Illusion is Reality
Chapter 86
-Why aren't you dancing-
With the younger twins (and Miz) having their plan together, and Stan having spent enough time with Miz on her own part in things ('acting lessons' and stuff, and how and when to go about playing things up for the audience and the people they'd be expecting at the beach, among other things)...
...and with Ford and the kid being pretty quiet up on the 'roof' of the cabin and seemingly able to (maybe) keep themselves from trying to kill each other (...for now…) and from re'addicting' somebody or another to somebody else (and it had damn well better stay that way, or the kid was getting punched in the face again, big-time)...
...yeah, things were about as quiet as they were gonna get for awhile.
So Stan decided it was time for dinner.
(Besides, the two of 'em were gonna be right above his head while he cooked. If either of them started a fight, Stan would hear them inside the cabin. The soundproofing on the thing wasn't that good, not by a longshot.)
"Hey, Miz," Stan said to the dragon-lady as she dusted herself off, in her human-dragon-child form once again. "You want to help me break in the new kitchen up there?" he said, tossing a thumb up deck-ways. Because he and Ford hadn't just finished the exterior of the cabin off that morning, after getting Bill and the teach back to the school again; they'd gone off to the city dump after that, and Ford had managed to grab up enough parts of what he'd needed to make up some fancy-pants 'not needing a lot of electricity to run this thing' stove stuff.
Miz lit up. "Yes! I would LOVE to!"
Stan smiled. He climbed up the rope ladder to the deck, as Miz floated her way up there herself, and he kind of wondered what she'd think of the place. It wasn't some fancy kitchen thing; not by a longshot, but… Stan had made sure that there were two propane burners on the stove, to go with the four electric ones that were working off of an old car battery… (which Ford had apparently hooked up to the solar panels he had moved off of the washer and dryer - which had gone inside the cabin, with a longer water-hookup hose that ran outside for an eventual dunking in the seawater below - and strung those panels up to hang off of the sides of the cabin's roof instead, in a sort of clothesline-between-the-roof-and-the-main-mast arrangement).
Miz pattered around on deck, looking over all of the most-apparent changes. (Ford hadn't just been idle on the cabin's roof; he'd been checking and rechecking some of the electrical connections up there, and water- and weather-proofing quite a bit of, well, everything. -Including the roof itself, which had still needed a little work.)
Stan walked over to the door to the cabin, and opened it up for Miz.
"Same arrangement as the 'Two," Stan told her, as he followed her inside. Ford had 'felt no need to mess with perfection' on the subject of the best cabin layout for a boat meant for sailing, and Stan had (more or less) shrugged and gone along with it. "Kitchen-galley and dining-work area first-thing," he pointed out. "With the bunks and main living quarters in the back," he gestured next.
"Okay." Miz nodded, looking around. She glanced up at Stan, "I got some peppers. All different kinds, and the spices too." Both scanned and saved into a room of her Mindscape that she'd built just for food-related stuff. "Also, I learned that Paprika is actually a pepper. I never noticed that. Probably because I never scanned a pepper, but then I did and it had the same make up as paprika." Miz told him, "I never used paprika but it was a pretty color so I scanned it. But now I know something new!"
"Good," said Stan. He considered teasing her about liking paprika-peppers on the spot, but then decided to save that one for later. (Didn't seem the right time for it; he wanted her feeling good about doing things for her brother and friends for awhile, not embarrassed 'cause then she'd not like the feeling and end up learning the wrong thing, there. Better to let it settle in for now as a 'good thing' for awhile.)
"You get a look at anything new of the 'same old', too?" he asked her. Miz nodded. Good. More human food she could use for stuff back home in her own 'set, then. (Maybe keep her from feeling too desperate about more human stuff later...) "And all the seeds you wanted?" he asked next, just to be sure. He'd forgotten to ask about the not-fresh stuff the first time. (Hey, he was gettin' old. He was allowed.) Speaking of... "You need any cookbooks too? For stuff you maybe, y'know, 'know', but maybe don't know?" he asked her next.
Miz nodded then shook her head. "Seeds yes, I've got a garden back home. Cook books no, I-" she looked embarrassed. "I don't like following instructions and measuring stuff…" She looked even more embarrassed. "...probably why I'm terrible at baking…"
Yeah, okay. "How did you usually learn recipes and stuff, then?" Stan asked her, as he moved forward into the galley area. He wasn't exactly the best baker, but he wasn't the worst either. He usually just followed the recipes, though; he didn't know too many other ways to do it.
"I just… toss stuff into a wok and go for it." Miz replied. "Pretty much self-taught?"
Huh. "You ever try watchin' those online videos instead? -The ones that actually take as long as it takes?" Stan asked her.
Miz nodded. "I do, but I always get bored partway through and improvise. And as long as it's not baking, the food still turns out fine and yummy, so… eh?" She shrugged.
...Yeahhhh, Stan could see that happening. And he knew first-hand exactly what kinds of stuff a bored person (*cough* Mabel *cough*) could create 'artistically' when she decided to 'improvise' in the kitchen. (Shack rule was that anything she made, she ate. No foisting it off on anybody else unless Stan cleared it first. ...which he sometimes did, y'know, to people he didn't like. -Mailed a couple things out on one occasion or another too, even. Heh. Luckily, his niece had had a stomach of titanium, or somethin'.) But if Miz actually wanted good human-food baking, and maybe didn't care so much how she got it...
Stan thought about that one for a moment. "Any of your friends back home like baking stuff?"
Miz looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers. "Well, he's embarrassed by it, but yeah."
"Don't have to tell me who, kid," Stan told her. "Was just askin' because I thought, hey, maybe if that other guy likes baking, then maybe give him a copy of those cookbooks with all those boring recipes and instructions to follow, instead." He winked at her.
"Ah okay. Well, he likes baking, but he never does it, since he's afraid someone will find out about it. He's got a complex about it, since he's supposed to be a rough and tough demon-imp so yeah…" Miz tilted her head. "I should give him his own private kitchen…"
Private kitchen, nothing. "Yeah, maybe no. That'd just get the guy caught out that much quicker, if he don't already have one wherever this guy's living, right?" Stan gave her an odd look. "You can't just toss up one of those perception filters for him on some other oven someplace, hand him a bunch of those cookbooks, and let him have at it? Then just say that you got the stuff from some other store nearby instead of him, later, when a bunch of hot baked goods just, heh, 'magically' show up?" he asked her.
Miz grinned. "I think he'd love that." She glanced around again. "Actually, I cheat with magic for all my baking, since… ah… I'm bad at it. Not like it turns out toxic, it tastes fine, it just doesn't look very appealing."
"Hey, not like we've got an oven in here," Stan pointed out. "Too dangerous, on a wooden boat like this. -Even with magic," he added, giving her a look.
Miz nodded. "Oven explosions are super dangerous. That's how I lost one of my jobs back as a human, the bakery I worked at exploded…" she said plainly, as if she were talking about the weather.
Stan winced. "Everybody come out in one piece?" he asked. "Or…" He'd seen first-hand what some explosions looked like after the fact. Up close and personal. There was a reason he only ever went with smokebombs for junk, and was always real careful with the kind of ones he used…
"Yeah, there was a large rolling cart with trays between the oven and the head baker so it blocked the blast. He was a little singed but otherwise fine. It happened super early in the morning before my shift started. Still sucked though." Miz pouted. "I liked my job there. Got free donuts."
Stan nodded, as he moved to the side and skipped the rest of the tour for now, jumping straight to where things actually were in the galley area. (Hey, they had hungry jerks and idiots and demons out there who hadn't eaten anything yet. Priorities. ...He was just glad that he'd found another thing to have the dragon-lady thinking about, that had her thinking about other people, and not just herself. Getting her past only thinking about what she wanted, remembering that there were other people who might want different things than her - or might say something different to her if they'd been there - and stopping to think about that? Was all good in Stan's book. What with the 'thinking about what her sister would say' thing, and the thing that had just happened out on the beach, and this 'donut bakery' thing now? Stan figured half her problem with people was that she just didn't think all that much about them most of the time. Not really. Just stuff that was happening with herself, and nobody else, most of the time. Just, none of that other kind of stuff. At all.)
(So Stan figured that anything he could set up to have her doing more of that kind of thinking was a win, in his book. Because the more practice she got at thinking about how what she did or didn't do might impact other people later, and what other people might think about what she was doing right then in the moment - and what she could be doing different, for them specifically... would get her actually stopping and thinking for a start. And maybe lay the groundwork for makin' it a lot easier to get her thinking about 'anybody else' later...)
"Stove's here," Stan pointed out to Miz next in the galley area, along with... "Propane's underneath for those two," 'cause he knew some folks got picky about gas versus electric with their cooking. "Think you saw what Ford did with the solar panels out there for the electric range." He gestured at the other four. Stan really hadn't been able to talk Ford down from that one. They'd only needed one on the Stan O'War II, but… the twins would have less money in the bank than they had themselves, for a pretty good while; propane cost and it could be a little dangerous to wrestle the larger tanks of the stuff around if you weren't careful, but the electricity would be 'free' from the solar panels, as long as there was sun and all the lines and electronics held out.
"Got the cold-and-colder-boxes from the kid, right there," Stan said with a smile next, pointing out the 'freezer' and 'fridge' under the counter that Bill had magicked up for them a few days ago, using a few of those box-crates from below deck. "Even got some stuff in 'em. And the sink's over there," next to the washer that Miz had set up with the whole clean water filter thing, with lines running to and from the thing…
...and also to a backup water-holding tank, just below them on the next deck down, in the hold below. Ford had (somewhat grumpily) announced that the filtration system was good enough that they could simply send the same water through it over and over again almost indefinitely. -The twins would just need to empty out some of the dirt-gunk from the washer's filter-part once in awhile, and add some seawater to the tank every so often, because water evaporating was a thing that happened a bit whenever you did stuff with it, no matter what it was you were doing. (The dryer wasn't dumping any of that washing-water it was drying out of the wet clothes back into the system, for a start…)
Miz tilted her head. "So what're we making for dinner? Or am I just cooking for brother and me while you cook for the humans?"
"You should probably handle the demon-food, while I handle the human-food," Stan told her. "Doesn't mean we can't have some overlap, though. Twins could use some salad, and I know you eat meat just fine," Stan pointed out. "Lemonade to drink, maybe; no sugar for the kid, though," Stan added. Usually, he just handed the kid the lemon juice; he poured a dollop straight into whatever he was drinking - usually just boiled tap water of some temperature or another. "Gonna have to think about the main meal; I'll handle that."
"Okay, lemonade for the humans, lemon water for brother. Got it." Miz was pulling stuff out of the cold boxes - handing it up to Stan, who was putting it on the table in the middle of the galley for easy access. "Salad because the teenagers don't eat enough veggies," she said aloud to herself, as if reminding herself of what they were doing. "Hm, kale works great when mixed with nuts… have to chop it super small…" she mused.
Stan nodded as he got his own ingredients together. He'd gone grocery shopping with Ford the day before; they still had some steaks left over in the 'colder box' - beef, not just fish from one of Miz's earlier hauls. There wasn't enough steak left for everybody as the meal itself, but… hey, he could grill and chop those up for tacos or something, couldn't he? He had the taco shells for it… and grated cheese… and bunch of other stuff, like what Miz had pulled out for the salad...
"Hey," said Stan, as he pulled one of the pans off of the wall and placed it on the nearest propane gas burner. "I'm thinkin' tacos tonight. -Save me some of that tomato and lettuce for fixings, will ya?"
Miz nodded and put aside the requested items before she went back to her own work. She started singing at some point as she worked. "The ship it swayed, heave ho, heave ho~ on the dark and stormy blue~ And I held tight to the captain's might~ as he pulled up his trews~ You haven't slept, heave ho, he said, in many suns and moons~"
Stan glanced over at the odd song, but mentally shrugged to himself after a moment. Mabel liked to sing to herself while working too. (...Heck, so did he.)
Miz was carefully chopping the vegetables into super small pieces on one of the wooden cutting boards Stan had gotten for cheap. (He'd cleaned up and sold the rest for a pretty decent profit yesterday.) "Oh I will sleep when we reach shore~ and pray we get there soon~" She scooped the veggies off into a large bowl and started chopping the next one. "He said hush love, here's your gown~ there's the bed, lantern's down~ But I don't want to go to sleep, in all my dreams I drown~" the cabin was filled with the sound of Miz's soft voice and the chopping board.
Stan blinked at the lyrics. What song even was this? Miz had some pretty weird taste in music. ...Did she even know what the lyrics she'd been singing actually implied?
"The captain howled heave ho, heave ho, and tied me up with sheets~ a storm is brewing in the south~ it's time to go to sleep~ His berth it rocks heave ho, heave ho, the ocean gnashed and moaned~ like Jonah we'll be swallowed whole and spat back teeth and bones~" Stan shook his head and just focused on his own work; yeah, Miz probably wasn't getting all the subtext there, since she wasn't blushing or nothin'. "He said~ hush love, here's your gown, there's the bed, lantern's down~ but I don't want to go to sleep, in all my dreams I drown~"
Stan was glad Ford wasn't down in here with them. (Ford might be able to hear the melody some out there on the roof above them, but not the lyrics - the portholes and door were closed.) Ford wouldn't get the subtext, either. He'd probably try and overthink why Miz was singing this, try and pick out some (other) hidden meaning, even though Miz wasn't like the kid like that. He'd gotten all worked up over the one she'd sung out on that rooftop a couple days ago. ...And Ford had had that crazy dream just that morning, that had had him grabbing onto the demon-kid because he thought he couldn't breathe(?!). ...Well, the first morning that morning, anyway.
Probably a good thing that Ford couldn't hear them, then. Stan had to admit it wasn't a bad tune; it was just the lyrics that were a little racy. "Captain~ captain~ I will do your chores~ I will warm your cot at night~ and mop your cabin floors~" Miz sang, scooping up everything into the salad bowl and getting out some walnuts. "Scold me~ hold me~ I'll be yours to keep~ the only thing I beg of you~ don't make me go to sleep~"
Finally, Stan spoke up. "I thought you liked sleeping?" and Miz giggled at that and told him, "Yeah, but it's a nice song regardless." She broke the nuts into pieces as well.
Stan nodded. "So what's this song from?" He wasn't gonna ask what it was about, seemed pretty obvious to him.
Miz hummed a little before responding, "The Devil's Carnival. It's a pretty messed up musical, but that's what made it so cool."
...so she did realize that song was kinda out there? ...Huh. Kinda made him wonder if she really did know what it was about, then. She got flustered about some stuff, but... not other stuff, now that he thought about it. (Well, not like he was gonna ask her right now.) Stan shrugged mentally, and asked her instead, "There a reason you like 'messed up' songs?"
"They're more interesting," was the simple reply. Stan raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
"Well it's not just about being disturbing or what not; it sounds cool, and it's not like all the songs I like are dark and twisted." Miz rolled her eyes. "Like, I really enjoy Uptown Funk just 'cause it's so much fun to dance along to."
"Ah huh? So, what, only the 'dark and twisted' songs have music that sounds more interesting?" Stan put out there.
Miz nodded. "They're songs I learned back when I was human, so it's not like this is some kinda demon thing, not that I can tell." She pouted. "Ford overthinks my music choices too much."
That had Stan letting out a bark of laughter. "Yeah, he does." Stan was pretty sure that his brother would find any song he otherwise liked 'objectionable', if he heard either of the demon-kids sing it at some point. Pretty much any song could be sung 'dark' if you wanted to.
Stan set to work tossing the leftover steak in a pan and starting to cook it up on the stove. The good stuff; too bad they didn't have a grill. He could hear Miz humming beside him. "So, any particular reason you went with singin' this song?" he asked.
Miz nodded. "We're on a boat, so I got reminded of this song."
...Well, guess that made sense. "Any other boat songs you know?" Stan put out there.
Miz beamed. And then she proceeded to sing...
Stan chuckled. "Heh, you like sea shantys too?" Stan asked as he spiced up the meat as he cooked it. It was clearly one of those, even if Stan couldn't understand the language.
Miz grinned. "I think they're fun! I don't know too many yet, but I'm open to learning more!" Her tone of voice making it clear she was hoping Stan could teach her a few. She was looking up at him again, that same odd expression of eagerness that made Stan feel a little twisted up inside. Like she was… looking up to him as some sort of...
...hero…
Stan shook his head, clearing away the feeling. Not like she could really mean it. Not like she knew him, anyway. If she did- "Heh, sure, I know plenty of 'em. If you wanna learn."
Miz practically vibrated in place in excitement. "I doooooo!" she squealed.
Stan chuckled. "Yeah, okay," he said, indulging her. "I know a few fun ones…"
Ford frowned at the loud awful singing coming from the cabin, then let out a tired sigh. He couldn't hear the lyrics (thank the Axolotl!), but he'd recognize Stanley's gravelly tones anywhere. (And from what he'd loosely term the 'melody' line, he had half an idea which song it was he was singing, and it was highly inappropriate. As usual.) It was very embarrassing.
