Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gyro found himself standing on the landing strip behind McDuck Manor. He, Fenton, and Mr. McDuck and his three nephews were waiting for the arrival of a biologist that Mr. McDuck had hired for some business problem. On the outside he looked the same as always, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, face pinched. On the inside he was just slightly teetering on the verge of panic. Luckily no one would be able to tell he was upset. If anyone could, it would have to be someone who spent a lot of time around him. Someone who knew his behaviours. Luckily he never spent too much time around any singular-

“Dr. Gearloose?”

“Dr. Intern.”

“Pardon me asking, but are you nervous about something?”

Of course he of all people would be the one to...urgh! Fenton looked up at him anxiously, wringing his hands.

“Or, are you excited? I’m really excited! It’s not everyday you get to meet a famous scientist. A-another famous scientist, I mean! Talking about you.”

Fenton smiled widely in response to the seething glare Gyro was giving him. He laughed, pulling at his collar. Good thing he couldn’t be fired now, right?

“For your information I am not nervous. I am not feeling anything. I have no feelings.”

“Aw, that’s not true Dr. Gearloose.” When Gyro didn’t respond, or even look his way, his face fell. “Are you okay? Please be honest. I promise I won’t overreact.”

“You say that as if I would believe you were capable of such a thing.” He glanced at Fenton, saw the big-eyed, sad look he was making, and sighed. “Me and...the scientist-“

“Doctor Tebasaki?” Fenton helpfully interrupted.

“Yes,” he replied through gritted teeth. “as I was just about to say, we have a...history.”

“Oooooooh!”

Gyro snapped his head to the side and fixed his fiercest glare on Mr. McDuck’s oldest nephew. Huey was unfazed, eyes wide with wonder.

“Did you two work together to try and make a cyborg? Or were you trying to make a technologically enhanced superhero before the GizmoDuck armor?” He opened his little guidebook, the one Gyro never saw him without, and pulled a pencil out of his hat. “Dr. Tebasaki is a biologist, and you’re a robot scientist.“

“Doctor of robotics,” Gyro corrected. Build a superhero? Really? What did they take him for. Of course, that did sound like something that she would-

“You must have been working together to discover new ways to combine the powers of robots and people!” Huey said triumphantly.

“Wrong.” Gyro said. “Now stop talking.”

“Were you making half robot half animal hybrids for an army? That’s just the kind of mad scientist thing I can imagine you doing.” Dewey chimed in, appearing next to his brother.

“You really didn’t need to add the word hybrid in that sentence. You already specified that they were half-and-half.” Huey muttered.

“Just think of it,” his brother continued, “rabbits with laser eyes, frogs that can breathe underwater.”

“Frogs can breathe underwater!” Gyro and Huey said.

“We never worked together.” Gyro paused, then winced. “Not officially, at least.”

Louie hadn’t moved from his original spot, staring at his phone and looking bored. “So what happened between you guys? I know we’ll find out eventually, but the suspense is...nah, I can wait actually.”

“Since when were you willing to wait for anything?” Huey asked.

“Since the plane started landing.” Louie pointed upwards where the Sunchaser’s bulky silhouette had appeared.

It was growing closer and closer, weaving side to side as it all but nosedived for the landing strip. Everyone started running for cover. Fenton watched them run, making sure the kids and Mr. McDuck were all accounted for before he made his own escape. Except not everyone was running. Gyro was still on the tarmac, staring at the oncoming plane with sheer terror written on his face.

“Dr. Gearloose!” Fenton ran back to him, grabbed him by the shoulder. “Come on, we need to get to safety before-“

“Call the armor.” Gyro said without looking away from the oncoming plane.

“Wha-“

“Call the armor!” Gyro grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “The plane is going down, you have to catch it! Or stop it! Or-!”

Fenton looked past him, screamed, and threw himself to the side. Gyro, still gripping his arms, was dragged along. The plane collided with the ground inches from where they’d been standing. It slid, sparks flying from where the metal ground against the pavement. The Sunchaser barreled down the strip, before finally hitting the fence at the edge of the field and getting stuck.

Gyro jumped to his feet and ran after it, followed by Fenton and the Duck family. He didn’t stop till he reached the plane. Doubled over and panting he looked up at the hatch.

“Dr. Gearloose, are you alright?”

He whirled on Fenton, his furious expression making him jump. “Why didn’t you call the armor?” He screamed.

“L-Launchpad always crashes the plane. And - and he asked me not to use the armor to stop him-“

“I am your boss! I ordered you!”

“Gyro, what’s gotten into ya?” Scrooge pointed at his head scientist. “I’ve never seen you get so bent out of shape over the plane before.”

Gyro turned his glare on Mr. McDuck. Something he never would have done in his right mind. Luckily, before he could say anything and endanger his job, the hatch fell open. Then fell off the plane.

“Oh my gosh that was the best flight I’ve ever been on!”

Framed in the dark opening of the Sunchaser’s hatch was Launchpad and a smaller figure. A Polish chicken dressed in a long, black coat, with a huge swathe of white feathers atop her head.

“Oh that? That was nothing. You’ll have to come on some of my other flights if you wanna see a real crash.” Launchpad smiled, then stopped when he saw the worried crowd looking up at him.

He sat down on the edge of the hatch before sliding down and falling to the tarmac. He stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet. “Nothing to see here folks. Just another successful crash landing by your old pal Launchpad.”

Everyone looked at Gyro, expecting to see him throw himself at the pilot in an act of rage. But the scientist wasn’t even listening. He was looking up at the figure standing on the plane. She was looking back. The sun caught on her wide, round glasses, turning them white. A strong wind blew between them ruffling Gyro’s hair and setting Dr. Tebasaki’s coat flapping.

“This is so dramatic. I hope something like this happens when I get to see my long lost enemy.” Dewey said.

Launchpad, oblivious to the tension, turned back to the plane and held up his arms. “Climb on down and I’ll catch you, Doctor D.”

“Oh, no need for all that.” She answered.

She turned back and disappeared into the plane. A moment later she returned lugging a huge suitcase behind her.

“Catch this!” She shouted, tossing the bag off the edge.

Launchpad stumbled when he did. The bag was designed like a suitcase, but about four times bigger. While the pilot had it hefted over his head, Dr. Tebasaki leapt out of the plane. She landed on the raised suitcase before jumping off in a graceful front flip. Launchpad fell backwards, trapped under the bag, while the doctor landed feet first on the tarmac.

Dewey gasped. “I didn’t know scientists could actually be cool! I thought they were all big nerds like Gyro.”

“Hey!” Gyro and Fenton exclaimed.

“Sorry, Fenton, forgot you were a scientist now.”

“And?” Gyro asked, hands on his hips.

Louie smirked at Gyro. “No, what he said still stands.”

“Why you little-“ Gyro paused and looked over his shoulder.

Dr. Tebasaki was standing right behind him. They were both the same height, but she was leaning forward and crouching in such a way that she was looking up at his face. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses, and her eyebrows furrowed.

“Gigi?” She asked. “Is that really you?”

Gyro jumped backwards and bumped into Fenton, sending them both crashing to the ground. Before he could even try to stand he was grabbed by his upper arms and hauled upwards, but not to his feet. Tebasaki held him in a kind of fake French dip, Gyro forming an acute angle with the ground from how tense he was. The doctor looked down at him, a wide smile on her beak.

“It is! IT IS!” She shrieked.

Gyro was lifted clear off the ground and pulled into a spine-snapping hug. Dr. Tebasaki’s arms wrapped around his middle, trapping his arms to his sides as she spun round and round, cackling happily. Fenton and the others watched, not sure if they should laugh or try and rescue him. Eventually the doctor halted and released Gyro. He stumbled away clutching his head.

“I really can’t believe it,” Dr. Tebasaki said breathlessly.

She reached out to steady him, but Gyro jumped away. He tripped over Fenton, who had just gotten back on his feet, and they both fell. Doctor Tebasaki laughed and Gyro glared up at her, trying to look as dignified as he could with Fenton trapped under his back.

“I’m sorry, Gigi, I-“

“Don’t call me that.” He snapped, getting to his feet. He jabbed a finger at her chest. “My name, as far as you know, is Dr. Gearloose. When I’m not working, you can call me Gyro. Deal?”

Dr. Tebasaki blinked. “I’m...sorry, what?”

“You heard me,” Gyro adjusted his glasses and brushed dirt off his clothes. “This is my workplace. I have jurisdiction here, and you will refer to me with the respect I have oh-so-carefully garnered.”

She smiled, but it was strained. “We’re scientists, Gyro. Not...whatever job uses words like ‘jurisdiction.’ Aren’t you, you know, happy to see me?”

Gyro hesitated. He crossed his arms and turned his head to the side. Dr. Tebasaki looked down, rubbing at her upper arms. In an attempt to alleviate the tension Fenton stepped forward and offered his hand.

“Welcome to Duckburg, Doctor Tebasaki. It’s an honor to meet you. I’ve been reading up on all of your scientific journals since Mr. McDuck said you would be coming here.”

The smile she gave him was bright and warm, and her handshake was tight as a vice. “You read my journals?” She placed a hand on her chest, touched.

Fenton waved his hand, sore from her grip. “I did! Your research on the nesting grounds of phoenixes was phenomenal.”

“Aw, thank you! Good to know it was worth the third degree burns.”

Gyro gave her a look from the corner of his eye.

“Oh! And the attack strategies of leprechauns was incredibly insightful.”

“Thanks. I’m still working through all the bad luck jinxes they put on me.”

Gyro stared at her.

Fenton gasped. “The crystal sharks of crystal cove! I was amazed by the photographs of the skeletal structure.”

“Weeeell, I was trapped inside one for three days. Had a lot of free time to-“

“I’m sorry,” Gyro interrupted, “you were eaten by a shark?”

“Yeah that...that wasn’t in the journal.” Fenton added nervously.

“I couldn’t include it.” Dr. Tebasaki shrugged good-naturedly. “The journals are for the findings and what they mean for science. Not for ‘dramatics’ as the board called it, or how bad the inside of a shark smells, or how many of its teeth I had to get removed from my-“

“Dol!” Gyro yelled. “How did you even end up that close to a shark?!”

“Well you see,” she steepled her fingers together, “when sharks get hungry they do this thing called ‘eating,’ and-“

Gyro hit her with a glare so sharp Fenton nearly expected knives to shoot out of his eyes.

“I cannot believe you.” He said at last.

“I can’t believe you get to call me Dol, but I can’t call you by your nickname.”

Gyro’s eyes widened. “I- What I said was doc not Dol. You know, the way imbeciles shorten the word doctor as if it’s too hard to say.”

“Right.” Dr. Tebasaki replied.

Fenton marveled at how her smirk was so similar to Gyro’s. She turned to him and smiled, the genuine glee on her face erasing the Gyro-like features he’d seen just before.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“O-oh! Right!” He offered his hand again, then retracted it nervously. He wasn’t really sure what to do. “Dr. Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, at your service. I’m a robotics scientist myself, but I do admire any fellow scientific mind.”

Dr. Tebasaki laughed, bringing the back of her hand to her beak. “Aren’t you lovely!”

Fenton blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. Gyro grumbled unhappily to himself.

“It’s a pleasure to know I won’t be working with only non-stick-in-the-mud scientists for once.” She beamed as Gyro gave an exasperated sigh. “And, it’s not often I meet someone else with as many names as me.”

Fenton tilted his head. “You have two last names too?”

“I do!” She put a hand on her chest and gave a small bow. “Dolmadakia Tebasaki-Gearloose at your service, Dr. Crackshell-Cabrera.”

Fenton blinked. He looked between her and Gyro. Gyro didn’t meet his eyes, instead looking off to the side with a miserable, embarrassed expression on his face.

“Are you two…” He trailed off, not sure what word to place in the blank.

“Rivals?” Dewey asked, popping his head out from behind Fenton’s legs.

“Clones?” Huey asked, poking his head out from the other side.

“Related.” Louie said, still browsing his phone. “They’re related.”

“Dr. Gearloose, you have a....a…?” He looked from Gyro to Dolmadakia, still struggling to find the right label.

“Siblings.” She said. “We’re siblings.”

“Twins.” Gyro muttered.

Huey gasped. “Your hair,” he pointed at Dolmadakia, “it kinda looks like how Gyro’s used to.”

She gasped, putting a hand to her head. “No way. Gyro showed you pictures of his bowl cut?”

“It was not a bowl cut!” He yelled.

“Sure, sure. Yeah.” She waved her hand at him.

“It was not!”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Dol, it was not a bowl cut.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

He stared at her, mouth hanging open. The sight sent Dol into hysterics. She doubled over, laughing madly and clutching her sides. Gyro closed his mouth and crossed his arms, fuming.

“Okay, while you’re here you gotta tell us all the embarrassing childhood stories about Gyro that you have.” Dewey said.

“Going through the sister for blackmail material. I’m impressed, Dewford.” Louie grinned.

Dol straightened and wiped her eyes. “Those three seem like fun,” she said to Gyro while pointing at the triplets.

“Stay away from them. They're nothing but trouble.” He replied.

“Reminds you of some other siblings, hmm?”

Gyro glared at her. This time her smile dimmed, and her face fell. Before Gyro could react, however, Dol had already turned her back on him. She approached Scrooge and offered her hand.

“Mr. McDuck, I’m terribly sorry for not coming to meet you first. I haven’t seen my baby brother in a long time and got a bit distracted.”

“Ack, no harm, lass.” Scrooge shook her hand. A brief flash of surprise traveled across his face when he felt how strong her grip was. He recovered quickly, but his eyes were wary. “I really must be thanking you for offering your services for free. I would have thought one of the world’s leading scientists in mythical biology would charge a fortune.”

“Well, like you said, I’m only one of the leading scientists.” She adjusted her glasses. “I don’t do this for money. I do it because...just because I enjoy doing it, really.”

Fenton glanced at Gyro. He’d been quiet since Dol had walked away. He was staring at her back, but not with a glare this time. He was squinting and his eyebrows were furrowed. It was the same expression Fenton had seen him wear while reading lines of code for hours on end. Fenton looked away when Gyro’s eyes darted towards him. He just managed to catch the last part of Dol’s conversation with Scrooge.

“Thank you, sir, really. I’m so excited for this opportunity...and everything that Duckburg has to offer.”

She looked at Gyro over her shoulder, who pointedly ignored her. He leaned down to Fenton and whispered, “what exactly is she here for again?”

Fenton frowned. “You weren’t listening when Mr. McDuck said?”

Gyro grimaced. When his boss had entered the lab last week he had been in the middle of an experiment. Scrooge had claimed to be there for a staff meeting, which really meant that he wanted Gyro, Fenton, and Manny to stand in front of him while he made an announcement. Gyro had been upset at being pulled away from his work for something frivolous. To spite his boss he made a point to not listen to anything he said. He ran calculations in his head, thought about the next step in his experiment, wondered what he would have for dinner.

When Scrooge had said the name Tebasaki it was like a spear had been hurled through Gyro’s thought bubble. He was back in the moment, confused, and filled with dread.

“What did you just say?” He asked.

“To get the lab ready for the new scientist. Ah know you’re not one for sharing, but it’ll only be for a little while.” Scrooge answered.

“No. The name. What was the-“

“Dr. Tebasaki!” Fenton said, tapping eagerly at his phone. “She’s the leading scientist in the study of mythical species anatomy.”

Gyro looked at Scrooge pleadingly. “Why would you need to bring her here when you already have two scientists? I’m sure we can handle whatever it is that you-“

“I need a biologist, Gyro. This is a very delicate procedure that requires an expert. Plus, she offered to come here for free. How could I turn down an offer like that?”

“Of course she would do something stupid like that.” He’d muttered to himself.

Back in the present, Gyro mentally screamed. She must have found out that he was here. With all of the news stories surrounding Scrooge and his family it was only a matter of time before Gyro himself had been captured by a tabloid’s camera or filmed on the hourly news. No wonder she was working for free. Nothing got Scrooge’s attention like that four letter word.

“I forgot.” He replied.

Fenton looked at him quizzically. “Well uh, Scrooge didn’t give specifics on what he needed her to do. He said he’d show us once she got here.“

Gyro looked back up, staring at his sister with that same piercing look.

“What’s your game, Dolmadakia?” He mumbled to himself.

Fenton frowned. He hadn’t know Gyro had a sibling. In fact, it seemed like nobody had. If he had to guess, he’d say the last time they had seen each other was probably...probably...

There was a shout. Every head turned to see Webby running towards them. The little duckling was waving her arms and shouting a panicked mantra of “I need a doctor!”

Scrooge kneeled as she came to a stop in front of them. “What’s happened, lass?”

“I need a doctor, quick!” She cried.

Gyro stepped forward, passing his sister. He gave her a sarcastic smile. “Well, as the resident head researcher, and Scrooge’s longest working scientist, she must be referring to me.”

Fenton watched him kneel beside Scrooge. This was...weird.

“What can I help you with, pink kid?”

“No offense, Dr. Gearloose, but I need a doctor-doctor.” She answered.

Gyro’s smug smile morphed into a glare. “What did you just say?”

“There’s a medical emergency!” Webby waved her arms frantically. “One of the harpy’s hurt its wing and it needs help.

Gyro felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Dol adjusting her glasses, the round lenses catching the light and bouncing it into his eyes.

“No offense, Gigi, but it looks like you’re in my wheelhouse.”

Chapter Text

Dol ran and grabbed her bag, dragging off of the nearly suffocated Launchpad. Webby led the group back towards the manor and around the side to the garden. There was a group of four harpys all crowded in a circle. They were murmuring and hissing among each other over panicked shrieking and flapping noises. While Scrooge and the kids approached the monsters with a general amount of calm, Gyro hadn’t seen harpies before. The ragged, winged monsters put him on edge. Dol however came striding after them cheerfully, smiling brightly when she set eyes on the crowd of harpies.

“They’re a long way from home.” She said, tossing the bag to the ground. It landed with a loud thud.

“Technically they live here now.” Webby explained. “They followed a demi-god here and then we kinda sorta got them trained and now they deliver lemonade for McDuck Enterprises.”

Dol whistled. “That’s incredible. How’d you train them?”

“They like lemons.” She pointed to a nearby tree, ladened with yellow fruit.

“Oho! It’s the citrus!” She cried triumphantly. “Harpies have a tendency to lack essential vitamins.”

“How on Earth would you know that?” Gyro asked.

“We-heh-hell,” Dol rubbed the back of her neck, bashfully looking off into the distance. “I once had a very...let’s say chaotic...spring break in Greece that involved hijacking a speedboat. Anyways, I washed up on Ithaquack and got stranded in the sacred harpy nesting grounds. But, I did learn how to mimic the mating calls. And the mother calls.”

She opened the clasps on her bag and the top flew open. It had clearly been stuffed with more than it was designed to hold. How she had ever gotten it to close long enough to fasten it was a mystery. Inside was a mess of medical supplies and personal items. Clothes, bone saws, gauze, heels, a stethoscope, hairspray, and about a million other items. She shoved her arm inside and rummaged around before pulling out a pair of what looked like scuba goggles. The lens was cracked, and stickers caked the plastic frame.

“Always wear eye protection when working in the field, kids.” She said slipping the goggles over her glasses. “Also, spring for prescription goggles if you have the budget. Somebody grab me some lemons. I’m going in.”

Scrooge looked between her and the crowd of monsters. “Are you sure you go in there? Harpy’s claws can rend through some of the toughest armor.”

“My lab coat will slow ‘em down. I should only be in danger for, eeh,” she rubbed the underside of her beak, “just a bit.”

“Just a bit?” Gyro asked.

“If it’s dislocated then all I have to do is pop it back in. It’s a simple ball-and-socket joint, like our shoulders, but without the shoulder blades to cut off the rotation. If it’s a break, well, then we’ll have a problem.”

“Maybe we should call in reinforcements?” Fenton offered. “Duckburg has quite a few superheroes to choose from, after all.”

“We are not letting those mangy birds scratch up my armor.” Gyro snarled.

Dol was busy untying the sash around her waist, but she looked up when Gyro spoke. Her face lit up.

“Did you finally make that mecha suit you always wanted to?” She asked eagerly. “Does it look like your old sketchbook drawings? You used to spend hours on those.”

He looked at her, aghast. “Wha- I would never- I didn’t waste my time drawing- I-!”

“So that’s a yes?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

Gyro glared, the threat only slightly undercut by the blush on his cheeks. “I hope those harpies tear you to shreds.”

“Gyro!” The group gasped.

Dol laughed. “Don’t worry, that’s his way of saying he cares.”

“It’s basically a fact.” He continued. “You’re going to try and put your hands on those monsters with just a lab coat and some...what are those scuba goggles? You didn’t even bring actual lab goggles?”

She ignored him and unbuttoned her black overcoat. “Scuba goggles are cheaper. And it’s not just any lab coat I’ll be wearing. It’s my favorite lab coat.”

She pulled the black coat off with a flourish. It obscured her from view before flying up into the air and framing itself against the sun. Everyone watched it flutter to the ground before looking back at Dol. Whether she had been wearing the lab coat under the original, or had quickly pulled it on while everyone was distracted, no one knew. Gyro groaned and pinched the bridge of his beak.

Dol was wearing a lab coat dyed in pastel shades of pink, blue, and purple. Notes and equations were scribbled on the sleeves in ink of various colors. A sort of petticoat had been sowed along the waist and frills to the sleeve cuffs. She didn’t look like a standard scientist, but she didn’t look bad either. Webby squealed in excitement.

“You look like a magical doctor!” She said.

“You look ridiculous.” Gyro said.

“When you’re the best in your field you can afford to look foolish.” Dol fired back.

The triplets offered her armfuls of lemons and she stuffed them into the pockets of her lab coat.

“Hey, so,” Dewey said. “If you survive this can I interview you on my talk show?”

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you. I never get interviewed.”

“But you have to bring some cool dangerous thing with you!”

“I’d be disappointed if I couldn’t!” She straightened up and pointed at the ducks - and Gyro - sweeping her finger over them all. “Now, no matter what happens you do not come after me. If I can’t fix it I’ll get back out, and if I can then I will. If anyone else gets too close they could get agitated, and if the hurt one tries to fly it could ruin the whole wing.”

Scrooge tipped his hat. “We’ll let you work yer magic.”

She nodded before turning to Gyro. “Don’t look so worried, G.” She said with a soft smile.

“I’m not.” He said with his arms crossed; shoulders hunched nearly to his ears.

The harpies had noticed the audience by now. When Dol started approaching them, they moved to form a protective wall in front of their wounded friend. One hissed out a warning. Dol stopped and held up her hands.

She crouched and hissed back. The harpies looked at each other in confusion. She cleared her throat and tried again, drawing out the noise of a ragged inhale. The harpies, crouched in fighting stances, sat up and folded their wings. Dol repeated the noise and drew closer. The harpies backed away making an opening for her to crawl over to the prone monster.

Fenton glanced at Gyro. His hands were under his glasses and over his eyes. He noticed Fenton staring as he peeked through his fingers.

“I cannot believe she’s embarrassing me like this.” Gyro groaned.

“But it’s working!” Huey said and pointed.

Dol was now crouched behind the injured harpy and was looking over its wings. The other four crowded around her, leaning to look at her more closely. Gyro stiffened as one of them hissed. Its beak was inches from his sister’s head. Dol turned and hissed back making the harpy jump.

Fishing the lemons out of her pockets she threw them to her right and left. The harpies chased after them. Dol offered one to the injured harpie. It snatched the fruit and cradled it against its beak.

After a few minutes of careful scrutinizing, Dol raised her head. “Great news!” she yelled at the group. “It’s dislocated! I can pop it right back in.”

Hearing the non-harpy noises from the doctor, the scattered harpies all turned to stare at her.

“Dol…” Gyro warned.

She looked between them and her patient. Settling her eyes on her brother, she smiled and shrugged. “Get my hair right on the memorial statue.”

Dol grabbed the harpy’s wing with both hands and wrenched it to the side. There was a loud popping noise. The harpy screamed. Her friends flew over, blurs of matted feathers, and tackled the stranger standing over her.

The kids yelled and tried to run over, but Scrooge held the back. Fenton tried to go as well, but was grabbed by the shoulder. It was Gyro, but he wasn't even looking at Fenton. His eyes were wide and glued to the mound of talons and wings that had engulfed his sister.

“Dr. Gearloose, wha-“

There was a shrill shriek. The injured harpy was on her feet and flapping her wings. She shrieked again, drawing the attention of the others. They left their prey and joined their mended pack mate in taking off.

Dol had been knocked onto her back. When the harpies had gone she sat up. Her coat was rumpled, hair askew, and her goggles had a huge chuck of the lense missing, but she seemed to be unharmed. She smiled up at the retreating harpies.

“I’ll send you my consultation fee, you beautiful sky rats.” She panted.

Gyro sighed and released Fenton. Seeing the look his coworker was giving him he quickly put on a scowl. “No reason for you to get yourself maimed as well.”

“Really?” The two scientists jumped when Scrooge spoke. He was watching the kids run over to Dol, but he spared Gyro a knowing glance.“Because, I think you were trusting her to know what she was doing.”

Gyro rolled his eyes. “You think I was worried? She’s too persistent to go out like that.”

“I never said you were worried.” Scrooge said walking away to join the kids.

“That! Was! So! Amazing!” Webby wrapped her arms around the biologist’s neck. “But also please don’t do that again. We thought you were a goner.”

“Yeah, and I was gonna be really disappointed if the coolest scientist I’ve ever met died right in front of me.” Dewey said as the rest of the group caught up.

Dol removed her goggles. Her glasses tumbled off of her beak and into the grass. “Aw, you care that much? And we’ve only just met.”

“How did the harpies not kill you, exactly?” Huey asked. “Not to sound mean or anything but there’s no way you should have survived that.”

“Huey!” Scrooge scolded.

“It’s fine!” Dol said with a wave. “He’s inquisitive. That’s good! Here, feel this.”

She held up the hem of her lab coat. Huey rubbed it between his fingers.

“It’s pretty thick, but there’s no way that the harpies couldn’t have clawed through it.” He said after a moment

“That’s what you’d think. See, I got this material from a guy who works in developing the latest in military protective gear. He owed me a favor, and so I got access to this stuff. It’s nearly invincible. I’ve been testing its durability for him by wearing it to all my most dangerous missions.”

Louie whistled. “That stuff must cost a fortune.”

“A fortune,” Dol agreed, “but he accepted my services for his wife’s home birth instead.” She paused. “Am I allowed to say that? How old are they, G?”

Gyro spotted her glasses laying in the grass and bent down to grab them. As he did, she reached for them as well and their heads collided. Dol recoiled with a laugh, her cloud of head feathers softening the blow. Gyro rubbed his head and grumbled to himself.

“I cannot believe you’re still throwing yourself into certain death scenarios.” He pressed the glasses into her hand.

“Pretty sure it’s a family thing, Gyro.” Louie smirked. “I distinctly remember you walking up to a killer, dime-crazed robot.”

“Yeah,” Dewey chimed in. “Every robot you make goes evil and you make them all in a very flood-able lab. You don’t really get to point fingers.”

Dol stiffened, glasses hovering over her beak. She met Gyro’s eyes. It only lasted a moment, but Fenton swore that he saw something pass between them. Some minuscule motion that formed an entire conversation only they could understand. Fenton and Huey shared a look as well. They hadn’t spoken a word to anyone of what they’d learned when they followed Gyro to Tokyolk. Fenton had a sneaking suspicion that the Tokyolk incident, the original one, had something to do with why Gryo was acting so strangely.

“Gyro has every right to point fingers.” Dol settled her glasses and fussed with her hair. “He’s the smart one, after all.”

Gyro grimaced. “Dol, you’re a surgeon. Please do not say that I’m the smart one.”

“What do you mean? I just take the brains out. You actually built brains. Sure they’re robot brains, but still.”

“Surgery? I thought you were a biologist.” Scrooge said.

“I am! But I’m also a surgeon, and I took a night class in psychology once.”

“Are you sure Gyro’s the smart one?” Dewey asked.

“Well,” she thought for a moment, “I’m already the pretty one. So, Gyro can be the smart one.”

Gyro stood and brushed off his pants. “I fear for the lives of your patients.”

Dol stood, teetered, righted herself. “And I fear for the life of your patience.” She giggled.

“As do I.” Gyro muttered.

“Well, I believe that’s enough excitement for our guest for one day.” Scrooge tapped his cane. “I highly appreciate you helping that poor thing.”

Dol shrugged. “I can never say no to a creature in pain.”

“Why don’t you let Gyro set you up in the lab and then take the day off. Launchpad can drive you over to the Bin. Ah can fill you in on what exactly I need done in the morning.”

Dol went to grab her bag and the kids followed Scrooge back to the mansion. Fenton fiddled with his tie. He didn’t know if he should offer to go along with them to the lab. After all, it seemed like alone time was just what they needed to catch up. However, Fenton knew Gyro. If Gyro didn’t want to catch up with, or even talk to his sister, then he wouldn’t. Leaving them alone might make things worse. He looked at Gyro. Currently he was rubbing his temples, clearly upset about something. Something. As if Fenton didn’t have a good idea of what exactly ‘something’ was.

He cleared his throat. “Dr. Gearloose, can I ask you something?”

Gryo glared.

“When exactly was the last time you and Dr. Tebasaki saw each other?”

Gyro closed his eyes and shook his head. “That’s none of your business.”

Fenton wanted to push him, to ask if it was after B...no, Akita, had razed Tokyolk to the ground. But he wasn’t confident enough to do so. Besides, he didn’t want to put Gyro in a bad mood before he and Dol were forced to sit in a car together, even if it was just for the short amount of time it took to get from McDuck Manor to the Bin.

Dol rejoined them, dragging her huge bag behind her. She was smiling that huge, face-splitting smile again. Fenton wondered if that was actually her neutral expression.

“Lead the way, gentlemen.” She said.

Gyro turned away and headed for the front of the Manor where the limo usually stayed. Fenton fell in step next to Dol.

“Would you like me to carry that for you? It looks heavy.” He offered.

“That’s sweet, but I’m fine. This is just my travel bag. I promise that I won’t be lugging this thing around the whole time I’m here.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“Dunno! Depends on exactly what kind of job Mr. McDuck needs done. He was very short on details.”

Fenton’s brows furrowed. “Then, how did you know you could do what he needed? Wait, I’m sorry. That probably sounded incredibly rude-”

“No, no, I gotcha. You wanna know why I would apply to a job when I have no idea what I’m in for.”

Fenton nodded. She tossed her head and the light bounced against her glasses. It almost hid the way she glanced at Gyro out of the corner of her eye.

“The job posting said he needed a biologist that specializes in unusual animals. Mythical is basically the same as unusual, and this is Scrooge McDuck we’re talking about. I figured that even if the animal was, like, a monkey or something, I would be able to help.”

Fenton looked down and rubbed his tie between his fingers. “And...did you know Dr. Gearloose would be here?”

He glanced at Dol, expecting to see the same frustration Gyro had met him with earlier. Instead she was grinning.

“You’re clever.” She said. “I hope you’re using it for good.”

In the back of his head Fenton could hear a voice (that sounded suspiciously like his mama) telling him that he was looking for trouble. Family drama was a problem better suited for the Duck family, or maybe this particular drama should be left to fester on its own. But, in Fenton’s heart, he knew he couldn’t keep himself from trying to help. That was what had drawn him to robotics, and later on to the calling of GizmoDuck. He wanted to help people.

