Summary: When Dewey and Webby visit the Hollywood History Museum for a class project, Dewey accidentally steals a letterman jacket haunted by the ghost of a teen basketball star who died in the 1980s. Best part? He went to Duckburg High, and promises to help Dewey become a star player in exchange for helping him play one last game. But is stardom all it's cracked up to be?
Disclaimer: I neither own the rights to Ducktales (2017), any other edition of Ducktales, any portion of the the Mickey Mouse extended universe, any of its associated media, derivatives or products, or any part of Disney's copyrighted material. I do not profit from this work.
"Alrighty then! Pencils down, tests to the front, thank you…" The teenagers scrambled to finish their answers and started passing their quizzes to the front desks, and Mr. Van Bark collected a small stack of papers onto the desk. "Okay! Now before you all go home for the weekend I need you to pair off for the museum project; remember, this project will be twenty percent of your final grade, so I'm giving you a full two weeks to–" A burst of whispers interrupted him; the coyote ignored it. "A full two weeks to–" More whispers and snickers. "Mr. Radcliff."
A cardinal with a rather Launchpad-ish build and a varsity jacket who'd been laughing with his friends at the back of the class looked forward. The teacher raised his eyebrows. "Do you have something you'd like to share with the class?"
"Just talking about next week's tryouts, Mr. V," the cardinal said, with the easy and misplaced confidence of a student who thinks his popularity extends to the teachers. "Go Bluejays!" This was followed by a chorus of "Go Bluejays!" by the other players, along with laughter and high fives.
"Uhuh. Well, I'm sure your discussion can wait until after class," the coyote said flatly. The cardinal rolled his eyes, and then stopped at the look the teacher was giving him and slunk down into his seat.
"Uh– yeah, sure Mr. V." The coyote gave him a last look, and then continued:
"As I was saying, this is a very important project. On Monday we are starting our unit on west coast history; the states of our region not only have a lot in common historically, but are culturally distinct from other regions of the country. We're going to examine what this means as a class."
He picked up a separate stack of papers from his desk and started passing them out to the front row to hand back. "Your first major project of the semester is due two weeks from next Monday; your job is to visit a museum that talks about the history of the west coast, pick an exhibit, and create a short presentation on it for the class. Any questions? No? Okay, everyone go ahead and pick a partner."
There was a flurry of activity as people stood up and began to chatter. Dewey reached forward to tap his brother's shoulder, but before he could even touch him Huey said, "Nope."
"Wh– come on, Hue, why not!"
"I'll give you three good guesses," the red-hatted twin said dryly, and then looked up as a shadow fell over him. "Can I help you?"
It was the cardinal from before. "You're the smart one, right?" he said to Huey. "Wanna team up?"
"No," Huey said flatly, to his brother's immediate panic.
"H-He didn't mean that! Right, Huey?" He elbowed his brother, who gave him a resentful look and rubbed his arm.
"Um, yes, I did. Sorry, not interested."
The cardinal frowned and muttered, "Fine man, no need to be a jerk," and walked off.
"Huey!" Dewey demanded once he was gone.
"What?" the red-shirted triplet said, unimpressed.
"You totally made me look bad! He's an upperclassman, he's levels of cool above us!"
"I don't care. Any kid who asks me 'are you the smart one' when a group project is announced is just looking for me to do all the work–" Dewey opened his mouth, "–and that includes you. Besides, I've already got a partner. Hey Boyd." The robot was weaving his way through the crowd. "You ready for tomorrow?"
"I am very ready!" Boyd said enthusiastically. "The JANM is supposed to be amazing!" His eyes glowed blue with excitement as he added: "Is Ms. Duck really okay with flying us?"
"Yup. She said she'd fly us down to Toontown first thing tomorrow."
"Whoa whoa wait, you already knew about this project?" Dewey demanded. "How?"
"It's on the class syllabus!" said Boyd brightly. "We've had our topic prepared for weeks!"
"Sorry, on the what?"
They were interrupted as Mr. Van Bark raised his voice: "Does everyone have a partner?" Dewey put his hand up; on the other side of the room, another hand wearing a friendship bracelet shot into the air. "Perfect; Mr. Duck, Miss McDuck, you two can work together. Anyone else?" There were no responses, except for the bell which buzzed loudly in the hallway outside. "Alright! Have a good weekend, and remember to turn in your project topics to me on Monday!" As the teenagers filed out of the room, talking animatedly about their plans for the weekend, the coyote called out, "Mr. Duck, Miss McDuck, I want a word with both of you."
Dewey and Webby shared surprised looks and waited for the rest of the students to file out. "Mr. Van Bark? Is everything okay?" Dewey asked.
"Did we do something wrong?" Webby added.
