An adult Louie and June chapter, inspired by the gen-swap AU. I got permission to use the AU for this story. It's more of a highlight reel than a full-on chapter.

If this is too June-focused it's because I'm not writing her into the whole thing; just June-centric parts. Okay? Okay. Let's go.

"You've got this, LP."

Launchpad nodded at Della, Fenton still sticking notes to the windshield. A faint humming caught the girl's attention and she turned to see B.U.D.D.Y driving up. Mark Beaks got out of the car, along with a female duck that she didn't know. The woman was glaring at Mark and based on the look on her face he'd clearly ticked her off somehow. He was nonchalant and indifferent to her anger, however, instead choosing to continue to tap at his phone. The woman pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.

"Mark. Do not do this," she admonished him. "I'm telling you, he's not ready."

"Listen, I know he's ready. Your job is to make sure the car's ready. That's why I hired you, honey."

"I have a name."

"I know. But you're sweet like honey, so I'll call you that."

The woman grit her teeth and Della silently wished she'd haul off and punch him. But professionalism won out and she tucked a loose strand of hair back into her purple baseball cap before opening the hood to double-check everything. Her purple coveralls were unzipped to the waist with the sleeves wrapped around like a belt. Clearly she was some kind of mechanic.

"Grease monkeys, am I right?" Mark chuckled quietly to Fenton. "She has no respect for sophisticated tech."

"Ma'am, are you sure you can—" Fenton started, but she glared at him.

"I've been working on this car since it was created. I know it better than you, okay?" B.U.D.D.Y looked at her and she smiled. "You just do your best. I'll be waiting here when you're done."

"I like her," Della stated bluntly.

The woman shut the hood and nodded to Mark.

"Car's in perfect shape."

"Great job, honey. I'll be sure to let Mr. McDuck know that you're my primary mechanic once this deal goes through."

The woman walked over to the side, leaning against one of the lampposts next to Della. Mark stepped into the street, ready to start the race. And it went as expected—B.U.D.D.Y won due to the fact that he wasn't able to crash. Gyro showed up and revealed the truth of why B.U.D.D.Y was so sophisticated. Everyone but Fenton and Launchpad loaded into the car.

"So, how did you circumvent the morality circuits?" Gyro asked Mark.

"What?"

"You know, stop it from turning evil?"

"I'm sorry, what?!" the mechanic snapped.

"Honey, let me handle this. I just made them look less dorky. They're just dumb robots, right?"

"B.U.D.D.Y, he didn't meant it!" The woman tried to get out of her seat but was strapped in. "Oh, no—calm him down, please!"

"You try!" Gyro insisted, trying to do the same as her. They were all trapped as the car sped around without abandon.

"Honey, what's going on?!" yelped Mark in terror. She didn't answer as she managed to get to her pocketknife. She used it to cut her seatbelts as Della honked the horn to get Launchpad's attention.

The next thing they knew, Della was leaning out the window to grab Launchpad's hand and the mechanic had her hands gripping Della's feet so she wouldn't fall. As the car hit a bump and lurched the two were launched into the air. Before they hit the ground, however, they were caught by somebody new.

"I gotcha!" announced the duck in the robot armor. He set them both into the limo as he headed after B.U.D.D.Y.

From there it was a race to get to safety, the robot armor crashing into the limo to reveal the pilot was Fenton. In the end they were saved by Launchpad crashing and the mechanic fell out of the limo as soon as it was set back down on the ground. Della helped her up, then watched as she marched up to Mark Beaks.

"Mr. Beaks."

"Yes, honey?"

"I quit. Effective immediately."

"Yeah, sure, whatever. I have bigger fish to fry than you. Feel free to call me, though!"

From there they gave the woman a ride back to Duckburg, where she hopped out of the limo upon their arrival at the Bin. Scrooge congratulated Launchpad on his driver's license and Della turned to the woman with a smile.

"Thanks for trying to save me back there."

