Illusion is Reality
Chapter 87
-Well I can't give you that-
"Bill, get up. -Get up, now," Stan ordered, standing over him and his 'nest' with his 'sister' in it.
Bill twisted in place slightly and let out a huff. Stan wanted to just grab him and cart him off, but he knew he needed the kid non-combative for this, and seconds counted. If he didn't wait until the kid was awake, he'd just waste time in...
"mmmM? Pineapples?" Miz said herself, rubbing at her eyes and looking up at him. -Yeah, it was early, even for her, even for Stan. Stan hadn't known why he'd woken up at first either, not until he'd thought to check on his brother and-
Bill slowly sat up, blinking. He stopped and swayed slightly in place.
-That was gonna have to be good enough. Stan hauled him up, lifted him over a shoulder and turned, telling Miz, "Go out swimming or something, I don't care. I need the kid for a bit, and no interruptions." He didn't wait for a reply, heading for the cabin already. He needed her out of the way and well out of earshot.
Miz blinked, yawning a little. "O-kaaaay~" She wobbled to her feet and plopped over the side of the boat, still a little dazed, landing in the sand with a soft 'foof!' (Yeah, she'd be fine. Demon-dragon.)
Stan stomped into the cabin in something of a rush, and practically dropped the kid down on the bunk next to Ford.
"Wake him the hell up completely!" Stan demanded out of the kid, who blinked and swayed in place a bit where he was sitting, then twisted in place slightly to look down at Ford and then...
...the kid raised a hand up, put it on the side of Ford's head, and his mouth dropped open and he let out that 'screaming'-singing hummmmm of his...
-and those minor muscle trembles Ford was doing abruptly stopped, and- Ford practically convulsed in bed - limbs flailing - and started actually gasping in air again, his eyes flying the rest of the way open.
Stan dropped down onto the edge of the bed and immediately reached over and grabbed his brother up in a hug, upright against his chest, because- Ford had been trying to sit up, eyes locked on him, hands grasping forwards along the sheets for him. (He'd looked like he'd been trying to get away from the kid for a second, there. Hey, progress!)
...Ford was gasping in his arms, and grabbing at him kind of weirdly, like… like Ford's arms didn't really want to work. ...Until his brother seemed to start to get better, like his body started working again.
...Or like he'd suddenly remembered how to work his arms again. Shit. What the hell…,/i
"It's okay, Ford. It's okay," Stan told him, holding onto him carefully, as the kid continued to hum out that weird 'singing'-stuff in the background, not touching either of them. "You're okay." Stan rubbed his back a bit, and he felt Ford shiver in place.
...And then his brother turned and ducked his head up against Stan's neck slightly.
"Hell, Ford," Stan said quietly, as he pulled him in a little closer, as his brother's breathing started getting a little less heaving-frantic, and the kid's whatever-it-was 'singing' slowly tapered off…
The kid closed his mouth again and quieted, watching them both.
Ford was straightening up in place slowly, looking between them both. (He was breathing almost normally again, but...)
Damnit. This wasn't okay. -Stan hadn't known what was going on earlier. If he hadn't checked…
"You awake?" Stan asked him, and got a slight jerky nod out of him. And yeah, Ford was sure awake now, but… he hadn't been moving before. He hadn't even been twitching, really, but he'd looked tense as hell and he'd been trembling slightly, like maybe he'd wanted to wake up, or get up, or something, but couldn't. ...And Stan hadn't been able to properly rouse him, with a shake of a hand on his shoulder.
His brother hadn't really been making any noise at all, but… his eyes had been just a little bit open and… he'd looked panicked. Like… like Stan didn't know what. And he'd been doing that trembling thing. Stan hadn't even been sure if his brother had been completely…
It was when Stan had realized Ford's eyes were half-open that he'd cursed out loud and rushed off to go get the kid. He should've done it sooner, realized it sooner - he'd just been doing what he normally did, rousing his brother when he woke up like he'd always used to do on the 'Two - but he'd been half-asleep himself at first, with no coffee around to fix that one for him, and he hadn't been… hell, he hadn't been thinking. He hadn't really thought that...
Stan slowly looked up at the kid, who was watching them both with half-lidded eyes.
The demon was smiling.
Stan felt that flare of anger rise up and he squared his shoulders and ground out at the kid, "You knew this would happen."
"Oh, YES," the demon said, and he sounded fucking pleased with himself, is how he sounded. Stan clenched his jaw. "Really, I'd expected something a LOT more like this sooner," the demon said casually, as he sat there. On the edge of his brother's bunk. Not three feet away from him.
While his brother was sitting with him, practically scared out of his mind by a nightmare, still letting Stan continue to hug and hold onto him in his arms.
"What. Did. You. Do." Stan ground out at the demon, because there was no way in fucking hell that-
"I didn't do anything," Bill drawled out, sounding as pleased as can be. "He did it to himself." And before Stan could pull in the air to yell at him, what slipped out of the demon's mouth next in a breath was, "No help for that Stanford again, EVER."
And Stan felt his eyes go wide.
The demon was GRINNING at him, looking absolutely ecstatic.
And Stan felt something zero out, just flatline completely inside his head.
-Ford's hand was wrapped around his other wrist in a vise grip of steel as his brother shakingly told him, "No. Don't… don't give him…" Stan shook slightly in place, realized he was fighting against his own brother's grip as his brother took in another shaky breath and said, as firmly as he could (which wasn't very and also too much), "Don't give him what he wants."
...And Stan turned his head and stared over at his brother in disbelief.
He'd been about to haul the demon forward, and only let go again to punch him in the face for doing this to Ford, and Ford had stopped him from doing it?
Ford was looking at him, leaning on him even as he held onto him with that grip that was stopping him. And his brother looked wavering-firm, but scared.
...for him. Ford was scared for him.
...and the kids. He must be. Because the last time he'd seen Ford looked that scared, anxious, nervous, and terrified-
Stan felt his own breath speeding up, going too fast. His brother didn't want him to-?!
-to defend him? Why the hell not?! Why wouldn't Ford let him-
-break the agreement, the kids were on the line. Goddamnit. That was what Ford had to be scared of-
-Stan didn't care, the demon had crossed the line already! It was too late for-
Stan looked up at the demon, angry as anything, and-
-and Ford had delayed him long enough that he was past the initial rush of red rage. So when looked back over at the demon again, this time he actually saw what was right in front of him. He realized what he was seeing.
The demon's eyes were flat. He was sitting there, tense and waiting. His shirt was fisted in Stan's grip - which had only barely been arrested in time by Ford - and the demon wasn't fighting it. He wasn't moving at all. He was just sitting there, waiting and tense, and he was-
There was uncertainty in that demon's eyes. Past all the absolute insanity filling his gaze, the wide grin, the anticipation-
-past and beyond all that was the idiot dumbass punk kid sitting right in front of him, shoving as hard as he could up against the boundaries that Stan had put in place for him-
-against them, up against them, because the stupid fucking demon didn't think he'd done anything wrong-
Fuck. Goddamnit. This fucking-
Stan pulled in a hard harsh breath and he tried as hard as he could to rise above it. Just for a minute. Just for-
He couldn't do it. He knew he couldn't do this. The demon deserved a punch in the face, for this, and Stan couldn't hold back. Not after this. Not this time.
...But Stan did it anyway. Because fuck what he couldn't or couldn't do, he had his brother here with him, and he trusted Ford to keep him from going over the edge if he really was going too far.
So Stan pulled in a breath and shook in place a little with rage as he leaned forward and demanded out of the kid roughly, "Say that again."
And the demon let out a laugh. One of those 'AHAHAHAHA!' ones. Oh, this little shit. This stupid little- He was giving the game away, it was shakier than it should've been if he'd been playing for-
"Say it again, kid," Stan demanded out of him, tightening his grip on his shirt, and not letting up on him for a minute.
He saw the demon twitch slightly at the 'kid'. He saw and felt him try to pull away slightly, out of his hold, the fist that was still in his shirt - the demon-kid made it look like he was just trying to resituate himself in place, but Stan knew better. Stan didn't let go.
...And neither did the kid. ...Because he had a hand at his forearm. Stan hadn't even felt it before; he was only seeing it and realizing it was there, now. He'd noticed his brother's hand at his wrist, but he hadn't felt-
that grip. He'd pulled his chest away a little bit, or tried to, but-
-This was the kid, trying to push him into breaking the agreement himself, when-
-the kid had been hanging onto Ford, too, out on that porch before he'd called the deal off, just like this, almost. Damnit. (Demon couldn't lie worth a damn, could he. He-)
"I didn't do anything. He did it to himself. No help for that Stanford again, ever," the kid repeated flatly, and he felt the kid twitching every so often in his hold now, the hand grabbing at his arm tensing every so often...
And Stan managed to stay far up enough above the anger for long enough that he realized- what was really going on.
(Kid wasn't even trying to push his buttons this time. Not really. The demon had barely tried this time. He wasn't looking nearly as enthusiastic as he had been before. Kid was already maybe starting to realize just how badly he'd screwed this one up, but good. And if he didn't? Stan was damn well sure gonna make sure the stupid punk kid understood it now.)
Stan took in a deep breath and let it out, as his mind raced forward. As he figured out what he was going to do about this.
...Oh, was this kid gonna have it coming.
Because the kid wasn't lying. ...The kid didn't think he was lying to them.