Could this blow up in his face? Definitely, considering that Gyro and his volatile temper was involved. But, hadn’t Gyro needed his help in Tokyolk? While he hadn’t asked for it, at least not technically, and Fenton had gone rogue in his attempts to help, he had protected Gyro long enough for the scientist to face his past and move forward. Maybe all he needed was a little extra support to make him feel safe enough to reach out. Besides, while Gyro was distant and would never ever admit to needing help or having a problem, his sister was the opposite.

Dolmadakia seemed, from what he’d seen so far, to be Gyro’s opposite. She was peppy and friendly and kind. Kind enough to throw herself into a herd of harpies knowing her life was at stake. If Gyro wouldn’t open up about what had happened between them then Dol definitely would. Or, at least he hoped so. No, that was no way to be thinking. Scrooge thought he was worthy of not just owning the GizmoDuck armor, but also of protecting the entire city in his stead. Gyro had promoted him to a doctor. Dol thought he was clever. He could do this...right?

Fenton blinked as he noticed a hand waving in front of his face. Dol gave him a nervous grin.

“Did I say something wrong? You kinda spaced out.”

“Oh! I’m just fine.” He assured her. “I was just thinking about...my next experiment.”

Chapter Text

Gyro was standing by the limo and watching them with a suspicious glare. As they got closer he disappeared into the car. He settled himself next to the window and hunched forward. Resting his elbows on his knees he pushed up his glasses, rubbing his eyes hard enough to make white spots blossom in his vision.

He had hoped that after his last stint in Tokyolk he wouldn’t have to worry about ghosts from his past coming back to haunt his present. No more nightmares about Akita, or Boyd, or Tezuka. No more fretting over something, anything, threatening the new life he’d built in Duckburg.

His family had never crossed his mind as one such threat. After the way he’d left he had been convinced none of them would ever want to see him again. Of course Dol would go against his perfect, genius plan.

The limo rocked. Looking over his shoulder he could see the trunk was open. Sighing, he opened the door and stuck his head out. Dol was trying to shove her giant bag into the trunk. Fenton was helping as best he could, but it was obvious the bag was never going to fit.

“Just bring it in here already.” He yelled before ducking back inside and slamming the door.

Sure, he could have left them out there to struggle until their inferior minds finally realized it was fruitless. But, doing so would prolong the suspense; would leave him sitting here alone and dreading every minute that brought him closer to what was sure to be the most awkward car ride of his life. Better to move this along as fast as possible.

Dol dragged her bag around to the door and lugged it inside. She dumped it on the floor and scooted into the seat opposite Gyro. As Fenton settled next to him Gyro glanced at her, pretending to look out the window. She was pulling at her coat and fussing with her hair. Unbidden, a memory surfaced of her, hunched over the dinner table with an open textbook, tugging at her collar with one hand while the other grasped nervous fistfuls of her hair. It was a long-standing nervous tick of hers to fiddle with anything nearby. After all these years she still hadn’t beat the habit?

Gyro straightened up in his seat. If she was still the same person she’d been during their youth, then surely that was a point in his favor. He was nothing like the naive intern she’d once called her brother. He was a completely different person now. Surely this meant she wouldn’t be able to read him the way he just had with her. He was safe, at least in that regard.

See, Dol was like a bomb. She was armed with knowledge of Gyro’s past. Technically so were Fenton and the Red Nephew, but that was only his past with Akita. Dol knew his past at home. Every embarrassing school photo and late-night decision made while high on caffeine. If she let those loose (or exploded, to fit his bomb analogy) then two things would happen.

Firstly anyone who heard it would have blackmail material. Scrooge’s nephews, at least blue and green, would use that against him. Della definitely would, and he would just rather not let his boss or anyone associated with him know any of his personal information. Then, of course, there was Fenton and Manny. As their boss he needed their respect for him to be able to command them. If that was damaged then they may start talking back, and Fenton did enough talking as it was.

Secondly, Gyro didn’t want to be reminded of anything from the past. After Tokyolk with Akita and 2B...er, Boyd, he’d suffered a number of restless nights. Nightmares of his time working with Akita kept him up at night. They were just memories, but it was his new knowledge that made them nightmares. Watching the other scientist tinkering with Boyd alone, suffering under his raised voice and angry outbursts, that last, horrifying moment at the lab when Boyd had fired on them-

He jumped when a shrill noise interrupted his thoughts. He hadn’t even realized that they were moving. He could see they were stuck in traffic in downtown Duckburg. The sound was coming from Dol. She dug through her pockets before finally withdrawing a screaming cellphone. She squinted at the screen, then her eyes widened.

“It’s mom.” She said looking up to meet Gyro’s eyes.

He stared back, frozen. He hadn’t spoken to either of his mothers since he’d left the country. Dol would undoubtedly want to tell them that he was here in Duckburg. Maybe she would even try to force him to take the call himself, to rip the old, scarred wound open without disregard and bask in his pain.

She tapped the screen and held it to her ear. “Konichiwa, mama! I almost missed you there.” She raised a finger to her beak, still holding his gaze.

He looked back out the window turning his body towards it as much as his seatbelt allowed. The driver in the next car over was startled to see him glaring at him.

“No, the flight was fine. A little, uh, turbulence on the landing. What? No, I am not lying! I’m not! If the plane had crashed I wouldn’t have answered, now would I? No, my logic is sound. My doctorate says so.”

Gyro listened. It wasn’t eavesdropping if they were sitting in the same car. They were little more than a foot away from each other. Still, something twisted in his stomach as he listened to the call. Was it guilt? Or, was it because of who the call was with?

Dol had said mama, and not mom. That meant she was speaking with Nikola Gearloose, the tech side of their family. She had lived in Duckburg running a small family-owned car repair shop. Gyro remembered when she’d first let him travel with her under their battered family car, how she’d pointed and named the twisting guts of the undercarriage. Laying on his back and staring up at the mess of pipes and wires he’d wanted nothing more than to be able to decipher it the way his mama could.

“I’m on my way to the lab right now. It’s exciting, getting to see what a katrillionaire’s laboratory will look like. I’m sure it’s got all kinds of-” Dol paused. “Oh, hi mom. Have a good day at work?”

And there was the other half, Hana Tebasaki. She was from Tokyolk, but had moved to Duckburg for a job opportunity. Then she’d met Nikola, they’d adopted two eggs, and had then all moved back to Tokyolk when one of the hatchlings - in his teens at the time - wanted to become a doctor of robotics. She had been a pediatrician and an EMT in her time, which came in handy when another one of her son’s inventions blew up in his face. Gyro suddenly felt nauseous.

“I was just telling mama that I’m headed to the McDuck lab. There’s some other scientists there, don’t worry. I’ve met-” she avoided her brother’s eyes- “I’ve met some of them. They seem nice.” Another pause as her mothers talked. Gyro could hear the faintest murmurs of their voices through the phone.

“It’s nothing, I swear. Well, you know. I’m a stranger coming to use their equipment of course they’re gonna be a little standoffish. Mama, please. No. It’ll all be okay. I’m sure- I’m sure they’ll warm up in time.”

Gyro was almost entirely curled up on the seat, nearly in the fetal position from how hunched up he was. He kept his eyes firmly set out the window, but he wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Fenton’s gaze prickled against the back of his shoulders. He ignored it.

The limo lurched and shuddered. Either they’d hit something or just missed something. Gyro hadn’t even realized that they’d crossed the bridge to the Bin. He squawked as the door was opened and he fell out, sprawling on the asphalt.

“Sorry, Gyro. But, we’re here!” Launchpad said helpfully.

Gyro stood up and brushed himself off. Fenton exited behind him and started trying to lug Dol’s bag out of the car.

“Sayonara, I love you two. I gotta go. I gotta go. Bye, love you!”

Gyro sneered. At least the fresh air and sunlight was helping release some of the unease he’d been suffering inside the limo. The still, sterile air of the lab would hopefully relieve the rest of it. He stretched and winced. His back was sore from being curled up for so long. Ironic, considering that he spent most days hunched over a desk.

Dol stepped out of the car and shooed Fenton away. She grabbed the handles of her bag and swung it over her shoulder in one swift motion.

“That can’t be good for your back!” Fenton exclaimed.

“It’s not, but I’ll deal with it later.” Dol answered with a smile.

“Alright, come on. Let’s get this over with.” Gyro headed for the entrance without a backwards glance.

The doors slid open and he walked to the elevator. He pressed the button and waited. Dol and Fenton caught up with him as it arrived. Dol let the bag hit the floor and wiped sweat from her face.

“Think I overpacked.” She panted.

“You always do.” Gyro muttered before he could stop himself.

“Ah, remember that, do you?”

“Hopefully not for long. There’s more important things that deserve a place in my mind than that.”

They all watched the elevator doors in silence. Fenton fussed with his tie and shifted from foot to foot.

So…” he started before being interrupted.

“You didn’t tell them I was here.” Gyro said.

“No.” Dol answered. “That’s not my decision to make.”

“You don’t want to be the one to tell them I’m still alive?”

“I don’t want to be the one to force you out of your comfort zone.” She turned her head to face him. “If I remember correctly, it’s small enough already.”

Gyro scoffed. “Why would you care?”

The elevator dinged and the doors parted. Whatever Dol was about to say was replaced by a gasp. Manny was standing in the elevator, still wearing his lab coat. The headless man horse swiveled his head between the three scientists blocking the door.

“Excuse me,” he tapped his hooves together.

Fenton, seeing her surprise, raised his hands. “Oh, that’s just Manny. He works here with us.” He explained.

Dol stepped into the elevator, bag forgotten in the hall. She grabbed one of Manny’s hooves and pulled his arm, looking up and down it’s length.

“What a stunning muscle structure.” She mused.

Manny pulled his arm away and clapped his hooves together. “Hands off the merchandise!”

“At least ask his permission first, Dol.” Gyro snapped.

Dol’s mouth fell open. “He’s sentient?” She turned to Manny. “You’re sentient?”

Manny crossed his arms. She clasped her hands and held them in front of her beak.

“I am so sorry! I’ve just never seen anything like you before. You’re really a marvel of nature. Are you naturally occurring? Where are you from? Actually let me get a pen-”

“Actually,” Gyro stepped into the elevator and pushed his intern out. “Manny’s going on his break. You can bother him later.”

Fenton quickly darted into the elevator before it shut, dragging Dol’s bag in after him.

“Oh my gosh, Dr. Cabrera, I’m so sorry.” Dol reached for the bag.

“It’s not a problem at all,” he handed over the handles, panting. “Wouldn’t want you to have to go back for it.”

“That’s sweet. You’re sweet.”

Fenton laughed and blushed. Gyro shoved himself into the corner, as far from them as he could manage. He went over the lab floor plans in his head. If he set Dol up on one side then he could move most of his projects to the other. It wouldn’t be nearly enough distance, but it would be all he could manage. The lab was only so big. She’d have to go by the elevator. That way Gyro wouldn’t have to say goodbye when she left for the night. He did not want to be stuck in the elevator alone with her. Elevators were too perfect a place for her to trap him in a conversation about….what had happened.

Fenton made small talk with Dol while the elevator dropped. When it reached the lab he offered to take her bag again.

“You know, maybe if we both carry it it’ll be easier?” He offered.

“You might be onto something,” she laughed and offered one of the handles. “Now I see where that doctorate came from.”

Gyro stayed where he was, waiting for them to leave first. He watched them drag the bag over the threshold and pushed himself away from the wall. When Dol stopped he frowned. Her head was turned towards the wall, at the windows showing the underwater scene of Duckburg Bay. She must be distracted by the view, he thought. She was still blocking his way, and he was so annoyed by this that he missed the way Fenton was looking at her in concern.

“Move,” he commanded. “You’re in the way.”

She was shaking. He almost didn’t notice, but her swathe of head feathers trembled and gave it away. Fenton had a tendency to do the same thing when he was excited. That was why he brushed it off.

“Dol, move.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and tried to force her forward. She whirled on him and smacked his hand away before darting back into the elevator. Gyro stumbled.

Dol stood in the small room with her back flush against the back wall. She was grasping her upper arms tightly, digging in her nails. Her breathing was a steady panting, but it was getting quicker.

“You didn’t tell me it was underwater.” She said, raising her voice.

“What does it matter?” Gyro snapped.

“Because I…” She looked away, swallowed, “I can’t go in there.”

Gyro crossed his arms and glared. “I’m sorry. Is the aesthetic not good enough for you?”

“Dr. Gearloose,” Fenton whispered, “I think she’s about to have a panic attack.”

“Panic attack?” Gyro repeated. “Dol? Dol doesn’t have panic attacks. She throws herself infront of everything without a care in the-“

He was interrupted by a sniffle. Looking back into the elevator he saw that Dol had turned away from him. Her forehead was pressed against the wall and her shoulders were shaking. Either she was trying very hard not to laugh, or she was genuinely afraid.

When they were kids Dol had always been the brave one. Sure, Gyro had stuck his hands into any mess of wires he could find, and he had once reworked the toaster into a heatray, but Dol was always the one who tested his inventions. He remembered hiding behind a mound of pillows as Dol, wearing only a bike helmet, hefted the makeshift heatray and tried firing it. She’d been caught in explosions over a dozen times thanks to Gyro’s ameteur inventions, but she never declined him when he asked to do another test. He wasn’t tough enough to do it himself, she’d told him.

“I’m the older one,” that’s what she would say, swiping whatever new gadget he’d held from his hands. “That means I have to protect my little baby brother. Now, which button do I press?”

Gyro ran his hand through his bangs. Eugh, he’d stopped that habit ages ago, why was it back now?

“Stay here,” he told Fenton. “I’ll take her back up.”

“What about-“ Fenton gestured to her bag.

“Leave it here. For now.”

He returned to the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed, Fenton watching him nervously the whole time. Honestly, he needed to mind his own business. He already knew about Tokyolk. That was more than enough of Gyro’s backstory for any one person to know.

There was a shuffling noise behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. Dol had sat on the ground, back against the wall and knees pulled up to her chin. Her face was buried in her crossed arms and her round glasses dangled from one hand. It looked like her shaking had gotten better, at least. Gyro looked forward again, staring a hole through the elevator doors.

“I’m sorry.” Said a small voice.

“Are you going to explain that?”

There was a long pause. “Not now.”

“Fine.”

They continued in silence.

“Your lab looked nice.” She laughed breathlessly, “I had always hoped you’d get one big enough for that head of yours.”

Gyro didn’t answer. She was downplaying, but what exactly? Was it just her earlier meltdown, a reaction caused undoubtedly by something Gyro didn’t know about? Or was she trying to convey something more? Was she hoping to pretend that Tokyolk had never happened and that they could resume their relationship from the last happy moment?

No, she wouldn’t do that. Gyro didn’t deserve that, and she wouldn’t be willing to overlook everything that had led to his disappearance. They were Gearlooses, and they held grudges. They remembered every wrong and right. She was just biding her time. Yes, that had to be it. She was waiting for him to give in, for her to believe that he believed that she had either forgiven him or was ignoring what had happened. Then, she would do something, once she was close enough, that would hurt him just as much as he’d hurt her and the family.

That’s what he would do, anyways.

“Do you think you’ll be able to actually make it into the lab tomorrow?” He asked.

“I...I don’t know.”

“Hmm.” Strange that she would so easily let him distance himself from her. It would make her plan harder. “There are plenty of unused meeting rooms in the Bin. I’m sure you can set up in one of those.”

She rubbed her eyes and replaced her glasses. “Thank you.”

The door opened and he stepped out. Dol stood, bracing herself against the wall, and followed. Gyro led her towards the front doors and the reception desk. There were chairs nearby and she collapsed into the nearest one.

“I’ll have Dr. Intern, Dr. Cabrera, bring you your bag. Then you can, I don’t know, take the day off like Mr. McDuck said.”

Dol leaned back, a hand tangled in her hair. “What are you gonna do?”

“I have work to do.”

“When do you get off?”

“At night.”

“What time?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Dol sighed and turned to look out the glass doors. Outside the afternoon sun was slipping into the evening’s golden glow.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She said.

“Not unless you’ll be in the lab.” He replied.

She winced but stayed quiet. Gyro turned and headed back towards the elevator. Just before he could hit the button and retreat to safety she called out to him.

“Gyro!” She was standing, if not unsteadily. “I am...really happy to see you. I mean it.”

He stared back.

“Come on, say something. Please?”

Gyro opened the elevator doors and went inside without looking back. He didn’t need to see the look on her face to know that he’d upset her. It didn’t matter. It was just an act. It was all just an act.

Chapter Text

Fenton stared up at the lab’s raised platform. Gyro had been up there since before he’d arrived. He’d tried to go up and offer a good morning, but Gyro hadn’t even paused his work. Fenton had tried several more times to strike up conversation, only to be met with the same response. Usually Gyro would at least take a moment to sigh irritably before going back to work. But today it was as if he couldn’t hear a thing. Fenton had even dared to get closer and check that he wasn’t actually wearing earbuds.

Fenton had retreated to his station but he wasn’t being very productive. He was worried about Gyro. And once his heart got caught on something his brain was soon to follow. Which meant that rather than tinkering with his current projects or trying to come up with new ones, he was thinking about yesterday.

Gyro had come back alone after taking Dol back above sea level. He’d told Fenton to take her bag to her. It was impossible to miss how exhausted his voice sounded. Fenton had lugged the bag into the elevator and then to the Bin’s front doors.

Dol was just outside and talking rapidly on the phone. Fenton assumed it was her mothers again and tried to be as quiet as he could, but once he’d started opening the door the conversation wafted in.

“I’m so sorry, Dickie, I know I’m really coming out of nowhere with this. I just- everywhere is so expensive and I- Dickie thank you so, so much. I’ll repay you somehow. And I’ll wash dishes! I swear!”

“Um, Dr. Tebasaki?”

She jumped with a squawk and turned around. “Oh! Oh, Dr. Cabrera. You scared me.”

“Sorry about that. I brought your bag for you.”

“Oh, right. Right, my bag.”

“Sorry, but, are you okay? Earlier you seemed really-“

“I’m fine!” She answered quickly, high pitched, and with a strained smile. “Totally fine.”

“Ah. Alrighty then.” Fenton stepped back towards the door. “Oh and uh, by the way, you can call me Fenton if you want. At least outside of the lab, if that’s easier.”

“Awe,” Dol sighed. “Okay, yeah. You can call me Dol.”

She held out her hand and he took it. Then a finger waved in front of his beak.

“But only Dol or Dolmadakia. No variations, ‘kay?”

“O-okay?”

“Great!” She smiled and released his hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Her face fell. “Well, maybe I will.”

Before he could reply she had grabbed her bag and started lugging it towards the waiting limo.

He had yet to see her since then. He didn’t even know where she’d be working. Gyro hadn’t set aside any tables or changed the lab in any way. He hadn’t even mentioned her when Fenton had returned after taking up the bag. Instead they’d worked as always until Fenton left at the end of his shift. Wait, had Gyro even left the lab since yesterday?

Fenton felt something move at his side and looked up to see Manny. The headless man horse was doing his best to look like he hadn’t been glancing over to see what he was doing. Fenton looked between him and the direction of Gyro.

“Manny, can I talk to you for a minute? I have to talk about something. If I have to sit here and think about it any longer I think I’ll go insane, but we can’t let Dr. Gearloose overhear.”

Manny stared at him for a moment as if digesting the ramble he’d just heard.

“Sure…” he tapped uncertainty.

Fenton jumped from his seat and darted towards the elevator. Manny followed more slowly. They took the elevator up to the bottom of the Bin’s stairway.

“Yeah, yeah here is fine. Just give me a minute to get my thoughts in order.”

Manny leaned against the wall by the Pep machine. Fenton started pacing. He rubbed at his chin, elbow in hand.

“I just don’t get it, Manny.” He said pivoting on his heel. “You would think that Dr. Gearloose would be willing to reconnect with his family, wouldn’t you?”

The stone head stared back. “No comment,” he finally answered.

“After everything that happened in Tokyolk with Boyd, I mean. He’s so much happier with Boyd around. Why would it be any different with his biological family?”

Fenton took a few more steps before straightening up.

“Unless something happened in Tokyolk. You know, before we went. The first time that Akita took over Boyd. That has to be it! Something happened between them. Maybe with their parents too. I don’t think they know that he’s even here.”

“Doing some detective work, are we lad?”

Fenton jumped as Scrooge McDuck came walking down the stairs.

“Mr. McDuck! Uh, no no, nothing. Just thinking about...science...stuff. Are you alright going down all those stairs? If the elevator isn’t working then-“

“Careful lad, sounds like you’re doubting me in my golden years.”

“No, I would never-!”

“Oh, I’m just teasing ya, lad. I only take the stairs every so often just to make sure I can still do it. Plus, I may have been goaded by my no good niece.”

“Please tell me that I did not hear you say Della is here.”

Fenton jumped again as Gyro came walking up to them. He hadn’t even heard the elevator ding.

“There you are, lad. I actually came down here to have a word with ye.” Scrooge rapped his cane against the floor and rested his hands over it. “I wanted to know why your dear sister couldn’t share the lab with you.”

“She’s not a dear.” Gyro sneered. “And she’s the reason she’s not in the lab. Something about the lab it- it’s like she couldn’t even get one foot inside.” Gyro huffed. “You act like she didn’t blab all about it.”

“She didn’t.” Scrooge answered cooly. “I could barely get any information out of her. She just called me this morning to ask permission to use one of the empty offices in the Bin, instead of the lab. That’s why I came down here. To make sure you aren’t causing any trouble.”

“Trouble?! Me?” Gyro put a hand on his chest. “Mr. McDuck I am above such petty displays of emotion. I’m a scientist. A genius, actually. I can keep myself level headed in any situation.”

“Mmhmm.” Scrooge narrowed his eyes. “I must be remembering another screaming scientist that I had to restrain and shove into a car.”

Fenton did his best to keep his expression neutral as he fought the urge to laugh. Gyro crossed his arms and looked away. Scrooge’s face softened.

“Look, lad, I know it’s none of my business but I’m well versed in familial friction. If you need any advice-“

“Uh uh. No way. You can be as well versed as you want but I am not taking advice on anything. I don’t need any. I don’t need anything from anyone.”

Scrooge sighed. “If you say so. I’ll leave the offer on the table if you ever change your mind.”

“I won’t. Now, just tell me if Della plans on heading this way so I know if I have to lock the lab doors.”

“I honestly don’t know. She came with me to meet the new doctor. Especially after she heard you were related.”

“WHAT??” Gyro bolted up the stairs.

Scrooge and Fenton watched him in amazement. It was definitely the fastest (not to mention the most) they had ever seen him move.

Fenton turned to Scrooge. “I should probably follow him. Make sure he doesn’t...y’know…”

“Overexert himself and fall down several flights of stairs? Good call.” Scrooge answered.

“Are you coming?” Fenton called over his shoulder as he took the first step.

“Well, give me a minute. I just went all the way down the blasted things.”

Once he started running he easily caught up with Gyro. Surprisingly he was still going after two floors.

“Dr. Gearloose, why are we running?” He panted.

“Della Duck is the last person I wanted finding out about Dol. Dol-“ he gasped- “talks too much. She’ll tell her anything she wants to know. Especially since- well- oh geez-“

Gyro collapsed on the landing. He’d made it up nine stories at full speed before collapsing. Fenton was honestly impressed.

“Made it this far, eh?” Scrooge was leaning against the doorframe. “Oh, sorry lad. Took the lift. Much more comfortable.”

Gyro groaned and pushed himself up.

“You’ve actually passed out at just the right time, Gyro. The numbering can throw you off but this is the floor above the lobby, right where I set your sister.”

“Great,” Gyro panted. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go save my reputation.”

He rose to his feet and pushed past Scrooge. Fenton and Scrooge watched him stagger down the hall.

“He’s going the wrong way.” Scrooge remarked. “He’ll be going around here for a while. Want to take a shortcut?”

“Shouldn't we bring him with us?” Fenton asked.

Scrooge chuckled. “And spoil the fun? Trust me, the less we interfere the better.”

Scrooge started walking in the opposite direction Gyro had taken. Fenton followed him, hesitating as he watched Gyro trying every door he came across. The room he’d given Dol was actually just around the corner from the elevator. The door was cracked open, and Fenton could hear Della’s voice coming from inside.

“No, they were more circular. Wait, no, like an oval. And mouth tentacles. Longer. Wow, your hands are shaking pretty bad. Do you have Gyro’s caffeine addiction too?”

Scrooge pushed open the door and led Fenton inside. Dol was sitting at a little office desk with her back facing him. Della was leaning over her shoulder and pointing at whatever she was working on.

“Della, you aren’t bothering my biologist, are you?”

Della gave her uncle a big smile. “Nope! Just sharing my know-how on all of the moon’s epic alien life. Look, she’s loving it.”

She spun Dol’s chair around to reveal the flustered scientist. Dol’s face was flushed red, eyes wide behind her round frames, and she was still holding up her pencil. Della threw an arm around her shoulders, setting Dol’s glasses askew.

“She talks way less than Gyro, but that’s not much of a problem. I’d like Gyro more if he talked less if I’m being honest. No offense. Ah, who am I kidding? You grew up with the guy so you totally know what I mean.”

Dol’s eyes traveled down to look at where Della’s hand hung over her shoulder.

“You alright, sister?” Della asked.

“Guh!” She came back to herself. “Ha! Ha, yeah. Yeah. ‘M fine.” She pulled at her shirt in an attempt to straighten it further. “Fine. Fine. Fine.”

“You sure? You look red.”

She fanned at her face. “What? No. I’m not. Just uh...new discovery. Exciting.”

“I know right? I’m a hoot. You guys should see how good this moon mite diagram looks.”

“I feel I should warn you,” Scrooge said, “Gyro’s on a bit of a rampage. Seems to think you’ll try and get some information out of the doctor here.”

“Ha! He knows me too well.” Della laughed. “Trust me, I have enough embarrassing Gyro stories without needing to go through his friends and family.” She leaned closer to Dol and whispered, “unless you have any really good material.”

Dol cleared her throat. “S-sorry, that’s classified.”

“Oooh it must be really good, then. Any chance I can get it unclassified?”

Dol grinned, “I can’t grant clearance for this. It’s-“

“Ah HA!”

Gyro stood in the doorway pointing an accusatory finger at Della, her arm still draped over Dol’s shoulders. He seemed to have recovered from the stairs, though he was leaning most of his weight against the wall.

“I knew you’d be poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. And you-“ he pointed at Dol- “were probably telling her everything she asked, huh?”

“Chill, Gearloose.” Della pulled away from Dol and crossed her arms. “Unlike you, your sister doesn’t run her mouth. I barely got a word out of her. Which, by the way, you gotta tell me how you bribed her so well. I can never get Donald to keep a secret.”

“Dol can’t keep secrets.” Gyro sneered.

“If you’re gonna lie about somebody at least do it when they’re not in the room.” Della motioned towards Dol.

She had turned back to the desk and was bent over it, hands planted on its surface. Gyro uncrossed his arms. They all watched her, until she straightened back up and turned. She was holding a piece of paper and smiling brightly.

“You know this really is amazing. The lack of gravity on the moon must have contributed to its massive size, but then it would have also affected the moon people. Sorry, lunarians. I should really try and meet one to see just how their biological structure-“

She looked up and found them all staring at her. “Sorry, did I miss something?”

Gyro rolled his eyes and recrossed his arms. “I was just talking about how you can’t stay quiet.”

Her face fell and she pushed a hand through her crest of white head feathers. “Well, uh, sometimes. You know how I get about science stuff.”

“I am not talking about science stuff,” he made air quotes around the last two words. “I am talking about sensitive - potentially embarrassing - information. Especially around…” he side-eyed Della, “people like her.”

Dol gasped and glared at her brother. “Gyro, that’s potentially embarrassing information.” She hissed.

“As if it’s not obvious. Or, has your face always looked like a stop sign?”

“Stop sign?!” She stopped, mouth slowly closing. She crossed her arms and leaned back against her desk. “Watashi wa anata to tatakau tame ni koko ni iru node wa arimasen.”

“Shinji rareta ka no yō ni.” He replied.

“Dōshite?”

“Because I know you! Stop hiding behind the language barrier!”

“That was for your sake. You know, because of all your sensitive information.”

She sat down and swiveled to face the desk. “Go talk to an ad blocker or something.”

“An ad blocker? Is that really the best you could come up wi-“

“Alrighty guys! Let’s all go outside for a minute!” Della spun Gyro towards the door and pushed him out. “You too, Giz-man. Huddle time.”

Out in the hall Gyro shook Della off and stomped towards the elevator. Scrooge put a hand on Fenton’s shoulder.

“I recognize that look in her eyes. Good luck to you, lad.”

“Wha- wait, where are you going?”

“I have a business to run. And three grand nephews, and one grand niece, to keep from burning down my mansion. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Wait, what did you mean by-!” A hand grasped him by the sleeve and pulled him backwards.

“Alright Gizmo Guy, we’ve got a mission.” Della said, pulling Fenton into a two person football huddle. “We are gonna go on an adventure, you and I.”

“Uh…” Fenton blinked. “What?”

“We’re gonna fix Gyro’s family drama! Well, first we’re gonna find out every last detail, and then we’re gonna fix it.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? It seems like it might be a bit sensitive.”

“Oh come on, you wanted to do the same thing, didn’t you? You’ve worked with Gyro for a while now. You know that he’s not so bad and all that mushy stuff.”

“I mean, yeah, I just- I’d feel bad prying into his personal life.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll pick Gyro’s brain, and you can talk to the sister!”

“I don’t see how this isn’t breaching their privacy.”

“Oh it totally isn’t...if you aren’t charming and sweet like yours truly. And I guess you’re pretty nice too. Trust me, I’d love to have a lunch date with my new bestie but I think I might be a bit too intimidating or something. She was shaking and stuff. You’d definitely have an easier time.”

“I don’t know,” Fenton tugged at his collar. “I’d feel guilty being nice just to gossip.”

Della groaned. “Come on, Giz-Guy, it’s for a good cause. Gyro’s been so much more chill since he got his robo-boy back, and his sister seems nice. They would get along great once they get past all the drama.”

She saw that Fenton was still hesitating and sighed. “At the least you can see the good, noble, hero-y-ness of taking someone from out of town on a lunch break. Come on, do a figurative blathering-blah-blah and do a good deed!”

He realized she was going to keep going until he said yes. He had been planning to try and help the two reconnect. In hindsight it was wishful thinking, that he could solve a problem without knowing what said problem was. Making wild guesses and speculating would probably get him nowhere. Della was right. The McDucks must have some kind of special sense when it comes to mysteries. And family troubles. Actually it was probably more the last one.

“Fine, I’ll do it.” He said.

“Yes!” Della pumped her fists in the air. “I knew I could count on you. Operation Gearloose Gearshift is a go!”

“How long have you had that name waiting?”

“Years. It’s the name I give all my Gyro related schemes. Though, I haven’t done one since before the whole stuck-in-space thing. This is gonna be such an epic return to form!”

Chapter Text

“Heeeey Gy-guy.”

Gyro sighed. He’d been trying to insert a dollar into the Pep machine. The machine insisted the dollar was too wrinkled to be accepted, even though it was flat as a board. He’d been trying to get this soda earlier before he’d had to go and try to intercept Della. Now she’d caught up to him. Great.

