Chapter Text
From the very early age the Duck triplets had known their family wasn’t that ordinary.
The one of the most obvious things was how the three of them had a same birth day. That was what being triplet meant after all, and to the three boys it was the most natural thing in the world. But they had quickly learned that even though other children often had just as many or even more siblings as they had, they were almost always born at different date or year than the other one.
The second thing that separated the boys from the most kids was their lack of mother or father. Of course they knew that they weren’t the only orphans in the world and there were kids who lacked one parent -though both of these cases were more common among older kids who were born during the war- and then there were others who had as many as four of them. The boys had their Uncle Donald though, and in their opinion, he was better than any father could ever be.
But the most unique thing in their family wasn’t something you could guess from the first glance. After all, it was impossible to tell only from look is someone was a bender or not. And in the Duck family; all four of them had born with the gift to bend an element under their will. The fact itself wasn’t that unusual; there were plenty of families full of benders, but usually they all members were able to bend only one type of element, or in some rare cases when the parents came from different nations, two.
But the Duck triplets... Well, each of them had an ability to bend an element the two others couldn’t.
From three of them, Louie had been the lucky one. He was a waterbender, a natural prodigy to top of that. If only he had been more interested in training his skills, instead using his bending to make his life easier and creating new ways to make money. Donald often claimed the boy to be like a river on sunny day, relaxed and flexible, never hurrying anywhere because why to rush at the destination when the trip to there was what made it all worth it.
Huey’s bending was a bit harder to explain. And harder to accept by the most people he met. After all, it wasn’t that long ago when the Fire Nation had tried to submit the rest of the world under its rule. You see, Huey was a firebender, just like his grandmother, or at least that was what Uncle Donald claimed. The boys had never meet their grandparents, they had died when Uncle Donald had been around their age, leaving him to be raised by the boys’ great-grandmother, Grandma Duck, a sweet old woman living in a small rural village on Earth Kingdom who the triplets saw far too rarely. Her son had married Hortense when the war had been at its most violent state, making the boy’s question the truthfulness of the claims of their grandmother being a citizen of the conquering nation, but according to their uncle the love sometimes worked in weird ways.
But even Huey’s bending was normal compared to Dewey’s, the middle child of the family. He possessed a gift only handful of people had in the post-war world. Airbending.
After the Avatar had died, Fire Nation had committed almost complete Air Nomad genocide that only lucky few had been able to escape before figuratively disappearing under the ground for hiding. For years, people believed that the fourth nation was completely gone, but after the next Avatar had ended the war, many of the remaining offspring of the original Air Nomads had come out from hiding, settling once again in the empty Temples or creating completely new communities of their own.
Uncle Donald said he wasn’t sure where Dewey’s bending had come from. It was possible their father was a descendant of an Air Nomad or maybe there were some older genes down in Duck side of their family line. And despite the fact that finding an airbending master was almost as hard as coming face to face with a real spirit, Donald had managed to get his hands on enough bending scroll to teach his nephew to control his element just as skilfully as his brothers bended their owns.
So, as expected, Dewey and Huey learned to avoid using their bending on public places, the first one because of the almost fanatic reactions it caused on some people, the later because of the hate many still showed towards anything related to Fire Nation, despite the fact the boys were technically citizens of Earth Kingdom. Louie usually followed his brothers’ example, but he was still the one who used his bending most freely from three of them. Their uncle tried to encourage the boys to embrace their gifts with their full potential, repeating again and again that every type of bending was just as natural as the other one, but he still understood his nephews’ decisions to keep low profile.
The first ten years of the triplets’ life were quite nomadic in nature, travelling from city to city and town to town on their uncle’s faithful houseboat, so he could find yet another weird job that he usually lost in matter of weeks or even days. The boys didn’t complain though. Despite his struggles, Uncle Donald managed to keep the roof over their heads, food on the table and his nephews fully clothed. And besides, how many kids of their age had a chance to see the world so much as they did? They had seen almost every single port on Earth Kingdom’s coast, visited both Poles almost once a year and had even been on Fire Nation couple times. All in all, the live was good. Maybe a bit boring, but good never the less
But everything had changed when they met their Uncle Scrooge.
Of course the boys had heard about Scrooge McDuck before, the man was well-known around the world as the fearless adventurer, cunning treasure hunter and the richest merchant there was. He was the head of clan McDuck, an old but minor noble house from Fire Nation, making the tale of Grandma Hortense’s skills as firebender way more believable, her being Scrooge’s -who himself was a non-bender- younger sister.
Meeting Scrooge had been a complete work of fate, Uncle Donald had gotten a job from somewhere he had seen unsuitable for children and being hesitant to leave the three of them alone for unknown time without adult’s supervision, he hadn’t had other choice but take an advance of the favour his uncle, who Donald hadn’t talked to in ten years, owned him.