The kid was trying to run. The kid had been, and still was, trying to get him to pull the trigger on-
"You're not helpin' Ford anymore." Stan repeated. It wasn't a question; the kid had outright said that Ford wasn't getting any help from him anymore - and it wasn't the first time he'd said it, either. (And Stan remembered when, the last time he'd said it-)
"YES," said the kid. "I am NOT helping that Stanford anymore."
And Stan saw Bill Cipher lower his head slightly, preparing for... the hit.
Demon was looking him right in the eyes and expecting him to...
...What, did he think he was an idiot?
Stan glared at him.
And then he closed his eyes and forced himself to relax.
When he opened his eyes again, and opened his fist, he saw the confusion start to set in with the demon-kid. ...He hadn't expected that, yeah. He'd thought he'd just found his 'out'. Just the right-wrong button to push.
...Kid still hadn't let go of his arm, even if Ford had loosened the hold on his wrist.
"Ford, let go," he told his brother quietly.
"Stan…"
"It's fine, let go."
Ford let go. (So did the demon.)
And Stan slowly raised his hand up.
The kid got that flat look in his eyes again.
The stupid punk-ass demon-kid braced himself in place, glaring up at him.
And Stan smiled at him.
And then Stan leaned forward, reached forward, and patted the kid on the side of the head.
"Good job, kid," he said in the lightest of tones. "You're really tryin' to keep to the agreement here, now, aren'tcha?"
And Stan knew, he just knew, that he was right on the money with what was actually going on here, when the kid looked startled, even straight-up confused, staring at him in disbelief, and then-
Yeah. -Did his brother catch that? Stan really hoped so.
Because there'd been a flash of fear, there, for a second. Kid had tried to pull away from his there, from his hand on his head, eyes wide as he realized what Stanley Filbrick Pines wasn't about to do.
-Kid was scared and oh, how he should be - smartest thing the kid had ever thought about him; the kid didn't know what to do, because he'd thought something, something about him, and the kid? He'd been dead wrong.
Because Stan had listened to his brother. He had his brother, here, backing him up. -You payin' attention to this, kid?
And the next thing the kid was thinking? Stan would bet the Shack that the kid was wrong about that one, too.
Stan wasn't an idiot. (He wasn't gonna just add a bunch more rules, and a bunch more rules, and a bunch more rules on top of everything he had going, more and more tryin' to cover absolutely every last thing that could happen down to a T.)
Stan wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing. (He knew what would happen if he did that. And Ford was right; he wasn't about to give the kid what he thought that he wanted. In the moment. Just after waking up. Kid had boxed himself in on this one, and Stan had let him. Maybe he should've not let things go last night all that easily. Because every time he let go just a little bit, and let Ford and the kid do whatever the hell they wanted...)
(And he knew what the kid was trying to do, too. Letting things slid and slid and right up to the breaking point, thinking they'd maybe break right on through it all. -This wasn't 'helping', kid.)
He wasn't gonna try to tie down the triangle so tight that the kid would have to break everything or get strangled by it all, from too much conflicting junk being shoved down onto him. Hell, no. That wasn't how the agreement was supposed to go. That wasn't how to make things work.
(That'd just get them all killed. It'd just give the kid that many more things to try and break, and have Stan having to run around after him forever. Stan wasn't doing that. Whole point of this thing was to have the kid running circles around after himself. Stopping himself. Not Stan.)
Stan didn't stop there, or let the kid get away with that; he reached forward and pulled the kid forward by him arm - roughly, but not too roughly, just enough for the kid not to be calling it 'an attack' what, you think I can't go right up to the line on some of this stuff, too? - and he started patting the kid's head again, the side of it, on top. (Not messing it up, it was definitely a rough patting. Might've, y'know, come pretty close.) He didn't let up.
And yeah, he stopped patting the kid's head after awhile a couple of minutes, once all that was left there in the kid's eyes was confusion and more than a little irritation - no fear, none of that, there, 'cause that wasn't really what he was goin' for, either, to get all mirrored back at him again, too - and just let his hand lie right there where it was, all relaxed. No threat really; just there.
And then Stan (finally) looked over at Ford again (who looked like he really didn't know what to think) and Stan told him, "Kid's supposed to let me know when there's some kinda weak spot in the agreement, where somebody can attack us. -You're on the priority list now, because of me and the kids. That means the agreement includes you, too, implicitly."
"Stan…" Ford said quietly, and yeah, he knew. Ford remembered him telling him why her hadn't had him as part of the agreement in the first place, but things were a little bit different now. (Because his brother had-)
Stan looked over at the stupid punk kid again and said, more evenly, to his brother, "Kid's been sure that I can't make this all work, since forever. Said he'd be willing to let me try, but..." Stan grimaced, not looking away from the kid. "Probably thought this one was a doozy. Rules weren't set up to handle this, they ain't enough as-is to stop somethin' like this from happening to you, with the kid maybe only barely followin' them 'by-the-book', instead of actually trying to keep the mutual non-aggression agreement himself."
He saw a flash of anger cross the kid's face next.
'...Yeah, you just wait, kid. I'm gonna drop-kick you in the head so hard…' Stan looked down at his brother again, pulled him up and in a little tighter of a one-armed hug as he could right then. "Kid thinks you're attacking yourself; that's outta bounds, the way I've got things set up. Not his callout. So the kid doesn't have to help you out; he's only helping me, and tryin' to keep you alive and feeling all-right in the head for the kids. -And that ain't enough, is it," Stan said to the kid, looking up at him again. "You better tell me what I'm missing here, though," Stan said next, in far too level tones, leaning in a little bit. "You slept outside for this, and you knew what was gonna happen, didn't you. That ain't actually following the agreement, kid. Because if Ford stops breathing-"
"He'll survive," was the bland response he got out of the kid for that one, and Stan felt his temper spike again.
"Stan…" was the quiet warning response he got from Ford again, and Stan forced it all back down again.
"Thinking you're gonna be able to get to him in time isn't enough, kid!" Stan yelled out at him harshly. "If my brother suffocates-!"
"He can't," the demon said next, and every thought process and argument Stan had going on in his head ground to a straight-up halt.
And the look of disbelief he had going must've been strong enough that even the kid knew what he was thinking there, because the kid leaned back (and Stan let him, dropping his hand back down to his side almost numbly) and the kid pushed his hands down against the bedsheets on either side of him, and the kid said, "That Stanford could walk straight on down into the ocean and breathe water, and NOT DROWN. -He could breathe ANYTHING and not-suffocate! I made sure of that."
And Stan stared at the (glaring) demon in disbelief as he heard this.
And he felt Ford shiver in place at his side, and suddenly realized exactly why his brother had been so willing to risk his own life in not falling asleep next to the kid last night.
It was because he hadn't been.
...Which meant that the kid had just set up the perfect fucking trap for him, for them both, to... The demon really hadn't had to...
(Not by the strictest sense of the agreement, he hadn't. But that wasn't what Stan was going for; not by a long shot. The demon-kid-)
"Ford, is this actually a thing?" Stan said lowly to his brother.
"I…" His brother swallowed, and said quietly, "I haven't actually tried…"
"-Wouldn't be all that pleasant," the kid cut in, with an almost-cheerful sneer, crossing his arms at them. "Getting all that sand and salt and silt out of his lungs that-much-later. And all that algae, woo-!" the demon enthused, with a horrible gleam in his eye. And the bastard-punk was really enjoying this-
Stan pulled in a breath, and he forcibly steadied himself. (Damnit. This was what he'd been dealing with all these years. His brother… his brother had been dealing with this. This shit. This was what Ford was afraid of having happen, to them, to all of them, all the time- This kind of shit.)
Stan felt his brother wince when he asked the kid, "When," and he felt him almost cringe when the demon said, "When he first arrived in my own little corner of the multiverse! -I changed the ruleset acting on him PERMANENTLY; added my own little localized one - practically stapled it onto him - just for him!"
"Why." Stan said when what he really wanted to ask was what the hell else did you do to my brother, you-.
"Because I didn't want him SUFFOCATING himself after he left MY little neck-of-the-multiverse on his little jaunt through wherever," the demon-kid waved off. "Just because I set up MY dimension that way, DOESN'T mean that-"
"-I hear ya," Stan said next, cutting the kid off, and the kid fell silent, though he looked annoyed (and tense) as he quieted. Because Stan had gotten the gist of it; the demon had done this thing to Ford back when they'd had their deal on, and Ford knew about it (hell, he'd have to, didn't he? 'the next minute you're breathing fingers'…), and...
Oh. Oh, goddamnit. Kid really would've actually felt fucking justified at breaking things after, if Stan had hit him for what he'd just said dared to say to him that way, to him and his brother, to their faces, for mouthing off at him, for telling crowing at him what he hadn't done, what he'd thought he'd gotten away with, what he'd thought he should be able to get way with with the way things were set up right now. The kid had actually technically, damn it been completely within the agreement as-is.
If Ford hadn't stopped him-
Stan took in a deep breath...
And Stan sent a long dark and angry look at the kid.
...Y'know, Stan had been about to (mentally) hit the kid with what he'd been all wrong-thinking about first, in not following the agreement, in just letting Ford practically suffocate from a bad dream instead of trying to prevent it before. But if that wasn't a thing…
Stan could've hammered the point home right then that the kid should've not let it go, that he should've said something to him and warned him about it all anyway, been a hell of a lot more specific about all of it, and not just let things go like that…
But Stan didn't feel like having that argument right now. The kid would still think he was justified, at having been willing to - and been trying to - get Ford to sleep next to him at all, to begin with. Stupid punk kid would probably just say that Stan had overruled him with the whole 'or you can do this instead' thing that he'd tossed out there last night, to try and get the both of them to sleep sometime before the sun rose over all their heads again.
