Authors note: I wanted to write something that put Launchpad in a position where he would have to 'adult'. I also wasn't sure how well I would write the DT17 version of Launchpad, as I'm honestly more comfortable writing say Violet and Huey, so yeah, I made it challenging for myself and he has to adult as well. Lol. I also did want to see a little bit more of Launchpad being a Woodchuck leader in the series (which, yes, I think he would be good at, in his own way.) I imagine its something he's put a lot of effort into. Its a setting where he'd have to be the one being the adult, but still being Launchpad… especially when things start to go wrong, so hopefully I have achieved that, here goes…


Launchpad gulped at the lump which had lodged in his throat. "What, what are you doing back in the Woodchucks? You…" Got kicked out. Because of me.

Mr Russell smiled and Launchpad momentarily wondered if he'd, as often happened, accidentally spoken that last part of his thought out loud. "You can't hold the mistakes of a man's past against him forever, Launchpad. The Woodchucks are pretty fair in that regard. Yeah, I'm back. But you're an adult now. You can call me Jack, you know."

Launchpad turned to face the bus. His throat felt dry. "Ah, kids. This is … Jack. He… he used to be my Junior Woodchuck leader. "

"Jack to you…" Jack waved a paw dismissively in Launchpad's direction.

Launchpad flinched back and the metal back of the driver's seat banged into his spine.

"…but that's still Mr Russell to you kids," he continued, as he turned to address the bus. "I'm afraid I'm a little old school, but don't worry," and he threw this back in Launchpad's direction. "Not as much as I used to be. And it's nothing you kids need to worry about. After all, I'm only here to assess Launchpad. He can lead you to his heart's content, without any input from me, and, well… I guess the whole point of this is to see how that pans out."

"I think you'll find our Woodchuck leader more than capable," said Violet confidently.

"Yeah, go LP!" said Huey, and the rest of the Woodchucks joined in.

Dewey was the last to pick up on the cue. His heartfelt: "Yeeeeaah LP..." carried on a good few seconds longer than the rest of the bus.

The cheers of his Woodchucks, and his best friend, broke through the swirling thoughts that clamored for attention in his head. His Woodchucks had his back. The last time he'd seen Mr Russell, sure it was something he didn't want to remember, and hadn't thought about in years, but, no, he would focus on the assessment.

Mr Russell was shorter than he remembered too. Well, of course, because he had grown! And maybe he wouldn't be so scary now he was an adult. Launchpad squared his shoulders. "Alright. Er, first we grab the gear and hike to the camping spot."

Doofus groaned loudly.

"A short hike," Launchpad clarified, and felt his chest swell as he launched into the easy familiarity of directing his Woodchucks in a task he'd instructed dozens of times. "Woodchucks, start unpacking the camping gear. Make sure you help our potential new recruits. I need to talk to… Mr Russell."

Violet and Huey shuffled everyone off, taking more care than they normally did that everyone exited in an orderly manner. Mr Russell waited until the last kid filed off. Launchpad slipped off past him, behind the kids. Somehow, he felt a little more confident facing the man who had made almost a year of his time as a Junior Woodchuck an absolute hell outside in the fresh air.

Mr Russell followed him down, and Launchpad waited until he was out before bursting out: ""Look, Mr Russell, I don't understand…" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt his beak flush. You didn't admit you didn't understand something to Mr Russell! You knew you'd get chewed out for it, and… he wasn't a kid anymore. "I don't understand why they would've picked you to assess me. Or that you would've agreed surely you don't want to see me, or…" The realisation slowly sunk into his brain. "Wait, is that why you're here? You had to resign because of me, and…"

Mr Russell held up a paw. It was hardly the gruff reprimand Launchpad remembered whenever he'd questioning him as a child, and it gave him pause. "Launchpad, I'm not here for payback. The Woodchucks won't hold my past failures against me, well, I'm not going to hold yours against you either. The last time we saw each other? That whole…. mess is not relevant. And I don't think either of us wants to think about it."

"Mess?" Launchpad said thinly. That's what he chose to call it?

"Yes, I rejoined the Woodchucks a few years ago. Heard you were still around, but I thought it best I stay out of your way. But since then I've heard there've been a number of complaints about you. Not that I find that surprising. You were always headstrong and foolhardy and you just didn't know when to quit. Everything is so damn slack these days, they practically hand badges out like candy, which I can deal with. But when it comes to the safety of the kids, that's another matter. I fully intend to give you a fair go, but I'm not giving any handouts. There's no failure badges for this one. If I don't think you can keep these kids safe, that's what I'm putting in my report. And then you're out of here."


