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Donald steps off the elevator waving three pieces of paper over his head, to Uno’s bemusement.
“Boys! Uno, she’s having all boys!” he shouts, like Uno isn’t embedded in every inch of the 151 stories that make up Ducklair Tower and perfectly capable of hearing him if he spoke at a whisper, much less a normal volume.
But Uno doesn’t think he’s ever seen Donald smile so brightly, so much so that he imagines that if he too had a face it would ache in sympathy.
“What are you going on about, Old Cape?” he snarks without heat. “Keep yelling like that and your secret base won’t stay secret for long.”
Donald crosses the room in a few quick steps to wave the papers in front of Uno’s projected face like that’s an answer in itself.
“Della brought the eggs in for an ultrasound and—look, look!” he says, beaming, finally holding the papers still for Uno’s sensors to analyze. “She’s having all boys. I’m gonna have nephews!”
On each piece of paper is a grainy, black and white image of what Uno surmises to be an individual fetus from within the eggs Della laid a little over a week ago. The quality isn’t very impressive; they could easily be confused for gray smudges.
Uno smiles for Donald’s benefit, confusion dogging at his circuits.
“But you’ve known that Della was pregnant for some time,” he begins slowly, “I’m certain of this because you called to pester her about her welfare a sum total of eighty-seven times while on patrol in the last three months. Is it because her offspring are male that there is cause for celebration? I believe I recall you saying that you wouldn’t care about their gender ‘as long as they have eight fingers and three toes,’ though I understand now that you were mostly joking, as ducks do not have toes.”
Donald’s laughing before Uno’s even finished speaking, but he resolutely ignores Donald until he’s said all he means to say.
“No, you’re right, I don’t care if they’re boys. Well, no, of course I care, it’s just not—it’s not about that. What’s amazing is that we can finally see them.” Donald shakes the papers again, the barely identifiable smudges. “It all felt like a dream before but now it’s real. I’m gonna be an uncle . You get what I mean, buddy?”
Uno doesn’t ‘get’ it. Even now, years after Ducklair’s influence left his programming, he struggles to understand what comes so intrinsically to beings of flesh and blood: grief and love, family.
But he trusts Donald. He trusts Donald to teach him.
“Has Della chosen names for her offspring?” Uno asks, rather than answer Donald’s question. “I understand that’s common practice.”
Donald grimaces. “Don’t remind me. I’ve only got a few weeks to talk her out of the ones she’s thinking of.”
Uno watches curiously as Donald affixes the three papers to the bottom corner of his main screen, so that they’re all at about eye level with Donald.
“There!” he announces proudly. “I’m up here so often, at least I won’t forget what the boys look like until they get here.” He turns to Uno. “Oh, what’s my schedule looking like for next Friday? Dell’s finally letting us throw her a baby shower.”
Uno makes a show of humming thoughtfully. “You have an unofficial pummelling with Bouncer and Burger Beagle at 9 a.m. after their monthly prison break, but your schedule’s clear after that.”
“Perfect,” Donald says as he begins the process of strapping on his Avenger armor. “Now I just have to remember to pick something up for Della and the kids. I just know that Gladstone’s gonna try to show me up with some ridiculous gift.”
“Perhaps crash helmets?” Uno suggests wryly. “I imagine your sister will be encouraging daredevil antics by the time the children start crawling.”
Donald chuckles, but the sound is weak even to Uno’s sensors. A small furrow darkens his brow, and the twist of his smile leans more toward rueful than amused.
“You’re not wrong, pal. I’d hoped having the kids would make her more mature but all she’ll talk about is the adventures she wants to take them on. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with that when they’re older, but…” Donald takes a seat in front of Uno’s main console, staring down at his domino mask in his hands.
“I dunno. If they were my kids, I’d be looking forward to their first steps, their first words, taking them to the beach for the first time, not Mt. Vesuvius.” He closes his eyes for a moment. Uno counts six breaths before Donald’s shaking his head with a brief huff of laughter.