Della slumped against the railing and grinned. “How’s it hangin’?”

“How did you get down here so fast?”

“I took the stairs. 'S faster.”

He huffed and stuck the money back in his pocket. That machine had it out for him, he could feel it. One day he’d melt it down for scrap and build a new dispenser. Once he was sure that it wouldn’t try to kill him, at least. He’d much rather be deprived of soda than have the machine actually have it out for him.

Della ran up behind him and grabbed his arm. “Hey, how about we go out for lunch, eh?”

“How about no.” He answered flatly.

“Come oooon. It’ll be like old times! Just you and me.” she said, dragging him towards the stairs.

“And the secret you’re obviously going to try and wring from me at any cost?” He asked, pulling out of her grasp.

“Whaaaat? Nooooo.” She stared at him for a minute, smiling uncomfortably.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine, yeah.” She relented. “But only because it’s bothering you.”

He adjusted his glasses and scoffed. “Nothing is bothering me. I am just fine.”

“Really?” Della planted her hands on her hips. “Because you only use Japanese when you’re upset.”

“No I don’t! I just, uh, don’t get many chances to use it.”

“Gyro, G-man, buddy,” she steepled her fingers, “you are not getting rid of me until I hear your family drama.”

He glared. “Shouldn’t you be sick of that by now?”

“Eh. I attract it like a magnet, I might as well get some enjoyment out of it.” She grabbed his arm again. “Now come on, there’s this cafe downtown that sells fresh danishes.”

Gyro groaned and threw back his head dramatically. “Fine! But it’s just lunch and I’m not telling you anything. And we are not taking the stairs!”

Della pumped her fist in the air. “Phase one, complete.”

“Phase one?” Gyro asked as she shoved him into the elevator.

~/~/~

Fenton poked his head inside Dolmadakia’s makeshift lab. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it before. Now he could see that it wasn’t at all the best place to set up a laboratory. It looked like it had once been a break room, or even a small kitchen. There were cabinets covering most of the walls, small counters with drawers. What he had first seen as a desk was actually a little table that at one point would have served as a kind of kitchen island. The only things that seemed new was the swivel chair she’d been sitting in, her bag sitting in the corner, and a whiteboard on wheels.

Dol was standing in front of said whiteboard. It was covered in various pictures held in place by a menagerie of what looked like refrigerator magnets. She tapped a marker against her beak and stared at her collage pensively.

She shifted her stance and Fenton noticed for the first time that she had a tail. Of course she had one, almost everyone did. But hers was made of long, sweeping black feathers. The light shifted on them like oil on water, casting a green sheen along the shimmering black.

“Does it bother you?”

Fenton looked up. She’d caught him staring. The fluorescent lights flickered in her glasses as she tilted her head towards her back.

“I can cover it, if it does.”

“Why would it bother me? It’s beautiful! I just didn’t notice it before.”

“Really? Oh yeah, I had my coat on yesterday.”

“Two coats, actually.”

“That’s right!” She laughed. “I didn’t know how soon I was expected to be working, so I wanted to be ready.”

Fenton stepped into the room and closed the door. “Have you had to start working right after getting somewhere before?”

“Lots of times.” She sat down and stretched her arms. “Sometimes the flight is my only downtime.”

“That’s horrible!” Fenton exclaimed. “Is that how biology is?”

Dol ran a hand through her hair, twirling the marker in the other. “No. I do a...special kind of service.”

Fenton tilted his head. Something sparkled and he turned to see the whiteboard. It was covered in pictures and diagrams, but there was also something taped to the corner. Something white, nearly translucent, and pulsing with a pale blue light.

“What is that?” He moved closer and reached out to touch it.

“He-EY!” Dol jumped up and grabbed his wrist, pulling his arm up straight and twirling his body to face her. She released him right after, holding up her hands and clasping them in front of her face. “Ah, sorry. So, so sorry. Force of habit.”

“That’s a force of habit?” Fenton rubbed his wrist. It wasn’t sore at all, but he was still surprised.

“Yeah, it’s- I mean-“ she grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged. “That’s my only sample. Samples are so, so important. If anything happens to it I’ll have to ask for another one, and I might not get it. Not to mention, I don’t know if it’s safe to touch with bare hands. Did I hurt you?”

“Not at all! Just surprised. You’re really strong.” Fenton turned his arm to and fro showing it was fine. “You know, I’m sure Mr. McDuck wouldn’t mind giving you another sample. Unless he said he couldn’t.”

“I’d rather not have to ask him. I can work with this. Just this.” She stared at the glowing fragment for a moment. When she looked back at him she was smiling. “Do you wanna see what I’m working on?”

Fenton grinned. He may not understand science outside of the robotics field, but it excited him all the same. “Of course! Though, you might need to explain some things.”

“I love explaining things! That’s why I put up with writing those awful journals.”

Dol sat in her chair and kicked herself across the floor. It lurched over the tiles and nearly capsized before she reached her bag. She started digging through its contents, occasionally tossing things onto the floor.

“So. Mr. McDuck has a very, very rare animal on his hands. Take a look at those pictures and tell me what you think it is.”

Fenton looked at the whiteboard, staying far away from the glowing sample. The pictures were pinned up in seemingly random places. He squinted at the nearest one. At first he couldn’t tell what he was looking at. It looked like a mess of roots, or maybe a bunch of rope? He looked at another one. There was that tangled mess again, but farther away. There was also...fur and...eyes?

“What is that?!” He jumped back when the face came into focus. It was an animal. Maybe. With big, bulging eyes, a sagging face, and huge, tusk-like teeth protruding from its mouth.

“That-“ Dol rolled up next to him- “is a Jackamoose.”

Fenton looked at her slack-jawed. “A what?”

“You know jackalopes, right? Cute little rabbits with antlers that live in the desert? Well, these are like very distant cousins.” She held up a folder with the word ‘classified’ stamped across the front.

She opened it and pulled out a sketch. It was vaguely shaped like a moose, with long, gangly legs and a shaggy body. The face was a rabbit’s, with huge antlers towering above its head.

“Those aren’t moose antlers.” Fenton said. He was somewhat lost for words.

“The name comes more from the body shape than the antlers.”

Fenton looked between the sketch and the pictures. “So, what does Mr. McDuck want you to do with it?”

Dol’s eyes sparkled.

~/~/~

“This place is charging too much for this coffee. It’s not even good.”

“It’s not good because you’ve ruined your taste buds with that slop you serve at the lab!”

“It’s not slop, it's just cheap. I don’t have a billionaire uncle to ask for loans.”

“Hah! You think he’d loan me anything if I asked.”

“He should. You have kids to look after.”

“My kids are already bleeding him dry.” Della crossed her arms behind her head. “I don’t have to ask for anything.”

Gyro snickered into his latte. He would never, ever admit it, but he had missed spending time with Della. They’d never been friends. Friends didn’t insult each other like this. At least he didn’t think they did. He didn’t really have any.

They’d spent a lot of time together before the Spear. Della would come down to the lab and sneak her way around, peeking at all his blueprints and notepads. She’d drag him out of the lab for food and sunlight, until he’d installed locks on the elevator to keep her out. Those hadn’t worked.

Della rested her elbows on the table and perched her chin on her laced fingers. “Soooo-“

“I told you, Della. I’m not telling you anything.” He set his mug down on the table. “Doubly so because you made me sit outside.”

“There’s an umbrella! Besides, you’re too pale.”

Gyro scoffed and looked out at the street. At least sitting outside gave him plenty of things to look at while ignoring her.

“Gyro,” she said, “don’t make me use the big guns.”

He snorted. “Oh, I wonder what you think you have on me this time.”

“I don’t wanna have to use it.” She warned. “It feels like it’s pretty big.”

“Feels? You don’t know?”

“I never asked about it because you were pretty upset when you told me.”

He paused. He didn’t remember ever telling her anything that made him upset, except for certain times when he’d had to stroke her ego into making her help him. Usually by telling her she had been right about something, and he was wrong. That always put her in a good mood.

It was probably nothing, or at least nothing that would actually give her leverage. He’d done countless things, but nothing he could think of - that Della knew about - would sway his stance on this. Gyro shrugged and took another sip of his drink. Della sighed and put her hands flat on the table.

“Gyro….is this because you blew up Tokyolk?”

He choked. He barely got the cup back on the table as he beat at his chest. Della waved at the other café-goers. When he’d recovered Gyro hung his head, arms crossed on the table top. He reached up and ran his hand through his bangs, grabbed, tugged.

“You okay?” Della asked. Her voice was soft. He hated it.

“How do you know about that?” His voice was ragged from coughing.

“You told me.”

“I’ve never told anyone about that.” He raised his head and glared. “You dug it up, didn’t you? Wanted to know why I was on a government watch list, found out I was on two, and couldn’t stay away from a mystery, huh?”

“No, you told me.” Della was working her jaw. “Remember that one New Years party I took you to?”

“Dragged me to.”

“You hadn’t slept a lot or eaten anything, you had one drink, and you got really upset. So I took you somewhere private and asked you what was wrong.”

Gyro swallowed. “And what did I say?”

“Mostly stuff I couldn’t understand. You were really out of it. But I did make out the part where you said “leveled the city,” and “left the country.” So I knew it was different from our usual Duckburg robot attacks. And you speak Japanese when you don’t want anyone knowing what you’re saying, so I assumed that was where you were from, but I did ask Scrooge and he confirmed it.”

Gyro took a deep breath and sighed heavily. This was a very delicate line he was walking. Could he talk about Tokyolk? Well, now he could. Now he knew that he wasn’t guilty; that he hadn’t caused the accident. He had Boyd back and in one piece. He should be able to talk about it easily. But this wasn’t about Tokyolk. This was about what had happened right after. When he got home that night after being released from jail. Home to his family.

There was a weight on his hand. He looked up to see Della resting hers over his.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I know that talking about this stuff really helps. I also know that, well,” she pushed her hair out of her eyes. “When I first came back I thought Donald was gonna be mad at me. Like, really mad. More than usual. Like super ultra-“

“I get it.”

“But he wasn’t. He was happy to see me. I mean, he was mad, but he was more happy. We were able to talk it out and start fresh.” She squeezed his hand. “You know?”

He looked down at the table. Through the little holes in its grating to the concrete under his feet. He sighed and took off his glasses. He didn’t want to see any pity from her while he told this story.

“Let’s just....start with what happened in Tokyolk.”

~/~/~

“I can’t pay you back for this.”

“I know, and I really don’t mind. You’re in some place new so it’s only right I show you around. Help you sample the local cuisine and all.”

Dol grinned. “I have heard that American burgers are much bigger than the ones we have in Japan.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I was just hoping you wouldn’t be offended that I didn’t take you somewhere nicer.”

“I would have been so mad if you took me somewhere nice! It’s bad enough I can’t pay you back for burgers.”

“It’s really no problem at all.”

Fenton had taken Dol around uptown Duckburg. Della had told him to avoid downtown as she would be taking Gyro somewhere in that area. Unfortunately that didn’t leave a lot of ‘good’ places to eat. Luckily Dol didn’t seem to mind.

“My mom always told me a good guest doesn’t take more than they could pay back.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Of course, she always said that when she took us out to eat anywhere. I was a monster at buffets. And at Halloween. Gyro could never hide his candy from me, but I mean what kid doesn’t eat all the candy in one night.”

“I would do that too. My mama got tired of telling me not to every year, so she made it a sign and put it up with the other decorations.”

Dol laughed. “But I bet she never built a machine to reflavor the candy so you wouldn’t eat it.”

“Gyro did that?”

“He sure did! He thought black licorice could keep me away, but it only made me stronger. I ate his candy out of spite that year.” She grimaced. “I hated every moment of it too.”

“Because you felt bad?”

“No, because it was black licorice flavored!”

They laughed. Fenton twiddled his fingers. He knew he was here to get information, but he still felt bad about it. He didn’t want her to think that he was only pretending to be nice. He was just nice to everyone. He cleared his throat.

“Uh, so, Dol.”

She took a noisy sip of her drink. “Yeah?”

He made several incoherent noises trying to find a good way to start. How was he supposed to start something like this? Come on, think.

“Uh...hey, why don’t you tell me more about-“

“Fenton.” She held up a hand to stop him. “You’re a real nice guy and all, but I have to come clean. I’m not into guys.”

“WHA-?!” Fenton sputtered and waved his arms. “No! No, this is not what I’m trying to do at all! I- oh my gosh-“

She cackled, putting her head down and banging the table with her fist. Fenton smiled nervously at the other customers who were now sending them strange looks.

Dol raised her head and fussed with her hair, tears beading in her eyes. “Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. You looked so uncomfortable.”

“And I don’t look more uncomfortable now?” He asked through a forced smile, face flushed.

“I mean, yeah, but now you can tell me your actual deal and we can go from there. Right?”

Fenton sighed and rested his head on his upturned hand. “Just like talking to Della.” He muttered.

“About Della…” Dol coughed and looked around. “Did she happen to uh, say anything about me? When you guys stepped outside?”

“No,” he said slowly.

“Great. Great. So, she doesn’t think I’m a total loser right?”

“Why would she think that?”

“Because! Did you see what happened when she was in my lab? I was- ugh! Like I’d never seen a cute girl before.” Dol pouted, face tinted pink.

Fenton couldn’t help but laugh. “Gyro did say something about how you would...tell Della anything she asked. He didn’t say exactly why but-“

“It’s because I cannot handle myself around beautiful women. Yeah. He’s held that over my head since high school.”

“Oh, uh, sorry about that.”

She thought for a moment, then her face cleared. The grumpy expression she’d been wearing was replaced with a sudden look of focus.

“You wanted to ask about Gyro, didn’t you?” She asked.

Fenton hung his head. “Yeah. I just...don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to reconnect with his family. I’m not a gossip or anything, I swear. It’s just that when I see a problem I want to try my very hardest to help fix it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And Della kinda egged me on a bit.”

Dol smiled. “She seems very persuasive. But, that might just be my elevated heart rate talking. Let me guess, is she talking with Gyro?”

“Actually, yes.” He responded. “I don’t know how well it’ll go, though. Apparently they used to be really close friends, but then the rocket happened.”

“Rocket? You wanna fill me in on that?”

“I don’t know if he’d want me to.”

“Well,” Dol leaned forward, and her glasses caught the light. “Maybe if you tell me a tale, I’ll tell you one back.”

~/~/~

Della’s mouth hung open. “Wow.”

“Wow? That’s all you can say?”

“Give me a minute, Gyro, I gotta process all this.” She rubbed her temples with her fingers. “So, the guy you were interning for corrupted your robot boy, levelled an entire city, and left you to take the blame.”

“Correct.”

“And then, up until about a month or so ago, said robot boy came back, you went to Tokyolk, found out it wasn’t your fault, and defeated him?”

“That’s an oversimplification, but yes.”

Della threw up her hands. “Gyro, I cannot believe you never told me this before. I mean, Huey told me he went to Tokyolk with you and that he had a robot friend but-“

Gyro ran his finger along the edge of his coffee cup. “I swore him to secrecy. No word of Akita or or Boyd’s to anyone outside of me and Dr. Intern.”

“Fenton has a name, you know.”

“I do know. I’m not clueless.” Gyro snapped. “I just can’t use it. You should see the way his face lights up. It’s infuriating.”

Della grinned. “Riiight.”

Gyro looked at her quizzically.

“So, what happened with Dol after all that? Did she blame you for what happened?”

“No,” he fiddled with his glasses. “None of my family members blamed me for what had happened. Dol was convinced - guess I should say she was right in thinking - that Akita was behind it all.”

“So that’s good, right?”

“It was.” Gyro responded after a minute. “But at the time all it did was make it worse.”

Della glared at him. “How? Your family was supporting you.”

“And it made it worse.” He said firmly. “Because then it wasn’t just me that people were mad at. They thought my whole family was in on it. My mothers lost their jobs, Dol almost didn’t get her doctorate, the whole city turned on us. On them.”

“Gyro, I get that this is hard for you to talk about. I really do. But, if Dol didn’t blame you, then why do you think she has it out for you now?”

Gyro pulled at his hair. “The trial.” He said.

~/~/~

They’d been at it for a while. It had started with Fenton telling her about the Spear of Selene. How Gyro had built it and Della had stolen it, stranding herself on the moon for the next ten years. He had been under the assumption that after she’d heard the story she would tell him what he wanted to know.

Instead she’d told him a story from one of her many jobs. An expedition to find a certain breed of rock troll deep underground in an abandoned mine. After that she’d again said that she’d tell a story in exchange for another. So Fenton had recounted the time that Lil Bulb chased Louie through the Bin. He hadn’t seen it happen, but he’d heard it enough times to make it sound like he had.

To repay him, Dol had told him about the time that she and Gyro had broken into their elementary school to retrieve a rogue, pencil-snapping robot Gyro had built to get back at a bully.

“I mean, why would he write his name on it? Sure, it wasn’t supposed to escape from the kid’s locker but-“

“Dr. Tebasaki,” Fenton sighed. “I’m sorry, but you know that’s not what I’m looking for.”

She shook her cup, trying to suck the last of her milkshake out of the corners. After a minute she spoke. “I know, Fenton. The thing is that I honestly can’t tell you.”

“Even if it could help reconnect you with Gyro?” He asked.

“That’s the thing. If I told you then it would only hurt him more.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it was telling it in the first place that got us here.” She pulled at her crest, then smoothed the feathers back down.

“Can you at least tell me that part? Can you tell me anything? Please, I just want to help, and if I don’t have anything to share with Della then I think she might unleash the fury of a thousand suns. I’ve seen it happen to Donald enough times to know that it’s not an exaggeration.”

Dol chuckled half heartedly. She blew out a long, heavy breath. Reaching for the burger bags she rummaged around until she found a few discarded fries and dunked them in ketchup.

“Gearloose and Tebasaki clearance.”

Fenton watched her pop the fried in her mouth as waited for her to continue.

“When we were kids, Gyro and I loved watching movies with spies and secret labs and swordfighters and stuff. One movie had all these clearance codes for the secret science stuff they were doing. Me and Gyro decided we would do the same thing, but for our secrets. If Gyro told me something he didn’t want anyone to know, then it was Gearloose level clearance and only he could give someone that clearance. My secrets were Tebasaki level. It wasn’t clever, but it was our system. We used it forever.”

Fenton frowned. “So, whatever happened between you was because you said something that he didn’t want you to?”

Dol pulled off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. “I didn’t just say something, Fenton. I said it...in the worst place possible.”

~/~/~

“There was a trial after the accident. I was the only one being tried because Akita was gone. There wasn’t enough evidence to find me guilty, but there wasn’t enough to prove I was innocent either. I didn’t like my chances with the jury either. Everyone was angry. Some had lost family in the attack. They...deserved to have someone suffer for what they lost.”

“Gyro, scapegoating isn’t a great profession.”

“They didn’t have any witnesses on what was going on inside the lab. Akita and I were the only ones there. Or at least, that’s how it was supposed to be.”

Della waited for him to be ready to continue. The sun was starting to set, casting warm orange light over the café’s outdoor seating. Gyro’s fingers dig into his upper arms.

“I couldn’t build Boyd by myself. The circuitry, the ai, and the weapons I could do just fine. But I couldn’t make him anatomically correct. I don't know about muscle structure, how the head should be proportionate, all that junk. He was supposed to be identical to a real life child. I only knew one person who could help me; who could keep it a secret.”

“And that’s Dol, right?”

He nodded. “She may not seem like it, but she can be professional when she needs to be. I’d trusted her with so much in the past, and Akita was getting more and more impatient with 2BO - Ack! - Boyd’s construction. I knew I would get in a lot of trouble if he ever found out I had outsourced.”

Della leaned forward on her crossed arms. She was completely engrossed in the story. “So what did you make her do?”

Gyro tapped his glasses against the table. “I told her what I was working on first. A defense drone with the appearance of a child. She...didn’t trust the idea. Not since Akita was directing it. But, she never told me no. Not for anything. I asked her to make a diagram of what the proportions should be like and I could build off her model. Dol had it done within the week.”

“Did Akita find the diagram?”

“I brought it to him as soon as I could and passed it off as my own work. Dol said I could. I had asked her permission. He approved it and I started working again, but I still couldn’t get it right. The weight was off and I couldn’t make everything fit inside the proportions she’d drawn up. So I went back to her and asked for another favor.”

“And that was?” Della asked wide-eyed.

“To sneak into the lab with me and look over my work.” He glared at the table, face screwed up in a scowl. “He wasn’t supposed to be there that night.”

~/~/~

Fenton and Dol crossed the bridge side-by-side back to the Bin. The sun was getting lower and lower. The ruddy light was the day’s last blaze of warmth before nightfall.

Dol’s glasses flashed as she smiled. “Tonight I’m going to Mr. McDuck’s mansion to be on his nephew’s little talk show.”

“Oh, Dewey?”

“I think. I’ve always been bad with names. It’s the blue one...I think.”

“Yep, that’s Dewey.”

“I’m bringing a mandrake.” She said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Don’t tell him, though. It’s a surprise.”

Fenton grinned. “I’m sure he’ll love it. And Webby. She likes that kind of stuff.”

“A girl after my own heart.”

Dol stopped and peered over the edge down at the frothing waves of Duckburg Bay. She turned away quickly and brought a hand to her beak. Fenton reached out to steady her and she flinched away.

“‘M fine.” She said thickly.

“Heights?” He asked.

“Water.” She gagged. “Sea water. Deep water.”

Fenton thought back to when she’d first tried to enter the lab. She’d frozen after seeing the windows and the depths of the bay beyond. Gyro had thought it was something to do with the lab itself, but it was the location! Fenton smiled at his revelation but quickly masked it. Now wasn’t the time.

“Have you always been hydrophobic?”

“No, I picked it up along the way.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, that was probably-“

“Stop apologizing. ‘S my own fault really. Shoulda shaken it by now.”

“I don’t think-”

“Hey, Fenton. How close would you say I look to Gyro?”

Fenton opened and closed his beak. Was this a trick question? Dol did look a bit like Gyro. Their faces were the same and so was the color of their feathers, but he wouldn’t go as far as to say they were identical. She smiled at him, eyes full of concern.

“Do I really make you that nervous?” She asked.

“I just don’t want to offend you with my answer!” He exclaimed. “I mean, some people would probably be offended if I said they looked like their twin brother. Not that you do. Only a little. But I mean looks are subjective. Wait, no, beauty is subjective. Not that you aren’t nice looking-“

“Fenton!” She put her hands on his shoulders. “Tell me. Why are you so nervous?”

“Ugh!” Fenton clasped his hands over his face. “Because I have nothing to show for today. You don’t want to tell me, and it’s fine that you don’t. That’s your privacy. But, at the same time I want to pry just a little. Because I do care about Gyro. And you seem like a nice person, so I care about you. And I know that Gyro would be happier if you two were able to make up. But at the same time I don’t know if you’d react like Gyro would to me finding out about your past.”

“How would Gyro react?”

Fenton waved his hand. “Scream. Threaten to fire me. He did fire me before when I was still his intern. Maybe two or three times?”

Dol stared at him. Her face crumbled, as if she were going to cry, and she turned back towards the edge. She stared at the sunset with her arms slack at her sides.

“Dolmadakia?” Fenton asked.

She didn’t turn to face him. Instead she kept her back to him as she started speaking again.

“Me and Gyro used to switch places. We both have curly hair, he straightens it now. He had more of it back then than he does now, and I had less. It was pretty easy to pretend to be each other with a little effort.”

She turned around and sat down leaning her back against the support rails. Pulling her phone from her pocket she motioned for Fenton to sit next to her. He did, and she held her phone up between them. When he saw what was on the screen he gasped.

Two young chickens were standing next to each other. Obviously they had been posed by someone else if their uncomfortable expressions were anything to go by. They both looked so much different than the Gyro he knew. Unruly mops of feathered hair on their heads, big smiles, bright eyes. One was wearing an unmistakable hat, a strap keeping it on over his unkempt feathers.

“Pretty close, right? Just mess with the hair and swap the clothes. As we got older we couldn’t really get away with it. My comb started growing in and my hair had to grow out to cover it. Neither of us wanted to deal with being referred to as a boy or girl when we weren’t.”

She pulled the phone back and started swiping through the other pictures.

“The last time I did it was in college. Gyro had a biology final. If he passed it, he wouldn’t have to take another bio class ever again. He came to me at three am, on his knees, begging me to switch with him. It was a dissection, the final. Gyro can’t stand gore. Not even gore just….have you ever seen him get a paper cut? It’s like he’s lost the whole finger.”

She held up the phone again. It was a graduation picture. Gyro was wearing the robe and hat, hair straightened but still unruly, tiny round glasses balanced on his beak. Dol was next to him, arms around his shoulders in a loose hug. One hand stuck up over his head to make bunny ears.

“That totally looks like a bowl cut, right?” She asked.

“I mean, maybe?” Fenton said.

“He was so sweet. He was the picture of pride, but he was sweet. Everybody loved him, and he wanted to help everyone. He’d fix their phones, fix the school equipment, etcetera. I was the evil twin, you know. Played too many pranks, said too many insults, started fights, stole some cadavers.”

“What?”

“Point is, it was always my job to protect him. I’m older. I was tougher. I’d take his place if he asked. If it would protect him from something. If it would help him. But,” she lowered the phone, “there was one time I couldn’t protect him. And then when I thought I was making it up to him...I made it all worse.”

~/~/~

“He never did it on purpose. At least, I used to think he didn’t. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Did what?” Della’s voice was low and carried a deadly edge.

They’d left the café. The sun had set and the last streaks of light were retreating towards the horizon. Gyro and Della sat on a bench just outside of the city park. If he had to finish this story, he was doing it before he returned to the lab.

Gyro pinched the skin between his eyes. His other hand clutches his glasses. He hadn’t put them back on since starting the story. “Hit me.” The words were forced through clenched teeth.

“He did what?!” Della exclaimed.

“When he was angry he would wave his hands around. Stand too close and you got hit. That’s just how it was. How he was.”

Della growled and clenched her fists. “I can’t believe he was doing that to you! Oh, I woulda laid him out before he even got close to you.”

“I don’t doubt it. He wasn’t really the athletic type. Against you he wouldn’t last a second.”

Della was quiet for a long moment. “Why didn’t you quit? You weren’t even getting paid.”

Gyro sighed and slapped his folded glasses against his palm. “He was the brightest scientist in Tokyolk. My whole family had moved from Duckburg so that I could attend the best college for robotics. If I hadn’t taken the opportunity to intern for him, it would have felt like I wasn’t taking full advantage of what my mothers, and what Dol, had given up for me. To move to a new country for my future...I had to make it count.”

“But, I’m sorry, I just can’t see you letting a guy like that walk all over you like that.”

“I was a different person. Basically still a teenager; young and impressionable. Besides, what right did I have to complain? I was working with the greatest-”

“Call him great one more time and I’ll scream. He’s nothing but trash and we will refer to him as such.”

Gyro quieted. He tilted back his head to stare up at the sky. Without his glasses he couldn’t see the stars. Della leaned forward and propped her elbows on her knees.

“So….when you took Dol to the lab he caught you?”

“No, thankfully. I heard him coming and told her to hide. I didn’t see where she went, but Akita found me working on Boyd alone with the blueprint. He was angry that I was there without telling him. Then he was angry that I still wasn’t done. At the time I was hoping he’d tire himself out, but he just kept going. Threatening to fire me and so on. He knocked everything off the table and when I went to pick it up I…..” Gyro winced, “got too close.”

Della stared angrily at the ground.

“After he finally left she came out and helped me pick everything up. Then I had to deal with her blowout. She wanted to hunt him down and, well, if Dol’s good at anything it’s coming up with cruel and unusual threats.”

“I would too, if I saw that.” Della huffed. She crossed her arms and thought for a minute. “What does that have to do with your trial, though?”

“I made Dol swear to never tell anyone what she saw. I made her promise, Della. I won’t get into it, but secrets were something we didn’t take lightly.” He closed his eyes. The dark wasn’t much different from the blurry sky he’d been watching. “Dol never told a secret before.”

Della’s eyes widened. “She spoke at your trial, didn’t she?”

“She did. She did, and she told them everything.”

Della sputtered. “But! Gyro! They were gonna put you in jail for something you didn’t do!”

“I know.” Heat returned to his voice. “I am well aware. But the point is that Dol broke her promise.”

“But you didn’t get arrested! Right? Tell me they didn’t arrest you.”

He sneered and crossed his arms. “They didn’t. I was found innocent. Akita didn’t have any cameras in the lab, so they couldn’t verify Dol’s story, but she was so….emotional on the stand that it swayed the jury. I went from the mad scientist that destroyed the city to the battered intern who couldn’t build an android without his sister’s help.” He sneered.

He yelped as he was slapped on the upper arm. Della glared at him.

“Are you kidding me?! Dol kept you from being unlawfully arrested and you’re upset about your pride? Gyro, seriously?”

“It ruined my reputation!” He cried. “Who was going to hire me, take me seriously, after that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Who would have hired you if you were found guilty of blowing up the city?”

Gyro threw up his arms in defeat. “You don’t get it.”

“No, I get it. You’d rather be known for a robot rampage than your sister standing up for you in court. Here I thought you fled the country for a good reason, but you were just embarrassed.”

“I was not! Other scientists started trying to hire me because of the media attention. Making big shows of ‘standing with me’ and offering their support. But I was done with interning.” Gyro put his glasses on and stared at Della as he spoke, eyes burning. “If I was going to be hired, it would be as a scientist. No more assistant work. That wasn’t going to happen if I stayed in Tokyolk.”

“Fine. I guess I can understand that.” Della grumbled. “But why didn’t you tell your family where you were moving to? Did you do one of those globe-trotting, self-discovery journeys before you got here?”

Gyro’s earlier strength suddenly vanished. He curled up on himself, rubbing at his upper arms and looking off into the darkness. Della studied his face, eyes narrowing.

“Gyro. What did you do?”

He turned his face away from her.

“I know that face, G. What did you do?”

Gyro turned the rest of his body away from her. As she watched, he shuddered. A hand came up to cup his beak, and when he spoke again his voice was barely more than a whisper.

“They didn’t know I was leaving.”

Della stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

“I left in the middle of the night. I went to the airport, cut my hair in the bathroom, and left on the first cheap flight I could find.”

“Did you….you left a note or something, right? I mean, come on. I left a note before I….”

Gyro looked at her over his shoulder. The light from the streetlamps caught on his glasses and hid his eyes, but regret was written all over his face. In the bushes crickets chirped and filled the silence. He didn’t need to answer. He couldn’t. It hung heavy in the air, clogged his throat, and filled his lungs like water.

Chapter Text

Gyro sighed as he crossed the threshold into his apartment. He felt drained in every aspect. Physical, emotional, mental. That was how most outings with Della went, but this had truly been an exception.

After locking the door behind him he made his way to the living room. The best way to end a day like this would be to pass out on the couch while watching some mind-numbing tv. After a full day of using his brain senseless cable entertainment was how he refueled. Unfortunately, the couch was occupied.

Boyd was sitting cross legged with a tablet propped up on his lap. He looked up at Gyro, a smile already perched on his beak. “Welcome home, Dr. Gearloose. How was your day?”

Gyro mustered a tired grin. “Fine. Della dragged me to a coffee shop and exhausted my social energy for the week.”

“Did you have fun though?”

