#Sabre Sharp Wit (Violet)

[muckduckgoose]

Thoughts on a Rebootverse Quack Pack

((I’ve pondered to myself on and off from time to time what a loose remake of Quack Pack set in the universe of DuckTales 2017 would be like. I don’t mean a 90s-style sit-com reality conjured by magic, but like the lives of the DT17 cast when the kids are teens, and hijinks ensuing vaguely similar to in the old 90s show, but with the setting of the reboot and personalities that are written to be the same characters from the reboot but a few years older.

This got long, so under the read-more it goes!

Like, of course, Duckburg wouldn’t be inexplicably populated by humans with only the main Duck family and a select few others being the only animals. If any human characters appear in the reboot version, they’d be anthropomorphized. Maybe Donald has a house now and is married to Daisy at this point, who has a moderately successful fashion line.

Huey, Dewey, and Louie are...I’d say, 16 around this time, and they live with Uncle Donald and Aunt Daisy in the house they got, as does Della. Donald could either be still trying to find a job that sticks or has found one by now, and Della’s probably a freelance pilot when she’s not specifically flying for Scrooge. The boys, no longer living at the mansion, would’ve been enrolled back into in-class learning, which would allow us to have the high school setting. This means less globe-trotting adventures than before, but it doesn’t mean none at all. They’re just reserved for weekends and vacation time.

Huey’s a studious...student. Hardworking straight-A student kinda guy, though not above getting into disagreements with a teacher on occasion. He’s in mostly academic-based extracurricular activities, but he’s got one sports activity to give his Duke-fueling feelings an outlet. He also works as an intern for Dr. Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, who actually does have a doctorate by this point.

Dewey’s a theater kid in pretty much all regards, including actually auditioning for school plays. He’s also officially taking flight school during the summer. He’s also fairly popular at school...when he doesn’t try to force it, as he learned from Ragnarok. He’s still an eccentric Dewer, just toned down from his childhood as he matured.

Louie, of course, is a slacker kid, coasting his way through high school. While still something of a schemer, and typically offering his services out to classmates for a sorta-reasonable-for-a-high-schooler fee, he is more mindful of how his actions could potentially hurt others after the kinds of consequences he suffered as a kid due to his failure to do so in the past.

After a fair bit of persuading towards Beakley, Webby was able to enroll in school the year her brothers did. But of course, she was even less prepared going in than they were, as they at least had the experience of elementary school before moving into McDuck Manor and meeting her. But she takes it in stride, treating the experience as a new adventure. Her being Scrooge McDuck’s daughter via genetic engineering is kept from being public knowledge, and she’s found herself more comfortable calling him Uncle Scrooge anyway. Thanks to Beakley’s thorough educating, Webby ended up in the school’s gifted program and is classmates with Violet.

Lena is...I’m not sure. If Ty and Indy hadn’t already enrolled her in school after adopting her, she probably wouldn’t be enrolled now. As for May and June, they’ve begun living with Webby as her sisters and probably picked up rhyming names so that Webby doesn’t have to go by April to match. Probably like Debbie and...I dunno, what’s another ebby-sounding girl name? They regard Daisy and Donald as their aunt and uncle.

Boyd is also a teenager. Since he probably wasn’t made from some kinda special self-growing nanotech-based metal, he would’ve had to have gotten a new body to match the growth of his naturally evolving computerized mind. He’d be in a few extracurricular activities, most of which overlapping with Huey’s, and he’d be fairly popular in his own right due to how authentically nice he is. He’d also do some volunteering outside of school. His name, in spirit, still stands for Be Only Yourself Dude, but he doesn’t write it as an acronym.

Doofus has also improved overtime, due to being forced to find other ways to get what he wants outside of flaunting his money and/or forcing his will upon others. He’s mostly an awkward young man who can seem bitter at times, but now he’s more consciously aware of how his actions affects others, because he now has to be. And yet, when you get past his defenses and make a genuine attempt at friendship with him, he’s weirdly yet sorta-genuinely sweet. His relationship with Louie, and his siblings by proxy, remains and probably will always remain awkward at best.

Over on the other side of the Audubon Bay, Launchpad is fully living with Drake and Gosalyn, the latter of whom has fully committed to the Quiverwing Quack alias, while Honker still helps both her and Darkwing in heroing from the sidelines. On the school side, his high school teachers may have noticed how overqualified Honker is for his schoolwork, despite him still not being skipped ahead, and given him more fitting work. Either that or he finally does get to skip ahead and graduates early.

