#lyds speaks

[the-green-dot]

i personally do lateral tripod. dynamic tripod is the "proper" way and i believe most common, feel free to correct me.

[rosedblush]

whos ready to get annoying 🫡

[pastthebutterflies]

Through the Vents to Grandmother’s House

Part one of a silly little au I’ve had in the back of my head for years now. Webby and the triplets have swapped places in a sense and yes, I would absolutely love to ramble about this au, thanks for asking!

Ao3

When Webby first arrives at McDuck manor, she can’t quite believe her eyes.

The main foyer alone is enough to make her jaw drop, never mind the rest of the house, including her bedroom.

When Granny went missing, Webby wasn’t sure what she had expected to happen. Most likely, she would have been shipped off to one of Granny’s former partners from her old business until she had been found and safely returned home. She could have stayed with Mr. Drake or maybe Doctor Hooter, from accounting.

However, what she hadn’t expected (not today, not yesterday. Not ever, if she was honest) was to be dropped at the doorstep of Scrooge McDuck, patriarch of the renowned adventuring family, the richest duck in the world, and, apparently, dear old friend to one Bentina Beakley.

She clutches her suitcase (the only thing she had been able to pack in time) a little tighter as she stares up at the driver who had picked her up- a talkative, red-haired man. Launchpad, apparently- and who Webby was pretty sure was the Della Duck staring down at her from the doorway.

“Hey, kiddo,” Della said, awkwardly waving at her like she wasn’t quite sure what else to do. And yeah, that was most definitely her, Webby had heard her voice enough times on Granny’s old radio, reliving adventures from her childhood, to know.

Now though, that same voice, usually so excited and lilting, is tinged with nerves Webby didn’t know she posessed. Della and Launchpad exchange a glance that Webby is pretty sure she isn’t supposed to catch, then look back to her. Launchpad clears his throat.

“So! If you’ll follow me, Mr. McD has a room set up for you until we find your grandm- ack!” Launchpad winces harshly as Della’s elbow meets his ribcage, sharp enough that Webby can practically hear the thud from where she stands.

“Let’s find that room, huh?”

They trail down the hall and up a flight of stairs, then circle through a maze of more hallways, all lined with lightly swinging doors, until they reach the only one still locked tight. Here, Launchpad slips off, leaving Della with a small, rounded key and a nod to Webby, his lumbering footsteps fading behind them.

“You can decorate however you want,” Della says as she turns the key in the lock. “I don’t know what you were able to bring, but we can pick up whatever you’re missing, or see if the boys have it, they won’t mind.”

“The boys?” She asks. Webby knew Della had sons, but after continuous threats from old enemies of Scrooge’s, they had largely been kept from the public eye. Rumor had it they sometimes popped up in town, but nothing substantial had ever come from it and, by now, no one knew them well enough to recognize the three if they did.

Della brightens. She lets the door swing open and together, they step inside.

“My sons,” she explains. “They should be in their rooms right now, finishing their lessons, but you’ll see them later. Dinner is in a few hours, take some time to settle in and explore if you want.”

It’s a bigger space than Webby is used to. At home, her room was at least half the size with her bed in one corner and a cluster of shelves stuffed with books and old notepads under the window. It was small, but it was hers and some nights, if she was quiet, she could hear Granny sparring down the hall.

Now though, the silence is deafening and she is reminded all over again how utterly alone she is here. Della and the others, as nice as they appear, weren’t her grandmother. Granny may have trusted Scrooge to look after Webby in her absence, but Scrooge has yet to show his face, much less help her or Granny get back where they belong.

“Hey,” Della says. She kneels and gently rests a hand on Webby’s shoulder. “Your grandma is a tough lady, we’re gonna bring her home.”

Della’s tone is sincere, polished off with a small smile, different from the ones she’s seen in photos over the years. More genuine, like it has been reserved just for her. Something about it tells Webby that she means it. Della, and the rest of the family, she hopes, are going to help her fix this. One way or another.

Webby just isn’t sure how long she’s willing to wait.

Della leaves Webby to her devices soon after.

Her bag is slumped next to the door. She hadn’t had time to pack much before Launchpad had arrived, so she mostly has clothes and a few odds and ends she remembered to take before she left.

She drags it across the carpet and to the dresser, laying out shirts and skirts and sweaters in neat rows like she would any other day. The room, even as she fills it with her presence, feels cavernous and overwhelming, like she could shout and hear the echo all through the night, a stark reminder that, no matter how nice it may be, this room, this house, isn’t where she belongs.

Tears well up in her eyes as the realization hits her. Webby slumps against the dresser, pulls her knees to her chest, and sighs. She keeps her eyes shut tight against the tips of her knees. Granny has never been the type to disappear, not without a good reason. She’s gone on long trips before, sure, mostly to help old friends out of a bind. But she always came back and never would have left without telling Webby. What happened today- it wasn’t like her. Granny had left the night before, she wasn’t supposed to be gone longer than a night.

But only Launchpad had been waiting when Webby had returned from school.