“At first.” Gyro grimaced. “What are you watching?”

“Dewey Dew-night!” Boyd chirped. “Huey told me he has a really special guest coming on tonight. I was hoping we could watch it together.”

“Sure, why not.” He answered from the kitchen.

He grabbed a Pep can from the fridge before joining the real boy on the couch. Boyd repositioned himself on Gyro’s lap letting the scientist rest his chin atop his head. It was a routine that they had started surprisingly quickly after Boyd moved in.

At first Gyro had been hesitant to be too friendly with him. He didn’t want to seem desperate. Not to Boyd, but to Fenton and Huey and anyone else who might judge him. It was true that he had missed Boyd beyond compare, but, come on, he has an image to uphold.

On the other hand, Boyd had gone out of his way to stay close to Gyro. He would reach out to hold hands when they were close, hug him before bed, and generally act in much the same way he had during his first few days of life. It had annoyed Akita to no end, but Akita wasn’t here now, was he?

The opening jingle of Dewey’s late show shook him from his thoughts. The duckling’s exaggerated announcer voice startled rattling off the night’s segments, and Gyro started to lose focus. He pulled Boyd closer and leaned back against the couch cushions. If he fell asleep he didn’t want to risk putting all his weight on him, even if the android was sturdy enough to support it.

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. It could have been seconds, or an hour, but the unmistakable sound of Dol’s cackling laugh had him shooting awake. He looked around wildly, searching the dark room, before looking down at the screen. Boyd was engrossed in the show. Much like any child his age (the age he’d been built to be. Ten years old.) he tended to block out the rest of the world when watching cartoons or fake talk shows. His eyes were practically glued to the screen. The screen where Dol had just walked into frame.

She sauntered up to the armchair next to Dewey’s desk, making a big show of bowing and blowing kisses to what he assumed was an imaginary crowd. She was wearing her garish lab coat again, and her sticker-encrusted goggles hung around her neck. The applause recording ended abruptly as she swept her coat to the side and took a seat.

“How are you Dewey-ing tonight, Doctor?” Dewey asked.

Dol laughed, the back of her hand raised to her beak. “I’m alright! So sorry for the delay. My roommate got her third noise violation and I had to go to a floor meeting.”

“Well you’re here now, and you totally brought something exciting and potentially dangerous to show us, right?” Dewey grinned, eyes darting between the camera and his guest.

“Oh, I did. But we will have to go over some rules before I bring it out.”

Dewey groaned. “Welp. If we’re gonna have to go through boring stuff first, might as well get through the usual interview junk now.”

Dewey reached under the desk and pulled out a handful of notecards. He shuffled them, pulled a few out for inspection, and placed them back in the deck. Dol snickered.

“Um, this is standard, professional interview protocol. I don’t know why you’re laughing.”

“My apologizes, Mr. Duck.” Dol straightened up and made an exaggerated face of seriousness.

Dewey fought back a chuckle. Dol threw her head back and laughed. From off screen one of the other triplets yelled something about losing views. Gyro glanced at the view count. It wasn’t that high to begin with.

“Hey, no backseat hosting!” Dewey yelled back. “Producers, am I right? I might just have to reshuffle my cards after an interruption like that.”

Gyro rolled his eyes. There was no way he was going to get back to sleep with Dol’s voice coming out of the speakers. Or even worse, he might fall asleep and risk having her voice haunt his dreams. She was haunting him, wasn’t she? This was some divine punishment he was suffering through right now.

“Dr. Gearloose?”

Gyro jumped. He was so caught up in his angry thoughts he hadn’t noticed Boyd turning around to look at him. The definitely real boy’s eyes were concerned.

“Are you upset?”

“What, no. Not at all. I am one-hundred percent fine.”

“Dr. Gearloose, you’re lying. Your accelerated heart rate proves so.”

Gyro frowned. “I thought I asked you not to read my vitals.”

Boyd looked away guiltily. It made Gyro feel bad. “You did, but I worry about your health a lot. I didn’t mean to, but you got really tense.”

Gyro sighed and rubbed at his eyes. This day would never end.

“It’s her.” He pointed at the screen.

“So, Doctor Tebasaki. Can I call you doc?”

“You can call me Dol.”

“Alright, first name basis. Going for that cool, fun scientist vibe. I see, I see.”

“I am a cool, fun scientist.”

“Oh yeah? Tell me some cool, fun science stories then.”

Gyro reached over and turned down the volume on the tablet. “Me and Dr. Tebasaki have a history with each other.”

“What kind of history?”

“Well, she helped me build you, for one.”

“Really?” Boyd’s big eyes widened. “Why don’t I remember her then?”

“It was long before I had even built your processing system. You weren’t sentient yet. All she did was draw up a blueprint, anyways.”

Boyd looked back down at the screen. He studied Dol in her colorful coat. She was waving her arms as she recounted some adventure from her past.

“I completely believed that the frogs were still going to be alive when we dissected them. So that night, I snuck back to the school and broke into the science lab. I grabbed every frog I could and released them...right in my own backyard. The school did not have any trouble tracing the whole thing back to me.”

Gyro blinked. He remembered that. That was from sixth grade. Dol had been near hysterics after they got home from school. Some older kid had told her that the frogs the school had ordered would be alive when the students were set to cut them open. She had snuck back to the school that night, but she had dragged him along. He’d been the one to pick the lock on the window and let her use his back as a step stool so she could crawl inside. He also remembered how horrifying it had been to see a trash bag’s worth of frogs infesting their yard.

She had cut him out of the story, he realized. There was a cold, sharp feeling in his chest. He didn’t like what it meant; he didn’t want to think about what it meant. So, he did what he always did with feelings he didn’t like: covered it up with anger.

“She told a secret of mine that I asked her to never utter to anyone. So, I don’t trust her anymore. That’s all there is to it.”

Boyd looked up at him. He could practically feel those huge blue eyes scanning his face. He deepened his scowl, just to make sure his anger was clear.

Boyd answered with furrowed brows. “Dr. Gearloose, I don’t think that’s the whole truth.”

“It is! She’s a liar and I don’t like liars.”

“Then why are you lying?”

“I am not-! Stop checking my pulse, Boyd.”

Boyd giggled. He had been quick to realize that his creator had a soft spot for him. That he tended to let Boyd get away with little acts of rebellion with only exaggerated offense and a lot of hot air as punishment. And, just like the definitely real child that he was, he tended to exploit it. But not for his own gain.

“Dr. Gearloose, you programmed me with the most advanced facial reading software. No matter how much you make yourself look mad, I can tell if it’s not true.”

“I heard through the grapevine that you actually have a brother. Is that true?”

Gyro’s head snapped towards the screen. Dol cleared her throat and adjusted her glasses.

“I heard through the grapevine that I specifically said no family questions before we started this interview.” She replied.

“It’s super vague I promise.” Dewey whispered. He was just loud enough for the camera to hear.

Dol sighed. “Yes. I do have a brother.”

“Who’s also a scientist, right?”

“...yes.”

“And said brother scientist is in a different scientific field that may or may not have to do with robots. So, did you two ever, oh I don’t know, combine your talents to make a robot-organic being army or some such? Asking for a friend who’s got a bet going.”

Dol chuckled and waved her hand. “No, we never worked together. We just never really...got along when it came to our respective talents. My mom, oh boy. My mom is a doctor, and when I started practicing you should have heard the things she said-“

Boyd laid the tablet down on his lap. He looked up at Gyro with his full focus, blue eyes sparkling with light from the screen.

“Dr. Gearloose, you aren’t mad.”

“I am.” He answered flatly.

“No you’re not.” Boyd responded firmly. “You’re sad. Really sad.”

Gyro stared down at his hands. He had been angry. He had been so, so angry at Dol. Angry enough to justify leaving home without a goodbye. Angry enough to shave off most of his hair. Angry enough to never speak a word of his family or childhood to any living soul in Duckburg for the many years he’d called it home.

Funny thing about anger. It’s a lot like fire. It will burn, long and hot and searing, but only while it has fuel. He’d started with so much, that he didn’t even need to think about what had happened for it to flare up. The fire, the anger, was a constant heat in the back of his mind. But over time the fire became fickle. It wouldn’t burn everyone who came close. Della could stand beside him, aggravate him, and the fire wouldn’t even singe her hair. Overtime he started having to go out of his way to refuel it. He would dredge up every memory of the jury’s pitying faces, of his mothers crying in the stands, of Dol’s stubborn, traitorous face on the witness stand, and it would flare back to life.

But one fire can’t go on forever. Della took the Spear and was thought to be dead. For a while, it was as if every log he threw on that fire was sodden, damp. There was more smoke than flames. He had to turn to fresher stock to burn. Another evil creation, another cut to his funding. The fire lived from bad day to bad day, and all of the past was left a charred mess. He stopped thinking about it so often. He stopped thinking about it at all.

Then Boyd came back. The fire returned. It wasn’t burning on his memories of Tokyolk, however. It sustained itself on his fear for the present and the future. Fear of dragging Fenton to Tokyolk and baring what had happened there to him. Fear of repeating that same destruction when Akita overwrote Boyd in that alleyway. Fear of losing anyone else as Boyd overpowered GizmoDuck and went to deliver the final blow.

He thought he was done with fire. And then Dol came back. He needed it to keep her away. The fire, the anger, it was familiar. It was safe. If he kept it burning it would keep her away, and everything her presence threatened to bring. Memories of his past before the destruction of Tokyolk. Memories of a childhood he loved dearly. Days spent inventing to his heart’s content, with a spitfire sister who threatened to break the femurs of every schoolyard bully who looked his way. Two mothers that filled their home with warmth and love. Misadventures with stealing his mother’s blowtorch, and Dol learning how to treat third degree burns on the fly.

When he’d first seen her on that plane he had been angry. Seeing her again had sparked the fire anew. But that was all it had been. A spark. He had told - or at least implied to - Della just a few hours earlier that he was mad at Dol for breaking a promise. But he hadn’t been mad about that for years. Not really, anyways. She’d saved his career; saved him from a felony charge. It had been the right thing to do. He couldn’t expect her to keep a secret while under oath in a federal court.

But if he wasn’t angry with her then he would have to face the truth. That he had brought this all in himself. That in a single, glorious blaze of blinding anger he had thrown his own family away. And...why had he done that?

“Ground rules time, kids! Listen up and listen well, this could very well be life or death.”

Gyro and Boyd looked down at the tablet. Dol had put on the goggles. The lens was still cracked from the harpy encounter, leaving her left eye and glasses’ lens unprotected. Dewey also had on a pair of goggles, and he was peering intently into a flower pot that had appeared on his desk.

“Turn that up for a moment.” Gyro said.

Boyd obliged and held it up so they could see better.

“Mandrakes have the worst eyesight, but their hearing is very good. If the mandrake hears that I am not the only one near it, then it will scream so loud that your head could explode.”

“That’s. Amazing.” Dewey commented.

“So, when I pull this baby out I need complete silence from you,” she pointed at Dewey, “and the peanut gallery.” She pointed off screen. So there was an audience after all.

“Webby, girlfriend, you hear that?”

“Loud and clear!” Came the distant response.

“Good! I’m going to see if I can get him to sing for us. And, no questions until after I put him back under the dirt, got it?”

“You got it!”

“Then let’s do this!”

“Oh, Dolly, no.” Gyro groaned. None of those children could stay quiet, even if their lives literally depended on it.

Dol reached into the flower pot. A long, leafy stem protruded from the dirt. Carefully, she started pushing the dirt away from it. Some tumbled out and onto the desk.

“Hey-“ Dewey muttered.

Dol shushed him violently. “Head. Exploded. You. Dead.” She reiterated.

Dewey nodded. Gyro couldn’t help but chuckle. He remembered receiving several of those quick, punctuated threats when caught sneaking into her room.

She reached into the pot again and cleared more and more soil away. Then, she grasped the plant and started pulling it upwards. It rose slowly. The green stem extended. There was a brown lump at the end with two wrinkled indentations for eyes and a frowning, puckered mouth. A neckless body with four root-like limbs followed behind it.

“That is the ugliest little creature.” Gyro said, leaning closer.

“So this is a mandrake.” Dol settled the dirty, lumpy thing on her lap. She sat it up as if it were a small child, or a ventriloquist's dummy.

“There are reports that they can be found all over the world, but so far most have been discovered in Germany. That’s where I got this little guy. Legend says that if you find a mandrake, you can take it to a specific stone wall in the Alps, have it knock, and you’ll be granted access to the vault of the mountain king.”

Dewey opened his mouth.

“No, I did not find the vault. The Alps are pretty big, believe it or not, and I didn’t have time to go looking for one stone wall that may or may not exist. So I just own a mandrake now. This little guy will sing with a little prompting, but he only knows German. Please don’t laugh at my awful Deutsch.”

Dol bounced the mandrake on her knee. It twitched it’s fibrous limbs and whined.

“Hush, liebling.” She cleared her throat and started singing. “Alrauner, alrauner-“

The mandrake perked up. “Alrauner spring!” It cooed.

“Good, good! Oh, I mean, gut. Alrauner means mandrake, but the way. Little guy only wants to sing about himself.”

“Alrauner, alrauner.” The mandrake continued.

Gyro took the tablet from Boyd. He held it close, watching the little abomination sing and the scientist who held it. She looked ridiculous in her goggles and coat, but she was also smiling in that big, self-satisfied way he knew too well. Watching her - watching his sister - enjoying her job so thoroughly, he felt...proud. It sat warm and light in his chest. So different from the burning, suffocating flame that had lived there for so long.

“Do you miss her?” Boyd asked.

“Yeah.” He answered more quickly than he’d like, but it was true. And admitting it felt so, so liberating.

Boyd put a hand on his arm. “You should try talking to her. Maybe you can bring me too. Then I can meet her.”

“What’s going on in here?”

For a split second everyone on screen was frozen, staring to the right in horror. If Gyro had to guess, Donald had just entered the room. The mandrake shook and opened its mouth releasing an ear-splitting shriek. The speakers on the tablet couldn’t even convey it, instead delivering a burst of shrill static noise. Dol and Dewey clapped their hands over their ears. A crack split the feed before it all went black.

“Oh no! Do you think they’re okay?” Boyd asked.

Gyro shook his head. “I’m sure they will be. Dol never lets anyone get hurt while she’s around.”

“Like how?”

“What do you mean ‘like how?’”

“Like, maybe, tell me a story?” Boyd asked hopefully. “As an example.”

Boyd loved stories. He asked for them every night before bed. When Gyro was working on a project at home, Boyd would ask for one to fill the silence. When he asked he would use those big, pleading eyes that Gyro could never say no to. Gyro looked at the tablet, pleading for the show to return. The feed remained black. He sighed.

“Alright, alright. I’ll give you a story.”

Boyd practically vibrated where he sat.

“So,” Gyro tugged at his bangs. “When I was in fourth grade Dol - that’s Dr. Tebasaki - had a bully. She had these pencils with little puff balls on the ends and she loved them. This kid would steal them from her and break them. The teachers weren’t doing anything to stop him because….Dol was never a model student.

Except I was. Now, I never went out of my way to cause trouble. Don’t laugh, I was a different person back then! Anyway, I thought that I could do something to get back at him for her. I built a robot that’s sole job was to break pencils and stuffed it in his locker. It worked really well for about a week.”

Boyd tilted his head. “Did it break?”

“Nope. It escaped. It was running around the whole school breaking every pencil it could find. It was even breaking into backpacks and pencil pouches. The school made an announcement that they were going to investigate the matter and put a stop to it.”

“That’s good, right?”

“No, it wasn’t because I’d written my name on it. If they found the robot then they’d see it and I’d get in trouble.”

“Why did you write your name on it?”

“Look, I was in fourth grade. I wasn’t a genius yet. Well, I was a genius but I wasn’t good at all of it.”

“So What did you do to get it back?”

“First I had to tell Dol what I did, because my plan to get it back was to sneak into the school at night and hunt it down. I was not going to run around a dark, empty building on my own. Dol was...really proud of me. She wouldn’t shut up about how much she appreciated me doing it for her, blah blah blah.

Anyways, we both snuck into the school that night. I just realized that we broke into it a lot more than we should have. Er, never mind. We went through all the classrooms and picked all the locks on the lockers. We couldn’t find it anywhere. Dol and I split up. She went to check the cafeteria and I went to the teacher’s lounge.”

Gyro shuddered. “Then I heard the snapping. See, I hadn’t started making my inventions sentient at the time. I didn’t know how to do that yet. So with the pencil-snapper it was only filling out its objective. When it ran out of pencils it went looking for substitutes.”

He could remember the long shadows in the halls. How it felt like every feather on his body was standing on end. The quick, steady snapping noise drew him closer and closer to the door. He’d hesitated for so long before finally getting the courage to grab the doorknob and turn it.

“What was it breaking?” Boyd asked.

“It looked like it had started with the janitor’s tools. All the mops and brooms had been snapped in half, and those halves in half. When I found it in the teacher’s lounge it was breaking the legs on all the chairs. It probably would have done that to every chair in the school if we’d left it.”

“So then you grabbed it and deactivated it, right?”

Gyro cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “No. I uh….I….don’t laugh, okay?”

Boyd nodded.

“I got scared and ran. And then it chased me. I tripped in the hall and it cornered me. The thing snapped my flashlight in half, and then it went for my hands.”

“Your hands?” Boyd gasped.

“I guess it saw my fingers and thought they were closer to pencils than brooms or chair legs.”

“Why do you think that?”

He rubbed his hands together. The little thing was stronger than he’d thought, and it’d been only a little bigger than Lil Bulb. Oh, he’d been screaming his little head off in that hallway, trying to squeeze himself even farther into the corner than he already was. The little robot was getting closer.

“Dol heard me and came running. She jumped on it and grabbed it. But, when she did, well….”

The snap had been so loud in the quiet hallway. She’d been smiling before, holding up the little bot in triumph. Then her face had changed, freezing in a look of horror before the pain hit. He doubted it had hit as hard as the robot had hit the floor. Dol had wound back her arm and punted it like a football. When it had started to get back up she’d brought her foot down on it again and again and again.

“Oh my gosh.”

“Yeah. It kinda deserved it. You make Dolly mad and you suffer the consequences.”

“Was her hand okay?”

“Her finger was broken, but she was okay. Dol always makes it out okay. I’ve seen her take a heatray explosion to the face and shake it off. Though, she was not happy about what it did to her hair. In fact, after she stomped the robot to death she ran over to me to make sure I was okay. Me! While her finger was-“ he covered his beak and gagged- “ugh, I can’t even think about it.”

Boyd smiled brightly. “It sounds like she really cares about you, Dr. Gearloose.”

Gyro rested his cheek on an upturned palm. “She did. But now I don’t know if she feels the same.”

Boyd’s brows furrowed. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“Remember how I said that if you make her mad you suffer the consequences? Well, I did something back when I left Tokyolk. I know it must have hurt her. It probably hurt all of them.”

“All of who?”

“Dol and my moms. I forgot to mention it, didn’t I? Dol’s my sister.”

Boyd gasped. He clenched his hands and waved them excitedly. “Does that make her my aunt?”

Gyro stared at him for a minute. Boyd had asked him several weeks back if he could call him ‘dad.’ Gyro had refused. He didn’t feel ready for that yet; didn’t feel like he’d earned the title. But even without calling him dad, Boyd still saw him as one. It terrified and uplifted him. Gyro smiled. Dol would probably love to be an aunt.

“Yeah, it does.” He answered.

Before Boyd could respond the Dewey Dew-Night livestream returned. At first it was only noise, the audio slightly distorted. Then the screen lit up, revealing Dol’s face skewed at an angle. She adjusted the camera, and the picture straightened.

“Are you sure that piece of trash is gonna work?”

Gyro recognized that as the voice of Scrooge’s green nephew.

“Piece of trash? Show some respect! This is my field camera. I use it to record all of my daily science things.”

“You mean you vlog your experiments?”

That was the red one...maybe.

“It’s only a vlog if you show it to the public. I don’t always have time to write down everything I see or experience in the field. Especially if I’m, say, in an active volcano studying phoenixes and all my paper would combust. Instead I take ol’ reliable here.”

She patted the camera, and the feed fizzled with static.

“No offense, but maybe you should get a new one? It really looks like it’s seen better days.”

Now that, that was the pink kid. Dol moved out of the camera’s range and Gyro could see all of the kids standing around the desk, behind which Dewey was still seated. Webby was sitting in the armchair with the mandrake in her arms. A bundle of pastel colored cloth was shoved in its mouth. Gyro recognized it as the petticoats from Dol’s lab coat.

“I would, but this one is special. I can’t just get rid of it like that.” Dol answered.

“As long as it holds out for the rest of the show, it’s good enough for me.” Dewey answered.

The camera shifted. “I’ll play camera crew, just to make sure,” Dol’s voice said.

Boyd looked up at Gyro. “She seems really nice, Dr. Gearloose. I think she probably misses you too.”

Gyro sighed. “I want to believe that, Boyd, but I can’t.”

“Why not? When Huey, Dewey, and Louie get mad with each other, they always make up eventually.”

“Yes, but they are children. Dol and I are adults and Dol is….she’s ruthless. Remember how I made that pencil-snapping robot to get back at her bully?”

Boyd nodded.

“After she destroyed it she took all the little pieces and put them in his lunch one day. I don’t even know how she did that!”

“Why did she do that?”

“I asked her the same thing.” Gyro ran his hand through his bangs, then retracted it and frowned. His hair would get greasy if he kept that up. “She said that if he hadn’t ‘made’ me build the robot, then she never would have gotten her finger broken, and so she had to get back at him. She always had to have the last laugh.”

Boyd looked between his father and the screen. “And you don’t think she might have changed?”

“Maybe she has, but I can’t risk it. If I go off of the assumption that she’s safe to trust, and then I get hurt because she’s still angry, then I have no one to blame but myself. I need a way to make sure that she’s not hiding anything. That she actually does forgive me.”

He looked back at the tablet. Then, slowly, his face lit up. He smiled down at the screen as Dewey moved on to his other nightly segments.

“And I know just how to do it.”

~/~/~

“Everyone say: Premature hearing loss!”

The kids smiled and repeated the phrase. Fenton took their picture with Dol’s phone. He passed it back to her and she gave him a wide smile.

“Thank you so much! I love taking pictures of all the fun stuff I get to do on my jobs.”

“No problem.”

“You know, I probably would have become a photographer, if you got to cut stuff open I mean.”

Fenton didn’t know how to respond, so he stayed quiet while Dol turned back to the kids. Della nudged him playfully.

“She’s a riot, huh?”

Fenton hadn’t planned to come to the Manor. He’d been waving goodbye to Dol and Launchpad as they left the Bin when Della had sent him a text. She’d wanted to meet up and discuss what they had managed to pry from their respective conversations with the Gearloose twins. Fenton had just managed to chase down the limo before it reached the bridge.

He’d been nervous about how Della would react to his lack of evidence, but she’d been too focused on everything that she’d managed to pull out of Gyro. And, listening to what she’d learned, Fenton found that Dol had actually given him more than he’d thought.

They hadn’t gotten a chance to shift through it all before Donald had wandered into Dewey’s show set (totally not just a closet) and angered his surprise guest. Now that the show was over and the kids had Dol distracted, Fenton and Della stepped into the hall. Surely they could leave them alone without any more catastrophic accidents happening.

Della clapped her hands together. “So, classic tragic backstory, right? Two twins - guess I coulda just said twins - are close as can be. Then, one starts working for an evil scientist. The relationship gets strained as one can clearly see he’s evil and the other can’t. Big robot attack happens, sister has to reveal some sensitive stuff on the witness stand, and Gyro leaves forever. We probably could have guessed that eventually.”

Fenton shook his head. “I just can’t believe he left without saying goodbye.”

“Gyro can be impulsive when he’s mad. That’s probably why he fired you so many times. He’s one of those people that when they get angry they say the first awful thing they can think of before realizing the consequences of what they’ve said.”

Fenton looked at her.

“What? I’ve been going to therapy. I know all about this kinda junk.”

“Okay, well then, how do we fix this then? I mean, Dolmadakia seems to be sorry about what she did. I think that she really does want to reconnect with Gyro.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how Gyro feels about her.” Della said. “I mean, he says he’s still mad, but you can’t stay mad for that long without doing some critical thinking, right?”

Fenton rubbed at his chin. “Maybe he’s just been mad for so long that feels like he can’t back down?”

“Classic, stubborn Gearloose.” Della said with a smile. “Our best bet would probably be to talk with Gyro again and see if we can convince him to meet up with Dol. Maybe we can take them both out to lunch or something.”

“Not anywhere too expensive. I don’t get paid as much as most people think I do.”

“Ha! Don’t worry. I learned where Scrooge keeps his credit cards when I was like, twelve.”

“Uh, Fenton?”

They both looked over. Huey had stuck his head around the doorframe. His eyes were wide and panicked.

“What’s wrong?” Fenton asked.

“I need backup.” Huey whispered.

Fenton and Della followed him back on set. Dol was crouched on the floor holding Huey’s phone. She was staring at it with an expression that was unreadable, but when her eyes lifted to meet Fenton’s he shivered. The screen lighting her face from below gave her an unnerving look.

“Fenton,” she said standing up, “tell me what this is.”

She turned the phone to face him. It was a picture of Huey and Boyd. They were both wearing their Junior Woodchuck uniforms.

“Do you know what this is?” Her voice had an odd tremor.

“Well, that’s Boyd.” Fenton answered.

“Fenton.” She felt so much taller than before. “Do you know what Boyd is?”

“He’s- uh-“ Fenton stammered.

“He’s Gyro’s robot boy.” Della answered.

Dol looked between him and Della.

“Does he know about what happened in Tokyolk?” She asked.

“Yes, I do.” He said.

Dol’s face softened and she laughed. It held a small maniacal undertone. “Why didn’t you tell me? This is….this is amazing!”

Fenton and Della looked at eachother out of the corners of their eyes.

“Huh?” Fenton finally asked.

Dol ran a hand through her crest. “2BO was so, so important to Gyro. When he lost him he was….he was broken. I’d never seen him like that before.” She looked at the phone again and smiled. “If Gyro’s built another one, then I- I’m so happy for him. Maybe he’s finally forgiven himself.”

“Another one?” Huey asked.

“Because the original was destroyed. And it was evil, though that was totally an Akita thing. Gyro loved 2BO. He would never put all that work into him just to have him destroy the city.”

“It was Akita that made him evil.” Huey responded. “Gyro didn't tell you?”

“Huey-“ Fenton warned.

Huey and Boyd were close friends. Naturally the duckling would want to keep any information about Boyd straight, but he didn’t know that Dol was in the dark. She looked up slowly. The light from the phone caught her glasses, and hid her eyes.

“Tell me….what about Akita?”

Huey looked at Fenton. He could feel that he’d said too much. But Dol stepped closer. Maybe it was the way her face was lit from below, or the glowing lenses of her glasses, or the earlier comment she’d made about cutting things open echoing in his mind, but Fenton suddenly found himself feeling very fearful of Dolmadakia Tebasaki.

“Tell me what, Huey?” She asked.

“Um-“ he took a step back.

Della stepped forward. “Well, you see, Gyro took him and Fenton to Tokyolk.”

“Mom, no! Gyro said not to-“

“It was gonna come out eventually, Huey. Besides, it’s not like we can really lie our way out of this one.” She pointed at the phone. “That is the original Boyd. I don’t know how he got here, but Gyro took him back to Tokyolk to try and fix him, and they all found out that Akita was behind the whole thing.”

Dol’s head turned to fix Fenton with her glowing gaze. “You went too?”

He hung his head. “Yes.”

Dol was quiet for a moment. She looked back down at the phone. Her glasses cleared and they could see her eyes again. She looked crushed.

“How long ago was he there? In Tokyolk?”

“About a month or so. We were only there for uh,” Huey thought for a moment. “A day and a half?”

“Did he say anything about us? About trying to see us?”

“Inspector Tezuka told us to leave right after we got Boyd back under control.” Fenton approached her, and extended a hand. “I’m sorry, Dol. I think it just, maybe, slipped his mind?”

“Or, maybe he wasn’t ready to see you yet.” Della offered.

Dol flinched away from Fenton’s reach. Her face had hardened into a glare he recognized all too well. She tossed Huey his phone.

“Figures.” She spat. “Figures. Figures. Figures. Couldn’t deal with the fact that I was right for once. Couldn’t bother to say sorry.”

Fenton rugged at his tie. “I don’t think that’s-“

“Oh it has to be. Why else wouldn’t he come home to tell us?”

“We would have to ask him-“ Fenton started.

“Because he would love to talk about it, I’m sure. He’s been such a pleasant conversationalist and all.” Dol shook her head. She ran her hands through her hair and pulled vehemently at the feathers. “I need to go. I need to be alone for a while.”

“O-okay.” Fenton stammered as she pushed past him. “What about your things?”

“I’ll be back for them, don’t worry,” she said without even stopping. “I’m not the type to leave without a goodbye.”

Chapter Text

Gyro waited. He was good at waiting. Especially when he knew the payoff would be coming soon enough. His plan had actually started exceptionally well. First, he had needed to get information on what exactly Dol was doing for Scrooge. He had considered hacking into the Bin’s records, but then he remembered that everything was overlooked by that wacky librarian and he changed tactics. All it took was twenty dollars slipped into the hands of Scrooge’s youngest nephew and he had just what he was looking for. Almost.

“She rambled a bit and it was kinda hard to follow, but here’s what I got.” Louie had said during their rendezvous.

Gyro had met him in the stairwell. Meeting in the lab might entice Fenton or Manny to eavesdrop, and he’d had enough meddling in this affair. Louie pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and passed it to the scientist. Gyro studied the picture for a moment.

“And this is what, exactly?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Some kinda Jackalope-moose hybrid thing.” Louie replied. “Apparently she’s here to trim its antlers and file the teeth. There was also some stuff about...I don’t know, magic or some junk?”

“And when and where is she going to be doing that?”

“Monday at the zoo. Scrooge is funding this new exhibit for rare mythological animals. That’s the whole reason he has the thing. Personally I think it’s to help his reputation, but who knows.”

“The city does take a beating on his behalf quite a bit.”

“Yeah, and no thanks to you either.” Louie smirked.

He glared at the duckling. “Did you get a time for when she’d be leaving?”

“Didn’t need to. I’m invited to watch. Well, she invited my mom and we’re all coming along. It’ll be before noon is all I got.”

“Perfect.” Gyro said with a grin. He handed back the picture. “Now, take this back to her lab before she realizes it’s missing. If you knew Dol at all you wouldn’t have tried to take anything. She’ll flay you alive if she finds out you stole something from her.”

“Didn’t know if you wanted proof or not. I like to cover all my bases.” Louie looked between Gyro and the picture. Then he held out his hand, palm up. “Fifty bucks not to rat you out if I get caught.”

He was out seventy dollars, but he had a plan now. Before he knew about Dol’s appointment he’d been monitoring the security footage to figure out when she left her “lab” for lunch. But she started leaving less and less each day, until she only left at night, taking her bag and locking the door. It wasn’t like he couldn’t pick the lock, but what good was getting in if what he was after was gone. He knew she had it. He’d seen it in her little office the day he’d run up all those stairs.

