I gotta find some way to make it up to him. Okay, fine,bothof them. Maybe I could let Huey use my phone to, bleh, text Gosalyn. That's certainly enough to fix the whole food poisoning mess, right? Wait. Scratch that. My phone has been dead for days and I can't find the stupid charger. I'll figure out how to pay Huey back later.

But Dad? How do I make it up to him? We meet for the first time and the first thing I do is force-feed him a bad chili dog. Maybe I could tell him stories of all of my past adventures to get his mind off things. Yeah! That's it! I'll tell him about the time I became a sky pirate. That's always a winner.

"Hey, fellas, have I got a-" He froze as soon as he pulled back the curtain.

Yikes. He looks sicker than a turkey that just found out about Thanksgiving.Dad sat on the floor against the bathroom door, holding his stomach. His face looked almost green. He looked up when Dewey came in. "Hey, Champ!" A burp shortly followed.

That is another great throwback… Champ Popular. I already can't wait for spring break. Uncle Scrooge has it all planned out. This is the first year that Webby and I get to face Jormungandr alone. Why can't it be spring break now? I'd love to take Dad so he could see me wrestle that snake to the ground.

"What's up?" Dad looked up from the ground, a faint smile plastered across his green, sweaty face.

Dewey swallowed hard and moved to sit on the bench next to him.But here we are. It's not spring break, we're stuck chasing Louie, and Dad looks way too tired and sick to be in the mood for storytelling.He sighed and rested his head in his hand.Seems like no one's ever in the mood for stories anymore."How are you feeling, Dad?"

The older duck wiped at his bill and leaned his head back. "Oh, I've been better, but I think I finally got most of it out of my system. Your brother's having another round, from the sound of it. That, or he's faking it to get away from me, which is also a valid possibility." His smile grew wider. "And probably one I deserve too."

Dewey folded his arms on the table and buried his face between them. "I'm sorry, Dad. I… I had no idea this would happen and I-"

"It's not your fault, sport. And I should have been honest with you about my diet on top of things." Dad struggled to his feet and climbed into the booth across from him. "Gah, I just didn't want to disappoint you."

Dewey rolled his eyes. "In other words, you got guilted into it by my charismatic personality. Greaaat." He glanced back at the bathroom door, dreading the moment his brother would walk out and hit him over the head with a buttload of logic."You gotta slow down sometimes, Dew. You run ahead and then leave everyone else in your wake."

"It was an accident. Nothing more than that. Besides, I'm feeling better by the second. There's just a little queasiness left over."

Dewey lifted his head. "Vegetarians can drink soda, right?"

"As long as it's not meat-flavored."

He hopped off the bench and over to the minifridge. "Of course not! But that's a brilliant idea, by the way. I'll have to pitch that to Louie and Uncle Scrooge in our own personal shark tank one of these days."

"Do you mean an actual shark tank or-"

"Pfft! Like it would be anything but a real shark tank! There was an incident a few years back where Glomgold thought he'd be able to kill Scrooge by releasing sharks into the pool. So he planted a giant shark tank beneath the pool. As can be expected, the trap door that was supposed to be giving the sharks access to the pool shorted out and all the sharks got electrocuted." Dewey popped open one of Louie's cans of Pep and dumped it into a glass. "Ha! All that to say, the pool now has an attached shark tank and I am never touching a plate of shark meat again." It took one glance of his shoulder to see that his dad was completely lost. He returned to the table with a glass of pep and several little glass bottles. "No seriously, we were eating shark meat for literallyMONTHS."

Dad chuckled. "Sounds like Scrooge hasn't changed much. Still the old penny-pinching miser he's always been, huh? My stomach turns just thinking about eating that much shark for months."

Dewey shivered, the very memory of it bringing back the tough, chewy, slight ammonia taste of the stuff in his mouth. "I've only recently been able to walk through aquariums again. Between seeing it on the plate on a daily basis and Huey explaining all of the properties of every part of the fish while we were eating it, it is one thing my iron gut can't stomach." He slapped his tummy and smiled.

The green in Dad's face was starting to fade. "Although, I have to say, I am impressed with that gut of yours. That chili dog did nothing to you?"

Dewey set all the bottles out in front of him, opening them and preparing the glass of soda. "Nada. It's like I said, my gut is like polished granite." He swung his hand out through the air. "It's indestructible! You know, besides the dumb shark meat. Fireworks could go off in my stomach and I wouldn't flinch an inch."

