"There you are lass"

Lena froze as a far too familiar voice called into the echoing amphitheater, it's aged tone digging deep into her. Out of everyone that she wanted to see at that very moment, Scrooge was not high on that list. However, despite her misgivings, she could clearly hear him slowly make his way over to her even though she had still yet to convince herself to turn and meet his eyes.

Lena's interactions with Scrooge had been few and far between with the older duck rightly never fully trusting her, as far as she could tell. Even their last time speaking had literally been about her betrayal allowing Magica to attack the thing he held most dear, his family. Simply put, the two of them were far from friends as far as she was concerned.

He wants something.

In Lena's opinion, there was really only one reason that he would have even bothered to travel all the way down here rather than cornering her the next time she was at the manor. It was clear to her that he didn't want her to ever go to the manor. It was the only obvious option as far as she was concerned. If he wanted to just talk to her he would have waited until she had another sleepover at the manor.

No, the reason was that he clearly wanted to talk about something he didn't want Webby to hear. This meant that there was really only one thing he was going to say, he didn't want her to spend time around his family, around Webby.

Lena wasn't going to give up Webby. Sure, after her betrayal she may not deserve Webby's presence, much less the comfort that the manor afforded. But she had given up too much over these last few months and Webby was not one thing that she was willing to give up on. Scrooge was going to have a fight on his hands if he tried to separate them. She would never admit it, but Webby was non-negotiable.

You know what you need to do.

"What do you want, geriatric" She hissed at him, pulling herself to her feet and facing off to him. This meeting would likely not going to be pretty, but Lena didn't mind getting dirty. She had the experience, all she had to do was get him metaphorically onto his back foot and she'd be able to get him to do what she wanted."This isn't your land so why don't you turn your senile self around and leave."

Scrooge paused his steps, raising his eyebrow at her, shooting her a contemplative look that Lena felt was piercing to her soul. Well, at least he had stopped walking towards her. She folded her arms and did her best to keep a fitting frown on her face. Aunt Magica hasn't taught her much, but she had told her how to put up a proper front for an opponent who held more cards. Magica hadn't exactly intended for Lena to use it against her own aunt, but it did give her a lot of experience.

"I came to talk, that's all." He told her carefully, moving his arms out to show a lack of weaponry, though Lena knew that he didn't need anything apart from his cane to take her out. "Just a quick chat and I'll be on my way. No tricks, I swear."

"You swear. Prove it, swear on something that matters." If there was one redeeming thing she liked about Scrooge it was that he was at least a duck of his word. Sure he could be conniving and deceiving, but he did keep his promises even if they were a detriment to himself, and Lena was going to lean hard on that facet.

"I swear on my family. Just a short talk and then you'll have your peace from me." He carefully made his way closer to her so that they were no longer calling out across the amphitheater's stage. Carefully he sat down on the edge of the stage and beckoned her to sit beside him. Lena unenthusiastically complied, sitting down dejectedly beside him. He'd already gotten the upper hand back from her, so she had to improvise and get control back.

He will betray you.

"I already know how this conversation is going to go," Lena muttered, barely audible to Scrooge. "Aunt Magica may have not being amazing to be around, but she did teach me a lot about how to survive. She also told me a lot about who you were and how you were the master of weasel words and trick contracts. She told me once she bargained with you for a magically infused crystal, but for failed to tell her it was cursed. She ended up being chased out of a city and losing the crystal."

"I've always been a duck of my word, Lena" Scrooge tried to placate the clearly annoyed teenager, confused about what had pushed her to be so incredibly antagonistic. "I do remember that happening with Magica, though I did keep my word. I gave her the crystal after all. Is it really my fault that she didn't heed my warnings?"

"Exactly, you trick people to get the upper hand. I heard about what you did to Medusa, that mirror trick was fiendish. So how can I know you're not going to do that here." She demanded, keeping her arms crossed and refusing to even look at him. Why did he have to be so calm when he was planning on tearing one of the last few good things in her life? Couldn't he at least pretend this was an important event or something?

"You can't lass, but I'm not here to demand you do something." Lena couldn't stop herself twitching at the mere mention of the word, but Scrooge seemingly either didn't notice or pretended not to as he continued. "I'm not here to stop you from living your life. I just want to make sure you're okay. Can we at least talk about that?"

