Hey! I'm back, thank you to all who reviewed the last chapter, it means a lot.

See chapter 1 for the disclaimer and let's crack on!

02/11/2019

Whew! Am I exhausted. I'm not even sure I can muster the strength to write this, but I'll try. So we went to the caves, at last. Feels like I've been talking about them forever.

Scrooge wasn't kidding when he says he wanted us to leave at 9:30, and me and Donald know this from many years of experience, so when it got to 8:55 and both Goofy and Max where still in bed he was not best pleased to say the least.

"Ah'm not waiting another minute!" Scrooge said, stamping his cane. "They need to get up and ready or ah'm leaving without them!"

Donald sighed. "I'll get them." And dragged himself off.

Huey – who looked way to chipper for 9 o clock in the morning – said: "It doesn't say what tunnel it's in."

I stopped stirring my coffee and said. "What do you mean, Huey?"

He wrinkled his beak as he gently put the book on the table and explained. "There's three tunnels in the cave. It's fair to say that ONE of them MUST lead to ANOTHER tunnel where the Shield of Archilles had GOTTA be." He rested his head on his hands and said, thoughtfully. "It's just a matter of finding which tunnel…"

"Oh, that'll be easy." I said. "We'll just split up and go through the tunnel in small groups. Whoever finds the tunnel with the shield stays there, the other two groups will find the correct tunnel after a bit of …er, trial and error, shall we say?"

Dewey stuck his hand in the air and said, eagerly. "Can Uncle Goofy come with me?"

"We'll see." I said.

"As long as nether of them are with me." Scrooge said, briskly stirring his coffee. "I don't think my nerves can stand it."

I glared at him. "Uncle Scrooge." I said, firmly. "Goofy and Max are coming with us weather you like it or not. At least act like you don't hate them!"

Scrooge stopped stirring his coffee and looked at me in genuine shock. "I doon't hate them! I doon't! You think ah woulda let them call me 'Uncle Scrooge' if ah hated them? An' I said they could come with me didn't I? I just doon't want to be responsible for rookies!"

I opened my beak, about to argue with him further when Donald came in with Goofy and Max in tow. So I shut up and stewed quietly while Goofy and Max made themselves breakfast. Then they ate it - thankfully quite quickly because I really think Scrooge was going to explode if they took to long – and we set off.

Twenty minutes later we were at the caves, Goofy waving his coupon at the bored young man behind the counter who took one look at it, stamped it and ushered us through.

Scrooge stopped us and said to the young man. "Is there anyone else on this tour?"

"Well yes sir." The young man said. "There's at least five." And indicated the small group of people just behind us.

Scrooge gave them a customary glance and, turning back to the man, dropped his voice and said. "Er…how much would it cost to make sure we're the only ones on the tour? And un-accompanied by a tour guide."

The young man frowned. "I'm not sure that's technically allowed, sir."

Scrooge clicked his tongue. "Look, laddy." He said. "I understand it's not technically allowed, what I'm asking you is how much it would cost to make sure it happens."

The young man looked uncomfortable and muttered something about getting a manager before rushing of to presumably do just that.

"Wow." Donald said dryly as soon as the man had gone. "You MUST be desperate to actually willingly offer money to someone."

To which Scrooge said, grandly. "Sometimes, laddy, you need to make sacrifices. If I can get the, well…" He looked at the small group and dropped his voice again. "…The you-know-what then 1000 or so dollars will be worth it."

It was then that a very EFFICIENT LOOKING women came and drew Scrooge to one side and I saw him making out a cheque. Then the efficient-looking women sent the others packing and said we could go in, but we only had two hours – which was the length of the tour – and if we weren't out in time they would charge us further.

"We'll be out in time." Scrooge said, immediately.

So got kitted up and headed in and immediately gasped because, it's a bit hard to describe, but you are literally walking into a cave coated in ice with GORGEOUS icicles hanging from the ceiling and because there's a tiny amount of light we could see all the pretty patterns on the cave walls and, I think Dewey said it best.

