Those Daring McQuacks in Their Flying Machines
by Zebeckras

A/N: Ugh, this chapter took me forever. I had to rewrite it like five times and I'm still not happy with it. I just need to get it out so I can move on with the story.

Act II, chapter 1

Beth couldn't deny that she'd been nervous about "shopping" with Launchpad's sister. Not that the blonde didn't appear friendly, but being alone with a stranger in the first place always put her on edge. It was worse when the stranger was the sister of your close friend and you had no idea what she'd heard about you.

But Loopy was as friendly as she appeared to be, and chatty as well. Incredibly chatty. She had an idiosyncratic way of speaking that Beth had only heard in a couple of movies, and everything she said was so peppered with "like" and "y'know" and other verbal white noise that it seemed to take her twice as long to get through things. Beth took the opportunity to let Loopy talk, since so often in a conversation she was the only one who seemed to want to say anything, and tried to tune out the extra words to get to the point of what Loopy said.

They'd found a souvenir cart off to the side of the air field, near the parking lot, and although Beth had at first given it a once-over and decided there wasn't anything she was interested in, Loopy had thrown herself in up to her elbows and thoroughly examined every corner and case in the cart. She did this while talking nonstop, about pretty much everything: how long she'd been flying, how much she liked it, what her parents had done before she was old enough to fly in their show, how her parents had met, what cities they'd been to on this particular show tour, and a lot more.

Beth was astounded by the amount of information that was coming out as Loopy simultaneously examined souvenirs in-depth. Finally the conversation took a right turn and came to a screeching halt, when Loopy asked, "So like, what's the sitch with you an' Launchpad anyway?"

Oh, crud. "Um, I, um, what? I-I'm not sure what you..." She cringed a little, but went ahead and bit the bullet. "Launchpad and I, we, um, we - we're good friends - well - look, I don't actually know what he's told you or anything and so I guess there's room for confusion, b-but, well, we're just good friends. Really, I mean, he's an absolute dear and I think he's great but our relationship is totally platonic-"

Loopy was nodding, but her eyes were widened as if she was a little taken by surprise. "Uh, sure, okay. Yeah, he told me all that, so I just wondered like, how you met and junk."

"Oh. OH. Gosh, I-I'm sorry, I... well, look, I guess I've just been wondering just WHAT everyone thought of me, and you know, things can be so complicated and-"

"No problemo!" Loopy said, which gave Beth pause, because other than Launchpad she'd never actually heard anyone say that out loud. Apparently it was a family saying. "Like, wow, I totally didn't mean to make you freak out... I am totally in shameville, fer sure! But like, why're you worried about what we'd think of you? Everything Big Bro says about you is way on the plus side."

"N-no, I'm not... that's what what worries me." She laughed. "I guess I'm worked up over nothing. I-I... well... I just don't know what he's... told you."

"He tells me everything," Loopy said, and smiled.

Beth hesitated. "Okay, well - when you say 'everything', do you know for sure-"

Loopy came closer and lowered her voice. "He tells me everything. I don't know what he tells you, so I don't wanna betray any confidences, but if you're wondering about like, a conversation or anything that happened between you guys..." She grinned slyly, "Or any confessions an' super-long visits to parents an' long car rides home? Yeah, I know about all that. It's like, totally cool, Beth. He says you're just friends, so we all know you're just friends."

The conversation was at once a relief and also moderately horrifying. Beth found she had to force herself to move again and answer. "...Oh...? Um... well... that's... D-does he tell, um, your parents...?"

"Oh, they get the screen version. I get the director's cut. The ending's the same though." Seeing Beth's perplexed look, she giggled. "I just mean, like, he talks about you in his letters but he's never said anything obvious. An' he told 'em about fifteen times that you two are buds and that's it, so no worries."

"Oh." Again, Beth felt a flood of almost-but-not-quite relief, though it was stronger than it had been. "Well, that's... good."

"Just be chill around 'em, okay? They won't ask any awkward questions - Okay, well, Mom thinks she's overdue for grandkids so she might drop a few hints, but like, just pretend you don't know what she means." She patted Beth on the shoulder reassuringly.

"Okay," Beth said shakily, grateful for the understanding. The sense of relief finally grew strong enough to overpower her anxiety, and she smiled a little; Loopy showed every sign of genuinely not minding that Beth had rejected her older brother on more than one occasion. Although... "Um, one thing - you know, if Launchpad tells you everything, why'd you need to ask me how we met? Didn't he tell you that?"

Loopy looked a little surprised, then sheepish. "Well - like, y'know..." She shrugged, and grinned innocently. "Heh, caught me. I kinda might've said that just to see how you'd react. But I totally didn't know it'd make you all wonky, like, honest!" she said quickly.

Beth sighed. "Um, that's... okay," she said, and dedicated her mind to changing the subject. She came up with, "So Launchpad tells you everything? You two must be really close."