Trying to fight that particular fight? Was pointless. All that would do would just be wasting his time, and getting Stan exactly nowhere with him.
So Stan just went on to the second thing, instead. (Hey, getting this part of things settled mattered more right now, anyway.)
"You don't want to be doin' this," Stan told the kid firmly.
"I'm not doing anything!" the kid told him with a smile. "THAT'S the POINT!"
Stan clenched his jaw, and he felt Ford tense. Stan rubbed a hand across Ford's back slowly. (No, he wasn't gonna lose it. Hang in there, Ford.)
Yeah, the kid had overplayed his hand earlier. Stan knew better.
"I want you to start doin' for Ford what you were doing for him before, again," Stan told him.
"No," said the kid angrily, and "No," said Ford, far more quietly, but with no less intensity.
And then the kid let out a laugh and gave them both a (brittle) smile and gestured at Ford, saying, "-SEE! We're aligned on this! -I'm just doing what he WANTS," the kid said next, giving them that wide, too-wide grin of his again.
"Thought you said that what Ford wants ain't good for him," Stan said evenly, and the kid lost the grin. Kid didn't laugh about it, or enthusiastically agree and try to one up him on it, no. He-
Stan breathed, because yeah, he'd been paying attention, and...
"...It ain't good for you, either. Is it. Not doing whatever this thing is." Because his brother wasn't looking so hot just then, but… neither was the kid. "That you decided to stop doing." Because yeah, the one time the kid decided to act all stubborn like he thought Ford was like - 'deciding things all on his own' like the kid complained about Ford doing to him - literally complained about for days and days on end - and this is what the kid was gonna 'decide' to get all stubborn and 'decide'-y over? This? -Like hell.
The demon remained silent, but the way he was glaring at him...
...Yeah, y'know what? That was fine; Stan would get back to that one later. "There any other thing anybody could do, to make Ford stop having these nightmares, besides you doin' your thing again, whatever that is, or you lettin' him fall asleep next to you?"
"...Yes," said the kid.
Right. "What are the easiest ways that we could do it, other than having you do whatever again instead," Stan demanded out of him next. Y'know, all that stuff that the kid should've told him earlier.
"...That Stanford falls asleep next to and touching you," the kid said next. What he wasn't expecting to hear, that slipped out of the kid next, though, was an, "Or Stitched-Heart."
And that… sonofabitch told him about half of what Stan had needed to know. This was some kinda stupid Zodiac thing going on here. Which meant...
"Bill, what the hell did you stop doing for Ford?" Stan said next.
"I stopped helping him," the demon repeated. "No help from me - again - ever."
Yeah, this was definitely some kinda Zodiac thing, with the kid refusing to talk like this.
"Why do you think Ford doesn't want it?" Stan asked the demon blandly next, and he felt Ford stir more than a little bit restlessly next to him. (It's fine, Ford. Was a pretty damn good thing that he'd worked out that 'rub you back' signal-thing with his brother before. Demon-kid might get ciphers, but half the time he hardly saw what was right in front of his face. The things you weren't trying to hide from him, half the time he just didn't get. Just a little more…)
"-Because he doesn't want anything to do with me," the kid spat out at him next, and yeah, Stan had finally begun to touch on the nerve. "He wants me to treat him like a Stanford? Refuses to be a 'Sixer' - my six-fingered hand?! -WELL, I can certainly treat him like a Stanford instead - just as MUCH as he WANTS!" the kid snarled out at them both.
('And he can choke on it, too.' Was the not so subtle subtext the kid was tossing out there. 'Literally'.)
Fuck. "You disconnected from him," Stan said, in a sudden rush of understanding. It made sense; kid had talked about disconnecting himself from things like karma before, so why not people? Why not them? -And with Ford not wanting anything to do with the demon… The kid mirrored what was tossed at him, and he threw it back hard. Just as hard as Ford had been pushing the demon away, not wanting anything to do with him, and now the kid was-
"No," said Bill, crossing his arms and looking annoyed. But then he said next: "Not completely." (Stan felt Ford straighten in place.) "-He's mine; can't get rid of ME!" the kid added, with a twisted, weird sort of grin. And an almost demented, not just angry but furious look in his eyes. "But that DOESN'T mean I have to-!"
"-You can't get rid of him, either," Stan cut in, "And you're shooting yourself in the foot, pullin' this shit."
Kid froze in place at that, wide-eyed and looking disgruntled. ...Yeah, caught you out right there, huh kid.
"You're gonna connect right back up to him, same way as you were before, right now," Stan said to the demon firmly.
"-No," the kid said immediately.
"Stan, I don't want that…" Ford said quietly to him.
"Ford, you're having nightmares that you can't handle, and you're practically a walking zombie or somethin' these days," Stan told him, because it wasn't as if he hadn't noticed it, damnit. "-It's not just the nightmare-thing, is it," Stan said to the kid. "You're made of energy, you were more connected to him before…" Didn't take a genius to figure out that maybe… "Ford's been tired as hell lately. -That's part of it too, ain't it." Because Stan would just bet that the kid had been giving Ford some of that energy of his, somehow, before. To help keep him going...
The demon-kid grimaced at him, then looked away.
...Yeah, Stan had noticed something was up; he just hadn't known what or why, before. But his brother had been tiring out real quick the last couple of days since the kid had stopped all that 'helping him' stuff. Ford had been slowly getting worse before, at home, at the Shack - after his deal with the kid had been off - but he hadn't been that bad. Ford had been recovering from two weeks of practically no sleep, and a hell of a lot of stress; it took awhile to come off a bender like that. But here? His night-owl insomniac brother had gone from maybe thinking it was just a coffee thing and being a little more tired than he was used to every day, to suddenly being nearly forced to stop and lie down only three or four hours after waking up, and needing naps in the afternoon and junk, and it wasn't like Stan hadn't noticed all of that going on.
"I want you to do it, kid," Stan said next, and for the moment ignored his brother's quiet, "Stan…"
"That Stanford doesn't want me to," the kid said next, not looking at him.
"I can convince him to say yes," Stan told the kid with absolute assurance. "I want you to-"
"No," said the kid. "That Stanford-"
"Ford, agree to it," Stan said, not looking away from the kid.
There was a long silence except for the sound of them all breathing.
"I'm not…" Ford began.
"You can't disconnect from him completely, Ford," Stan told him. "Kid wasn't lying there. Might as well get enough outta him to stop having those nightmares, again. Get something out of it, even if you can't get yourself out of it. Yeah?"
"I…" Ford began, then paused.
Out of the corner of his eye, Stan saw his brother look between him, and the demon.
And then, heh, then Ford slowly said, "...Alright, Stan." And then his brother took in a breath and gave him a quiet, "Yes."
Stan smiled. (Ladies and gentlemen: his brother. Doing the unexpected, just like he'd said: something that Bill wouldn't expect, sometimes.)
"I want you to do it, kid," Stan repeated.
"N-no," the kid said, and Stan's eyes narrowed slightly at the half-stutter. (He'd caught that. Had his brother?)
"Doesn't have to be a lot, kid," Stan added next, "Just enough to ease it all off."
"N-no, I-" The kid looked around, away, grimaced and almost said… something, looking like he was trying to gain some kind of mental traction and losing it, like he had shifting sand beneath him… but then he seemed to grab ahold of something and stop himself. (Barely.) And as Stan watched, the kid physically pushed himself back - his back - up back against the wall of the cabin behind him. Just as he mentally pushed himself back, as well.
Kid was glaring at Ford as he did it. (And Ford was staring quietly as he watched all this, saying nothing.)
"No," the kid finally said to them clearly. "I'm not doing that."
But it looked like it had cost the kid some serious effort.
...Stan thought about all this for a moment, trying to wrap his head around what he'd just seen there a little better. He was starting to get an idea of...
Yeah. There was a lot to unpack with the kid, sure. But the way the kid had been acting the last couple of days… really, the biggest change in how the kid had been acting recently, ever since he'd stopped whatever this thing was with Ford, was...
Heh. Okay. Sure. (...And that was probably the last pillar of whatever that the kid had managed to grab onto there, for a 'no'. And then…) So, yeah. Let's go with…
And then, without looking away from the kid, he said next, quite calmly to Ford, "Ford, you remember that talk we had a couple months ago on the boat, in Iceland? About that one scrawny-ass guy with the big black beard?"
Stan could just about feel Ford's stare on him at the abrupt shift in topic. (Yeah, just give him a minute. He'd get there.)
"...Yes," Ford said slowly. "I do."
"You remember how he stole that gas can from us, right off of our boat?" Stan said next. "How we had to go runnin' after him to get it back?"
"Yes," said Ford, glancing between him and the kid.
"You remember how we lost him," Stan said, still not looking away from the demon. "But how I asked around, and we searched around, and we found his brother's shop instead?"
"Yes," Ford said next.
Stan pulled in a slow breath. He saw how the kid was already tensing.
"You remember when I saw our gas can in the window of that shop there, and I brought up goin' in there and takin' it back, and all-else I wanted to maybe do? What you told me, then?" Stan asked his brother next. (And yeah, it had been a doozy. He'd straight-up turned around and asked his brother if he was really serious. And he had been.)
