AUTHOR NOTE: Though this story opens in Duckburg and features DuckTales notable characters, it takes place primarily in St. Canard and features Darkwing Duck characters. I couldn't classify this under both categories (Darkwing Duck and DuckTales) so I had to choose. . . I went with the one I felt better represented my fanfic. Bear with me if you're not a big DuckTales fan; it pays off in the end, imho. :) Please read and review. Reviews make me happy and provoke me to update my fanfics. 'K' Thx bye!

CHAPTER ONE

Tegwen Dodgers stepped outside the school gym, pausing for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the blaring sunlight. Calisota's Finest City, she thought warmly. I love this place. Tegwen had to be one of very few teenagers who so dearly loved the city in which she was raised and appreciated all of the unique things that made it home. She liked everything about Duckburg: from the Audubon Bay Bridge across a glistening bay to Killmotor Hill where Scrooge McDuck's stately Money Bin stared down with disdain upon the rest of the city. It was as if it reminded everyone how fortunate they were to have such a benign benefactor lording over them all.

Being daughter to the head lawyer in a law firm possessed solely by Scrooge McDuck certainly didn't hurt Tegwen's rosy opinion of the place, and as she walked home from school, allowing the temperate air to dry her perspiration from a hard workout in gym, she recounted just how good life was. Her mother had asked if she'd wanted a ride home in their newer Duxus but she'd declined. She loved being out in the surprisingly fresh air of an old city. Besides, she knew she'd be sweaty after practice and didn't want to stink up the family's nice car.

Cars passed by Tegwen on her walk home and she caught more than a few lecherous stares of the men behind their steering wheels. She smiled sweetly at a few and waved her fingertips at them, wondering if today would be the day she caused a multi-car pileup. I know I'm not that pretty, she laughed at herself. Still, it would be flattering. Sad, very awful, of course, but flattering!

At an intersection, Tegwen waited patiently for the light to change so she could cross. Home was less than a half mile away. When the crossing indicator blinked white, Tegwen checked carefully for cars turning in front of her -- a holdover from early childhood -- and stepped into the street, splashing down into a puddle of mud. It had rained the night before and some places had yet to dry.

Normally, the sight of mud could make Tegwen smile. But this particular puddle had just laid assault to her newest possessions. "My new running shoes!" She cried. They were brand names, and her parents had shelled out a pretty penny on them. She hurried across the intersection and paused on the opposite corner to assess the damage. They would dry and probably be okay in the long run, but Tegwen couldn't help but feel that her mother would kill her.

She'd been having such a good day and didn't want to screw that up. Having her mother yell at her would certainly accomplish that so she did the only thing she could think of: she pulled her old sandals from her backpack and switched shoes, putting the sneakers into an old plastic bag she used to cover her backpack on rainy days.

And suddenly she wanted to run the rest of the way home. She could get there in no time, but wearing sandals would make everything much harder. Hunger pangs reminded her that it was nearing dinnertime and provided fuel to ignore her feet protesting a half-mile run in sandals.

Tegwen adjusted her backpack on her shoulders and flexed her feet. Oh well. With a deep breath, she took off at a sprint toward home.

"Mom?" Tegwen asked quietly as she opened the door to the Dodgers family estate. No one was within eyeshot of the door. Perfect! Then there would be no questions about her new shoes. Certainly they would wonder why she walked home in sandals as opposed to nice, comfortable and excessively expensive sneakers.

She kicked off her sandals just inside the doorway and bumped the door shut with her tail.

"Mom!" Tegwen called in a sing-song voice, running a hand through her long, wavy hair. "MOM!"

"In here!" A pleasant voice echoed from the kitchen.

The blonde-haired duck bounded into the kitchen, blowing by an expansive library and living room. She slowed down as she entered the living room, being careful not to break anything as she wandered through their elaborately decorated dining room.

"Mom!" Tegwen cried happily, greeting her mother with a small peck on the cheek. Tegwen was always happy to get home before dinner, and that day was no exception.

Beitiris Dodgers offered her daughter a warm smile in return. "My, my . . . Someone's in a good mood today!"

Tegwen grinned, eager to start helping her mother with the daily chore of washing the dishes before dinner. "Magica gave me something today!" She announced.

Beitiris glanced at Tegwen, pulling the last piece of good china from the soapy water in the sink. "Oh? I thought you were at school today!"

"Oh, I was!" Tegwen was fast to reply. "She visited me at lunch. Found me right away on campus. It's like she knew just where I was!" She presented her small wrist to her mother. "Isn't this just the best?"