Ford tried to comfort himself with the fact that at least no-one should be able to hear his brother except the kids and the demons - at least, he hoped so. That perception filter of Bill's was still up, wasn't it? It was supposed to be both modifying the light that could be seen and blocking the sound from the boat from carrying, right?
"The heck is that sound?" Lee said as he slowly climbed the rope ladder back to the deck (homework done finally, for better or for worse) and glanced around. "Is the old me dying?" Lee asked next.
Ford sighed again, tiredly. "No. He's… singing." Bad enough he'd had to deal with Stanley's dulcet tones while they were out at sea together, but must his twin insist on being so very obnoxious here, too? (He could at least have picked out a better song-)
Then Ford heard a much higher-pitched and less abrasive voice join his brother in the song. He blinked and jumped straight down off of the roof of the cabin, down onto the deck, strode forward, and yanked open the door to the cabin. "What are you-"
""-Blow HIGH, blow LOW, and so sailed we! Look ahead, look astern, look aweather and alee~"" Ford saw and heard his brother singing together with the smaller demon. ""Look along down the coast of the High Barbareeeee~"" and- dear lord, Stan was even dancing along to it. Ford groaned. (Because, oh Axolotl, it had gotten even worse. Bad enough when he'd pulled this sort of thing in the Shack with Soos around; at least it hadn't been a full-throated yell practically at the top of Stan's lungs back then, barely more than a hum.) ""There's nought upon the stern, there's nought upon the lee, blow HIGH, blow LOW, and so sailed we~""
"Stan, what are you doing?" Ford rubbed his eyes behind his glasses.
"He's singing," Bill's voice said from above, and Ford twisted his head and then his body in place back towards the doorway, to glare up at the demon who had poked his head down into the doorway from his current vantage point (still) on the roof of the cabin.
Stan let out a laugh and just kept on singing, ignoring Ford for the most part. -Well, except for the wide grin he got as he tried to sing even louder, to try and draw his brother in. He was having fun, is what he was doing, and his brother knew it! (And if Ford got exasperated enough, Stan knew he might even be able to rib him enough to join in, begrudgingly as he always was at first.)
"Oh 'taw broadside to broadside a long time we lay~" Stan sang. Miz piped in with the accompaniment, "Blow HIGH, blow LOW and so sailed we!" Stan danced around the galley area of the small cabin, grooving a bit, kicking and stomping his feet slightly to the merry song, as he waved his spatula around in accompaniment. "Until the prince of luther shot the pirate's masts away~" he and Miz joined together for the next lines, ""Cruising down along the coast of the high Barbaree~""
"Are you quite done?" Ford sighed tiredly. Why was Stanley always like this?
"Blow HIGH, blow LOW and so-sailed… mm" Ford heard echoed at his back, and he turned to see Lee blush a little and then trail off at the disbelieving look that Ford gave him.
"Aw, c'mon Ford," Stan said, coming to a slow stop in his grooving at the water Ford was basically throwing on the younger him there, with all of his glaring. "Ain't nothing wrong with-"
"'There isn't anything wrong with'-" Ford corrected his brother, glancing over his shoulder at him. "Grammar, Stanley." He ignored the look he got from his brother for that one. ...And the 'HA!' from Bill. (They both knew what he meant, and it wasn't an inappropriate time for it!)
"Don't crush his musical spirit!" Miz put out there. "That's a BAD thing to do to someone!"
"I don't got- uh, 'have' a…" Lee sort of hunched his shoulders slightly, as he put his hands in his pockets and shrugged at them all, looking away. "Can I, uh, help with the food?" Lee asked next, trying for the more direct route, and brightening a little as he realized that maybe this was something that the old him might actually let him do, to help out some, for once!
Miz looked down and handed Lee the bowl with the chopped lettuce and tomatoes. "Well, I dunno if you put the veggies into a taco first or last, but you can help set up said tacos?"
Stan took in the scene at a glance, and shrugged to himself. Usually, it was every man for himself, adding as much as they wanted of whatever, but...
"Yeah, kid," Stan said, as he finished cooking up the first of the steaks, speared it, and moved it over onto a plate. "C'mere and carve this up into pieces, then shove that stuff into the shells first, yeah? -Miz, the meat goes in first, yeah?" Stan told her next. Miz nodded, accepting this little nugget of wisdom. She didn't really have much experience with Tacos and didn't know how they worked aside from a basic knowledge of 'stick meat, veggies and cheese into it'.
"Stan, you shouldn't have her helping to cook," Ford said warningly, to which Stan replied breezily, "Ford, just have the kid check it over however he's doin' it for his own stuff, and tell you what's what. Since you still know when he's lying." Seriously, why his brother didn't take more advantage of that… Stan didn't know. Hell, the kids had picked up on that pretty damn quick, and they couldn't even always tell when the kid was lying. ...Yet. (...Not that the kid had tried lyin' to them much, which was… y'know, a whole 'nother thing.)
Miz pouted. "I just chopped veggies and nuts. How the heck am I supposed to mess that up?" Just because she didn't know how 'real, proper' cooking worked didn't mean that her billions of years self teaching herself through experiments and failures meant nothing!
"-That isn't the problem, and you know it!" Ford snapped out at her abruptly, which had Lee flinching, and Bill...
...pushing himself forward, and then pulling himself down, in a half-somersault, to land feet-first in the doorway, and then turn to lean up against the side of the doorway instead. (...at Lee's back, which the younger twin wasn't so sure how to feel about...)
"...I cook for my friends and children all the time… and they're fine…" Miz pulled at the bottom of her dress.
"Demons could be different in her dimension," Bill put out there, crossing his arms casually as he leaned up against the doorway. "I haven't seen her try anything yet. Overt or otherwise."
Stan frowned as he glanced between Ford and the kid. "...There something here I need to worry about?" Stan asked, because-
"Yes!" said Ford, at the same time as he got a "Maybe," from the kid.
-okay, great. So what was he missing this time?
Lee and Sixer (who'd also come up to the deck at some point, and was standing just outside the open doorway now) looked back and forth between the older thems and the demons.
...Was there something wrong? Lee didn't realize he'd said that out loud until Stan looked over as him and sighed. "My brother gets a little paranoid-"
"-It isn't paranoia; it's a justifiable concern!" Ford insisted, feeling irritated at his brother not taking him seriously. -Again! "You can't trust demons. The worst of the worst of them will pretend to be nice, and then bite your head off for fun! -Quite literally!" he stressed to them all.
"I don't eat heads. They're gross!" Miz protested. That didn't really make Ford any less angry or fearful. He'd seen what happened when-!
Bill straightened away from the doorframe, then walked past that Stanford and over to his sister, to place a hand on her head. "I told you, he's not going to eat it, sis. I won't eat food from animals here; he won't eat food from demons anywhere. Understand?" They both had reasons for it.
Miz sighed. "Yeah, but I… I don't want to hurt anyone here…" She looked down at the prepared ingredients. "Well, I only made the salad, so you can just avoid that if you hate me so much…"
"S' why I told you to work on that," Stan said good-naturedly, with a lopsided smile. "Ford don't hate you," Stan corrected her. If he did, he'd have been trying to shoot her straight-out; minimum. "He does hate his leafy-greens, though," Stan told her with a smile. "He'll do the tacos; no salad."
Miz puffed out her cheeks. "I don't like veggies but I still eat them."
"Oh, he'll do 'veggies'," Stan told her next (while ignoring his brother's warning "Stan…"). "He just don't like stuff like lettuce. Says it's too much like eating leaves." (Ford shot him a glare.) "But then he likes puttin' basil on stuff." Stan's grin got a little wider. (The glare got worse.)
Miz thought about it. "Well, lettuce is kinda boring on it's own. But I wouldn't say it's like a leaf. Leaves are more… fiber-y." She sat back down on the ground to finish up the salads (having moved some of her stuff to the floor so she could spread them out in separate bowls, expecting the table to run out of space as Stan and Lee worked on the tacos). She looked through what she had, shaking a few herbs and spices onto them. -No vinegar, no salt or sugars, or her brother wouldn't eat it. So she had to flavor it some other way.
"Spices and herbs are different!" Ford complained to his brother, as Miz continued on with what she was doing to the salad, and… From his change in tone of voice, Lee figured that it was maybe safe enough for him to sidle his way over in-between the table and all the stuff along the wall now - boy, was it cramped in here! Belowdecks was way easier! - and grab a knife and fork to start cutting up the cooked meat like that old-man him had wanted him to...
(Meanwhile, Sixer scooted along the opposite wall, headed for the back bunks, trying to stay out of the way of everything and everyone in general. He had a few more things he wanted to write down…)
"Oh, sure," said Stan. "Says the guy who eats planets on accident."
"-That was one time!" Ford snapped back, looking more than a little frustrated (while trying terribly hard not to feel one bit embarrassed, because if he did-).
"Yeah?" Stan said almost challengingly. "How much grass did you accidentally eat on that thing, anyway?"
Miz blinked. "You ate a planet too?" She made a face. "It's so unpleasant!"
Ford twisted his head over to stare at her, a little horrified.
"Oh, little sis," Bill grinned - because that little gem had just gotten opened up for storytelling, what with both Stanley and that Stanford talking about it! "Fordsie here stumbled his way into a little Cthulhu-banquet this one time," Bill told her, sitting down next to her on the floor and patting her on the head, with something more of a stroking movement this time. "I told him to stick to the side-bars at that little spiral-arm-wide shindig, and what does he go and do?"
"Bill." The dream demon was grinning widely, and Ford wanted to shoot him so badly right now. His fists were clenched at his sides...
"...let me guess, he did the opposite of what you said and went straight to the main tables." Miz could see where this was going. Really, did Ford do that out of sheer pettiness or did he really think Bill was-
"-He did the opposite!" Bill enthused out, spreading his hands out to the sides, then crossing his arms and leaning back against the floor-level shelves that sat below the 'table'-area behind him. "Went straight for the 'sandwich' buffet instead," Bill told her with a grin. "Got himself a nice 'sandy' one, too!"
Then Bill leaned in slightly and told her, in a not-quite-quiet-enough to be conspiratorial tone, "Luckily, all the people on THAT one were already long dead, or WOO BOY, his 'morals' sure would have taken a HIT! -THREE-HUNDRED-MILLION YEARS since the last sapient life kicked the bucket on that one, AND COUNTING!" Bill told her. "Hit their 'atomic age' with a BANG!" he added, then said almost philosophically, "Sixer was taking iodine pills for a week afterwards. -Really, Sixer," Bill ended on an almost chiding tone. "That stuff does next to NOTHING for you, when it's the HEAVY-METAL POISONING you really should have been WORRIED about, instead! All that iron..." Bill trailed off, shaking his head, before breaking out into a wide grin again.
Lee was staring at Ford, a little horrified, but also a little grossed out. Wait, and Miz said she'd eaten a planet, too?
"And you know what the worst part is?" Bill added, raising his voice and talking to all and sundry now. "-He didn't even enjoy it!" Bill told them all in scandalous tone. "Aged like a fine wine, with nary a bone or even a fossil remaining, and he not only GULPS IT DOWN in three bites, he practically LOSES it not three minutes later, when somebody ASKS him about how it tasted, and his translator-"
Ford didn't even try to get Bill's attention with words that time, to try and stop him (always a futile endeavor) or otherwise interrupt him (moderately more likely, for short periods of time, with consequences always attached). He just stomped his way over, dropped down into a crouch next to the dream demon, and slapped one of his hands over Bill's mouth, fuming. (...while Stan looked back over his shoulder at him from where he was in front of the stove and blandly wondered why his brother hadn't just said 'stop' to the kid, instead.)
Miz sighed in relief at learning the planet was already dead. "Well, I didn't really enjoy eating a planet either, was a stressful experience for me actually, though at least Ford didn't kill anyone from eating the planet, so that's good." Not like she'd been forced to do. Heck, that had been the POINT. "And he didn't explode or anything." ...like she'd done. Huh. Well, she didn't really want to think about this anymore…
...but then she paused as she remembered something. "Actually… now that I think about it, I found some planets once, which didn't have life in them, and they sorta broke apart into slices when I messed with them… and then I put them back together like a sandwich…"
"With or without trimming off the crust?" was Sixer's contribution to the discussion from the bunk area, and Ford turned his head to stare over at him in pure disbelief. (Because the brazenness and utter lack of empathy that must exist in the asker of said question - given the subject matter of the question posed, and the tone and method in which it was asked - was simply… obscene.)
"I left the crust, was kinda curious what would happen. Funny story, the elements, substances and minerals from the different layers mixed together and life formed on the planet. It was really cool to watch them grow and evolve!" Miz grinned. "I kept that planet protected for a few billion years, making sure other species didn't try to invade it, but then the inhabitants wanted to explore space so I left them alone to do that… and…" Miz's smile faded. "They got attacked and enslaved by another species that sent in ships to mine the planet for all its resources…"
"You didn't smite the attackers for doing that?" Bill asked curiously, after having reached up and pulled Ford's hand down and away from his mouth in order to speak. "Or give your own a few pointers on 'self-defense'?" (And at the last, Ford looked down at Bill, his eyes going a little wide...)
Miz sighed, looking melancholy. "I wanted to. I asked them if they wanted me to help. But they said that they could do it themselves, that they didn't need me anymore…"
"Oh. Well," said Bill, suddenly sounding a lot cooler. "THAT was their problem then." They'd decided they didn't want to be HERS anymore? -Then they'd gotten what they DESERVED. ...The idiots. CLEARLY, they HADN'T 'deserved' HER!
"-That doesn't mean they deserved to die, Bill!" Ford ground out at the demon angrily, pulling his hand away from him, because he knew what sorts of events Bill was thinking of and about just then. There were stories throughout the multiverse, about what would happen to you if you 'double-crossed' Bill in any way, let alone failed to deliver...
After all, telling Bill Cipher that 'you didn't need him anymore' to him was, to Bill, the equivalent of saying that you didn't have anything that you wanted anymore, for him to be able to make a Deal with you over. (Thus, making you useless to him.) ...Up to, and including, wanting 'to continue to live' or 'to stay alive', or to keep anything of what you currently had going for you.
Because in Bill Cipher's mind, 'not wanting anything' translated to 'being dead already' - which had been a hard-learned lesson for Ford. ...Even more so when the way he'd learned this was through how Bill had decided to torture him with it, by applying it to every single solitary person in existence other than himself, and making him watch as he-
(Ford had seen quite a few people die, from 'not wanting anything' from Bill. Far, far too many. ...And those that wanted everything from Bill-)
Miz pulled her legs up to her chest and hugged them. "Why won't anyone ever accept my help when I ask? They're fine with living under my protection so long as they don't know I'm giving it to them. But the second that they know it's me they all want nothing to do with my help." She smiled bitterly, "But they're perfectly fine with accepting my help when I pretend to be something else. They just don't like me." She pressed her face against her legs.
Stan winced. The heck had been happenin' in her dimension? Were triangles really considered that scary to look at over there? Somethin' else had to be goin' on… right? (...or was it kind of like the kid with everybody else and their dog, just refusing to…)
"...Still don't see how we're gettin' from 'I don't want to eat any planets' to 'I won't eat any demon food' here," Stan told the demon-kids both. "Not like your sister's making planets to eat, there. Just salad. Outta human-food. So."
Bill rolled his eyes. "That Stanford-"
"I am not being picky!" Ford hissed. "I have very good reasons for not trusting-"
"-has his reasons, too," the kid continued, giving Ford a long, almost unreadable look, as Ford snapped his mouth shut and stared.
"Yeah, okay," said Stan. "You've both got reasons. Mind sharing them with the rest of us?" Stan said, to which Ford clenched his jaw and otherwise remained silent, not wanting to look at him.
"...You'd have to override that Stanford on talking about other dimensions, Stanley," the kid told him, still giving Ford a long look. But then the kid turned to him. "They aren't 'frivolous'. You shouldn't take food from other demons. I haven't seen Miz do anything… objectionable," the kid put out there, glancing back at Ford again. "But other demons in this dimensional set…" The kid trailed off.
"Is this something I gotta worry about," Stan repeated.
"No," said the kid. "You don't. You're mine," the triangle demon told him. "-So are Pine Tree and Shooting Star. And that Stanford."
"Then why's he so worried about it," Stan deadpanned. "Tell me." (Stan saw Ford tense out of the corner of his eye.) "Keep it general," he told the kid. "No specifics."
The kid eyed Ford a bit. "He's seen other demons… do things," the kid said slowly and... about as generally as Stan had ever heard him talk. Then he looked back to Stan. "And he wasn't in the loop as much before."
"In the loop," Stan said, frowning. "Meaning…" what? That he was too far away from the rest of them?
The kid looked frustrated. "In the loop is in the loop! -In the circuit. …In the Zodiac?" the kid tried. "-He's more connected to the rest of you now."
"So, taking food from demons wouldn't cause him problems anymore," Stan tried.