Dad narrowed his eyes and looked him up and down. "Has that actually-"

"Yes."

They both looked up just as Huey staggered out of the bathroom.

Wow. He looks worse than-all I'm saying is, it's a good thing Gosalyn isn't here to see this. Whew, he looks rough!Dewey scooted over as Huey collapsed into the seat.

He sat there with his head rested on the table and his arms hanging low to the ground. "I mean, logically speaking, he ate the closest thing to edible fireworks there is. Mom made an entire cake made out of fizzy rocks when she got back from the moon."

Dewey kicked his feet up on the table by Huey's head and laughed. "Oh yeah. I shifted into Turbo that day. Total drive! I've never felt so alive!"

Huey groaned and threw his hand onto Dewey's feet. "Now that I think about it, the high chemical concentration of those fizzy rocks probably altered your brain too."

Dewey just sat there and watched as the weak, sickly nerd version of Huey attempted to push his feet off the table. "Leave it to Huey to make something fun sound more like a death sentence." He kicked his hand away. "I like to think of it as a superpower. Just call me Gut Guy! Get it? Not only am I full of bravery and the guts to not back down from any fight, but my stomach has the superhuman lining to match!"

Huey finally managed to shove his feet off the table. "Yeah, yeah, you're Gut Guy, we get it. But some of us have stomachs that are flopping like dying fish." He grabbed the glass of soda. "Please tell me it's a ginger ale."

Dewey sat straight up. "It's something even better!" Grabbing the bottles and the glass of soda, he dragged them to his side of the table and began mixing up a concoction like a mad scientist. His tongue hung out of his mouth as he focused on the bubbles. "The trick is making the perfect flavor mixture while maintaining peak carbonation. Louie taught me that."

There were a few things he was missing about Louie. He was a great partner in crime, especially if it had anything to do with treasure, getting out of work, or caffeine.

"I give up. What is it? Wait, this isn't like those 'milkshakes' you used to make in the bathtub when we were kids, is it?"

"No. This is a real soda flavor Louie has been helping me develop." He swirled the syrups throughout the glass with a straw.

"Oh, so it's like a suicide?"

Dewey rolled his eyes. "Oh be real! That's a cheap restaurant kids game. This is a complex mixture of divine flavors and a well beloved soda for thematurepalate."

Huey lifted his head, his eyebrow raised. "I literally watched you drag your cup through every flavor at a pop machine two days ago."

"That's not the point!" Dewey grabbed his brother by the beak and turned his head to the soda. "Thissoda has a brand new flavor and I can guarantee that it'll help your stomach better than some old dumb ginger ale."

"It's a well known fact that ginger ale-"

Dewey shoved the straw in his mouth. "Just try it."

Huey rolled his eyes but took the glass anyway. "Eh, my stomach's already ruined by your lastbigidea. What's the harm?"

Dewey and Dad both watched as he took a sip… and then another and then three!

Huey set the cup down and smacked his lips. His eyes narrowed. "That's…"

Dewey scooted to the edge of his seat. Up to now, only him and Louie had tasted it. He thought it was great of course, Louie said it was still, in his own words, "meh," but that's just Louie's reaction to everything truly good and wonderful in the world. "What? What do you think?"

"Surprisingly good!" Huey took another sip before passing it across the table to Dad. "It's a little overly sweet but I can taste the spearmint and that's stomaching my stomach from swirling."

He watched with bated breath as Dad also tried it.

Dad's eyes brightened and he gained his full color back. "He's right. I'm surprised this isn't on the shelves already. It's a slam dunk in my opinion."

Dewey sprang to his feet, landing on the bench seat. "I knew it! Dewberry Pep is going to be the new flavor of the century!" He spun around.Wait until my fans get a load of this!"Oh yeah! That's right! Ace pilot, seasoned treasure hunter, and famous influencer with hisownflavor of Pep. You can't really be called famous until your face is on a can, that's what I always say. I'm going to have my own pop! Take that, Timmy Jenkins!"

He was practically vibrating with excitement, until Huey's cheeky tone brought him down from his cloud. "Hey, genius, you've got toilet paper on your foot."

He looked down. Sure enough, there was a piece of long, white paper stuck to the bottom of his foot.I'll be famous enough to hire someone to watch for that, right?Peeling it off his foot, he spotted writing scrawled across the back. "That's not toilet paper. It's a note."

The first few words made him fall back into his seat.

"I'm sorry, Dad…."