Down at the campsite, the more senior Woodchucks had already started helping the new kids set up their tents. Violet must have begun implementing her protocols, and Launchpad didn't need to know exactly what those were to be grateful. He breathed deep the forest air, and huffed it out with a sigh of relief. The sky was clear, and he could hear the roar of the river a short distance down from the camp. "Come on, LP. Just do what you always do. Be a good Woodchuck leader! Your kids know you are, and Mr Russell will see that and…" He gulped. But just like every other time he'd had an assessor following him about, he couldn't let him be a distraction. He had to concentrate on the kids and making this trip as fun for them as possible, whatever his own fears might be.

"Hey, Launchpad," said Dewey with an enthusiastic wave. "Can you help me set up my tent?"

Launchpad frowned. Dewey knew how to set up a tent. Violet and Huey had the other kids all under control though, so he wandered over to his friend. "Sure. What do you need help wi…"

Dewey grabbed Launchpad by the collar and dragged him down to his level, then shoved a tent pole in his face. "Where does this go?" he said loudly, then dropped his voice. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah… why…"

"You went white as a sheet when Mr Russell came onto the bus. Was he that bad? I mean, I've had some pretty annoying teachers…"

"He wasn't annoying. He…" Mr Russell wandered about, hands clasped behind his back, watching the Woodchucks put up their tents. And not lifting a finger to help, which hardly surprised Launchpad. His eyes drilled into their backs as he watched every little thing they did. At least he wasn't here to judge them, and the kids were all so engrossed talking to each other and with the task they hardly seemed to notice. "He just didn't think I was a very good Woodchuck, okay? What if he doesn't think I'm a good leader either?"

"LP, look at these nerds. They know what their doing. And you taught them all of that."

"I'm not sure I had that much to do with it. I just give them an activity and they all seem to pick it up really quick. Other than that, I just make sure we bring enough food and water, and, you know, distract angry mother bears."

Dewey squeezed his shoulder. "Hey, you're good at this, LP. You'll be fine."

Launchpad smiled faintly. "Thanks. Thanks for coming too. You're right, I…" But it wasn't just the memory of how Mr Russell had treated him as a kid. It was the last time they'd seen each other… and Mr Russell had said that was the past, but that still didn't stop the memory stirring. Dewey, most of his Woodchucks actually, they would be the same age as Calvin had been. And that thought brought an ache to Launchpad's chest.

"Thanks LP, of course it goes here," Dewey screamed into his ear, and rammed the tent pole into its slot.

Mr Russel appeared at his shoulder. "Well, this one seems to get it. Most of your Woodchuck's seem to know what they're doing actually."

"Are you surprised?" Launchpad said as he got to his feet. It was getting easier to talk to his old leader like an adult, but being crouched down at kid level was not helping.

Mr Russell would've snapped at him for talking to him like that. Had, on more than one occasion, which somehow coincided with him getting stuck with the worst chores. LP couldn't be sure if it was because he'd grown up, or maybe Mr Russell had mellowed, because the old dog just raised an eyebrow. "A little." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "This one though. Not cut out for this."

Doofus Drake sat in the middle of his unfurled tent. He'd dragged it around and over his head, so only his pouting face stuck out.

Huey stalked past. "I tried showing him. He won't listen to me." He went over to help one of the other kids.

"You know he's new, right?" said Launchpad.

Mr Russel lowered his brows, that same condescending look Launchpad remembered. "Yeah, Launchpad. I know. That's why he's not wearing a uniform."

"I meant… how do you know when he's barely had a chance to try or…"

Someone let out a faint shriek, and a tent toppled over. Mr Russell folded his arms and snorted out a laugh. And just stood there.

"Maybe you could help Doofus?" One good thing had always come of having the assessor along for a trip: Launchpad didn't need to take care of up to a dozen kids all by himself. Ever since the other leaders had left they'd been unable find replacements, and it wasn't just because of how Launchpad drove the bus. No one seemed interested. And that's what made the assessments so stressful. It would suck if an assessor finally failed him, and he could no longer give back to the organisation that had helped him so much as a kid. But it would suck even more if the kids here didn't have Woodchucks at all because their branch got shut down.

At least the other assessors had slipped into leader mode themselves, and actually helped. But Mr Russell just stood there and raised an eyebrow. "Oh no. this is your show, son. Like I said, I don't give handouts."

The toppled tent righted itself as the unfortunate girl finally found her way out of the heap of canvas.

"We've got this, Launchpad," said Huey as both he and Violet and even some of the other new kids who had already got their tents up went over to help.

Launchpad gritted his teeth. Handouts. What the hell did he think his job as Woodchuck leader had been anyway?

And that just left Doofus. Launchpad went over to the boy, Mr Russell trailing behind him. He picked up a tent pole. "You know, I think you're supposed to use this to hold up the tent. Not your head."

"I want to go home!" Doofus disappeared underneath the canvas.