"Like, pretty much yeah, y'know? He's just super-cool to talk to. Maybe it's easier 'cause we're not around each other in person too much, I dunno." She seemed fine with the change of subject, which was another great relief to Beth.

"There's a pretty big age difference between you guys, right?"

"Yeah, 'bout eight years. An' of course I was only like seven when he left, so we weren't all that close back then but I just totally idolized him, for real."

"Yeah..." Beth tried picturing them both at those ages, and smiled. Then she frowned slightly. "Left?"

"Right. When he was fifteen. Y'know?" There was a long moment of blank silence during which they looked at one another and blinked, unable to fully comprehend the other. Then Loopy said, "He did, like, tell you an' all, right?"

"Um..." She really didn't think he had, but maybe...? Beth wracked her brains for what Loopy might be referring to, and any sense of familiarity. Launchpad at fifteen... Launchpad's history without his family... She didn't actually know much of it, she realized.

Loopy obviously realized this. "He bailed before he was sixteen. Y'know, like, ran away? From home?"

"But-" Her mind reeled at this information - Launchpad's family seemed so close-knit, so stable, what possible reason could he have had to leave it? "But, but why..?"

"Oh," Loopy said, sighing melodramatically and replacing the program book in the stack she'd taken it from, "such a long story. Uh, wow, short version... 'Kay, like, y'know his whole crashing-every-plane-ever thing? Well, back when 'Pad was in the Flying McQuacks, every other show got called midway through 'cause he'd crash. An' he totally blamed himself an' well, y'know how he is when he thinks he's a failure, right? TOTAL overreaction city. So instead of just practicing more or goin' to the parental units for help, he just took off."

Beth didn't manage to say the things that popped into her head - Loopy's assumptions that she knew things about Launchpad that were apparently obvious, like his history of crashing or how he got when he was upset, stumped her. She'd never seen any sign of these things from Launchpad - although now that she thought about it, it wasn't as if she'd seen him fly very often and it did explain some of his driving habits - and more than anything it gave her the sense that she didn't know him nearly as well as she thought she did. But she couldn't ask about them, because Loopy was just barreling ahead with more and more new information.

"Anyway," the blonde continued, snapping her gum, "we didn't even hear ANYthing from him for, like, a hundred years. Then after a couple of months Mom and Dad got this letter from him that was all 'I'm fine, I got a job, don't look for me'. And then about a week later I got a letter with all this extra info like where he was and how to reach him, but he just about begged me not to tell the 'rents unless it was an emergency. An' they were kind of chilling once they heard from him, so things kinda calmed down an' we just kept writing. The end." She beamed, and turned her attention to a rack of scarfs.

"Oh." That was it. She absolutely did not know anything about Launchpad, and she felt a little shell-shocked. "Wow. Gosh. H-how long was it until he came back?"

Loopy cocked her head, looking completely at ease. "Oh, he never did come back." She shook her head and the fluffy hair that escaped in all directions from under her flightcap flew about her face. "No, we didn't see him again for like... ummmm it was totally about seven years, I think. Yeah, seven, at the Duckburg airshow when I was fourteen." She picked up a flightcap and eyed it critically, then looked at Beth. Then she leaned forward confidentially. "Hey. Can I ask you something?"

"Um... sure?"

Loopy grinned happily. "Is he like, totally Mr. Chivalry with you or WHAT? 'Cause whenever he'd fall for a girl when he was younger he'd write me and he was just nuts, he just like, idealizes them. It's hilarious." She noticed Beth's expression, and blinked innocently. "Somethin' I said?"

"How fast can this one go?" Gosalyn asked, pointing at a fancy-looking jet that was parked near a runway.

"You'll see later," Ripcord answered her. "That one's handled by Bill Barkley, an old pal'a mine."

"Can it break the sound barrier?"

"Well, no, don't think so..."

"Have you ever flown a plane that could break the sound barrier?"

Ripcord smiled. "We don't do a lotta that kinda flyin', li'l lady."

Gosalyn frowned for a moment, putting her finger to her chin, then brightened. "Any advanced weaponry?"

Some feet away from the discussion, Launchpad leaned against the wall of a hanger and brooded uncharacteristically. He knew he shouldn't let the whole thing with LaDinde bother him. The guy was just being friendly, in that French kind of way. Did Beth know he was just being friendly...? Well, it didn't matter. She wasn't interested in meeting guys anyway.

Besides, they probably wouldn't even see him again. LaDinde was going to be busy getting his plane ready, then flying his routine. They'd barely cross paths with him again, most likely. And if they did, Launchpad could just punch him in the beak.

No, no, he'd never do that. There was no reason for it anyway. He was completely overreacting over one little kiss on the hand. And of course Beth wouldn't be interested in a guy like that. What would she see in him? He was just some suave, super-cool, reasonably handsome, semi-famous hotshot pilot with a great career and a reputation that preceded him.

