Welcome to an AU that I CAN'T WAIT to share with y'all - the DuckTales Swap AU!

(What can I say? I really like swap AUs XD)

Big thanks to salenaRD, who has put up with all my excited ideas and ramblings for this AU and has even helped me figure out some parts of it! Thank youuuu

This particular one-shot is set after the events of the episode From the Confidental Casefiles of Agent 22, which is a S1 episode. So if you're not totally caught up with the latest episodes then there's no spoilers *shrugs*

Now, without further ado, here we go!

As soon as Webby woke up that morning, she knew something was wrong.

At first, she didn't quite know exactly what was wrong. Maybe it was one of those get-dressed-before-breakfast days where her conscience told her that she'd be going on an adventure today.

But as Webby stood in front of her mirror, fully dressed just minutes later, something still didn't seem right.

Maybe, she thought, it was because she didn't have her bow in. Maybe her hair was too unkempt for her liking. Maybe she really wanted her bed to be clean.

But, half an hour later, Webby had done all of those things, and none of them had ceased the nagging feeling inside of her that something was wrong.

Webby admitted defeat in her head. Maybe she was just not fully awake yet, like the triplets sometimes were. Maybe that was it - maybe she needed a nice, cold cup of juice to wake her up.

That was an awful lot of maybes, she remarked.

She looked around at her awfully neat bedroom for eight o'clock on a . . . what day was it? . . . on a Saturday morning, and then she opened the door to her bedroom and stepped into the hallway.

And then it hit her with a bang.

All at once, she knew what was off. She knew what had been nagging at her for a full half hour straight. She knew what had made her jump out of bed and fix her bedroom first thing instead of eating breakfast in her pajamas.

It was quiet.

Dewey wasn't singing at the top of his lungs while sliding down the stair railings. Louie was not watching Ottoman Empire in his favorite living room, the one closest to Webby's room. And there was no Huey reciting rules from his trusted Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, making a long-winded speech and telling his brother to get up off his lazy butt and would you stop singing, Dewey, because you're not in the shower anymore and it's high time to eat breakfast.

No. It was completely, utterly, and horribly quiet.

And it was very off.

Even more confused and possibly even a little frightened, Webby quickly hurried down the stairs that led into the front hall and the foyer. Maybe, she started to tell herself, maybe Scrooge and the triplets are already at the Money Bin. Yes, that had to be it.

And then she stopped on her tracks.

She paused, took a step back, and turned around.

Was that - was Launchpad dusting the fireplace mantle?

Was that really Launchpad? His hair had been slicked back and he wore black glasses and a suit and he even had on an apron, just like Webby's granny did. And - and he was dusting off the fireplace, something that Launchpad would never ever do.

The fireplace, Webby realized, which had the old painting of Scrooge dressed as a gold miner hanging above.

Launchpad noticed her and nodded at her. "Good morning, Webby," he said, his voice unusually calm and straight.

Webby blinked.

"Are you alright?" Launchpad looked concerned. "You seem confused."

Then, without so much as a hello or a what? or even a goodbye, Webby ran as fast as she could to the kitchen. She had to find her granny. She needed to find her granny.

But the kitchen was empty and clean, albeit the delicious smells wafting up from the stove and a new fold-up table in the back.

So then where was her granny?

Webby raced back into the foyer. Launchpad had moved on to tending to the fire instead of dusting the fireplace's mantle.

She opened her mouth, but the front door banged open with a SLAM and then suddenly there was her granny, all right, but -

Her granny wasn't wearing glasses.

Or an apron.

Or her hair even in a bun.

Her hair was hidden under a cap with goggles on top, her eyes looked dangerous and wild, and she was wearing clothes that Launchpad would normally wear - a giant, oversized lavender coat and cargo pants and black boots and no apron.

Webby looked from her granny to Launchpad and back again several times.

"What a rush!" Mrs. Beakley shouted, jumping into the foyer. "Nothing like an early morning crash - oh, Webby dear! Woke up just in time for breakfast." After a second, she added, "You looked very stunned."

Webby's jaw had dropped and she did indeed look rather stunned. What had happened to her granny and Launchpad? Were they pulling a prank? Was Louie in on this?

"What's going on?" she finally said.

"What's -" Launchpad paused. "I suppose being stuck in here yesterday might've been exhausting. Maybe breakfast would help."

"She hasn't been out for a whole day, LP." Mrs. Beakley grinned. "Cut her some slack."

"Breakfast?" Webby repeated. "Stuck? In here? For a whole day?"

"Breakfast sounds excellent!" Mrs. Beakley rubbed her hands. "What's for breakfast?"