Mr. Van Bark didn't answer this question, instead handing them both an instruction sheet. "I'm glad you two paired up with each other. I think this could be a good learning experience for both of you."
"Uh– okay?"
"I've heard stories from your other teachers about the last few class projects you were assigned," the coyote continued. "Something about an overly-elaborate group physics report that set the science lab on fire–" Webby winced badly, "–and a five-minute speech on Julius Caesar with absolutely no accurate information, but that somehow got the whole class to stand on their desks and demand Mr. Kumar give them better test scores."
"Whoa, wait. Teachers talk?" Dewey demanded. "Is that allowed?"
Mr. Van Bark gave him an odd look. "What exactly do you think happens in a teacher's lounge?"
"I just assumed you drank a lot of coffee!"
The teacher didn't dignify this with a response. "Group projects are supposed to be done as a group. Not one person doing all the work–" He nodded to Webby, "and the other person getting all the credit with a flashy delivery." He nodded to Dewey.
"But I'm really bad at public speaking!" Webby protested, at the same time that Dewey said, "But I'm the best at flashy deliveries!"
"Doing good history involves teamwork and cooperation with other researchers. I want you both to work together on this project. Look at it as an opportunity," the coyote suggested. "Miss McDuck, let up on the reins a little; Mr. Duck, make the project your own. Alright?" Webby sighed with an "okay" at the same time that Dewey gave a noncommittal "Uh-huh yeah sure," and the coyote smiled brightly. "Great! I can't wait to see what you two come up with."
"–I mean, what's so wrong with flashy deliveries?" Dewey demanded that night as the family sat down to eat at the great table.
"Dewey, you can't charisma your way into success," Donald pointed out.
"Uh, actually, I totally can," Dewey said proudly. "All those projects got passing grades."
"Yeah, straight C's," Huey interjected.
"Exactly, big brother, and that's all you need."
"I didn't know you were scared of public speaking, Webbigail," Scrooge said, passing the bowl of steamed vegetables with a frown.
"Yeah well, neither did I until last month," she said ruefully. Louie chortled next to her.
"Oh yeah, I totally forgot about the Great Gooseby incident."
"The what?"
"Webby has this… thing," Huey explained, as the girl winced and went pink in the face. "She goes super overboard on a project–"
"Baking Soda Volcano of Death," Louie listed, ticking off on his fingers.
"–Spends all week working on it–"
"Golden Goose-chase down the school hallways."
"–And then when she gets up in front of the class, she kind of, um, shuts down?" Huey said as gently as he could. The girl buried her face in her hands. "And then usually something goes horribly wrong."
"La Cocina de Cthulhu," Louie stage-whispered.
"But I don't understand, you've faced dangers far worse than a little public pontification!" said Scrooge, still confused.
"C'mon, Uncle Scrooge, there's a big difference between facing monsters and facing your peers," Della said fairly. "I mean, you stop a little skeleton rebellion, it's over by the end of the week. But the social stigma of humiliating yourself in front of all your friends and enemies lasts forever."
"Thanks, Aunt Della," Webby mumbled.
"Do you children have a project in mind yet?" Beakley asked.
"Nah," Dewey shrugged, taking a bread roll. "We'll probably just go to one of your exhibits, Uncle Scrooge."
But Della's eyes had lit up. "Wait, no, hold on, I've got the perfect thing! Listen, I'm already taking Huey and Boyd to Toontown tomorrow to visit the Japanese American museum; why not while they're there, I take you kids to the Hollywood Museum!"
Dewey's eyes lit up. "Wait, wait. There's a museum just about movie stars?!"
"Uh, only the coolest museum ever! C'mon, you kids'll love it; it was my favorite place to hang out when we were living with the Ganders. There's bound to be an exhibit there you'll like."
"Cinema history!" Webby bubbled. "Ooh, that sounds really interesting!"
"Great idea, Mom," Dewey agreed, and Della's eyes shone.
As Mrs. Beakley cleared the plates away after dinner, Della found herself going upstairs instead of sticking around to help with the dishes like she usually did, in an unexpectedly reflective mood. As she shut the door behind her, she took a moment to look with fond nostalgia over the room; it had changed a lot since she'd been a kid—the most obvious differences being that Donald's bed was gone and her furniture was now more appropriate to an adult than a teenage girl—but some things hadn't changed. On the wall near the door was still the old nail on which she hung her flight gear, including her aviator's goggles and her cap. She smiled to herself as she unbuttoned her brown jacket and hung it on the hook, and then picked up the framed photograph on the bookshelf under it.
It was one of the only photographs she'd kept from their pre-Scrooge days, and it wasn't an entirely happy one—aside from her and a slightly sullen Donald in the center, she could identify a younger Gladstone Gander picking up twenty dollars and Mrs. Gander trying with increasing exhaustion to get the excitable young Della and annoyed Donald to stand still for twenty seconds while her husband took the picture in front of the Hollywood Museum. But for Della, the devil was in the details. Her younger self was excitedly showing off her new brown jacket to her brother—the very first bomber jacket she'd ever owned, even if it had been just a cheap kiddie imitation.