Beitiris gasped as she inspected the silver bracelet. A small, square stone seemed to glow red as it was bathed from sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. "It's gorgeous!" She slid the bracelet around Tegwen's wrist a few times, looking it over some more. "What was this for?"

Tegwen shrugged, withdrawing her wrist from her mother's grasp slowly. "Magica just felt like being generous, I guess. She said I was ready to have it now."

Beitiris frowned.

"And she told me the bullies will leave me alone when I wear this," Tegwen grinned. She pulled an old dish rag from a nearby drawer and began drying the good china gently.

"Hmmm . . . I don't know . . ." Beitiris grumbled in disapproval. "Your father and I talked with your principal."

Tegwen looked away quickly.

"They're still picking on you?" Beitiris gasped.

"Oh, Mom," Tegwen sighed, setting her rag on the counter. She focused on the off-white grout between each smooth, white tile, running her finger along a crevice. "Now it's worse than before. Principal Feathertale doesn't know what he's doing. He should go back to teaching drama in St. Canard!"

Beitiris frowned, moving a few glasses into the dining room, conveniently adjacent to the kitchen. Her slippers squeaked along the floor as she walked out of one room and into another. Tegwen knew her mother was exhausted by the way her feet dragged along the Italian ceramic floor tile. Having this conversation again was no help, either.

"Don't say such things," Beitiris said flatly. "We should consider ourselves lucky to have him as your principal."

Tegwen nodded absentmindedly, walking by her mother and taking her spot beside the dining room table. "You taught me to speak the truth.Always."

Beitiris stood beside the island in the kitchen, straightening her stacks of dishes. Soup bowl, Tegwen guessed. Beitiris reached for the stack of silver-rimmed soup bowls. Good ol' predictable Mom, smiled Tegwen. Always the soup bowls first.

Beitiris dried the bowl once more for good measure before tossing it to Tegwen. Tegwen caught it, two yards away, not so much as blinking. She and her mother had fallen into such a predictable routine that not a single piece of china or flatware had been dropped in five years. As far as chores went, Tegwen liked playing catch with the china better than anything else her parents asked her to do.

"Shall I send your father to speak with Mr. Feathertale again?" Beitiris asked, tossing a salad plate at Tegwen. "Maybe he can threaten legal action, or. . . or. . . threaten to have Mr. McDuck withdraw funding."

"I don't see how it will help. If he suspends them- which he will if he gets another complaint about them from us- they'll just wait for me off campus . . . And then they might do something worse than just teasing me," Tegwen replied solemnly, catching the plate gently.

"So you think the way to deal with this gang is with violence?" Beitiris griped.

"It's not a gang, Mom . . ." Tegwen insisted, rolling her eyes. "And Magica said nothing about violence when she gave this to me."

Beitiris sighed, hanging her head for a moment. "You know I have nothing against Miss De Spell. But sometimes I worry about you."

Tegwen smiled crookedly. "And you were worried about Gyro Gearloose, too."

"Mister Gearloose," Beitiris corrected with a shake of her finger. "He's your elder. Address him properly."

Tegwen heard the front door swing open in the silence after her mother's statement. Beitiris heard the sound as well, perking up considerably. She beckoned to her daughter frantically to rejoin her in the kitchen. Tegwen scurried over to the sink in a heartbeat.

"Mr. Gearloose asked me to address him as Gyro," Tegwen continued the conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. She busied herself with drying the all ready dried glasses.

"And how are my two lovely ladies?" A tall mallard in casual attire stepped into the kitchen, sporting a broad grin and twinkling brown eyes.

Tegwen lowered her head and quickly escorted two wine glasses into the dining room. "Hello, Father," she greeted him in a tiny voice.

"Darling," Beitiris sang, giving her husband a sweet kiss on his bill. "It's a lovely evening now that you're home."

"What mischief have you two been causing while I was at work?" Giffen Dodgers asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow toward Tegwen.

"Mischief?" Tegwen squeaked nervously. She hurried into the kitchen, her gaze still sweeping the tile floor. Picking up three more plates, Tegwen quickly slipped back into the dining room. "We're not up to anything, Papa." She added quickly.

Giffen followed Tegwen into the dining room, trapping her by the rectangular table. "You can't lie to me. I can see right through you." He poked her teasingly on her right collar bone.

Tegwen felt her face growing warm with guilt. "I can't lie to you," she whispered, glancing around him. She caught a glimpse of her mother, leaning on the island and watching the interlude with a sweet smirk.