Before Launchpad could reply, Webby had zoomed down the hall again, but in the opposite direction of the dining hall. She had no interest in eating; she had to go find Scrooge.

~

Webby skidded to a stop before the door to Scrooge's study and nearly kicked the door down. She had no idea if Scrooge was even in his study - he was probably at the Money Bin with the triplets, but that idea was quickly shattered to pieces when she nudged the door open with her foot; there sat Scrooge, hunched over at his desk, muttering to himself and occasionally writing things down on a notepad.

He didn't even glance up at her. "Good morning, Webbigail."

Webbigail?  Webby waved her full name away and ran up to the desk. "Uncle Scrooge -" she began.

This time Scrooge did glance at her, and he raised an eyebrow. "Uncle?" he repeated. "Don't be daft, lass, I'm not your uncle."

The rest of Webby's sentence faded away, and her eyes grew wide.

"But -" She hesitated. "But yesterday -"

"Yes, yesterday." Scrooge waved that away. "Did you need something?"

"Something - yes, I need something." Blinking her wide eyes, Webby forced a nod and did her best to keep her hands steady. "Where - where are the triplets?"

"Haven't the faintest idea who you're talking about." Scrooge had gone back to writing things down.

Now Webby's jaw dropped.

"Your -" She hadn't expected that answer at all. "Your nephews -"

Scrooge paused and looked at her again.

Then he got up and started to push Webby out the door. "That's enough for today, lass," he said firmly.

"But -" Webby couldn't help but be shoved out of the study. "But but but -"

"Good day." And then the study door slammed shut.

Webby stared at the now-closed door. This had to be an elaborate prank - it just had to be. The triplets were probably hiding somewhere - maybe in the pantry or the houseboat - muffling their laughter as they thought of what was happening.

Webby walked down the hall and back into the foyer, her heart sinking. Launchpad looked irritated and Mrs. Beakley seemed full of energy, but they both paused when they saw Webby.

"Did you visit Mr. McDuck?" Launchpad asked. "You should know he doesn't like to talk before having his nutmeg tea."

Webby couldn't remember the last time Scrooge had actually been like that - it must've been before the triplets came. That had been months ago. "I'm going to find the triplets," she said slowly, and she turned to the stairs.

"Triplets?" Launchpad repeated, but Webby hurried up the stairs, not wanting to deal with the idiocy that this prank was. She'd find the boys, she would - they were in their room, probably with the "Dewey Dew-night" set still up and their bedroom a mess -

But when Webby opened the door to what was supposed to be the triplets' bedroom, she wasn't prepared to face a completely empty room - no Dewey Dew-night set, no triple-bunk-bed, nothing at all except for a sheer inch or two of dust that covered everything. The dresser was still in there, but there was nothing inside its drawers except for a friendly spider weaving a web.

"Guys?" Webby called, her voice echoing. "Hello?"

Silence.

"If this is a prank, it's gone too far."

Nothing.

Webby wasn't sure what to do. Where was everyone? Come to think of it, where was Donald? She hadn't heard him yell about something the boys had probably broken by now.

Maybe they were in the houseboat, she thought. But when she moved to the window in the room, the pool in front of the mansion was houseboat-free.

She walked back down to the foyer rather stunned.

"Poor dear," Mrs. Beakley sympathesized once her granddaughter had stopped by the fireplace with wide eyes. "Breakfast will do you good." Then she leaned closer to Webby and whispered, "Maybe we'll stop by the houseboat today - sneak out and all. You seem worried about the triplets."

The houseboat? Webby looked up at her granny in surprise, and then she nodded eagerly. Her granny had to be in on the prank, she thought, as she followed Mrs. Beakley and Launchpad into the kitchen and not the dining room.

But Webby wasn't very hungry, as she quickly found out. All three were seated at the table in the kitchen, and it strongly reminded Webby of the days before the triplets had arrived. With her head resting on her hand, she stabbed a pancake with her fork.

"Mrs. Beakley, I have an errand for you to run," Launchpad said, sitting down at the table. "Mr. McDuck wanted to know how Dr. Crackshell's suit is coming along."

This made Webby pause. Who on earth was Dr. Crackshell?

"Webby and I wanted to get out of the house, anyway," Mrs. Beakley said cheerfully. "We'll stop by the lab first."

Webby still had her head in her hand, and she stared at her fork with much thought that wasn't on the fork at all. Maybe the triplets were at the lab with Gyro and Fenton and . . . whoever Dr. Crackshell was. Maybe Donald had taken the triplets and the houseboat out for fishing or something.

