Disclaimer: I don't own DuckTales. Disney does.

This is not written like a cartoon. I also bumped the timeline back a few years. There was never any "Canberra Expo" - that's just my imagination.


Something's Happening Here

Prologue

Scrooge McDuck picked up his office phone and pressed the button for the intercom.

"Fenton, come here." Scrooge commanded as he leaned back in his leather office chair, a freshly-opened letter in hand.

Fenton Crackshell, a nerdy man with a strange taste for pastel-coloured suits, reported to his boss' desk immediately. "Yessir," he said enthusiastically, as if he were reporting to duty.

"Fenton," Scrooge told his accountant, "the president has just invited me to join him on a trip to Australia. He wants an important business leader to come with him and he wants me to demonstrate one of my prototypes for the public. Anything that involves transportation, he says."

"Why? What's it for?"

"Apparently," Scrooge said disinterestedly, "it's for Expo '82 in Canberra. Supposed to be the biggest world's fair in history. Everyone's going. It's just a publicity stunt, to show the world America's better side."

Scrooge said the word 'everyone' with more than a hint of derision. He was a man with little patience for such things. He had seen too much – the lines on his face and his white hair said it all. His business was business, not silly public relations junkets to the Land Down Under. And there would be crowds too, big crowds like nothing no one had ever seen before.

At this, Fenton giggled with delight. "I want to go to Expo," he said. "It's one of my lifelong dreams to go to a world's fair. My mother told me all about when she went in '67."

"It doesn't really interest me. Theme parks are for children."

"But your nephews would want to go."

"Yes, they would. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to go – I tell the president what to do all the time. It's only fair if I do him a favor once in a while."

"Fair..."

"Yes, Fenton. Pack your bags. We are going to Australia in two weeks. Consider it your year's vacation."

"Yessir. Thank you, sir. But what will we test?"

"I'm not sure yet. It's gotta be simple, understandable. Something the public likes. Do we have anything like that?"

"I'll check," Fenton replied. "But if not, I'll have Gyro whip something up."

"Easier said than done," Scrooge muttered to himself as Fenton left the room.

To be continued...