Depending on how successful the heroes were in finding and rescuing Waddlemeyer, he may now live with them as the family grandpa. But either way, Drake and Gosalyn have by that point warmed up to each other enough for the former to adopt the latter. And if Waddlemeyer is back, he would have (at the very least, in spirit) taken Drake as a son for a complete family dynamic.

Most of the family enemies from the kids’ preteen years are no longer an issue (and a few of the ones that still are are now Saint Canard problems), but new enemies have come up that are dealt with on the homefront from time to time. But most of the challenges the kids face come from being back in an ordinary school kid setting. But hey, just another adventure in their lives, right?))

#Guess I was just born to be wild! (OOC) #((If any DuckTales RPers wanna take a crack at such an AU; even if they have ideas different from mine; I'd totally add it to my list)) #Smarty in Red (Huey) #Toughy in Blue (Dewey) #Sharpy in Green (Louie) #Who Gets Stuck With All The Bad Luck? (Donald) #Look To The Stars (Della) #Designer Who Wants To Be Heard (Daisy) #Making it Square in Pink (Webby) #Sabre Sharp Wit (Violet) #No More In Magica's Shadow (Lena) #Obscenely Rich and Richly Obscene (Doofus) #He's a Pilot (Launchpad) #The Terror That Flaps in the Night (Darkwing) #Baddies Quiver Before Her (Gosalyn)

[maine-writes]

Facing the God of Death

Our heroes stood atop the Great Wall, the first and last line of defense for the City of Kera, their iron gaze fixated on the horizon. They numbered only four; Sir Hardin, the stalwart paladin and defender of civilization; Mara, a beautiful elven songblade of the feywild; Leopold, a humble monk of the sun god; and Crunch-Bite, a kobold who was just lucky to count himself among them. 

Hardin’s bright blue eyes caught glimpse of what they were wating for; the shifting, shadowy form of a long-dead god. Once sealed in the form of a young girl, their enemy manipulated them into releasing it into the world. Now it sought out the Eternal Flame, the last physical manifestation of the god of civilization and only remaining link between the heavens and their realm. This was their doing, now it was up to them to undo it. 

The dark form seemed to shift and change shape, below the afterimages was a black form; human-like, but with elongated arms and a mass of writhing tentacles where the legs should be. As it came over the hill, the creature let out a horrible shriek that struck fear into the hearts of all those who heard it, save for the heroes that faced it. 

Two skeletal drakes erupted from the earth beside the dead god; unholy fires burning within their skulls, giving them life. As they spread out their wings, devoid of skin, scale, or feather, a foul stench filled the air, and the undead monstrosities took flight. 

“Remember everyone,” Hardin began, “She must not reach the Eternal Flame. Mara and I will deal with her. Leopold and Crunch-Bite, stay and take down those necro-drakes.” 

“Sure, you two be heroes again.” the kobold remarked, “Leo and I will just be here, ladling punch for the big party after all this.”

“Don’t complain.” Mara chided the little lizard as she ran her hand through her brown hair, “We’re the one’s with the holy weapons.” 

“Weapons we got you.” Crunch-Bite murmured. 

Hardin and Mara jumped down from the wall, falling from several stories high, only for their fall to be slowed by Leopold’s spell. Like feathers floating from the sky, the pair gracefully touched ground. 

Hardin’s gleaming armor beared the symbol of the god of the Eternal Flame, a golden insignia resembling a swirling fire. In his hands, he wielded a great sword, a shimmering red jewel embedded into the hilt. Mara, clad in leather and steel, carried twin blades; short sabres with black blades of unrivaled sharpness. 

As they rushed toward the shifting form, the god raised one of its arms, summoning its undead army from the earth below them. One by one, shambling corpses rose from the ground, like the skeletal drakes before them, with unholy fires burning within them. 

Bathed in golden light, the paladin struck down one of the undead, and then another. Mara, unlike her companion, seemed to dance through the crowd, their forms falling to pieces as she passed by. Although surrounded, they were not outmatched, as the horde slowly fell to their strength. 

“Remember, my friend!” Leopold said to the kobold, “Darkness must always give way to the light!” 