"Yes," said the kid. "Taking food from other demons won't cause him problems anymore." Stan let out a sigh. But before he could relax, the kid said next, "You still shouldn't eat it."
"Why not," Stan said, giving the kid a long look. "No runaround this time, just tell me, damnit." Because, really, he was getting tired of this-
"Because they could have done something to it."
Stan stared at the kid, and he realized after a moment how very pissed off the kid looked right now.
...Because that was the real, full reason the kid hadn't wanted to tell any of them before what he would or wouldn't eat. Not just because somebody might try to add something he didn't want to eat to what he was eating - it was because, to the kid's mind, anybody who knew what he would eat could do absolutely anything to it before he sat down and ate it, while he wasn't looking.
And knowing at least some of how the kid's messed-up thought processes worked, the kid probably thought that he was giving Ford ideas for how to mess with him, with what he'd just said, because Stan had told him to tell him straight-out while Ford was standing right there listening...
"Yeah, well, here's a new 'house rule' for ya - in case, y'know, it wasn't clear enough already," Stan ground out, just putting it out there. "Anybody who messes with anybody else's food, trying to mess with them? That gets counted as a flat-out attack," Stan said. "Understand?" He sent a glare first the kid's, then Ford's way.
...Both of them were staring at him, blinking.
"What," said Stan. "Any of you got a problem with that?" He eyed the both of them (and the other three in the cabin, for good measure).
Miz huffed. "Food is IMPORTANT! I don't mess with it!" She mumbled about stupid wasabi pranks and how she still hadn't forgiven someone she'd apparently known who'd done that to her. "...told me it was green tea ice cream…"
"...I don't have a problem with that," the kid said slowly to Stan. "I have the OPPOSITE of a problem with that." (He glanced over at his sister at her muttered comment though, frowning slightly. -Did he need to GET REVENGE for her? ...Or help her to get that revenge for herself?)
"No, Stan," Ford said quietly. "I don't have a problem with that."
"Good," said Stan (after he sent two glares the younger twins' ways, and got confirmations out of them both, too). "Right; good talk. -Ford, you don't gotta eat anything you don't want to, for any reason; kid, same goes for you, too, in case that wasn't clear. ...Miz, you keep on eating whatever you want," Stan deadpanned. "Now. All of you get over here and eat your tacos and stuff." And with that said, Stan gestured to the put-together tacos that Lee was making. "Salad was cut up and tossed together by Miz; kid, check that and give us a reading on it for Ford. Me and Lee did the tacos; that includes cutting up the meat fixings and the cheese," Stan added for good measure. "Miz washed up the lettuce and tomatoes stuff when she was pulling stuff out for the salad, and cut it up, but nothin' else, and… kid?"
The kid finished whatever thing he was checking by messing around with the whatever at his wrist, as he and Miz both stood up, with Miz putting the very large salad bowl on the table. "It's fine. Good enough for me to eat; I plan on eating most of the salad, no tacos," the kid told them. "The drink is fine, as well. I won't drink the basil lemonade; the flavored water is mine."
Stan noted the kid's own 'mine' claims with a nod (which the kid usually did for his food and stuff when Ford wasn't in the room but the niblings were these days, so saying it outright right now was… kinda new, but also not). Ford slowly made his way over, still staring at Stan and glancing over at Bill and Miz a few times.
"Sit down and eat," Stan told Ford, handing over a plate with three tacos on it to him - practically shoving the edge of the plate into his chest, really. (It was only meat and cheese and the shells, made up himself just then with the last meat he'd just grilled, so he could say that he was the only one who had touched the stuff, if his brother wanted to be really paranoid about everything and asked.) Ford blinked down at it as he took it. "Miz made both of the drinks, so if you want something else, you'll need to grab water from the sink," Stan told his brother, next. (...And Ford promptly set down his plate, picked up two glasses and turned around, heading for the sink. Right.)
"Basil lemonade? Basil water?" Lee asked as he looked at the pitcher of lemonade with some distinctive green leaves floating in it, which was sitting next to another pitcher with slightly more odd-colored water, a few visible lemon slices and more of the basil leaves in it.
Miz nodded. "I made it once a really long time ago with a human friend. It was good." She scooped out some of the salad to put into serving plates for the others before handing the rest of the bowl to Bill. "The only flavoring is some lemon juice, peppers and a bit of basil," she told him. "I got basil at the store and wanted to use 'em for stuff. Gonna try out some other spices later."
"-The difference between them is that the 'lemonade' has sugar added to it, too!" Bill added, for completeness, without prompting. "THAT one." He pointed.
"Brother doesn't like added sugars. Natural glucose from the fruits are fine, but the actual sugar stuff is a no-no for him." Miz explained to the younger twins.
Bill frowned. (He didn't like information being wrong; Liam had always corrected him when he was wrong; he was Miz's big brother now. All of these things were connected in his mind, which led to…)
"I prefer sour and bitter," Bill noted almost absently, as he sat down with a fork for his salad bowl. "But I CAN eat sweet and salty if I HAVE to." He pulled a slight face, though.
"I will try to use more sour stuff for you in the future. Maybe try grilling some bitter melon, you might like that." Miz noted. Bill looked up and blinked at her. "Even if I can't eat melons, you might like them." She smiled. Stan glanced over. She was already doing the 'thinking of what others might like' thing. Good.
"This is fine," Bill said, pointing down that salad with his fork. He didn't see any reason not to eat it; the salad was as 'clean' as human food ever got, it wasn't overly saturated with sweet or salty things, and everything in it came from fruits and vegetables that didn't have any soul-bits stuck to them. "Mine!" He shoved his fork into the salad, retrieved some of it, and took a bite.
...HMMMMMMMM. The lemon juice made it sour, the pepper seasoning was nice and spicy (he LIKED pepper!), and the kale and the chopped nuts were both mildly bitter.
Bill smiled a little as he chewed.
(Stan noted this. First time he'd seen the kid smile while eating anything.)
Miz was wiggling proudly when she saw that Bill was enjoying her cooking.
"-Also-mine!" Bill said enthusiastically, before taking a sip out of his own glass.
"Stan…" Ford said, as Stan picked up his first taco.
"Ford, all the dragon-lady did was cut the lettuce and tomato stuff," Stan told him, as Ford plunked donw a glass of water in front of him. "She didn't make it up outta sand; this is the stuff we got from the store. He really wasn't seeing the problem, here. "Kid even said it was fine," Stan told his brother, then said half tongue-in-cheek next, "Not like she 'claimed' any of the fixings or nothin' for herself."
And Stan saw Ford just… pause.
And he watched Ford begin to relax.
Stan eyed this, and then took a bite of his taco. His brother wasn't even looking at him, now, let alone looking like he was going to pitch a fit at him eating something that had stuff in it that the dragon-lady had touched.
It left Stan wondering, as he finished off his taco in another two bites, exactly how much of all the kid's 'mine'ing was actually some kind of a thing. Stan noted that Miz was copying her brother now, picking up a glass of lemonade and saying, "This one is mine."
"Yes!" the kid said to her. "That one is yours now. -Good job!" Stan looked up and saw the kid smiling at her for it, and still continuing to smile while he was eating and drinking that stuff his sister had made for him. Huh. Stan wiped off his hands to take a drink of his own water for a minute, thinking.
"Hey, Miz," Stan said, with a gesture at the salad as he put down his own water glass. "What all'd you put in there, anyway?" Stan asked Miz, as he picked up his next taco. "For the recipe?"
That had Miz happily chattering away at him a bit, as Bill munched on his salad, and the rest of them dug into their own food. (The kids, Stan noted, stayed away from the salad, but while Lee went in for water too, Sixer poured himself a glass of the lemonade and picked up one of those small side plates of the salad. …Well, at least Ford didn't lose his shit over it, even if he did give his younger self a long dark look for it.)
"...nuts go really well with salads as a source of non-meat protein, they crunch nicely and with the kale chopped up like so, they mix together really well! And the added lemon juice helps to bind everything together because of the surface tension of the water content inside it, which makes it moist and that's good because the walnuts are pretty dry on their own and…" Miz babbled on. Stan nodded and gave her a smile, before taking another bite out of his next taco. She really seemed like a normal kid sometimes, so long as she was busy with food-related stuff like this.
...Stan also realized that Miz must have been thinking a lot about ways to make food that would still taste good even with Bill's limitations. (Hell, had she gone with lemons in the salad because Bill hadn't really liked the sweet strawberries from the vegetable dish he'd eaten last time?) She didn't need to do that - the kid would eat crackers and burnt toast without doing more than grumbling out loud a little bit about it - but Miz had made an effort to find ways to make Bill's food something he thought was 'good', so that he would enjoy eating it.
...And that was really a good idea. Stan had been trying to figure out something the kid might actually like to eat for awhile now, but with the kid not talking about his food 'preferences' before, he hadn't exactly gotten anywhere. Miz was really speeding up the process now, though; Stan didn't just have a list of 'will's and 'won't's now - the dragon lady was working up actual recipes. Stan made some mental notes on this stuff as she talked, because if he could make sure he had the right fixings in the house for this stuff, and made more of it, he bet he could get the kid to actually eat more. Because that was still a problem; the kid wasn't practically skin and bones anymore, but he was still pretty damn far underweight for his height and build - even for a 'human-ish female', or whatever.
Getting to eat enough would solve a whole host of problems with the kid, Stan was pretty sure. -Chief among them being, the worst sniping sessions between Ford and the kid tended to happen at or just before mealtimes, when the kid hadn't had anything (or enough) to eat yet. Kid just didn't think all that clearly when he was hungry - which he'd only gotten the kid to actually admit to, not too long ago. But if Stan could get the kid eating more, then he'd have more food in his system; it'd tide him over longer, and probably end up making mealtimes that much smoother. (Because as much as Stan didn't like to admit it, the kid was the one who tended to grind those arguments to a halt more easily, not Ford, just by not snapping back at Ford directly for all of it, and redirecting by 'talking back' to Stan instead. At least, the kid did that when Ford tried starting something with him verbally, with what was probably the nerdbot equivalent of trash-talk. When it was the kid starting it, though-)
Not for the first time, Stan acknowledged that even with some of the problems that arose with the dragon-lady being here, she was helping out with the kid. She was good for the kid. And the fact that she was legitimately trying to learn to be good from Stan even if she was crap at following up on it, hurting his brother without even trying- was a thing that Stan intended to take full advantage of, again and still.
Now, if only he could get her and Ford to stop taking swipes at each other every other minute…
Stan mentally sighed. The two of 'em just couldn't seem to get along; they were even worse than Ford and the kid, and that was sayin' something.
Because Ford would say something that happened to tick Miz off for some reason or another and then she'd snipe at him - or vice-versa, with Miz being the one to say something that set Ford off - and then Stan would have to get between them before things escalated even further, every time. Worse, Ford seemed to have his reasons for snapping at her, even if he didn't want to talk about them half the time. But most of the time, Miz seemed to be just being petty, or caught up in some crazy-bad thing that was completely messed up, and didn't want to stop, so she didn't-
...And Stan couldn't lean on the kid for backup for any of this, because the kid wasn't exactly any better than Stan himself was right now at trying to get Miz to stop. The kid had just made stuff worse at the kitchen table, the first time Stan had seen the kid actually try to… 'enlighten her' a couple nights ago on stuff to do with Ford… which was maybe half the problem he'd had there, not getting anywhere with her on that because she wasn't all that human anymore... and the kid hadn't exactly gotten all that much better at stopping her when she needed to be stopped, any time since. (Not that the kid knew when he should stop either, half the time.) So Stan couldn't exactly 'enlist' the kid's help to magically solve this one, either. ...It was a problem.
...Well, at least his brother wasn't trying to haul off and shoot the 'man-eating' dragon-lady, though. That wouldn't end well.
They all ate quietly for a bit as Miz finished explaining the salad and began eating her own taco and some of the salad, making a slight face at the peppers but wanting to learn to get over her aversion to it… heck, maybe some sweet lemonade would help…? Ahh~ much better. Stupid spicy peppers!
Wanting to fill the silence, Sixer spoke up. "So…" He chewed on his taco. "What's up with Mr. Harman?"
Ford stiffened. Stan sighed. Miz looked confused and let her gaze drift off to Flicker and see what this was about. Bill continued eating.
"Bill… 'inspired' him a little bit," Stan said, explaining it as best as he could, from what he now knew. "Some of the stuff the kid knows is... kind of 'addictive' for smart people sometimes, when he tells it to 'em. Kinda like catnip, for nerds?"
"Catnip isn't addictive, or habit-forming in any way," Ford said lowly, giving Stan a dark look.
"Fine," said Stan, brushing off the purposefully bad analogy - because hey, if his brother really wanted him to get all accurate and junk on this stuff... "More like nicotine, then. Bad for you, poisonous in large doses, builds up over time so you need more and more of it to get that quick rush, you don't ever want to stop, it's hard to break the habit once you've got it, and you still think you need it even after you definitely know that you don't anymore. ...Involves a lot of smoke getting blown places, too," Stan added, not looking over at his brother as he talked, choosing to take another bite of his taco instead. He chewed, swallowed, then said, "The kid didn't think that what he was doin' was a problem, before. I've told him otherwise, now. So now he knows he needs to not go off doing it," even if the demon didn't understand yet why he shouldn't do it, "Not to people like Mr. Harman," or to Ford.
"Why is he… addictive to our physics teacher?" Sixer asked next.
Stan shrugged at Sixer at that, not letting on to how angry the whole thing had made and was still making him. "Has to do with giving people too much of what they think they want," Stan told him, because as far as he could tell…? That had been it. "The kid's happy to keep on giving it to them, as long as they keep asking him for it. And then they do some kinda brainiac-O.D. on it; they think they're 'just' thinking, and they just don't know when to stop. -And the kid sure ain't gonna stop for them, because he thinks they're the ones who are supposed to be the one to say 'when'. Except, they go off and don't. And some of that 'don't' is not doin' things like eatin' and sleeping, which you kinda need to do to keep on doing anything, without killing yourself. So."
Sixer frowned thoughtfully, as he tried to think that one over, with the limited (and purposefully general) information Stan had just given him. ...And Ford was real quiet over at his end of the table. (Yeah, well, if he hadn't wanted him to talk about it, then Ford should've just let him stick to the 'catnip' thing.)
Miz blinked a few times. "...still seems like it would be difficult to tell one way or another if it was bad or not until we get to that point…" she mused. "How would I tell if someone was just really excited to learn something versus if they were going to obsess over it? I don't want to hurt anyone…" Luckily, Ms. Talia seemed fine now, after having some time to think about it.
Stan glanced over at her. "That an actual question?" he asked her. She nodded. (...Hell, the kid looked almost interested, too.) Stan let out a sigh.
"...You want to take this one, Ford?" Stan tried, looking over at his brother.
"I'd rather not," Ford said quietly, looking down at his water, before lifting it up and drinking it down like he wished he was chugging something a hell of a lot stronger.
...Right. Okay. Sure. Give the guy with the wheel the wheel back instead of the 'recovering addict', why not. (...Then again, his brother skipped meals every time he thought he could get away with it, and thought food pills were better than sliced bread. Maybe Stan should be taking point on this one.) "Somebody talks with you for more than an hour, or skips a food break or a water break, or bathroom break," Stan told her, "Then you know there's somethin' else going on. -You try tellin' 'em you want to stop for a bit and get some food, and they look jittery or wanna protest? Even if you tell 'em after that that you can pick up the conversation after you're both sitting down someplace with some food? You've definitely got a problem," Stan told her. "People need breaks for that stuff."
Miz blinked. "Like when we're doing an anime marathon and get so invested that we forget the time?" she asked carefully. "Or only if someone remembers the time and asks for a break but someone else doesn't want to?"
"Yeah," said Stan. "Like TV marathons. You get somebody who has to see it live, not even okay with recording it and picking up watching the recording right after, later? -That's a little messed up; kinda too much," he told her. "And even if they seem okay with whatever, you can get 'em to stop and eat and take breaks? If you still end up going for more than five hours with 'em, or it starts gettin' to be night, and they don't want to go to sleep… it's the same thing," Stan told her. "They were just holdin' out on ya for a little bit. Those are the smarter ones who know how not to drop on their feet, but think they can get away with no-sleep," he warned her. (Y'know, like his brother.) "That don't work out for 'em either. Don't let 'em try to get away with it."
Miz nodded, seeming to get it. "So it's only a problem if they neglect their own health in pursuit of the thing they want to do…" She frowned. "Like staying up to 3 AM working on a school assignment? Or is that just a normal type of unhealthy forced on students from the pressures inherent in the education system?"
"...Normal type of screwed-up for nerd-bots, maybe," Stan pointed out. "The rest of us like our sleep." He'd never had that problem, even if his brother always had. He was pretty sure Dipper had that problem, too. Mabel was pretty good about making sure she got enough sleep, even if she was working on something, because she knew - like he did - that just trying to keep going and going on and on just didn't work. It took you twice as long to get half as much done, and eventually you just weren't getting anywhere anymore. ...And he'd figured all this stuff out pretty early on, trying to get that portal working. After awhile, he'd been forced to realize, and then admit, that he'd had to pace himself, or he was never gonna get anywhere, at all, ever.