After Webby and Mrs. Beakley had finished their breakfast, they got into the van that the crew sometimes took on adventures. Webby buckled up in the passenger seat besides her granny, and she leaned back, trying to relax.

But she didn't remember when her granny had become . . . less of a driver.

Webby found herself holding onto her seatbelt for dear life. Mrs. Beakley nearly crashed into several lampposts and fire hydrants and even almost ran two red lights if it wasn't for Webby's screech for her to stop and slow down. So when the van reached the Money Bin, Webby was understandably the first one to bolt out of the van and thank her lucky stars she was on the ground now.

Mrs. Beakley seemed unaware of her granddaughter's relief that she was out of the van as the two walked inside the office and as they took the elevator to the underwater lab.

A few minutes later, the elevator doors slid open, and, as usual, Gyro was chasing a runaway invention around his lab. Both Mrs. B and Webby were unfazed, but Webby noted this with a sigh of relief - it looked like maybe this was all a prank.

But when Gyro had finally caught whatever was running away - it had been Lil Bulb, on further inspection - Webby realized that Gyro was off, too.

"Mrs. Beakley!" Gyro grinned. "What brings you to the lab today?"

"We're here to get a report on the suit for Mr. McD," Mrs. Beakely said. "And I brought Webby with me."

Webby blinked at Gyro. He looked so . . . un-neat. His shirt was untucked, he wasn't wearing his vest, there was a tie fastened under the collar of his shirt - he seemed so happy and not at all stern.

"Of course! Let me go get Dr. Crackshell." And Gyro quickly turned around and hurried up the stairs to the small balcony in the middle of the room.

Webby glanced around - no triplets. Huh. If anything she would've thought that Huey had to be in here, maybe to complete a Junior Woodchuck badge, but there was no sign of the red-wearing duck - or, come to think of it, this Dr. Crackshell everyone kept talking about.

Then Gyro appeared again, and he gestured up the stairs to the mountain-balcony-thing in the middle of the room. Mrs. Beakley and Webby followed him up the stairs, where Webby saw yet another surprising thing that day - there was Fenton, dressed almost like Gyro usually was - high-collared shirt, brown vest, purple bowtie.

The first thought that came to Webby's mind was that Fenton reminded her forcefully of a banana.

But then that thought was quickly banished from her mind when she realized that there was a giant robotic suit standing on the balcony.

Webby's eyes widened even more at the sight of it.

"Report for Mr. McD," Mrs. Beakley said. "On the Gizmoduck suit." She gestured to the suit.

"Of course," Fenton said. Webby had to blink several times - he sounded so composed. But then he turned to Gyro and gave Lil Bulb a surprisingly stern look.

"Oh - right," Gyro said hastily, shoving Lil Bulb behind his back.

Fenton faced Mrs. Beakley and Webby again and started to talk. "Nice of you two to visit," he said placidly. "The new Gizmoduck suit is better improved than its last - disastrous - attempt to save the civilians of Duckberg. I've made some improvements and rewired a few things as well."

Mrs. Beakley nodded thoughtfully.

"Intern, you better be writing this down," Fenton said sharply to Gyro.

"Of course, Dr. Crackshell," Gyro said hurriedly, quickly grabbing a notepad and pen and starting to scribble things down.

Wait wait WAIT.

Webby stumbled back.

Fenton was Dr. Crackshell . . . and - and that meant that Gyro was Fenton's intern, not the other way around.

She barely heard the rest of the report - Fenton was Dr. Crackshell. Gyro was Fenton's intern. Gyro looked so unkempt and Fenton looked so neat.

When the report was finished, she left the lab in a daze.

~

They were back in the van moments later with the slip of paper that Gyro had been writing on. Webby just stared out of the car window, clutching her seatbelt again - what was going on? Everyone she had met so far had acted weird and crazy and not at all like themselves.

The triplets would know how to fix this, she told herself. Or they would assure her it was an elaborate prank or it was National Switcheroo Day and Webby just didn't know.

But she was slowly convinced that National Switcheroo Day was very much not a thing, because the triplets would've gone on and on about it and then try to make it a giant prank.

Okay, so maybe it was very much a thing and she was just wrong about everything she had theorized so far.

The van pulled into the parking lot of a dock - very clumsily and almost crashing into the plants - and Webby jumped out of the car immediately, searching her line of vision for the houseboat. Where, oh where was the houseboat?

"Looks like they moved the houseboat again," Mrs. Beakley remarked, standing next to Webby.

"Again?" Webby said before she could stop herself.

"They move it nearly every day!" Mrs. Beakley laughed. "Let's go find it."