Oh, and he was French.

Launchpad groaned and put his hand over his eyes.

"Do you need an aspirin, dear?"

"Huh?" Launchpad turned to see his mother smiling up at him. "Oh, nah, I'm good."

"Are you sure? I always have some with me... let me just find them..." She began to root through a patchwork purse.

He smiled ruefully. "Ma, it's really okay."

She ignored him. "Your young lady is just darling," she said into her bag.

"She's not really my lady," he answered, rolling his eyes. "We're just friends. Remember?"

Birdie looked up from her bag to give him a knowing grin. "Oh, I remember, but I can see how you two look at each other. You know, the best marriages start out as friendships."

"Ma, c'mon," he said uncomfortably, pretty certain he was turning pink. Nothing was worse than having your mother grill you on relationships. Now he was starting to wish he hadn't mentioned Beth as often as he had - of course, when he'd first started talking about her, he'd thought they'd be together by this point... but, he still should've known better. Even though he'd never explicitly said to his parents that he was in love with Beth, he'd probably been obvious enough that they'd figured it out. His mother, still smiling, went back to her bag. "Look, just... do me a favour an' don't ask Beth a ton of questions, okay?"

"Ohhh," she said, disappointment in her voice, "just one or two?"

"Only if they're not about kids."

She chuckled. "You and Loopy paint me as an obsessive old Gramma-wannabe-" She stopped as her hand slipped and her bag fell to the grass. "Oh, rats."

"Here, I got it," Launchpad said, and stooped to pick up the purse and its contents. Above his head there was an odd "swish" followed by a distinct THWACK, and when he looked back up, clutching the bottle of aspirin and a few other things, there was a stick waving on the wall where he'd been standing. "What the heck-?"

He stood up to look at it, and his mother peered up as well. It was approximately level with his head. "Goodness, sweetheart, that looks like an arrow!"

Launchpad poked it with his finger and it wobbled a little. "Yeah, sure does. Wonder where that came from?"

The noise the arrow had made on impact with the hangar's wall had attracted Gosalyn and Honker's attention, and Ripcord was following them over now. Gosalyn eyed the arrow critically. "Huh. Looks like your standard one-eighth-inch shaft - from the impact I'm guessing it's not a rubber-tip though."

"Sure know your arrows, kid!" Ripcord said, sounding impressed.

"Uh, yeah, archery's kinda a hobby of mine!" Gosalyn said with a chuckle. "Honker, can you tell where it came from?"

"Well," said Honker, who was craning his neck up at the embedded projectile, "based on the angle and the velocity I'd estimate it's from those woods back there -" He pointed over his shoulder - "but that's not taking wind resistance into account. I'll need to check some calculations to be sure." He pulled out a calculator and fell silent, poking at the buttons.

"Heh, weird day to play with arrows!" Launchpad said. He tugged at the shaft but it was stuck pretty tight. "They could - urgh - put somebody's eye out!"

"Yeah, right out the other side of their head," Gosalyn speculated. She turned, and saw a disgruntled-looking turkey approaching them from the direction of the woods. "Oh hey, Maurice! Can we ask you something?"

LaDinde stopped walking abruptly and stared down at her angrily for a moment before he recovered himself. "Ahaha... I am sorry, leetle girl, but I cannot give an autograph just now. I am very busy."

"Actually, I just wondered if you'd seen anyone with an archery bow back that way." She turned to point in the direction he'd been coming from, and continued, "Honker thinks somebody shot an arrow from back there and we're trying to figure out who-" When she turned back, LaDinde had gone and she was addressing thin air. "Geez, and Dad says my attention span is bad," she muttered, and walked back to Launchpad and his family.

When she got there, Ripcord and Launchpad had managed to pry the arrow out of the wall. There was nothing about it that was noteworthy except that it had been aimed directly at Launchpad's head. Launchpad was wondering what to do with it. "D'you think we should take it to the Lost and Found?"

"That's not a bad idea, sweetie. I'm sure those arrows cost enough money that you don't really want to lose too many!"

"Well, they oughta play more carefully then!" Ripcord suggested. "If some kid's gonna let his arrows fly off any ol' which way, he doesn't need ta get 'em back!"

"I dunno," Launchpad said, scratching his head and regarding the arrow in his hand. "Seems to me these archery sets aren't cheap - the kid's parents'd probably wanna get this back..." He started forward, looking left and right as if checking for the Lost and Found tent. He'd taken no more than three steps before there was another "swishTHUNK" behind him, this one accompanied by the sound of something breaking. He turned around, as did his parents, Honker, and Gosalyn. The whole group stared at the heavy flowerpot that was half-buried in the dirt where he'd been standing moments before. Then, as one, they all looked up to the roof of the hangar. There was nothing there.