"But yeah," Stan told her, leaning back in his chair, "They neglect their health? They're definitely goin' too far, too hard. They're gonna crash." Neglecting work and family or anything else was a whole 'nother issue that Stan wasn't gonna get into just then. Mostly because, if they weren't so obsessed with junk that they were just too tired and hungry to think straight, then they could just go off and make that decision for themselves, Stan figured. (Their teach, on the other hand, hadn't been thinking that clearly - which was why he'd had problems there, Stan also figured.)
Miz nodded again, seemingly understanding what to look out for now. "I'm gonna have to check on Kryptos when I get home, then. He's been pulling some all-nighters working on some kinda Death Ray…"
"Ugh," went Bill. "Kryptos… I don't like that guy," he muttered. (Stan frowned.)
"He's not that bad, at least mine isn't. I'm not sure what yours is like." Miz tilted her head. "Mine's really cute. Always invites me out to go to restaurants or amusement parks with him. Dunno why he keeps insisting that it should just be an 'us' thing whenever I try to invite my other friends to come with us though…"
Everyone stared at her. Lee finally spoke up, "Er… maybe he wanted alone time with you?"
Miz blinked. "But we do have alone time? I hang out with all my Friends. Both by themselves and with my other friends?" She looked a little confused.
"Sounds a little suffocating to me," was Sixer's blase contribution to this, looking down at his notebook as he wrote a few more things down. Trying to steal all her time for himself, not wanting to let her have some space for herself… (and he didn't notice at all, as Ford frowned over at him severely while also covering an internal wince.)
Miz twitched and frowned at him. "What's wrong with hanging out with my friends? We live together and we enjoy each other's company." She huffed. "And I don't mind being with them if they want me. I'm just not sure why Kryptos wanted it to be just us two. It's more fun with more people, right?"
Bill looked askance at her. "...You said he's building a Death Ray?" Bill asked, putting his fork down and paying a bit more attention at this point.
"Yeah. He said it was a project for his mechanic's class. Something about wanting to find a way to generate a lot of energy for precise attacks from far away…"
"Oh, WELL." Bill took a sip of his 'flavored' water, then said, as easy as you please, "He's probably trying to kill you then."
"...That is not what I got out of that," Lee muttered to himself, looking between them.
Miz blinked. "Wha? Kryptos?" She started laughing, so hard she rolled out of her seat, down onto the ground, and kicking her legs in the air. "Pfffth! Ahahahaha! Kryptos? Killing ME? That's RIDICULOUS!"
"Never said I thought he might be able to pull it off, not if he's anything like my friend," Bill said, putting both elbows down on the table and propping his chin up on his hands. "But-"
"Ahahaha! That-" Miz cackled. "That's HILARIOUS! No way. Ahahaha!"
"Yes," Bill said simply. "It IS hilarious." Not funny at all. -CLEARLY, he was going to have to kill this individual for her.
Miz gasped for breath and rolled onto her side. "Nah. Even if Kryptos wanted to kill anyone, it wouldn't be ME he was after. He's my friend." She giggled.
"He wants to 'spend time with you'," Bill ticked off, to start with. "He wants to set up a place and time that he knows where you will be. -He doesn't like it when there are more people there, who might get in the way of the long-range, high precision energy beam weaponry that he is trying to point at you from a great distance. It ruins his tracking," Bill said, "-and ruins his alibi, if there are more people around. He won't be able to maneuver you into position as easily, or slip away and handle the gun disposal afterwards without one of your OTHER more-loyal friends potentially following him after, and then catching on."
Lee rubbed the back of his neck, looking between the two demons. "Um… it sounds more like that guy's trying to date you to me," Lee pointed out. "...Unless there are really different rules for dating demons or something," Lee put out there next, as it slowly occurred to him that maybe trying to kill each other could be a demon thing? (The dragon-lady did eat people sometimes, she'd said. Was that kinda stuff considered romantic for demons? -Sixer had better stop flirting with her, if that was true!)
Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. These two, he swore...
Miz raised an eyebrow. "Kryptos… dating me?" Her eyes seemed to flicker before she snorted. "That's even less likely. We're just friends." She turned to her brother and pouted. "And there's no way he'd be planning to kill me. We're friends. And he loves me. He told me so." She grinned. "And I love him too! Because he's my friend!"
Bill frowned. Then let out a half-laugh, half-snort. "LOVE? -'Love' is a sick raw biological urge to reproduce trying to dress up in a suit and charm its way through the opera! -You're letting someone who TELLS you that they 'love' you GET AWAY WITH trying to TIE YOU DOWN IN ONE LOCATION AND SHOOT YOU INTO THE GRAVE!" Bill told her, tossing his hands up into the air in frustration. "YOU and your SQUIRMY FEELINGS!" Bill huffed out, almost in offense. WHY did his sister have NO sense of SELF-PRESERVATION?!
Lee was muttering to himself, "Feel bad for that guy, if the girl he likes is THIS oblivious…" Not to mention the crazy demon brother who wanted to kill him, because he was practically as oblivious as his sister was. -Heck, the guy had straight up told Miz he loved her, and she still hadn't gotten the point!
Miz scoffed. "There's different kinds of love. Not just the sexual need to reproduce." She frowned. "I doubt we're compatible anyway, our species don't even have similar genitalia… and even beyond that, there's no way he'd like me in that way. We're just friends." She shook her head. "And I love you as my brother. That's not from any need to reproduce."
Bill blinked and his arms dropped slightly.
"Oh." Bill looked a lot calmer all of a sudden, as he slowly began to lower his arms back to his sides. "You don't mean eros-love, or storge-'love'. You mean agape-philia-love. -That's different," Bill said. "That's fine." (...And for some reason, Ford was looking like he'd just been hit over the head with a cinderblock at hearing that, now; Stan was definitely gonna have to get a translation from him later, from whatever weird language that was from.) Then Bill frowned. "-Still shouldn't be taking advantage of your feelings for him to try and kill you, though," Bill said, then brightened. "You should get your OTHER friends to keep an EYE on him for you!" Bill told her. "They're trustworthy and not at all acting-suspicious, yes?" Getting 'friends' who weren't yet compromised to rat out the ones who were was a viable strategy; Bill had done THAT before with his own Henchmaniacs many-a-time.
Miz rolled her eyes, quite sure that Bill was being paranoid. "Alright, I'll ask Pyronica and the others to watch him in case he really is trying to kill me. I still doubt it though. He's too much or a dork to be able to hide murderous intent from me," to which Bill replied promptly, "YES! Do THAT!" (Bill looked skeptical at this, not wanting to trust that someone who he thought might be trying to openly kill his sister WASN'T trying to do so, not without vetting them PERSONALLY himself… but he tried to content himself with the fact that his little sister was listening to him, and would be taking at least some precautions. ...and wasn't going home just yet, so he could help her with her PTSD and her layering and other-defenses, and a few OTHER terrible tricks that she could surprise anyone else with, before she went!…)
Lee was groaning as he buried his face in his hands. Demon or not, he was pretty darn sure that his own guess was correct, and not Bill's. Because hey, didn't Miz say that Kryptos guy was inviting her to restaurants and amusement parks? Those were very much 'date' types of places to take a girl! Just to test out his theory, Lee asked, "Did this guy invite you to go out with him by yourselves to any other places?"
Miz counted out on her fingers, "A zoo, the beach, a flower garden, we tried to go to the movies once but they wouldn't permit me to enter, so I had to disguise myself."
"And these are all things that you like?" Lee pressed. "That he knew that you like when he asked you to go there with just him?"
Miz paused and thought about it. "Yes?" She thought about it. "You know, Kryptos doesn't like flowers, but he always gets me some, and not the bouquet stuff, I don't like those, he gets me little potted flowers… and he got that part time job because he said he didn't want to rely on my money all the time..." she frowned. "Ah, he's always thinking of me. I should thank him for that when I get home."
Lee stared at her.
"Uh…" said Lee. "You know that when a guy does stuff that he knows you like, that he doesn't really like so much… that he really really likes you, right? And wants to date you? -I mean, the guy's crazy about you," Lee said. "You just said that he's thinking about you all the time!"
Miz blinked, still uncomprehending. "Yeah. He's my friend and he loves me. But dating…" She looked confused. "Why would he want to date me? That's… that's not…" She frowned. "Why would he want me? That doesn't…"
Everyone, even Ford, was staring at her at this point. (...Well, except Sixer, who was bored by the conversation, and scribbling down other thoughts in his notebook.) Stan sighed and took over.
"Kid, pat your sister on the head for me. -Miz?" Stan said, as Bill started doing that, "We can talk about this later. Don't worry about it, for now. Yeah?" The way Stan saw it, he figured that the dragon lady must have even worse self-esteem issues than he'd thought… because this was, hell, Ford-level dating issues. Like, nobody-could-ever-possibly-like-me-because-of-my-hands-denial and all the rest of it. Just, I-am-a-triangle-and-everybody-hates-triangles-so-that-can't-be-a-thing-denial instead. (Stan had never really figured that one out for Ford; he was gonna need the kid's help for this one, but he wasn't too sure how well that would go over, with how the kid had talked about 'squirmy' stuff with his kid sister every single time so far...)
"It's nice that he's thinking of you, yeah?" Stan tried with her, instead of trying to tackle it all with her right then. (Especially not with Ford and the younger twins around. Besides, they had other stuff they needed to talk about that night, before it got too late.) "Maybe you could just, y'know, try thinking about him a little more often, too. See what happens. Just in case?"
Miz still looked confused but nodded. "I check up on him to make sure he's getting rest and eating properly. He forgets sometimes when he's working."
"That's good. -That you're doin' that for him," Stan added, not wanting her to maybe misunderstand what he was saying. "Maybe think about stuff he might like, too, when you're out… looking at stuff, next?" Stan told her, trying to think of examples for her. "You're looking for cookbooks next; maybe try thinking of other stuff that guy might like to read? Is he a reader?" Stan asked. Because, yeah, that was a thing. He'd liked reading comic books and some stuff, growing up, and Ford had always read everything he could get his hands on. But apparently some people weren't real 'big on' reading, and didn't even like newspapers or comic books. (That had been a big shocker, when he'd realized it. ...Because, y'know, there was a difference between deciding to finish reading something or hanging out with your friends, and just not liking reading at all.)
"He's a really big reader." Miz grinned. "He also likes to learn things himself, without me telling him. It's really cute."
"Well see there, you got something in common," Stan said. "You both like learnin' stuff. Might want to keep an eye out for books for him more often when you're out, maybe, then?" Stan said leadingly. "He does flowers for you, you do books for him?"
"Okay." Miz agreed easily. She thought about it. "Kryptos also likes power, so maybe I could get him books about how to gain political influence? Or books on how to manipulate the physical world?" she mused.
("Oh, he is DEFINITELY planning on killing you and trying to take over your Henchmaniacs," Bill muttered, which got him a long warning look from Stanley for some reason Stanley wasn't saying. -Which was stupid, because it wasn't like Bill hadn't had PLENTY of experience in SEEING the WARNING SIGNS before! He KNEW what he was TALKING ABOUT!)
"Uh," said Stan, to Miz. "Maybe start small first. -Ask your brother for pointers," he said next, because the kid would probably not recommend anything to her that might be too 'kill and/or enslave the dimension' kinds of powerful. ...Probably. (Not if the kid was worried about the guy 'taking over', anyway.)
"I don't suppose we could talk about something else, beyond how to be a better-" Ford grimaced, then cut himself off. (Which had Stan just about ready to hug him, right there.) "Something lighter, perhaps?" he tried again, with an edge to his tone that he couldn't quite keep out of it.
"-Sure," Stan said, taking that and running with it. "First things first. -Kid, your sister tell you about a list that she's supposed to be writing up for you?"
Bill blinked.
Then Bill looked over at his sister. (She had said something earlier about a list that was…)
Miz flicked her wrist and summoned a little notebook. She handed it over to him, looking embarrassed. "Just… stuff that I might need you to help me with? I guess?" She took a large bite out of her taco to avoid having to talk.
"It's supposed to be a bunch of stuff that she thinks is any kind of problem at all," Stan told the kid (trying to make stuff clear - and not just for the kid, because his brother looked about ready to have a heart attack right there for a second). "All the stuff that ain't so great that she doesn't like, or that she wishes wasn't a thing." (...Aaaaand Ford wasn't looking any better. Hell, Ford. Stan shot him a look to calm the hell down.)
Bill looked down at it and started paging through it slowly.
"-I asked her to write it up for you," Stan said, trying to make it as clear as he could, "But you should probably talk to her about it, maybe ask her about a few things that you might already be worried about, too. -I'm tryin' to help you catch a couple things early here, kid," Stan told him outright. "Like the emotion thing. Don't really need any of this biting her or anybody else, later." (And now Ford was eyeing the kid and the notebook. Stan didn't know what the hell his brother had been thinking before, but it definitely must not've been stuff like the PTSD thing, or that.)
"Mm," said Bill. He frowned slightly as he flipped a page, then went a bit still where he was sitting in place. (In the meantime, Stan got up to help clear some of the plates… and pull a few frozen ice-pops out of the 'colder-box' for the younger twins, his brother, Miz, and himself.)
"...You are oscillating between extremes?" Bill said, looking up at Miz abruptly. She winced. "I'm just having trouble adjusting. Sometimes my powers really want to do certain things, but I don't want them to…"
"This is not 'problems adjusting'," Bill said, waving the small notebook at her. "You are going near-empty, then full again, on purpose." He sounded more than a little stressed, enough that it had Ford watching him again (while Lee got up from the table and went over to sit near his twin on the bunk beds, where he was). "And you feel detached from what your own energy does and can do internally?" Bill asked next. "Even though you were not layering before?" (Hell, the kid had only gotten through the first two pages, there, and he was already… Stan sighed to himself, because yeah, he'd called it.)
Miz winced. "Back home I had a better grasp on how much energy it took to do stuff. It's just… harder here. And my powers have always felt somewhat separate from me."
"This was a problem before." The kid did not look happy about this. "This is what you were writing about before. -This is half the reason that you felt-and-feel this way?" Bill said. "More than half? -Almost-all-of-it now, because you have me and your friends?" Bill said, of the itching and the human-like suicidal-like behavior, of tearing herself open and bleeding out the 'excess' energy...
"...I'm sorry…" Miz looked down at her lap.
"'Sorry'." Bill repeated. "Sorry is not…" He looked away from her, and back at the notebook. "'Sorry' is not the word," he told her, setting it down. "You should have told me sooner. -THIS is what is causing most of your problems." He looked back over at her and brought his face down in, closer to hers, almost nose-to-nose. "If this goes away - if I FIX what makes the problem, and the ITCHING goes away because the problem causing the itching is no longer THERE, well. -THAT solves LOTS OF THINGS!" he told her, his eyes going a good bit brighter.
"...I just got used to it… didn't really think about fixing it… didn't really occur to me…" Miz mumbled.
"-Like the emotions-feeling," Bill said, leaning back and away from her slightly, going back to sitting upright again. "Don't be 'sorry' - be NOT-sorry! You are telling me now, and we will fix it ALL now," he said to her firmly. "Before you leave. -We will work on this NEXT," he informed her. "This is IMPORTANT." And then Bill looked up at Stanley. "-You noticed this."
"Was talkin' with her; some of it came up," Stan said. "Figured I'd get her to get it all down for you, whatever she could think of."
"This was a good idea," Bill said, looking down at the notebook, and flipping on to the next page. "Thank you."
(Ford looked on at this, stunned.)
"You are telling me now," Bill said, as he reached up and patted Miz on the head, "This is good, that you are telling me," he added, as he looked down at the notebook again and continued reading one-handed, while Stan passed out ice pops.
Miz leaned lightly against her brother, relaxing slightly once she realized he wasn't angry at her for being broken messed up. She accepted the ice pop from Stan with a quiet, "Thanks." and stuck it in her mouth, feeling a little better.
"...You ARE hooked into the karmic cycle?" Bill stared at some of the stuff his sister had written, as he kept on patting her on the head. It included a lot more detail than what she'd written down in her blog before, and a lot of what he was reading looked like it implied that she really was… or MORE than 'implied' it. He winced. "It READS like you are. ...Ugh, the Karma system." Her talk of needing to do certain 'bad' things to settle her uncomfortableness whenever she gave 'freebies' to people… the fluctuating power levels and LOSS OF CONTROL… suddenly made A LOT more SENSE now!
Miz blinked slowly. "There's a system?"
"Yes," Bill said, sitting back a bit and grimacing. "I unhooked myself from it, a LONG time ago. Stupid cycles. Stupid shifting set-points." ...And he might still be in trouble at-present, because he MIGHT currently be hooked back INTO it, again. It was looking less and less likely, the more he narrowed down exactly how his anchor worked, but… he was still trying to be careful about that, and the multiplier effect that might be coming-calling any day now… (stupid lizard).