"Yes," said Ford, frowning at him.
"Good," said Stan, lowering his hand away from the center of his brother's back (and ending the signal he'd been giving him). "Tell the kid what you told me."
Ford gave him a long look.
But his brother did as he said, and said, "I told you that I didn't believe that it was appropriate to barge in there, guns blazing. We didn't know whether he'd had anything to do with the theft," Ford said, "Or if he'd even known it was stolen."
"Yeah," Stan said, "But do you remember what you told me specifically."
Ford paused for a moment. "...I believe I said, 'Stan, I see no reason to treat the thief's brother like the thief himself. I refuse to do that to someone, without evidence to the contrary.'"
Kid was still looking tense. And he was staring at Ford, now. (...Yeah, Stan had thought that'd get his attention. Wasn't like he didn't remember when and why the demon had pulled all this shit in the first place.)
"Yeah," Stan said next, "And I remember that big long discussion we had when we got back to the boat later, too." Stan dropped a hand on Ford's shoulder, and he said, "So, gotta hypothetical question for you, here, o' brother of mine." Ford sighed and turned towards him with a grimace - 'cause that was what he did when Stan talked to him like that, heh - and gave him a 'this had better be good' look to him.
And then Stan asked (while already knowing the answer), "Did you mean that for everybody?"
His brother blinked at him. "What?"
"Y'know," Stan said, "Anybody. Brother, sister, aunt, uncle, parent, sibling, whatever. Somebody does something, and one of them-"
"-Stanley," Ford said harshly, pushing away from him slightly on the bed and cutting him off. "I am not going to blame anyone else for something that they didn't do!"
"Not gonna take something out on somebody else," Stan said.
"No! Never!" Ford said hotly, scrubbing a hand through his hair in frustration.
"Not even if they're family and-" Stan began.
"-Of course not!" Ford shot out, "Stanley, I already told you-"
"Doesn't matter who it is, or what they've done," Stan said.
"-No!" Ford said hotly. "That's not-"
"Even if it's Bill Cipher," Stan put out there.
"That would hardly matter-" Ford began almost automatically, then stopped and stared at Stan. "What…?"
"Y'know, hypothetically," Stan said next, but he was already smiling on the inside, because his brother looked half-distraught, and he could see the look on the kid's face out of the corner of his eye and-
"That's hardly topical, Stanley," Ford began, "Because Bill-"
"Well, y'know, Miz is-" Stan began, almost good-naturedly, and as absolutely leadingly as possible.
And Stan saw when Ford snapped and straight-up lost his temper with him. (Heh.)
"-I'm not going to punish anyone else for something someone else did!" Ford yelled out at him, "Bill or otherwise! -What part of this do you not-"
Stan was looking over at the kid as Ford got past the most important part of that, though, and-
(Ford was frustrated as hell that his brother was needling him on this point, as if Stan thought that if he asked him the same thing enough times, that he would somehow change his mind! His morals were not something that simply changed on a whim! And- Stan was smiling and not even looking at him-! What was he-?!)
And Stan knew when his brother had gotten frustrated at him and looked over at what he was looking at, too, because that was when Ford's voice cut off.
Because the kid was staring at them expressionless, white as a sheet, and he was shivering slightly in place.
Stan was smiling.
He'd known it. He was right. (Mirrors, reflections, games; all of it.) Because yeah, the kid had been enjoying- (Stan pulled in a breath, held it all) watching Ford suffer earlier. (Stan let it out again.) ...Kid had been mad at Ford since forever. -But he hadn't been that deadly-killer mad at Ford until Ford had said-
...The kid hadn't dropped his 'helping' thing for Ford right away, once he'd gotten his head screwed back on straight after all his deals were off. He didn't do things that would screw himself over if he could help it. And he'd been pretty mad then, sure, but not mad enough to pull the trigger on this. Not then.
Not until Ford had pushed him to that specific point, later. Denying the kid's brother's existence.
...which meant that the kid really had had a reason to keep it going up until that point, up until Ford had pissed him off so badly that the demon-kid had decided himself that taking the hit was worth it.
(And Stan was pretty sure now, what it was. What the kid had just hit himself with, when he'd tried doing this 'disconnecting' thing with Ford - or as close to it as the demon could get, with any of them who were one of 'his Zodiac'.)
Ford was alive because he hadn't threatened Bill's dead brother outright. If Ford had, he probably would be, agreement or not, Stan's brother or not, Zodiac or not. Stan didn't get everything about the kid yet, but he knew enough to know some things already, about how the kid thought and approached shit like this.
Bill had thought that Ford - that anyone - would go after his brother as a weak spot, if they knew about him; as an easy target to hurt him. And Stan was pretty sure now, after a lot of the things the kid had said, and what the kid had said he could do, that the kid was eventually, at some point, planning on...
And Stan had just handed the triangle demon the biggest 'get out of jail free' card from Ford that the demon could possibly get, for this 'Liam' of his. (Because the demon didn't know his brother at all, and hadn't been willing to risk-)
And Stan had made sure that it was covered completely for the kid, too. The kid probably thought that Ford had thought that Stan had been thinking about Miz, when they'd each said what they had. (Stan knew better and so would Ford, once he thought about it for more than two seconds while he was mad as hell with him and 'not gonna take it anymore' - but that hardly mattered, because Ford had made the main point of the whole thing really freaking crystal clear anyway, and…)
"You've got no excuses left now, kid," Stan told him. "You know what I want you to do."
"I-" the kid said shakily, as his torso bobbed slightly in place. "I-" It didn't look like he was doing it on purpose, exactly; he looked more like he was stuck than anything.
"I want you to do this for me, kid," Stan repeated. "It'll help me out." And the kid had promised him any help he asked for, while they were here. (So either the kid was gonna talk back to him again now, or…)
Stan watched carefully, and he saw how the kid went a little glassy-eyed for a split-second there, and started to almost fall-forward. ...But it was more of a bobbing motion towards Stan. ...Until the kid seemed to catch himself, just barely, and pull himself back away from him again.
And the kid looked frustrated, as he backed off again, putting his back back-up against the wall behind him.
Ford was sitting there, staring at this, next to him.
...Yeah, Stan was pretty sure he had the kid's number, now. -The kid really had shot himself in the foot with this one, bein' all stubborn and angry and spiteful. Demon-kid had decided the hit just might be worth it, so he'd gone ahead with it and done it anyway. Even though that had meant…
...losing what he'd been getting from Ford in return. Because the kid didn't give anything without getting something back. Not now; not ever. And Stan was starting to get an idea of maybe what that thing was. What the demon-kid had been getting outta Ford that he might've…
"You need him," Stan told the kid.
"NNnno, I don't," said the kid, still bobbing in place, looking half-untethered.
"Yeah, you do, kid," Stan said. "I can tell. Maybe you think you don't, but you do." He pulled in a breath, and let it out slowly. "Just go ahead and do it, already."
And Stan waited.
And the kid smiled.
And then the kid let out that weird clicky sort-of giggle of his.
And he said, in an odd sort of tone, "I can't."
Stan stared.
The kid let out another odd giggle again. "I can't do it."
Stan frowned and opened his mouth to say-
"-I can't do it alone," the kid said next, like it was just slipping right out of him again.
Stan let out a breath. ...Hell. That wasn't- Not a 'no', just a 'being stupid'.
"What do you need to do it?" Stan said, pulling off outward-calm because he really could at this point.
The demon-kid was blinking and looking between them. (Ford was staying silent throughout all this.) "More than just…" The kid's eyes drooped lower, and he looked tired.
...Great. "This a Zodiac thing to fix the Zodiac thing? -'Course it is." Stan said, or the kid wouldn't have brought up the Valentino kid as a possible 'solution' as part of keeping Ford from having those nightmares. Stan frowned as he chewed over this. "You need the whole circle for this?"
"Maybe," said the triangle demon. ...Not evasively; hell, the kid actually wasn't sure.
"C'mon," Stan said. "You gotta at least try." He let out a grumpy old man sigh; hey, he was allowed. "So how do we-"
Stan stopped, and blinked. Because the kid hadn't even said anything, he'd just slid forward on the bunk, and…
Stan looked down at the kid's hand, that had just slid into his own.
"Okay…" Stan said. Apparently holding hands really was a thing for most of this Zodiac-stuff.
Stan looked over at his brother, and lifted a hand to place it on his shoulder.
He gave Ford an almost-sorry look, because he knew how hard this was gonna be for him, his brother doing anything close to something like shaking hands with the demon for this.
Ford grimaced, and he looked like he was seriously considering some form of mutiny, despite what he'd told Stan earlier.
(C'mon, Ford. You can do this.)
And Stan watched as Ford pulled in a breath…
...and followed through on the 'unpredictable thing' he was doin' for him, putting a hand on Stan's own shoulder, too, and using it as a brace to sit himself up a bit more upright.
Ford not-quite glared at Bill, as he slowly held out his hand towards him.
And Bill did the same.
And Ford moved his hand forward slowly...
And Bill did as well...
And then Ford flinched, reflexively raising and pulling his hand back again-
-and the demon-kid lowered and moved his hand back again, too, just as quickly as Ford had. Just as quickly.
Stan watched his brother stop, and blink at this.
...and then move his hand forward ...and back ...and forward and back. And stop and frown. And then move his hand side to side, in little bits and starts...
...and watch the kid do the exact mirrored-opposite motions as he was doing, all the while.