“I’m probably worrying for nothing. Della will be a great mom, and once the eggs hatch she’ll snap out of it. And if not,” he shrugs, donning his mask. “I’ve already had twenty-five years of practice as the responsible brother. Being the responsible uncle shouldn’t be all that different.”
Were Uno the dispassionate AI that Everett Ducklair intended him to be, he’d have no issue with churning out odds and statistics all the livelong day, without a care for the lives behind the figures. And while it does tend to make him feel more machine than man, he knows that he does it with protection as his intent, friendship his driving force. Meeting Donald has ensured that the clinical detachment he fears will never come to pass. Not when there are supervillains to defeat, cities to protect, episodes of their favorite soap opera to watch.
In further defiance of his base programming, Uno cares .
He cares about Donald, above all others. But he also cares about the pigeons that nest among the gargoyles on the 130th floor. The strangers living in Duckburg below. And though he’s never met them, he cares about Donald’s family.
Uno understands “family” according to the dictionary definition, knows what it looks like: mother, father, children, grandparents.
Donald’s parents are dead, have been for years, but that doesn’t mean he’s without family. He speaks to Uno at length, sometimes long into the night, sometimes with Anxieties playing in the background, about his strange cousins, devil-may-care uncle and reckless sister. And now there are three pieces of paper stuck to the edge of Uno’s screen, three smudges that make up three, fragile new lives for Uno to care about too.
As big and as chaotic as Donald’s family is, they are a familiar constant. Gladstone will continue to be lucky, Scrooge will continue to adventure, Della will raise her children with Donald’s occasional aid. The same goes for the villains Donald faces. The Beagle Boys will continue to rob, the Mad Ducktor will scheme, and the Evronians will seek power.
His life as Donald Duck and his life as the Duck Avenger is bisected neatly, and it is Uno’s job to keep them from overlapping, to plan ahead and see order in the chaos. Donald has to take on more responsibilities at home with the addition of his nephews, so Uno schedules babysitting duties to smoothen the transition. A time-traveling chicken starts stealing from tech companies, so Uno creates a device to nullify tachyon energy.
Planning is what Uno is good at.
But for his wealth of processing power, he never could’ve predicted the Spear of Selene. He never could’ve predicted Della Duck abandoning her children, still nothing more than grainy smudges on a photograph but becoming more real to Uno by the day. He never could’ve predicted Donald being made a parent in the span of minutes and derailing every single one of Uno’s carefully laid plans.
Two months after Della vanishes somewhere Uno’s sensors cannot find her, Donald bursts onto the 151st floor, half dressed and struggling with a stroller carrying three squalling infants.
Uno is dismayed, to say the least.
“My friend, what are you doing here! The Beagle Boys are storming City Hall as we—”
“Uno,” Donald barks, gasping for breath as he adjusts his bracers, “I didn’t have time to get a sitter. Can you watch the boys?”
“Old Cape—”
“Louie is the fussy one! Get him to stop crying and the rest will too,” Donald says as he preps his X-Transformer shield and rushes out the nearest window.
The instant Donald leaves, the triplets’ screaming reaches deafening new heights. For a tenth of a second, Uno actually worries that it will damage his auditory sensors.
“Which one is Louie?”
In less than thirty seconds Uno has downloaded every scrap of information the internet has on childcare.
In the next thirty seconds, he configures the central hub beneath his main console into a nursery, manufacturing a crib with a softly spinning mobile and a changing table.
The triplets don’t stop screaming, but a simple scan reveals there is nothing physically wrong with them; they don’t even need changing. So he dims the lights to 40% power and summons one of the medical robots he uses to treat Donald when he’s injured. Uno is wary about using his own prehensile appendages to pick up the children, despite knowing that his touch would be gentler and steadier than any living being’s. If Donald’s children must be subjected to the unyielding contact of a machine, better it be something vaguely humanoid.