Bill frowned at the notebook as he finished reading and closed it up again, leaving his other hand resting on top of Miz's head, now.
"AT LEAST HALF of your problems stem from this," Bill told his sister, handing back the notebook and elaborating now on what he'd only written briefly to her on before. "The 'karmic cycle' is a long-term function of the Karmic system, and it all WANTS to be balanced. So it TRIES to 'balance' itself AGAINST YOU. -If you're HOOKED INTO it, then that might explain it!" He frowned. "It's cyclic. -It's enacting some penalty on you AFTER you do things, repeatedly, when you are doing those things repeatedly." Like eating. And using her powers, potentially in certain specific ways. "-That system COULD be what's causing your pain and itching. That could be PART of the penalty." The question was whether it was for use, because of the specific use, because of the specific effect, or...
Miz sucked on the ice pop and thought about it. "Dat sshounds wite." She mumbled through the sweet cold treat. The way her powers would stir restlessly right after she does certain things...
"The GOOD NEWS is, you can detach yourself from the karmic cycle, AND remove yourself from the Karma system entirely!" Bill told her. "The BAD NEWS is," and he grimaced at this, "The PERMANENT and IMMEDIATE drop in power." Bill sighed as he handed the notebook back to her. (He'd memorized it, and it was her notebook; she could add more to it later if she wanted.) "You CAN build your power levels back up over time," he told her, "The HARD way." Knowledge-based power was ALWAYS harder! -But in Bill's vaunted opinion, far more worth it for the CONTROL one received, and had over oneself and one's own 'destiny' and future-outcomes!
"But," Bill said, "The 'hard way' is much more stable. And can be expanded almost infinitely FOREVER!" He smiled, then frowned again. "Karmic systems can only spike so far outwards FOR you, in YOUR favor," Bill told her, "Because they are a connected-loop. They can only spike so far without breaking the loop. And the loop refuses to break; inherent limitations," the older demon told her, of what he knew of how the local system in this set worked. (And if he was ever going to get RID of that system entirely - which he WAS, eventually - he KNEW he was going to have to be very, VERY careful about the backlash, because the AMOUNT of pent up energy stored in there… and given what it was tied into...)
"-And they can shift over time," was Bill's next warning to her, "And they are ALWAYS affected by other people. -You will have more consistent effects," and be much safer and better off, in his opinion, "If you put yourself OUTSIDE OF the cycle," he informed her, "No matter WHO you are Dealing with. It won't matter WHO they ARE, WHAT they want, or WHAT the outcome is. -History, time, place, space, area of effect, and current 'moralistic' thought-patterns of EVERYONE ELSE as related to those things, are no longer modifiers that must be taken into account for their effect on YOU. -You can just do what you WANT, with NO CONSEQUENCES!" Bill told her with a smile. "The only penalties you have to worry about THEN are ones you can then-control, all-direct and all-easily-Seen and easily-understood. ...Not something that tries to remain COMPLETELY HIDDEN and is almost IMPOSSIBLE to untangle causally," Bill complained. (He'd absolutely HATED having to calculate all that out, once he'd realized what sort of problems he'd actually been RUNNING INTO there, and WHERE they had actually been coming from.)
(Stan watched his brother paying close attention to all this, without looking like he was paying close attention to what he was hearing at all. And Stan took another sip of his water, and let the demons just keep right on talking...)
"The ONLY 'good news', besides that," Bill told her, "Is that MOST of your problems seem to be hitting you DIRECTLY. As in, not being routed-thrown-and-tossed-at-you through OTHER PEOPLE, through 'knee-jerk' karma-prompted actions, or OTHER PLACES, through supposedly-'natural' events." Because THAT all got really messy, VERY quickly. "...Unless your Karma system is VERY different from the one that is here," Bill told her. "But you are NOT seeing or feeling any changes in what is happening, yes?" Bill asked her. "The DEGREE of the SPIKES here are worse, but the IMPACT is the same." At least, that was what she'd seemed to indicate to him so far? Which was why he was checking with her by asking her now, straight-out!
Miz thought about it and slowly nodded. "I think so. They're all still making the same uncomfortable feeling." She glanced over at Ford and Stan quickly. "I don't think my powers like it when I'm trying to be 'good' for so long." (Stan looked over at Ford at this, but Ford was acting all stone-faced, like he didn't believe any of this for a second. ...Hadn't touched his own ice-pop yet, either.)
"You can try to switch your OWN definition of 'good' and 'bad' for awhile," Bill told her, "Like those 'Blessings'," he told her. But then he added, warningly, "But you can only FOOL a Karma system for so long. And THEN- well." Then it came back to bite you, in the VERY WORST way! -And as far as BILL was concerned, the only WORST that HE wanted to have around? WAS HIM!
"I've been making all sorts of justifications to alleviate or get around some of it." Miz pointed out. "I don't really know about switching it, sounds like it would cause problems down the line."
"Yes," Bill said. "DON'T 'switch' it; disconnect from the system ENTIRELY, instead!"
Stan blinked at the demon's conversation. "Wait, justifications… for 'good' and 'bad'?" What little he could understand was that it sounded like Miz's powers were hooked into some kind of system that apparently penalized her for trying to be 'good' by... making her itch? Badly enough that she wanted to tear herself open and die? -How was that 'balancing' things out?! ...Hell, was her idea of 'good' really that screwed up?
Bill looked over at him. "Karmic systems depend and RUN on a definition of 'good' and 'bad'. 'Good' people are rewarded in large ways overall, over time, and doing 'good things' is rewarded variably. And 'bad' people, well." The kid looked annoyed. "Extra-bonuses to 'good' people doing HORRIBLE things to 'bad' people! -Especially if the things are 'bad things' being done to 'balance out' those very 'bad' people," the kid told him sourly. "Because acting as an equalizer means that the system-underpinnings themselves don't have to handle it, on their own. So those 'energy savings' get passed along as karmic benefit to the acting-enactor. And NO bonuses for 'bad' people, ever, no matter what they do or don't-do, no-matter-what. -How FAIR is that?!" The kid looked incensed.
Stan stared, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what this all meant. "So…" he started, but the kid cut him off, apparently not done yet with his short (for him) rant.
"-And if ENOUGH people decide that 'some thing' is BAD and then YOU are suddenly classified as a 'BAD' person because of this, WELL," Bill said next, "Aren't YOU just three-different-types of screwed over, by what all those OTHER STUPID PEOPLE THINK!" Bill crossed his arms and leaning back. "-Do you know what all THAT is ACTUALLY pushing for?!" Bill looked even angrier. "-It's pushing for SOMEONE to TAKE CONTROL of ALL THOUGHT!" Bill said next. "To dictate FREE WILL, to try and game the system!" (And Bill suddenly looked incredibly tense, Stan realized.) "-And it would work!" Bill spat out next, "They would be able to REWRITE THOSE rules!" which… "Into something EVEN MORE STUPID!" ...was probably why he was so incensed about the whole thing. (Whatever the hell the kid meant by what he called 'free will', it was something he really did take real seriously, and didn't want anybody to mess with. For anybody.)
(...And adding all that 'making the rules even worse' stuff on top of that? No real mystery why the kid was hating on everything there, from start to finish. Stan shook his head. ...Though he did wonder how somebody got 'classified' as bad, and what the kid's definition of 'bad' actually was. It seemed to shift every other day on him, if not every other conversation. ...Heh, and the kid thought Ford was inconsistent? Hell...)
Miz raised an eyebrow. "Well, mostly, whenever my powers get uppity, I go and mess with some Federation guys. Pranks here and there, just bad enough to calm my itching down. But sometimes it gets too bad, generally when I've got too much energy inside me that wants to go out and start twisting things and I have to bleed out the excess…" She paused. "And sometimes it happens when I feel super sad-"
"-Miz, you need to stop there," Stan said abruptly, not really thinking through the implications of what she'd just said (about those Federation jerks) yet. "Don't talk about that kind of stuff in front of…" He glanced over at the younger twins, who weren't exactly listening in at the moment, but who were only a few feet away, sitting on one of the bunks. "Remember?" (He deliberately did not look over at his brother just then. Last thing he needed was to add Ford to the list and get an argument out of the dragon-lady.)
Miz looked over at the twins, wincing. "Right… but they're older, and not Dipper and Mabel? I thought they'd be able to handle it?" Stan shook his head 'no'.
"They ain't head shrinks," Stan told her. "I told you. Just because I can handle it, don't go thinking just anybody else can, just because. It ain't about age," Stan told her. "It's about what people can handle. Don't go shovin' that stuff in their heads," he repeated.
"Stan…" Ford said slowly, but Stan waved him off, with an, "It's fine, Ford. I can handle talking to the demon-kids about their stuff. -Don't you feel like you've gotta go tryin' to." And Stan left it at that. (He had to trust that Ford would leave the room if it got to be too much for him, or say something. He couldn't look out for his brother that far, and handle two demons at once. Not with the kid and the dragon-lady screwing things up left and right. He could be looking to cut some things off at the pass, but that didn't mean that he could-)
Miz frowned as she looked back and forth between the older set of twins. "I don't want to make you sad just because I'm messed up…" She pulled at her dress a little. Her ice pop was already gobbled up, melting quickly from her internal heat.
"Look," Stan said, "We're not gonna be able to handle this all tonight. -I was just tryin' to get the kid started thinking about things," he looked over at the kid, "Which you are," Stan told the older demon. "And I figure it's gonna take you two awhile to talk through a bunch of this stuff," Stan told them both next, "And then, y'know, come talk to me about it after that, once you think you're ready to actually do something about it, to run it all by me first. You know why; we talked about this," he told the kid, for Miz's benefit (so she could ask the kid about it later if she wanted to). Because he was helping the kid workshop his ideas, good or bad or weird or whatever. Getting the kid to agree to that had been easier than Stan had thought it was gonna be; it had been one of the very-first things he'd tried to do, and… as far as Stan was concerned, it had saved him and the kids multiple times so far, and counting.
Stan glanced at Miz. "But what I'm getting from all this stuff, is that you're really on the wrong, long end of the see-saw, here," he told Miz. "Because when you're doin' stuff you think is 'good' things, you feel pretty awful until you do something you think of as 'bad' to 'balance' it out. Am I gettin' that right?"
Miz nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. "It's why I find reasons why I want something, when I want to give other people things. If I have some personal, selfish reason for wanting something, then it's not a problem."
"Because... what, being 'selfish' is bad?" Stan said, confused. (Ford gave him a look.)
"Generally, that category of things is considered 'bad' by the vast majority of people in every dimension in existence that is out there, yes," the kid told him, with a sigh. "-Are you seeing the problem here, already?" the kid then added, almost-cheekily.
Stan suddenly connected a few dots. "Wait. Is that why you always have your own reasons for wanting to do stuff?" he asked Miz next. "Like, what you said about the washing machine - making it to help the kids, but then 'really' because you wanted it yourself?" ...Was some of this junk with the kid left over from when the kid had had problems with karma, too? The kid never seemed to do anything without a reason, and he always had a shit-ton of reasons for doing anything he said he wanted to do. The kid had said that he had cut himself off, disconnected from that karma system thing, eventually. But the triangle demon had had to be stuck with this stuff in the system, long enough to know how 'annoying' it was. (Because for the kid, everything he didn't like was 'annoying'; kid didn't differentiate all that much, other than maybe toss a few adjectives in there, on top of everything, if you were lucky.) And the kid had always seemed three types of cautious to him when he was working out stuff - literally working out stuff, with those 'probabilities of success' of his...
Miz nodded. Ford couldn't help but frown at her even as he glanced up at Bill, looking at him over the book that he'd been 'reading' while listening in on all this. The older demon hadn't lied about any of this. ...As far as he could tell, Bill hadn't felt that he'd left much out of his own ranting on this odd choice of subject, either. (Nothing that the demon considered important that would alter or otherwise change the nature of their understanding of the information drastically, certainly.) And if this was true, if there was some sort of penalty that the universe itself inflicted upon demons for...
"...Who does this 'Karma system' apply to?" Ford asked Bill slowly.
And he most certainly did not like the answer he got out of him, when the triangle demon turned to him and said: "Everyone."
And then said: "-even ME, until I disconnected myself from it a LONG time ago!"
Miz added on, "I guess humans don't feel it directly?" She leaned against Bill's side.
"Humans don't usually feel it directly, no," Bill told her. "No-one does, except demons."
Ford was staring at Bill. Something wasn't quite… He could tell Bill had just lied about something there, but also… not quite. He'd left something out...
"Who isn't subject to it?" Ford tried next, and Bill just laughed at him and said:
"What, you want a LIST? -Get in line!" he was told by Bill, and Ford frowned at the absolute evasiveness of that statement.
Miz asked her brother, "Is Ax not affected by it?"
And at that, Bill hesitated.
"...Not that I'm aware of," Bill said slowly, after a long moment. (It was clear to the others that he was thinking hard.) "But I didn't check for that, at the time that I Saw it 'in-person' last. -Either time." And the Karma system-underpinnings were VERY hard to See, let alone nail down. "The stupid frilly lizard DOES have Rules; three of them that are externally-applied to it, that it THINKS it HAS to uphold," Bill told her in far too-even tones. "And a lot MORE that it created for itself OUT of those three. ...Bound itself up even tighter, the stupid thing," Bill muttered. Then he added, with fake-brightness suddenly, "-Wouldn't be surprised if the stupid thing ADDED itself into all that, too! ...But probably not," Bill ended on a more sober note, then added even more darkly, "Because it will have CONSEQUENCES COMING TO IT that are a LONG TIME COMING if it was…" And then Bill even waved that off with a hand, saying, "And then it wouldn't be able to do its job anymore, which it is 'required' to do! -So probably almost-definitely not part-of and/or under-the-influence-of the 'Karma system', no."
There was an awkward lull in conversation as Stan and the other humans stared at the demons. Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright. Like I said, you two talk about all this junk, and then come talk to me about it before ya go off doin' anything about it. -That includes Miz not feelin' pain from that karma penalty thing, if that's what it is." He figured the kid would double-check that one on his own, no questions asked. "-You two need to figure out if numbing that out is gonna cause worse problems," Stan told them, "More than her feeling hungry, and what happens if she's too 'full' or too 'empty' on her energy 'gas tank' stomach thing, or whatever."
"She could balance herself by doing something 'bad'," Bill said with a shrug, but… yeah, even the kid didn't seem to like that idea. "...And expend far more energy than she needs to in doing so. …...And then eat more again. …...And then expend more again." Stan grimaced. -Yeah, that was the problem.
"Kid, do you think your sister wants to do something 'bad'?" Because that was the gist of it that Stan understood. Miz wanted to be good, but doing so made her literally feel terrible. And apparently her 'energy levels' being high - not feeling like she was half-starving, apparently - was what was making the feeling even worse for her, that was what Stan was getting here. The more energy she had the stronger those feelings became. ...and then Stan grimaced again as he realized that 'making herself bleed' probably counted as one of those 'bad' things. ...Except she was doing it to herself, so if she counted as a 'bad' person… except the kid said 'bad' people didn't get 'bonuses' for anything, though that didn't necessarily mean they got nothing, right?… but the way the kid had talked had made it sound like 'good' didn't need to be offset by… except then he'd said that thing about equalizers and loops and… oh hell, this was givin' him a headache already.
"Just, figure it out," Stan told the demon-kids a little grumpily. "You ain't gettin' any worse right now, at least?" Stan asked Miz. "It's not getting worse every time, this cycling thing? Or is it?"
"No. It comes and it goes. It hasn't really gotten worse? Just annoying."
"Okay," said Stan, letting out a breath. He knew what a runaway feedback loop was. "We'll keep doin' what we're doin' for now, then. -You can keep eatin' and usin' up energy," Stan told her, "And me and the kid can talk you through tryin' different things; see what makes you itch more or less or not. Whatever. -You two can keep on talkin' in the meantime, try to figure out something more permanent that's better. Right now, we'll stick with what works, that isn't hurtin' nobody. Including you," he ended on, giving Miz a look.
"Once I get a better fix on the ratios in this dimensional set, I should be fine on the hungry and full levels." Miz told him. "That would help a lot."
"Yeah, sure," Stan told her. "Just, don't go bumpin' yourself too far out of whack when you're figuring this stuff out," he warned her. "You change too much too quick… that's a problem you might not be able to get back from." Runaway loops and spirals.
Miz nodded at that. Bill nodded at him as well.
Ford wanted to change the subject again, though he also wanted to know more about this 'karma system' - Bill had said it applied to everyone… and had also implied that it was not standard that Miz was feeling the 'karmic' consequences of her actions as a direct penalty to her - meaning that other people would experience it indirectly. Which… based on what Ford knew about the definition of 'karma', indirect consequences seemed more in line with his understanding of the idea. That good and bad things he did would affect someone's future and the events therein. ...But the idea that, perhaps, these effects were not simply the natural consequences of his own choices and their casual impact rippling through the universe and people around him, but also weighed somehow by the whims of what the 'majority' might think of his actions, were they ever asked, and that somehow having some odd (probabilistic?) impact as well...