"Hey, I'm not the type of person to let a kid fall to her death from a speeding car. That type should be shot."

"DELLA!"

Huey came running out of the elevator, Donald and Louie hot on his tail as he swept his niece up in a hug.

"Uncle Scrooge just told me what happened. Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay, Uncle Huey."

"Glad you're fine," Louie told her with a sigh of relief. "The limo, on the other hand… I don't think we can salvage it."

"You'd be surprised," the mechanic chuckled. Huey and Louie looked up at her. "I was the mechanic in charge of B.U.D.D.Y. I just quit, so if you need someone to take a look at it I'll do it for free."

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Huey asked.

"She saved me from falling out of the car!" Della chirped.

"You mean it? You'll fix this hunk of junk for free?" Louie inquired.

"Hey, the least I can do for old friends."

Louie narrowed his eyes, then they popped open in shock.

"Holy—June?!"

"Nice to see you too, Lionheart." He shook his head and chuckled a little. Huey, on the other hand, lit up and swept the long-haired woman into a hug.

"I can't believe it—you're back in Duckburg!"

"For a couple years now! Put me down, please!"

He set her down and she let out a breath.

"Great googly moogly, that's a welcome."

"Uh, Uncle Huey, who's she?" Donald spoke up.

"Oh. Donald, Della, this is June Duck. She was a friend of ours when we were your age." He smiled. "You're a real mechanic now, huh?"

"She finally upgraded from skates to cars," Louie joked.

"Hey. Is that any way to treat the person who's going to fix your car? For free?"

"Fair enough, fair enough."

"Anyway, I'll ride with Launchpad back to my garage. I suppose this is goodbye for now. It was nice to see you both again." There was a sadness in her tone, Della noted, as if someone was missing. And she supposed someone was—Dewey. If she'd been friends with Huey and Louie then she'd had to have known her father, right?

That night, Della went to talk to Huey as he folded laundry.

"Uncle Huey, were you and Uncle Louie really close with June?"

"Louie was honestly closer to her than I was. Believe it or not, she's part of a set of triplets, too. She was the youngest, which is what they initially bonded over."

"Really?"

"Yeah. She was always fiddling with a special pair of rollerblades she'd made herself. It's not a surprise that she wound up becoming a mechanic."

"You should've seen her when she was talking to Mark Beaks. I'm surprised she didn't punch him. He kept calling her honey like she was his girlfriend or something."

"Ooh, boy. Having a crush on June doesn't usually end well."

"Did you—"

"No. Louie did."

An empty can almost hit Huey in the head.

"Don't air my non-existent love-life to our niece," the triplet in green grumbled, entering the room.

"You spent a month not talking to her when you figured it out and turned the color of my hat every time she stood too close to you or had some kind of physical contact."

"Aw…" Della cooed. "She's really pretty, too."

"No. Dells, I haven't seen her in twenty years. We're both different people now."

"Boo. I was hoping to get an aunt out of this."

"Sorry, kiddo," sighed Huey.

"I guess I'll just settle for her being my aunt the way Uncle Gladstone is my uncle."

"Maybe you should ask her before you decide that."

Della nodded and ran off, Louie narrowing his eyes at Huey as she left.

"What? It's not like you and June ever went anywhere. It was your first crush, plain and simple. She'll fix the limo and then we'll probably speak to her minimally from that point onward."

Huey was wrong.

Largely thanks to Della's puppy-dog eyes and how well she'd fixed the limo, June was brought on as a mechanic to fix cars when Launchpad crashed them. It gave her plenty to do and thanks to her newfound reputation as Scrooge McDuck's mechanic she was given enough business to finally hire some hands down at her main garage. Up until that point it had been just her managing and working on all vehicles that drove through her doors. And that meant she had a lot more time to spend with the family. Della already called her Aunt June and it wasn't long before Donald followed suit.