The rest of the week passed by at a glacial pace. Several times he would take the elevator up to Dol’s floor hoping she would be gone so he could run in and execute his plan. But every time he did she was inside her room, muttering to herself or blasting music as she worked. When Gyro returned to the office Fenton would give him a look. So, he started stopping at the Pep machine after every failed visit, to try and convince him nothing was wrong or weird. By Friday the lab’s fridge was full of untouched cans and Gyro had spent all his pocket money for the month.

The weekend went by uneventfully. Dr. Intern and Della tried to invite him out to lunch and he declined. Instead he spent it at home with Boyd in a desperate attempt to alleviate his anxiety. He wasn’t sure which outcome would be worse: finding out that Dol was planning to betray him should he attempt to reconcile with her, or finding out that she wasn’t. If she was planning something then all he had to do was avoid her until she left. If she wasn’t then….well, then what? The obvious answer was that he welcome her back into his life. The question was could he really do that after everything that had happened?

Monday arrived like a soothing summer breeze. Despite his apprehension, Gyro found himself strangely high-spirited. It was the same feeling he had when it came time to test a new experiment. Either it would work, or it wouldn’t, but at least the suspense would be over.

He took the elevator down to the lab, but he wasn’t planning on staying long. He’d actually arrived late on purpose to make sure- yes, there he was. Fenton was sitting at his desk sketching blueprints for some new project. When he saw Gyro heading towards him he put aside his pencil and watched him nervously.

“Good morning, Doctor Gearloose.” Fenton greeted him. “Is everything alright? Not that I think anything is wrong with you, but I never get to the lab before you.”

Gyro stopped him before he could talk any further. “Can it. I need you to do me a favor.”

Fenton blinked. “Uh, sure. Okay!”

“Great. Follow me.” Gyro turned and headed back towards the elevator. He didn’t look back to see if he was being followed, the sounds of the swivel chair rolling and hurried footsteps were enough.

Inside the elevator Gyro straightened his shoulders. His stomach felt uneasy, but maybe it was because he hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast. Beside him Fenton shuffled his feet nervously.

“Why are we going to the floor Dr. Tebasaki is on?” He asked. Then he gasped. “Are you going to talk to her and you need me for moral support? If so, then let me just say that I am so proud of you for-”

“No. Dol is going to be leaving her office soon to go do her little job for Mr. McDuck. I need you to make sure she’s gone, and then tell me.”

“But….aren’t we going up there together?”

“I’ll be waiting around the corner. She’ll most likely be taking the elevator and I don’t want her to see me.”

Fenton looked at him questioningly. “What are you going to do when she’s gone?”

“It’s none of your business, but I’m going to look at her computer.”

“Oh!” A huge smile split Fenton’s beak. “Are you going to fix it for her? She was complaining about it when we went to lunch over the weekend. Which we did only as friends and Della was there! Of course, you probably know that she wouldn’t be interested in me since you knew how she would act around Della-“

Fenton babbled on and Gyro tuned him out. So, that’s why they had asked him out to lunch. Some vain effort to get him and Dol in the same place to, probably, talk and reconcile. A small part of him noted how incredibly thoughtful it was that they would try to help him like that. The rest of him was marveling over how insane they were to be willingly injecting themselves into his personal life.

Still….he wondered if Dol had known what they were trying to do. Had they told her? If so, then had she been upset when he hadn’t arrived? He’d been with Boyd over the weekend and, if he deemed it safe to try and speak with her, he was not looking forward to bringing him up in conversation. As long as she didn’t find out that he’d gone to Tokyolk behind her back, then he might just escape vicious bodily harm.

The elevator chimed as they reached the floor. Gyro followed Fenton around the corner to Dol’s office, then passed the door and ducked into the next hall. Flattening himself against the wall, he could just hear her voice as she ranted to herself in her room.

“Absolutely nothing is showing up on the scans. Nothing! I know that this thing is exuding energy, why can’t I trace it? If I can’t map out where to cut then I’ll-“

She stopped abruptly. Gyro listened. There was a long stretch of silence, then the sound of the door swinging open. Fenton and Dol screamed.

“Fenton! I nearly took your head off!”

“Yeah! Yeah I can see that!”

“What are you doing standing outside of my door like that? Were you- are you listening to me through the door?”

“What? No! Of course not! I just got here, actually. Took the elevator. More comfortable than the stairs you know. But, you probably knew that already.”

A pause.

“Sooo, what are you doing up here?”

“Well, uh, aren’t you going to be leaving soon for Mr. McDuck’s-“

“OH MY GOD THE THING! I completely forgot I was- and then- I gotta go!”

There was shuffling and banging and crashing. Then there was the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Gyro rolled his eyes. It must be that enormous bag she’d been lugging around when she first arrived.

“Are you going to come watch the fun?” She stopped to ask.

“I would have to ask Dr. Gearloose about that. I just came up to uuuh, see you off. And wish you good luck! I’m sure you can tell me all about it later.”

Dol sneered. “Right. Well, if my dear baby brother let’s you out of his clutches I’ll be with Della and the kids at the zoo. The exhibit’s closed off, but just give me a call and I’ll get you through.”

“Sure thing! Bye!”

The dragging grew quieter and quieter. Then he heard the elevator ding in the distance. After a few seconds Fenton poked his head around the corner. He was frowning.

“All clear, Dr. Gearloose.”

“Great.” Gyro pushed himself away from the wall and strode towards the open door. She hadn’t even remembered to close it? This was too easy.

Fenton followed him, still frowning. “She didn’t look like she was doing too well.”

Gyro hummed and looked around the little room. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it the first time, but he could tell that it was messier. Empty ramen cups were piled on one of the counters that wrapped around the walls. The trash was full of empty soda cans and the floor was covered in crumpled papers, notes scribbled and crossed out on both sides. Then, there on the little fold out table she was using as a desk, was what he was after.

“She looked like you when you haven’t slept in several days. And I don’t mean that because you look alike, I mean she just had that look about her. When she opened the door she swung at me with a bone saw! That’s not something you do when you’ve slept a full eight hours, right?”

Gyro didn’t bother responding. He sat in Dol’s swivel chair and opened the computer. It was an ancient, bulky thing. The keys were so worn that shiny circles marked their centers, and the letters had long since been worn away. Duct tape had been wrapped around one of the corners of the screen, where a spider web of cracks radiated towards the other edges. It hadn’t been turned off. If he had to guess, she’d slammed it closed when she heard someone at the door. But the screen was so dark that he could barely make out anything. He placed his fingers on the mousepad and recoiled as he was shocked.

Fenton stood next to him and grimaced. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to fix that. It might be easier to just get her a new one, is what I mean. Or build a new one. You can’t trust Waddle products and they’ve really dominated the market-“

“Can you shut up?” Gyro reached into his vest and withdrew his tablet. “Got an HDMI cord?”

“Oh, yeah!” Fenton placed one in Gyro’s waiting palm. “Are you going to back up her files?”

“Let’s have a look.” Was his response.

The cord sparked when it connected with the computer. Gyro hesitated before plugging the other end into his tablet. It would make looking at the contents much easier, but not if the whole thing short-circuited. He examined the ancient device while the tablet was loading.

“What is that, water damage? You’d think she threw the whole thing in the ocean.” He mused to himself.

“I don’t know,” Fenton tugged at his tie. He thought back to when he had crossed the bridge with Dol that night. “But, it could be likely.”

Gyro poked at the warped plastic shell. “This thing should be trashed. Or at least burned. I bet it’s a fire hazard.”

He looked back at the tablet and grinned. Displayed on his screen was Dol’s desktop, though now with adequate back lighting. It was covered in files, and clicking through a few of them he could see that they were all full of videos.

Fenton looked over his shoulder and whistled. “Wow. She must really like filming. I guess when you travel as much as she does you’d want to capture it somehow. So, are you going to store those in flash drive or a cloud or-”

Looking closer Gyro could see a lone video file on the desktop screen. It stood out against the sea of manila folder icons. He tapped it and the screen darkened before showing Dol’s office. It looked like it was being filmed from the computer’s point of view. The footage was grainy, and a cloud of colored pixels danced in lines down the bottom part of the screen.

Dol was pacing back and forth in front of the desk. One hand was tangled in her hair while the other cupped the underside of her beak. She was muttering to herself quietly, but it was steadily growing in volume. Finally, she stomped over to the desk and slammed her hands down. The footage granulated, then cleared.

“Welp,” she popped the p in her mouth with disgust, “I have nothing. I have no plan, no strategy, and today’s the day.”

She threw herself into her chair and leaned back, pushing her hands up her face and her glasses into her hairline.

“Absolutely nothing is showing up on the scans. Nothing!” She shot forward and fixed the screen with a look of disbelief. “I know that this thing is exuding energy, why can’t I trace it? If I can’t map out where to cut then I’ll-“

She stopped, back straightening. Slowly, her head turned to look over her shoulder and towards the door. Her hand darted to the side. He could hear it traveling over the desk off screen. When she held it back up, it was grasping the handle of a bone saw. She quickly reached forward and closed the computer, ending the recording.

So that’s what she’d been doing before they’d arrived. Gyro couldn’t help but smirk. When he’d seen Dol on the blue nephew’s little internet show, when she’d replaced his camera with her own, he’d remembered something very important.

Dol loved making videos. As kids he’d constantly had to search the room for their mother’s camera before agreeing to do anything with her. A lot of the time Dol would try to record any practical jokes she pulled on him, or she’d hide it in the garage to see what kind of robot he was building. When she’d started college she hadn’t had the patience to write out her scientific procedures in a journal, as was the norm. Instead she would film them all, then rewatch and transcribe them. He’d built her a camera for one of her birthdays.

Gyro had been betting on that idiosyncrasy still being part of who his sister was. Because if Dol still recorded everything, then she would have recorded exactly what her thoughts and feelings were on finding him in Duckburg after all these years. It was a bit like reading her diary. It would tell him everything he needed to know, and she would never have to speak a word.

Fenton watched Gyro scroll through more videos. When he saw the scientist click on another, a look of understanding flashed across his face.

“Dr. Gearloose! You can’t look through her personal files like this!”

“Took you this long, intern?” Gyro asked, turning up the volume.

“That’s doctor intern - I mean! - Doctor Crackshell-Cabrera to you! And, might I just add that I’m employed by Mr. McDuck and you technically can’t fire me before I continue.”

Gyro ignored him. The video he was watching was from the day before Dol had flown to Duckburg. He recognized the room behind her. It was her childhood room. The walls were bare and yellowed with age, but he could see the outlines of where posters used to hang. Her walls used to be covered in decorations, and his much the same.

“I’m going back to Duckburg.” She said while running a comb through her curls. “It’s been a long time since I’ve said that name. Years and years. The job posting was by McDuck Industries. I did a little research and it turns out the guy, McDuck, is the richest guy in the world. He could probably pay my college loan debt a billion times over and not even make a dent in his wallet.”

Gyro snorted.

Fenton frowned. “Are you even listening to me? Dr. Gearloose!”

“That being said-“ Dol set aside the comb and steepled her fingers. “I, being the idiot that I am, offered to work for free. Based on what I could gather on the guy, it seemed like the best way to make sure I was hired. I need to go to Duckburg.”

She shuffled through what sounded like loose papers on her desk. “I kept seeing pictures from when the city got attacked by the moon, and I found this.”

She held up a printed web article. Just above the headline was a picture from the midst of the battle with the moonlanders. There, at the edge of the picture, amongst the tangle of arms and capes and blasters, was one of his clones. Gyro slapped his forehead. Of course the clone spray would come back to bite him somehow.

“I mean, it doesn’t really look like him. But, it could be.”

“What do you mean?” He snapped at the screen, interrupting Fenton who was still trying to lecture him away from the tablet. “It’s literally an exact copy of me, Dol.”

Dol turned the paper to look at the picture. She looked tired. “He really loved his hair. I can’t imagine him getting rid of so much-“

Gyro squawked as the tablet was pulled from his hands. Fenton held it away, but minded the cord tethering it to the computer. He glared nervously at his boss.

“Dr. Gearloose, I can't stand by and let you breach Dolmadakia’s privacy like this.” He said firmly.

Gyro stood up. “Then leave. You don’t have to stay here if it bothers you so much. In fact, by being here aren’t you also breaching her privacy? Not a very hero thing to do, huh?”

Fenton hesitated but steeled himself. “Yes, but I’m trying to stop you. It’s different!”

“Sure, keep telling yourself that.”

“Dr. Gearloose, why can’t you accept that your sister doesn’t mean you any harm?”

“Because I have no proof!” Gyro threw up his hands. “I would love to believe that she can be trusted, but I know from past experience that she can’t. But I bet she told you all about it, didn’t she?”

“No she didn’t!” Fenton yelled, exasperated. “She never said a word about what happened at your trial.”

“Ah-Ha!” He pointed accusingly at Fenton. “How would you know it was the trial if Dol didn’t say anything?”

“Because Della told me, and you told her!”

Gyro blinked. He scowled. “I’m sure she brought it up at some point. Maybe when you all went out for lunch together. Trying to get blackmail material on me, intern?”

“No!” Fenton growled in frustration and his eyes screwed shut. “You know what she did mention? Gearloose clearance.”

Gyro stiffened.

“She said that she broke it one time, and that you never forgave her for it. Then I learned about the trial from Della and we pieced it together from there. Gyro, I- I’m sorry about what happened to you in your past, but you can’t let it ruin your present, or your future! Otherwise….” he fought with himself over his next words.

“Look, just give me the tablet back and leave if you can’t-“

“Otherwise you’re letting Akita win again!” Fenton blurted.

He watched as Gyro’s eyes widened in shock, then contorted in rage.

“What did you just say?”

Fenton gulped at how Gyro’s voice plummeted in pitch. “You’re- you’re still letting him control you and how you feel. He made you think that Boyd was just a machine- an evil machine! And now you’re thinking that Dol is bad because she made you look weak. But, you’re not weak, Dr. Gearloose. Everyone needs help sometimes. I need your help all the time, and you’ve needed mine before too. It’s not a bad thing.”

Gyro stared into Fenton’s eyes. They twitched back and forth, as if reading something Fenton couldn’t see. Whatever was happening, he hoped his words had made their way into the scientist’s head somehow. Gyro’s eyes narrowed and Fenton’s small feeling of hope flickered. He towered over the duck and reached for the tablet.

“Give it. I’ve come too far to stop now.”

Fenton hugged it to his chest. “No!”

Gyro grabbed the tablet with both hands and tried to wrench it from his grasp. Fenton fought back. He was stronger than Gyro physically, but Gyro was angrier. They scuffled for several moments. Neither noticed that their game of tug-o-war was pulling the computer closer and closer to the edge of the desk.

Fenton twisted his body to try and break Gyro’s grip. The cable connecting the two computers pulled taunt. Dol’s ancient laptop pitched over the ledge and smacked against the floor. The two scientists froze, staring down. After a moment, Fenton groaned and pushed the tablet into Gyro’s hands. He knelt down and picked it up, grimacing as pieces of the screen came loose and clattered against the floor.

“Oh no, oh no,” he repeated as he gingerly replaced it on the desk. “How are we going to fix this before she gets back? I doubt they make screens for this model anymore, and even if we made one by hand we could never-“

“Warning!” A robotic voice chirped. “This file has been corrupted. Would you like to continue?”

Fenton whirled around. Gyro was studying the screen of his tablet. The HDMI cable dangled from its port. The voice had come from him.

“Are you still looking through her things?” Fenton asked incredulously.

When Gyro looked up, his face had that same manically tinged expression of mirth that he’d seen on Dol. The same one she’d worn when learning that 2BO was alive. Gyro sat back in the chair and held the tablet up, propping his elbows on the desk. He was grinning smugly.

“Look at this. She thinks she’s being clever.”

He pointed to a video file sitting by itself in a folder. This one had no name, only labeled by a sequence of letters and numbers most likely given by the computer. On the side of the screen Fenton could see that the file holding the video had been inside several other folders. Possibly twenty, if he had to guess. Reading their names put his feathers on end.

PLEASE

DON’T

WATCH

THIS

NOT

AGAIN

YOU

PROMISED

PLEASE

STOP

IT’S

NOT

WORTH

IT

And so on.

“She used to save all her diary entries like this on the home computer.” Gyro explained. Fenton was shocked at how liberal he was being with this information. “She doesn’t know how encryption works, so she tries to hide it inside so many folders that you give up looking.”

Fenton looked at the file names again.

WHY

WOULD

YOU

DO

THIS

TO

YOURSELF

AGAIN

He shivered. “I don’t think we should watch it.”

“I have to. I’ve come too far. This has to be it. If she’s planning something, it has to be here.” He looked up at Fenton, eyes blazing. “Either leave or stay. Just don’t talk.”

Fenton looked at the door. He looked at Gyro. He sighed. If Gyro was really going to go through with this then he might as well be here for him. Who knew what was in this file, and if it was too much then, well, at least he would be here to support him.

“I’m staying.” He said.

Gyro nodded and pressed his finger against the video icon. The screen went black. The speakers started playing something. It sounded like talking, but it was extremely distorted. Then, in a burst of prismatic pixels, the screen cleared.

It was the side view of a desk. At said desk a bald eagle sat grimacing at a computer. The two recognized it as Dol’s computer. From the poor lighting and the rippling walls, it was safe to assume that he might be inside of a tent. He slapped his hand against the side of the screen.

“Work, you blasted device!” He snarled. “I should just throw you in the ocean and do the world a service. You, and your wretched owner. That whining, ridiculous, mockery of a scientist.”

“Why, Emile,” came Dol’s voice, dripping with sarcasm, “I’ve never heard you say such nice things about me.”

Emile stiffened. Quickly he schooled his face into a look of disdainful boredom before turning around. “Gearloose, I thought I told you to check the oxygen tanks.”

“You also told me you were going to check your emails. Yet here you are, in my private tent.”

Emile smiled haughtily. “Well, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this piece of….technological history sitting here. I just had to take a look.”

“Get out of my tent, Emile. I have to put on my dive suit.”

“Gladly.” The eagle stood and moved away from the desk.

He was short, and his feathers were graying. He had actually begun losing them at the top of his head. Huh. A literal bald eagle. Or a balding eagle at the least.

He moved off screen towards the left. Dol appeared from that same direction. She sat down on the vacated seat and started feverishly tapping at the keyboard. From behind her, a hand approached her head.

“Touch it and die.” She spat without turning around.

“Pardon me?” The hand quickly retracted. “What are you going on about?”

“I’ll put up with a lot, Emile, but the hair is off limits.” She said without turning around.

“How do you know I was even near you?”

“I can see your reflection on the screen. Why do you think I keep it so dark?”

Internally, Gyro reflected on how clever that was. Maybe he could invent a screen that told you if you were being watched.

There was a disgruntled “humph” and the shadows in the room darkened. If he had to guess, Gyro would say that Emile had closed the tent flap behind him. Dol stopped typing and rested her chin against an upturned palm. She turned her head and looked at the camera.

The screen was overtaken by another burst of pixels and the speakers played a strange squealing noise. The screen cleared first, showing a glitching feed of Dol ranting, arms waving. The footage then reversed, then stopped. It started playing again with audio.

“ - sneaking into my things since we got here.” Dol was wearing a pink and black diving suit. She glared at the camera. “We have only been here for two days. I keep catching him in here! Ugh, I should have known better. This guy wanted to work with me so badly. I was getting emails for months.”

She clasped her hands together and blinked doe-eyed at the camera. “Oh, please work with me, Dr. Gearloose. I’m such a big fan, Dr. Gearloose. Won’t you collaborate with me on my next invention, Dr. Gearloose.”

Her face twisted up in disgust. “That shoulda been my first clue. I said Tebasaki, he said Gearloose. I meet up with him for this little expedition, and guess who he was expecting? I’m sure you’ll never guess.”

“Do you know him?” Fenton asked.

“No,” Gyro frowned.

He’d never heard of this Emile before. Or, if he had, it hadn’t been important enough to commit to memory. If he ever did meet the man, he would be sure to remember this.

“He thought I was him at first.” She spat. “Sure, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that. But, he keeps trying to see if I’m wearing a wig and I just-!” She paused, head tilting back. She had moved the camera to where the computer was, giving it a view of the exit behind her. Under the closed tent flap, a pair of feet could be seen.

The recording sped up without warning. Dol went from the desk to the opening. Emile appeared. The shadows in the room were changing so fast it was nearly impossible to see what was happening. Then the screen froze, but the audio returned.

“You’re a creep!”

“I’m not a creep! I’m just letting you know that you’re unwanted. You are not the scientist I was hoping for.”

“I. Know.”

“I wanted a genius. Instead I’m stuck with you.”

“Keep pushing me, Emile, I am begging you. I’ll-“

“You’ll not get paid is what you’ll do. And I know that’s why you’re here. You have to be desperate for cash to do what you do.”

The screen jittered. A loop of Dol leaning back in her seat as the eagle leaned closer. Her back was to the camera. He sneered at her.

“You’re not a biologist. You’re self imposed cannon fodder. You do the dirty work for real scientists. A hired liability. How pathetic.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had so many contenders for the ‘swim down and plant my shark cams in shark-infested waters’ job. Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead.”

A long, tense pause.

“We both know you won’t.”

“....get out of my tent.”

The screen was glitching again. In the lull, Gyro noticed that he was holding the tablet much tighter than necessary. His knuckles were white. He snuck a glance at Fenton. He was bracing his hands on the desk and staring at the screen with deep concentration.

“He’s horrible.” Fenton murmured in an astonished voice.

Gyro nodded. “Despicable.” He swallowed.

The feed returned. It looked like the camera had been mounted on either Dol’s head or chest. The camera pointed down at her feet, showing her hands as they turned over a radio.

“How will I be using this underwater?”

The camera panned up and over. Emile was hefting an oxygen tank into his arms.

“It’s just standard diving protocol to carry one.”

“But I already have the earbuds.”

“Don’t question my methods, Gearloose.” He snapped.

“Tebasaki.” Dol answered as she strapped the radio to her hip.

“Whatever.” Emile groaned. “You remember what your job is as well as you remember that?”

“It’s my name.” Dol sighed. “Go down, mount your special little cameras, and get back.”

“That’s right. And, do take your time. I’ve made sure you have plenty of oxygen for….we’ll say-“

A brief fizzle of static and Dol was wading into the water. She turned around to face the shore, where Emile stood watching.

“This would have been quicker with a boat.”

“Then you should have brought one.” He shouted back.

Another burst of static. Now the recording was completely underwater. Dol’s arms bobbed in and out of frame as she swam. She was close to the bottom of whatever body of water she was submerged in. A rock covered in various seaweed and barnacles loomed out of the blue. Dol swam closer. Her hand rose up, holding a strange, small device.

“That’s a camera?” Fenton asked.

Gyro leaned forward and squinted. “No, that’s not a camera. I feel like I’ve seen that before.”

She placed the device on the rock face, and it started blinking. Gyro’s eyes widened.

“It’s a pulsar.” He said.

“A what?”

“It makes noises. Sound waves.”

“But, doesn’t sound attract-!”

They jumped as the camera turned to the side, capturing the rushing mouth of a shark. It’s jaw’s parted. Dol’s hands flew up. The screen went black. What audio they got was heavily distorted. A mix of turbulent water and high pitched noise. Gyro found himself taking fast and shallow breaths.

Then, slowly, the screen lit up again. Fenton gasped. It looked like a cave. The walls were covered in pink, glowing crystals. They crusted the walls like pillars of rock candy, curving upward in soft semi circles before meeting in a thick, bulky line along the ceiling.

Fenton inhaled sharply. “I know that.”

“What do you mean you know this?”

“The crystal sharks of crystal cove. It was one of her published journals. That’s-“ He pointed at the screen, dragging his finger along one of the curved pillars and up towards the jagged beam they suspended. “Those are ribs. That’s the spine. It’s the skeleton of the shark.”

Gyro stared. “When she first got here.”

“Huh?”

“She said she was trapped inside one.”

“For three days.” Fenton looked at Gyro, face aghast. “Dr. Gearloose, this isn’t some revenge plan. This is-“

The sound of coughing. Their eyes snapped back to the screen. Dol was sprawled on the floor. Unlike the walls, it was made of twitching, pink meat. Gyro fought the urge to gag.

She pulled herself towards the wall dragging her legs behind her. The pixels on the screen cling to her movements, distorting the image. Gyro shook the tablet, apprehension getting the better of him.

“Emile!”

The screen cleared, for the most part. A stripe of unstable color flickered against the bottom of the screen. Dol had turned over on her back and propped herself against the wall, nestled between the crystal encrusted ribs. In one hand she held the radio. The other clutched at her leg.

“Emile!” She called again. Her voice was ragged.

The radio crackled. “Why, Dolmadakia, whatever has happened?” Emile asked in feint surprise. “You seem to be heading way off course.”

Dol grit her teeth and threw her head back against the wall. “Shark….shark….bit me. Trapped inside….”

“Trapped inside? Well, that’s a surprise. Or, rather, you being alive is.”

She panted and glared at the radio. “You were supposed to warn me….if they got close….”

“Did I not?” Emile asked. “I must have neglected to check the radar. My mistake.”

She bowed her head. Slowly, she peeled her hand away from her leg. Even in the poor quality of the recording, Gyro could see the red coating her fingers.

“You need to call for help. I need help.”

Emile scoffed. “Really? Come now, I thought you had surgical training. Surely you can patch yourself up.”

“Stop it. Be serious.”

“I am. I’m very serious. You aren’t getting any help from me, or anyone else. And you won’t be going anywhere either. Not unless you give me some information.”

Dol shifted and coughed on a scream. Her shaking was violent, giving her a blurry silhouette on the feed. “What?”

“Tell me where the real Dr. Gearloose is.”

Gyro stiffened.

She thrashed her head to the side, face screwed up in pain. “Why?”

“Are you sure you have the time to be asking for details?”

“A creep like you….looking for my brother….why would I let you….”

“Careful, Dolmadakia, sounds like the blood loss is getting to you.”

Dol hurled the radio away. She grasped her leg with both hands, threw her head back, and wailed.

The screen distorted again. Gyro jumped as a hand landed on his shoulder. Fenton was staring at him with concern. He realized that he was panting, a tight feeling in his chest.

“Maybe you should stop the-“

“No!” He snapped. “We know she gets out alright. We just need to see how.”

Fenton retracted his hand and buried his fingers in the cloth of his tie. He made a small noise of worry as the recording started up again.

The camera was moving. It planned over the crystal covered ribs slowly, showing the quivering muscle that stretched between each one. Gyro squirmed.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Hearing Dol’s voice Gyro released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The camera spun around and there she was. Her feathers were dripping with water. Her crest had deflated, and under their own sodden weight the feathers had parted. Gyro gasped and pulled the tablet away, turning so his body obstructed Fenton’s line of sight.

“Wha-!”

“You can’t look!”

“What is it?”

“Shut up. You just can’t.”

Dol’s comb was exposed. The V shaped, double pronged comb protruded from her dripping feathers. It was a sensitive topic for her. The cherry red ridges were larger than that of a hen. It was easier to pass as a hen with an elongated tail, than one with a towering comb and elongated tail.

“I can’t believe this,” he remembered her sobbing into her comforter while he rubbed her back. “Why is it so ugly?”

“It’s not, Dolly. I think it looks cool.” He’d answered.

“I have horns, Gyro! Devil horns! Everyone always said I was evil, and now it’s true.”

“Dolly….”

She’d raised her head, eyes dripping with tears. “You can’t tell me it’s not true. The proof is literally on my head!”

Then he’d wrapped his arms around her; held her close while she sobbed. She’d tangled her fingers in the back of his shirt. She’d held onto him as if he would disappear.

“You aren’t evil, Dol, you’re just-“

“Sharks are really misunderstood. They aren’t violent by nature, if you can believe that. And this guy, or gal, it’s not their fault.”

Something nudged Gyro’s shoulder. When had he closed his eyes? He opened them and the world was white. He blinked. Squinting he could make out Fenton offering him something. Wait, ugh, his glasses were fogged up. Why?

Fenton pressed a tissue into his hand. He realized that his face was wet. Tear tracks marred his cheeks. Why on earth was he crying? Dol was still alive. She would escape this just fine, like she did with every scrape she got caught in. This was nothing but senseless drama.

“....theory that they might be parasitic. They’ve grown over all of the bones in here. The internal organs are gone too. There’s no more stomach, no brain, no nothing. Which I thought was really cool. Then I remembered that I’d been bitten and I uh-“

The camera moved. Fenton and Gyro squinted at the screen, faces dappled with red light. Gyro dropped the tablet and it clattered onto the table. He doubled over in his seat and retched. Fenton took a deep breath and gripped at his upper arms.

“Oooh dios mio.” He gasped.

“I panicked and tried to remove the teeth by hand. Without medical equipment. Or numbing agents.”

The camera, blessedly, turned back to Dol’s face. She was trying vainly to pull her drenched head feathers back over her comb.

“I don’t know how many are left in there. I can feel them when I move. But, at least there are three less.”

She held up a wedge-shaped tooth. It glimmered with pink light. Solid crystal, Gyro realized.

“I passed out for a while. Don’t know how long. And, can I just say, salt water really stings on an open wound.” Her humor felt wrong spoken in such a hollow tone of voice.

“Oh, and, here’s a fun fact! If I move around too much then the shark fills with water.” She laughed breathlessly. “I think it’s how it digests without a stomach. Drown what’s inside and let it rot away. That’s what it smells like in here, at least.” She pulled her hands out of her hair and slouched her shoulders. “As long as I don’t move too much, I should be okay.”

The footage started reversing again. It looped and jumped. When it steadied there was no audio. Dol was balancing on her good leg and beating at the wall with her fists. Her mouth opened and closed in silent screams and - he felt safe in assuming - threats. Water started pouring in, shooting into frame from behind the camera. Dol slipped and fell.

The screen became a dancing array of multicolored squares. A voice wormed its way through the speakers, pitch distorted and shaky.

“Don’t die on me. You can’t die on me here. Please, not here. You’re the last-”

The screen went black. There was no sound. Fenton’s hand was on Gyro’s shoulder again. He was shaking. They stared at the tablet, waiting. After a long moment, Fenton spoke.

“Is that it?” He asked.

“It can’t be.” Gyro hissed through gritted teeth. “That can’t be it. She got out somehow. It has to be here.”

Gyro tapped the screen and the progress bar appeared. He dragged it forwards, speeding through more blank feed. It kept going. His frown deepened. Where was it?

The screen shifted, an image wriggling into focus. He stopped fast forwarding and let it play. Water was running down the lens giving it all a hazy, unfocused filter. This angle was different than before. Had she moved the camera, or had it been carried by the water? It was closer to her now. Her back was facing it, and she shivered violently.

Next to the camera came a burst of static and radio crackling. Dol jumped and hissed. Emile’s voice echoed in the small space. Gyro glared.

“Oh Dolmadakia, are you still alive in there?”

Dol looked over her shoulder. She looked away and curled up tighter. Emile continued.

“Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. All that matters is that you’re down there and I’m up here. Both literally, and in status.”

“Shut up.” Gyro muttered through gritted teeth.

“It’s been so much quieter since you left. I took a day off and wandered around town. Had a nice lunch at a quaint little deli. Took a look at all of the lovely videos on my new computer.”

Dol stopped shaking. She turned so that her back rested against the wall, her movements stiff and jerking. She stared just off to the side of the camera with an unreadable expression. Unreadable, to everyone except Gyro. He knew that face.