To say that that Scrooge was thrilled to meet his great-nephews would be the fattest lie anyone had ever made. The bitter old merchant had no idea how deal with children so exited to get to know another member of their family, so he had decided just to ignore the problem and locked the boys in one of the many empty rooms found in his large manor with pouch of old glass marbles as their only entertainment.
In the end the boys managed to get their new-found uncle to warm up for them, but not before they had become friends with Webby, an earthbender around their age, whose granny worked as the manor’s housekeeper. Through her the triplets learned untold tales about their Uncle Donald and his past life as Scrooge’s companion on his adventures.
And most importantly, they learned something world shaking about their mom.
It all started when they had found a torn painting hidden at the back of the room that worked as storage for junk Scrooge had collected during his travels.
The painting itself wasn’t that special. It was just a portrait of the younger Uncle Scrooge with their mom and Uncle Donald, all of them dressed in traditional Fire Nation robes. But there was one detail that gained their complete attention. The blue arrows of the master airbender tattooed on Della Duck’s shaved forehead.
The very same tattoos that only one person had possessed during the years of war.
The Avatar
In the hindsight, it had made sense. Their mother being the Avatar would explain why their uncle had been so reluctant to talk about his sister and why he had lied not to know where Dewey’s airbending had come from. After all, the Avatar had a lot of enemies, and it wasn’t unheard for them trying to get a revenge on the Master of Four Elements through their loved ones.
And then there was a fact how their mother had disappeared around the same time as the last sightings of the Avatar had been made. Many claimed that the Avatar had died soon after the end of the war and was currently a child training towards the mastery of all four element, but there were rumours of them travelling in the Spirit World and never returning.
Needless to say, the four children made a plan to find out what had happened all those years ago.
The process they made was slow. They were trying to dig up the secrets buried almost decade ago without letting Scrooge or Mrs Beakley to find out what they were doing. The adults would only try and stop them from finding the truth, claiming them to be too young to understand or some other stupid excuse the adults liked to use.
Thankfully the adventures Scrooge kept taking them even after Uncle Donald had returned from his job trip, offered the four children plenty of chances to sneak away to question the village’s elders and spiritual leaders if they knew anything about the whereabouts of the Avatar.
They had only little luck, but some of the people they talked with still managed to recognize Scrooge as an old travelling companion of the Avatar, a proof that the boys saw as big enough evidence to prove their earlier suspicions true and even more determined to find out what had happened to their mother.
But when you keep sniffing around long enough, you will eventually get in the trouble. And what bigger is the secret you are trying to reveal, the bigger is the trouble you will find yourself in.
Needless to say, the mystery as big as trying to find the lost Avatar had one of the biggest consequences you could imagine.
The only mistake the kids had made was to ask one too many questions in wrong place at wrong time, leading the enemies of the Avatar to find out the purpose of their self-given mission. And before they could realise what was going on, the triplets and their friend found themselves tied up and surrounded by real, dangerous criminals who had no intentions to let a punch of children to bring the Avatar back from hiding.
If given enough time, the boys and Webby could have probably escaped on their own, probably with some wounds and in the worst case with couple broken bones. They were all benders after all, and even though none of them was the Avatar, they still had all four elements on their side.
But it never needed to come to that, because Uncle Donald had come to safe them.
The boys had never seen their uncle so angry in their entire life. Sure, he had inherited the famous McDuck temper that his father’s just as explosive personality had done nothing to ease, leading to almost humours fits of rage whenever Donald lost his temper, but it was nothing compared to pure rage the boys were now witnessing.
There was literal smoke rising from his nostrils and small flames were spit out every heavy exhale the man released as he marched towards the criminals who wisely lowered themselves on defensive bending stances or, in case of some really smart ones, run away as fast as they could.
He was like a raging dragon, come to destroy those who had stolen his most priced treasure.
“Give me back my boys!” the man bellowed with booming voice, sending the walls of burning fire towards the criminals who had barely enough time to shield themselves from being burned alive. But Donald wasn’t even close to be finished with them. He kicked and hit the air over and over, sending the blast after blast towards the fools who had dared to hurt his family. The only time he stopped his attack for longer than a heartbeat was when he managed to make his way at the kids’ side where he grabbed hold on the rope that tied them together, burning it just enough it to snap in half.
“Go back to the boat” Donald snapped, his rage towards their capturers burning still way too hot for him to use any gentler tone. Later, he would worry around the triplets like a mother hen, treating even smallest scratch like it was a painful battle wound, but now wasn’t time for that.
“But Uncle Donald”
“Now!” he commanded with voice that left no room for arguing before knocking the in coming rock away with burning fist like weighted nothing at all.
“I can’t believe you never told me how awesome firebender your uncle is!” Webby complained with huge exited smile as they rushed through the woods towards the safety of the houseboat, completely unaware of the look shared between the triplets.
Because there was one big problem.
Uncle Donald they knew couldn’t control the fire at all.
That just wasn’t something waterbenders could do.