(Yeah, Ford. Mirroring. ...What, you thought I was lyin' to ya about the kid?)
Stan watched this, and managed to keep his grumpy face going (because hell, watching the two of 'em go at it with each other should not be this funny), and finally, Ford frowned a little more deeply, and seemed to settle on a sort-of over-under forearm-clasp with the kid.
And then the kid closed his eyes and they all lit up blue.
Stan heard Ford gasp out loud.
And then the kid let go of him (and Ford) about a second later, pulling away from them both.
"It work?" Stan said, though he was already pretty sure that the answer was-
"Yes," said the demon-kid. His breathing seemed to be a little faster than it had been before. (So was Ford's, weirdly enough.)
Stan watched as the kid half-hunched, half-rotated his shoulders for a second, then let out a huff.
"You both gonna be feeling better, now?" Stan asked him blandly next.
The kid looked up at him, eyes a bit hard and a lot more- what Stan was used to seeing outta the kid, really. More there.
(Yeah. He'd thought so. Probably better that this had happened here, instead of back home where-)
And the kid said, "That Stanford's nightmares should stay under again. I am NOT doing any more than that." The kid sounded tense, and there was that undercurrent of anger there (probably because Stan had asked him about how he was feelin', too), but… yeah. Kid was still angry about Ford saying he didn't have a brother, but...
Kid had the next best thing to a 'get out of jail free for having a demon as a brother' card, now. With Ford. (Y'know, the guy who they all knew was still trying to find a way to kill him dead?) ...And the kid had it now, when the kid had thought Ford would want to go after his brother (one way or the other) for stuff that he had done before, if and when Ford realized that this 'Liam' guy was a thing. ...Yeah. That had to go a long way. ...Or at least a little way with the kid.
(Hey, it was a start.)
"Good," said Stan. "That was all I was askin' for, there." And he didn't even feel like punching the kid too badly when he followed that up with a final, "Thanks, kid."
"Tch," went the kid, as he shoved himself up and off of the bunk's mattress.
Stan glanced over at his brother as the kid moved off, and… his brother wasn't just breathing a little faster; he looked like he was having a little trouble breathing again, but… uh, more out of some kind of shock than anything else. Not some stupid dream-thing that the kid had screwed with his brother enough to give him in the first place this time, or whatever.
"Ford, you okay?" Stan asked him.
"I- that-" Yeah, his brother was definitely all shell-shocked and junk all-right. "-That was like the circle!" Ford exclaimed, looking alarmed and sounding kind of… off. (And he was staring down at his hands for some reason.)
"Uh, yeah?" said Stan. What, his brother hadn't been expecting that?
"Only stronger!" Ford said, jerking his head up to look at him.
"Uh, yeah?" said Stan, because really… "Ford, what were you expectin' here?"
Ford turned to him and stared.
"What?" Stan said. The kid had practically confirmed it was a Zodiac thing a bunch of times there, when Stan had been asking. So what was Ford gettin' all weird about?
"Didn't you feel that?" Ford said, half-hysterically, and Stan was starting to wonder...
"Uh, yeah?" Stan said. (Hadn't felt that different from the circle-thing before, and not too different from the 'anchor' thing he had going with the kid, either - though he hadn't felt that really more than a couple times now from the kid, and only barely when he had. Kid was bein' real careful with things there, not wanting him to get any more of a handle on that one. Not that the kid was being all that stupid there, considering.)
Stan looked on at his brother's expression and sighed.
"Ford, what's the problem, here?" He eyed his brother. "We're all part of that Zodiac thing, right?" Ford knew that...
"Bill isn't!" Ford exclaimed, pulling himself inwards and away from Stan slightly, and looking a little freaked out, his hands clutched in close to his chest.
And Stan just… couldn't help but stare at him.
"Ford, he's right in the freaking middle of the whole thing, yeah?" Stan told his brother with exasperation. Because really, Ford, what the hell…?
"What part of 'you are all MINE' do you people not get?" Stan heard the triangle demon grouse out at them, halfway to the door.
"We aren't yours!" Ford said, swiveling his head over towards hi, eyes-wide and looking like he was jumping straight from some kind of weird-ass panic (over nothing that Stan could see, and) straight into some kind of denial.
"YES YOU ARE," Bill told them both, turning around in the doorway to face them, looking and sounding more than a little incensed. "The stupid lizard made you all FOR ME."
And with that parting shot sent, the triangle turned away and slammed the door to the cabin shut behind him.
Stan eyed the door. Then, he called out (mostly directed through the porthole window in the cabin that was open, still), "Get some more sleep, kid. You're way too grouchy."
Then, Stan turned back to his brother.
...who looked like he might be having some kinda existential crisis going on.
"We… we aren't… We- we weren't made for… for..." Ford said slowly, looking three kinds of messed up for some reason.
Stan sighed, and rubbed the back of his beck.
"Ford, the kid's literally older than dirt," he reminded his brother. "He thinks math is his." The kid was nuts. (Why did Ford keep on listening to him so much? He didn't have to. -And he sure as hell didn't have to take him seriously. So why couldn't he...) "Just… let it go."
"I…" Ford didn't really look any better, still pretty damn frazzled.
"Ford, the kid might not be lying, but that doesn't mean he's right," Stan reminded his brother patiently.
And he waited.
"...Right," Ford said after awhile, lowering his hands slowly. "Yes. ...Of course."
Stan sighed and shook his head a bit.
"Look," Stan told his brother, who looked up at him slowly. "Maybe you should get a little more sleep, too. Yeah?"
"I… suppose I... could…" Ford said quietly, as he slowly began to relax in place.
"Hey, it's what I'm plannin' on doin', bein' a grunkly old man and all," Stan told his brother good-naturedly, and he waited until Ford looked up at him with a slight smile, "Eh? Eh?" as an answer to Stan's own one.
Stan patted his brother on the shoulder and got up from the bunk, planning on shuffling over the few feet, to go right back to his own.
(And he did. But Stan didn't fall asleep again himself until he heard the rustle of covers in the other bunk settle, and his brother's quiet breathing even out.)
(It didn't take long but, to Stan, it felt like it maybe took longer than it should.)
Meanwhile, Miz was wandering around the beach, having gotten herself a bit of breakfast in the ocean and was taking this time to clean up the beach. So many glass shards. So much trash. It was awful to look at. So she was cleaning up. There was no way she'd be able to get it all by hand, but she wasn't in the mood to use her powers for this. She was still feeling out the churning energy beneath her skin, it was a light tingle. Not uncomfortable, yet. Being bound down in a vessel like this generally made the feeling more noticable. Actually...
Miz relaxed and let her physical form fall away. She stretched herself out and sighed. Really, this dimensional set felt so different. Everything was heavy. Contained. Restricted. Like the rules here were stricter. The AXOLOTL here must have set more limitations. Miz hadn't realized how much freedom her dad had really given her. She floated around in the Mindscape, relaxed and spread out so that her energy was free to buzz about without causing her any discomfort. She was pretty content right now. She'd gotten her breakfast by stealing some fish from the local fishing boats, that was enough to make her powers thrum cheerfully.
So… the karma system huh? Made sense. Miz remembered her brother had mentioned it once before, during their chats over the blog. She twisted herself, buzzing somewhat as she floated along. Had she wasted enough time yet? Could she return to the boat yet?
She sighed, shifting again, a he now. He flowed around, lazily Looking around, he could Feel everything. The underpinnings of this dimension. How it was built, how it was put together… how old, or rather, not old it was.
"This Ax really created an entire new dimension just from…" Bill mumbled to himself. Well, MizBill. That would differentiate him from his big brother. Eh… having the same name was hard, wasn't it?
MizBill sighed. He glanced up and wondered how long he was going to stay here. He loved being with his brother. But he missed home. Missed his friends and children. MizBill shook his head. It… it's fine. His friends and children were fine, he'll make his way back to them eventually. MizBill wondered if he could possibly bring his brother home with him. There had to be some way to do that...
...not forever, of course. MizBill hummed. Stan was… good for brother. Well, sort of. Stan obviously had his own plans for what he wanted with brother, but MizBill thought that despite that, it was more good than bad.
Even if Stan didn't want Bill.
MizBill sighed. He could tell. Even if Stan said he wanted Bill, it didn't mean he wanted him. Stan DID want Bill, but not in the way Bill thought...
But that was fine. MizBill felt his form twist, if he had a body right now, he'd be smiling. Even if Stan didn't truly want Bill right now, that didn't mean he wouldn't eventually learn to want him. Humans pack bonded to just about anything. Especially if they were familiar. And if Bill and Stan were going to be spending time together (possibly eternity, if what MizBill was picking up was correct) then Stan would just start wanting Bill eventually.
And it was all fine anyway. Stan was teaching brother, and teaching MizBill as well! And Stan was a good man. He wasn't perfect, but he was good for them. He helped them, on things that they didn't understand. And, well, that meant that he and his brother were using Stan to help them, just as Stan was using them. So, fair's fair and it was all fine.
MizBill curled around in the air and wondered if things on the boat were okay now. He floated over to glance at it and saw Bill going back to flop down on the blankets. Ah, that should be fine then.
"Little sis!" Bill called out, on his back in the blanket-pillow pile, all his limbs splayed out haphazardly from his sides as he stared up at the slowly lightening sky. "I am done with Stanley's thing now!"
MizBill floated down, pulling himself back together into a more solidly defined mass of energy.
Bill looked up, and saw his sister, and smiled.
