Sailor With a Heart of Fire || A DuckTales Story

Tenacity

It was past the break of dawn when Elliot began to feel tired of rowing, but he didn't want to stop, especially when the houseboat was at stake. However, his sisters did notice his eyelids were beginning to droop. Elliot's arms grew tired, and the oars started to move more lethargically.

"Here, I can row now," May offered.

"Okay," Elliot sighed.

He let go of the oars and tried to move to where June had been sitting, but he was so tired he could hardly move his tail feathers. June gave a gentle smile and helped Elliot move to the front, and handed him the compass. Once they had switched places, June proceeded to switch with May so she could row, and that's just what the girls did. Elliot put his free hand at the front of the boat and pulled himself up to his knees. He took off his cap and rubbed his eyes, then he looked down at the compass, finding it to still point straight ahead, the hand wavering but distinctly pointing one direction.

"Still straight ahead," he said, putting his cap back on.

May rowed the boat straight, through the still empty ocean. So far, even in the few hours they had been out, they had come across nothing. They had just been going through the vast mass of blue and green, and now the sky was starting to turn pink, orange and blue. They had been out all night, and as May rowed through the sea, Elliot wondered how everyone else was at home as the sun was coming up. His parents were probably worried sick, for all three of them, his cousins were probably looking for them, but finding them nowhere, and then there was Delilah. Elliot was suddenly wide awake, now that Delilah had come to his mind; he had gotten out of bed without her knowledge once again, and it was bad enough that he had terribly worried her the first time. He felt awful, and suddenly he felt a lump in his stomach, slightly weighing him down.

He put the compass down for a moment and turned to his sisters. Now that he had more than one sister, he was worried for them. He wasn't sure he wanted to put them in danger, but they had insisted on coming along for the journey. He was starting to question whether he should have waited until morning to go after fiery rocks with Scrooge, but he was already here, and there was no going back now.

"Are you guys sure you wanted to come?" he asked May and June.

"Yeah," May breathed between rowing.

"We want to save the boat too," said June. "We weren't sure our new family would ever let us do something like this, especially since Black Heron made it sound like we would never have a real family....But you and Delilah were loving, like no one else in our lives, and we wanted to help you, because you're out to save the boat."

"Yeah but you guys don't have to play hero," Elliot replied. "I'm not trying to prove myself, I'm just trying to save the family."

"We never said we came along to prove ourselves," June added. "We want to save the family too...even failed experiments can do what's right."

As May kept on rowing, Elliot felt a little more bad than he had been feeling, now that June made that remark. He knew their past; May and June were created by F.O.W.L. to obtain the magical papyrus of binding, but they didn't meet all the needs that Webby met. Donald and Daisy took them in and they became sisters to him and Delilah. They were failed experiments, yes, but they knew right from wrong.

"Yes," he said. "Of course."

He turned back around and picked the compass back up off the floor of the boat. It still pointed straight ahead, wavering in its place. Elliot's free hand hung over the edge of the small boat in thought. Everything had been full of love since Bradford's defeat, but now he was out with a lot of weight on his shoulders, the boat at stake, as well as his sisters' lives. He almost felt as if his heart was starting to rip in two, especially being without his youngest sister, he felt...incomplete. He brought his attention back to the matter at hand, and looked back at the compass. The light orange glow started to fade in and out, and the needle pointing straight forward fluctuated from left to right more furiously than it had before. This worried Elliot.