She smiled and set the photograph back down on the bookstand, and then yawned and rolled her shoulders. "Alright, Della, be an adult for once and go to bed early," she scolded herself with a chuckle, pulling her pajamas out of the hamper (or rather the pile of clothes around the empty bin). "Big day tomorrow." She grinned and looked back at her younger self as she added: "Lots of flying to do!"
"Hollywood! Land of the stars!" Dewey said, his eyes almost sparkling with stardust as he pressed his beak against the bus window glass. The bus rolled along through the streets of Toontown as the hot sun glimmered off the city in a wavering haze. "Man, last time I was there I was a mess. But now this older, cooler, more mature duck is ready to roll!"
"When did you go to Hollywood?" Della asked with a quirked eyebrow.
"The time I got the Darkwing Duck movie shut down, long story." Before his mother could question this, Webby gasped and pointed.
"Ooh look! There's the sign!" Above the rising scrubby hills of Toontown, the Hollywood sign was gleaming white in the hazy morning light. "Maybe we should go up there once we're done with the museum?"
"Eh, trust me Webby, it's not worth the climb," Della advised. "The neighborhood's way more fun; there's the walk of fame, and some great old-timey movie theaters, ooh and Donald used to love going to the record store…" The bus rolled down into the valley, palm trees swaying overhead, and then pulled to a stop. "This is us, come on!"
They all hopped off and stood blinking in the bright sunlight as the bus trundled away. In front of them stood the same whitish-pink art-deco building whose likeness had been preserved in Della's photograph. There was already a pretty steady flow of tourists going in and out of the front doors, and as they passed through Dewey glanced at a bronze statue of Merlin Monroe making what Mrs. Beakely would probably call a "less than substantial effort at propriety" before he quickly looked away with a blush, hoping his mother hadn't noticed.
They entered into a white marble lobby and took a moment to appreciate the cool air; even in autumn Toontown was still fairly warm compared to the temperate seaside climate of Duckburg. "Okay!" Della said, handing them brochures. "So most of the exhibits are on the second and third floors; why don't you kids take some time to look around, and when you get hungry we can pop over to the diner for some lunch?"
"Ooh! There's a room for Merlin Monroe! And they've got an exhibit for Science Fiction!" Webby gasped as she spotted something on the brochure: "And the Dungeon of Doom! A whole floor for horror movies!" She looked over at the mother and son, almost vibrating with the effort to contain herself and letting out a noise like a steaming teapot, and Dewey rolled his eyes with a grin.
"Go on, Webby, we'll catch up."
"You're-the-best-thank-you-so-much-bye!" Webby squealed in one breath, and then dashed off towards the basement.
The other two laughed and headed for the upper floors. "You're gonna want to go to the second floor, Dewey, that's where all the new exhibits are," Della advised him.
"Aren't you coming with?"
"Mm. I'm gonna visit an old friend," Della answered absent-mindedly. "I'll be on the third floor if you need me."
They parted at the second landing, and Dewey found himself left alone in a large black room with a red carpet, and gleaming glass cases full of cinema history relics. He spent a long time at the "Back to the Past: Time-Travel in Cinema" exhibit and then the "Darkwing Duck and Claw-Eared Cat" cases, so absorbed that he didn't notice the passage of time until his phone went off and told him it was noon. He was just about to head upstairs to find his mother on the third floor when something caught his attention.
It was another exhibit, one he hadn't noticed before due to his love for all things Darkwing, but something had caught his eye—namely, a series of posters, all of them featuring a different actor dribbling a basketball and wearing, curiously enough, a Duckburg High letterman jacket. "Development Heck," he read aloud, looking at the sign, and then peered into the case.
It seemed to be about some sort of sports movie from the 80's; below the posters there was a basketball on a glass stand, several framed photographs and an empty mannequin. "Development Heck is an industry term describing a project which has remained in development for an abnormally long time, such as the featured movie, Living for the Spotlight," he murmured. "Seeking to tell the story of Duckburg hometown hero, Brandon Bluejay, Living for the Spotlight has gone through two script rewrites, three studious, five casts and seven leading actors."
He peered closer at the photographs and found that most of them were of the different casts; the last was of a Duckburg High basketball team, with a bluejay at the forefront holding the ball, his attractive grin and confident posture frozen in time.
"Hey, look who it is."
Dewey spun on his feet. Walking up the red carpet in the glow of the display-lights were Jason Radcliff and several of the other varsity team members from class. "Oh. Uh, hey, Jason," he said, trying to adopt what he hoped was a "cool" posture by leaning up against the display glass, sliding off sideways, and scrambling to lean against it again. "What's up?"
