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boydgearloose · 5 years ago

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(for some reason when i answered the ask, it wouldn’t let me put it under a read more and this drabble is a bit on the longer side so hopefully this is okay. my apologies!)

The first night Della spent on earth in ten years, she cut her hair. Beforehand, it was something she did quite often. Her hair had been rather short when she’d first crash-landed her rocket, not the shortest she’d ever had it but definitely much shorter than it had become. But unfortunately for her, the duck’s hair had become quite lengthy during the duration of her unexpected departure from earth, and the moon didn’t exactly provide supplies for her to cut it like she wanted. That and she found herself more focused on survival than a haircut.

She’d gotten used to it, but that didn’t mean she really liked having it that long. Della had been eager to cut it as soon as she was able to, and there was nothing more relieving than taking the scissors to her lengthy white hair and hearing them do their job with a satisfied snip. She stared down at the mess of hair it left on Scrooge’s bathroom floor, laughing at a sudden flashback that popped into her head of her uncle getting angry with her for leaving it there many a time in her teenage years. Luckily, she’d learned better by now and began to dispose of it with a broom and pan.

After she cleaned up, Della looked in the mirror to see her new hairstyle. It was about shoulder-length, not as short as it was when she’d crashed but much shorter than it had become. Maybe one day she’d cut more of it off, but this would do for now. As she looked at her reflection, a certain moment from her time stuck on the moon played in the back of her head.

“Your hair keeps falling into your eyes, do you know that? Here, lemme just—”

“Penny, I’m fine!”

Della laughed and playfully pushed her roommate away, blowing the strand in question out of her face so she could give her a smile.

“But it’s annoying me!” Penumbra crossed her arms. “Why don’t you ever tie it back or wear a helmet or I don’t know, do something with it so it won’t get in the way of your work?”

“I’ve learned to work around it,” Della said with a shrug.

“How can you work around hair that long falling in your face all the time?”

“I dunno. I just do. I’ve had hair like this for nearly a decade.” Della shook her head, showing off her long locks. “I will admit that it’s not my favorite, but I’ve adjusted.”

She continued to weld together the gold she was using to remake her ship, and Penumbra stood behind her and watched her for a while before rolling her eyes. “I don’t see how you can stand it.”

“Of course not,” Della giggled. “You don’t even have hair.”

Penumbra gasped, sounding offended. “I do too!”

The duck’s eyes lit up, and she whipped around to Penumbra once more. “You do!?” she exclaimed, hopping over to her roommate. “You gotta show me!”

Della reached a hand up toward Penumbra’s helmet, intending to rip it off, but she was stopped by the moonlander’s strong grip clasping around her arm and her angry stare fixating on her.

“You are not to touch my helmet. Understand?”

“Okay, okay! I won’t, sorry!” She flashed Penumbra a cheeky grin as she recoiled her hand backwards and away from her grip.

Della moved her head from side to side, watching her hair follow its movement. She did it a few more times before turning her attention toward the bathroom window, where the moon could be seen. It looked so small on earth compared to its actual vastness, for Della had been taken off-guard by how large it actually was once she had the chance to explore it. There were a lot of things about the moon that had taken her off-guard, come to think of it. However, the society of aliens who had welcomed her into their hidden home and helped her get back to her family was the most surprising and perhaps the only thing she missed. Especially one in particular.

She turned her attention back to her reflection, looking over her new haircut, paying close attention to how it kept her hair from falling in her face. Della began to wonder what Penumbra would think of it once she got to earth. Or at least she assumed Penumbra would visit. She had to miss Della as much as she missed her, right? Although she was unsure if it was because it had been a while since she’d had someone to form a genuine bond with, Della still considered Penumbra to be one of her best friends. There was no doubt she’d be itching to see what the earth-dweller’s mysterious planet had to offer.

And Della looked forward to the day she would be able to show it all off to her.

Once she’d properly settled in, it didn’t take long for Della to get back to adventuring. Other than her family, it was the thing she missed most about earth. She’d been quick to snatch the Cloudslayer back from that other pilot Scrooge hired during her absence whose existence in the mansion she was still confused about. Della was all about dangerous, but his style of flying seemed outright reckless. The guy couldn’t even fly a paper airplane! And what kind of name was Sunchaser?

Complaints aside, Della was glad to share her first adventure on earth in a decade with one of her boys. Out of all of them, Dewey had been the first to warm up to her. She wasn’t about to play favorites with the kids she’d spent so long desperate to know, but he instantly accepted him into his life, and she was thankful for that. While she understood that her children needed time to adjust to having a mom just as she needed it to adjust to being one, Dewey’s eagerness helped her feel more at ease about the whole parenting thing.