"That's... weird," Gosalyn said.

"My stars, who would leave a huge flowerpot like that on top of a plane hangar?" Birdie wondered aloud, still staring up at the roof. Launchpad, Honker and Gosalyn all knelt to look at the broken pot, and after a moment, Ripcord joined them.

"Does this mean anything ta you, son?" he asked.

Launchpad shrugged. "Bad day for gardening?"

Gosalyn eyed him. "This doesn't seem just the littlest bit suspicious to you, Launchpad? I mean, in the past five minutes you've nearly been killed twice." Honker looked at her in shock, and Ripcord looked concerned, but Launchpad just chuckled.

"Heh, just my luck, I guess." He tousled her hair, and stood up. "Naaah, probably just coincidence! Besides, how could a flowerpot not fall off a hangar roof?" He pointed upwards at the clearly sloping roof, as if this was an explanation that made sense, and that seemed to be the end of it.

Gosalyn beckoned to Honker, and he followed her around the side of the building. "Honk, something's going on here. I'd bet my 'Behind-the-Scenes' pass to this airshow on it!"

"I - I don't know, Gosalyn," Honker said uncertainly. "I mean, I agree that these events are statistically improbable, but there's no reason someone would be going after Launchpad!"

"That we know of," Gosalyn said ominously. She looked away from Honker when she saw movement a ways behind him, and blinked to see Maurice LaDinde lowering himself down a ladder from the hangar roof.

The hangar roof...?

She ran up to LaDinde as he set his feet on the ground, and smiled sweetly, taking a more polite approach this time. "Gee, Mr. LaDinde, were you up on the roof?"

He all but jumped, and there was clear frustration in his eyes when he recognized her. "I - er - oui, ma petite, I needed to - er - check the weather from above."

"You didn't happen to see anyone else up there, did you? 'Cause, see, the funniest things keep happening..."

"I really do not have the time for thees, cherie," he said impatiently, patting her on the head. "See me later and I will personally geeve you the greatest autograph you 'ave ever received." And with that he stalked off the direction opposite the Flying McQuacks.

Gosalyn waited until he was gone, then turned to Honker frantically. "Did you see that? That turkey guy is trying to take out Launchpad!"

"Um, what? Wait, Gosalyn, there's no reason to assume-"

"Are you kidding, Honk? There's EVERY reason to assume! We need to tell Launchpad about this right now!" She took off at a run.

Launchpad was laughing with his parents when she reached him, and she had to tug at his sleeve to get his attention. "Oh, hey Gos. What's up?"

"Uh, Launchpad, can I talk to you real quick..?"

He looked confused. "Sure...?"

"Over there?" She indicated a few feet away. Still looking confused, he let her lead him out of earshot of his parents. "Look, I can't say this in front of them 'cause I thought maybe they might be his buddies, but I have a bad feeling about that Maurice LaDinde guy."

Launchpad immediately grew serious. "Me too!" he said, bending down to her eye level.

"Oh, man, am I glad to hear you say that! Honker said I was imagining things, but I'm sure we can't trust him."

Nodding, Launchpad said, "He gives me the creeps. I'm thinkin' maybe that French accent is a fake, too."

"You think he's not even French? Interesting," Gosalyn said, cupping her chin in her hand and pondering this.

"You think he's just movin' in on Beth for kicks or d'you think he's gonna hurt her?"

"Huh?" This derailed Gosalyn for a moment. "No, I think he's trying to hurt you."

Launchpad cocked his head and frowned in confusion. "You think he's tryin' to get me outta the way so he can get at Beth?"

"What? Where's this stuff about Beth coming from?" They looked at each other in incomprehension for a moment longer, and then Gosalyn said, "I think he's the one trying to kill you, Launchpad."

"Whoa, wait, who's tryin' to kill someone?" Launchpad straightened up and shook his head. "That's a pretty big accusation, Gos!"

"Yeah, I know, but - you gotta listen to the evidence! First he was walking this way from the direction that arrow came from, and then, after that flowerpot almost hit you, I saw him climbing down from the roof!"

For a moment, Launchpad was clearly considering this. Then he shook his head. "Naaah. Look, I know sometimes when ya don't like someone, it's easy to think they're up to no good. But we can't do that just 'cause we don't get along with somebody! You gotta give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy, even if he is fakin' the French thing."

"But..."

He smiled, and patted Gosalyn on her shoulder. "Thanks for worryin' about me, though!"

"Aw..." She said as he started back towards his parents, "shoot."

Undeterred, she pulled Honker aside and informed him of Launchpad's reaction. "Well," he said rationally, "you really don't have any evidence, Gosalyn. I mean, why would he try to kill a pilot he just met today?"

"I don't know. You've got a point." She frowned, then sighed and shrugged. "I guess the only thing we can do is stick tight to Launchpad so we can catch that guy in the act!"