"Looks like someone had the same project idea as us," Jason said to his friends, coming to a stop in front of the younger boy.
"Oh yeah. I mean, my family's got our own plane, so it was like, super easy for my mom to fly us here," Dewey said, smoothing back his hair. "I guess you could say she kind of grew up in Hollywood."
The cardinal shared a look with his friends, smirked, and then adopted a friendlier tone of voice: "Hey, listen, Danny–"
"Dewey," Dewey corrected, and then quickly added: "But, uh, Danny's cool too, I kinda always wanted to be a Danny, y'know my mom actually wanted to name me Turbo but my Uncle Donald–"
"We've got a pretty cool idea for a project," Jason barrelled over his rambling. "But we're just not totally sure about it. Come over and give us your opinion?"
"Wh– yeah, of course!" Dewey stood up. "I'd love to! Anything to help!"
"Great. It's over this way…"
They led him through the displays towards the far end of the room. Dewey was nearly bursting with excitement, but he restrained himself. Okay, Dewey, come on, keep it cool. "So what're you thinking?" he asked nonchalantly. "Superhero movie? Action star? Heist film? I'm kind of a movie buff myself, so–" As he spoke, they came to a stop at the back of the display room, in front of a door that said: "Do Not Enter: Employees Only." "–Y'know any questions you've got, I can probably–"
Jason and his friends shared a nod, and then Jason yanked the back of the younger teenager's bomber-jacket out from under his bookbag's strap and flipped it up over his head. "What the– hey!" Dewey tried to turn around, but found himself being grabbed from behind. "What are you–"
"Tell your twerpy brother next time, it'll be him," he heard Jason snicker, and then he heard a door open and he was shoved forward. He stumbled into something, yelped, and heard a door slam behind him.
"Guys!" Finally managing to pull the jacket off from over his head, Dewey turned around and tried to open the door, only to find that something was blocking the way from the other side. "Okay, guys, funny joke," he said, laughing nervously. "But I've gotta get back to my mom and–"
The sound of laughing and high-fiving came from the other side of the door and then grew more distant as the upperclassmen walked away. "...Guys?" he said weakly, and then slumped. He tried the door again, stood there for several moments, and then sniffled. Then he wiped his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, turning around.
"Okay. Could be worse, could be a pit trap," he said, shoving the memory of the last few minutes away to deal with later (or better yet, never), and then blinked. "Whoa."
He'd been expecting a janitor's closet, but the room in front of him looked more like a small warehouse. There were long stretches of shelves covered in boxes, mannequins wearing different costumes, and even an old car from the 1950s, gleaming under the ceiling lights in what looked like perfect condition. Distracted from his own woes, Dewey walked forward and looked around the room in awe. "This must be the museum's storage room," he realized aloud, and then got a big grin on his face. "This is all the cool stuff they can't show the public!"
With that slight misunderstanding of the situation in hand, it was only a matter of time before he was racing through the room, fanboying over artifacts and touching things that probably shouldn't be touched. "Is that– no way. The miniature Empire State Building from King Gorilla!" "The Golden Finch from Mary Trotter! Webby would go nuts over this!" "An original Darkwing Duck cape? Someone catch me." "Ha-ha!" "Should I touch it? I shouldn't touch it, I shouldn't touch it– I gotta touch it!" "No-no-no, please don't be broken, please—phew."
As he put the repaired Galaxy Wars lightsword back on its shelf, something caught his eye on one of the mannequins, and he walked over. "Huh. This must be the jacket for that mannequin in the display," he said, peering over the old Duckburg High jacket. It looked pretty much the same as current models, except that the fabric was a slightly different texture and the stitching looked a little worn out.
Dewey caught sight of his own reflection in an antique makeup mirror, and then looked back at the jacket. He hesitated, and then, before he could lose his nerve, shrugged off his bookbag and bomber jacket, and put on the letterman jacket.
The Dewey in the mirror now looked… older. Cooler. He tousled his hair, spun around, and then pointed finger guns at himself. "Dewey Duck, star player, takes the court," he narrated, miming dribbling as he turned away from the mirror. "He shoots. He scores! The crowd goes–"
The door opened on the other side of the warehouse. "Ack!" Dewey clapped a hand over his mouth.
"Hello?" a voice called. "Is someone in here?"
"Phooey, phooey," the teenager whispered, quickly pulling off the jacket and putting it back on the mannequin.
"Anyone? There was a chair in front of the door…" As he heard the museum employee walking forward, he grabbed his stuff and slunk behind a shelf. He watched the man look around, confused, and then closed his eyes with a silent sigh as the employee shrugged and started walking back. Dewey hid until he was sure the man wouldn't be coming back, and then slipped out the door back out into the exhibit hall.