However, the “adventure” they accompanied Scrooge on soon turned out to be nothing but boring matters of business. Della and Dewey found themselves waiting idly in a room full of future investors and one of Scrooge’s rather obnoxious rivals as he went on about the doomsday vault they’d been enlisted to protect or something like that. She wasn’t really paying attention until the mention of a tree made of money was brought up, and when she turned to her right, Della noticed her son wearing the same courageous look as her. It wasn’t long before the two of them had snuck out, boarded the Cloudslayer and started the route to the vault without anyone in the room, including her uncle, noticing their disappearance.

As they were traveling in the air, Della found the silence that surrounded them to be bothersome. She leaned back in her seat, still focused on the sky ahead of her and asked Dewey if they had anything to pop into the CD player. When he explained to her that the only thing he had was his old Powerline album, Della nearly crashed her plane in the best kind of shock possible. Her son knew who Powerline was!? She’d never been a prouder mother!

Her and Dewey spent the duration of the flight singing out loud to every classic song, ones that Della still knew by heart and was glad to see her son did as well. However, in the midst of the jam session, one of the songs brought her back to the last time she’d sung it aloud.

“If we listen to each other’s hearts, we’ll find we’re never too far apart, and maybe love is a reason why, for the first time ever we’re seein’ it eye to- oof!”

Della’s singing was cut off abruptly as she bumped into something that she soon found out was someone. She angled her stare upward to find herself locking eyes with her roommate. A nervous smile slipped across Della’s bill.

“Sorry, Penny. I wasn’t watching where I was going-”

“Who are you talking to!?”she demanded, leaning in closer to Della to confront her.

The duck backed away, holding her hands up protectively. “Whoa, whoa! I wasn’t talking to anyone!”

“Yes you were. Words were leaving your mouth. Tell me who you are communicating with, earther, or I will inform General Lunaris of your suspicious behavior!”

Della thought for a moment until she realized what Penumbra was talking about. “Oh, you mean my singing?”

The moonlander narrowed her eyes. “Your…what?”

“Singing? You know, like I did with the moon mite?”

“You mean that wasn’t a malicious chant to get the creature to bend to your will?”

A hearty laugh left the duck’s throat, and she patted Penumbra’s back. “Good one, Penny! No, no, that was just a song.”

“I see.” Penumbra wiped her back where Della had touched it. “What “song” was it then?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know. Just something by Powerline.”

The moonlander tensed up and grabbed for her spear. “Is that your leader’s name?”

“What? No!” Della leaned against the wall of their shared living space. “Powerline’s just some guy on earth who writes songs. Really good songs!” She sighed happily. “One day, Uncle Scrooge took me and Donald to see one of his concerts for our birthday. It was amazing! I’d never seen so many lasers in one place! Oh and Donald looked directly into one, and we thought it blinded him for a few seconds, but he was fine.”

As Della lost herself in the happy childhood memory, Penumbra stared at her with an expression showing both disgust and curiosity. Finally, she crossed her arms and stuck her face in the air.

“I have no idea what any of that means.”

Ever since then, Della knew that she’d have to get Penumbra to listen to a Powerline song as soon as she came to earth. She’d love it! What kind of monster didn’t like Powerline? It was only one of the many things she was excited to show to her old roommate as soon as she saw her again, which Della could only hope would be soon.

She didn’t want to wholy admit to how often she would find herself staring at the sky, wondering when she’d see a gold flash falling to earth. Della made sure to tell all of her family members about the moonlanders and how kind they’d been to her. She even mentioned Penumbra separately a few times. According to Uncle Scrooge, she talked about her more than she did Lunaris and the others. Della wanted to argue against that, but he was probably right.

“You okay, mom?”

The voice of her son startled Della, and she briefly turned to face him. “Yeah! I just zoned out for a second, that’s all.”

Dewey’s concerned expression shifted into something more mischievous. “Good because I thought you forgot the lyrics.”

“Me? Forget the lyrics to a Powerline song? Ha!” Della focused back on the road, wearing a confident smile. “You’ve got a lot to learn about your mom if you think she’d ever do that.”

When Huey first invited Della to the lab, she’d wanted to decline and demand he not go anywhere near that place ever again. If there was one person in Duckburg she was not fond of, it was Gyro Gearloose, and to think that her own flesh and blood had been learning from him was horrifying. However, she soon learned that Gyro wasn’t the scientist her boy admired most.

