You can't reason with a headless man!

The past four post titles, btw, are from the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, narrated (and in this case, sung) by Bing Crosby. Man I wanna watch that now!

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Chapter four

References:

- "Monsters R Us", the Darkwing episode, referenced a few times over mostly for Gos having been the Monster and somewhat for LP having been the vampire bat. Evidently Beth has not seen that episode. ;)
- The Seven-Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe, which is the inspiration for Beth's costume (as she says).
- "Malice's Restaurant", I think, was the Darkwing episode where Morgana meets the Muddlefoots. I always thought it was interesting because it brings Morg into Drake's life, outside of his nightlife as Darkwing. Also because of how quickly the Muddlefoots and Morgana take to each other. *G*

Joke that may be lost: the Super Glue to get the bolts on. One should never Super Glue anything to one's body. I'd intended to refer to the bolts being there later (possibly the next day) but decided it was out of place.

I feel a cardinal rule of writing a ghost story is, even when you have cute scenes, you must keep the tension up a little by including some spooky stuff. Hence the part with the locked/unlocked door at Beth's house.

This is another chapter with a bit of a change to it, mainly with LP in Beth's house; I made him a little more exasperated with her behaviour. 'Cause no matter how much you like someone, when they're frustrating they're just FRUSTRATING, durnit. *G*

Another thing I tweaked was just referencing the fact that Beth knows how LP feels about her now, and is nervous being complimented by him (though underneath she's also quite flattered, as well).

Don't ask me why I "duck-i-fied" Charles Darwin's name to "Drakewin" but did not change Marilyn Monroe or Humphrey Bogart. I just couldn't think of any good replacement names. Drakewin, on the other hand, fit so nicely... SO nicely, in fact, that I'm certain either DWD or DuckTales already used it somewhere. The image of Honker in that costume is SO CUTE in my head! ^_~

The brief Honker and Beth interaction sorta sets up something I started playing with back in "Something In the Air", which is that Beth and Honker think very similarly and as such get along very well - which down the road leads to Honker developing a little crush on her. I think this is different from the "everyone loves Beth" syndrome I used to have, because it actually makes *sense*, and also because I intend to underplay it and use it mainly to annoy Gosalyn. If I ever manage to write a fic that takes place after this one, it'll become a little more obvious. ^_^

One thing that is in use in this fic which I don't think has been made particularly clear in earlier fics is that Beth really *is* pretty, and despite being incredibly skinny, could possibly pull off something like Marilyn Monroe for her costume. It's made a little more evident in AAE. The issue she has is that she's been overshadowed by her glam older sister and had self-esteem issues, so she's never put any effort or developed any confidence into her appearance, and manages to keep people from *looking* at her closely enough to notice that she's quite good-looking. She really is underweight, though - or at least, she was, but she's no longer as bad as she was before she met Launchpad. Once she got more friends, she started eating a little better and is a healthier weight now; so she's still skinny - that's just her body type, tall and thin - but no longer badly so.

I put Morgana in a black dress (kind of a Morticia Addams deal) because I figure Halloween is for her family what Christmas is for a lot of Normals (at least the Christian ones), so she's dressed up after having just left some family affair. Oddly, though, I always put her in black when she clearly prefers the colour red in the series. Well, blame me for liking black, I guess.

Yes, "thrilled to death" to see Morgana is an intentional pun on my part.

LP does indeed do a Bogart impression, I believe in "Double-O Duck" from DuckTales.

Man, I really wanted him to kiss her. *sigh* How come, no matter how many times I reread that scene, he never does? :P

Chapter Five

References:

- None in this chapter!

More additions to the text here, both to acknowledge the changes to canon and to give a little more depth to Beth's freakout. In the original she was freaking out more because she was just afraid she was going to ruin her friendship by falling for LP or something, the way she had with Drake; but it makes more sense for her to freak out because LP is moving in on her and she doesn't know how to deal with it. Of course she blames herself though. *G* And actually, she's sort of right - she is sending pretty mixed messages...

I don't think it comes across too well here but that wall section that keeps worrying at Beth - what makes it so uncomfortable is that it's body temperature, perhaps a little damp, and tends to remind people of touching human skin. :P

Of course the "audio" portion of this ghost scene corresponds to the prologue. I tellya folks if this had been a movie and not a fanfic, this scene would have been positively spine-chilling.

Personal opinion, on rereading this, is that you can tell I was out of practice writing DW when he comes into this chapter... A better representation of him would be to have him say something to make it worse, or something like that. I was writing DW like he had no sense of humour here. If I weren't so lazy I'd rewrite it a little, but eh... ;)

Wow, a short chapter!