"Awesome." He breathed as we drank in the sight.

"So pretty." Webby added.

Louie, open-beaked, lifted his phone up and took a picture. Cue Huey.

"We're not meant to have phones in here!"

Louie shrugged.

"Gawsh." Goofy said, staring at the ceiling. "Penny would've loved it in here."

I think mine, Donald's and Max's hearts stopped for about ten seconds following that. Goofy rarely talks about Penny. He acknowledges that he had a wife and will talk about her, but he usually has to be asked a precise question like 'How did you and your wife meet?' or 'What would your wife think of X?' for the conversation to start. It's extremely rare he just…brings her up like this.

There was a silence and then Max said, voice a little chocked. "W-would she, dad?"

"Yeah!" Goofy smiled, even if it didn't quite reach his eyes, slung his arm round Max and said, clearly not caring if the rest of us were there or not. "She liked watching lights reflecting of stuff you see. Anything that caused a pretty reflection, Jewellery, lava-lamps, disco-balls, she loved them all. She could watch them for hours." He shrugged. "I'll admit I never really understood WHY, but something about them seemed to calm her and make her happy. And if she was happy I was happy." He straightened up again and looked round the cave thoughtfully. "Shame we never really came here. I suggested it a few times. She didn't like the idea of the 'cave' part you see. She wasn't really keen on small spaces." He smiled fondly, then seemed to realise we were all watching him and said, brightly. "But you don't want to hear about my love life. What are we doing now, Uncle Scrooge?"

I got the feeling, going from his face, that Max would like very much to hear more about his mother, but I guess he understood this wasn't really the place for a nice trip down memory lane and looked up instead studying the lights.

Scrooge cleared his throat. "Right, here's what's happening. You will hopefully have noticed that there are three separate tunnels just on the other side of the cave." He pointed with his cave towards the tunnels. "Now, apparently when the tour guide comes down here they stick to the middle tunnel. That's not because the other two tunnels are un-useable but because the middle tunnel is the widest and they tend to have big groups down here. At the end of the middle tunnel at least there should be a smaller cave similar to this one. Apparently in that cave there is a 'loose icicle' that we have to find and pull and THAT should give us access to either ANOTHER ROOM – OR - a small block of ice with the Shield inside it. We will then break the ice using the chiseller and take the shield with us. The manageress knows we're looking for it and I've told her if we find it, it's ours, which she's agreed to." Scrooge took a breath. "Noow." He said. "The thing IS there's no guarantee that it's the middle tunnel, as a matter of fact it's probably not because apparently some other people have had the same idea as us, have tried the middle tunnel and got nowhere BUT it might be they simply haven't found the right icicle. So we'll check them all. The way we're going to do that is to have one leader per tunnel. Ah'm taking the middle one, Donald the left one, Della the right one. We'll break the rest of you down into small groups." He thought for a moment, then said, slowly. "Goofy and Dewey you're with Donald. Louie and Webby you're with me, which means Huey and Max, you're with Della. Any questions?"

Donald put his hand up. "Yes. What do we do if we can't find it?"

"You try another tunnel of course. Process of elimination laddy, use your intuitive. It's got to be in one of them! Noow." He looked at his watch. "We only have an hour and a half! C'mon let's go. Louie! Webby! Let's go!" And with that he strode off.

"Wish me luck." Louie said to his brothers as Webby bounded off. Dewey patted him on the back consolingly before bounding up to Donald and Goofy with a wide grin.

"So.." I turned to see Max standing there awkwardly. "Do we just go or what?"

I grinned at him. "We go and follow the directions that the good old trustworthy JWG gives us!"

"Ooh! Can I lead the way? Can I, Can I?"

I smiled. "Of course you can, Scoutmaster Huey!"

And with that we set off into the heart of the cave.