"Phew," he sighed, shouldering his bookbag. "That was way too close."
"What was way too close?"
He whirled on his feet. "Webby!" The girl blinked back at him. "Uh– nothing! Just almost– uh– forgot to take my meds! Yeah, that's it!"
"Oh. Well, good thing you remembered," Webby said cheerfully, apparently not having noticed the door with the giant "Do Not Enter" sign beside them. "So I've got so many ideas for the project, we could do the Invasion of the Feather Snatchers or Attack of the 50 Foot Wombat or–"
"Yeah, uh, that all sounds great Webby," Dewe said, looking around nervously; it had just occurred to him that Jason and his friends might come back eventually to check on their prisoner. "Hey, can we maybe talk about this somewhere else? Like anywhere else?"
"Sure! Your Mom said there was a diner somewhere nearby, right?" She looked around. "Where'd she go, anyway?"
"Upstairs, I think? Said she was meeting someone."
"Ooh, maybe they'll want to get lunch with us! I'm starving!" As Webby headed for the stairs, Dewey puffed out his cheeks in a silent sigh of relief. He wasn't exactly sure why he'd lied to her—if anyone would understand the thrill of sneaking around the back rooms of a museum, it was Webby—but the idea of telling her how he'd ended up back there just seemed too humiliating.
They searched the upstairs gallery for a few minutes before they found Della standing in front of one of the exhibits, surprisingly alone. "Hey Mom, I thought you said– whoa." Both teenagers stopped as they took in the exhibit. The backdrop was a large black-and-white photograph of a female pig in a bomber jacket and goggles in front of an airplane, grinning out at the viewer; on the glass stands around this were several model airplanes, a group photograph of several pilots, and a mannequin wearing the same bomber jacket as in the photo. "Mom," Dewey said, awed, "who is this?"
"Pancho Barns," Della said reverently, looking up at the poster. "One of the greatest aerial stuntwomen in history."
"Her first name was Pancho?" Webby said, confused.
"Florence, actually," Della said eagerly, turning to face the kids, "but she went by Pancho because, get this, she used the name while pretending to be a man to travel through revolutionary Mexico!
"Wow!" Webby gasped. "She was an adventurer and a stunt pilot?!"
"Oh, she was more than that, Webby, she was a legend," Della raved, starting to pace back and forth. "Picture it: young rich socialite girl, growing up in the hills of Calizona, but with a burning passion for adventure! One day, at ten years old, she's taken by her grandfather—who flew a combat air-balloon in the Civil War, by the way!—to an air show. From there, it is history!"
She mimed a plane zooming to takeoff with her hand and continued: "Little Florence grows up trying lots of different hobbies, but always her heart belongs to the sky! After a couple months of crossing Mexico on donkey-back, she sneaks back across the border into Calizona and decides that the time has come: she's gonna learn how to fly! And not only does she learn how to fly," the duck said, growing misty-eyed again and looking up at the poster, "but she breaks Amelia Eagleheart's speed record."
"Whoa." Dewey's eyes were glowing, the stage lights of the exhibit shining off his irises like stars.
"With skills like hers, there's nowhere better to go than Hollywood, so she becomes a stunt pilot! But it's dangerous work, and the movie studios don't always want to pay a fair price for it. But Barns doesn't take that lying down! She gathers a bunch of pilots together and says, 'If these bigwigs won't pay us what we're worth, then these wings won't fly!' And that's how she founded the Calizona-Calisota Picture Pilots union." Della wiped a single tear away from her eye. "She was my hero."
The two kids shared a knowing look. "Y'know, Mom," Dewey said, faux-idly, "considering you survived ten years on the moon and fixed your rocket ship, not to mention became a real-life pilot for all our insane adventures, I think she'd think you're pretty cool, too."
Della gasped, turning on her good foot. "You mean it? Oh man–" She scrubbed her eyes and grabbed her son into a hug that almost lifted him off the ground, "–that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."
"Mom– mmrmf– mom, you're strangling me," Dewey rasped.
"Oh– sorry, honey," Della said, setting him down and ruffling his hair. "So, did you guys find a fun exhibit for your project?"
Dewey and Webby looked at each other and nodded, grinning. "Definitely," they said in unison.
They were still talking about the project that night as the pair gathered at the dinner table with Della. "I'm sure the library has lots of information!" Webby said eagerly. "And I can write to the Picture Pilots union and see if they have an archive! Ooh! And we can get some footage from one of her movies, and–"
"What's all this now about a union?" a Scottish accent interjected as the door from the kitchen opened and Scrooge came in, followed by Beakley with the dinner cart. It was less full than normal, as Huey was over at Boyd's house to start on the project, Donald was with Daisy's family and Louie had roundly declared his refusal to eat at the dinner table if the whole conversation was going to be about "boring nerd stuff." Della, who was sitting next to Webby and Dewey at the table, rolled her eyes.