Mr Russell huffed. "Kids these days are just so damn soft. Even you weren't this bad. I told you he wasn't cut out for it."

"Mr Russell, will you just…"

Mr Russell squared his shoulders. "Yeah?"

Launchpad gulped. "Nothing." He poked the pole into a gap in the canvas and lifted it. Forget the assessment. Forget Mr Russell. Forget the memories he hadn't thought about in years, churning up in his gut. If he'd been here on his own, he'd be helping this kid. Because despite the attitude, he'd seen that brief moment of tears in his eyes. He wouldn't be the first kid who'd been sent by his parents when he didn't want to go and that certainly didn't mean he 'wasn't cut out for it'. Or that his parents shouldn't have sent him. He didn't need some overbearing leader, which was something Mr Russell would never understand. He just needed a friend.

"There we go," Launchpad crawled inside and propped up the canvas with the pole. "We're half done now."

Doofus glared at him from other corner of the tent. "That's not where the pole goes."

"So you do know how to build a tent?"

"It's not building! I can figure it out. But I shouldn't have to! I have… PEOPLE… to do these things for me."

"Yeah, but not always."

"What?"

"What about when you don't have people?"

"You can put the tent up for me!" Doofus folded his arms with a huff.

Launchpad winced. "Actually," he said, lowering his voice. "This is one of the new tents. I haven't figured out how to do this one yet. I was going to get Violet to show me."

Doofus' jaw dropped. "But, who's going to put up my tent? I don't want to sleep out here in the rain."

"Pft. It's not going to rain. Violet can help you."

"I…" Doofus slumped down, arms folded over his knees. "I already told her she was stinky and had weird hair; I don't think she'll help me."

"Well, at least its not going to rain?"

"I…" Doofus threw back his head. "Urgh! Give me that." He snatched back the pole, and rammed it into a corner of the tent, threading it through a canvas sleeve in the tent's side. He snatched up a second and did the same.

Launchpad watched him work. "Huh… that makes sense." He grabbed the last pole and copied what Doofus had done, shoving it into the remaining canvas sleeve. The whole tent popped out, crisp and straight and complete.

Doofus glared at him. "You said you wouldn't help!"

"I said I didn't know how to put it up yet. There you see? That was easy. " They slipped out of the tent flap.

Doofus turned back and looked at his tent. "I… built a tent?"

"Yeah. Look at that. At least now you know you can do it if you ever don't have… people."

Doofus eyed him warily. "Well, I at least hope someone is going to cook my dinner." And with that, he stalked off.

"It's not going to help him if you do it for him."

"He put half that tent up himself!"

"Because you got chummy with him? You're not going to teach these kids the skills they need in life by being their friends. They need discipline."

"Yeah, well, I've been on the receiving end of your discipline." Launchpad snorted.

Mr Russell swallowed hard. "One time, Launchpad. That was only ever one time."

It wasn't what Launchpad had been referring to. Not that one incident, but the usual bullying and the tearing strips off of the kids in front of each other, and slapping failure badges into their open hands like it was something they should have been ashamed of. Launchpad shook himself and went over to check through the food supplies. Mr Russell didn't follow him.


Dewey kept his eye on Launchpad the whole afternoon. As they set up the food, the campsite, and collected firewood, his friend was clearly becoming more and more frustrated with his so-called assessor. I mean, he had plenty reason to be. Mr Russell hovered around, making snarky comments, both at LP and about the kids to LP, and he didn't help with anything. But this was Launchpad. He liked everyone. Launchpad had simply said Mr Russell hadn't thought he'd been a good Woodchuck. But that couldn't be all of it. It all made Dewey want to grab his friend by the shirt sleeve and make him tell him exactly what the guy had done that had him so on edge. He'd tried once, but Launchpad had just smiled at him faintly, which was something at least, and then asked him to go help collect firewood. Dewey would have argued, but Mr Russell had been right there and he hadn't wanted to make Launchpad look bad.

Now, the camp was set up, the sky was darkening, and everyone had settled down to eat dinner around the campfire. Nothing bad had happened that Dewey could tell, apart from the tent falling over. Hopefully that meant, so far, Mr Russell would have nothing negative to report on.

Once the meal was finished, Launchpad stood up and pulled out a set of prompt cards. "Oookay everybody. Now because some of you are new we're going to show you some of the stuff we do as Woodchucks. Then, if you want, we can talk about you becoming one too, if you're interested."

Russell snorted. "Or are capable."

Launchpad shot a glare behind him and a prompt card fluttered into the fire. "Er. Where was I?"

"Maybe you can tell our new recruits what we're doing tomorrow?" Huey suggested.

"Um, right," Launchpad shuffled his cards, then shook his head and shoved them back into this sash. "Well, the swimming hole is only a little way upstream. So, in the morning we're going to hike up there. Assuming the weather holds, we'll be doing some swimming. And the…"

"Do you even have your swimming badge yet?" Mr Russell said.