"What did Stan want?" MizBill asked, thrumming and humming as he settled onto the blankets, not quite ready to craft a new vessel yet.
"Mm," said Bill, rubbing his left hand against the side of his head, near his left temple. "Wanted me to start doing some of the thing again, that I didn't want to do." He half-shifted, half-twisted in place a bit as he explained this, like he was trying to settle properly inside his own skin.
Oh? "Was it an annoying thing?" MizBill asked, twisting their tendrils of energy and light around as they pulled themselves back in some more.
Bill rolled over onto his side, to face him(? -bowtie meant 'him', yes?) and let out a sigh. "Yes. No." Bill pulled a slight face. "It's a necessary thing," he said a good bit more lowly, then added - almost under his breath, because the porthole window behind him was open - "I shouldn't have stopped doing the thing…" (Because, annoyingly, it had been more 'necessary' than he'd thought. -For that Stanford, at least. And for Stanley to not be getting angry enough with him to hit him maybe... which maybe could have still worked out, too...)
Bill frowned.
MizBill hummed, finally condensing himself back into a physical form, falling onto the soft pillows in his William form, a large single eye blinking at his brother. "Are you okay? Doing the thing again didn't hurt you or anything, did it?"
"No," said Bill. "It didn't hurt me." And then he blinked at William slowly.
"...You DO know what 'thing' I am talking about, right?" Bill said to his little sister, eyeing him.
"I didn't Look to See what you were doing. I figured Stan wanted some privacy for whatever it was he wanted me to go away while he talked to you for." William blinked slowly. "I did feel a shift in energy again. I could probably make a guess as to what you did."
Bill sighed. He should have just said he wasn't sure what he was talking about.
"I reconnected a bit more strongly to that Stanford again," he said, sounding irritated and... also not.
William rolled onto his side, pulling Iseblonker back to his chest. "Well, how are you feeling?"
"Better than I was," Bill told him under his breath - which, as far as he was concerned, was the IRRITATING THING! -He didn't need that Stanford! No! (...And yet...)
Bill let out a huff of breath, and grabbed the nearest pillow, to bite it into submission (it only took TWO angry-bites this time; a record!) and then squeeze it with his stupid human-ish fingernail-'claws' very strongly. He glared out over it, kicking his feet against the blankets around him slightly, before slumping down against the flat of the blanket-covered deck all-at-once. "Nnn-nn."
William shuffled closer. "You know, sometimes, even if we don't like someone, they might still be worth something, to have them with you." William said softly. "I've had a few clients like that. People I didn't like, but wanted on my side for various reasons."
"-I know that!" Bill said to him, then scoffed. "A few clients. HA." As far as Bill was concerned, that was EVERYONE except Liam and-.
William shrugged. "I've had some clients I actually liked. A few are even friends." Speaking of which, it'd been a while since he'd got to visit Queen, should go do that.
Bill grumbled to himself, as he curled 'finger claws' into the pillow a bit more, uncurled and curled them again, and...
"I have plenty of friends who are like that; I like them," Bill told him. Well, except for Kryptos, who was annoying, but still useful, and still a friend. He'd also had plenty of friends who he didn't like who were useful, and a few friends and worshippers here and there that weren't all that useful, but who he had still liked. But the one thing they all had in common was that…
"They NEVER last, though." Bill frowned. Because, sooner or later, they always turned on him. -And yes, his latest Henchmaniacs gang was a little different, sure; they'd gone on longer than ANY of the others before them, but IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME…
"That's sad. Not having them last. Sounds lonely." William stretched to get more comfortable. They had a few more hours before they should get up for school. For a second, he wanted to skip, the nest was so comfortable, he didn't really want to get up. But they had school, he had to watch the kids and make sure they didn't skip, and then they were doing the dragon plan after school.
"I'm not lonely!" declared Bill. "Define: 'lonely'." He bet he wasn't, whatever William thought it was. (His sister had strange definitions for things sometimes - and they weren't always old-human definitions, either!)
"...wanting to have someone by your side, but not having anyone." William said. "Or missing someone who you want by your side, but they're not there."
"Mm." WELL. Bill wanted to have Liam by his side, but he had Miz! And Stanley. And his Henchmaniacs! -So he wasn't the first one of those. The second one, though...
"So," Bill said, "Stanley and that Stanford are oh-so-lonely by your second 'define'," Bill said, "Because Pine Tree and Shooting Star aren't here with them!" That didn't sound right. Stanley had that Stanford, and that Stanford had Stanley. Twins together were never alone. -This DEFINITELY wasn't a human definition; it must be Miz's own personal one. (Bill made a note of that.)
"...they just don't realize it, probably." William blinked. "I'm sure Stan misses the kids, he's just too busy dealing with this other set of kids to really think about it."
"HM," said Bill. "Then it's good that we'll all be going back soon," Bill noted, as he let go of the pillow, and settled down into the blankets a bit better, in a way more conducive for sleeping. (School was hours-away, and he was tired, and he wanted more sleep! So he would sleep more-again-soon.)
"Yeah. Dipper's gonna have a panic attack if we don't get their grunkles back to them." William sighed. "Can't believe Mabel tried to grapple hook through the portal." He saw that Bill's eyes were already drooping. He must be tired. William made a note to cook a nice, hearty breakfast for his brother in a few hours.
"Need to get that for her," Bill noted, in a half-mumble. "Shooting Star will want it back." She'd only lost a few feet off of it; she could just remove the short-end rope piece from the hook, and tie the hook back to what was left on the other side and still attached to the grappling gun.
"I grabbed it." William said. He'd found it while he was cleaning the beach earlier. How the heck no one had thought to pick up and move that dangerous sharp object was just more proof to him that the humans here didn't give a shit about the litter.
"Good," Bill said, "Thank you." And then he let out a long, slow breath in something that was almost a sigh.
"You should sleep more-again too," Bill told her, as he shoved the bitten-pillow away, and shifted in place a bit.
"Okay." William closed his eye and wiggled over to press against his brother. "I'll make a nice breakfast in a few hours…" He relaxed. "...you know I had the weirdest dream about a table. He was a person and PaciFire's eyebrows were dating the Federation…" His breathing slowed as he drifted off to sleep.
Bill smiled. He let out a soft 'hummmm' of acknowledgment, and he fell back asleep again pretty quickly after that. (After all, William was warm, and Bill knew where his little sister was - there with him, and safe because of it.)
Lee was a little intimidated by the amount of food in front of them. "Ah… did you… make all this?" he asked the weird looking yellow cyclops creature sitting in front of him who had to be Miz.
The cyclops nodded at him. "I made it for all of you. But if you don't want it, then I can eat the extras."
Stan shrugged. "And if you don't wanna eat William's cooking, I'm gonna be making some eggs and bacon." He'd asked what the younger demon wanted to be called in this form (since he hadn't really memorized the names-spiel the first time Miz had said it), and they'd responded with 'William' - which, y'know, made Ford pretty annoyed (because what didn't these days), but Stan didn't care either way. He was already frying up some bacon, shoving a plate of sunny-side-up eggs at his brother.
"I made some roasted carrots and potatoes with some spicy pepper sauce, for brother -" William pointed at the bowl that Bill was already digging into, "- and some omelettes stuffed with the remaining carrots and potatoes for you." He grinned. "And diced sausages. Since at least you guys eat meat."
Sixer took the offered plate and sat down to eat. "It's delicious, like everything else you make," he made it a point to tell the younger demon after only one mouthful, which had William turning orange and looking both pleased and embarrassed.
Ford ate what Stan made. Lee couldn't help but take one of the omelettes, despite all the glaring from the old-man Sixer. -What? It looked good. It smelled even better. And he'd already eaten the demon's cooking during lunch a few times already with nothing bad happening, not even a stomach ache, so hey, he was inclined to just eat the yummy food and be done with it. No sense in letting it go to waste here! (And with the way the dragon-lady ate stuff like she had a black hole in her stomach, Lee figured leaving it all for her to eat would be a waste.)
Breakfast was a pretty quiet affair, with the older Ford sending all sorts of weird long unreadable looks at the two demons that Lee couldn't really decipher, and everybody else being too busy eating to really talk that morning. It worried Lee a little bit, but he didn't get to ask about it as he, his brother, and the demons had to finish up quickly and rush out the door, making their way to school.
...Look, good tasting food was good tasting food. Lee wasn't knocking it. He just wanted to know why the older Sixer would. He hadn't really explained it before, just said not to do it (and sounded a little crazy as he yelled it out there). And the way he'd been looking at Bill today at breakfast...
There were even more whispers around the school Friday morning.
Miz, in her teenage female form for real this time (having changed back on the walk to school), told Lee not to worry about it. "Besides, once you two become monster hunters, there'll be even MORE whispering." Ah, well… Lee was sure she told him that to make him feel better, but it didn't really make Lee feel any better. He did want to be a monster hunter, sure! But... he kind of worried about what would happen in school if he did manage to pull it off after school today with his brother.
Actually... 'monster hunter' was probably a cooler thing than 'alien baby sitter', so...
And it was really weird, but... despite all the rumors and whispering and junk, Lee was surprised to see that school was almost… normal today. Nobody was really treating him or Sixer any differently than they had the week before - other than, y'know, all the whispering, and them also having two girls hanging around with them now. And the demons were super weird as always, but it almost seemed like everyone had… gotten used to it? -Heck, the most outrageous thing that happened today was Miz spotting Ben in the halls and waving to him with a cheerful "Hi Ben!" which got the poor guy blushing profusely and walking into a wall. Lee noted that he still had that violin.