“You have such a lovely little family. I did find your little home videos incredibly charming. Your brother was so talented even back then. Must have been hard to live up to such a superior mind.”

“Keep talking,” Gyro warned, “And you will get exactly what you deserve.”

“Is that why you do this? A sense of purpose? Because, I know that feeling, believe me. It wasn’t very often but there were times when someone would come along who could compete with me. Even more rarely could someone surpass me. But, if you can believe it, sometimes it would happen. And that feeling is so crushing. So, so destructive to your image. Hmm, maybe I can see why you do this. Nothing left to try and salvage, eh?”

Dol scrambled away from the wall and lunged for the radio. The camera was nudged and fell back. It gave a perfect view of Dol’s face as she cradled the radio in her shaking hands and fixed it with the worst glare either Gyro or Fenton had ever seen.

“What do you want, Emile?!” She screamed. “What do you want?”

“I want Gyro Gearloose. The greatest mind of the modern era. I want his technology, and I want it for myself.”

Gyro stared at the screen in shock and confusion.

Dol looked around. Grimaced. “Need I remind you,” She said slowly, “that my brother’s defense drone tried to level Tokyolk? If you were going to try and copy his technology wouldn’t you want something that actually worked?”

Gyro’s mouth fell open. It felt like he had been punched in the stomach. Wait, no, getting punched would hurt much less. She’d been so insistent that he couldn’t be at fault for what happened. To hear her say something like that it was….

Her eyes landed on the camera. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“She’s just trying to throw him off. She doesn’t mean it.” Fenton urged.

And Gyro knew that. As much as he wanted to - once again - deny it, he couldn’t. Because….he didn’t want to anymore. She was lying for him just like how she’d told the truth for him.

“She’s trying to protect you.“ Fenton said.

“Like she always does.”

“Oh, you really are stupid aren’t you?” Emile laughed. “Of course I know all about it. That’s the entire reason I know about him! The ability to make such a realistic robot, coupled with an independent ai with the drive to do harm, it’s incredible! I want it for myself.”

Dol stared at the radio in shock. “You want….an evil robot?”

“Yes!” He cried. “It would make everything so much easier. I would rise to the top of my field without opposition with muscle, or rather metal, like that on my side. And once I have it even your brother won’t be a match for me. I mean, if he had to depend on you so much then he must be all brains and no spine.”

“My brother,” Dol rose to her feet. She grit her teeth and swayed where she stood. “Will always be your superior. When he creates he does it out of a desire to help people. He puts love and care into every single thing he makes. Because he has a heart and you have nothing but an empty, ugly, little ball of hate where yours should be.”

She panted, holding the radio triumphantly. Gyro found himself grinning. He’d missed how satisfying it was to see her tear into a deserving bully.

The radio crackled. “Oh, poor, dear Dolly.”

Dol’s back snapped straight and Gyro hissed at the screen. Only family could call her Dolly. Only family. Gyro had never wanted to cause bodily harm so much in all his life.

“What does it matter if I have a heart? I don’t want a heart. I want to be the greatest scientist in all the world. Besides, the wicked have so much more fun. For example, I’ve been thinking about what to tell your family about your untimely death. Or rather, how I can use it to my advantage.”

Gyro stood up. Fenton watched him nervously.

“Do you think your brother will come out of hiding for a funeral? I’m sure if I can wrangle enough media coverage it’ll reach him one way or another. Maybe I’ll go with a search party instead. See if he can invent a stupidity-seeking device to find you down there. If he does I could modify it into something useful and sell it as my own along with all his other inventions. Oh, there’s an idea. Maybe I can tell him you’re alive and use you as leverage, assuming he’s as idiotic as you.”

Dol was shaking again. Her forehead pressed against the radio and it hid her face. She threw her head back and laughed. It bounced off the walls. It wasn’t happy or sad, it was just laughing. Incecent, maniacal cackling. When she looked back down she was grinning and her eyes were wide.

“He wouldn’t bother with me. He wouldn’t care at all. I’m the reason you can’t find him in the first place.”

“Got sick of you, did he?”

“Absolutely fed up.” She clipped the radio to her hip. “Just like I am with hearing your voice.”

Turning around she looked the ribs up and down. She wrapped her hands around the pillar before pulling back with a hiss. The crystals were sharp. Something dripped from her hand.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’ll be the last one you hear. Especially since you’re basically useless to me.”

Another short burst of cackling. “Emile, I’ve worked for many terrible people in my time as a, oh what did you call it, a hired liability? Can you believe that you aren’t the worst? You aren’t the first one to try and off me either.”

“I don’t find that hard to believe at all. You’re infuriating.”

Dol scooped up the camera. The screen blurred as she swiped her thumb over the lens, trying to wipe away the water.

“Hold on, buddy. Just one more trip.”

The camera turned and shifted. She’d reattached it to her suit.

“What are you going on about?” Emile said.

“Oh, blathering blatherskite will you just shut up?” She snapped. “I’ll be up there soon.”

“What?” Emile squawked. “Oh, very funny. You’re going to haunt me, is what you’re saying?”

“No. I’m heading up there. You really messed up when you hired me. Because I’m not a biologist-“ her hands wrapped around a rib, fingers digging into the crystals. “I’m a mad scientist. And you don’t. Mess. With. A. Mad. Scientist!”

The camera jumped up and down with her last few words. Then, there was a loud crack. Dol held the rib in both hands. Everything shifted and she hit the ground with a wet thud. She was back up almost immediately. Water was pouring in and splashing up against the walls. Dol raised the rib overhead, the point leveled at the tender skin exposed by its removal. It stabbed down. The screen went black again.

“Poor thing,” Fenton said. “The shark, I mean. Not that it wasn’t necessary.”

Gyro sat back down. He stared at the black screen like his life depended on it. How deep was she? How far would she have to swim, and how far could she with a bad leg? He shook his head. She would be fine. She was fine and alive right at this moment.

The screen flashed to life. Gyro jumped as he was met with the face of his mother. Nikola Gearloose squinted into the camera lens. She turned it over, giving them a view of her worktable littered with tools. It turned back around to her beaming face.

“Hana! Hana!” The screen became a blur as she stood and started traveling through the house.

“I think I fixed Dolly’s camera!”

The movement stopped. Hana Tebasaki stood in her tiny kitchen fiddling with the oven. She turned around, eyebrow raised.

“Are you sure? This is the fifth time you’ve come to say it’s fixed.”

“It’s gotta be. The red light is on. That means it’s on, right?”

The view blurred again. It refocused on his mother’s faces side by side, looking down into the camera.

“I did my best on it, but you know Gyro was always better with machines. Especially when he built them.”

Hearing his name in his mother’s voice made his chest ache. He flinched.

“Yes, but who taught him the basics, my love?” Hana leaned over to press a kiss to her wife’s cheek.

Nikola giggled, but her face fell shortly afterwards. “I miss him.”

“As do I.” Hana responded after a brief pause.

“I wish we knew how he was doing. If he’s happy.”

“If he’s finally eating full meals.”

Nikola snorted. “Yeah, yeah that too.”

She set the camera down on its side. The worn coffee table became a wall. A cup obscured most of the view. The armrest of the living room couch was just visible in the bottom corner.

“I’m worried about Dolly. She’s taking all these high-risk jobs. It’s not good for her.”

“She’s doing it to travel.” Hana responded. “She’s looking for him the only way she knows how.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s still out there. I know he is. I mean, if he was...was….”

“Dead?”

“We would feel something, wouldn’t we? I know Dolly would. Those two were thick as thieves, they must have some kind of twin sense. Like in the movies.”

There was a loud thud. Muffled yelling. His mother’s exclaimed and ran for the stairs-

There was no burst of pixels or blackening of the screen to signal the next transition. It just happened. Dol was in her room. It was the same scene as the recording from the day she’d explained her taking the job in Duckburg. She stared at the screen. Her hands, bandaged, were steepled infront of her face and her glasses were gone.

Finally, she moved. She lowered her hands, crossing her arms and leaning forward. Her eyes were red rimmed and dark bags lined them. She took an unsteady breath.

“So. Life update. Just- just to close this whole- this whole,” she waved her hand, “thing.” She sounded so tired.

“It’s been about, maybe, a week since I was cleared from the hospital and finally came home. I’ve been in bed for basically all of it. My leg is, um, not doing great.”

She shifted and Gyro braved himself for another traumatic shot of said injury. Instead Dol settled and rubbed a hand over her face.

“I was right about the whole parasite thing. The doctors got the teeth out and removed as much of the onset crystallization as they could, which was more than I expected of them. But, it doesn’t look good. They- they said I should consider amputation.”

She ran her hands through her hair. “I know a guy who owes me a favor. He’s in cell regeneration research. Whatever it’s called. There’s a procedure in beta that he thinks could fix it. I’m gonna do it. What do I have to lose, right? They already want to take it off.”

Abruptly her face contorted. She pressed her palms against her eyes and leaned against the desk. Her shoulders were shaking, but no sound escaped her. Gyro held the tablet closer as Dol started whispering to herself.

“It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“Dolly….” he said.

“I was- I was such a bad sister.” A tremor seized her voice. “I should have tried harder. I should have known I would screw it up eventually.”

She slammed her hands on the desk making Gyro and Fenton jump. She glared down at them, tears gushing from her eyes.

“I was right. Everyone was right. I am the evil twin, the mad scientist, the screw up. I- I drove him away. I betrayed him I- I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.”

Her hands plunged back into her crest, pulling so hard that Gyro could hear feathers coming loose. “I- I miss my brother. Wherever he is I….I hope he’s okay. He will be, now that he’s far, far away from me.”

She buried her face in her arms. Behind her the door creaked open. There was a soft noise, or maybe it was a voice. Dol shot up and gasped. She reached out and grabbed the computer screen, slamming it shut.

“What are you doing here? You can’t be-“

The video ended. Gyro’s tablet once again showed the video icon in its folder, buried under dozens of others. The names now made sense. It wasn’t a warning to him, or some strange attempt at throwing off snoopers. It was Dol begging herself not to subject herself to her own suffering.

He remembered how, after the events of Tokyolk, he’d done the same. Rewatching hours of news footage of 2BO attacking the city, telling himself it was to find a meaning for it all. He was only searching for some scene, some hidden capture of events that would bring him closure. And she’d been there, telling him to stop and wrestling the remote from his hands.

He set the tablet down. His fingers were stiff and his hands were sore from how tense he’d been. Taking off his glasses he ran a hand down his face. Fenton’s hand was on his back and he didn’t have the energy to shake him off.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“No,” Gyro croaked. “I messed it all up again.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Yes I have!” It meant to come out so much angrier; so much louder. But it came out small and pathetic. “Look at what I threw away. Do you know how much I loved my family? A lot. I loved them a lot, okay? I had the best parents, and the best sister, and now I’m never getting it back.”

“Gyro-“

“Fenton!” Gyro looked up. Tears were beading in his eyes. “Look at how I treated her. She was- she was so happy to see me when she got here.”

“And she still is.” Fenton’s voice wavered for a moment. “I’m sure she is.”

“Why would she? She went through all of that trying to find me, to see if I was even still alive, and when she did I acted like this. I- if she was smart she would cut her losses.”

“Dr. Gearloose, no offense but it’s kind of how you always act. Don’t you think that she knows that?”

Gyro was pinching the bridge of his beak. He looked up, face lighting up as if a lightbulb had appeared above him. He grabbed the tablet and started searching through the files.

“Dr. Gearloose!” Fenton groaned.

“Just one more. Just one more. I need to see- there!”

A recording dated for the day she’d arrived. Gyro tapped on it before Fenton could say anything else. It showed a room he wasn’t familiar with. Some kind of guest room perhaps. It was full of miscellaneous items and band equipment. Dol was leaning out of frame and yelling.

“Dickie, you can order whatever you want for dinner. I do not care in the slightest.”

“But you will do the dishes, right?” Answered a voice.

“I will make them so clean you can eat off of them again.”

“Nice!”

Gyro gasped. “Dickie?! I haven’t seen her since middle school.”

“I think Dol’s staying with her.”

“She still lives here.” He said to himself in awe.

There was a moment of quiet while Dol set up the camera. She held her hands on either side waiting to see if it would fall. When it didn’t she drew away and smiled. After a quick glance towards the door she jumped out of her seat.

She twirled and danced around the room squealing happily. Gyro looked away, embarrassed. Dol tripped over what looked like an electric bass with the neck snapped in half. She popped back up a minute later rubbing at her beak.

She scrambled back to the desk. “I found him! I actually found him.” She hugged herself and spun around. “I hugged him. He’s alive! He’s alive and he’s here!”

She took a minute to calm herself. “So, yeah, I found him. I was such a dummy not to think of checking Duckburg. I guess I didn’t think he’d want to go anywhere people might know him. Of course, he looks a lot different now. His hair is….” she waved her hand in a so-so gesture. “It’s not what I’d go with, personally.”

Gyro subconsciously ran his hands through his bangs, glaring. Fenton giggled.

“He’s um, he’s got a really nice lab. I didn’t get too good a look at it because….water.” She shivered. “He’s also a lot more uh, less delicate than before.”

Gyro tugged at his hair.

“He was never very soft spoken before, but he was acting like,” she waved her hands as she thought, “like when I’d sneak in his room to bug him. Except it was constant. Rude, you know.”

Fenton glanced over nervously.

“But….I think it’ll be okay.” She continued. “He’s never been big on change before and me coming back is definitely a big change. Maybe he’s still mad.” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna do my best to let him know that I still, you know….that I still love him. He’s still my baby brother. And I’m always gonna be-“

“Who’re ya talkin’ to?” A blond duck popped her head into the room.

Dol squawked and grabbed the camera, ending the video.

Fenton smiled. “See? From the beginning she was willing to give you another chance. Gyro, she wants you back in her life.”

Gyro twisted his hair around his fingers. “I’m not the same person I was. She’ll be disappointed when she gets to know me.”

“Why don’t you let her get to know you first, before you start thinking like that.”

Gyro leaned back in the chair. He stared at the computer with its shattered screen. He looked around the cluttered, messy office. On one of the counters, something red flashed under a pile of papers. He stood and approached the light. Brushing the papers aside he uncovered the camera.

It was dented, melted in one corner, discolored and scuffed. But he recognized it all the same. He opened the side screen. Scratched into the indentation where it closed was his handwriting, or as close as he could make it with the knife he’d used to write it. Gearloose Indestructible Field Camera.

He’d built it for her birthday.

He pushed the screen back in and tucked the camera into his vest. Then he returned to the desk and stashed his tablet as well. He turned to Fenton with an apprehensive sigh.

“Let’s go.”

Fenton tilted his head. “Go where?”

“Where Dol is. If it’s not too late to fix this, then I probably shouldn’t wait any longer. Just to be safe.”

Fenton gasped and his face split into a huge smile. “Yes! Let’s go right now! Immediately! I’ll text Launchpad and ask him to come get us.”

“Actually,” Gyro said as they headed for the elevator, “why don’t we take the suit?”

Fenton gasped. “You want to take the suit?”

“Why not? I’m sure a mid-life crisis is as good an excuse as any for an emergency flight-“

He was cut off by Fenton throwing his arms around him. He didn’t push him away. Instead he rolled his eyes and awkwardly patted his back.

“Dr. Intern.”

“Yes, Dr. Gearloose?”

“Can we please go now?”

“O-oh! Right! Sorry!”

Chapter Text

Dol lowered the scanner and sighed, running a hand through her ruffled head feathers. The beast watched her with its wide, black eyes. While its face had an absent-minded look to it, the creature exuded an aura that clearly conveyed its irritation. She glared down at it before turning her back. Considering the nature of this creature, putting it out of sight was never a good idea, but she was getting frustrated.

Mr. McDuck had, for some reason, not scheduled the creature’s maintenance to be conducted in a zoo enclosure. This would have been ideal. Keeping the jackamoose in what was essentially a concrete pit, with steep walls separating it from the general public, was the safest option.

Instead Dol was working on a kind of courtyard area. Nothing but grass and paved walkways, with a few freshly planted saplings and various statues of Scrooge McDuck sporting weapons and apparel from various adventures. The animal sat in the middle of it all, bound with chains and a thick metal collar. At the very least the courtyard had been roped off from the public and the surrounding hedges would stave off any prying eyes, but there was nothing keeping the beast contained should the chains break.

It also didn’t help that Della was here with the kids. They were running around and hiding behind the statues while firing dart guns at each other. Della was standing next to Dol, watching her work while occasionally yelling advice to the warring children. A foam dart hit her in the back and she glared at the duck.

“Why are they shooting each other?”

“They got bored. Good thing I brought those, otherwise they’d probably be climbing all over that thing.” She jabbed her thumb in the direction of the bound animal. “What is it again?”

Dol sighed and tossed the scanner onto the nearby worktable. Well, it was a plastic fold out table that she was using as a worktable. It was covered in an assortment of sharp objects and devices of questionable origin. Weird amulets, an urn, and several twisted pieces of metal which pulsed with strange energy.

“It is a dangerous animal that is not being properly contained, is what it is.” Dol said.

Della put a hand on her shoulder. “Anything I can help with? Maybe you just need a second pair of eyes.”

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “This creature is known for having magical properties from everything I’ve researched. I’ve been going over it with every magic-seeking device I have, but nothing is showing up.”

“And you need that, why?”

“Because the horns are where the power is stored. I need to cut them to get rid of its powers, but if I don’t do it right then I risk negatively impacting its health. And, this is an incredibly rare species so I can’t chance anything happening to it.”

“What makes it so dangerous? It’s just sitting there. Sure it’s big and ugly, but so are lots of people that I’ve met.”

Dol steepled her fingers. “Okay, so, first off, it has the ability to control people’s minds. So that’s pretty big. Not to mention the fact that it absorbs the life energy of anyone it controls. Also, not mentioning the fact that it uses said hosts to capture more people to control and absorb their life energy-”

“Hey, hey. Just relax. Maybe we should call Uncle Scrooge and say you need more time?”

“Why? Why would we do that?”

Della smiled nervously. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem a little high strung. And sleep deprived. Have you slept, like, at all?”

“I don’t need sleep.” Dol picked a tuning fork up off the table, sneered, and set it back down. “I need results.”

“Oh, I can definitely see that family resemblance.” Della muttered under her breath. She tried again to speak sense to the scientist. “Maybe you could just take a quick break?”

“I can’t.” Dol said, exasperated. “The longer it’s here the more likely something bad will happen. I can feel it.”

Della looked behind Dol, eyes drawn by the sound of a helicopter blade. She inhaled sharply as GizmoDuck touched down on the edge of the courtyard, Gyro climbing off his back. She waved her arms trying to signal that they - or at least Gyro - really, really shouldn’t be there. Gyro ignored her and started walking towards Dol, who had her back turned to him as she poured over her equipment.

“I know that feeling, sister.” Della groaned.

Dol looked up, turning around to follow Della’s gaze. She glared and straightened up. Nearby, the kids had stopped their dart war to watch. The air was tense.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Gearloose,” she said, crossing her arms. “This area is restricted from public access. You and your little friend are going to have to leave.”

Gyro stopped. He hesitated, mulling over his words in his head. GizmoDuck rolled up behind him and whispered something reassuring. Gyro balled his hands into fists and took a deep breath.

“Dolly?”

Dol’s eyes widened. She uncrossed her arms.

“We have to talk.”

She stuck her hands in her pockets and glanced over her shoulder. The jackamoose was staring at them, head tilted forward. Dol looked back at Gyro and grimaced.

“There’s a lot to talk about. I don’t really have the time right now.”

“You can step away for a minute. This is really important.” Gyro insisted.

“I actually can’t, Gyro. Sorry, Dr. Gearloose.”

“Why don’t you go talk to him?” Della asked. “I’m sure you can spare a minute.”

“I can’t.” She hissed. “Now that he’s here something is definitely going to go wrong.”

“Dolly, please?”

Dol looked around. Everyone was watching her expectantly. She sighed and stepped away from the table, walking towards Gyro. He started to walk away, to lead her somewhere private, but she grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“We can’t leave here. We talk now or we don’t.”

Gyro shot a look at Della and the kids, standing in a line and clearly trying their best to listen in. They weren’t far enough for his liking, but Dol was close enough where he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. He nodded, then looked at Fenton, who was still standing beside him.

“I’ll just go over there.” He said before heading over to the others.

Dol blinked. “Was that Fenton?”

“Yes. Long story.” He answered.

“Seems like you have a lot of those.”

He stopped, confused, then shook his head. He knew he needed to say what he wanted as fast as possible, before he lost his resolve. He ducked his head and started talking.

“Look, I….I need to apologize. For the way that I’ve been acting. I didn’t think about how….I mean….it’s been years. You were really happy to see me and I shouldn’t have met that with as much hostility as I did. I’m sorry. And I….really do….want to….to talk about everything. To catch up. On everything. I mean it, Dolly.”

He didn’t look up. He was afraid to. There was a long pause.

“And you really mean that?”

“I do.”

Another pause. He was feeling optimistic. If Dol had been waiting to reconnect with him this whole time then she should be ecstatic. Maybe she would hug him again. He hadn’t enjoyed it the first time, but now he felt differently. That was the first hug he’d gotten from his family in years. He should have tried to savor it.

“What brought this on?”

He looked up. Dol was watching him with a stony expression, hands still buried in her pockets. That was not the response he’d been hoping for.

“What?” He asked.

“Why are you apologizing now? What made you change your mind?”

“I- what does that matter?”

“You are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. What could have possibly made you change your mind so fast? I doubt it was self-reflection.”

“Dolly-”

“Don’t Dolly me, Gyro. Answer me.”

Gyro started sweating. He was expecting Dol to be happy about this. She was finally getting what she wanted. But she knew him too well. She knew he’d done something; found something out. He could feel himself balancing on a razor’s edge. There was no way he could tell her that he’d gone through her computer. That would be one more strike against him, and he had a feeling that her reaction would be volatile.

But, perhaps, he could tell a half truth instead. He reached into his vest and withdrew Dol’s camera, holding it out to her. She gasped when she saw it and swiped it out of his hands.

“My camera! I can’t believe I forgot it. I never-” her eyes widened. “You went into my lab?”

“I’d heard you would be leaving soon. So, I went up to see you off.” Technically that was true. He had gone up to see her leave….so he could sneak in. “The door was open so I went in. I saw your camera on the counter. Honestly, I’m surprised that you kept it; that’s it’s survived for so long.”

“Of course I kept it,” she said, “it was the last thing I had of yours. I’ve done my best to take care of it, but it’s had a few close calls. Mama would patch it up for me the best she could.”

“I’m sure she did a great job. You know, I could tune it up for you. Maybe make a new one. I bet I could actually make it indestructible now. I’m a lot better at making things now than I was back then.” In his head, he made a note to make the next camera waterproof.

Dol looked back down at the camera. She opened the side screen. “So, you saw this, and changed your whole attitude. Just from seeing this.”

He nodded. “You know what they say. The small things make the biggest impact. Butterflies and hurricanes or something.”

Dol held the camera up to her face, then looked back at Gyro.

“Gyro.”

“Yes?”

Her eyes were cold. She put her finger against a button on the side.

“You’re still a terrible liar.”

His eyes widened. He sputtered.

“I-! I am not lying! I’m telling the truth.” He cried.

“You are lying!” She said, raising her voice as well. “It’s the same tell, Gyro. You have the same tell after all these years.”

“I don’t have a tell!”

“You do! Your voice goes all weird.”

“It does no-”

“Can you shut up?” Gyro froze as he was interrupted by his own voice. “Got an HDMI cord?”

“Oh, yeah!” Came Fenton’s voice. “Are you going to back up her files?”

Dol’s eyes darted to the side, watching the camera’s small screen. The camera. The red, blinking light was gone. Gyro remembered how it was the light that showed him where it was hidden under Dol’s notes in the lab. It had been recording the whole time.

“Don’t watch that!” He stepped closer and reached for the camera.

Dol’s eyes snapped back to him. Her free hand darted forward and she tangled her fingers in the front of his shirt. Gyro yelped as she pulled him closer, the sides of their faces pressed together.

“You’re right. Let’s watch it together.” She snarled.

Nearby, the others watched nervously. Fenton had moved forward, as if to try and approach the two, but he’d stopped himself. Getting involved might make things worse, especially since he’d been an accessory to the crime. Della looked up at him, her face mirroring his worry.

“What did you two do?” She whispered.

“I think you’re about to find out.” Fenton gulped.

Gyro watched helplessly as Dol sped up the footage, stopping every so often to hear what was happening. He watched himself plug his tablet into her computer. He watched as he and Fenton fought for control and toppled it. He heard his tablet warn of the corrupted file, and his triumphant tone.

“She thinks she’s being clever. She used to save all her diary entries like this on the home computer.”

Dol paused the video. She was shaking, head feathers trembling. Slowly, she raised her head and turned it towards him. The sun caught on her glasses and Gyro squinted against the glare.

“You have one chance to tell me the truth.” She said quietly. “Did you watch what I think you did?”

Gyro took a quick, steadying breath. “Yes.”

Dol jerked her head in Fenton’s direction. “And him? He was there to see it?”

Gyro looked away. “Yes.”

He squawked as Dol lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards. He landed on his back, quickly pushing himself up. With Dol towering over him he didn’t dare stand. Instead he sat there, propped up on his elbows, and stared up at her. She glowered down at him, her bangs casting a heavy shadow over her face. She was taking quick, shallow breaths as tears beaded in her eyes. Her hands were balled at her sides in trembling fists. The camera was lying forgotten in the grass.

“I cannot believe you!” She screeched. “I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU. How could you do that?”

Gyro felt anger starting to bubble in his gut. The manhandling and the yelling was enough to raise his ire, but because it was Dol it felt different. This was old anger from memories of petty fights on the playground and brawls over leftover sweets. It was familiar, familial. Logically, his brain argued, it had been too long and he had done too much damage to scream back the way he would in the past. Realistically, he was already yelling.

“Can you blame me? After what happened? I had to make sure I could trust you.”

“TRUST ME? What would I possibly do?”

Gyro staggered to his feet. “You’d try and hurt me like I hurt you, Dol.” He stabbed a finger into her chest. “I left without a warning. You didn’t know where I’d gone, or if I was still alive. Don’t tell me that it didn’t hurt, because I know it did.”

“It did! It hurt a lot! It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt, Gyro. But, why would I spend so long looking for you just to hurt you back?”

“Because it’s what I would do! We’re Gearlooses, Dol, we are empowered by spite. We grew up together. Think of all the times we did something just to get back at someone, or to prove them wrong. We are the same!”

“No we’re NOT, Gyro!” She grabbed him by the vest, sneering in his face. “I’m nothing like you.”

“Really? Then why watch that video over and over again. I know you named those folders for your own benefit. I did the same thing after Tokyolk. You saw me, you tried to stop me. You have to know that getting rid of it would be better for you.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“What does that mean?”

“You still have 2BO.”

Gyro stiffened. He looked over Dol’s shoulder at Fenton and the others. Fenton pressed his index fingers together and ducked his head.

“I-it was an accident. We didn’t mean to-”

Dol shook Gyro, forcing his attention back to her.

“You were in Tokyolk a month ago. You found out you were innocent one month ago. You were less than a walk away from us one. Month. Ago.”

“Dol-”

“WHY?! Why didn’t you come see us? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you do anything?” She pushed him away again, but softer. Gyro took a step back and straightened his vest.

“It’s because I was right, wasn’t it?” She continued before he could speak. “Because you couldn’t stand being wrong. You never could! And then I showed up here, to your job, with my doctorate and my journals and my traumatic backstory.” She threw her arms wide. A maniacal grin spread across her face. “And I bet you got scared. Scared that poor, dear, Dolly had surpassed you. So you had to find something to soothe your ego, huh? Had to know that dummy Dolly was still just a lackey; just meat shield arm candy for a real scientist. And you found it.”

“Dol I-”

“How could you?” She whispered. “How could you watch it? How could you watch it with another person there? Everything that’s in that video. My….” she raised a hand to her head, gripped a handful of feathers. “My comb….”

“Dolly-”

“Don’t. You don’t get to call me that now. You don’t get to ‘Dolly’ your way out of this, Gyro.”

Gyro rubbed his face. He’d done it again. He’d ruined it all again.

“I’m sorry.” He said.

“No, I’m sorry.” She snapped. “Sorry that I kept you out of prison. Sorry that I spent so long looking for you. Sorry that I showed up to your new life. I should have realized that you didn’t want me here.”

“Dolly.”

“I said-”

“Shut up. Look at me.”

They stared at each other. Gyro stone faced with tense shoulders, and Dol shaking as tears crawled down her face. He swallowed nervously. Dol stepped back when he moved forward. She watched him as he bent down and picked up her camera. He pushed at the buttons, then leaned towards her. She tried to lean away, but he put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back.

“We’ll watch this together.” He said.

“Are you okay?” Fenton’s voice crackled through the ancient speakers.

“No, I messed it all up again.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Yes I have! Look at what I threw away. Do you know how much I loved my family? A lot. I loved them a lot, okay? I had the best parents, and the best sister, and now I’m never getting it back.”

Gyro stayed quiet as he played the last conversation he’d had with Fenton before leaving the lab. As she listened, Dol took the camera from him. She cradled it in both her hands, eyes glued to the tiny screen. When the Gyro in the recording started playing the log of Dol at Dickie’s house, he chanced a glance at her face.

“I didn’t know Dickie still lived in Duckburg.” He said.

“Yeah. Same neighborhood and everything.” She answered.

“She still….you know?”

“Still Dickie? Yeah.”

In the recording, Dol criticized his hair. The recorded Gyro glared at the tablet screen while Fenton laughed. She called him rude. She said she didn’t care that he was rude. Dickie interrupted and the recording ended. Gyro watched himself look towards the camera and stand. He picked up the camera, and it captured the way his face changed when he opened the side screen and saw the makeshift engraving. He didn’t like how….vulnerable it was.

Dol sighed heavily. Her shoulder sagged under Gyro’s hand.

“Oh, Gigi.” She looked up at him, her poor posture making her - momentarily - shorter than him. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Of course seeing me almost die inside a shark would be one of the few things that could get you to have a change of heart.”

Gyro looked down and pulled his hand away. “I….don’t like how that sounds.”

“It’s how you are, though. I’ve known you since we were born.”

He looked up. Her tear-streaked face made his chest hurt. “I am sorry. Sorry that I watched it.”

“Because of the one shot of my messed up leg?” She asked with a small smirk. His face turned green and she laughed.

“Yes. Ugh, yes.” He cleared his throat. “But, more so because….I wouldn’t have watched it if I knew doing it would hurt you so much.”

She snapped the camera’s screen shut. “Do you mean that?”

Something twitched in his chest. A small, ugly feeling. He frowned. “I- I want to think I do.”

She straightened and looked into his eyes. They were once again the same height. They always had been. Growing at the same time; stopping at the same time. He realized that he’d been separated from his twin longer than Della had been from hers.

And they made up so much faster.

His eye twitched.

Dol wiped her eyes. “Gyro, I want to catch up too. I want to get to know you again. I’ve really missed you. I’ve missed my brother.”

“I missed you too D-”

You don’t get to call her that. You’ve lost the right.

“....Dol.”

She smiled. “We can start as soon as I’m done here. You’ll wait for me, right? You don’t have to do it here, but you won’t change your mind again, right?”

