//------------------------------// // 157. Delightful Donald. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -???, Oleander- I just sipped at my drink as we sat in the cantina, when a guy five feet behind me and to the left ignited a red blade. I sighed and turned to him as he swung it at me and summoned ‘End of Pain’ between me and him, he looked fairly surprised that his light blade didn’t cut through my magical blade. “The force as it is, is just a bunch of overblown rubbish.” An explosion of darkness erupted into a pillar slamming the guy head first into the ceiling knocking him out. “Also you were standing on my trap.” I idly turned back to the counter and continued to drink, while catching the red glowing blade with magic and swiftly turned it off before someone lost a limb from a rather unfortunate accident. I stowed it away, having yet another souvenir from this world. How many more of these thing did I have to steal before they got the point that energy blades just weren’t that threatening to me? “Did she just take out that Sith with an invisible mine?!” Honestly the lengths people will go to just to rationalize away magic. Force this, force that, sure it was raw power, but they act like it was special and the only reason for weird impossible things in this galaxy. “Better question, why would the Sith be trying to off one of their own.” A guy lit a blue blade and held a defensive stance at me warily. “I’m not a Sith, but if you attack me you’ll find yourself hard pressed to really win the fight. Won’t even need ‘End of Pain’ for it either.” As I said this, End of Pain disappeared from sight. “Honestly these Sith and Jedi attacking you every other day is getting boring, THEY REALLY SHOULD LEARN THEIR LESSON!” They all honestly thought Fred was a weird form of droid holocron thing, but the Jedi were at least more wary of him than the Sith. Fred might have eaten one when I wasn’t watching. “That you should not bother my dear Ollie when she’s trying to relax.” “Hey Ollie, stole a ship form a bunch of dumb bounty hunters that took out a hit on us, they obviously don’t know a badass level Bicorn when they see one!” Butt fired her shotgun into the air outside and it stated a requisite quote, this time the shotgun shouted ‘Kickstart My Heart’ and I rolled my eyes. “Help me find a droid to pilot the thing and we’ll have better transportation to get around! Also one of those red blade guys tried to stab me while I was wasting those other guys, dumbass doesn’t know my hide is practically immune to plasma blades.” When she fired her shotgun before walking in the Jedi that addressed me, his young friend and a third hidden backup Jedi all clutched at their heads in agony. Apparently Boomacorn’s have that effect on these so called force users that caused them pain, I didn’t care one bit about that. We would have asked Dust Man, but he was spending time with Izuku in the realm I got the monster dog egg from. Couldn’t let a minor adventure alone and Dust Man wasn’t a complete push over despite his whining about his lot in life. “Well at least I’ll have a place to put all my stuff aside from the HALO floating off of my horn.” This adventure was just throwing souvenirs at me constantly. Still, for the life of me, we just couldn’t find Pom. “Please remember that it’s a super weapon that can end all life in a galaxy Ollie, BECAUSE I DEFINITELY FEEL LIKE WASTING EVERY FORCE USER THAT’S BOTHERING YOU WITH IT.” Not taking Fred’s advice, but I was certainly tempted to do so since neither the Sith or Jedi could take ‘no’ for an answer when it came to trying to court me to their side. We should have went to search for Pom in that dimension with that planet of slaughtering rat people, we would have gotten far more peace there than here. -Earth, A day or so later, Scrooge’s Bin, Infirmary Room, Pom- “So you try to stay positive, despite your anger issues?” Today’s entertainment brought to me by a world exploring duck who was quite protective of anyone he’d call a friend. He was also infamous in several circles for a number of various things, scared off most of the mercenaries that escaped that knew who he was too. He was simply Donald Duck. “Yeah, I’ve had lots of bad luck. I certainly feel for you having to take care of three kids yourself.” Donald was a nice duck, he was also a take charge kind of guy when things got bad. The only thing odd about him is that his voice sounded like someone was constantly strangling a rubber hose while it was gargling rocks and was horribly acid burned by concentrated amounts of lemon juice. “We gained a companionable robotic ostrich last world and in this one it raised to a loving and adorable Dalmatian that is a bit hyperactive.” As I spoke, a gliding Dolly zipped between us and landed on the floor. She really couldn’t jump her full height in this room or her head would collide with the ceiling, it didn’t help that she was literally bouncing off the walls in spite of the injuries that should be slowing her down. “I now have to account for taking care of all of them wherever we end up next.” “I’m sure you’ll do a great job Pom.” Liked Donald’s vote of confidence, he has told me he’s seen the look in my eyes before. “You’ve taken care of them so far, I’m sure you’ll be able to get everyone home.” The look in my eyes were the same look Donald’s had in his eyes after a particularly solid week where he’s had a constant run of bad