And so Webby and Mrs. Beakley walked up and down the dock, trying to find the all-too-familiar houseboat. They eventually found it ten very long minutes later, sitting beside a railing that led right into the houseboat, but either Webby hadn't been to this particular spot before or the houseboat seemed off at this location, too. No one was running around the house in the boat, but she could certainly hear noises coming from inside.

Webby and Mrs. Beakley climbed into the boat and walked up to the front door, where Mrs. Beakley knocked on the door.

"Hello?" Mrs. Beakley called. "It's Mrs. B and Webby!"

Webby clasped her hands together and swayed back and forth on her heels. C'mon, guys, she wished. Open the door -

And then the door did open, as if on cue, but who had opened the door was someone Webby would've never guessed in a million years.

Donald hadn't opened the door.

Della Duck had.

Webby's jaw moved up and down, her eyes so wide she felt like she was straining them and she'd have spots in her vision if she didn't stop soon enough.

"Oh, Webby and Mrs. B!" Della - Della freaking Duck - shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "What brings you here today?"

Webby tried to speak but she couldn't.

"Webby was worried about the triplets," Mrs. Beakley said cheerfully.

Della paused, and then she cracked a smile. "Well, then, come -"

"DELLA!" Webby finally burst out.

Della raised an eyebrow.

"You're - how - get here - where were - where's -" Webby's sentences came out jumbled on a string, making no incoherent sense as her eyes bugged out even more.

Suddenly Huey was at the door, and he grinned. "Oh, hey Webby, Mrs. B!"

"But - Donald - what about -" Webby babbled.

And then the mood changed; Della's expression hardened, Mrs. Beakley looked alarmed, and Huey's eyes grew wide.

"We'll be right back," Huey said sweetly, grabbing both of Webby's wrists and yanking her inside the houseboat.

He led her to a corner of the house and then, after glancing over his shoulder, gave Webby a panicked look. "Webby, what was that? We promised to never say his name in front of Mom -"

"Where's Dewey?" Webby shouted frantically. "I need to find Dewey - discuss some things -"

"Yo," a familiar voice said.

Webby whirled around and nearly fell over while doing so - Dewey was lying on the couch, scrolling through his phone, which was a very Louie thing to do.

"Dewey, are you still on the couch?" Louie admonished, popping up from behind the sofa. "Webby's over, c'mon."

And then Webby realized there was something still very wrong.

Dewey pulled on his blue hoodie.

Louie fidgeted with his green hat.

Huey looked nervous in his red layered shirt and no hat.

Webby rubbed her eyes and stared at the triplets again. It was like they had switched styles of clothing.

No, not just clothing.

It was like they had switched personalities.

"This - this is just a prank, right?" Webby said desperately.

"What's a prank?" Dewey glanced up from his phone, suddenly looking interested. "There's a prank?"

Webby hurried over to Dewey, sat next to him, and made herself comfortable on the couch before whispering into his ear, "Why is your mom here?"

Dewey gave her a weird look. "Because she . . . lives here?"

"But where's -"

Huey pulled Webby off of the couch. "Webby, not here!" he said hurriedly. "What's with you?"

"What's with me? What's with all of you?" she cried, pointing to each of the triplets. "You've all switched -" She froze. "Wait -"

Switched.

That was what had been off the entire day.

First Launchpad and Mrs. B, and then there had been Fenton and Gyro, and now the triplets - they all had switched.

It really wasn't a prank.

"But -" Webby stared at the triplets. "How did you - how did I -"

Wait - if Huey was Dewey, then . . .

Webby turned to Huey. "Do you have a picture of - you know, the note?" she asked.

Huey pulled out his phone, fiddled with the password, and then discreetly showed Webby a picture.

In incredibly messy handwriting, the note now read:

Scrooge -

I've taken the Spear of Selene. I'm sorry.

- Donald

Webby stared at the picture with her jaw hanging open.

"Wait, but then -" Webby thought desperately. "Why aren't you at the mansion?"

"The mansion?" Huey blinked in confusion.

And then the answer came to Webby.

It was the reason why the picture of Della and Donald wasn't hanging above the mansion's fireplace mantle.

The reason why Scrooge had seemed like his old self. The reason why Webby, Launchpad, and Mrs. B had eaten in the kitchen and not in the dining room, and the reason why the mansion had been so quiet.

Della had never gone to live at the mansion in the first place.

And that meant Scrooge had never met the triplets. 

A/N: this is the first one-shot set in the SwapTales universe! If you'd like to see more of this AU, then you can check out the SwapTales book on my profile, where an edited version of this one-shot is posted!