Ugh...what happened?
Stan Pines opened his eyes and found himself looking at the ceiling of his bedroom.
Nothing exactly new about that. It was the same thing he'd done virtually every day for the last thirty years, except for when he fell asleep in the basement.
But this time he felt far more like crap than usual.
It all probably had something to do with-
Oh shoot.
The kids.
Ford.
The Zodiac thing!
Stan tried and failed to sit up.
He tried again, with the same result.
It wasn't even that he was tied down or anything; his limbs just didn't seem to have any strength left in them to move.
All Stan had the energy to do was turn his head-
-and notice that there was a strange woman in his room.
Despite what you might think, this had never really been a common occurrence for Stan.
And even if it happened now, it definitely wouldn't be one this young; Stan wasn't that much of a creep, thank you very much.
She was about Soos's age, with brown skin and a light brown ponytail, and a little on the chubby side but not like an unhealthy amount (not like he was exactly an expert on that, mind you). Come to think of it, maybe she was a little familiar.
"Mr. Pines?" she asked with a worried frown, scooting closer in her chair. "Are you awake?"
"Nnnng." Stan tried to remember how to use words; idly his tongue found the gap between his teeth and probed at it, and the ensuing pain woke him up a little more. "Wh-who-?"
"I'm Melody. Soos's girlfriend?"
...Oh yeah. That was a thing that had happened earlier this summer. Heh. He always knew the kid had it in him if he got his head out of his anime video games and actually learned how to talk to real girls.
Then he remembered why he'd been panicking earlier.
"Wh-where's…?"
"Everyone else is in different parts of the house," Melody told him. "They've all been asleep for almost two full days. You're the first one who's woken up, Mr. Pines."
Heh. About time Ford got some sleep…
Stan could already feel his heavy eyelids sliding shut again.
It was another day before everyone began waking up for real.
Soos was the first one to open his eyes this time-and was promptly covered in messy kisses and fussed over by his abuelita, calling him her little hero and telling him not to ever do something so foolish again. He felt like he was kinda getting mixed messages here, but she seemed to be mostly happy with him so he decided not to question it too much.
Gradually the others woke up too; however, they were all in various stages of exhaustion, and nobody was strong enough to get up and move on their own until they'd had a few good meals and gotten a little more sleep.
Even then, though, the former members of the Zodiac all needed to hold onto something while walking, and doing much of anything was a test of willpower for quite some time.
They had all also acquired a white streak in their hair.
With some people (namely Gideon and Fiddleford) it wasn't that noticeable, for obvious reasons.
Others, however…
Robbie had wailed and whined about it for an hour until Wendy reminded him that he could always dye it black if it was such a big deal to him; fortunately that was enough to shut him up, and Tambry was nice enough to find him some dye lying in the wreckage of the mall.
"I kinda like mine," Wendy said, looking at herself in the mirror and brushing the lock out of her eyes with a shaky hand. "It makes me look like Rogue from X-Men."
Ford, who had been examining his own hair with a grimace, turned his head in surprise. "Kids are still familiar with the X-Men?"
"Uh, yeah." Wendy reached up and parted it so it was hanging on either side of her face, before nodding to herself in approval. "I've seen all the movies. Granted, some of those were better than others, but-"
"There were movies?!"
She gave him a long look, and then sighed. "We got a lot of pop culture to catch you up on, dude."
"This is a disaster!" Priscilla Northwest lamented as she stared at the white streak marring her daughter's blonde locks. "It's completely ruined your image!"
"Mom, it's not that bad!" Pacifica argued. Despite what she had lamented during Weirdmageddon...it honestly wasn't that bad when you got used to it. She was surprised to find herself admitting, "I like it. It's kinda punk."
Both her parents gasped in horror, and she saw her father's face starting to tighten up in indication that she was about to get one of her credit cards revoked for her insolence.
...Instead, a sudden inspiration presented itself.
"It's like a badge of honor," Pacifica said, folding her arms. "It shows that our family was part of the fight against Bill Cipher, and we won. We're heroes who fought with the right side."
The reminder of how much the Northwests valued their reputation (and that this would hopefully be enough to make people forget about that little faux pas in which he tried to become one of Bill's "horsemen of the apocalypse") was enough to stop Preston in his tracks.
Pacifica smiled at him sweetly, until at last he looked away, muttering something about "at least try not to make it so visible."
The victory was her small consolation when her father's mistake of investing in "weirdness bonds" made them lose their house.
"...Maybe if we buy up a lot of hair dye Mom and Dad will never have to know," Dipper said thoughtfully.
"Ooh, can I do pink and purple streaks?" Mabel asked, bouncing on her bed (with less exuberance than usual). "That would look so cool!"
"I think they'd like that even less than they would just seeing the white part."
She pouted. "You're no fun."
When they weren't looking after their heroes, everyone was hard at work repairing the damage to their town.
Much to his frustration Ford was too weak to get physically involved in rebuilding, but he and Fiddleford did help with assembling blueprints for the work crews (and it allowed him to keep an eye on his friend and make sure he didn't secretly give too many of the new buildings the ability to turn into giant killer robots). He encouraged Fiddleford to sell some of his more ambitious inventions to the government, so the royalties could help him to improve his living arrangements, along with his wardrobe and diet and everything else about his life.
"...I'm sorry that you've gone through all that," he admitted one afternoon as they worked. "And that I was such a terrible friend."
Fiddleford looked at him sharply over the rims of his spectacles. "Stanford Pines, you were not-"
"Yes I was," Ford insisted. "If I had taken the time to listen to you just once, none of this would have happened."
After a second Fiddleford's expression lost some of its severity. "Well, mebbe some of it woulda happened any old how. Ya can't know fer certain one way or another, not unless ya get involved with time travel shenanigans or summat."
Ford grimaced, remembering what he'd read about Dipper and Mabel's misadventures with time travel. "Probably for the best if I don't try."
"Then don't spend a lotta time beatin' yourself up over it either. Have ya learned your lesson?"
"...I hope so."
"Good enough fer me." Fiddleford beamed at him, and went back to work.
After a moment, Ford did too, with a soft smile.
Needless to say, the hospital was being worked overtime trying to take care of broken bones, incidences of being viciously mauled by otherworldly creatures, the trauma of having your molecular structure rearranged-the list went on. They had to call in doctors and nurses from other parts of Oregon to help out, and Ford was forced to use up his entire multiverse med kit to help out those with the severest injuries.
Also, despite his protests, at the first opportunity he and the kids dragged Stan in for a professional checkup.
"You're lucky this isn't infected," the doctor said, examining the upper part of Stan's mouth where his incisor had been ripped out. "Fortunately we can create an artificial one that we can insert in its place, and it will look good as new."
Stan brightened. "Ooh, can I get a gold one?"
"NO," said Ford sternly.
Stan gave him an indignant look. "What? It'd add ta my image!"
Ford just glared at him until he folded his arms and stared grumpily at the table.
"Fine. Whatever. I don't care anyway."
Things were still...a little awkward between the two of them.
They'd cleared the air a bit before they had to be part of the Zodiac, but...while they weren't fighting or ignoring each other anymore, they were still doing a bit of an awkward dance around each other.
Neither one seemed sure how to make the first move.
Even as the town slowly rebuilt itself, and the end of summer crept steadily closer.
One or two more chapters to go!