"Don't get bent out of shape, Uncle Scrooge, it's for the kids' class project. They're doing their report on Pancho Barns."
"Oh, Pancho!" Scrooge's face brightened as he sat down. "Now if that name doesnae bring back memories! that indomitable aviatrix was one heck of a woman!"
"Wait a minute, you knew her?" Dewey demanded, at the same time that Webby objected: "But there's nothing about her in Life and Times!"
"Och, Webby darlin', if I'd put every adventure I ever had in that book it'd have been a thousand pages long! And the printer was already charging me four cents a page," he added with a snort.
As Webby's face currently bore the expression of one who's just been told their sacred text had been cut for length, Dewey took the lead: "You must have a million stories about her then! This is great, we'll get the project done in no time!"
"First time I met her was in Mexico in 1928," the Scotsman reminisced. "It's a bit of a long story, but I got tangled up with some revolutionaries there when the boat I was traveling on turned out to be a cover for their smuggling operation! Pancho, the helmsman and I barely escaped with our lives; of course at that time, she was disguising herself as a man. You can imagine my surprise when I got called down to Calizona by the other studios in 1931 to handle a union dispute and found my opponent was none other than my old friend, but this time in heels!"
"Wait, wait. So you were the person the union was fighting?" Della demanded.
"Och, nae me personally, Della dear, I was jus' the negotiator for the studios. Anyhow, once we realized who each other was, Pancho and I got on like a house on fire." He chuckled and added: "She said I was 'the only greedy corporate executive she ever liked'—I think because we both agreed on a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, though I was no fan of the unions. Ach, she was a hard bargainer, that woman, and always put her pilots first. I'm still not sure I got the better of that deal; the studios had to pay out the beak for health insurance for the pilots…"
They continued to chat over dinner as Scrooge regaled them with the story of getting held hostage in a banana boat, escaping with the helmsman and future pilot, and then his adventures after splitting off with them to head back east while they went west towards Calizona. "Why didn't you follow them?" Webby asked curiously as they cleared their plates back to the kitchen. "You could have come up to Calisota that way."
"Och, I had plans to, Webby dear, but I got wind there was a business opportunity in Cuba. Anyhow, Pancho and the helmsmen were, eh, getting rather close, and even I can tell when I'm being a third wheel…" Behind him Dewey let out a yawn, and Beakley caught it with one eagle-eyed look.
"Goodness, it's nearly ten; you should both be getting to bed."
"Aw c'mon, Granny, it's not that late! Besides, I've got so many questions for Dad!" Beakley opened her mouth to object, but Scrooge waved her off.
"It's fine, Beakley, tomorrow's Sunday anyhow."
"Oh, very well. Just a little longer, Webbigail."
As Webby continued to pepper her father with questions about the pilot and her adventures, Dewey yawned again and decided that maybe bed wasn't such a terrible idea. "Night, mom," he said, and Della ruffled his hair.
"Night, honey. We can work more on the project tomorrow."
He made his way upstairs to the room he shared with his brothers, still thinking about the project and the exhibit. "Maybe for once homework will actually be kinda fun," he mused to himself. "I didn't even know you could be a movie-star pilot. Whole new world of possibilities…"
He opened the door, expecting to find his brother still awake, but there was only a lumpy Louie-shaped figure under the covers. Dewey shut the door and was about to go to his desk (he just had a few more touches to put on his model Pilatus PC-12) when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a little pillow corner poking out from under Louie's covers.
Predictably, the Louie-shape was not actually Louie, though the real triplet had left him a note. "Dewey: snuck out to buy cherry Pep, be back soon," he read aloud. "If Mom asks I'm super asleep. –Louie." He rolled his eyes good-naturedly and crumpled up the note. "Man, he really hates being grounded, " he mused aloud, and then stood alone in the empty room.
The very empty room, with no company save for his own thoughts. Thoughts like being tricked by three of the coolest upperclassmen and locked in a storage room, something that the whole varsity team would probably already know about by now.
Uh oh.
His eyes landed on the wastepaper basket next to his desk, and suddenly he had a distraction. "Dewey Duck goes in for the shot," he said, miming dodges. "He spins. He shoots! Whoosh! Nothin' but– huh?" The paper had missed the basket and hit the bookbag. That wasn't entirely unexpected; what was unexpected was the very soft tshh noise it made when it hit the top and bounced off. "What the…"
He walked over and opened the top of the bag, expecting it to be the old bomber jacket he'd received from his mother. There was a jacket inside, alright—it just wasn't his.
Dewey stared, and then lifted the antique letterman jacket out of the bag. "Uh oh."
