Darkwing Duck: The Webfoot Chronicles, Part Four
Shake, Rattle, and Mole
By Zebeckras

Author's Notes: Okay, first official chapter of TWC4. Yaaay! I meant to get started on this in late September/early October but I got no writing done at all then. (It's currently the start of November.) I can't say what my pace will be on this, but it IS my hope to get the second chapter written by the end of this month and then the act completed by the end of the year... Um so, please leave feedback, please please, somehow recently the readership AND the comments dropped off of my stuff and... well come on, what would YOU assume? So if you read this and like it, please take a second to let me know. I'd really appreciate it. :)

It started as a rattle at the window.

A sort of buzzing sound accompanied the shaking of the window pane - then all the window panes - then, just as Beth and Gosalyn were peering around the room trying to figure out what was going on, the furniture started jumping about as well, and there was a noise like thunder, and suddenly Beth could swear that she felt the couch she was on moving as well.

Utterly confounded, she said aloud, "Is this an-"

"EARTHQUAAAAAKE!" yelled Gosalyn, who at ten years old recognized it instantly for what it was. She tossed the controller to her video game aside as the quake picked up, and leapt to her feet. "THIS IS AWESOME!"

When Beth got up as well, the room was actually buckling around her, and it was anything but awesome. She felt like she was getting motion sickness just from standing still. "Gosalyn - get under the frame to the kitchen door!" she managed as the girl scampered across the moving floor towards the front entrance.

"Huh? C'mon, let's get out of here-"

"NO! Doorframe! Go!" Beth had to clutch the arm of the couch as she stumbled and nearly fell. Meanwhile Gosalyn somehow flitted across the floor, reminding Beth vaguely of a mountain goat, and obediently braced herself in the doorway of the kitchen before looking expectantly at her babysitter.

Beth took about four steps before getting distracted by the sound of glass shattering; she turned to see that several pictures had fallen off the wall, and one had broken. Somehow she felt like she was going to get blamed for that. Her next step didn't connect quite properly with the ground, and she lost her balance and fell on her stomach. The impact knocked the air out of her and sent her glasses bouncing off her face, somewhere onto the carpet in front of her. Well, at least it was carpeted, she thought as she tried to suck air back into her lungs.

"You coming?" Gosalyn asked semi-urgently. Beth waved a hand at her weakly, indicating she was fine where she was. Maybe, she thought, if anything heavy fell on her, it would be an improvement on her life at this point. Or maybe the ground would literally open up and swallow her, as she'd wished it to do at various times in her life.

The rumbling felt slightly more distant now, and as Beth gripped the floor and tried to ignore the sense that she was on the ocean during a storm, the shaking slowly died down. she wondered how long it had gone on for; it felt like forever, but other than the broken pictures, there had been no damage so it couldn't have been that long. From the doorway, Gosalyn said, "Why a doorframe, anyway? Why not just go outside?"

Still hugging the carpet, Beth said, "Some of the building could fall on you. Or wires. Or things like that."

"Ohhh," said Gosalyn. "Much better to stay in here and let the roof collapse on me."

"Supposedly," said Beth, who was too freaked out to argue.

"So how does lying flat on the floor help keep you from getting squished?"

Beth sighed as the tremors subsided. She still felt them slightly, or maybe she was the one shaking - but in any case, she felt safe enough to sit up and begin hunting around for her glasses. "I just figured maybe if I pretended I was already flattened, the quake would leave me alone," she answered absently. Gosalyn laughed.

"Can I get out of here now?" she asked. "They're right in front of you, by the way."

"OH - thanks," Beth answered, and crawled forward cautiously, sweeping her hand in front as she went. "And yes - I think it ought to be-" Her knee came down on something hard and there was a crunch. For a second she was silent, and so was Gosalyn; finally she said, "Please tell me that my glasses are somewhere in front of me and I just smashed your videogame controller."

"Sorry," Gosalyn said, sounding truly sympathetic as Beth lifted her knee and picked up her glasses. "Oh boy. I don't think tape is gonna fix those all the way."

Beth held the glasses up directly in front of her face and squinted at them; she still could barely make them out. She felt them gingerly and when it didn't seem as if anything was going to gouge her, she put them on. One of the lenses had a spider-webbing of cracks over it, and the bridge was bent. She sighed wearily. "Occupational hazard."

Turning to Gosalyn, she took a breath and tried to make the best of it. "So! Better clean up that glass, huh? Do you have a dustpan anywhere nearby?"

"You bet!" Gosalyn cried, and took off for the kitchen. By the time she returned, Beth was kneeling by the wall, carefully picking up shards of glass and looking out of only one eye. "Uh, does that make it easier?"