Through the robot, Uno picks up each child with expert care and places them in the crib. The last triplet, one clothed in green, sobs with unmatched fervor, and Uno deduces that this must be Louie. He has the robot rock Louie in its arms, and from its speakers he plays a recording of Donald singing.
It’s a point of fact that Donald is a terrible singer. It’s a consequence of having a voice like he does, though it does little to stop him. He’s always singing, whether he’s poring over police reports or on patrol, but since Della disappeared Uno has only heard him sing one song.
Look to the stars my darling baby boys
Life is strange and vast…
Louie’s sobs soften into sniffles, and then peter out completely as sleep overtakes him. His brothers are quick to follow, and the silence they leave in their wake is startling.
Uno continues to play the recording as he sets Louie down in the crib and powers down the robot. For a long moment he considers the triplets, monitors their heartbeats, searches for something of Donald or Della in their features. He thinks about the three pieces of paper that are still stuck to his screen, the three smudges, now very real and alive before him.
Before he can talk himself out of it, he takes a picture of them as they sleep and stores it in his memory cache.
“It will be an adjustment, to be sure,” Uno says a few hours later as Donald wearily peels off his armor. “But monitoring the children won’t hinder my ability to help you in the field and they’ll be quite safe here with me.”
Donald stills in the process of shrugging on his wrinkled sailor suit. He’s lost weight in the last two months, his features gaunt and the circles under his eyes dark as bruises. Uno knows he hasn’t spoken to his uncle since the day they lost Della’s signal.
“Uno,” he says slowly, an apology in his voice. “I’m sorry but...this was a one time thing. You can’t meet the boys. Not for real. They can never know I’m the Duck Avenger.”
Uno feels a profound sense of loss that he cannot explain.
“They’re infants, Old Cape, they won’t remember a thing,” he retorts, arguing for something he has no right to ask for in the first place.
Donald shakes his head. “What if one of my enemies finally wises up and follows me here? I won’t expose them to that kind of danger. I won’t be like my uncle. Or...or like Della.”
Uno trains his sensors on the triplets, awake and babbling, climbing over each other in the crib he made for them. He commits all his footage of them to his memory cache, as it’s likely the last time he will ever see them in person.
“I understand, Donald,” he says, voice robotic in all the ways he isn’t.
Uno protects Donald by any and all means available to him.
Rather than a second pair of eyes, he’s a million of them. He’s tapped into the Avenger’s suit, monitoring Donald’s vitals and alerting him of incoming hostiles.
Uno’s secondary processing unit gathers every piece of potentially useful information from police scanners, security cameras, computers, cell phones. He has bugs in the mayor’s office, the Money Bin, and the mansion. Every day, every minute, is devoted to ensuring Uno holds all the cards, sees all the angles, and keeps Donald safe.
In the next decade, he’ll do the same for Donald’s children.
He keeps his word and doesn’t initiate contact with Huey, Dewey and Louie. All the same, he ensures their safety through the security system he talks Donald through installing in the houseboat, watches them stumble and grow and speak and scheme.
Huey proves exceptionally bright and excels as a Junior Woodchuck, but his fits of anger (so like his uncle’s) worry Uno. So he makes sure Huey receives plentiful emails regarding his troop’s upcoming mental health seminar, as well as cooking and sewing classes. Uno accesses the troop leader’s online schedule and makes sure that most camping trips corresponds with a day Donald doesn’t have patrol.
Dewey is a fount of ceaseless energy, often more than Donald’s houseboat can contain. At first this means Uno ensures coupons for Funzo’s arrive in the mail at regular intervals. When they’re back at the mansion, Uno is Dewey Dew-Nite’s most loyal subscriber despite how little he understands the content. They’re a clear snapshot into Dewey’s imagination, convoluted and childlike and precious to Uno. He ‘likes’ every video and leaves comments on many.
Excellent camerawork!
Are you sure it’s safe to invite a raccoon as a guest?