Huey had been excited for his mom to meet his friend Fenton, an intern of Gyro’s who had found himself employed full-time at the bin. Della laughed at the thought of Gyro having an intern and made sure to tell the guy how much she pitied him, but he was quite different than the man he worked with. While Gyro was smarmy and ill-tempered and said things that made Della want to ring his neck, Fenton was a lot more outgoing and kept the obnoxious scientific jargon to a minimum. And whenever he did use big words, it was for purposes other than to get a rise out of Della.

Urged on by an excited Huey, Fenton was quick to show her everything he was working on. These inventions ranged from some paddle ball thing he said was a work in progress, a green liquid that would melt through absolutely anything and Della’s personal favorite, a spray-on substance that made anything taste like glazed donuts. Eager to test this one out, she made a mad dash for the vending machine and came back with a bag of plain potato chips. Before he could stop her, Della had snatched the can from Fenton and ripped open the bag, spraying a heavy dose inside and all over the chips. Not one to care about possible side effects, she dug in and soon discovered that the invention worked very well.

Giving a satisfied sigh, Della held out the chips to Fenton and Huey. The two looked at each other and shrugged, reaching in and grabbing a few of the glazed donut potato chips. As the three of them rather quickly finished off the bag of chips, she sighed in realization.

“The next time I need gum to last me ten years on the moon, I’m gonna go to you instead of Gyro,” Della told Fenton.

The inventor was quick to gasp in horror. “You aren’t talking about Oxy-chew, are you?”

Della laughed. “Sure am!”

“Oh my goodness,” Fenton said with a gulp, “you weren’t wrong about Gyro wanting to kill you.”

His response was both enough to get another genuine laugh out of Della and to trigger yet another memory from her time on the moon.

“Why are you always smacking?”

“Huh?” Della lifted up her welding mask and looked to Penumbra.

“You’re always moving your mouth up and down like you’re chewing on something.” The moonlander shuddered. “It’s disgusting.”

“Ohhhh.” Rolling her eyes, Della turned around and leaned against the cabinet she’d been working at. “You see, I need this stuff called oxygen to breathe. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. I also need sustenance which is a fancy word for food and water. Well, those things don’t exist on the moon. In order for me to get that out here, a person from back home who I wouldn’t be caught dead calling my friend made a special kind of gum that gives you all of that! Sounds great, right?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Right! But it’s not. He made it black licorice flavored, and it is the worst.” The duck grumbled in frustration. “I can hardly stand it.”

Della turned back to her work, not knowing what thoughts were forming in Penumbra’s mind until she spoke.

“So that…goom-”

“Gum.” “I knew that. That stuff’s really hard to handle, huh?”

“Oh, definitely. I’ve grown a little accustomed to it, but it’s still quite the challenge.”

There was a beat of silence. Then, Penumbra burst to life.

“You can’t play this game with me and win, earther! You think I can’t handle your “gum,” don’t you? You think I’m weak!”

Della frowned. “No, I really don’t.”

“Ugh, you’re such a liar! Okay,” Penumbra took a deep breath before holding out her hand, “give me some, and I’ll prove to you that I can do it.”

The duck shifted uncomfortably, giving a nervous laugh. “Are you sure? I’m all for showing you and the others earth food, but I do not think black licorice is where you want to start.”

“Your opinion means nothing to me!”

Although she was unsure if she wanted to go through with this or not, Della was quite certain that Penumbra wasn’t taking no for an answer. She reached into the drawer on the side of the cabinet she was working at and pulled out the box of Oxy-chew. Then, she retrieved a black stick from it and handed it to Penumbra, wincing at what she knew was to come.

At first, the moonlander studied the stick of gum in various ways. She sniffed it, held it up close to her face, ran her fingers along its surface and finally, popped it into her mouth as if she was taking bitter cough syrup. For a while, she idly chewed, trying to get the feel of what gum was like. Then, rather suddenly, she screamed in agony and spit the substance onto the floor, immediately reaching for the pistol on her holster while coughing and gagging violently. Della was quick to jump into action, rushing to console her.

“Penny!” she gasped, trying to reach a hand out to the moonlander but finding it slapped back in her face.

“You…you…you tried to POISON me!” Penumbra snapped, pointing her pistol at Della with fear and anger in her eyes. “I knew you were up to no good!’

Della sighed and tried to avert the weapon away from her, knowing she should have expected this reaction. “I tried to tell you, it’s really bad!”

“Tell it to General Lunaris!”

Penumbra gave chase as Della found herself frantically hopping out the door, rushing away with the other hot on her trail in an attempt to avenge her taste-buds.