To make it even more awkward, the kids would ask June so many questions about when their uncles were kids and she would answer them without fail. She didn't talk about Dewey at the request of Louie and Huey (though they did get a lecture from her initially about how the kids deserved to know their parents) but everything else about them as kids was fair game. To Webby and Della, she was a window into the past who hadn't been part of the fallout a decade earlier. Donald just liked having another adult around to handle his sister if she went too far.

Probably the biggest change, however, came with Louie.

He'd thought that he'd shaken his crush on her from when they were kids. He really did. But as it turned out, his childhood crush had turned into an adulthood one as they interacted more and more. It didn't help matters that she'd gone from cute girl to pretty adult, or that she'd retained her upbeat attitude unless she was dealing with Mark Beaks which he honestly didn't blame her for. He found it difficult to be civil around the Waddle CEO too. And she'd been hired by the jerk, so she had spent even more time with him.

Maybe that was why he felt protective of her. She was fully capable of taking care of herself but he wanted to make sure she was safe in any situation. Not to mention that when the family broke apart again she'd stayed by his side to make sure he was okay. After all he no longer had Huey or Beakley or the kids, and Scrooge was no help. June made sure he didn't fall apart like the old man. There was also something oddly enticing about her fighting the Gizmoduck armor with nothing but a wrench.

And now that everything was out in open he felt oddly at peace. You know, as much as he could running one of the biggest companies in the world while his family went on adventures. But even when they were out overnight he had June to keep him company and drive him to work if he was exhausted from a night of work. She was his girlfriend in everything but name and physical affection. He never mentioned it to anyone—to Scrooge, the kids, Huey, Dewey when he came back, and especially not to her because that would mean he could wreck everything in just a few words.

"You ever think about when we were kids?"

Louie looked up from his phone at June, who was driving. Rain slapped against the windows as they wove through traffic. He could see how it could make someone feel a little nostalgic.

"Yeah. A lot. Things were simpler," he sighed.

"A lot simpler. Back then I went on adventures with you guys all the time and there wasn't so much baggage. Being an adult sucks."

"Especially when you have responsibility quicker than you expected."

"Or you're left alone."

"What about your sisters?"

"Once we reached high school, April and May kinda found their own groups. Most of the people in my shop class were guys so they thought I didn't deserve to be there in the first place."

"I'm sorry—you're the girl who engineered a pair of convertible roller skates in your sneakers when you were ten. How do you not deserve to be there?"

"Because I was a girl intruding in their special club. Shop teacher wasn't much help either."

"Hey, look at you now. You're running a successful garage and working for the richest duck in the world. If those chumps could see you now they'd be wishing they had backed you up somehow."

She laughed a little before gasping and slamming on the brakes as someone pulled out in front of her. It was someone on an odd-looking scooter—more specifically, it was Mark Beaks. His scooter was covered by a glass bubble that protected him from the rain and his eyes met June's. Without hesitation he pulled a highly illegal maneuver in order to pull up beside her.

"Hello, honey! Haven't seen you since the B.U.D.D.Y incident!"

The light was red so she couldn't move. June was gritting her teeth and Louie narrowed his eyes at the gray parrot beside them.

"Aw, I see you're working for Louie Duck now. Or are you just giving him a ride since you don't have a job?"

"Louie, let me punch him," she request in a low voice.

"Some other day. Let's just head home. The kids will be home tomorrow."

"Right."

The light turned green and she hit the gas, launching them forward and away from Mark Beaks. It didn't take long for them to reach Killmotor Hill, where she dove into the backseat to grab her umbrella. It was then she remembered she only had one.

"You take this and I'll go park the car," she told him, holding it up.

"No, I'll ride with you and we'll walk in together."

Her cheeks turned red and he was reminded of when they were kids and he reacted the same way. He could already feel his own burning despite the chill of the rain that slapped against the windows. June started the car again and brought it into the secondary garage Scrooge had built for her to work in. She and Louie walked into the house together under her umbrella and their proximity to each other made the cold feel nonexistent.