...if that was, in fact, the case, then what did that mean for demons like this Miz-'Bill' Cipher? Why did her own actions towards him seem to go largely unpunished by this system?
Not to mention... what did that mean, in how much of his own life had been affected by karma over the years, over the course of the outcomes of all of what he considered to be major life events for him, and-
-What sort of awful thing could he have possibly done in this life, or the last, that would have resulted in him being stuck with Bill for more than thirty years, if indeed Ford's suffering at the hands of the demon were potentially some form of karmic retribution?
Or would Bill himself simply call what he had done to him 'inevitable' - with Bill being outside of the system himself and apparently able to do as he pleased with no consequences but those that other people directly applied in an attempt to directly combat his madness?! - and his own karmic balance merely tipping the scales only slightly, one way or the other? And, if this was truly the case...
-Could he have been stuck with Bill playing with him and watching his every step for thirty-four years, instead? Forty years? -Fifty?
Ford stifled a shiver. And he tried very hard not to think about the fact that Bill had said not more than a few days ago that he could bring them all back to life and de-age them, if he so chose, and that meant-
Stan sighed pushed himself up from the table, clearing the table and starting the dishes. "Alright," Stan said. "Now that we're past the first of the things-first," he said, half tongue-in-cheek for the kid's benefit, "Let's talk about…"
And with that, he moved on to the next topic - the main topic of the night's discussion, really - which he was pretty sure Ford wasn't gonna like any better than the last two: an overview of the 'big plan' for tomorrow.
The younger twins both perked up at this over by the bunks, much more interested in this discussion - which was one that they could actually both follow.
And after the initial query from Ford as to what this was all about - and then the initial protest - Stan actually got Ford settled out a lot faster than he'd thought he would. (Stan guessed it helped that his brother was getting tired.) It didn't take very long to convince Ford that (1) he (Stan) would be watching Miz and their younger set as they were doing the whole 'act' for everybody, and would jump in and handle things if need be, (2) the kid would not be taking part in any of this thing at all, and (3) - which Stan had thought would be the kicker - neither would Ford.
As it turned out, Stan didn't even need to make a bunch of arguments there to get his brother on-board with that last one, or anything. Because after he'd said that he wanted the kid away from it all, Ford had practically volunteered to be the one watching the kid for him, making sure he was staying out of trouble and keeping away from everything.
And the really weird thing was… after Ford said he was going to do that? Watch the kid himself, and not be there for any of the whole thing? -The kid stopped objecting to not being there himself; he just 'settled' for getting to have final say on everything that they were going to finish working out that night, beforehand.
(...Had the kid really been that worried about Ford trying to shoot his sister? Stan didn't think that the act going wrong was what did it for the kid - because Ford losing his shit and waving the gun around without firing it would be more than enough to have Miz 'breaking character' and hiding behind one of the younger twins, probably Lee and not Sixer, after what had happened with Sixer earlier that day, even if Ford didn't actually fire it off at anything or anyone.)
After Stan had shooed Ford back out to the deck again, to do more work on the roof of the cabin and the deck (to try and keep interruptions to a minimum), Stan had Miz and the twins fill the kid in on how things stood so far, as he washed up the dishes after dinner.
The three of them got the kid up to speed pretty quickly, and they all planned at things for the 'capture' for the next few hours, talking things out until Bill wasn't vetoing the entire thing anymore, and (eventually) wasn't even offering more than 'suggestions' on 'flair' (after a hell of a lot of middling complaints of 'this won't work because-' and 'what are you going to do if-', along with what was basically a pretty hefty list of 'demands' before he'd okay his little sister putting herself in any 'danger', supposedly-real or otherwise)...
...and Stan finally decided they'd talked just about everything to death, it was all gonna be fine, and it was time for bed.
So Stan sent the kids off, down to their sleeping bags belowdecks, as he opened up the porthole above what was going to be 'his' bunk, just for that night.
He looked out of it, to see Miz moving blankets and pillows out of the sandcastle to set up a bedding area out on the deck. Stan wasn't too surprised; he'd literally heard the kid announce, as he'd strode out the open doorway, that he had decided he would sleep next to Ford that night (so that his brother wouldn't have any more 'annoying and incorrect' nightmares - at least, not ones that he could remember...), and where the hell was he- NO he was NOT sleeping UP THERE on top of the roof where he was right now, get DOWN here on deck, look Stanley is RIGHT THERE with the window open if Miz tries to eat you, stop being so STUPID, etc. etc. - seriously, the kid and his brother had issues.
Miz had blushed and looked oddly excited at the idea of Bill and Ford sleeping together. Bill wasn't sure what that was about, but he wasn't worried about it. When he'd asked her, his sister had told him it wasn't anything important. Just something about boats.
Ford protested the sleeping arrangement again, but Bill leveled a glare at him and said, "I am NOT handling you having STUPID dreams with not-me IN them, and COMING UP or OUT HERE tomorrow morning and GRABBING at me. AGAIN! -You are sleeping UP here, NEXT to me, there IS no OR ELSE, you are just going to DO it, I am NOT breaking the agreement because of YOU. -Stanley, tell him to do the thing," Bill complained out at Stan next, directing it back towards the porthole.
"I don't need-" Ford stopped for a moment and reevaluated his argument quickly at the look he was getting from his brother through the window. "-I fell asleep next to you in the basement on that couch, without issue!" he tried next.
"Ford, when you fall asleep next to the kid, you sleep like the dead. It ain't gonna kill you to try it out one more time, and figure out if this is really a thing or not."
"Stanley, you can't possibly think-"
"Look, the kid's offering to help, and the dragon lady don't like eatin' heads. You got a metal plate in there that'll keep just about anybody out," if the kid didn't kill them first for the offense. "Pretty sure you're as safe out there as I am in here," Stan told him, then sighed and said, "But I'm right here, and I'll grab a chair and come out there to watch you both sleep again if I have to, until morning. And, y'know, make sure the scary dragon lady stays in her sandcastle lair. If you want me to." Not like he couldn't sleep through 'til the afternoon when the school let out, if he had to, once Ford was awake again.
"She's not staying in her 'sandcastle lair'," Ford began, because from the looks of things, she was planning on sleeping right at Bill's other side. Then Ford shook himself, trying to refocus on what was important, because, "That isn't the issue, here-" Ford began.
"Ford, you said you couldn't breathe last night, because you had some kinda nightmare, that you needed the kid to help you wake up out of," Stan said. "Were you lyin' to me about that?" ...Yeah, no. No, he wasn't. Not from the look Ford was avoiding giving him, he wasn't. Damnit. He'd really been hoping he'd misunderstood him before. "-Kid, is this gonna help him?" Stan asked the older demon next.
"It will help... you. Because it will keep him from having nightmares that have him thinking that he can't breathe," the kid said to Stan shortly, even though he didn't sound too pleased at any of that.
-Yeah, no. Stan wasn't risking his brother passing out - or worse - if whatever this thing was happened again, and his brother couldn't get to the kid in time this time. So Stan decided that he was gonna out-stubborn his brother on this one, and he stubbornly stood his ground. "-Ford, if this is gonna help you, then just do it."
Ford clenched his jaw and his fists and looked away. -That wasn't the point, or the problem. This hadn't been an issue before. Something had changed, and now Bill was taking advantage of the situation, to- to-
...Ford wasn't quite sure how this might be advantageous to Bill yet, but the point still stood. He had no reason to be having these kinds of nightmares; certainly, not to this degree. He hadn't had nightmares this bad since-
"I'll be fine-" Ford began.
"It's all ready, now!" Miz chirped out, of the blanket- and pillow-pile nest that she'd finished setting up for the three of them.
Ford turned around and glared at Miz, not trusting her nearby while he was sleeping.
The younger demon sighed and scooted over a little, still close enough to be within sight but far enough that she wasn't anywhere close to touching Ford. She was snuggling Iseblonker to her chest, pouting. She flopped down on the fluffy blankets, looking like she wanted to complain at Ford's hostile look, but held herself back and just crawled under the pillows, sliding most of herself under a large pillow with an image of some anime character on it, with just part of her leg sticking out from beneath the pile.
Stan noted her avoidant behavior, and tried to remind himself to give her a headpat for that tomorrow morning - not engaging the fight Ford was trying to pull, probably as an excuse to get out of not suffocating in his sleep. (...Stan also recognized that the pillow she'd just tunneled under was one of those 'anime' style ones, though didn't know what show it was from. And… Stan blinked. Was the image printed on the pillow a half-naked man? He shook his head and turned away from the porthole. Yeah, no. Not gonna ask.)
"I'm goin' to bed," Stan told them all. "Either fall asleep out there with the kid, or give up and come in here and take the other bunk," Stan told his brother.
"...That's an option?" Stan heard Ford say, in tones of confusion - like he couldn't understand why no-one had told him this before. Stan also heard Bill say next, "I am NOT putting up with you mentally attacking yourself AGAIN and blaming it on me. AGAIN. SO LIE DOWN ALREADY."
...Ford ended up in the cabin. (Stan rolled his eyes at this.)
"If you die from not-breathing from this, I am tellin' the kids I said 'I told you so'," Stan told him grumpily, as he pulled up the covers, and settled himself into his own bunk bed.
Ford grumbled wordlessly at him, taking off his glasses to set them down on the nearby table, and rolling over in his bunk. -It was likely situational, Ford told himself, A one-time thing. They were in another dimension, in unfamiliar surroundings, and he'd been having to interact with both Bill and another highly-dangerous demon on a regular basis - neither of which he could shoot at in self-defense without risking the safety of the niblings' lives, being held hostage. -In a more familiar boat-like setting, with only the one demon nearby, or the better air from being up on deck, with at least one porthole window open… surely this would not be a problem tonight.
And even if it was…
Ford was left blinking as the lights went out suddenly, and he realized how dark it was out just then - both inside, and outside, of the cabin.
"Stan…" Ford said quietly.
"Go to sleep, Ford," was what he heard back, and a rolling-away and shifting of covers.
Ford forced himself to pull in a slow breath, as he tried to settle down in place. ...It was difficult, because he still felt keyed up and very much on a hair-trigger, after everything that had happened that day. The sounds weren't quite right, as a start, not what he was used to hearing, since they weren't actually out at sea or at a proper port. And it didn't help either, that his mind was still going in circles after what had happened earlier, when...
Ford tried to relax enough that he could drift off to sleep, while his mind kept crunching away at all the things that had been bothering him. He couldn't help it, as his mind kept circling around the problem of the demons, of three days and their younger selves and everything else that had been going on and going so horribly wrong ever since they'd arrived here. And what one particular triangle demon had done today - or rather, yesterday...
"I can make time not a problem. It's fine. He doesn't have to rush…?" Bill said.
"But… But how?" the teacher asked next, like a supplicant asking for- and Ford felt his hackles rise because that was the next thing that went wrong ...
Bill was still looking over at Stan. "I can control time," he said simply which just had Ford fighting down a shudder, because in the Fearamid-. Stan was staring back at Bill intensely, in a way that wasn't exactly leaving Ford feeling any better about-
Mr. Harman looked very confused, and also awed. "Y-you can-" There was a pause, and Ford realized that the man was looking down at his six-fingered hands. And when the teacher's eyes went wide and he said, "You're from-"
"-an alternate dimension's future, not the future of this one," Ford told the man quickly. He only realized how he may have just traded one problem for another far worse one, only after he saw the man's head lift. And at the new intensity of the feverish gleam in the man's eyes, the grin that got just a bit wider...
Ford fought the urge to take a step backwards.
"Time isn't a problem…" the man said in wonder, staring at Ford. But then he slowly began to frown. "...But you're old." He said it almost dejectedly, and with an undercurrent of stress in his tone that...
Ford heard his brother let out a snort, and Ford couldn't help but give him a glare. -This was a serious situation! Did Stan not realize that-
"Kid," Stan said next, "There's no way the teach here is gonna be able to teach class today. You got any time-related ideas for how to handle that?" Stan said, clearly playing off of what Bill had just said. But before Bill could actually say anything one way or the other, his brother added, "Other than doing the day over again?"
"Not with two demons here," Ford informed him tersely. "Not easily." Ford severely doubted that rolling back time would do them any good here; the other demon would hardly want to go along with it, herself.
"I can handle nonlinear time loops," Bill said to Stan, while sending Ford a glare. "My sister hasn't Looked yet, so it's more than doable."
"-Yes," the teacher said quickly, swiveling his head between them. "Do the day over again - I'll get it right this time, I swear!" he said desperately to the demon next, straining to lean forward towards him, despite Stan's hold. "I know I will! I just-"
"Okay, no," said Stan, still holding onto the knowledge-addicted teacher, but without trying to physically pull him back away from Bill again. "Not a straight-up redo. We aren't doing the exact same thing again," Stan said next to the man, almost soothingly, "Because that'd have those blackboards all erased on you again. Right? -Kid, what's your idea," Stan said next. "This is your screw-up, gettin' this guy all wound up this far. I'm open to ideas from you on how to fix this one yourself."
Bill grimaced. (He didn't protest; he grimaced.) "He needs more time, yes? There are several ways to do it," Bill said next, then paused. "What is the thing that you would have wanted him to do yesterday, that he did not do?" Bill… asked Stanley.
Ford stared.
"Go home, see his family, eat dinner, and get a decent night's sleep, so that he can teach his classes today," was what Stan said to the demon promptly.
Bill turned away from Stan, and turned to face the teacher instead.
"Did you fall asleep yesterday, after Stanley left?" Bill asked him.
"-I'm sorry," the teacher said immediately.
Ford watched as Bill grimaced slightly in pure irritation, then smoothed it away. "Don't be sorry. Just ANSWER THE QUESTION."
"I- I-" the teacher stammered, and Ford grimaced and started to move forward.
"Ford," Stan said quietly, and he stopped for a moment, to stare at Stan. Because why-
"WHEN did you fall asleep, and WHEN did you wake up," Bill said again, with a terrible intensity, staring the man right in the eyes.
"-I don't know when I fell asleep," the man said to Bill, "I only know when I woke up." He looked and sounded almost mesmerized, as Bill stared slitted cat-eyes at him, and he stared at Bill right back.
"WHEN did you wake up," Bill repeated, the exact same way as he had said it before. Ford shivered.
"Seven-forty-nine P.M.," the man said distantly. "I saw the clock in the teacher's lounge when I woke up…"
Bill leaned back away from him, breaking eye contact, and the man drooped slightly in place for a moment.
"Got a plan?" Stan said next. "Talk me through it, first."
"Stan-"
"-I want to hear what the kid's got to say, Ford," Stan interrupted him, sending him a look. "Let the kid talk."
Ford gritted his teeth. This was not-
But Ford saw the look his brother was giving him. And he kept quiet (for the moment).
And the silence drew out for almost a minute.
"-We leave the school grounds," Bill said, finally. Abruptly. Quickly. "You give me permission to toss up a 'perception filter' so that no-one stops us leaving. We walk someplace out of the way, out of sight. I cancel the 'filter' and jump us back in time, to seven-p.m yesterday, local-time. I put up a new 'perception filter'. We walk back to his house," Bill pointed at the teacher. "And we go inside and do all-"
"-No, no, that won't work," the teacher said, shaking his head back and forth, and Ford startled and stared at him, stunned. "That won't-"
"Hey, HEY!" Bill said, refocusing on the teacher and snapping his fingers several times in his face, rather rudely. "Look at me! HEY! -LOOK AT ME," Bill intoned, finally getting the teacher's attention back on him again - but only after physically grabbing his chin and-
Ford winced, feeling alarmed. -Was the man stupid?! Why wasn't he listening to-
And then Ford tensed in place as he realized what he'd just been thinking.
And when he glanced over at Stan, feeling a bit paranoid at his thoughts potentially having been heard by Bill guilty that he'd fallen so completely and abruptly into old and terrible habits, he realized that his brother wasn't looking at Bill, or even the teacher, as Bill more or less berated him and otherwise talked down to the grown man like a child. No, Stan was watching him. What he was doing. And...
Ford pulled in a slow breath, and looked away. He hoped that his thoughts hadn't been visible on his face. ...At least Stanley didn't say anything. At least he didn't seem to understand it all yet, even being visibly confronted with... Well, of course he wouldn't, couldn't understand it. Of course not. (Not yet.)
"-then you can ARGUE with me about it all AFTER we're all running on spare time, instead," Bill told him, "Unless you WANT me to NOT HELP YOU again." ...Ah, yes. And now came the threats. 'Do what I want, or else.' Classic Bill, with all the subtlety of an already-swinging sledgehammer.
"No! No! I-" the teacher said, rather predictably.