Launchpad flinched and clutched a hand to his sash.

Dewey couldn't tell if he'd covered a blank spot or not, but there were a hell of a lot of badges, spread all across Launchpad's broad chest. So, of course there was a swimming badge. I mean, everyone know how to swim, right? It was time to Dew what he'd come here for. "Launchpad knows how to swim!"

"I wasn't talking to you, boy," Russel snapped.

The scared look fell from Launchpad's face. "Hey!" he said, a growl creeping into his voice, "don't talk to my Woodchucks like that."

"Well, you're not doing anything about it. You're just going to let them interrupt you?"

"You're the one who interrupted, Launchpad," Huey pointed out. "My brother was just…"

"That's enough out of both of you. If you don't want to be digging toilets…"

"We have to dig toilets?!" Doofus groaned.

"There's a block up the hill," said Violet. "That was supposed to be part of the induction. Unfortunately Launchpad was interrupted before he could get to that section of his prompt cards."

"Seriously?" Mr Russell fixed his glare on each of the Woodchucks in turn. "This is what you let them get away with? No wonder they're such a pitiful…"

"Mr…." Launchpad bit himself off, then steadied his hands into fists down by his sides. "Jack, that's enough. I had to put up with this when I was a kid; I'm not going to let you talk them like that. They're going to do fine. And if some of them take a little longer to get their badges, or even if they don't want to be Woodchucks, that's fine too. But you're not in charge here. So you can… you can sit down, shut up, and put whatever the hell you like in your report. But if you're going to behave like this, you can leave."

"Oh, snap…" Dewey said, as quietly as he could manage. Okay, so he'd never seen Launchpad get mad enough to take someone down a notch, so Mr Russell had to be getting to him, but, at the same time, Launchpad was standing up to him. Good for him! And Mr Russell deserved it too.

Mr Russell glared at Launchpad for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "Well, the way you're going, you're not going to be in charge for much longer." He took a step up to him, and the two men stood chest to chest. Launchpad didn't back down. Not that he should have, because he was clearly that much bigger, and Russell just ended up pretty much staring into his chest.

"Yeah," Russell finally drawled. "Didn't think so. Still haven't got that swimming badge, I see. And I know there's at least one pretty big failure hiding behind where that one should be."

Launchpad's stance drooped. He said, barely audibly: "I thought you said you weren't going to bring that up."

Huey's guidebook snapped closed sharply, and everyone jumped. "There's nothing to say he can't give out a badge he doesn't have. Plenty of our other leaders didn't have all their badges either."

"You mean the leaders you had before Launchpad scared them all away? I've heard the stories. Part of the reason why I made sure I got this assignment; I had to make sure he was taking care of you. And, you know, I wasn't going to say anything in front of you kids," and he turned back to Launchpad. "But seeing as you're being so disrespectful to me, which isn't surprising, I'm not going to feel bad about it.

"I've seen nothing that tells me you should be looking after these kids all by yourself. A couple seem to be pretty self-sufficient, if belligerent, but if anything they've been doing all the leading here. You can't control them, I can't see that you're actually teaching them anything, and I'm just glad nothing has happened except a few fallen tents, because I'm not sure you've got what it takes to handle all this."

"I haven't had the chance to teach them anything yet. This was your problem, Jack, you never gave anyone a chance, the slightest mistake and you'd already pegged them."

"And I was usually right! I was right about you, wasn't I? You're dangerous!"

Violet shot up a hand. "My understanding of the assessment procedure," she said, not stopping to get permission to speak, "is that you assess Launchpad on his ability to keep us safe. Not on how you view his leadership style."

"Leadership style. That's a fancy way to put it, miss."

"Her name's Violet," said Launchpad. "You realise I'm doing this all by myself, right? If you could just help, for once, instead of standing around judging…"

"Judging you is literally my job here," said Mr Russell. He spread his paws wide. "Look, kids, I get it. You all think I'm the bad guy here. But the girl is right; this is about your kids' safety. I just don't want to see Launchpad get himself in the position I found myself in, where I couldn't control the kids I was responsible for…"

The firelight threw sharp shadows across Launchpad's lowered brows. "Jack, don't."

"I got kicked out of the Woodchucks for years, and they had every right to do it. You want to know what happened? A kid drowned on my watch. Come on, Launchpad, you don't want to be responsible for something like that, do you?"

Launchpad stared at Mr Russell for a long time, saying nothing, chest heaving. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the campsite.

What the heck? Dewey shot to his feet. "You're a jerk, you know that? Launchpad, LP…" He headed out into the darkness after his friend.


Authors note: Please leave a review! I like hearing what people think and I usually try to respond. :)