#or more specifically having black heron plant said bomb

[korkorali]

Oooooohhhh are we talking about Bradford telling Della about the Spear of Selene? I think we're talking about Bradford telling Della about the Spear of Selene!

Okay okay this is something I have Ideas™️about- specifically why he told her, and why she believed him.

The answer (as I have so humbly decided is obviously the abject truth) is the same for both: Because he'd been manipulating her for years.

He was trying to be the Emperor Palpatine to her Anakin Skywalker.

Why? Simple: The Papyrus of Truth.

Think about it- it doesn't make sense to immediately go 'oh, only Scrooge McDuck's heir can find the Papyrus? Welp, time to steal some of his DNA and make a kid!' That's supervillain territory, and Bradford isn't a supervillain! (He's just a bit of a scumbag, but that's not a supervillain so it's obviously fine.)

So picture this: he finds out about the wish Scrooge made on the Papyrus, that only his heir could find it, and his thought patterns line up with Scrooge's:

He thinks "Alright, then it has to be one of those rugrats."

The question is, which one? Della, or Donald?

And honestly, when they're both kids- it's not really that much of a question, is it?

Is it Donald, the angry coward who loves to hole up in his room and write songs about eating the rich and basically doing everything that Scrooge hates?

Or is it Della, the adventurous and energetic ball of high-octane excitement and adrenaline, unable to sit still for a single moment, who acts like Scrooge McDuck, who likes all the same things as Scrooge McDuck, who is pretty much every single thing that Bradford Buzzard hates about Scrooge McDuck, all rolled up into a bratty child?

(Nevermind the fact that she isn't actually like that, not entirely. Nevermind the fact that she's doing all that because she feels she has to be useful, to be likeable, and that means mirroring Scrooge McDuck because if he likes himself so much then he must like seeing himself in her.)

Obviously it's Della. It has to be.

Which means, in order for him to get the Papyrus, he needed to get his claws into Della.

Which shouldn't have been hard- you can't tell me that Scrooge wouldn't do the same thing with Donald and Della that he did with Louie. He'd take them to the Money Bin (after all, it's like a second home for him), then head into his office and tell them not to disturb him.

And that'd leave Della in the perfect position for Bradford to begin to wheedle his ways past her defenses.

(Of course, multiple problems arise, not the least of which is she's a child and Bradford undoubtedly hates children. But moreso it's that she's genre-savvy, and also (and we love her for it, but) kind of dumb. It's a very frustrating mix that leads to her very nearly calling him out on what he's doing a lot.

But also, despite all that- she's still a kid.

And despite how much she thinks she knows, he's still better.)

It'd take a while, and I don't think he ever really manages it, but he still gets her to trust him.

Eventually, of course, he learns that Della isn't the 'heir of Scrooge McDuck.'

(Not sure how this happens, but it obviously does- I'm sure that lots of the Adventure Trio's adventures in the earlier days were spent searching for that missing Papyrus, but for some reason they stopped. The whole thing threatened to tear Donald and Della apart, or something.)

And that makes all the work he spent on her useless. All the time spent manipulating her, and trying (and -mostly- failing) to get her to be something he wanted, to push her to break up her family, all for naught.

Or- maybe not.

Because Scrooge keeps a secret. He makes her a spaceship. An untested, unreliable, terrible spaceship that literally runs on money.

It's horrible.

It's a waste.

It's perfect.

All the work doesn't have to be for naught. All Bradford has to do is let Della come to him one day, when she's at the Money Bin (probably because she and Donald and Scrooge were going shopping for baby toys, and she kept trying to get these really dangerous and deadly-looking ones, and ultimately got sent to the Money Bin as a bit of a 'time out'), let her rant and burn herself out to him about how frustrating Donald and Scrooge are being, how unfair they are (how scared she is, how much she just wishes they'd let her actually handle some stuff, how bad they make her feel for still wanting to adventure at a time like this, how much it feels like all either of them care about anymore are the kids and not her), how much it blows to be stuck like this.

And all Bradford has to do is offer up some half-hearted consolement, assure her that (while Donald is definitely being too overprotective) that of course Scrooge still cares about her, is still thinking about her, is still thinking about her, after all he's making her the-

And then cut himself off, like he said too much. That's aaaaallll that's needed to peak Della's interest, after all. And as soon as that's peaked- it's over.

All he has to do is hem and haw back and forth, say 'oh but he made me promise never to say anything' and 'I could get in trouble' and so on and so forth. Make it seem like he didn't want to say anything. Make Della feel like she earned the information, that he didn't plan this from the start.

And when she finally gets the information about the Spear out of him, and her eyes light up like stars and she darts off to go see if he was telling the truth, he can be confident that she'll never remember that he was the one who told her about it. All she'd be able to think about is 'I figured it out.' Because she had, after all. She'd figured it out, all her, he definitely hadn't pointed her in that direction at all.

He got to get rid of a liability and break the family, all in one fell swoop.