"-Then DON'T ARGUE WITH ME when I TELL you that I WILL do something to FIX whatever little 'time problem' that you THINK you have," Bill ended, then looked up to Stan. "We need to go NOW. Before first class; I DON'T want to have to overlap things too much."
What happened next left Ford feeling very off-balance and wrong.
"Kid, tell the guy that I know what I'm talking about," Stan said.
Bill gave Stan a long unreadable look.
"Go on," Stan said. "Tell him that he should listen to me."
And Bill slowly turned back towards the teacher.
And Bill said, "You should listen to Stanley. He knows what he's talking about…... when he says things about food and sleep." Bill said it slowly, and he said it while looking at Stanley, instead of the teacher.
"And…" Stan prompted Bill, and Ford looked between the two of them in growing worry.
"And…" Bill began, "He… is going to take you home. And... then-"
"-No," said the teacher, interrupting Bill again. "I need to-"
Bill gripped the teacher's chin even more tightly and looked him in the eyes. "Stanley knows what he is talking about when he says things like 'you need food' and 'you need sleep'," Bill repeated, in a more normal speech pattern for him.
"I tell the kid when he needs a break, and he listens to me," Stan said next.
"He- you do?" the teacher said, going from protesting to confused in the blink of an eye.
"Stanley makes sure I know when it is mealtime, to eat at mealtimes. ...because eating is a necessary thing for human bodies to function properly ...with the way this dimension is currently set up." (Ford winced at everything that Bill could have been saying, but was leaving out there - and the demon was clearly holding back hard on not including any of what Ford knew Bill wanted to say, for some reason, which was… highly unusual for him, especially given the circumstances.) "Sleep is also important."
"Tell him I'll make sure he gets what he wants here, kid," Stan said next, to Ford's utter dismay.
"You will do what Stanley tells you to do," Bill said. "He will give you what you want."
And hearing that made Ford sick, and not just because of what it implied.
It made him feel sick, because Bill clearly did not think that was the case.
And yet when Bill said it, it almost didn't sound like a lie.
What happened next left Ford feeling even more off-balance and wrong.
Stan had not-quite dragged a worried and frazzled looking Mr. Harman out of the school, around the corner, and into a dark alleyway. Bill and Ford had followed them.
No-one had seen them leave. They'd made eye-contact with no-one in the school. The students had all seemed to turn away from them as they went - not looking through them, but their gazes and bodies literally turning away from them - the student populace parting in front of them like the Red Sea as their little group moved down the hallway, straight-on through them.
And, once they were in that alleyway, out of the way of everything and everyone, Bill had simply stood there and cast some sort of spell. He'd just…. braced his feet slightly farther apart than he usually stood, lifted his hands up and moved his fingers into a triangular formation in front of his chest, closed his eyes, and...
Bill had muttered under his breath for almost an entire minute, nearly subaudally. Nothing that Ford had been able to quite catch - which was likely rather the point.
And then the sun went out.
...Not quite that literally. But one moment the sun had been shining overhead, and the next… it was rather dark outside.
Bill had slumped a little in place after that, looking abruptly tired. And then, as Ford had watched, the triangle demon had waved a hand overhead almost irritably, making some sort of clicking noise as he did so, and then started striding forward, almost stiff-legged, out of the alleyway.
"Try and keep up," Bill had said, not looking back at any of them as he went. (And from the line of Bill's shoulders, he was irritated in the extreme.)
Ford almost protested Bill's 'order', but he held back after he glanced at his brother, quite ready to castigate him for letting the demon take the lead… and saw how very angry Stan looked.
Ford's breath caught.
It was gone in the next moment - that steely-eyed glare, that clenched jaw - but Ford saw it.
Stan wasn't… nearly as okay with the situation as he'd been acting.
And Ford hadn't realized this. Not really. Not until now. But… that didn't quite make any sense either. Because why hadn't Stan said-
"Kid, slow down," Stan called out, startling Ford out of his thoughts because Stan was not sounding angry, and not trying to hurry, either. Stan was just walking forward at a normal pace as he helped the teacher along. "We've got time. Yeah?"
Ford followed after Stan, and watched what happened next, and... he realized something: Stan hadn't let Bill hurry him along. He hadn't let Bill set the pace.
Stan had outright ordered Bill to slow down, and Bill? -Bill had looked over his shoulder at Stan when Stan had complained at him about his set pace, and… slowed down. He'd slowed down his pace. And come to almost a complete stop. Waiting for Stan to catch up to him.
Ford watched this, as he followed the three of them, at not two short paces behind, as they all continued walking on down the street, towards Mr. Harman's house.
...This wasn't just about Bill listening to Stanley or not. Not anymore. (If it ever had been.) There was something more going on here that Ford simply didn't understand.
Stan was planning something. Some sort of… scheme?... having to do with Bill. And Ford was completely lost now, not just at a loss at his brother's ongoing nonsensical behavior. Because this clearly wasn't just about getting Bill to not kill the kids, if it ever had been. Not anymore. -Not from what he'd seen out of the roof a few short nights ago. Not with what had happened out on the boardwalk. And not from what he'd just seen here. -Had Stan been lying to him, this entire time? ...Did Bill know what Stanley was trying to do? Or had even Bill been completely fooled somehow. Ford shuddered at the very thought. -What was his brother planning? He'd talked of… twisting Bill up inside, of Bill not telling him 'no', but… this was a far cry from simply a lack of 'no'. This looked far more like a 'yes', to him. And not just one 'yes'; this looked far more like… it was almost...
-How had Stan managed this? They were in another dimension, for Axolotl's sake! They were divorced from the rest of the Zodiac, they had no fallbacks or safety net to speak of, they were completely at Bill's mercy, subject to his every whim in order to get back home again - if Bill would even let them do so, when he had every reason in the world not to - and yet… Stan wasn't worried. And while Bill might not be following along at Stan's heels, he was taking outright orders and commands from him. -And not just listening to them and then laughing them off and… letting Stan get away with having said it to him by not killing him. Oh, no. Bill was actually doing what Stan explicitly told him he wanted him to do. -And not just that, but even largely without complaint. The former was mind-blowing enough, but the latter? Ludicrous! Did Stan have ANY idea-?!
No. No, Stan couldn't possibly. If he had, he would be being far more careful about it. That he wasn't being more careful about any of this spoke volumes, and all the bad kind. Ford almost wanted to grab his brother, tell him to stop- but he couldn't.
Because if Bill didn't know what Stan was trying to do… if he didn't actually realize… If there was even some small chance that whatever Stan was trying to do to keep Bill in line and from killing or torturing them all for all eternity was actually working, even in some small mean respect… then Ford wasn't about to say anything that might clue Bill in to that possibility.
Ford still couldn't believe that this was truly what was happening, though. He couldn't imagine Bill taking commands, even though he'd seen it happening, right in front of him... but that didn't mean that Bill wouldn't, in order to continue playing along to some long game he had going.
...After all, Stan (and Bill) had indicated on multiple occasions now that Bill had only taken the Deal he'd had with him in order to get out of the Nightmare Realm eventually. If Bill had been willing to do something he considered so objectionable then, to, in essence, give up his own free will for an unspecified period of time in order to get something that he wanted...
...then the question still remained: what was it that Bill wanted so very badly now, that he would not only put up with this behavior from Stan, but actively play along with it?
That was hardly the worst of it, though. The real problem was, when Ford saw Bill defer to Stanley, looking to him for an opinion and actively asking for one… it wasn't a lie. Ford was sure of that, now. After what had just happened, it was clear now that...
...Bill had actually wanted to know. He'd wanted to know what Stan thought, and he'd wanted to take that into account, to run with it. And it hadn't been the first time this had happened, either. And that was-
Ford shook himself and felt a chill go down his spine as they came up on Mr. Harman's home. Because...
They didn't stop. They just walked up to the door.
And they all went inside.
And they more or less tried to hand the man over to his wife and very young son, and the man didn't want to-
And then Bill talked to him for awhile, and talked him down.
For the moment, at least, by explaining what he planned on doing.
-except then Stan got his two cents in and corrected him next.
At which point, Ford couldn't take it anymore.
"-The problem he's worried about isn't time to work, it's aging," Ford ground out at them all, because neither Bill nor Stan seemed to be getting the point, here! "Giving him some sort of workspace to work within for however many additional hours a day, the way you are talking about it, will simply age him prematurely. -He won't get any more done," Ford told them all. "He'll simply die a few years earlier, relative to the rest of the people in this dimension!"
Stan gave him a long look. "...Okay." He turned to Mr. Harman and then glanced at Bill. The demon rolled his eyes, looking exasperated. "I can make it so he doesn't age while he's in there," Bill said. "And-"
"-that still doesn't solve anything!" Ford protested angrily, because had his brother really missed the point of this whole excursion that completely?! "That won't stop him from working and working until he drops, or-"
"-Have any of you had dinner yet?" Mrs. Harman interrupted casually, bouncing her child on her hip. And Ford stopped in the middle of his tirade to look at her, blinking, rather derailed by her question.
"Ford," Stan said, "We can talk out the details downstairs later. -Teach," Stan said next, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "Ford's worked with the kid before. You can trust him to come up with a really good workspace for you, no time problems or nothin'. And the kid will toss up a copy of those equations again before we go; no worries," Stan said, as Ford clenched his jaw at that one. "Kid's got a great memory. You can pick up on that stuff again later." Ford nearly protested again, but stopped at the warning glare he received from his brother, though only barely.
"I…" Mr. Harman began.
"-And no, we haven't had dinner yet," Stan flat-out lied told Mrs. Harman with a smile, "And neither has this guy." Ford looked on as he clapped that hand on the man's shoulder again, then pushed him forward towards his wife and kid. "Maybe ask him about his day? He's had a doozy," Stan said with a grin.
"But…" Mr. Harman said.
"Me, my brother, and the kid'll go down to the basement and handle things for ya there, don't you worry," Stan told the Harmans. "You go off and get some food in you, spend some time with your family. Talk with your wife, and get a good night's sleep," Stan said like he had a right to be ordering a grown man around like a child. "You do all that? And everything will be all ready for you down there in the morning." (And Ford wasn't the only one who caught the warning there.)
Mrs. Harman smiled and took her husband's hand. "Come on, John. I made lamb roast tonight. Your favorite!"
"I… well…" Mr. Harman looked to Bill, who crossed his arms and gave him an unreadable look.
"Bill, tell him to do what I just said, or else," Stan said without looking over at the demon or away from Mr. Harman, just as good-naturedly as before.
"Do what he just said or else," Bill repeated verbatim, not changing his tone, look, or stance.
"Ah…" The teacher glanced around at them all one more time, looking a bit lost, then (quite meekly) said, "Yes, dear," to his wife, and followed her into the kitchen.
As soon as they'd left the room, Stan dropped the smile.
"Basement. Now." was all Stan said, as he turned and glared down at the kid.
Ford blinked.
...And that was how they all ended up down in the basement of Mr. Harman's house.
And then… Then, Stan actually listened to him for once.
Though, oddly, Stan insisted that Bill eat some crackers and get some sleep for a few hours before starting work on 'fixing up' that basement space to his (read: Ford's) specifications.
...Which was how Ford found himself - after a quick 'early lunch' of crackers and more canned beans (also pulled from Bill's hat) - sitting next to his brother on an old ratty couch in their old physics teacher's dimensional counterpart's basement, while watching the triangle demon sleeping on the floor and his brother dozing off on his shoulder.
Stuck in a 'nonlinear time loop'.
While himself, Stan, Bill, were also on the boat, and Mr. Harman was also still at school...
...completely violating everything that Ford knew about time travel from the niblings talk of the time-tape they'd used. It wasn't consistent with anything Ford knew from his own time in the Do-Over Dimension, either.
They hadn't 'replaced' their earlier selves along the same portion of their timeline, and Bill hadn't completely rolled back time in this dimension. He'd quite literally jumped them all back in time, to exist at the same time as their earlier selves, with their earlier selves being none the wiser.
It was more like their travel to this dimension had been, except without the glowing portal to fall through, and Ford had a terrible urge to attempt to leave the premises and try to create some sort of time paradox.
...except of course he couldn't, because Stan had, had Bill put up some sort of rather unobtrusive (to the demons 'in the past') and not easily Seen 'safety net', to keep himself and the Harmans in the house for the next several hours, until they were all past the 'time of overlap', as it were.
Bill and Stan were apparently the exception to that 'rule', but neither of them were planning on going anywhere.
It left Ford's head spinning, regardless.
Because it was impossible. Bill couldn't do this. It was impossible.
...if Bill was actually a demon.
A 'demon from the outside' couldn't have time loop back on them. They wouldn't be able to respond to their past and future selves in any coherent way. Not as far as Ford had ever heard. From what he'd heard, anyone who had ever tried to do something like that to one of them...
...well, it just didn't work. There was only one of any demon, ever. Their names were unique, and never used by others, and there was only one consistent, personal timeline for each of them. Summoning a demon across dimensions simply wouldn't work, otherwise. And once a demon was summoned into a dimension, at a point along that particular timeline… forward in that dimension's timeline meant summoning that demon when they were 'older'. Demons didn't, couldn't simply 'bounce around' a timeline in any order that they pleased. From what he knew from his time with Jheselbraum, the Axolotl kept that from happening, kept them from doing so. (It was one of the reasons Ford had thought that all dimensions had had their time synchronized to each other before their trip to this one in order to rescue the kids; why Bill saying that he could select any time at their point of entry had been so unexpected to hear.)
So if, after they were past that overlap in time again and past any possibility of causing any paradoxes by potentially running into their past selves, Ford saw this dimension's set of their younger counterparts and 'Sixer' and 'Lee' weren't aware of their having been gone… if the two of them remembered the very same events as they did, as had occurred earlier that morning... and if they didn't wonder outright where the three of them - Ford, Stan, and Bill - had been upon their waking, because they'd not been missing from the boat and Bill had been talking and acting as if that was going to be the case...
...then Bill wasn't actually a 'demon from the outside'. Not a real demon. Not like the rest of them.
And Ford didn't know what to do with that knowledge.
He'd largely been bluffing on the deck of the boat, when he'd said what he'd said to Bill before. About it perhaps being just a title. Challenging Bill on it. He'd been trying to act and react a little differently, as he'd told Stan he would, trying to put Bill even a little off-balance...
...But if Bill wasn't really a demon, then what did that mean?
And what was he, really?
(...A person?)
(...A person like them? -Hardly.)
(And if Bill wasn't a demon, what did that make his so-called 'sister', as well?)
And what did it mean that Bill had just helped get Stanley everything that he'd asked for?
Stan had said that he'd wanted Mr. Harman to leave the school last night, go home, see his family, eat dinner, get a good night's sleep, and (presumably) make it back to the school tomorrow in time to teach all of his classes.
And Bill had outright delivered on the first three of those things, strictly enabled the fourth and fifth, and was presumably going to help Stan make certain that he got back to school the next day on time and without issue for the sixth of those to occur.
And that was simply...
Ford stared at the ceiling, feeling tired as anything. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and tried to tell himself that, at least in some small measure, perhaps everything would be all right.
Because Stan had listened to him, for once, for the first time since Bill had been back. Stan was going to have Bill outfit the basement with a magical device that would act as both a time accelerator and a time freeze, in a sense. When it was activated, one second would stretch out to an eight-hour period, though it could be deactivated early. It could only be used twice in one twenty-four hour period - as in, taking into account the last two times it was activated prior. The magic spell would encompass the entire basement; the device itself would not be able to be moved, and would be made as tamper-proof as possible, but any tampering with the device (to try and see how it worked or to attempt to reproduce it) would break it. The device would only work if activated by Mr. or Mrs. Harman, and the device would only work if Bill, Stanley, Stanford, Mr. Harman, Mrs. Harman, or any children the Harmans might have, were the only ones in the room; if anyone else was in the room, it wouldn't set off the spell.
Ford had wanted it not to be misused or over-used. Stan had wanted it to be a one-off, and something that couldn't be used by other people, because then the time could be 'sold off' or somebody might have a reason to steal it. But he'd also made it clear that he didn't want the teacher to be working down here alone; he'd wanted his family to be able to be down here with him.
Another limiting factor - which Bill had brought up - was food, drink, and the like. Bill was planning on building in a few localized 'rules' that the spell would enact, that would keep anyone down there from aging, needing to use the facilities, and needing to breathe, and the air mix would be refreshed right before the spell came down so that they wouldn't immediately suffocate on carbon dioxide. However, anyone down there would still need to eat and drink to keep their energy levels up; that had been something that Stan had pushed for, and somehow managed to convince Bill was necessary, too.
...And the part that Ford was hoping to convince his brother out of following through with, was Bill making a copy of all the prior equations into a notebook for the teacher; and Bill giving the man a way to contact him across dimensions, in case something happened and either the spell in the basement stopped working, or he thought he needed to ask Bill questions about something.
And the reason Stan had gone with both of those? Was that once Bill had seemed to understand what Stan was saying about having a 'release valve, just in case', Bill had been (thoroughly annoyed but) adamant that that meant having to give the man some way to contact him, in case he had questions or if something went wrong.