luck. Donald wasn’t Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee, but he definitely could make a good show of trying to match up to the insanity that followed that particular parrot around. Dolly was practicing her gliding and rotating her body while moving in various directions as she did so, Dormarch was making sure she took breaks and got some actual rest. She wasn’t leaving my side for very long even as the days were dragging on, she only did so for a little fresh out outside and immediately comes back five minutes later to complain about how boring it was to be stuck here. Stretched her magic muscles really didn’t hurt Dolly’s body all too much. For some reason her magic accounted for all the spiraling and twisting she was doing when it should be making her green in the face and sick to her stomach. Instead she was enjoying the wild spinning through the air as much as she could do before touching the wall or floor. “Have you ever considered that somewhere out there, there’s someone having a worse day than you Donald?” I wondered if he would interested enough to ask about. “I know of a person that nobody can beat in having a bad day, in fact even on a good day she’d get a spiral fracture at best.” “Really, what’s her name?” Donald was a good guy, probably the friendliest of the adult ducks regardless of the generally terrible things that happened to him. Sure Donald could be mad at life and as paranoid as I was that it was out to get us, we wouldn’t be wrong considering how I ended up in the park in the first place, but at least we could keep going after a huge setback. “Well I know this one parrot that would be considered a biped here, she’s so unlucky that she can start her day by waking up on fire.” I had to wonder how that was possible, maybe a bit of glass on a window or something shiny like a drop of water focusing sunlight into a single heated point to light her pillow on fire. “How unlucky can she be?” Dolly said with a hint of amusement thinking I was trying to lead into a joke, unfortunately I wasn’t. “She’s so unlucky she fell up there flights of stairs once and then tripped and fell back down the same flights. The worst she got was a broken arm and several compound fractures.” The two blinked at me, as did our computer friends. “I’m not joking, that’s just how unlucky she is. She could pour a drop of water into an empty glass and it might shatter to impale her with all the shards regardless of how impossible it is for every shard of glass to hit her considering some of them should be moving in the opposite direction. She randomly has trees fall out of the sky at her and it’s usually not the same kind of tree twice. If you fire a projectile weapon and she’s in the vicinity, the projectile will literally ignore reality to veer more than ninety degrees in an attempt to hit her and that’s without actually rebounding off of anything. There’s having bad luck and then there’s being cursed with it. Anyone who has ever been in her presence for more than thirty minutes will absolutely acknowledge that the curse exists, even the most skeptical will say it does and still disavow the existence of the possibility of any other curses being feasible. Those are the things that I know of that have happened to her and I was never around her very often, but she does visit me in Huoshan… she’s much better to deal with than being bothered by her nuisance of a sister.” “So is it all bad?” Of course Dolly would be fascinated by it. “Is it really that bad?” It was clearly of some concern to Donald who was mirroring Dolly’s curiosity. “Not entirely, she has a loving husband, is a pirate of some renown, she even has a really cute child and a crew of exceedingly well-trained licensed medical professionals. That includes the crew pet, a giant pet butterfly that also somehow earned a medical license and I’m not even going to question that too hard because it didn’t get the license in my region of the world.” Not really going to ask how an animal was intelligent enough earn a doctors license, but weirder things have happened on Equus. “In fact it’s probably a good thing everyone in her crew is a medical professional… her curse sometimes has a nasty splash zone that involves her friends and family.” “… I kind of feel somewhat better about life now.” Donald mumbled. “At least I don’t have much of a splash zone. Usually my luck only affects me personally.” “You know, I’m fairly thankful you came to keep us company.” I truly was, having to rest with badly burned legs wasn’t pleasant and having one in a sling with torn and pulled muscles is even less so. I was also wearing an eyepatch over my left eye. At least if Shanty sees me like this, she’d be in a good mood about me possibly being pirate themed. “So know any exceedingly lucky people in your life?” Dolly licked at my face and nuzzled up at me and I smiled before hugging her, she wrapped her paws around me and gave me a gentle squeeze being careful with my still present injuries. “You could say that.” Donald’s demeanor went down so fast it probably dug its way straight through Tartarus and out the other side and back around to Elysium. “I have a cousin named Gladstone Gander, he’s so darn lucky that he could be a lawyer and win his cases one hundred percent of the time without doing anything. He has literally found twenty dollars every single day of his life, if he needs more he gets multiple twenty dollar bills