There was a mishap, he said. Granny was gone. No one knew where she went, much less where to find her. Granny was, for all intents and purposes, gone. Webby doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

Suddenly, before Webby can sink further into the hole she finds herself spiraling into, a creak echoes across the room. She freezes.

Granny raised her with a stark paranoia surrounding the rest of the world. Every bump in the night had been a risk if left unchecked and Webby had given endless lessons on self defense as a result. Blocks to kicks to flips, drilling her over and over again until Webby could fight a grown duck in her sleep.

As another creak sounds, Webby shoots to her feet, hands balled into fists as the metal grate covering the vent in front of her falls to the floor.

There’s a pause, followed by an explosion of angry whispers as three ducks spill out of the vent in a tangle of limbs.

“Dude, ow.”

“Hey!”

“Move.”

The duck on the top of the pile is the first to roll off. He falls to one side and leaps to his feet as his friends continue their struggle on the floor.

He glances around, eyes wide until he lands on Webby. He grins.

“Guys! ” The duck blindly flaps a hand at his friends as he bounds up to Webby. “Hi! You must be Webby, welcome home! Well, not home, I guess, more like home for now- or forever, maybe? Are you-”

“Hey, let her breathe,” says the duck in red. He puts a hand on the other’s shoulder and pulls him back. Then, to Webby, “sorry about Dewey- he gets excited.”

The one in green snorts, “that’s one way to put it.”

“I’m Webby,” she says because she is certain any other response would just come out as a verbal key smash right now.

“I told you,” the blue one shouts.

“No one doubted you?”

“Both of you, cut it out,” the red one says.

The three start to argue amongst themselves, each of them struggles to shout over the others which causes a cacophony of noise to once again fill her room. She isn’t entirely sure what it is they’re fighting about and honestly, she doesn’t really care to find out.

All she knows is that the noise is attacking her eardrums in a way that leaves Webby covering her ears and scrunching up her eyes again. She isn’t great with so much input all at once, never has been. So the sudden attack coupled with the heaviness of the day- any more and she might have to start throwing books.

“Stop!” She yells after a moment, and they all fall quiet.

“Ooh, guys, she’s upset.” Says the blue one as realization dawns on his face.

“Yeah, Dewey, we got that,” says the green one, not glancing toward his brother, but sending a sympathetic glance her way.

“Thank you.” Webby scrubs at her eyes. Granny wouldn’t want her breaking down like this, not over a little thing like homesickness. Or noise. She could deal with that later, right now, there were more important problems at hand. Such as the three boys crowding around her.

“Ignore them,” the third steps forward. “I’m Huey, these are my brothers, Dewey and Louie. I’d say they aren’t always like this, but that would be a lie.”

She laughs. The anxiety ebbs at the edges of her mind, still disconcerting and all too present, but beginning to fade. In its place, a small bubble of excitement starts to take up residence. “Do you guys always go through the vents like that?”

“Duh, it’s the only way to get around.”

“That and it’s way quicker than dealing with people,” Louie tells her. He pulls out his phone, where he shows her what looks like a map of the entire ventilation system throughout the mansion. “Huey made it, I navigate, Dewey...narrates. We have a system.”

“Uncle Donald said to give you space, but we figured you could use some company,” Dewey says.

They glance around the room, taking in their surroundings for the first time. “Isn’t this Scrooge’s old library?”

“No way.”

“Scrooge would never-”

Webby frowns, actually, he’s not wrong. On closer inspection, that may be exactly what this is.

Her bed, which is propped up high above their heads, is lined with shelves that lift up her mattress and mold themselves into two out of the four walls, with a ladder propped against one side. The far wall looks out over the front yard, giving a wide view of all of Duckburg. The fourth, where the door sits, still propped halfway open, is decorated with wallpaper and outdated wood paneling.

Overall, removing the addition of her bed and a dresser, the room largely resembles a long-forgotten library.

Webby crosses to one of the shelves that make up her bedframe and pulls off a thick, dust-coated book, titled “The (Current) Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, circa 1946” and opens to the first page.

The others crowd around her as she flips through the pages, carefully lifting each one as she goes, wary of the way the paper seems to crumble under her fingertips.

“Jeez,” Louie mutters. “He never lets us in here, what makes you so special?”

The book goes back where she found it and she shrugs. “Your mom said Granny used to be close with Mr. McDuck, maybe that has something to do with it?”

“I didn’t realize Scrooge had friends outside the mansion.”

“I didn’t realize Scrooge had friends.”

“They used to work together, I think. It’s funny, Granny never mentioned him.”

Already distracted, Huey turns from where he kneels by the window, notepad in hand as he jots something down. “We all know Scrooge has his secrets, after Mom...I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more we didn’t know about.”

“Where did they say your grandma was, again?”

“They didn’t,” she says.

“Oh,” awkward. “Well...you wanna go crawl through some vents?”

Ten minutes later, Webby is on her hands and knees crawling through the- surprisingly clean- ventilation system that connects all of the mansion. Louie leads the way, with Huey hot on his heels, shouting directions. In the back, Dewey gives a hushed tour of the mansion, pointing out their bedroom, the living room, as well as several rooms seemingly dedicated solely to storage. Most appeared to be filled with old gear and memorabilia; old swords, glimmering gemstones, specially molded shields. She has only ever seen so many amassed artifacts at the Duckburg National History Museum and even they couldn’t compare to the sheer mass of what they pass over.