It was definitely the same one from the museum; he recognized the fraying stitching and the old fabric. Dewey gaped at it another moment, and then dropped it and stepped back.
"Uh, okay," he said, voice pitching upwards. "So you stole a jacket. That's fine, that's– totally fine." Then the gears started turning as he started to pace. "Wait, what, no, that doesn't make any sense. I didn't steal it, why would I steal it? Unless– I did it in my sleep! Wait, what, no. Stop." He stopped in front of the door. "Okay, Dewey, think. You've accidentally-possibly stolen something super valuable. What would Louie do?" He looked over at the lumpy cushions under the covers. "Uh, nevermind. What would Huey do?"
He paced a few more feet. "Huey… would go tell Mom and Uncle Scrooge," he reasoned. "And they'd believe he didn't steal it because he's Huey." He wasn't sure they'd believe him right away, but if he insisted they'd probably take his word for it. "Okay. Yeah. Just go tell Mom and Uncle Scrooge, and they'll bring it back to the museum and explain things. Right!"
He turned and was about to walk out the door when a voice said: "Whoa, whoa, hold on!"
"Ahhh!" He jumped and whirled around, every feather standing on end.
The figure in front of him didn't exactly help, either. "Okay, don't scream," said the glowing blue outline of a bluejay. Dewey's mouth fell open. "Look, I know this is a lot to take in, but please don't–"
"Ohh, it's haunted!" Dewey realized, relieved. The ghost blinked at him. "Oh man, that makes way more sense than sleep-stealing!"
"Uh– okay, so you're being way more cool with this than people usually are." The ghost frowned. "Are you not afraid of me?"
"Nah, I've got a ghost butler." Dewey peered at him, intrigued. The ghostly bluejay in front of him had very familiar features, and it only took him a moment to figure out what was going on. "Hey, I recognize you. You're that guy from the team photo; Brandon Bluejay, right? The one they were making the movie about?"
"Yeah, I– wait, did you say ghost butler?" The ghost looked around the room, confused. "Uh, do you like, live in a haunted orphanage or something? Who are you, anyway?"
"Dewey Duck. And nah, it's just my Uncle Scrooge's house, it's super old."
"Scrooge?" the ghost repeated, surprised. "As in Old Man McDuck, richest guy on earth, lives on top of the hill? That Scrooge?"
"Yeah, that's him. Listen, you've gotta come with me and tell him and my mom I didn't steal the jacket!"
"Whoa, hey, wait a second now kid," the ghost said, hurrying to stand in front of the door. "Sorry, no-can-do."
"What? Why not?"
"They won't be able to see me, okay? Only people who've worn the jacket and played basketball in high school can—like you!"
"Uh, but I've never–" Dewey glanced sideways at the crumpled-up piece of paper next to the wastepaper bin. The ghost's gaze followed, and then his mouth dropped open.
"Oh come on, seriously? How does that count?!"
"Hey, it's not my fault," Dewey protested, and then added for good measure: "I'm just a freshman; tryouts are next Thursday."
"Listen, you've gotta try out for the team," the ghost insisted. "You go to Duckburg High, right?"
"Yeah? How did you–"
"I saw those guys who pushed you into the conservation room; they were wearing these," the ghost said, straightening his ghostly letterman jacket, which was identical to the one currently heaped on the ground at their feet.
"Wait, how did you see me get pushed into the room but didn't know where I live?"
"Uh, 'cause I came here in your bag?" Dewey frowned. "I can only see what the jacket sees; I've been stuck in that museum for ages! Look, that's why I need your help; didn't you read my exhibit?"
"Yeah, no, I'm kind of a 'do-now-and-read-later' kinda guy."
"Okay, yeah, I get that," the ghost said, nodding and pointing at him. "Yeah. Okay, kid, listen. Every ghost has a reason for hanging around, right? Some reason we can't move on. For me, my reason–" he looked into the middle-distance and wiped a single ghostly tear from his eye, "–is to play my last game."
He continued to stare into the distance. Dewey watched him, and then titled his head. "You know I can't see your flashback, right?"
"Huh? Oh. Right," he ghost said, and began to tell his tale of woe. What followed was a story that, in Dewey's opinion, definitely deserved to be a movie. In 1987, Brandon Bluejay, a basketball prodigy at his old school in the midwest, moved to Duckburg High for his senior year. At first picked on as the new kid, he soon gained his fellow students' respect when he tried out for the school's failed basketball team and proved the new star player. Shot by shot and game by game, the team began to move up in the brackets, and the other players began to believe they had a real chance at the championship.
"But then, that's when tragedy struck," Brandon sighed. "Our final game, the championship, was across the river in St. Canard. I was driving across the bridge when I blew a tire and crashed over the edge. When the car hit the water, it was lights out for me."