and he gets them immediately through random happenstance. He coasts through life on his luck so easily that he really doesn’t have to do anything at all to deal with the same kind of strife the rest of us do. He walks down the street and nothing but good things happen to him, he’s never had to work a day in his life!” Okay, calculating that into Equus based currency He gets like fifteen bits a day?! More if he whenever he needs it for whatever reason? I can understand why Donald might dislike him. “What about casinos?” I asked, since Gizmo Duck brought it up the other day. “He, never, loses. Which was actually a bad thing for him once when he got captured by a really powerful reality warping luck vampire.” Donald crossed his arms and grumbled. “One of the few times his luck ever goes sour and we had to bail him out. The Phantom Blot kind of showed us truth about him though.” “What is the truth?” I tilted my head and Dolly did the same. “His luck is quite literally magic based and can be stolen from him. Which the kids got back from Blot when they protecting Lena from him before she figured out how to wield her powers to protect herself.” Donald looked to Dolly and me. “It’s exasperating to know that he will always be lucky when I have to work twice as hard for everything I have. So do you girls need anything?” “Yeah I’m kind of hungry.” Dolly stated. “Also entirely bored of literally bouncing off the walls, can we do something together that won’t be strenuous like play cards?” I think Gandra and Fenton created a monster when they decided to get Dolly in on our card game the other day. “Any more physical activity and you’ll be setting yourself back even more Dolly.” Dormarch has been fairly keen on seeing us heal, he has been on top of Dolly near constantly as she was being kind of reckless with her personal health. Dormarch also seemed to be very quiet any time Cape Suzette was mentioned, it was because Kahn Industries had their main headquarters there and he was worried about what we might find out when we visit while picking up Shanty. “We could go for some steamed vegetables, a large amount of kibble for Dolly and some water for the both of us please.” I heard Donald knew how to cook, but he was better when he wasn’t trying to make breakfast or snacks. “Also we need something to distract Dolly with so she doesn’t hurt herself, don’t suggest fetch. She hates that.” “I’ll get started on it then, we’ll see about getting Manny to move Gandra and Fenton back in here, maybe with something to do.” Donald left the room and I turned to Dolly. “Try to keep her entertained until then and I’m sure one of us will be back in twenty or so minutes.” “He’s a really nice guy.” I leaned back into the pillow behind me. “Yeah, but that voice though!” Dolly bemoaned. “It’s not that bad, I mean he’s vaguely understandable.” I wondered what Ocellus and Smolder were up to, they’ve been spending a lot of time with each other between visiting me and spending time with the other kids. I really should chaperone their intentions towards one another to make sure they won’t go too far before they're absolutely ready. -Twenty minutes later- “We can’t do cards because Fenton and Dolly will never let us win if we do.” As grumpy as she was, Gandra had a point. “I don’t think dice rolling will go any better for you or Pom.” The genius Fenton Crackshell stated as he considered what kind of games we’d be playing. “We’re recovery buddies and we’re not going to let our friends be bored even if we’re not doing too well with boredom ourselves.” “Donald is supposedly working on the food, he’s not too bad a cook right?” I asked and the two nodded. “When he can get the kitchen working right and not have any accidents, then I think he’s decent at it.” So Fenton, alongside Gandra, were at least aware of the problems Donald has to deal with. “Not a professional by any means, but much better than his sister Della at any rate. My mother is worried about my health, but she’s happy that Scrooge actually cares for his employees unlike Glomgold.” “Is this solely the part of the world where all rich birds gather?” I’ve heard at least seven names in reference to being financially wealthy. “Pretty much, when you got the likes of John D. Rockerduck, Flintheart Glomgold, Mark Beaks and Scrooge McDuck all living in the same city.” Gandra answered and shrugged. “John is not as antagonistic, he uses his riches to get at his rivals more than actually going out of his way to directly attack someone. Glomgold is the exact opposite, he will try any kind of looney, ludicrous and completely inane thing to get one over on Scrooge McDuck. Mark Beaks is just a quick scam artist that somehow hasn’t been jailed yet and gets rich off of repackaging other people’s ideas and his only real personal success is doing things at a cheaper cost. As for Scrooge himself, I’m happy to work under his employ. He at least cares about what happens to his family and friends, that and the guy is a financial magnet.” “He cared about Della when she got lost on the moon enough that nearly bankrupted himself trying to find her, he still pulled back from that and practically got his wealth back in full. Scrooge know business and he even funds my super hero side job.” Fenton seemed happy to be both a super hero and a scientist. “Yeah, but when his family and friends are all completely fine and happy, he goes right back to being a penny pinching