PKNA 12: Second Draft

Second Draft is the 12th regular issue of PKNA. It was written by Francesco Artibani and penciled by Claudio Sciarrone.

Plot Summary
A Channel 00 crew goes to Ducklair Tower to interview... Donald Duck, director of Ducklair Corporation? As part of the interview, Donald recalls how he got there: It all began when Everett Ducklair offered him to be his personal assistant, with the work of limiting Everett's excessive creativity. Over time, Everett gave Donald more responsibilities and they became good friends, until Everett asked Donald to run the Ducklair Corporation in his absence. After the interview, Lyla sees a brief flash of things as they should be, like Donald as the errand boy of Ducklair Tower. Donald privately goes to the 151th floor with Uno, where he turns into the Duck Avenger to patrol.

In the year 2255, Odin Eidolon sees that while the droids need to have some rights, now these rights have become excessive, with the droids behaving with superiority airs and having exclusive meeting places where no humans are allowed. Suddenly, Eidolon also has a flash of the main timeline and concludes that there's only one explanation and only one way to find out, so he goes to Time Ø, the timeless dimensional headquarters of the Time Police. There, he gets an object he had storaged there (implied to be a backup memory) and asks for a travel permit.

After defeating some thieves, Donald returns to Ducklair Tower to watch TV, but is visited by a duo in robes, claiming to come from Dhasam-Bul, the monastery that Everett Ducklair retired to, and telling Donald they know he is the Duck Avenger. The next day, Donald invites Lyla to meet one of the monks, and tells her he is a brilliant engineer offering Ducklair Corporation his invention of robotic servants, and they want Lyla as advertising manager, but she protests that droids shouldn't get such subservient roles, suggesting instead for them to be presented as collaborators, artificial brothers, from the beginning. After "Lyla" leaves, the droid, who is the other monk, re-dons the robe while Donald tells how he met Lyla: a Ducklair robot malfunctioned and almost overwhelmed her, but Donald cluelessly crashed his 313 against the robot. It was the same day that Everett Ducklair, creator of the robot, took Donald as an assistant as thanks for his intervention. The monks recognize that as an specific event that shouldn't have happened.

The monks guide the Duck Avenger to the place where he first met Everett, and without his knowledge, also make him time-travel back to the moment. The Duck Avenger believes it's a new test he wasn't notified of, and following the Monks' instructions, sprays the robot with a device that makes it malfunction, so by the press arrival, they are told that the test was postponed. After the other journalists leave, "Lyla" remains behind and is ambushed by the Duck Avenger and the monks. The android monk reveals her actual face, which "Lyla" recognizes as... Lyla, which confuses the Duck avenger, but not as much as seeing himself driving the 313 at a distance. "Lyla" takes the distraction to escape.

The tall monk reveals to actually be Odin Eidolon, and the Duck Avenger begins to remember the main timeline where Scrooge McDuck hired him to take care of Ducklair Tower. Odin explains that the timeline where Donald runs Ducklair Corporation is a second draft, a rewriting of history. The changed timeline is unstable and sometimes shows how reality should be, happening too fast to be perceiver by organic beings, but obious to androids. The Time Police hasn't intervened since their agent Lyla Lay was supplanted by the imposter, the leader of a robot revolution. The android monk isn't Lyla either, but instead another 5Y android brought to take the imposter off-guard, which didn't work.

The Duck Avenger and Odin Eidolon travel to Time Ø and take the Time Police to the rebels' headquarters. They fight the droids and find the captured Lyla, but while the Time Police have defeated most rebels thanks to the advantage of surprise, their leader is still unaccounted. The leader, who turns out to be Geena, a 5Y android the Duck Avenger had met in other adventure, locks herself, the Avenger, Lyla and Eidolon in Lyla's cell, to not be reached by the Time Police agents. She explains that she formerly tolerated to be treated as a slave until the Duck Avenger showed her kindness, which drove her to establish the rebellion.

Even though the rewrite of history was undone, Geena still has a last ace in the sleeve, a chronobomb that will self-destruct the base and finish the Time Police, thus making easier for her successors to repeat the plan. Odin Eidolon tells Geena that in the timeline where the droids gained independence, they took advantege of it and are on the brink of a war that won't benefit anyone. He shows her this via optical data interface, so Geena takes out the booster charge of the chronobomb and covers it with her body to protect the others from the explosion, despite the Duck Avenger's protest of it being too dangerous. After the explosion, Geena's last words are that, by ignoring the Duck Avenger's warning, she has proven she isn't an obedient machine.

Back at present day Duckburg, the Duck Avenger wonders why Geena wanted to include him in her plot, and Odin Eidolon explains that with him in charge of Ducklair Corporation, which would lead to the first Robolab, he and Geena-as-Lyla would have ensured the future of her kind. Before leaving, Odin Eidolon gives the Duck Avenger a memory plate with data for Uno, so he can know the events of the adventure.