"Wh– that's it?" Dewey demanded. "But you guys worked so hard, you deserved to win!"
"I know, right! So I went to the school."
"Wh– but I thought you said you were dead?"
"Oh I was. But I just couldn't move on yet; I had to see what would happen. I thought the game would be canceled, but instead the team decided to play to honor my memory…" He trailed off.
"Did they win?" Dewey asked eagerly.
"Huh?" Bluejay blinked, as if lost in thought. "Oh, yeah, they did."
"Yes!" the duck cheered, and then added quickly: "I mean that's, uh, super sad for you, obviously—but still, that's like, a beautiful story, the team coming together and believing in themselves like that." He sniffled and wiped away a fond tear. "That's the heart of a great sports movie, y'know?" The ghost shrugged. "So they won, right? Why can't you move on?"
"Because I didn't actually get to play in it. Listen, kid, that's why I need your help! I just wanna step on the court one more time, you know? Please, you've gotta help me!"
"How? I mean, you're already dead."
The ghost waved his hand. "Basic ghostly possession stuff, it's easy. You let me play one last game in your body, and I'll train you so that you can keep playing once I move on to the afterlife!" Dewey looked doubtful, but the ghost "picked up" the jacket and levitated it into his hands. "Come on, man, please! It's like my life's—uh—undeath's dream!"
"Look, I get it, but you said you have to go wherever the jacket goes and if anyone finds out I have it, I'm going to be in so much trouble," Dewey said. "And also I'm not on the basketball team; I don't even really know how to play."
"Maybe you don't, but I do!" Bluejay insisted. "C'mon, we can help each other out here: you help me win one last game, and I'll help you make varsity!"
Dewey hesitated and looked down at the jacket in his hands. "Look," Bluejay said again. "You wanna be cool, right? You want those guys to stop messing with you?"
"Yeah, but–"
"Well painting toy airplanes isn't gonna make that happen," the ghost said bluntly. Dewey glanced over his shoulder at the model PC-12 on its little mat of newspaper, and then back at the jacket in his hands. "Come on, kid, you help me and I'll help you. Nobody picks on the star player."
"...You really think you can help me make varsity?"
"Uh, yeah. You'll have the best coach in the world: me!"
He grinned and held out a ghostly hand. Dewey hesitated, and then nodded determinedly and shook it.
A/N: So I've realized that just because I upload the episodes as self-contained stories, doesn't mean I can't also use the chapter function. I probably won't do this for all of them (e.g. the Christmas episode, which is already finished, is written entirely in one piece), but I thought I may as well experiment with this since it worked decently well with Lost Crown of Genghis Khan.
STORY NOTES:
Dewey's medications: I generally have a personal rule against headcanoning characters as having certain traits such as disabilities unless it's already canon in the source material or confirmed by the author, but I do make an exception for if I think it genuinely matches a character's behavior. In this case, I think it makes sense that Dewey has ADHD. The next chapter will explicitly state that that's what his medications are for, but I thought I'd leave the explanation in this chapter so that nobody gets confused.
CULTURAL NOTES:
Toontown: From Who Framed Roger Rabbit, this Disney town is said to be connected to Los Angeles. I basically just extrapolated it into being Los Angeles in this universe.
Hollywood Museum: This is a real place in Las Angeles and has roughly the same floorplan as described in the chapter, including the Dungeon of Doom, the exhibit floors, the rooms dedicated to various "bombshells" of Hollywood fame, the statue of of Marilyn Monroe, and so forth. The "Development Heck" and Pancho Barnes exhibits are my own invention, however. You can find out more about it on their museum, here; /. I apologize if I got any of the floorplan wrong; I've never actually been there myself.
Pancho Barns: A pun on "Pancho Barnes," the famous aviator and founder of the first movie stunt pilots' union, the Associated Motion Picture Pilots union. The stories about her life in this chapter are all true, including the story about the escape from the banana boat and her and the helmsman, Roger Chute, traveling across Mexico on donkeyback (hence how "Pancho" got her nickname—Chute's spoonerism of "Sancho"). The best biography I found about her online is: "PANCHO BARNES (1901 – 1975) Pilot, Proprietor, Partier," on Forgotten Newsmakers, /2011/03/16/pancho-barnes-1901-1975-pilot-proprietor-partier/ .
JANM/Japanese American History Museum: An absolutely fantastic museum on Japanese American history in Los Angeles, well worth the trip if you get the chance to visit.
"Donald used to love going to the record store…" I.e. Amoeba Records, the famous Hollywood record store. My husband and I went when we visited L.A.; I'm not much into records myself, but he absolutely loved it.
"Pop over to the diner for lunch." Della means Mel's Drive-In, a famous burger joint connected to the Hollywood History museum.