Della looked back down at the bag of chips in her hand. She’d have to get Penumbra to try some of them when she got to earth. Maybe it would make up for the time she made her eat something so vile that she literally thought she was on her deathbed. It also inspired a delayed response to Fenton.

“Y’know, shocking as it may sound, I think my friend actually hated it more than I do.”

Binventory day was the worst. Counting each and every cent made by the richest duck in the world was just about as boring as it sounded, which was really, really, really boring. Luckily, it wasn’t just Della doing it this time. After he’d taken an interest in running a business of his own, Scrooge had taken her son Louie under his wing and expected him to always help with such tasks.

As the three of them sat around sorting out the various coins in the money bin, Della found herself starting to lose count through boredom. Letting out a low groan of frustration, she lay on her back and rubbed at her temples. Scrooge noticed this and walked over to her, gently prodding his niece with his cane.

“Get up, lass. Can’t have either of you slacking off or the whole thing will take all day.”

“But it’s already taken all day,” Della whined. “Plus, I’m tired. My brain still hasn’t adjusted to a normal sleep schedule.”

“You’ve been home for nearly a month.” She shrugged, and Scrooge shook his head in frustration. “I can’t believe Louie is doing a better job than you.”

Almost as soon as he spoke, the smaller duck plopped down next to his mom with a relaxed sigh. Scrooge looked ready to pull his feathers out.

“Not you too!”

“Hey, mom’s doin’ it,” the duckling countered back.

“Now you’ve gone and set a bad example for your children!”

“Hey, if my kids are tired, let them sleep,” Della waved him off, yawning. “Especially if I’m about to crash myself.”

“I’ve had it with you two slacking off! Get up, both of you!” Scrooge scolded them. “I won’t let either of you rest until you’ve counted every quarter, nickel, dime and penny in the-”

“Penny?” Della, who had been half-asleep by then, suddenly jolted upward at the mention, having spent so long associating the name with something else that she forgot it was a coin.

“I still can’t believe you have all this gold just sitting here on the moon,” Della said in awe. She was taking a break from working on her ship while Penumbra sat in on her bed sharpening her spear, forced to listen to her roommate’s rambling.

“I can,” she replied, not looking up from what she was busy with.

“That’s because you don’t know how much this stuff goes for back on earth.” Della kicked back in the chair she was sitting in, resting her feet on the table. “If it weren’t for gold, my uncle wouldn’t be the richest duck in the world!” She faked Scrooge’s accent as she announced the title, humoring herself. It didn’t get even a smile out of Penumbra.

“So it’s a type of currency for you?” she asked.

“In a way, I guess. It’s not common though.” Della shrugged. “Paper money and regular coins are. We’ve got dollars and nickels and dimes and pennies and quarters and that’s just the basic-”

“What?” The duck stopped and looked over to Penumbra, who she was surprised to see actually paying attention. They stared at each other for a moment until the moonlander became frustrated. “What do you want?”

“Huh?”

“I thought you were calling for me.”

Della cocked her head to the side. “I wasn’t- ohhhh, it’s because I said pennies!” She chuckled. “That wasn’t about you. On earth, a penny is also a type of currency.”

“I see.” Penumbra hummed, turning her attention back to her spear. “I bet it’s worth a lot.”

Della sucked in a breath of air. She opened her bill to explain to the moonlander that pennies were quite possibly the most worthless currency in the entire world, but then she remembered how Penumbra chased her throughout the entire village just a few days ago after the Oxy-chew incident and decided to stretch the truth.

“Yep!” she said with a nod. “They sure are valuable!”

“Della!”

Scrooge’s voice shocked Della out of her daydreaming state. She shook her head and looked around, meeting eyes with the rather concerned faces of her uncle and son.

“Heh…” Della cleared her throat, sitting up. “I’m fine, don’t worry.” She got to her feet and stretched, clapping her hands together. “Guess we should get to sorting again. I feel rested up already!”

The confusion melted away from Scrooge’s face and was replaced with adoration. “That’s my girl,” he commended her, then turned to Louie. “That means you too.”

“Awwwww, mom!”

Della giggled and gave her son an affectionate pat on the head. Then, they got back to work, and she realized that binventory went by a little quicker when there was something else on her mind.

Something that would hopefully be there for her within a matter of days.

#my writing #drabble reqs #nbcats #dellumbra #della duck #lieutenant penumbra #this was originally a lot longer but it was getting to be too long for my tastes so i stopped and just decided to post part of it #maybe one day i'll finish the rest and post it in a part 2!#but for now this is all i got done so sorry for the abrupt ending lol

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