...And a bunch of other boys ran up to Ben to grill him for information about why the 'hot one' was talking to him.
Lee didn't really get it.
What Lee did realize was why Ben carried the violin with him everywhere, never letting it leave his sight - it was because when he was carrying it, the boys around him weren't really able to get all that close; not close enough to touch him, or grab him. The violin was even glowing softly, so faint that Lee wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been looking for it. It almost looked like that magic barrier thingie that Miz had placed over him and Sixer.
Lee looked over at her, wondering if she knew… and Miz commented absently, "He gets picked on a lot. But I kinda like him so he gets a small Blessing."
Bill turned to his sister. "For free?" he asked, frowning slightly. (He was worried about her karmic backlash problem.)
Miz scoffed. "Naw, he entertained me. That's payment enough." (Bill let out a short breath upon hearing this.)
Sixer glanced between the two of them. "Payment?"
Bill sighed, looking a little annoyed as he said (almost dourly), "Karma system," thinking over the list of stuff Miz had written down about her issues. There WERE a lot of problematic things there, Bill had to admit - and they WOULD work on all of them! - but mainly, it looked like at least half of Miz's written-down problems stemmed from the fact that she seemed to be plugged into the Karma system directly. And right now, as a part of that, she needed payment in exchange for things she did for people, in order to avoid 'direct retribution' things like the itching.
Miz had told him and Stanley yesterday that she could skirt around the issue sometimes by having her own 'selfish' justifications for doing things. Like turning all the cafeteria slop into 'real' food being more because she wanted the kids to eat better food - more for herself and her own beliefs on the matter - than for the kids themselves. And also, because was fun. Cooking was fun for her, which was another 'selfish' thing.
When Bill had tossed up a perception filter to mask their conversation (and her current-form and then subsequent body-shift) on the walk to school that morning, and questioned her a little further on the issue, Miz had told him a little more about it, too. Miz had stated that her 'good' and 'bad' levels were always shifting. She'd explained that her powers felt more comfortable to her on the 'bad' side, but that she was able to sort of get a more balanced and closer to neutral equilibrium somewhat, if she tried. And what counted as 'good' or 'bad' for her seemed to change depending explicitly on her own intent at the time she was using her powers.
In Miz's on words, this was why sometimes she could get away with a lot of stuff that helped people without it counting as something 'good', and then causing her powers to rile up uncomfortably. ("Like feeding the homeless - you know that's apparently against the law? So I'm being really bad when I make sure they don't starve to death! Same thing for sheltering refugees!" -And that left Bill worried about what might happen if that Time Baby of hers realized this, and then decided to change all of the laws in all of the dimensions he had control over, all at once; all while she wasn't Looking, or even thinking to Look.)
Bill was mainly worried over his sister's insistence that her powers were apparently sentient, though - or at the very least, different from her own conscious wants. Miz had mentioned to him something about how she would have random thoughts and urges to do things that weren't always what she actually wanted to do.
"Like, I might suddenly think about how funny it would be to replace every carbon atom with an entire fish," she told them all (now filterless), as they sat down in homeroom together, waiting for the announcements to begin. "But then I realize that's a stupid idea. And it would probably mess up a lot of the universe."
Lee stared. "What?" he asked, and Miz groaned.
"Well, fish are made of carbon," Miz explained. "So each of those carbon atoms would turn into a fish, which means more carbon, on and on, infinitely creating more fish, until all energy in that universe runs out because they could no longer continue…"
"Define 'fish'," was the first thing Bill pointed out, because if 'a fish' was 'a carbon atom', then…
"Swimming animal I like to eat, it's made of carbon and other stuff already, though…" Miz sighed as Bill raised his eyebrows and started to smile at her. "Well, yeah, redefining what makes a fish would work, though I'd have to rewrite what the molecular makeup of a fish was beforehand. But even if that was fixed, there are plenty of other things I'd have to fix and it would just be a waste of time and energy for what was ultimately a passing thought that wasn't even all that important to me."
She huffed, folding her arms under her chest, unintentionally causing her breasts to be pushed up. "That's why I don't listen to all my random urges. I sometimes get one that I really want to do, but for the most part, I'm just ignoring them because they're not important."
"...Rrrrrrright. Well, that's good?" Lee scratched his head, a little disturbed by the whole 'turning everything into fish' thing, while Sixer seemed to be developing a headache at the idea of infinite fish.
Bill still didn't like all of this 'random urges' talk (because did she really not realize…? REALLY?) - but he was also curious at this concept she seemed to be getting stuck on, because hadn't she considered…? "Little sis, haven't you ever looked at it sideways before?"
Miz blinked. "Sideways as in?" she asked.
"Sideways," Bill said, "As in, sideways... recursion?" -Yeesh, twentieth-century American English just wasn't cut out for this, was it? HA!
Bill thought for a moment, then tried to explain it a little more differently, with... "You have one fish. It has carbon atoms, which now need to be fish. You have a second fish. It is one of the 'carbon atom replacements' for the first fish. The second fish also has carbon atoms; the second fish needs a 'carbon atom replacement'," Bill said. "So you also have a third fish. It is one of the 'carbon atom replacements' for the second fish." Then he grinned. "The third fish needs a 'carbon atom replacement'. -The first fish is a 'carbon atom replacement' for the third fish." He paused for a moment. "It is a little like the 'left hand draws a left hand draws a left hand drawing the first left hand' picture. Have you Seen D.J. Escher's work?" Bill asked, because he'd suggested several acid trips to that artist upon summoning, and really, they'd worked out quite terribly! -Bill had been very pleased.
"-You do three fish instead of two fish," Bill told her next, "Because the first fish cannot easily be a 'carbon atom replacement' for the second fish, because the second fish is directly a part of the first fish as the first fish's 'carbon atom replacement'. -It's too close," Bill told her. "The folding-of-space LIKES a little more 'room to breathe', or it isn't quite as stable when other-things try to act on-and-upon it, and interact with it. -You set up the space-folds a little like a Mobius strip," he told her, "But NOT like a Mobius strip at all. -Maybe more like a Klein bottle, but also not like that at all EITHER." (...And this is why English was annoying and useless for explaining these things. The concepts just didn't translate properly AT ALL!)
Miz's eyes widened. "So just link the fish together so that they share their parts instead, therefore there wouldn't be infinite fish." That was brilliant. "But it would still end up turning people who are made of carbon into fish as well, and I don't think they would enjoy that."
"Yeah, no," Lee said to her quickly. "I like eating fish, not being fish!" He didn't want to get turned into some kind of fish strip. No way!
"You are what you eat," Bill said almost teasingly to Lee. "-Quite LITERALLY! -And you," Bill directed at his sister next, "Say that like people who are made of carbon are carbon, or people who are made of water are water." And Bill gave her an odd look at that. "The whole is not necessarily the subset-of-a-single-part-of-the-parts, when there is more than one subset of parts. -It USUALLY isn't - and that's a good thing," he told her. "Things are more INTERESTING that way!" (Bill really liked talking mechanics and mechanisms of rules with his little sister! But when they strayed off into philosophy? She really seemed to end up somewhere far off in the mud to him...)
Miz thought about it. "I know that say, a human, is not made entirely of carbon, but if the carbon parts of them got replaced by fish…"
"...And how do you keep people from suffocating when they don't have oxygen to breathe without giving them oxygen to breathe, or changing their biology to not need oxygen or not need breathing?" Bill said leadingly. "-It's the same thing. Change the rules so that having fish-replacements is fine," Bill shrugged off.
Miz thought about it some more. "I'd have to start a new dimension with those rules already in place. Suddenly changing that rule would probably distress the people that have carbon as part of their make up if they suddenly started sprouting fish."
"Hit pause; stop EVERYTHING - not just a stop-time - until you're done changing things," Bill said, "And add two rules, not one! Second rule: no people 'distress' about carbon atoms being fish now."
"But wouldn't that mess with their free will?" Miz frowned. (Lee was rubbing his face, why was this conversation still going on? -Heck, even Sixer looked more disturbed than interested in the idea.)
"It depends on how you do it," Bill told her. "Change the definition of the thing, and no-one will notice or care, with 'free will' being impacted not at all!" Bill told her cheerfully. "But... change the outcome of the thought processes..." and Bill trailed off.
Miz thought about it, and then she turned to the twins. "Hypothetically, if I told you that you were supposed to be-"
"-No," Lee said, cutting her off immediately. "No changing stuff into fish. Nope. No. Not even a little, no."
Miz looked to Bill, who just shrugged at her.
...And then Bill turned his head and looked over at the twins, and grinned evilly.
"How do you KNOW that your 'carbon atoms' didn't USED TO BE fish, but that someone ALREADY CHANGED THEM OUT at some point, and you NEVER EVEN NOTICED?" the demon said to them almost sweetly.
"That's not-" Sixer began, frowning, as Lee felt his expression drop. "That's… not…"
"-Because wouldn't all those FISH go together SO MUCH BETTER with all that WATER in there?" Bill said next, and his grin got even wider.
...Yup. Lee was definitely gonna have nightmares over this one. Probably. (Especially with the way Miz liked to eat fish.)