“By that logic, the day must always give way to the night.” Crunch-Bite said. “So yeah, it sounds poetic, but it’s a vicious cycle.” 

The priest grimaced, obviously unamused by the kobold’s deconstruction of his words. As he held his holy symbol up high, rays of golden light radiated out from it. The shining radiance then focused into a single beam, fixated on one of the drakes. A brilliant mote of light, like a flickering star in the night sky, quickly ran down the beam. As it struck the drake, the monster became engulfed in holy fire, leaving nothing but ash falling from the sky. 

“That’s it? That’s the big spell you’ve been saving?.” Crunch-Bite chuckled, popping knuckles, “Let me show you how a dragon deals with drakes.”

The little green lizard gazed up at the other undead drake in the sky, his yellow eyes brimming with determination. A pair of leathery wings erupted from his back, ripping through the cloth of his robe, and he dove from the wall before taking flight. 

As he met the skeletal beast in the sky, the little kobold surrounded himself in a cocoon of swirling fire. The conflagration quickly grew in size before being dissipated into countless flicking motes of fire, with a single dragon with bronze scales in the center of it. 

The dragon quickly grabbed hold of the necro-drake in his great claws, his fierce maw clamping down around the skull of the drake. As the skeleton went limp, the dragon spewed out the bony fragments and released his grip. He flew down to his friend, perching on the stone wall with a pleased smile on his draconic face. 

“Don’t say a word.” Leopold said before the former kobold even opened his mouth. “You wasted your dragon trasnformation on a necro-lich.”

“Worth it.” Crunch-Bite quickly answered. 

At the foot of the wall, Hardin and Mara stood amongst piles of smoldering corpses. They faced the shifting black form approachng them, struggling to catch their breaths. 

“Is that all?” Mara dared, a slight smile curling upon her lip. 

The dead god raised its arm, pointing its palm past the pair. An alien warble warped the air around them, and the wall suddenly exploded, spewing rubble in all directions. 

With not even a second to catch themselves, Crunch-Bite and Leopold toppled down with the wall, crushed beneath the debris and suffocated by the cloud of dust.

“Leo! Kobold!” Mara cried before turning to the undead god. She lunged forward, brandishing her holy weapons. 

But without so much as any visible effort, the god waved its hand, throwing Mara aside with an unseen force. Hardin, shocked with how easily the god fought off the elf, raised his great blade up high, enveloping it in golden light. As he brought the blade down, the shifting form caught it in its twisted claw, and shattered it with relative ease. 

Pain shot through Hardin as the other claw ran through his armor, rending his flesh and bone. The unknowable god drew the paladin closer, cocking its head slightly as if to mock him. 

Suddenly, the god disappeared in a flash of light, and Hardin fell to his knees. As his vision failed him and he was consumed by darkness, he peered into the fading dust cloud where there wall once stood. Lying there was the kobold, returned to his diminuative form, pointing a short length of wood in his direction. Beside him was a scroll, the runes inscribed upon it glowing an ethereal blue. 

He didn’t know what happened. He didn’t understand how. But Hardin felt that he witnessed a miracle; the world was safe, the god was gone, but to where, he did not know. Nor did he care. 

Deep in the feywild, stood a grand castle of elegant marble and shimmering gold. Motes of flickering violet and yellow floated about in the cool air, unwavered by the breeze. Elves in graceful robes of green and white tended to an orchard of ancient trees; the living history of their people. 

There was a bright flash of light, and an ominous wind swept through the orchard. A shifting form appeared amongst the trees, which began to twist and splinter in its presence. 

This was the beginning of the end. 

Another story based on a tabletop adventure! This time; Dungeons & Dragons!

#Leopold and Hardin died #Mara and Crunch-Bite lived #dungeons and dragons #kobold

[muckduckgoose]

((I’d like to say that Duckburg and Saint Canard share a Junior Woodchuck troop due to how close they are to each other, if only so that Honker in the Junior Woodchucks can be in the same troop as Huey, BOYD, and Violet.))

#Guess I was just born to be wild! (OOC) #Guess particle beam physics is more my speed. (headcanon) #Always Expect the Unexpected (Junior Woodchucks) #Smarty in Red (Huey) #Definitely Real Boy (BOYD) #Sabre Sharp Wit (Violet)