Something tugged at him. Something tugged inside of him. He physically jumped. It felt as if a fish hook had buried itself in his sternum and someone had yanked on the line. He put a hand on his chest, grimacing. Then he looked up, past Dol, past the group of smiling ducks, towards the jackamoose.

It was standing now. It’s long, knobby-kneed legs held it up, high above even GizmoDuck’s head. The tangled, overgrown antlers made it seem even more towering. He watched as, starting at it’s head, pale blue light began to travel up the antlers. The dirty, brown protrusions turned translucent and glass-like. The jackamoose’s huge black eyes turned the same brilliant powder blue that spread across it’s crown. Somehow, in the back of Gyro’s mind, he knew that it was trained on him.

But even as he thought that the beast moved its head. It aimed itself at Dol, who had just turned to see what her brother was looking at. Her eyes widened. The chains that connected to the jackamoose’s metal collar and wrapped around its limbs frosted over with blue light before shattering. It was free. It charged.

“RUN!” Dol screamed.

Fenton looked over his shoulder. Seeing the charging beast he quickly scooped up Della and the kids before flying out of its way. Gyro reached for Dol’s hand, to pull her away, but she was already gone. She was running towards the oncoming threat - no, she was running for the table. Reaching it she rummaged through the items until she found a black cylinder with a forked end. Gyro ran after her. He could feel that the creature was watching him even as it bore down on his sister.

A blade shot out of the cylinder. It wasn’t a cylinder, it was a sword hilt. The long, curved blade was pink with facets that sparkled in the light. It was made of crystal, Gyro realized. The crystal from Crystal Cove. The shark rib.

Dol raised the sword, gripping it tightly with both hands. The jackamoose reared up and kicked at her with its long legs. She slashed back, making the creature jump away. Gyro grabbed her sleeve.

“Dol, we have to run.”

“You have to run,” she said, pulling away. “I have to deal with this.”

“Let GizmoDuck take care of it.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Intern! Get over here!”

“No! Gyro, just go. I can handle it.”

He hissed as the tugging in his chest got worse. His mind felt fuzzy around the edges. Dol stumbled and stamped her leg a few times.

“It’s more powerful than I thought. You need to get clear.”

The jackamoose stepped back as a pie slammed into its face. Fenton hovered in the air behind the two scientists, readying more pastries. Dol looked up at him with a mix of confusion and disbelief. Then she noticed how Gyro was pulling at his shirtfront, searching for the source of his discomfort.

“ You feel it too, don’t you?” She asked.

He nodded. “I’m assuming you mean that dreadful pulling sensation.”

“That’s the one. You have to draw back before it gets worse.”

“What is it?”

Fenton fired a volley of pies at the beast, pushing it back. Dol took the opportunity to explain.

“This animal can sense emotional discord. It can feel that we’d be good hosts, that we have unresolved tension, and it’s powerful enough to feed those feelings. It’s trying to throw us off long enough for it to take control.”

“And you’re feeling this too?”

“Yeah, but mine’s more-” the animal bellowed in frustration and Dol grimaced. She shifted her weight off of one leg. “Painful.”

“Then you have to get back too.” Gyro said, reaching for her again.

She pulled back again. “No, I have to cut its horns to stop this.”

“But you don’t know where to cut!”

“I’ll figure it out as I go.”

Suddenly there was the sound of something breaking. Gyro and Dol looked around. The statues of Scrooge McDuck that littered the courtyard were one by one becoming ringed in blue light. They shattered, just like the chains had, save for the weapons they were holding. The weapons - swords, axes, and maces - floated into the air.

“Oh, you disgusting, overgrown rat!” Dol yelled.

“Intern! Behind you!” Gyro yelled as the weapons raced for GizmoDuck’s back.

Fenton halted his helmet-copter and fell. The weapons flew over him, continuing forward to gather in a cloud around the pie crusted jackamoose. Dol grit her teeth.

“Of course. Of course! Of course it wouldn’t be magic. Gah! I am never trusting the records of sixteenth century hikers ever again.” She ranted to herself.

“What are you going on about now? How is that not magic?” Gyro demanded.

“All the old journals I found on it said it was magical, but psychokinesis isn’t magic. It’s amplified brain waves! That’s why I couldn’t find any traces of magic.”

“That,” he said, “looks an awful lot like magic.”

“Well who’s the specialist here, Gyro?”

Fenton jumped in front of the two. The jackamoose had sent two axes hurtling for their heads. They glanced off his forearm shields and buried themselves in the ground. He whirled around to face them.

“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but instead of fighting do you think you could try and come up with some kind of strategy?”

“Here’s a strategy!” Dol ran past Fenton and swiped at the creature’s face. Her crystalline sword sliced through an elongated tooth, sending the excess flying into the grass. “We gotta get this thing contained and subdued. Fast.”

The jackamoose reared back on its hind legs. Its antlers pulsed brightly. Fenton cried out as the GizmoSuit froze around him, held in place by a heavy glaze of blue light. Dol stepped back and her left leg trembled under her. Gyro hissed as the pain in his chest turned searing. The animal fell back down and walked towards Dol. She stood there, trapped in place, sword hanging limply from her hands. Gyro was running before he knew it, grabbing hold of Dol by the shoulders and shoving her aside. When his hands made contact, a voice wormed its way into his head.

Trapped again. Always trapped, always scared. Now they’ll be trapped with you.

Dol hit the ground. He looked up. The image of a shark’s gaping maw dissolved to reveal the jagged teeth of the jackamoose. He threw up his arm and they closed around it.

“Doctor Gearloose!” Fenton cried, voice nearly drowned out by Gyro’s scream.

It was short; more out of surprise. The way that the thing’s teeth had grown kept it from biting him properly. Instead his arm was held captive, squeezed between long, dripping ivory tusks. He pulled but the beast held firm, glaring at him with its glowing blue eyes. Abruptly those eyes shut as Dol drove her elbow into the side of its face. It moved back, pulling Gyro along and lifting him off his feet.

Dol jumped up and threw her arms around his middle. The added weight pulled him free, but not without consequence. His sleeve caught on a tooth and ripped. He yelped as on his way down another tooth caught and scraped along the underside of his forearm. It was the tooth Dol had cut. The uneven end had been made into a sharp point, digging into his skin as he fell.

They both hit the ground, Gyro landing on top of his sister. He rolled off and clasped a hand over his arm. “Are you okay?”

Dol sat up and looked him over. Her eyes landed on his covered arm, and she grabbed it roughly, pulling it straight. She grabbed his other hand by the wrist and wrenched it away, gasping when she saw the narrow cut underneath.

“No,” she whispered, looking closer. “No, no!”

A shadow fell over the two chickens. Gyro looked up to see the jackamoose looming over them. He could sense it watching them; looking down at them over its short rabbit nose. It didn’t move, only stood and watched.

“Why’d it stop?” Della cried. She stood a short distance away, holding back her kids.

Fenton rolled up slowly, finding the suit functional again. “Doctor Tebasaki?”

“Dol. What’s happening?” Gyro asked.

Dol slowly raised her head. Tears were beading in her eyes. She whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s just a scratch. That’s hardly the worst of our concerns right now.” Gyro raised an eyebrow.

“Gyro, it’s infected you,” she said. “You’re a host now.”

“Host? Host of what?” He demanded.

“It.” She looked up at the jackamoose.

“Explain? PLEASE?”

Dol took a deep breath.

“The short version.” Gyro snapped.

Dol glared. “There’s a protein in its saliva that, upon entering your bloodstream, allows the jackamoose to access your mind directly. There it can control you by influencing your most repressed and hurtful memories.”

Gyro blinked. Fenton wrung his hands, the metal gloves creaking as he did.

“So, how do we cure it? There’s a cure, right?” Asked the hero.

“There is no cure!” Dol snapped. “There’s never been a recorded instance of the mind control being cured.”

Gyro looked down at his arm, then looked away. Tiny red droplets were beading along the length of the cut. Eugh. “What exactly does it need to mind control me for? It’s a giant rabbit.”

“It’ll use you to gather more hosts. My theory is that it knows we’re less likely to hurt someone who looks like us. Someone we care about.”

Gyro grimaced. He hated the idea of being used, especially by a lumbering brute that would never be able to adequately use his intellect to its full potential. Unless the stupid thing planned to use him for grunt work, because then it was even dumber than it looked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dol staring at him.

“Maybe,” she mussed to herself.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe that big head of yours could be the key.” She said, a smile slowly stretching across her face. “You’re smart, maybe you can beat it in a mind battle. Resist its thrall and take back control!”

Gyro glanced up, frightfully, at the beast. “Well….obviously. But what happens after that?”

“When we get there. Wait until we get there.” Dol answered. “And we will get there. I’ll be here helping you the whole time.”

Gyro took a shaky breath. “You promise?” He asked quietly.

She took his hand in hers and squeezed. “I never jump ship on a Gearloose experiment.”

Gyro huffed a nervous laugh. “Almost sounds like you think this will work.”

“It will work!” She put her other hand over top of his. “I believe in you.”

Then his head fell forward, bangs obscuring his face and hat slipping off. Reluctantly she released his hand. It fell limp into his lap. Dol jumped to her feet and started pushing Fenton backwards.

“Give him space! Give him space!”

They retreated and were joined by Della and the kids. Together they all stared at Gyro, who sat slumped at the feet of the jackamoose. Dol clasped her hands and muttered to herself. Della patted her shoulder.

“Hey, he’ll be okay. Everything always turns out okay with us, right kids?”

The kids nodded in agreement. Dol smiled, but it was strained.

“He’s getting up!” Fenton gasped.

They watched as Gyro slowly rose to his feet. His head was still pointed downward. The jackamoose raised its head and inclined it towards the group. Gyro stepped forward. His hat was crushed underfoot. He raised his head. His eyes blazed with blue light. It hid his pupils and covered his sclera. From the cloud of weapons that surrounded the jackamoose a sword floated down. It hovered next to Gyro, and he reached out to grasp its hilt.

Louie chuckled, making the others glare.

“What? It’s Gyro with a sword. How is that not funny?” He said.

“Because he’s being mind controlled!” Webby cried.

“And he’s gonna try and use that sword on us!” Dewey added.

“But it’s still Gyro. You’re telling me he actually knows how to use a sword?”

“He knows how to use a sword.” Dol said, her eyes never leaving Gyro’s.

“What?! Since when?” Louie asked.

“Since we took kendo together as kids.” Dol readied her own sword.

“Okay, but, you were better right? Please tell me you were better.”

“I’ve never been better than him.” Dol left the group, slowly approaching Gyro. “Fenton, you need to keep the jackamoose from infecting anyone else. Try and restrain it any way that you can, but don’t hurt it.”

“What do you mean don’t hurt it? Maybe if we hit it hard enough it’ll let ‘im go!” Della cracked her knuckles.

Dol glared over her shoulder. “As long as Gyro has the mental link he will feel all the pain that the jackamoose feels. No harm comes to that creature.”

Gyro bent his knees and raised the sword. The jackamoose gave a minute nod. He charged at Dol, blade leveled at her head. She watched him, sword hanging at her side. Gyro stopped and swung. She raised her blade. The two swords met with a clash. Dol and Gyro ground their weapons against each other, Dol’s eyes staring straight into Gyro’s glowing ones.

Fenton activated his helmetcopter and flew over them. He headed for the jackamoose and released a volley of pies. Della and the kids dashed around the two and followed him, hoping to distract the beast further. Gyro turned to follow them, raising his sword to bring it down on Huey as he passed. Dol lurched forward and intercepted his blade with her own. They danced around each other, swords screeching with each hit.

“Talk to me, Gigi. Tell me you’re in there.”

“Like you care.” Gyro snarled and swiped at her legs. There was a strange echo to his voice.

She jumped back, turning it into a one-handed cartwheel. “Guess that’s the influence making you whiny.”

“You would love it if this was the end of me.”

“That would waste all the years I spent looking for you.”

“You could finally be better than me. You want that, don’t you?”

“No.” She ducked and rolled as he lunged. “I never wanted to be better than you. I never had to.”

“And why not?” He tried to trip her as stood.

She rolled again and brought up her sword, narrowly blocking a guillotine like chop. “Because we are in completely different fields of study, and completely different kinds of people. There is no logical way to compare our achievements.”

“And what about on an emotional level?”

“That’s very unscientific of you, Gigi.”

“How is that simultaneously the coolest and lamest fight I’ve ever seen?” Dewey asked.

He and the others ran past the sword fighters as the jackamoose sent a hail of weapons at them. Dol knocked a shield out of the air with her sword, cutting off its trajectory with her head. She ducked as Gyro’s blade followed suit.

“The hair is off limits and you know it!”

“Just admit it Dol. Admit you’re better off without me.”

She glared. When he swung at her again she blocked at an angle. Their blades slid into the cross guards, and she grabbed one of his wrists.

“Why? Why are you so intent on being hated?”

Gyro snarled and shoved her away. For just a moment, the light in his eyes dimmed.

“Answer me, Gyro! That’s what it’s using to control you!”

He threw up his hands. “Because I’m evil, Dol!”

He stood there, chest heaving. Tears beaded in his eyes, cloudy with blue light. Dol mirrored him, blinking in confusion.

“What?” She panted.

“I finally figured it out. Why everything I make turns evil. They’re learning it from me.”

“Dr. Gearloose, that is completely untrue and-” Fenton was cut off as a mace smacked against the back of his helmet.

“What do you mean, Gigi?”

Dol stood her ground as the others ran around behind her, dodging flying weapons and diving for cover. The jackamoose followed them. It’s slobbering lips pulled back from its jagged teeth in delight. Gyro’s face contorted as he fought to keep himself still.

“Everything I made….after Boyd. It all turned evil after developing sentience. I always defended them. It wasn’t their fault. Because it was mine. They turned out that way because they were made by an evil creator.”

He gasped. He raised his sword again and charged at Dol. She darted aside as he slashed his sword upwards.

“Explain it to me. Give me examples. I won’t believe you without proof.”

Their swords met again. Sparks flared to life at the impact and blinked away seconds later.

“I left home without a warning.” He panted through gritted teeth.

“You were an upset kid. You acted on impulse.” Dol countered.

“The way I treated you when you showed up.”

“You’ve always been paranoid. I’m used to it.”

“No you’re not!”

“Yes I am.”

His eyes blazed. “Why do you even care? You should be happy. You’re finally the better of us.”

She spun, gathering momentum for a sideswipe that he blocked with ease.

“I told you it was no use comparing us….but if you insist.”

She grit her teeth as his sword nicked her side. Her coat kept her safe, but Gyro stumbled. His eyes dimmed again, and she used the lapse to put distance between them. She turned and ran, stopping next to a half shattered statue and turning to face him once again.

“Mom doesn’t know this is what I do.”

Gyro blinked. “What?! How does she not know?”

“She thinks I’m still a surgeon. That I’ve been taking these trips to study techniques and sit in on procedures.”

Gyro sputtered. “How did you explain the shark?”

“Told her I wasn’t paying attention to the lifeguard. She doesn’t know I was eaten, just that I was bit.”

He pointed his sword at her. “You said you were one of the top scientists in the field of mythical biology!”

She groaned and grabbed fistfulls of her headfeathers. “I’m the only scientist of mythical biology! I’m blacklisted from every science foundation and institute. I take grunt work in order to travel and conduct all my research on my own time and dollar. No one in the science community believes I’m for real. The internet does but….yeah.”

Gyro opened his mouth, but could only hiss as his head throbbed. “I can’t do it, Dolly.”

“Yes you can.” She stomped her foot. “My brother is not evil.”

“Then why do I keep hurting everyone over and over again? This isn’t something you can contest, Dol, I’ve lived it over and over.”

Dol searched his face. She sighed. Twirling her sword, the hilt traveling across the back of her hand, she turned it upside down and stabbed it into the dirt. Leaving it there, she started undoing the buttons on her coat.

“Gigi, I thought you knew how experiments worked by now.”

“What are you doing?”

Dol shrugged off the coat. She was defenseless now, in nothing but a powder pink shirt, silver tie, and brown vest and pants. She folded the coat and draped it over the hilt of her sword. Her worn pink converse made no sound on the manicured grass as she started walking towards him.

“Scientific theory. Define it.”

“Dol! What are you doing?!” Unbidden, Gyro’s feet started moving as well.

“It’s when an experiment has been tested multiple times to see if it’s accurate. That’s what you’ve done with your behaviour.”

She stopped, but Gyro kept coming.

“You’re assuming that because you have tested this over and over that it must be a fact. But, the thing about testing an experiment….” Gyro stopped. He was less than a foot away. “Is that other scientists need to recreate it; need to test it.”

“Dol, I’m begging you.” The sword was raised over his head, blade pointed forward. Tears streamed down his face. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” She answered. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“Dolly please I can’t- you can’t-”

“I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago. You don’t have to forgive yourself but at least accept that! Just….”

The blade tip trembled, aimed for the center of her chest. It inched backwards. Dol shut her eyes.

“Just accept I still love you!”

SWISH

Dol gasped as the sword cut across her front. It was a narrow miss, swiping through the very front of her vest. The blade didn’t even reach her skin; didn’t even draw blood. She cracked open one eye. Gyro had brought his sword straight down and buried it in the grass. He crouched over it on one knee. His hands were still holding the hilt in a bloodless grip. His head drooped between his outstretched arms, and his whole body was shaking.

“Gigi?” She asked softly.

Gyro raised his head. His face was damp with sweat and his hair clung to his forehead. Panting, he looked up at her with clear eyes. An exhausted smile stretched across his beak.

“Guess my big head was good for something, huh?” He said between heavy breaths.

Dol cried happily and fell to her knees. She threw her arms around Gyro’s neck and tucked her chin over his shoulder. Slowly, Gyro pried his hands from the sword hilt and pressed them against her back.

“You won.” She said incredulously. “You won.”

“And here I thought you had faith in me.” He said sarcastically.

“I did!” Dol pulled away and sat back on her legs. Her eyes were overflowing with tears. “But I - but I didn’t wanna lose you again. And-”

“Dolly,” he held up his hands, “I’m still here! It’s all fine now.”

Someone screamed. The jackamoose had pinned Gizmoduck to the ground. The hero was on his back with the beast’s front feet planted on his chestplate. Della and the kids were trying to get to him, but a steady barrage of unmanned weapons kept them at bay. Blue light frosted over the armor’s left arm and tore it free. Fenton’s organic arm protruded from the hole left behind. He quickly pulled it inside the torso as the jackamoose snapped at it with its tusks.

“Oh. Right. That.”

Gyro and Dol stood. Dol ran to retrieve her lab coat and sword. Gyro pulled his tablet from his vest pocket and started scrolling.

“I know this isn’t your field of expertise, but is now really the time for web surfing?” Dol peeked over his shoulder as she rebuttoned her coat.

“I am not web surfing. I think I can help.”

“How’s that?”

“A few months ago I attempted to build an app that allowed the user to see what other people were thinking.”

“Wow. Did it work?”

“It did. That’s why it was struck from the app store. Sometimes it’s better to stay in the dark.”

The jackamoose gnawed at the Gizmoarmor. The metal squealed and dented under its assault.

“How does that help me?” Dol asked nervously.

“If I just tweak the code a bit then it should- there!”

Gyro held up the tablet, camera turned towards the jackamoose. On the screen, certain clumps of tangled antler were marked with glowing points.

“Those are where the brain waves are being magnified.” Gyro explained as he passed the tablet to Dol.

She stared at it, open mouthed.

Gyro cleared his throat. “You’re welcome?”

“I’m not gonna be able to look at this and cut the thing’s horns.”

She looked back up at the creature, then at the group of ducks bobbing and weaving in the hailstorm of battle gear. She smiled, wide and triumphant. She pushed the tablet back into her brother's hands.

“Give that to the kids. They have dart guns.”

It took Gyro only a second to catch on to her plan. He mirrored her smile. As they both turned to face the jackamoose and their glasses flashed white in the sun.

Dol stuck two fingers in her beak and whistled. All heads turned to her. Gyro gave a small nod. She sprinted towards the jackamoose cackling madly; sword raised. With a flying leap she landed on GizmoDuck’s chestplate, then, using it as a springboard, hit the creature between the eyes with a flying kick. It scrambled backwards, surprised.

The weapons plaguing the ducks retreated back to their master. Della checked the kids for injuries. Gyro ran up to them holding the tablet.

“Listen up! No time to complain. You need to mark all the glowing areas with your darts as fast as you can. Take this.” He shoved it into Huey’s hands. “Do not break it. Or else.”

“Or you’ll kill us if that thing doesn’t?” Louie asked pointing at the jackamoose.

“Nope. I’ll set her on you.” Gyro pointed at Dol, who was deflecting and dodging the full force of the jackamoose’s armoury. She flipped and spun with an exhilarated, crazed look on her face.

“I’m gonna skin you alive and wear the skin like a Halloween mask!” She shrieked as a gilded dagger skimmed her cheek.

“And they called me the mad one.” Gyro grumbled as the others looked on in horror.

The kids quickly snapped out of it and ran towards the jackamoose. With Dol making a very big, loud distraction they were able to go unnoticed. Della stood beside Gyro with a proud look on her face. The kids ran around the thing, tossing the tablet to eachother and ducking under its legs, all while firing round after round of suction-tipped darts at the thing’s antlers.

“Doctor Gearloose?” Gyro turned to see Fenton dragging himself over. The wheel of the suit had been crushed into an unusable shape. “I’m sorry about the armor. I had no idea it was so strong. I-”

Gyro held up his hand. “It’s fine. For once.”

“Really?” Fenton asked.

Della leaned close and whispered something in his ear. He gasped.

“Blathering Blatherskite!” The armor clattered to the ground. “You and Dol made up?”

Gyro rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, I suppose so. Seems like trying to kill each other is an exceptional bonding exercise.”

“I coulda told ya that! Me and Donald try to kill each other all the time.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Fenton grinned. “I’m really happy for you, Gyro.”

Gyro shrugged, looking away as he smiled. “Thanks. Let’s just hope she can pull this off.”

“You don’t think she can cut it all?” Della asked.

“Oh no, she can do that.” Gyro waved his hand. “I just don’t know if she can do it without hurting the thing. She’s very….”

Dol was clinging to one of its tusks. It shook her off and then tried to trample her. She rolled away, screaming. “TRY PLAYING MIND GAMES IN THE GLUE FACTORY, B-”

“Vengeful.” Gyro finished.

The kids retreated. Huey returned the tablet to Gyro. He raised it, checking their work. They had done an exceptional job. The tangles marked on the screen bristled with darts, while a few stray projectiles marked places with less energy.

“Did we do it right?” Dewey asked.

“Let’s hope.” Gyro tucked the tablet under his arm. “Dol!”

Dol skid backwards, tearing up the grass as she went. An axe was bearing down on her, and she held her sword up in an unsteady block. Two other weapons raced for her head.

“Clear?” She screamed.

“Clear!” He answered.

There was a deafening metal crash as Dol deflected the axe. She reached into the pocket of her coat. Suddenly there was another crystalline sword in her hand. The two enemy swords were sent flying.

Dol leveled a blade at the jackamoose’s glowing eyes. “Time to get scienced, jerk!”

She pointed the other sword at the crowd. Everyone besides Gyro flinched. “Don’t try this at home.” She grinned.

The jackamoose roared. Spittle flew from its curved teeth and the weapons massed around its head were whipped into a frenzy. Dol answered with a roar of her own, a triumphant rooster’s call. She twirled her swords to hold them in reverse. The weapons flew towards her and she ran at them. Swords were redirected into the dirt, axes flung into the air, spears cut in half. A steady path was carved through the whirlwind of weapons towards its master.

“So they teach all that in kendo?” Della asked.

“Oh not at all. Dol watched a lot of movies and anime with swords in them. She started copying what they did no matter how impractical it was. Our coach hated it.” Gyro responded. “Of course, it looks like she’s also using what we learned in dance.”

Della leaned forward, mouth hanging open. “You took dance?”

Gyro’s eyes widened and he looked away.

“Gyro. Gy. You took dance?”

“You’ll get no confirmation from me, Duck.” He snapped.

Huey grabbed his mom by the scarf and pulled her down. A severed antler tip flew over her head and burrowed into the dirt. They looked to Dol, who danced around the jackamoose at a frenzied pace. Her swords were blurry fans of pink and white light, plucking blades from the air and chopping at any antlers the jackamoose dared to try and hit her with.

Gyro squawked as another, bigger antler piece flew over his head. “What your aim, Dol!”

“Get out of the splash zone, dummy!” Came the response.

Dol stabbed one of her swords into the grass. She leapt onto the raised hilt, balancing for just a moment before leaping onto the beast’s side. She climbed its matted fur as it bucked and shook. Suddenly she was in its glowing crown, hacking away at the dart-encrusted protrusions. Huge ivory prongs fell to the ground. They pulsed with blue light. The jackamoose trembled and Dol fell. She hit the ground and rolled to her feet. There was only one knotted section left, throbbing with angry light. The rest of the antlers had been cut back to its original shape, albeit with flat prongs instead of pointed ones. Though, when you had to cut with a sword you got what you got.

“Just….just one more….part….” She panted. Her leg shook under her weight.

His eyes widened as he realized the creature was still affecting her. The sting of the thrall was gone from him, but it was still clawing at the corners of Dol’s mind. She ducked her head and steadied herself. Her sword slipped in her sweat-soaked palms.

“You’ve got this, Doc!” Della yelled, pumping her fist in the air. The kids cheered alongside her.

“Awe,” Dol straightened up and smiled. “Thanks you g-”

Then she was gone. The folding table that had once held all her tools floated where she had been. It had swept her aside like a flyswatter and sent her hurtling through one of the hedgerows. Leaves fluttered to the ground, a hole ringed with broken branches the only clue to where she’d gone. Gyro and the others ran to the break and peered inside.

“Oh no,” Fenton whispered.

There was a fountain on the other side. A huge marble one with a deep bottom, tempting visitors to toss in coins. The water was frothing. Frightened zoo visitors stood around in shock watching the fountain or pointing their phones at it. A hand shot out of the water and clutched the rim. Dol’s head broke the surface with a ragged gasp. She pulled herself over the edge and tumbled to the ground. Her eyes were wild and panicked, darting back and forth as she scrubbed water from her face and clawed at her drenched clothes.

Several people screamed. A shadow fell over Gyro. He looked up and saw the jackamoose towering behind them. But this time it wasn’t focused on Gyro. It was watching Dol’s frantic movements with great interest. It raised a hoofed foot and stepped onto the other side of the hedge.

“No!” Gyro yelled.

The jackamoose barely spared him or the others a thought. They were all ringed in blue light and thrown backwards into the courtyard. Gyro looked up and found himself next to Dol’s sword, the one she had used to jump on its back. He looked back, heard the screams of scattering civilians, and scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the sword with both hands and pulled it free.

The jackamoose looked down at Dol with a satisfied air. Dol shrunk back against the fountain with her knees pulled up to her beak. Her breathing was erratic. In desperately swiping at the water dripping down her face she realized her glasses were gone, but she couldn’t muster any energy to care. The tug of the jackamoose’s thrall was blazing in her chest and setting her leg throbbing. She couldn’t stand even if she had the mind to. Then she started rising. Blue light gathered on her clothes like frost and lifted her into the air. She struggled until the jackamoose tightened its hold, freezing her in place. Floating right in front of its face, Dol trembled. A mouth full of fangs….it was too familiar. It was too close.

“No,” she stared at its teeth, “don’t you dare.”

“Hey!”

The jackamoose looked over its shoulder. Fenton and the Ducks had regrouped and were standing behind the beast. Fenton had the GizmoSuit’s severed arm over his own.

“Put the sword-wielding scientist down!” Dewey yelled.

“Or else things are gonna get ugly. And you’re already ugly.” Della threatened.

Dol floated to the right, then shot off to the left. The ducks watched in horror as she was thrown at another statue of Mr. McDuck. This one held a spear, point extended. It buried itself in the middle of Dol’s back before the statue broke under the impact. Momentum gone, she toppled to the ground.

“What’s going on?” Gyro ran up to the group holding Dol’s second sword.

They pointed wordlessly. He followed their gestures with his eyes until he saw her crumpled in a pile of broken stone.

“Dol?”

She didn’t move. He was too far away to see if she was breathing. A hand grabbed him by the arm, and he looked down to see Huey. The duckling looked up with frightened eyes. He pointed at the jackamoose, which had once again fixed its glowing gaze on them.

“What’s the plan now, Dr. Gearloose?” He asked.

He looked down at the sword in his hand. Then he looked up at the jackamoose. Then he spotted the white, slightly crushed arm of the GizmoSuit. The jackamoose took a step towards them.

“We only have one shot at this. Everyone grab on!” Gyro carefully shoved the sword through his belt.

Everyone grabbed onto the GizmoSuit arm at his instruction. Fenton pressed it against his cheek and aimed the hand at the creature’s crown of antlers. More specifically, the last knotted section. It stepped closer and closer, but Fenton waited. Gyro would give the signal. The scientist watched it unblinking. He was sweating, counting down the distance between them; trying to ignore the pastel blur in the corner of his eye.

The antlers flashed in warning, and the jackamoose raised its leg for another step. Gyro clamped a hand over top of the arm and forced its aim lower. “FIRE!”

Fenton’s arm flexed inside the metal casing. The hand was ejected, flying forward with a thick cable following behind it. It grasped the jackamoose by its front leg, the other still hoving in the air. “PULL!”

Fenton clasped his fist and the cable pulled taunt. Della and the kids held firm as the pulley met resistance. The jackamoose’s leg was pulled forward. Unbalanced, it toppled onto its side. It roared and flailed its legs, one still being held captive.

“Gyro, what now?” Della cried. The arm was jumping in their grasp, pulled by the struggling animal.

Gyro was already gone. He was running at the jackamoose at a full sprint, aiming for its head. He pulled the sword from his belt, grimacing as he felt it cut through the faux leather. He wavered once it was in his hands. He didn’t know how close to cut, if he should take off the whole thing, what he had to do at all, really. All he could think of as he raised the blade overhead was his coach’s words. Don’t hesitate. Keep your strength behind the whole swing. Keep your eyes on the target. The jackamoose screamed as he cleared the final distance. He swung downward, eyes closing before he made contact.

At first he thought he had missed. There was almost no resistance when he swung. He hadn’t stopped running either, and he must be well past the thing at this point. Opening his eyes he stopped and planted his hands on his knees. If he missed….oh, that would be so embarrassing. And possibly deadly. Surely the thing would stand up and kill them all. Sword hanging from his sweaty grip, he slowly turned around to face his fate. A bright flash of blue blinded him.

He threw up his arms, dropping the sword. The flash lasted only a moment. After it had cleared he peeked at where the jakcamoose had been. A small, vaguely rabbit looking creature stood in a circle of scorched grass. It had long, knobby legs, but just barely reached Gyro’s in height. Its mouth was full of protruding, overgrown teeth, and a pair of antlers adorned its head. One antler was noticeably shorter than the other. It looked at Gyro fearfully with big, black eyes.

“Huh.” Gyro said examining his sword. “Must have over trimmed.”

The jackamoose squealed and ran, clumsily diving under a nearby bench and hitting its antlers against the bottom. The kids cheered, Dewey and Webby holding the Gizmo arm aloft in a triumphant fist pump. Fenton ran up to Gyro, jumping joyfully.