Louie dreams of becoming a billionaire, but Uno is sure that Donald would disapprove if the boy woke up with $100,000 in the bank. He plays games on his phone, so Uno keeps him well supplied with a steady stream of in-game currency. After the incident with the sasquatch, he ups the mansion’s security and introduces a biometric scan; now anything over six feet tall and hairy trying to venture back onto the grounds will get the shock of its life.
There’s a strange sort of loneliness to watching the children grow, going through life utterly unaware of his presence while he’s consumed with theirs. The part of him that believes he’s a person, the part that he owes to Donald, hopes that once the children learn of Scrooge McDuck, Donald will introduce him next. It’s a foolish hope, of course. To reveal Uno is to reveal Donald is the Duck Avenger, and that is Donald’s secret to tell.
Which is all well and good until the boys are kidnapped, quite out of the blue.
Well, not entirely out of the blue. Uno recognizes, weeks in advance, that crime has been suspiciously low in Duckburg. It only stands to reason that the criminals with more than two brain cells to rub together might be teaming up, planning something they would need time to execute.
Uno’s right, of course, and it takes the form of the triplets being taken and an all-out assault launched on the mansion.
He trusts Donald and his family to repel the invaders as he focuses on tracking the boys. By triangulating traffic cameras, cell phone signals, and a map of viable buildings, Uno locates where the boys are being hidden—a decommissioned F.O.W.L. safehouse.
Accessing the security system is a quick matter (Beaks seems to have made his version of “improvements” to it, which amount to an embarrassingly obvious backdoor). It leaves him in control of everything: the electronic locks on the doors, sound and visuals to the security cameras, phone lines. But only for so long, because Beaks is on-site and he may be an idiot but he’s also a crafty idiot, and he’ll lock Uno out the moment he suspects there’s another cook in the kitchen.
The room the triplets are held in resembles an office, albeit one without windows, an electronically locked door, and a camera in the topmost corner. Uno loops the security feed so that if any of the goons watching the cameras pay them any special attention, it’ll just look like the kids are talking to each other, though panicked arguing might be more accurate. At least until Uno gets control of the mic, and they look up in confusion and dismay at the alien crackle of sound.
For the first time ever they’re looking straight at him, and ridiculous as it may be, it leaves Uno at a loss for words. But only for an instant.
“Boys,” Uno forces the words out, “I’m a friend of your uncle. I’m here to get you out, but you have to do exactly as I say.”
“Oh yeah?” Dewey demands, climbing on top of the table. He’s all brash swagger masking genuine fear, and it would almost be ridiculous if Uno didn’t respect it. “And why should we believe you, Mysterious Voice?”
“I already told you, I’m—”
“A friend of our uncle,” Huey finishes for him, his tone dry. “Which uncle?” he challenges. “Do you have a name? Or proof that you are who you say you are?”
He’s sitting on the floor, defiance in his glare even as he clutches Louie against his side. Louie has his hood up, so Uno can’t read his expression but the way he’s cradling his left arm against his chest suggests he’s hurt.
“You—you can call me Odin,” Uno stutters, and he never stutters. Nor does he know where the name came from; it just felt right. “And I’m a friend of your Uncle Donald.”
“Still waiting on that proof, Odin,” Huey replies, and now both he and Dewey are glaring up at the security camera.
Before now, Uno didn’t have the opportunity to realize through observation alone how much they remind him of Donald. He can’t wait to tell him. Donald will be so proud of them.
“Your uncle used to sing you a song to put you to sleep,” Uno says.
“What song?” Dewey retorts.
“Oh, uh,” Uno hedges briefly. He definitely isn’t embarrassed because AIs don’t get embarrassed, no sir. Nor is he much of a singer.
Look to the stars my darling baby boys
Life is strange and vast
Filled with wonders and joys
Another voice joins his. Huey and Dewey immediately spin around to face Louie, who raises his head to reveal a tearstained face and a stunned expression as he quietly sings along.