"I know." Giffen chuckled, then grew somber again. "Tegwen Louise Dodgers, young lady, were you playing catch with Grandmom's good china again?" Giffen kept his stern expression looking down on Tegwen. He knew she couldn't hold out too much longer.

"I'm so sorry!!" Tegwen practically sobbed.

Beitiris nodded slightly, incredibly pleased with her daughter's honesty.

"I know how much you hate it, Daddy . . . It's just . . . Well, we haven't dropped a dish or anything in so long and -- and -- it's always Mom's idea, and --"

Giffen pulled Tegwen into a tight hug, ceasing her run-on sentence abruptly.

"Sweetheart," he said softly. "Listen ta' me."

Tegwen looked up at him, meeting his kind eyes in a hesitant stare. "No, I don't like that you play with our good dishes like they're plastic toys--"

"I'msorry --"

"But when have I ever punished you before for doing this?"

Tegwen smiled slowly. "Never?" She whispered, praying desperately that her reply wouldn't evoke a punishment.

Giffen smiled, nodding slightly. "So why would I start now?"

The young blonde-haired duck heaved a sigh of relief, squeezing Giffen quickly around his waist.

"Besides," Giffen added, shooting a playful glare at Beitiris, "I'd have to get your mother to stop throwing my dishes first. And that, I think, is impossible."

"Well!" Beitiris snapped, feigning exasperation. "That's the last time I set the table for your dinner!"

Giffen promptly wrapped Beitiris in a warm hug, kissing her on the bill.

Tegwen smiled, but quickly resumed setting the dining room table. Well, there's no doubt they love each other! That's reassuring.

For Tegwen, seeing the spark of passion still burning -- flaring, sometimes -- between her parents, was a relief. All her friends lived in a single parent home or spent one week with their mothers and the consecutive one with their fathers. Tegwen was the only duck she knew whose parents were happily married to each other . . . Sometimes it made it hard to relate to the other girls in her classes, but she knew that no friends could ever replace the happiness that her close-knit family filled her with.

After a few silent moments in the kitchen, Giffen came out, his brown eyes shining merrily of untold secrets.

"So, how did my favorite daughter's day go?" He asked, ruffling Tegwen's soft hair.

"Daa-aad!" Tegwen whined, swatting his hand away from her head gently. She grinned up at him, taking her usual seat at the dining room table. "I'm your only daughter!" She giggled. "Your only duckling, actually! Of course I'm your favorite!"

"I know." Giffen sat down in his seat beside Tegwen, looking away from her for a moment. Was he frowning? "So, what did you do today, Tegsie?"

"Well, Magica came to my school and gave me this." Tegwen offered her left hand.

Giffen took her wrist in his right hand gently, holding her silver bracelet with his left hand.

"Oh, it's gorgeous." He put on his half-moon reading glasses, inspecting the red stone more closely. "It's too light to be a garnet . . . If this is a ruby, Tegsie -- wow! Hold on to it!"

Tegwen took the stone from his hand, holding it in her own fingers for a moment. "I will hold on to this!" Even if it wasn't a genuine gemstone, it was still beautiful.

Beitiris groaned disapprovingly from behind the opened refrigerator door.

Tegwen sighed, lowering her head as her mother stepped into the dining room, carrying a full soup bowl with a white plastic ladle hanging off its edge.

"That thing is nothing but trouble," Beitiris warned.

Giffen chuckled, watching his wife carefully as she set the bowl near the center of the table. "Oh, Honey, it's just a ruby!"

"Yes, a ruby, and from Miss De Spell," Beitiris elaborated. She frowned, retreating to the oven.

"How much harm can a semiprecious stone do?" He chuckled, his bill curling up at the corners.

Beitiris said nothing to this comment, coming into the dining room again and sliding a bowl of gefilte fish beneath Tegwen's bill. A pointed look from mother to daughter did not go unnoticed before Giffen's eyes.

"Tegwen," Giffen spoke firmly. "How much harm can this little ruby do?"

Keeping her head bowed, Tegwen muttered, "I don't know what it's supposed to do, but Magica told me that the bullies would leave me alone. Now that I have it." She stubbornly pushed the gefilte fish away from her dinner plate.

Giffen looked greatly amused throughout the whole conversation, despite the uneasy look Beitiris wore as she made her trips to and from the kitchen.

After a brief hesitation, Giffen decided what he thought would be the best solution. "I see no harm in your gemstone. Keep it and wear it in health, my sweet little Tegsie."

Beitiris gaped in disgust but refused to protest.