"Huh? Oh, no - just, the crack in this is really getting in my way. I thought if I just looked through one eye - but it's making my head hurt." She placed a handful of glass into the dustpan and sighed, while Gosalyn loaded her arms full of larger shards and dropped them into the pile Beth had already started. Beth jumped at the sound. "Um, could you be a bit more gentle than that?"

"Why? It's not like it's gonna matter if it breaks more."

Beth shook her head. "You know, I think I should handle this. I don't want you getting hurt on broken glass."

"Oh come on! I know what I'm doing!" Gosalyn protested vehemently. Beth frowned and picked up another few pieces. As she turned to slowly place them carefully in the dustpan, Gosalyn continued, "Honestly, I'm insulted! You really think just because I'm a kid, I'm going to - YAAAAAH! AAAIEEEEE!"

"OH MY GOD!" Beth yelled, her eyes widening as she turned back to Gosalyn who was holding her hand to her side and grimacing in pain.

"OHHHH NOOOO! MY JUGULAR!" Gosalyn screamed, and Beth stared in horror, uncertain if she should try to make a tourniquet or run to call 911 first; then she realized that Gosalyn was laughing.

"Ahahaha... Just kidding," said the girl, pulling her hand out from her shirt and wiggling it. She caught sight of Beth's expression, which was still utterly horror-stricken. "Heh heh... sorry, that was probably not nearly as funny to you as it was to me."

Beth finally found her voice, which sounded flat even to her ears as she said beseechingly, "Please let me do this?"

Gosalyn relented, and went to sit on the couch and see if the earthquake had affected her video game console. "Wow, so that was an earthquake! I've never felt one before!" she said happily.

"Never? We used to get them every so often in Duckburg. How can you have enjoyed that?" Beth squinted hard in the hopes that she could pick out the smaller bits of glass in the carpet. She was probably going to need to vacuum, she realized.

"I dunno if I really enjoyed it... but y'know, I just like being there when stuff happens. What's the point of living life if your life never does anything?"

With a small, rueful smile, Beth answered, "You and I are obviously separated by denominational differences." Rising to her feet, she asked, "Where's your vacuum?"

"What? You're not gonna clean up, are you?"

"Well, just the glass-"

"Beth, we just lived through a catastrophic earthquake! You don't vacuum right after a catastrophe!"

Beth raised an eyebrow. "I would hardly call that a-"

"You don't vacuum," Gosalyn repeated firmly, and bounded off the couch so that she could grab Beth by the hand and pull her back to retake her seat. "Dad can take care of that tomorrow."

Once she was settled on the couch, Beth took off her glasses and looked at them ruefully. "Earthquake," she said in a low voice. "It's like a metaphor for my life now. Everything's all shaken up and falling apart."

"Aw, well, you'll get another job soon," Gosalyn said sympathetically.

Beth sighed. "I don't know about that. I mean, it's been more than two weeks now and NOTHING! And I've looked all over! And - and what was I thinking, quitting? Why did I do that, Gos?"

Gosalyn shrugged. "I dunno. 'Cause you hated it there?"

"It wasn't that bad," Beth said sullenly. Her head fell forward. "I never said I hated it. Did I?"

"Yeah," Gosalyn answered. "A bunch of times."

"Really?"

"Over and over."

Beth looked uncertain. "You're sure?"

"The next time we saw you after you'd quit you talked about it for like, an hour and you said you hated it about five or six times. Dad started saying something about a record tripping, whatever that means."

"Skipping, not tripping," Beth corrected her, and blushed. "I talked about it for an HOUR? I mean... I know I was kind of worked up about it-"

"You kept getting up and pacing, too. Then you'd say your life was starting over from that day on."

"Oh, lord," Beth said, and put her face in her hands. "I really didn't think I was that bad." She sighed heavily and sat back on the couch, leaning her head back. "And it was so stupid. I can't believe I got myself all worked up, thinking I could actually get anywhere. Look at me, what have I done since then? I mean, other than send out resumes and spend a good portion of my savings, that is."

Gosalyn couldn't help rolling her eyes at this point, and hoped that without her glasses on Beth wouldn't be able to see her. "Y'know, maybe you should think of this as a vacation or something."

"And it's not even just being out of a job!" Beth went on, as if she hadn't heard. "It's everything! I mean, there's all this money stuff - the roof of my house needs to be fixed up and I only have enough in my savings account for two more mortgage payments, and now my glasses... and I'm going to HAVE to get these fixed, in case I ever get an interview, even though that seems unlikely... You know what my problem is, Gosalyn?"

"Negative thinking?" Gosalyn tried.

"No, it's that nobody notices me. I just fly under everybody's radar no matter what I do. Even Launchpad's starting to avoid me."