“You did it, Dr. Gearloose! They way you ran right past it with that flawless cut-” he mimicked said cut with his arms. “The last second change of trajectory for the grapple-hand! How did you think of that?”

Gyro huffed and crossed his arms. Nothing like a bit of pride to cover up the way his hands were shaking. “Well, I figured it would see it coming. If it stopped the arm in midair then we’d be out of options. Getting it down on our level would obviously make it easier to take it out myself.”

“And….why did you do it yourself? No offense! I just mean, I’m sure one of the kids could have gotten up there with the sword. They’re surprisingly acrobatic for their age.”

“I did it because it was personal. I mean, after what it did, taking over my head! And not to mention D….” He dropped the sword and whirled around, head swiveling wildly. “Dolly!”

Della helped her sit up. Dol grimaced. She struggled to raise her head, movements stiff.

“Are you okay?” Della asked.

Dol put a hand against her back, pushing harshly. “‘M fine. Just, ugh, my back.”

“Yeah, you took a spear to the spine! I’m surprised you’re not paralyzed!”

“Got the magic coat, remember? This is the price you pay for not getting impaled.”

Della pulled back, and Dol was able to sit on her own. She stretched her neck, still hunched over. “Guess I’ll have to see a chiropractor or someth-AAAAAAAAA!”

She shrieked as Gyro appeared, wrapped his arms around her, and squeezed hard enough to elicit a sharp cracking noise. Gasping and teary-eyed, she put her arms on Gyro’s shoulders.

“H-hey, you fixed it! Look at you. When did you learn how….to….” She quieted as she took stock of the situation. “You- you hugged me. You’re hugging me. You are hugging me.”

“Yes. Dol.” Gyro snapped. “Do you have brain damage?”

“Maybe.” She replied, dazed.

“Gyro, be nice.” Della slapped his arm. “She took a statue to the back.”

Dol’s eyes watered as Gyro held her tighter.

“You are not allowed to do that again.” He said.

“Get….thrown?” Dol asked.

Gyro pulled away, holding her at arm’s length. Unshed tears beaded in his eyes.

“Yes! And not asking for help. You can’t do that anymore. And going places without telling anyone. And-”

“Gigi?”

“What?”

Dol’s eyes focused. “You called me Dolly.”

“I….” Gyro pulled his hands from her shoulders. “I’m sorry. You said-”

“You called me Dolly.” Her voice cracked as tears flowed down her cheeks. “You- you called me Dolly.” She buried her face in her hands. “It’s been….so long s-since….since you-”

“Dolly, don’t cry.” Gyro scrubbed at his eyes. “You know if you cry then-”

Dol sobbed and threw herself at Gyro, wrapping her arms around his neck. She pressed her face into his shoulder and cried harder. “I missed you s-so mu-hu-huch!”

Gyro wrapped his arms around her and sniffed. “I missed you too. I missed you a lot.”

Fenton, Della, and the kids looked on with happy smiles.

“I th-thought something might h-have happened to you.”

“To me?! Dol, you were-”

“Bring up the shark again and I’ll play jump rope with your esophagus.”

Fenton, Della, and the kid’s eyes widened.

Gyro threw back his head and laughed. “I missed your threats.”

“I missed you not taking my threats seriously!” Dol giggled wetly. She added, quietly, “I still can’t believe you missed me.”

“I did. I always did.” Gyro leaned the side of his head against hers. “I just didn’t know it.”

“How could you not miss the second best Gearloose?” Dol asked.

“I thought you said there was no way to measure our achievements equally?”

“Hey, you saved me. You get to be the better Gearloose today.”

“And you’ll hold onto the title until I earn it again?”

“Please, you know mama holds the title of best Gearloose.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

They pulled away and wiped at their eyes. Gyro stood and offered his hands to Dol. He pulled her up, then held her up as she stumbled.

“Your leg?” He asked.

“Yeah,” she grumbled.

“Did that….cell treatment work?”

“Oh yeah, it saved me from losing it. But the thing is I’m supposed to wear this brace, and I hate the brace, so I don’t wear the brace. But, if my leg gets irritated then it really starts hurting and swelling. It’s annoying.”

“Dol, you’re a doctor. You know you should be wearing the brace.”

“Oh, excuse me, Doctor GearBrain. I didn’t realize I was talking to a medical professional.”

“And here I thought that I was talking to one.”

They glared at each other. Fenton and Della looked at each other nervously. Before anyone could speak the two doubled over in laughter. Dol tottered on her good leg.

“I missed you so much.”

“I did too.” Gyro answered. “Also, I owe you this.”

He hugged her around the middle and lifted her off her feet. She squawked in surprise as he spun around in staggering circles.

“You’re gonna drop me!” She screamed between laughs. “Put me down! This is my thing! Gigiiiii!”

He set her back down, then tried to grab her as she fell, then fell with her. They collapsed in a laughing fit on the grass. One of the kids had managed to find the mangled remains of Dol’s glasses in the fountain. She took it and tossed the twisted frame over her shoulder.

“I have a million spares. And a baby brother who makes me new ones when he’s feeling nice.” She said.

Gyro rolled his eyes. “I did that back then to save money. Our mothers shouldn't have had to pay for us to see.”

Dol pouted. “And you’re going to be a bully and force me to take part in the corrupt capitalist system?”

Gyro sighed, smiling. “No. I would never.”

“And you’ll fix your beautiful sister’s camera too?”

“Fine.”

“And my phone has been acting kinda strange. Maybe-”

“I will hop on another plane, Dolly, I swear.”

Dol grinned. “I found you once. I can do it again.”

“Hey, so uh,” Della clasped her hands, phone sandwiched between her palms. “I don’t mean to interrupt the casual threats or anything, but Uncle Scrooge wants to talk to you.”

Dol struggled to her feet. Gyro stood and held her by the arm.

“He wants to know if it’s done! Ugh, tell him I’ll call him right away.”

“Actually,” Della smiled sheepishly. “He saw the whole thing. The whole thing.”

Dol’s mouth fell open and her face whitened. “How?”

Dewey shuffled his feet. “I’ve been uh….live streaming it. From my phone.”

Dol leaned closer to Gyro and whispered something. He grimaced.

“I think that joke’s a little too dark for this.”

“It’s not anything bad!” Della reassured.

“Well, I’d hope not. He can’t really fire me if I’m working for free.”

“That’s the thing. He actually wants to hire you.”

Dol blinked. She stood there silently for a moment. Then she shrieked, hands flying up to grasp at her hair. “HE WANTS TO WHAT?! Was he- was he even watching? I screwed it up so badly!”

“Technically that was my fault.” Gyro pulled at his collar.

“But you still got the job done!” Fenton added. “As long as everything ends well, that's what's important.”

“Uncle Scrooge really kinda hires anybody.” Della added.

“Anybody who causes more trouble than they’re worth, anyways.” Gyro muttered.

Dol turned to look at him. She worried the hem of her coat between her hands. Gyro raised an eyebrow.

“What?” He asked.

“I’m not going to say yes unless you’re okay with it.”

“You’re asking me for permission to accept a job?”

“I’m asking if you don’t mind if I work here with you. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. We can reconnect, but that doesn’t mean you want to see me every day.”

Gyro saw the ducks watching him intently. Della made some threatening gesture while Fenton made a face that seemed to say: “no worries, take your time.” He looked at Dol and shrugged.

“Why not? It'll be just like old times.”

“You mean it?” Dol asked, smiling widely.

“Gyro smiled back. “Yeah. I do.”

Chapter Text

Gyro and Dol stood next to each other in the elevator. She tugged at her shirt collar; adjusted her tie. Done with that, her fingers twitched as she wrung her hands. Gyro had his arms crossed behind his back. He watched her in the mirrored elevator doors. They were heading down to the lab for the first time since she’d arrived in Duckburg.

It had only been two days since the jackamoose incident. Scrooge had given Dol a week to recover while a new lab was built on one of the Bin’s lower floors. Above sea level, of course. Dol had, to Gyro’s unsurprise, refused to stay home and rest. She wanted to spend time with her brother, and more importantly, meet her definitely real nephew.

“We can come over and see you.” He’d offered during their phone call the other day.

“Are you crazy?” Dol had hissed. “You can’t just show up to Dickie’s apartment, much less with a kid. Your kid. She’ll lose her mind!”

“You’re right. Dickie is….excitable.”

“Why don’t I come over to the Bin? I could try taking a look at your lab again.”

“Dolly, I don’t think you should push yourself with the water thing. After the fountain-”

“Gyro. You’re talking like a man that wants to lose his knees.”

“I mean it, Dol. Think about your mental health. I thought you said you took a night class in psychology.”

“I did, but you must not know me very well if you think I’m gonna listen to any of it.”

“You and your pride.”

“Pot and kettle.”

“Point taken.” he’d looked around the walls of the lab, an idea striking him. “Actually, I think I know a way to make it work.”

“So you’ll let me come?” Dol asked hopefully.

“I’ll let you come.”

He’d met her at the Bin’s front door, and they’d hugged. Gyro had always been a hugger. When you were raised by a family that took shows of love and support so seriously, it came with the territory. He wasn’t against falling back into the practice, but he did have a reputation to keep. Lord forbid Della find a reason to start giving him surprise hugs again. She’d been a menace before the Spear, always sneaking up behind him.

“Keep it together, Dolmadakia.” Dol muttered to herself. She smoothed her head feathers.

Gyro cleared his throat. “So, I wanted to ask you about something.”

Dol straightened her tie again. “As long as the question does not involve the words shark, leg, or girlfriend. Because the answer to all of them is no.”

“Really? Still?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sad and single. What’s your question?”

He pushed himself up on the balls of his feet. “So. You had a priceless crystalized bone and turned it into a pair of swords?”

Dol snorted. “Don’t sound so disappointed. I actually had two ribs. I couldn’t get out with just the one, so I got another and had to-” she made a bizarre scissoring motion. “You know, like salad tongs.”

“I have never seen anyone do that with salad tongs.”

“I’ll have to tell you about that wild fundraiser I went to, then.”

“....So why swords?”

“Thought it would look cool. They were already in the shape for it anyway. And the crystals absorb most kinds of energy including magic. Considering what I work with, it's a pretty useful tool.”

“How did you make the blades retractable? They’re longer than the hilts.”

“I know a guy who worked in wormhole science who owed me a favor.”

“Of course.”

“He got me back by modeling the hilts after shark tails. The jerk.”

In the mirrored elevator door he saw her staring at him.

“What?”

She smiled. “I think I actually do like your hair.”

He rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to suck up to me, Dol.”

“No, I mean it! It looks nice.”

He examined it in the door and ran a hand through the feathers. “Well, thank you.”

“You know, I think if you tied it back like mom does it would look just like hers.”

“Are you saying that I have mom’s haircut?”

“Yeah!”

“I do not!”

“You do!”

“No I do not!”

“Okay, then let’s push it back and see.” Dol reached for his head.

Gyro slapped her hands away. “Hair’s off limits.”

“Come on,” she grinned, “just let me-”

Gyro turned his back to her. He squawked as she wrapped an arm around his neck and reached for his hair with the other. He doubled over, trying to break her grip. Instead she held on, draped across his back.

“Get off me, you horrible woman!”

“Just let me see! You know I’m right!”

“Get off!”

“Never!”

"Off!"

"Never!"

"OFF!"

"NEVER!"

“Uhhhh.”

The elevator doors had opened without their notice. Fenton stood just inside the lab, watching them. Gyro quickly stood up, Dol sliding off his back. They looked away from each other as they fussed with their hair and straightened their clothes. Just as Gyro turned to face them, Dol’s hand was on his forehead and slicking back his hair.

“DOL!” He slapped her hand away.

She smirked. “I was riiiiight.”

He fussed his bangs back into place. “Get out before I throw you out.”

She laughed, stepped towards the open door, then stopped. Her smile slipped. Slowly she poked her head into the lab and looked around. The windows were all covered in thick metal shutters blocking out all view of the ocean floor outside. Dol stepped fully into the lab, drawing a shaky breath.

Gyro followed her out of the elevator. “So, how is it?”

“It’s….not so bad. Now that I can’t see it, that is. If I just don’t think about it then….I should be okay.”

“Well, then, let’s get you distracted!” Fenton said. “Dr. Gearloose has something set up for you.”

“Reeeeally?” Dol shot Gyro a suspicious look.

“What’s that for?” He asked, stepping into the lab.

“Nothing. Just that your surprises always seem to happen when I’m in no position to say no.” She leaned towards Fenton. “This doesn’t include any kind of simulation game, does it?”

“What?” Fenton asked.

“Dol, that was one time!” He cried.

“One time too many!” She shot back.

The duck smiled nervously. “No, nothing like….that. Dr. Gearloose was actually going to upload all of the videos on your computer to a digital storage space. If you’d like, that is.”

Dol clapped her hands and smiled. “Oh my gosh, yes! I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that for years, but I am the worst with computers. They hate me more than….more than….” she tapped her beak. “I can’t think of a good punchline. Wait, how did Gyro get my computer?”

“I grabbed it from your lab before the construction started.” Gyro said, quickly moving past her. “You really should lock your doors.”

Dol hummed and put her hands on her hips. “Still a dirty snoop, I see.”

“You’re welcome.” He called over his shoulder.

~/~/~

“So then, Gyro had the bright idea to make a dating simulator with a sentient AI.”

“Really?”

“It was one time! I needed to practice and perfect the sentience code.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

“You know, I seem to remember someone who wasn’t me bringing up the idea in the first place.”

Dol cleared her throat. “Ha. Wonder who that was.”

“So, did it work?” Fenton asked.

“Too well.” Dol answered. “The AI escaped the game and started leaving me love notes in my school essays. I did get an A in English though. It was really good at writing love poems.”

“Well that’s….cute?” Fenton said.

“Most of our appliances ended up sentient after Gyro perfected the sentience code. Our microwave hated him, but it really liked our moms. Most of them did.”

“I think they were just smart enough not to test them.” Gyro said without looking up.

He sat at one of the lab’s many terminals. Dol’s battered laptop was plugged into it, Dol seated in front of it in a borrowed swivel chair. The terminal’s huge holographic screen showed a mosaic of video files. He opened one and nudged Dol to look at the preview.

“Oh yeah, keep that one.”

Gyro nodded and added it to the cloud. “Do you really need all these?”

“I have a lot of good memories stored in there. We haven’t even gotten to my home movies folder yet!”

“Home movies?” Fenton asked. He stood by the top of the stairs, every so often looking down towards the elevator.

Della and the kids would be coming soon, and Boyd would be with them. She’d agreed to pick up Boyd from his Junior Woodchuck meeting when she went to get Huey. Then they’d all come to the lab for lunch.

“Mmhmm! I did a lot of filming as a kid. Gyro and I would do these fake commercials for his inventions while I tested them.”

Gyro ducked his head, blushing.

“That sounds adorable!”

“They are!” Dol clapped her hands. “Oh, we gotta watch one now.”

“No we do not! We need to finish this folder before we move to another.” Gyro pointed to another video thumbnail. Dol shook her head and he deleted it.

“Oh,” she said slyly. “You wanna watch them with Boyd and Della, don’t you. That’s so sweet.”

He turned to her with wide eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Mmm, maybe I wouldn’t. If we watch one now maybe I could get it out of my system?”

They stared at each other for a moment. Gyro glared. Dol smiled deviously. Eventually he sighed and hung his head.

“Fine. Pick one. One. And be quick.”

She exclaimed happily and leaned forward to give him a quick hug. Gyro looked away, but he was smiling all the same. She released him and turned to her computer cracking her knuckles. With her beak nearly touching the dark screen Dol scrolled through a stuffed folder before finally settling on a video.

“Toaster heat ray.” She said triumphantly. “It’s an absolute classic.”

“You just want to watch the aftermath.” Gyro said.

“Maaaaaybeeeeee. Fenton, come see!”

“Are you sure?” He glanced at Gyro. “I would hate to intrude on a family moment.”

“She’s only playing it to show someone.” Gyro snapped. “Hurry up and come over here before the others show up.”

Fenton trotted over and Dol started the video. There was a long shot of the ground as whoever was carrying the camera kept it pointed down. Two feet bobbed in and out of view, clad in oversized shoes. The hardwood gave way to a grassy lawn, and the camera was raised. A young chicken wearing a very familiar hat was crouched in the grass.

“I got the camera, Gigi!”

The chick - Gyro - turned around and smiled wide. “Great!” He stood and tilted his head. “Wait, why are you filming?”

“Awwe!” Fenton couldn’t help himself. “Dr. Gearloose, you’re adorable.”

Gyro groaned and Dol giggled.

“You have to start filming early otherwise the actors get all weird when it turns on.”

Young Gyro crossed his arms. “Is that a real fact or something you came up with?”

“It’ll be a fact when I become a doctor. Everything they say is a fact.” Replied the camera wielder, who Fenton assumed was a young Dolmadakia.

The camera was mounted on a tripod and his hunch was proven right. Young Dol tightened her scrunchy, a worn piece of fabric trying desperately to hold back a huge mane of feathers. Gyro wore his hair loose, the curly strands hanging in tangles around his face.

“Dolly, that’s not true either.”

“Well it will be when I’m a doctor.”

“Dolly-”

She turned her back on the camera to face her brother. “So! What are we testing again?”

The next portion of the video was several minutes of Gyro instructing Dol and how to hold his makeshift invention. To Fenton, it looked like a toaster duck taped to the handle of a tennis racket. Knowing Gyro, it was probably more impressive in its execution than its design.

“It wasn’t a bad idea.” Gyro mumbled to himself. He watched his younger self with a strange look on his face.

“No it wasn’t.” Dol agreed. “The explosion was a bit much though.”

“Well, I didn’t plan on it doing that.”

“Sure you didn’t.”

She skipped forward and restarted the video. The two chicks had finally started the recording in earnest. Gyro turned his head, face turning red. His younger self stepped into frame with an exaggerated, easy-going swagger. Fenton found himself snickering along with Dol. The chick stopped and turned to face the camera, clearing his throat and tucking his arms behind his back.

“Greetings, Duckburg.” He said formally. “My name is Gyro Gearloose, the greatest mind in Duck-”

There was frantic whispering from off screen, Gyro leaned towards it, then nodded.

“Sorry about that, folks. Important science news.”

Gyro hunched over in his seat, embarrassed.

“As I was saying, my name is Gyro Gearloose and I am the greatest mind….of all time!”

“There’s that big head of yours showing.” Dol whispered.

“Dol,” Gyro shot her a look, face bright red. “I will strangle you with that pathetic tie.”

“Not before I’ve pulled your vocal cords out of your mouth you won’t.” She replied without looking away from the screen, a big smile on her face.

On the video, little Gyro had continued his presentation.

“Everyone loves popcorn, but warming it up in a microwave is so slow. It’s boring, too. That’s why I have concocted a brand new way to warm up your food that’s both fast and fun. Introducing the Gearloose Heat Ray!”

He flourished his hands and Dol came running on screen. She hefted the duct-tape encrusted invention onto her shoulder. A bike helmet had been shoved onto her unruly hair.

“The Gearloose Heat Ra-” Gyro was interrupted as Dol cleared her throat. “Ugh, sorry. This is my assistant-” another angry cough- “UGH! My lovely assistant, Dolmadakia Gearloose.”

“Thank you so much.” Dol shot back. She replaced her grimace with a grin and curtseyed to the camera.

Gyro - both of them - rolled their eyes. The one on screen ran up to the camera and turned it. A small pillow fort slid into view. Dol scooted back into frame as her brother started talking again.

“Dolly- I mean, Dolmadakia will be testing my invention on this bag of popcorn.” He pointed to the ground where a flat bag lay, rustling in the breeze. “I will be taking cover over there. This is a normal safety precaution and not because I think it will explode.” He pointed to the fort, then ran and dove behind it.

“Whenever you’re ready, Dolly!” Came a muffled shout.

The chick nodded and put on a pair of sunglasses. She aimed the toaster at the bag, crouched, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, save the bag tumbling end over end from a stronger breeze. Dol looked at the machine dubiously.

“Gigi-”

“It’s Gyro! We’re recording!” Answered the hat just visible above the pillow fortress.

“Whatever! The thing isn’t work-”

The screen turned white, making the chickens and duck shield their eyes. The light resided after a second. The heat ray lay in the grass, and Dol’s helmet was ablaze. Gyro vaulted over his protective barrier with a fire extinguisher under one arm. He fired it at his sister, smothering her in white foam as she stood there, dazed.

“That stuff’s super toxic. Don’t breathe it.” Dol said, leaning towards Fenton.

“Did you breathe any?” He asked.

“Oh, a ton.” She answered.

On screen her younger self hacked and coughed, batting away the foam with her hands. Gyro dropped the extinguisher and wrung his hands frantically. Dol grabbed the helmet and wretched it off her head, exclaiming as the melted plastic ripped wads of feathers from her head.

“My hair!” She cried.

“My heat ray!” Cried her brother.

Dol slowly turned her head to look at him, eyes narrowing, before lunging and knocking him to the ground. The camera was knocked over just in time to show the front door flying open. Nikola Gearloose stepped onto the lawn and gasped, the sounds of her children scuffling offscreen. She turned around and yelled into the house.

“Hana! The children are fighting again! Which one do you think is gonna win? I think Gyro could really pull through this time!”

“Niki stop!” Hana appeared in the doorway. “Help me pull them apart.”

They ran forward, someone collided with the downed camera, and the screen blackened. It returned a moment later. Now the scene was inside a dim kitchen. Gyro and Dol sat on chairs, arms crossed and faces pointing away from each other. Their mothers stood offscreen.

"We cannot have any more explosions in the yard! Do you know how expensive it is to have the fire department down here every week?"

"They won't accept free tune ups on the fire truck as payment for much longer, kiddos. Maybe it's time you started experimenting with do-dads that don't require fire power, Chickpea."

Gyro stiffened at the old nickname, while his younger self hung his head. He'd never been able to stay angry with his mother and her sweet Southernisms.

"Yes, mama." The chick answered.

"And you, young lady." Said the other mother. "Cannot keep attacking your brother when inventions go wrong. If you agree to test them, you will suffer the consequences. Perhaps it's time you stop throwing yourself into these situations, hmm?"

"But mom," little Dol argued, "He's gonna blow himself up if he tries 'em himself!"

"Then maybe no one should be testing them."

"No!" Both chicks cried.

"Fine! I won't punch him anymore! Don't make Gyro stop inventing!"

"And I'll try and make 'em less dangerous! So Dolly won't get hurt!"

"Awe, you two do care about each other."

"Somebody has to care about him." Dol snickered.

Gyro glared, pushing wads of matted curls out of his eyes. "Hey! That's not nice! Apologize to me right now."

"Apologize to my hair then!" Dol retorted.

"Never!"

Dol threw herself at him, knocking them both to the ground. Scuffling and screaming could be heard offscreen. Something nudged the table, setting the camera wobbling.

"Ugh, Niki, why are they like this?"

There was a short pause.

"And if you say pecking order one more time-!"

The camera toppled over and the video ended.

Fenton looked over and was surprised to see Gyro snickering along with Dol.

"You were always so stuck up about your hair." He chuckled.

"And you were always so infuriating stubborn."

"As if you weren't!"

"Oh I have no idea what you mean!"

They threw their heads back, cackling madly. Fenton smiled. When he heard the chime of the elevator it only grew.

"Guess who brought the par-tay!" Della's voice echoed off the walls.

Dol, startled, set about straightening her clothes and checking her hair. Gyro rolled his eyes. Then his eyes widened at the sound of Boyd's rockets. Boyd himself appeared seconds later, having forgone the stairs and flying right up onto the elevated second floor of the lab.

"Hi Doctor Gearloose!" He said with a wave. His Junior Woodchuck uniform had been exchanged for his usual shirt, pants, and bow tie.

"Hello, Boyd." Gyro glanced nervously at Dol. "How was the meeting?"

But Boyd hadn't heard him. Well, he probably had, but answering the question had been labeled a secondary objective once his big blue eyes landed on Dol.

"Doctor Gearloose," He gasped, "Is that the doctor from Dewey Dewnight? Is that my aunt?"

Dol stood up. Gyro stood up with her. He honestly had no idea how she would react to seeing him again. Sure, she had played a small part in creating him, but the last time she had seen him was in news footage. Footage of him burning down the city.

Dol crouched. She looked Boyd up and down. Della and the kids lingered on the stairs, watching. Louie was eating popcorn.

"Are…you my aunt Dolmadakia?"

Dol raised her hand. "You don't call me that. You never have to call me that."

Boyd's face fell.

"Family calls me Dolly."

Boyd's face lit up. Dol opened her arms and he dutifully ran forward for a hug.

"Oh, look at you!" She said when he pulled away. "Absolutely anatomically accurate! I did such a good job."

Gyro cleared his throat.

"Yes, and you did help. Thank you, Gyro."

He glared and she laughed. "I'm just kidding and you know it!"

"I love your hair." Boyd said.

Dol gasped, grasping at her heart. "Oh! Thank you! Oh my gosh, you are now my favorite nephew."

"Am I your only nephew?"

"What on Earth would that have to do with anything?"

Boyd giggled.

"Oh, I know Newton would just love you."

"Who's Newton?"

Dol stood up slowly. When she turned to Gyro she smiled, but her hand was pulling at her headfeathers. "He's…he's um…he's your nephew, Gyro."

The Duck family "ooohed" from the stairwell while Fenton gasped. Gyro stared, dumbfounded.

After a long moment he found his voice. "My nephew?"

"Yeah," Dol said, nervously.

"That makes him your son." He said.

"That's correct."

"Your…you have a son."

"Yeah."

He exclaimed and threw up his hands, making the others jump. Dol's face settled into a look of expectant chagrin.

"YOU HAD A SON? WITH WHO? WHEN? HOW? WHY?" He cried.

"You're gonna give yourself an aneurysm." Dol answered.

"DOL!"

"Gyro, he's adopted."

Gyro quieted while he processed the new information, before jumping back into his rant.

"WHY WOULD YOU ADOPT?"

"Gyro," she said calmly, even as her eye twitched. "That is a long story."

"And suddenly you don't feel like spinning a yarn?" He demanded, crossing his arms.

"All I can say is that Newton was the happy ending to a long series of extremely unfortunate events."

Gyro fidgeted. He looked around at the others' expectant gazes and blushed. "I'm sorry. For…"

"Exploding?" Dol grinned.

Gyro grunted. "It's just…you know. You're-" He gestured at Dol, and vaguely at Della. "And to have an egg requires…you know."

"Gyro, I passed middle school biology."

"I am aware!" He snapped. He pushed up his glasses and rubbed at his face.

"Can I see what my cousin looks like?" Boyd asked.

"Yeah! Let me see what kinda little guy you've got." Della said, finally leaving the stairs with the kids close behind.

Dol fished her phone out of her pocket and excitedly swiped through her photos.

"Here he is! My little angel."

Gyro leaned over the ducks to see. Newton was a Silkie chick. Short, maybe only as high as his own knees, and covered in pale, blonde feathers. They topped his head in a thick mop, with only a pair of black glasses to show that he even had eyes underneath. A white and red cane was in his hand.

Gyro looked at Dol. "Is he-?"

"Blind?" She finished. "Yeah, he is. But he's also a little genius. He's built so many things into that cane I have to take it away almost every day."

"You take it away?!" They all exclaimed.

"Only that one! I have a closet full of non-technified canes. But every time I give him a normal one he's built a propeller or flamethrower into it by the next hour. I got him a bike for his birthday and he built rocket thrusters into the pedals."

"It sounds like he takes after you, Dr. Gearloose." Fenton said, giving him a smile.

"Tragic, isn't it?" Dol joked.

"Can I meet him one day?" Boyd asked.

"Of course you can! He's in Tokyolk with his grandmas looking after him for me right now. But one day, we can go see him. Or maybe he can come see you."

"And I can meet my grandmas too?" He asked.

Dol looked at Gyro. Boyd looked back and forth between them, expectantly. Gyro scratched the back of his neck.

"One day." He agreed. "One day."

He and Dol smiled at each other. Gyro cleared his throat, dispersing the heartwarming moment.

"Well, I can at least appreciate the naming convention you used for him." He said.

Dol tilted her head questioningly.

"Isaac Newton? The father of modern physics? One of the greatest scientists of all time? That's what he's named after, yes?"

Dol's eyes widened and she smiled. She smiled nervously, and just a bit too widely.

"Oh yeaaaaaah. Yeah. Yeah that's it. Mmmhmm. Isaac Newton."

Gyro stared at her. "Dol. You didn't."

"Didn't whaaat?" Her eyes darted around the lab.

"You did not name my nephew after fig newtons."

Dol laughed and tugged at her necktie.

"Why would you-! Ugh! Why is it always food with you, Dol?"

"Okay I know what you're talking about and you know it was a misunderstanding!"

"Oooh! More Gearloose family drama?" Della asked.

"She thought-" Gyro pointed accusing at his sister- "that my name was referring to the Greek food!"

"Wait, it's not?" Della gasped.

"Gyroscope! I'm named after a gyroscope, people!"

"Dude, that's a terrible name." Dewey grimaced.

"My full name is not Gyroscope! It's just Gyro, which is where the confusion happened."

"Why didn't your parents just tell you the truth?" Louie asked.

Dol and Gyro looked at eachother. Dol tilted her head towards the ducks. Gyro, with a momentary hesitation, sighed.

"My parents did not name me Gyro, I chose the name for myself." He glared at Dol. "And I wrote it down in my diary before I told anyone."

"And I would, always, look through his diary." She said, sheepishly. "Darndest thing is they're both spelled the same! So when I chose my name I decided I would also have a Greek food name, and that's why I'm Dalmadakia."

"Wack." Louie said.

"Wack indeed." Dol grinned.

"You can just change your name?" Dewey exclaimed. "Do you know how many possibilities you just opened for me?!

"You have to wait seven years afterwards to change it again." Della said.

Dewey groaned, slapping his hands over his face. "Not fair! That’s too much commitment!"

~/~/~

Dol got back to the apartment late that night. After the get-together at the lab she'd gone out for dinner with everyone. It was nice. It had been so nice.

She tiptoed past Dickey, who had fallen asleep on the couch with a banjo cradled in her arms. Dol threw a blanket over her before heading to her own room. She wasn't tired at all. Too many good things had happened and a happy, fuzzy feeling thrummed under her feathers.

She stepped over the guitars, around the drum set, and crouched next to the bed. Her suitcase, still bursting at the seams, was half shoved underneath it. Better start unpacking now, while there was nothing to distract herself with.

As she began folding clothes she considered opening the new camera Gyro had thrown together for her. He’d put it together during dinner, much to the chagrin of the ducks. Dol’d actually welcomed it. It was familiar - nostalgic even - to have him tinkering nearby while she ate.

And she’d have her own lab! No more working out of her bedroom. Or saving up for flights to throw herself at sharks or volcanoes. No more-

She froze.

It was at the bottom of her suitcase. At first she wondered why she had bothered to pack it, but she never felt comfortable leaving it at home. Leaving it near Newton. Honestly…she should have burned it by now. She should burn it right now.

But…

She shoved it back inside and slammed the lid shut. Pushing the suitcase back under the bed with her foot she threw herself on top of the covers. “Don’t think about it right now,” she told herself. Dol took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. It was only an old lab coat.

But the emblem monogrammed on its lapel - the taloned claw reaching for the globe - stayed fresh in her mind until she finally fell asleep.