Stan was sure that the man was never going to get over what he'd thought he'd lost on those blackboards, unless they gave him a straight-up copy of what had actually been there - that he'd just build it up into some great thing inside his head that would drive him crazy forever. Ford had a sinking feeling that his brother was right in some respect - that it could become some sort of white whale for him - but that there had to be a better way, even if he himself couldn't think of an alternative. Ford had seen what that knowledge had done to the man, and so had Stan, and yet...
Bill had offered to give the man something completely different to think about instead, but Stan had shot down that idea so fast that it had made Ford's head spin. Stan had stated that doing that would just make things worse, because then the guy would just have two things to maybe go a little crazy over, and that 'the kid' had already done enough damage to the guy for one day. (And Ford could hardly disagree.)
The possibility of more contact with Bill, though… Ford hadn't liked that idea at all. And Stan clearly did not know what he was talking about, because his reasoning had been… 'C'mon, Ford. He won't actually call the kid that much. Just knowing he can is gonna be enough. Knowing he can't, or thinkin' that he's gotta prove something to the kid to keep talking to him, is just gonna drive him crazy too. He'll practically kidnap the kid while he's here, and go crazy again once we all leave. It's gotta be 'no strings attached', or it just won't work.'
Stan had used similar reasoning for his open-ended idea of telling the teacher that he could talk to Bill about life extending ideas. Potentially moving to other dimensions or other planets, where he could keep on working after being or becoming younger again; medical treatments; getting de-aged completely - Stan was planning on tossing several Bill-originated ideas at the man's head, and letting it go at that. 'Taking the pressure completely off.' Because Ford had been fool enough to explain that half the problem was dying before everything he might want to understand and know and work out the math and theory for was done.
The worst part was, Ford couldn't put into words why he thought it wouldn't be enough. It didn't seem right, and yet… Stan had put significant thought into it, he'd gotten Bill on board with everything - grudgingly, in many instances - and he'd argued Ford to a standstill. He'd listened to him. He'd included everything Ford could possibly think of, even if Ford didn't agree or believe that what Stan thought was a solution was actually going to work to solve what he thought it was going to solve.
Ford couldn't say his brother wasn't trying. But he was leaning far, far too heavily on Bill for all of this. And none of it was any real solution; it was just a stopgap measure at best.
And the saddest part of the whole thing was… the man was already better off than any other individual that Ford had seen have an encounter with Bill like that, and… well, they never survived unscathed by any means of the word. But this John Harman was at present, doing far better than...
It was a depressing thought.
And Ford really did not want to see Stanley fail at this.
...Really, Ford couldn't believe he'd been forced to be a part of this. To be a part and party to this.
He also worried about how the younger him was doing, left alone with the other demon…
...twelve hours later in time.
...No, Ford did not like any part of what had been happening here. Not in this dimension. And certainly not in the last one.
Bill had woken up later, and put in a solid eight hours of work, doing what he'd said he was going to do. And Stan had done what he'd said he was going to do. And they'd gotten a dead-tired Bill, and a still-frazzled (but fed and watered with two meals in him) physics teacher back to the school again - after said teacher had immediately taken two of those one-second shifts in the basement that morning right after finishing breakfast.
...with no-one on the room with him for that first-shift, and his wife in the room with him for the second-shift. Because Stan had apparently saw fit to tell the husband that he was required to spend the second eight-hours sleeping with his wife in there, if he spent the first eight hours looking over those equations in the notebook Bill had oh-so-helpfully provided.
The man had seemed so focused on the notebook, that apparently it hadn't even occurred to him to ask to drag Bill into the room with him for that first-shift. It certainly hadn't occurred to him after the second, as they both came out and Stan handed the lady's child back to her almost immediately, with the door to the basement closing and then reopening again within seconds.
They'd all said good-bye to a smiling wife and her half-asleep child, and escorted that harried-looking teacher back to the school, along with Bill...
...and Stan had then turned around and immediately carted Ford off to go run errands and the like, despite the fact that, unlike his brother, Ford had barely gotten any sleep at all down in the basement during that entire unholy Bill-instigated mess.
Frankly, Ford was starting to think there was something wrong with this dimension. He hadn't felt this tired on this much sleep since he could remember. -Really, he had never felt this tired, period. The last few nights, he felt barely capable of staying up for more than eighteen hours straight without practically collapsing, and he was starting to worry if there was more wrong in this dimension here than potentially something drastically deficient in his diet despite Stan and the niblings seeming to, by all accounts, have suffered no issues with own their general health and liveliness themselves.
Something wrong like his other, younger self.
-Yes, they were in another dimension. Yes, this was one that had apparently been created without any influence by Bill. ...And, yes, Bill himself had stated that the dimension was all but the same as their own, the one they'd just left to come there.
Stan seemed completely at ease, and was fitting right in.
Ford felt like someone had dropped him down a rabbit hole at some point, and then tied it into the bottomless pit, with no light at the end of the beginning of the tunnel and no apparent escape.
He didn't understand what was happening here, and Stanley simply didn't seem to care. And the hits just kept on coming, and Ford didn't have the time or space or room to breathe to deal with any of them.
-Things didn't feel right, at all. Nothing made sense. He knew… just, knew… that there was something desperately wrong with this place, with this dimension. But he couldn't explain any of it; Ford simply couldn't find the words for it. Things just weren't matching up to the childhood that Ford remembered. Ford couldn't believe that, that other self who was supposed to be him was actually acting anything like him at all. But Stan didn't seem to find anything odd with it. None of it. None.
And Ford couldn't help but wonder if maybe he was slowly going insane.
Stan had been the one with memory problems, not him.
And the one thing - the one thing - that was just screaming for some sort of answer, was the one thing that Stan seemed completely resolute in out-and-out ignoring to the very best of his ability.
The science fair project.
It had broken, that younger Stan apparently hadn't been a part of it, and… Ford just couldn't understand why Stanley wasn't out and out screaming that from the rooftops. Some kind of 'I told you so!' nonsense that would have him grinding his teeth and taking it.
It should have been a vindication for him. Stan had said he hadn't broken the project, and that whatever he had done had been an accident. And if what had happened here was in any way reflected in what had happened back in their own dimension, then...
Ford pulled in a deep breath and rolled over onto his other side in his bunk, putting his back to Stanley.
But Stan… Stan was refusing to talk about it. He wasn't looking into it; he didn't seem at all concerned about what had happened, beyond making sure that neither of the younger thems went hungry or were too cold or too warm or doing badly at school...
...His own younger self had been the one to be kicked out of the house here, instead, and Stan had said and done absolutely nothing to address that, other than to say that the two of them should stick together, and then follow through on making that a reality.
And when that young Stan 'Lee' had talked about - and kept on talking about - dropping out of school and picking up extra jobs to be able to take care of his brother?
It made Ford's heart sick.
"It's better this way." Ford shuddered when he remembered the words he'd said. Remembered the look on Stan's face when he'd said it. Was… was that why Stan wasn't talking about it? Because he thought...
Ford hadn't meant it like that. He hadn't known… hadn't realized… -He'd just thought...
Stan knew that he hadn't meant it like that... didn't he?
...Was this really what Bill had wanted? What he'd wanted to see? What he'd wanted Stan to see? ...No. No, it couldn't be. Bill had outright expected him to go through the portal, leaving Stanley behind. Bill couldn't have expected any of this...
...but Bill had expected something. And they were in short order reaching the end of Bill's 'three days'. And…
Ford pressed a hand against his mouth to muffle any disgraceful noises he might make, as all of these thoughts spun around in his head, and something very fragile and sickening now occurred to him. Because now he was thinking, thinking about what Stan had gone through. He'd gotten kicked out, over a broken project that he hadn't been responsible for… and he hadn't had anyone stepping in to take care of him. And that younger Stan, would have gladly dropped out of school to work for the sake of his brother, if Stan hadn't been here to do what he was doing for them. It had, quite literally, been the very first thing on his mind, that that younger Stanley Pines had thought of. And that meant that Stan… that Stan... if that had happened to him, would he have…?
The first thing that Ford had thought, standing down in that hold and listening to them all talk, when he'd heard that that other, younger version of himself had been kicked out of the house… hadn't been a thought at all. It had been outrage, and disbelief. It had been a mix of emotions that Ford could only, shallowly describe as a 'how could he? How could this have happened?'
And it had all culminated in one single, solitary, and now truly terrifying thought: that it wasn't fair.
He'd never thought that for Stan. The thought had never occurred to him.
And Ford was realizing, only now, that it should have.
Because he'd thought 'that isn't fair, that isn't right, to get kicked out of the house like that, just for that'. For something that had felt like no real reason at all. ...for the younger him.
But not for Stan. Ford had never even contemplated what life might be like, out on the streets for his brother. He'd certainly never thought about how unfair it must have actually been for Stan to be kicked out of the house at age seventeen. He'd… he'd thought that Stan had deserved it for… for ruining his life...
...for seeming so unconcerned about what he'd done that was so very wrong...
...for not even seeming to care in the slightest that...
Ford pulled in another deep breath, and let it out slowly. His eyes burned, and he grimaced at himself angrily.
...it was still unfair. Stan hadn't deserved to be kicked out of the house for that. Not for that. Not for...
Ford hadn't even gotten a straight answer out of him for it. He'd barely been yelling at talking to him for two minutes before their pa had…
And it had left Ford without the means to seek any real answers, or closure to the situation. And, by the very nature of that, Stan himself had had no real chance to answer for any of it. To see, or to understand exactly what he'd done to him, for any possible remorse to set in. No chance to have Ford explain to him what Stan had done so very very wrong. No chance to even apologize properly for it, once Ford knew that he truly understood. No chance to make up for it-
Ford's eyes shot open in the dark of the cabin. And he felt as though he'd just been doused with cold water from his head right down to his feet.
No chance to make up for it. No chance to-
Ford's mind raced, as he struggled to understand - not why he hadn't thought that might even be possible before, because ruining someone's life wasn't something one could simply 'make up for' somehow - why had the thought even occurred to him in the first place, without any sort of sarcasm at all? It absolutely wasn't a viable option - it couldn't be, if the situation had been what he'd thought it originally was before, because ruining someone's life that thoroughly was effectively the future death of whoever that person was truly meant to be, as surely as someone drawing a knife across that future person's throat - but...
Stan's life had been ruined too, hadn't it? Whether he'd ruined it himself or not, for never coming home again after that - for refusing to for whatever pride-filled reason, as far as Ford had been able to read between the lines from what both his ma and pa had said, from time to time - being kicked out at the age of seventeen… never graduating high school… either living out on the streets, or in a half-repaired half-broken-down and unlivable boat that was barely a step above such...
But had it all been pride? Ford just wasn't all that sure anymore. And he'd never asked Stan about it directly. He'd been too upset about it all, again-and-still, and he'd not wanted to dredge up all that old anger and pain, to have it all bubbling up to the surface all over again. To say things they shouldn't, and hurt each other all over again, stabbing again at all those old wounds. They'd barely exchanged a handful of words about it, when Stan had finally remembered what had happened to have them each 'going their separate ways' and not talking to each other for years - a full decade, in fact. Neither of them had wanted to talk about it, and not talking about it had seemed fine to Ford. He'd just been relieved that he'd had his brother back - quite literally, back from the dead again after he'd pulled the trigger at his own bequest and killed him.
Neither of them had wanted to talk about it, and there had been plenty of other things that had needed attention and fixing far more than that, to fill up all of their time besides: the rest of Stan's memory, the house and the Mystery Shack itself, the fault line and dimensional tears in the forest-
And Ford pulled in a sharp breath.
-Stan had consistently talked about fixing things with Bill since he'd been back. About making up for unthinkable things. Fixing things. Making things better. -Penalties and learning-lessons. 'You fix it at least partway, and the penalty gets to be less.'
The implication there was: some things you can't make up for completely, but you can do something about it to make things better.
Stan never talked about forgiveness, when he talked about that.
He just went ahead and did things, and didn't ask for anybody else to say or do anything...
He'd only brought up 'forgiveness' once, and it hadn't been forgiveness, not really. He'd asked Ford what Bill could do to make it up to him.
At the time, Ford had thought Stan had meant forgiving Bill, to give the demon a chance to stab him in the back all over again, but- that hadn't been what Stan had meant at all, Ford was now realizing.
All along, Stan had been trying to give Bill some of the very most basic things that he hadn't had after losing his home: food, clothing, shelter, schooling. Ford had drawn the first parallel to Stanley, but he hadn't drawn the second. Because Bill didn't want to be forgiven for anything that he had done, and that was that.
But Stanley… didn't want to be forgiven, either. -Not because he didn't care about it or was absolutely uninterested in it, but rather because in all likelihood, it was occuring to Ford now that it likely hadn't even seemed like an option to Stan. It probably didn't even occur to him that he might ask for it, and...
...and what? Ford shivered. Because if his brother had asked him to forgive him for breaking his science fair project one week ago, would he have done it? Would he have done it two weeks ago?
Three?
When they'd been out on the boat together?
...Ever?
Because Ford wouldn't have. He could not conceive of a situation in which Stan could have said something that would have had him letting go of that dull, old and painful anger. Of not caring that Stan had ruined his life, anymore. -On purpose, and with malice aforethought, Ford had thought.
...And Ford couldn't conceive of forgiving Stan, even now. But now, it was because he simply had no idea what to think about it all let alone what to feel.
Because, quite frankly, he'd just been confronted with the idea that Stan's idea of trying to 'make up for' something that wasn't even his fault would be to give up his own life to go out and try and work three jobs or more to try and take care of a him that was homeless at age seventeen. -Either of them. Both of them. Because what Stan had been doing these last few days? Acting as a guardian - boat repairman - carpenter - cook - money-making con-man and breadwinner for all four of them, plus two demons?
Ford couldn't even begin to comprehend what Stan would have considered doing for him, to try and make up for him not getting into West Coast Tech, if he'd had the chance, if he hadn't been kicked out of the house for… for whatever had happened with that project, with them.
...The project that he had damn near stepped forward and broken himself, staring down at it on that table in this dimension.
Everything, absolutely everything, about this was wrong. All of it. Every last piece and bit of it was wrong.
It hurt his head. It hurt his heart.
It made him want to punch and kick and scream vile profanity at the sky, that these versions of themselves got to have what he had not. What he had been denied, through- through what? Fate? Destiny? -His own, stupid pride?
...Karma?
...or maybe Bill himself, somehow?
Ford tried to switch to a different topic. A different thought. Because this train of thought was making him hurt. But he couldn't. He simply couldn't. The things he had said, and what he had thought… how wrong had he been to say them? To think them? How wrong had he been then, and was he wrong now, about what he knew about everything?
...And now Ford was thinking about what his younger self must have thought he'd meant, when he'd said what he'd said out on that beach. 'It's better this way.'
...And now he was thinking what Stan must have heard when he'd said what he had out there, on that beach, too. What he must've thought, when he'd heard...
And it all made Ford feel even worse. Twisted up inside, painful and heavy and-
He shook and suppressed the sob building in his throat. Suddenly, he wanted to go back outside and punish himself by... if he was lying down and sleeping next to Bill, then Stanley wouldn't hear him, would he? Because Ford absolutely did not want Stanley to hear him right now- they were in the same room, Stan would definitely-
Ford shoved his face under the pillow and breathed, hot tears streaming down his face, trying as hard as he could to calm down. He couldn't let Stan see him break down like this, he just couldn't. He couldn't, wouldn't be able to take-
Ford curled in around himself and held in his distressed sobs, and, eventually, after much careful breathing, he managed to get his shoulders to stop shaking.
He slowly and carefully wiped the remnants of the tears away from his face, and tried not to think about anything too hard for awhile, except...
...Three days. Bill had said three days.
Tomorrow was going to be beyond the third day.
And Ford had absolutely no idea what to do. About anything.
And somehow, it was worse - not better - that Stan was there with him. Because that just meant that his brother was going to be hurt somehow, too. When Bill did whatever he was planning on doing...
Ford wasn't ready for him. And Ford was now starting to fear that he never had been.
And Ford wondered, as he drifted off to sleep, exhausted from his surge of emotions, if it had occurred to Stan that the niblings were actually safer, with Bill not in the same dimension as them anymore. He wondered if Stan realized that, the longer they could keep Bill away from their home dimension, the more chance they might have for Ford to find a working solution to their problem. Ford had made that quantum destabilizer before; he could do so again. It wasn't as though he'd forgotten how to make it. He'd even spent the last several weeks before this trying to figure out ways to create more of them, not just alternate power sources that could effectively power it to the level that they needed. If Stan would just listen to him for once, when it came down to killing Bill...
But then, if Stan had been willing to do that, he would have performed the circle with them long-since, and Bill would have been taken care of weeks ago.
Ford slowly, in fits and starts, relaxed and tensed, and relaxed and tensed, and...
...eventually, Stanford Pines fell asleep.