"Looks pretty bad out here," he told her. "I don't think it's supposed to let up until tomorrow morning."

"I heard something similar."

"Where do you live again?"

"It's less than half an hour away. But I don't like driving in these conditions. It's not safe with this much water on the road."

"Well, we do have space in the mansion. If you need somewhere to spend the night."

"Are you hitting on me, Lionheart?"

"Maybe a little."

"Great googly moogly, thank goodness. I was hoping you were."

"You were hoping?"

"Yeah. I knew when we were kids that you had a crush on me."

"Okay, who told." She gave him a blank look and at the same time they said "Dewey."

"I kinda thought you were cute, too." They were walking upstairs towards one of the guest rooms. "But before I could say anything Dad moved us to New Stork City and I had to say goodbye."

"Poor timing."

"Really poor timing, yeah. And since we started talking again, I just kinda… started feeling that way again."

"Oh, so it wasn't just me."

"Nope."

"So you wanna be my girlfriend?"

"Yep."

"Cool. Well, since we're apparently alone, I can cook dinner."

"You don't have to—"

"Hey, you made lunch for us all the time when we were kids. It's my turn to pay that back."

"Okay, then. Just let me know if you need help."

The next morning, Della came through the front door with Webby and Dewey right behind her.

"I'm gonna tell Uncle Louie how much treasure we found!" she announced proudly.

She barreled her way up the stairs, only to find his room and his office unoccupied. When she did find him, she found him snuggled up with June on the couch and her eyes lit up as she began to giggle. Scrooge came up behind her and she put a finger to her lips, pointing at the couch. They'd clearly fallen asleep while watching a movie together and nobody was willing to wake them up.

"Aw," whispered Dewey. "You know, I wouldn't be mad to have June as a sister-in-law. She and Louie get on so well. They have since we were kids. Let them sleep."

June shifted slightly, her hair tickling Louie's nose. He sneezed and woke them both up, making June yelp as she fell off the couch.

"Sorry!" he gasped, reaching down to help her up. "Jeez, what time is it?"

"Almost ten o'clock," Scrooge replied with a smirk. "Pretty late for you, Louie."

The two young adults looked at their small audience and June let out a nervous chuckle.

"I'd better get going. I have interviews for a new hire… to… prep for. Bye!"

"Where you going?" Dewey laughed. "Stay for breakfast. You told me you leave interviews for the afternoon so you have plenty of time to work here."

"Dang it." Her cheeks were red with embarrassment. Louie sighed.

"Yes, June and I are together now. No, we are not answering any questions while we get used to it. Let's eat."

Della was squealing as she hugged June's leg.

"You're gonna be my aunt for real!"

"Hold on, Dells. We have a lot to sort out with this but I'm happy to be your aunt."

"Last one to the kitchen is a rotten egg!" yelled Dewey, running past her.

"HEY! NO FAIR!" June picked up speed, lifting Della onto her back.

Scrooge chuckled.

It had taken a while, but Louie and June had found each other again and found what had always been meant to be. Maybe if they hadn't been forced apart by her moving they would've been married by now with kids of their own, cousins for Donald and Della. Who really knew what the future held in store?

They'd find out together.

Sappy ending, Mark Beaks because I want to kick him in the face and break his phone, and Louie and June being super cute.

Lionheart is the nickname June has for Louie that I hope to actually implement later in this story. It's entirely because Llewellyn is said to mean 'lion-like' and I thought her calling him Lionheart is cute. I also really like the song "King and Lionheart" so give that a listen if you get a chance.

Big thank-you to ducks-gen-swap on Tumblr for letting me use your AU for my weird story. You did not have to do that and I hope I did your versions of the characters justice.

Next chapter will be the school dance that several people are excited for. I was inspired by my recent binging of The Owl House and the episode "Enchanting Grom Fright" so that tells you how it's gonna go.

So long and thanks for all the fish!