"Oh, he is not," Gosalyn said, but Beth shook her head.

"I'm telling you, the past couple of weeks, ever since I quit my job, he barely says hello to me when I come in; then he asks me how the job hunt's going, then he goes into the kitchen until I go upstairs to talk to you, and then he and Drake leave."

Gosalyn could see this was a losing battle against a pity party, so she gave up for the time being. "Wow, well, how about that."

"And Drake..." Beth's head was still back against the cushions of the couch. She closed her eyes. "I can't do a thing to make him notice me. Ever. No matter what I try to say, he just doesn't care. I mean, I don't know if it would be worse if he outright hated me, or better, because at least then he'd have SOME kind of feelings towards me."

"Alright, that's IT," Gosalyn said, and she got to her feet and walked across the couch cushions until she could grab Beth. Beth, startled beyond response, cringed slightly. "Enough with the moping already! You're supposed to be a grownup and all you do is act like you can't run your own life. You want a new job? Go into these places and TELL them why they should hire you! You want people to notice you? Well make them notice you, darn it! If you want people to pay attention to you then you gotta give 'em no choice but to pay attention! Grab them by the shoulders and SHAKE them!" she said loudly, shaking Beth by her own shoulders for emphasis.

Beth looked stunned. "I - well - I, I don't know HOW to do that!"

"So I'll help ya! I'm good at getting people's attention."

"I can tell," said Beth weakly. "You'd... you'd really do that? Help me?"

"Sure!" Gosalyn stepped off the couch and landed evenly on her feet. She looked pleased with herself. "I do it for Honker all the time."

"Even..." Beth looked uncertain. "Even if the person I want attention from the most is, um, your father...?"

Gosalyn drooped slightly at that, but then shrugged. "Well, sure, why not. What else are friends for?"

Beth's expression went from uncertain, to touched, to slightly giddy. She grinned and looked like she was considering crying at the same time. "Awwww... really? Friends? Aw, thanks, Gos!" At which point she hugged the ten-year-old standing in front of her, which Gosalyn considered unnecessarily mushy, and she wished she'd stood slightly farther back.

"So... speeeeaking of Honker," she said once Beth had let her go, "I wonder if he's okay? His family owns a lot of big furniture. How likely do you think it is that the earthquake made any of it fall on him and squish him?"

Beth didn't appear to know how to answer that. She hedged for a minute, then said, "Y'know, I think it would be fine if you wanted to go over and check in on him. I mean, we should leave a note for your father - I bet he's on his way home too - but if you want to go over and see..."

"Keen gear! Beth, you rock!"

Smiling slightly, Beth picked up her broken glasses and appeared to weigh them in her hands. "Nobody's ever said that to me before," she said quietly.

They'd been up patrolling the city from the ThunderQuack for somewhere between two to three hours, by Launchpad's count, before Darkwing sighed. "I guess all those emergency vehicles earlier were for a fire, not for a police chase or anything worthwhile." He pulled himself away from the passenger window and stretched his back. "I'm tired of sitting... let's head back to the Tower."

"You got it!"

They were back within less than ten minutes, with the jet landed and everything. Darkwing checked the time and frowned. "It's not even 11 o'clock yet. Ugh, could this night go any slower?"

"Well, some nights have to be slow, or we'd never get anythin' done!" Launchpad said consolingly.

Darkwing grumbled, "That doesn't make any SENSE. It's the slow nights when there's nothing to DO. If we didn't have any slow nights... Oh, forget it."

"Think we oughta just go home?"

"We can't." He tossed himself into the chair that sat in front of his computer terminal, and listlessly spun in a half arc. "That woman is there until 11:30. We need to kill some time before we can get back in."

Launchpad crossed his arms. "Ya can't even call her by her name?"

"Oh fine," Darkwing said, "Beth is there. Happy now?"

Not really, Launchpad thought, but it wasn't worth picking a fight over. He nodded, and decided to give another shot at the crossword puzzle that had defeated him earlier in the day.

A couple of minutes passed in silence, and finally Darkwing swung around again in his chair and faced Launchpad from the platform where he sat. "Look, LP..."

"Yeah? Hey, d'you know a nine-letter word for 'koala'?"

Darkwing thought for a moment. "Marsupial."

"Thanks!"

There was a pause, and then Darkwing said, "LP, I'm about to say something that I predict is going to go over pretty well with you." Launchpad looked up in surprise, and Darkwing cleared his throat. "I don't normally say this - since it almost never happens - but... I've given some thought to that Beth Webfoot woman. And... I think I was wrong about her."

