out, but he dismisses her and they go by boat to some run down house on an island

- Drake is sure that’ll be the end of it

- The night before Dewey’s birthday, he decides to stay up until midnight

- Gosalyn joins him and they talk about stuff

- Dewey admits that he wishes he knew about his birth family

- Drake’s only ever told him that he was given to him by some old grandpa

- But both Dewey and Gos think he’s joking about that

- Gosalyn kinda understands, because she knew her grandfather

- She still thinks of Drake as her dad, but she finds comfort in knowing about her biological parents

- So she hopes he learns eventually

- The clock strikes twelve

- Dewey turns 11 (and the same age as Gos, but only for a week)

- And suddenly the door gets busted down

- Gos and Dew are, obviously, pretty fucking scared

- home invasion and all that

- Drake swoops in with a punch to the dudes chest, and nearly breaks his hand

- The strange large man apologizes for knocking down the door, saying that he just wanted to knock

- He says hi to Dewey, introduces himself as Launchpad, and goes to sit down

- Drake shows a lot of confusion at this turn of events. Specifically, he wants to know how Launchpad knows Dewey’s name

- Launchpad express’s his own confusion at this, and realizes that Drake, Gosalyn, and Dewey know nothing about the wizarding world

- So he gives Dewey his Hogwarts acceptance letter (and a cake, which already has a Launchpad-sized bite taken out of it) and explains -sort of- about how he’s a wizard, and what that entails

- He also tells Dewey a little bit about his family, which 100% sells Dewey on the idea

- Drake, understandably, does not believe him, until he gives them a show of magic

- Which kinda freaks Drake out, but makes Dewey and Gosalyn way too excited

- Drake decides to allow Dewey to give this ‘Hogwarts’ a try

- But he does tell Dewey that he’ll love him no matter what happens

- So the group makes plans to go to Diagon Alley with Launchpad in a few days

- A few days later, the group meets up with Launchpad outside the Leaky Tap

- Drake doesn’t notice the Leaky Tap, but he’s the only one who can’t

- Of course, he can easily see Launchpad, so it doesn’t really matter

- Drake is still a little wary about the whole thing, but he is quickly warming up to Launchpad, which helps to put him at ease

- When they enter the Leaky Tap, everyone (sans Launchpad) is surprised at how everyone inside seems to know Dewey

- They even recognize a few faces as some of the strange people who’d wave or act like they knew him sometimes

- Drake never really liked those people

- Launchpad explains that Dewey and his brothers are kinda famous, and he’ll tell him more later after they get him his stuff

- They leave the Leaky Tap out the back entrance, and enter Diagon Alley

- Cue shock and amazement from everyone

- Especially Drake, as he can no longer deny that this actually a thing that is happening

- The kids run off, looking into the shops at all the amazing and mind bending things in them

- They are quickly enthralled

- Drake is initially worried that they’ll get lost, but Launchpad assures him that it’s fine, because the place they need to go (Gringotts) is straight ahead, so they probably won’t get lost

- He and Drake talk for a little bit (Drake is still annoyed about how the letters had Dewey’s  f r e a k i n g  bedroom on them) and Launchpad gets Drake to calm down a little

- Just in time for them to enter Gringotts Bank, and thusly, the mine-cart roller-coaster

- Drake hates it, the others love it

- Launchpad picks up a mysterious parcel, which the kids are immediately intrigued about

- Then they get back on the mine-cart to go to the vault Dewey shares with his brothers

- He learns that both his brothers have already accessed the vault earlier that week, which means that he won’t be running into them until the school year starts

- Which he’s kinda bummed about

- All sad feelings go away when he sees the inside of the vault, and the massive amount of Galleons in there

- Which means that Dewey’s rich

- Which Gosalyn immediately comments on

- After they shake themselves out of the money stupor, and Dewey grabs a fair amount of money, the group goes back outside of Gringotts and begins the trek for Dewey’s school supplies

- Dewey and Gosalyn try to go on a spending spree, and the get the most impressive/expensive stuff

- Which leads to Drake confiscating the gold pouch

- At least until after Dewey gets all his school supplies

- They get most of them, including getting Dewey fitted for robes (which both Dewey and the seamstress hated - Dewey cannot stand still for the life of him) until it gets to the wand

- Dewey and Gosalyn go in, but Drake and Launchpad stay out, saying that they wanted to get him something

- The shop is run by a old duck by the name of Olivander

- He is immediately excited to see Dewey, one of the ‘Chosen Three’

- Though he does spare an intrigued glance to Gosalyn

- He gets right to it afterwards, fitting Dewey with wand, after wand, after wand

- None seem to be right (which makes Dewey nervous)

- Until Olivander finally picks out one special wand, which Dewey immediately knows is right with barely a touch

- He picks that wand, and Olivander explains that it’s core is a phoenix tail feather

- And that the phoenix that gave him that tail feather gave him one more

- And that one had been placed in his mothers wand

- Filled with awe and respect, Dewey pays for the wand, and he and Gos head back out

- And they find Drake and Launchpad waiting for them, with an owl for Dewey

- Gosalyn decides that that’s unfair, until Drake explains that it’s so that Dewey can write to them

- Dewey, overcome with emotion, decides to name his owl Darkwing, for the show that his family was raised on

- Which makes Drake emotional as well, and he does a poor job hiding it

- Drake makes Dewey promise to write every day while he’s gone, and he tells him again that he’s already so proud of him

- And he does end up caving to Gosalyn’s demands and promises to get them a puppy while Dewey is off at Hogwarts

And that’s it for how it would begin! Honestly, the length kinda got away from me, so next time (if it doesn’t get away from me again) we’ll talk about The First Meeting and Beyond! I hope you’ve enjoyed!

[mochuelovelli]

Huey time!!! :)

Edit for captions:

Huey McDuck:

Age - 14-15 yrs old [Eldest Sibling by 3 seconds]

Traits: Highest Strength (excluding Boyd) [Maybe 3/4th best fighter depending on the circumstances]. Inventor of the group, [best at puzzles]. "Asks all the Wrong Questions". Does Better in longer battles. Tries to take care of everyone.

Scar on his cheek captioned- "Awesome Scar!" By Dewey once he sees it in the "The Last Safe Place".

Backpack and Hat captioned "Pack Mule" since he caries most of their stuff- Basic necessities. Lots of Junk for inventions. JWG. Keeps crucial and dangerous artifacts with him. Maps, code decipherer, batteries. Tools gifted by Della, Donald and Beakley.