“Someday,” Dewey whispers as the others carry on. “Huey wants to get all of this transferred to a museum or something, says it’s sad, seeing so many learning opportunities locked away like this. Better than sitting here forever, I guess.”

And it is sad, in its own way. Everything is stacked carefully, with cards under each pedestal to commemorate the item’s history, according to Dewey. But most of the items look as though they hadn’t seen the light of day in decades. She pictures striking out on epic adventures as often as the McDucks used to, with grandiose speeches of impending peril and bravery, bringing home priceless artifacts, only to turn around and stow it away the same way it had been before they had found it, and shivers. Huey may be onto something.

They move on after that, leaving the treasures to gather dust. Up ahead, Louie and Huey start arguing over where to go next, until Dewey joins in, suggesting a new idea entirely, which sets them all off again. None of them seem to realize that, as they continue to move, they end up following Louie’s lead.

Relatively certain she can follow their voices to catch up later, Webby pauses outside the nearest grate and lets the fresh air rise up to greet her. Despite being dangerously close to summer, the vents are much warmer than she had expected them to be. This hadn’t been exactly how she planned to spend her day, but when the only alternative is sitting alone in her new room, she finds that she is more than content with this.

The triplets are exactly what she would expect from the McDucks. Growing up, everyone in Duckburg was familiar with the stories surrounding Scrooge and his family. Donald and Della had come to stay with him as kids and from there, a legacy was born. The adventures they undertook were the stuff of legends. Della, wild and largely unpredictable, had been their pilot. She had led the way across every continent up until the day she had announced her three eggs. Donald, on the other hand, had always been right alongside Scrooge, stomping his way out of any situation if it meant keeping his family safe. And Scrooge, right at the head, had led the way, each and every time, until the day he just...Stopped. Some say it was to protect his great-nephews, others suspect a greater conspiracy. Most don’t care.

Webby has always followed them closely. With the kind of history they carried, how could she not? The entire family is like a walking, talking mystery, waiting to be solved. Waiting for her to solve. Even now, as she listens to her new friends fade into the distance, the idea sends an excited jolt up her spine. The answers to the greatest mystery in town- right at her fingertips.

A new wave of energy passes through her and she shifts to go join the others when she pauses.

Whispers begin to drift up through the grate at her feet as she passes over what Dewey had said is Scrooge’s personal office (“we are not allowed in there, under any circumstances. Wanna see what I stole from it?”)

“There’s something off about this, Uncle Scrooge, you know her better than any of us, you can’t sit there and pretend this is like her. Beakley was always more careful than that, especially with her granddaughter on the line. She’d never be that sloppy.”

As Webby peers down, she sees Della sitting across from Scrooge himself, looking tired. She leans back in the leather chair, one hand dragging across her jaw as she stares over at him. Scrooge, to his credit, looks every bit the duck Webby remembers seeing in the papers, if several years older, now. Even so, he strikes an imposing figure as he hunches over his desk and glares a hole through the carpet.

“Aye, this isn’t like Agent twenty-two. I was under the impression that she gave this life up,” he snorts. “For protection, she said.”

Webby pauses, ducking just out of the way of the grate. Below, the conversation continues.

“She was looking out for the only family she has left, I seem to remember you doing the same thing when the boys were still ducklings.”

“And I turned to my family! She could’a done the same and we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”

Suddenly, she hears a gasp and scuttles further back, only to find Dewey staring back at her. “Find some gossip?” Dewey leans further over the grate to stare down at the two and grins.

“Agent twenty-two,” Webby whispers to herself. They were talking about Granny, right? Who else could they be discussing? But that didn’t make any sense-

“Wait,” Dewey frowns. “Why are they-? Webby, we should go. Now.”

Before she can protest, Dewey is dragging her further into the ducts and away from the conversation.

“And Webby?” She hears as they go.

“We honor Bentina’s wishes.”

Then, they turn the corner and the conversation drifts out of earshot.

[the-green-dot]

mutuals you would sit on a power line like little birds with

[the-green-dot]

“d-y-i-n-g” spelling ain’t so fun anymore

[the-green-dot]

sorry I can’t hang out I gotta boop the tumblrinas

[the-green-dot]

I am so DONE with car culture get me a HORSE

[the-green-dot]

Reblog for larger sample size! I’m currently approaching 10,000. I am DROWNING.

[the-green-dot]

I wish all swifties a very salted air and rusted door this august

[the-green-dot]

i need tayvoodoo to start working NOW

[the-green-dot]

take me to the lakes where all the tortured poets went to department

[the-green-dot]

mutuals I think you should come live with me. We can be pirates.

[the-green-dot]

November 29 for swifties: a moodboard

[the-green-dot]

do y’all think usher is gonna reveal that he’s pregnant during the halftime show

[the-green-dot]

geese are so silly i wish they were real