Launchpad was flabbergasted, and - odd, considering how much it rankled him to hear Darkwing speaking poorly of Beth - bordering on horrified. The last thing he'd said about dating Beth was that it would never, ever happen - and even just now he'd been dismissing her offhand! And what about Morgana? Though Beth would certainly be happy - and, well, that was important... He couldn't grasp it, though. It didn't seem to make sense. "Isn't this... kinda sudden?"

"Yes, I know," Darkwing said with a blase sigh. "I know I stuck to my guns for as long as I could, but - well, like I said, I'm not often wrong. But I'll be the first to admit it when I am..." He smiled graciously before continuing, "Anyway, after observing her for weeks now, I've finally reached the conclusion that you were right all along."

"Me?" Launchpad choked. "I'm... I'm not..."

Nodding, Darkwing said, "Yep. I'm now quite sure she's not a supervillain."

OH. That made much more sense. Launchpad felt kind of stupid. "OH, oh, yeah! Well, I coulda told you that! Uh, and I guess I did."

"Had to be sure," Darkwing said sternly. "I mean, she was associating with two known supervillains - even if it was by accident, as you maintain, it's still my responsibility to investigate suspicious things like that!"

"Well, I'm glad you're not still investigatin' her, anyway."

Darkwing shrugged. "Well, it's six weeks of my life I'll never get back, but hey. No harm done."

"Good!" Launchpad was genuinely relieved to put this behind them. It was one thing when DW complained about the Muddlefoots, but he'd never actually accused them - to their faces or behind their backs - of supervillainy. Why he'd picked Beth out as a potential menace was still unclear to Launchpad.

"Yep, yep, yep." Darkwing leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. "So we can fire her now."

"WHAT? No!"

Looking annoyed, Darkwing sat back up. "Look, I don't need to keep her around for observation anymore! And let's be honest, Gos doesn't even need a babysitter most nights. And when she does we can just send her over to Honker's house!"

"DW, she doesn't have any other job! Ya can't fire her now!"

"Hey, I didn't tell her to quit her day job."

"She hated it there!"

"So she said," Darkwing muttered. "Launchpad, I don't want to have to put up with her in my life indefinitely. I already have the Muddlefoots living next door, the worst thing that could happen to me is to have that Webfoot woman as a permanent fixture in my life too!"

Stung, Launchpad could only frown. Then he stood up and headed for the transport chairs.

"Wh-! Where are you going?" Darkwing called after him.

"Home! I don't care if she is still there, at least she doesn't make up stuff about perfectly nice people!"

"Hooooold it, hold it, HOLD it!" Darkwing leaped over the side of the platform he was on and landed just beside Launchpad, then grabbed him by the scarf. "If you show up there now, my secret identity is blown. And I'm not even talking about YOU - why are you taking this so personally?"

Launchpad didn't have an answer for that; it just bothered him. With his arms crossed, he said sullenly, "It's just not nice. And it's not the kind of thing a guy sworn to defend the city oughta do - put a nice, normal person outta work completely."

"Fine." Darkwing relented, and shook his head. "She can stay on the payroll until she gets a new job - but if it starts to look like she's not even trying, I'm changing my mind!"

All his anger evaporated, and Launchpad smiled a bit. "Thanks, DW. I just... it seems important, y'know?"

Darkwing raised an eyebrow at Launchpad, but didn't reply directly to the statement. Instead he headed back for his computer; as an apparent afterthought he said over his shoulder, "I thought you were avoiding her now too."

"Nah," said Launchpad vaguely, which was a lie. But explaining to Darkwing why he was suddenly sort of, kind of, a little bit avoiding Beth would have been complicated and left things open for a huge misunderstanding, so it was better to keep quiet about it. The last thing he wanted was for DW to think that he didn't like Beth anymore, when really, that wasn't it at all.

It was just that things were weird for the moment, that was all. Only slightly weird, really, but maybe he'd been seeing just a little bit too much of Beth or just associating her with the wrong things, whatever it was, his brain had tossed up some crazy dream about her a couple of weeks back, and he'd felt a little embarrassed around her since. Given the awkward situation, he figured the best way to deal with it was probably just to see a little less of her until he forgot about it, the way he forgot about most of his dreams, so he was keeping a little bit of a wider berth than usual. And, for some reason, the dream was taking a little longer to be forgotten than most did.

He wasn't sure if she'd noticed - he didn't think she would, since she only really seemed to pay attention to Drake anyway, but he might've imagined that she seemed a little disappointed a couple of times recently. Was it wishful thinking, or - well, wait, "wishful thinking" kind of suggested that he wanted her to be disappointed, so...

Darn it, this was too complicated, and complicated was what he was trying to avoid. He settled back into his chair and tried staring at the crossword puzzle until the little blank boxes filled themselves with answers.