money grubbing jerk… one that everyone still loves, because he’s a far sight better than the alternatives.” Donald stated firmly as he wheeled a cart in loaded with covered trays. “Got the food for Fenton and Gandra as well. Working for my uncle isn’t too bad, I don’t like being a lazy do nothing duck.” “I can agree with that, I don’t like the feel of being unable to do much for myself.” I received a bright smile from the duck, we understood one another which is why we had quickly become friends. “Then get better by resting, eating and actually asking for help.” Donald stated simply with a nod. “Asking for help is the hard part for me, but you seem to be able to do it so easily.” “I’m the adult of my group, I need all the help I can get just to survive long enough to make it home.” So of course I was going to ask as long as someone was willing to give me even the slightest bit of help. “Which is why I’m going to seek out Abigail Callaghan for you once you are on your way to Cape Suzette. I still want to aid you and Big Hero Six does too!” Ms. Shuttle chirped cheerfully as I carefully started in on the pot of steamed vegetables. “She will need protecting, because there are numerous people out there that would want to use her research for bad things. Taurus Bulba, some strange evil lizards frequently seen around Anaheim in California with robot armies and a few others individuals have been seen messing around with dimensional technology in an unsafe manner. So far obscurity is keeping her safe, but when she starts building a working portal… well I’m sure my friends will protect her.” Evil lizards with robot armies, who’s been fighting those guys? I passed close by to there when I was in Hollywood and didn’t see or hear much about a robot army, so someone else must be taking care of them and I’m actually glad I don’t have to. I was getting tired of dealing with machines, monsters and mercenaries. “Yeah, about that. Gyro, our boss and chief scientist, apparently traced something really strange and it involves Dolly.” We turned to Fenton, he now had all our attentions. “Somehow Dolly stabilized the dimensional instability plaguing our world, because it occurred at the same point and time she did whatever it was that caused that bright flash upon defeating that Hollow guy.” “I did what now?” Dolly said in a confused tone. “Yeah, she doesn’t know much about what she did, how she did it or what came of it.” I seriously hoped that didn’t come back to bite us though. “Frankly neither do I and I’m the one mystically connected directly to her. The most I can say is that I likely felt her doing something humongous on a small scale before passing out if that makes sense, basically what you just told us would be more information than what we have.” “Can we not get into heavy stuff right now? You’re eating and I brought a game you might be able to enjoy together.” Manny stated as he came in with a box that had the word ‘HINT’ printed on it. “This game is all about solving a mystery with hints in various rooms to figure out the mystery.” -Several hours later, late evening- “Final guess, it was in the laundry room, with the poisoned ink and quill pen and the culprit is Ms. Chutney!” Donald stated firmly with a grin. This game was about deception as much as it was about figuring out the mystery first, we all held our own clues that were the hints that we had to keep hidden as well as we could while getting others to reveal hints themselves. “He’s correct.” Manny stated with surprise, pulling out the location card, the weapon card and the character card. A wrong final guess leads to a player being taken out of the game, if the game is between two people left then the winner is the one who doesn’t fail to make a final guess. We only got about ten turns into the game and had very little information. At least, everyone had a fair shot of winning this one, even I won a game. Gandra won one because everyone else failed a final guess. Fenton one two because he was making very good educated guesses, but was knocked out four times for failed Final Guesses. “Good job Donald, were you ever a detective, at least in a past life?” I could already guess it comes with adventuring family as weird as his. “No, I do have a distant cousin named Maui Mallard though, he’s a private investigator that hangs around the Hawaiian Islands and you might even see him in Cape Suzette.” I’ll be sure to keep that in mind Donald, might have to look him up if I needed help with investigating Kahn Industries. “Some people say we look a lot alike, but our family has always had strong resemblances in it.” “Wait Mallard, then wouldn’t that mean that you’re distantly related to Drake Mallard?” Fenton the caramel colored duck asked in curiosity. “Yep, Darkwing Duck.” Donald responded dryly. “Before you ask, I’m not closely related to Daisy. She’s the sister of my sister’s late husband, the father of Huey, Dewey and Louie. Didn’t really meet her until recently and we’ve been doing well together.” “Wow, so the insanity is a common family trait even in your branch families?” Stated Gandra with a look. “Sure is, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Donald chuckled. “So want to play Go Fish?” “Yeah, then I’m going to turn in. Dolly and I have to be awake tomorrow.” I knew this vacation was soon to be over. “So who’s flying our plane to Cape Suzette? I’ve heard some... things... about Launchpad.”