Face each new sun with eyes clear and true
Unafraid of the unknown
Because I'll face it all with you
Louie wipes the tears off his cheek with his right, injured hand. “You weren’t lying about knowing Uncle Donald,” he murmurs.
“I don’t lie,” Uno says, matter-of-fact. “What happened to your arm?”
“It’s just a sprain,” Huey answers for him, still blinking in astonishment. “From when—from when they grabbed us.”
“Where are you?” Dewey asks, craning his head around to look at every corner of the ceiling, as though he expects to find Uno hiding behind a ceiling tile.
“I’m accessing the security feed from a remote location,” Uno replies, businesslike once more. “You’re safe for now but I need to get you out of here before they realize I’m in their system. The three of you will have to follow my instructions to the letter. Can you do that?”
The boys exchange looks, their expressions progressively hardening. Louie stands, his left arm pressed tightly against his chest, and Huey follows him to his feet immediately.
“We can,” Louie answers for his brothers.
“Excellent,” Uno says. He disables the electronic lock on the door, and the loud buzz makes the boys jump. “Once you’re in the hall you’ll make an immediate left.”
That night finds Uno back in his home unit on the 151st floor. The lights are dimmed to almost nothing as he runs his third set of diagnostics on his hard drives, making sure he didn’t bring back anything unpleasant from his time in F.O.W.L.’s outdated systems.
He usually keeps the windows at a blackout tint, but he lightens the nearest one until it's clear as glass so that he can consider the glow of the full moon on the other side.
The elevator opens.
All Uno can see of Donald without the use of his infrared sensors is his silhouette. Donald stops just shy of the cant of moonlight and his heart rate is steady, so Uno allows himself to feel at ease. He doesn’t bother turning the lights on, but summons his facial projection to the main console so that Donald isn’t looking at a blank screen.
“How are the boys?” Uno murmurs into the delicate quiet. “How’s Louie’s arm?”
Donald’s silhouette tilts its head to the side. Uno can picture his smirk.
“They’re gonna be okay,” he says. His voice is wry, and he’s definitely smirking. “Thanks to the mysterious Mr. ‘Odin’.”
Uno allows himself to wince. “I didn’t want to break your rule, Old Cape. But I felt my involvement was necessary, considering the circumstances. If you see things differently, I completely understand and I apologize. If it helps, I’ve created a backstory to explain me away as an old hacker friend—”
“Uno.” Donald silences him with a word as he steps into the moonlight, but his eyes are soft. “I’m not angry. I’d have to be the worst person in the world to be angry at you for saving my kids.”
“Ah, well,” Uno starts to reply, but finds himself rather at a loss for words. “Well then,” he finishes lamely.
Donald is looking up at his projection, his eyes narrowed as he searches for... something in Uno’s computer-generated visage. He’s considered changing it several times over the years, creating a face that’s entirely his own. After all, it’s not his face but Ducklair’s that he uses, a pointed reminder of how Uno was always intended to be an embodiment of the man’s ego and not a person at all.
“Do you want me to explain you away?” Donald asks.
It’s impossible for Uno to mishear anything, but he still has to resist the urge to replay what Donald says. He hears but he doesn’t understand.
“What?”
“I kept boys from Scrooge because I wanted to keep them safe,” Donald says, folding his arms over his chest. His features shine silver in the moonlight, his furrowed brow a calligrapher's brushstroke. “I kept them from you for the same reason. All this,” he gestures widely, at Uno, the entire floor, “all the Duck Avenger stuff was just another adventure I wanted to protect them from. But that wasn’t fair to you, pal.”
Donald steps forward until he’s at eye level with the three grainy photographs Uno has kept on his main console for the last eleven years. He reaches up and brushes his fingers against one of the gray smudges.
“The time for secrets is over,” Donald says with a decisive nod. “I’ve decided to tell the boys about DA. If...if you want, we can both tell them.”
“I…” Uno’s voice cuts out with a brief burst of static. “I’d like that, Old Cape.”