Lena refused to even look at Scrooge, leaving the two in silence as she steadfastly refused to respond to him. The control of the conversation was yet again slipping from her fingers. This was her domain and he was the interloper. She had to get back control in some way, otherwise, she was going to lose Webby again. A few desperate plans span through her mind, each getting easily dismissed as she struggled to regain control from the annoying wise duck.

"Well if not that, then how about a subject that you're more willing to talk about, the fate of Magica?" He asked her quietly, his voice weirdly stiff to her, not that it helped that much. "I wanted to ask you about Magica and if you know of any other plans she may have brewing."

And there it was, the true reason he was sitting beside Lena and trying to act all kindly. He just wanted to protect himself. Still, it did nicely give her a rather nice bargaining chip, she just had to be careful how she approached her own demands. In truth, she did have a few ideas about what Magica might want to do next and where she would need to go to get her magic back. Was this the best way to get control?

You need to control him.

"So you want to know about Magica's plans, right?" She began, turning back to him and relaxing somewhat. For once, Scrooge wasn't the only one holding all of the cards. "How about we make a deal?"

"Magica isn't my only concern Lena." He tried to interject, but Lena wasn't going to let him take control again, this was her domain and he was going to listen.

"You're either going to listen to this deal, or you're going to leave." She told him coldly, enjoying her moment of power over Scrooge. It wasn't often that she could demand things from those older than her and she was going to savor this. "I know you want me to do some things for you on top of this Magica stuff, and it's not going to happen. So here's the deal. You give me complete access to your manor to freely come and go and hang out with whoever I want whenever I was. If I want a sleepover with Webby you let it happen and make sure Ms. tea and crumpets stays out of the way. Oh, and you give me that stupid dime around your neck whenever we talk. If you promise to do that, then I'll tell you everything I know about Magica."

She remembered the old lesson that she'd being forced to learn thanks to Magica. Her supposed aunt had definitely been one for difficult deals and Lena had quickly learned the first rule of bargaining. Always demand more than you want so you can pretend to give up concessions you don't care about. She remembered using a similar approach to get Magica to agree to a sleepover during that whole money shark debacle. With any luck, Scrooge would be so desperate to keep his dime, the other demands will seem more minor.

"Okay, it's a deal." Scrooge's words were straightforward and Lena's mouth dropped open in surprise. That was most assuredly not how she was seeing his response and honestly, she wasn't sure what to say in response. Magica had never agreed to a deal before at least complaining about for a solid few minutes, Scrooge wasn't meant to actually agree. Before she could even respond, he had already pulled his necklace from around his neck, the dime clearly attached to it, from around his neck and held it out to her.

Wait, don't take it yet.

There was no deception in his action, Lena could feel the power emanating from the simple dime as it sat hanging in the air in front of her face, mere inches away. Shaking somewhat she reached up to the magically imbued treasure, wondering when he was going to pull it away and renege on their deal. Why did he even agree to such an outrageous demand?

The cool metal touched her palm as she slowly closed her finger around it, unable to look away from it. Unwilling to look up at Scrooge's expression, she shakingly took the necklace in both hands and pulled it over her head. With the dime in place around her neck, she felt the hum of magical energy from it begin to vibrate in sync with the amulet embedded deep within her. The last time she had been able to touch the dime it had almost felt like a normal dime. This time she could feel the energy emanating from it, it felt amazing. Feeling a strange surge of power spread through her, she finally possessed the courage to meet the eyes of Scrooge.

"Why did you agree?" She couldn't help but ask, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. It was probably the exact opposite question lean should have asked, but to have him just freely agree and hand over his dime was throwing her for a loop. Was he playing her somehow? How would this ever work out in his favor?

Instead of responding immediately, Scrooge instead just chuckled and put an arm around her, seemingly not in a rush to ask her any questions just yet. "It's interesting that you would just assume that I have some ulterior motive." He smiled at her, Lena shuffled to make a larger gap between them. "You're right, of course. It's not really an ulterior motive, I just like to multi-task. As for letting you hold my number one dime, I trust you."

"You shouldn't." Lena blurted out before she could stop herself. Of all the stupid reasons for him to let her hold his most prized possession, why did it have to be because he was being a sentimental fool? She could deal with trickery and deception, but even fake emotional responses were far from her strengths. Why did the immodest fool have to be so good at controlling the conversation? She was meant to be the one running this, not Scrooge. "Why would you ever trust me? I betrayed you, remember."

"That's not what I remember."