Miz made it worse by teasing, "And how would you know that you haven't already BEEN changed so that you're the way you are now, when you were originally like… a girl or something?" She grinned even wider. "Or if maybe you two were originally conjoined twins? Or if you were originally a dog?" She'd read a fanfic about that once, where Stanley was a dog and Ford didn't even HAVE a twin! "Or maybe that you didn't even EXIST up until a few days ago~" she couldn't help but add!
"-I would be an awesome girl," was Lee's no-nonsense response to that. "I would kick butt in hot pants and at boxing." He'd seen enough of how things went with the two demons over the last couple of days with their old-man selves. Nope, no, and no. -He wasn't going down without a fight!
Lee sent a hard glance over to his twin, because this was supposed to be Sixer's kind of nerdy-talk wheelhouse - Sixer had better deliver on his own nerdy thought-'punch' back!
"...I…" Sixer paused, readjusting his glasses and looking very unsure at the sudden and intense pressure he was receiving from his twin's gaze that he didn't really understand why he was on the receiving end of, just then.
"I might have been… a butterfly… dreaming of being a human being… instead of originally a dog?" Sixer tried slowly. "And then got my wish?"
Miz nodded emphatically. "And you would never even knoooooow~" she sang out at them, smiling a bit too widely for either of the twins' comfort as she said it.
"Yup," said Lee, clapping his hands together once, with finality. "That's right. We both coulda been conjoined butterflies with a dream, or somethin', and then got turned into humans. Over the bridge and under the rainbow. Poof! -Just like that. Yup. It was definitely that. -Good talk!"
Lee turned away to ignore the demons, but still found himself rolling his eyes at Miz's next mischievous comment of, "You were pretty hot as a girl, just putting that out there." -Because, "Well, yeah." Of course he would be hot as a girl! Why not? Wasn't 'being hot' all part of the 'being awesome' package? Hadn't the demon-dragon been listening? ...Or did she not think that being 'hot' was 'awesome' anymore?
...With the way her brother was ribbing her a little bit over her chest again after that 'hot' comment from her, and the blush she got at the ribbing, maybe it was that second one. Which was weird, and kinda dumb. Having a huge chest wasn't the be all and end all of a girl being hot. (...Was it? I mean, y'know, it shouldn't be. He hadn't been all head-over-heels for Carla just because of how she looked, y'know! ...I mean, sure, it had helped a lot, sure! Lee didn't want to date somebody who looked like they had resting dog-face. But Carla was a really smart gal too! And-)
Still, the demons quieted down a bit after awhile, as the homeroom announcements came on over the intercom speakers, and Lee found his thoughts trailing off to a different subject too, one that Sixer was nervous about as well:
-The plan today after school. There were so many ways it could go wrong. The older Stan had come up with a bunch of suggestions and stuff to help them out, first. And Bill had talked his sister through multiple layers of protections she had to put on, and a couple changes to the 'technical details' of stuff later, sure. And this had all been 'okay'ed by the older Stan first, and a grumbly Bill later…
...And ultimately they'd gone with something that was much safer for everybody involved that everybody had been sort-of okay with. (Except the old-Sixer, who wasn't even gonna be there, because he was just gonna get in the way and want to shoot things if he did. ...Because apparently Sixer would get all stuffy-responsible and super more-careful in his old age about stuff like this… which Lee was kinda actually looking forward to…)
And the old-man him was gonna be there, looking out for them, ready to jump in as kind of a 'safety net', too. If they really needed it… Well, Lee wanted to prove that they didn't need it. (Plus, if the old-man him jumped in, Bill might end up jumping in, too, and that would be…)
Miz was excited for it. (Sixer was just as eager, though he did notice Miz was still acting a little… less affectionately with him than she had before, apparently still somewhat upset at him for touching her inappropriately the previous afternoon. This had resulted in the girl sticking closer to Lee now, instead of him.)
...Sixer looked over at Miz and tried not to feel a little sad, irritated, jealous upset that Miz didn't even want to sit in a chair, or at a table, right next to him anymore. Not at the boat, not in the galley-kitchen, and not even here now at school. Sixer's hands twitched in his lap. He hadn't thought it would be this… uncomfortable, to have a girl who had once liked him then shun him; he was used to it from other girls, and this shouldn't have been any different from what he felt from anyone else, but...
They all (demons and twins) got through homeroom (again) without incident, and made their way through the hallways (also without incident) to their first class of the day, but then...
"OH. Oh, HELL NO!" Bill exclaimed, as they all walked into their Physics class and-
Lee's mouth dropped open in pure disbelief as he stared at the guy at the front of the classroom, leaning up against the chalkboard with his arms crossed in front of him. (No. way. -Was he supposed to be their teacher for the day?!)
"What are you doing here?" Miz asked, blinking, as the older Stanford Pines straightened up and away from the chalkboard (which had his name written on it in chalk), looking over at the group of them with not quite a glare.
Ford let out a huff of breath.
"You're blocking the classroom door," Ford told them, not too happy to be there himself. He'd been planning on largely watching them all from the adjoining rooftop that the day, not… this! But-
"Stanford!" the man called out from below him. "Stanford Pines!"
Ford winced slightly. He'd been lax; he'd gotten used to being able to sit out in the open on the rooftops here a few nights ago, due to Bill's precautions (damn him), and now he'd (rather embarrassingly) forgotten to take any of the proper precautions that morning, as a result.
(Though, quite frankly, it shouldn't have been an issue. He couldn't remember the last time that he or Stan had looked up at the sky during the daytime, once they'd entered high school, let alone started the twelfth grade.)
He ducked down a bit, and rolled back away from the roof's edge, in the vague (and quite probably futile and non-existent) hope that, maybe, perhaps…?
"Stanford Filbrick Pines," he heard called out below him - closer than before - and Ford winced. "I mean, really," he heard the man call out. "To think that one of my star pupils from another dimension wouldn't even give me the time of day-"
"That is not how it works, Mr. Har-" Ford began to complain before biting his lip, then smacking a hand over his face. -Good lord, why. Just, why. (No. He knew why.)
He closed his eyes and ran it down his face next, because he knew, just knew, that he was getting smiled at from down-
"Really, Mr. Pines," was what Ford heard next, in good-natured tones, from below. "Or should I say Dr. Pines, now? -I don't suppose you could come down here for a moment, so that we could continue this discussion of ours, face-to-face?"
Ford opened his eyes, stared up at the sky, and for one very long moment, he wanted to disappear forever into the roof of that building.
...He had no reason to be embarrassed about any of this, Ford told himself, as he got up and made his way back over to the edge of the roof. This was a natural reaction to any teacher at any age; he'd seen this happen in many other dimensions beyond this one. It wasn't his fault. (He swore that the schools of the multiverse taught that exact same tone of voice to teachers-in-training everywhere, as some sort of universal constant that rivaled the ubiquity of weirdness itself…)
He jumped off of the roof at the corner closest to the nearest alleyway to the teacher, and hopped, swung, and somersaulted himself down, kicking off of the nearby and opposite walls as he decelerated himself to almost a standstill, before dropping the rest of the way down - his motion due to gravity being forestalled enough that he wasn't going to damage his knees in the final eight-feet's-worth of drop.
He still did a rolling tumble at the end of it, coming to his feet again as his own natural momentum lend him the necessary force to do so most easily.
The teacher was smiling at him.
"Well," said Mr. Harman (who was also a Dr., having his own doctorate). "That was a rather impressive display of the use of the laws of physics to your own advantage; I applaud you," the teacher grinned. "I expect that 'other me' must have done a very good job of teaching you the basics."
...Oh Axolotl, he'd been baited. Of course the man had understood the explanation he'd been given of alternate dimensions; he wasn't stupid. He'd said what he had deliberately in order to coax goad him into responding, and then...
...Ford blinked as he looked the (young) man (who was maybe half his age) over.
Because Mr. Harman looked… almost normal. And...
...This was not what he was used to seeing, as a result of Bill's direct interference with someone, after their 'enlightenment'. Had Stan really managed to…?
"Was there something you needed of me?" Ford asked his old teacher's dimensional duplicate - then nearly cursed himself in the very next breath, because he wasn't entirely sure that-
"Hm. An interesting question," the teacher said to him. "Well, I might... But I do have a question for you first, if I may." Ford blinked at him.
"Of course," Ford said, despite himself. Despite the fact that this was highly nonstandard, and he wasn't entirely certain if his talking to him now might help or hurt more, and-
"What were you doing up on that rooftop just now?"
Ah. Ford tried not to wince. "Well, Mr. Hatmsn, you see…"
...and Ford contemplated trying to lie, right up until he got that very patiently waiting look from him, that Mr. Harman had generally used to reserve for his brother...
Ford clenched his jaw.
And after a moment, he replied, "...I was planning on surveilling the demons from the adjoining rooftops today."
"Hm. I see," said the teacher. "Why?"
...Ford would rather be having his teeth pulled out with the current state of technology in this dimension than having to continue to be standing here answering these questions, he swore.
"Because neither of those demons should be attending school today," Ford told him. 'Or ever.'
The teacher gave him a slight frown. "Then why didn't you keep them out of school today, at the boat where you're staying?" he was asked, frustratingly reasonably.
"...Because Stan wants them in school today," Ford said slowly.
"Mmhmm. I see." And, rather terribly, Ford had the sinking suspicion that Mr. Harman maybe did, in fact, see.
"So, if you'll excuse me-" Ford began, trying not to sound like he was in as much of a hurry as he truly was (no, he did not think or feel as though he could get detention for this, that was a silly thing to say!), as he turned away from the teacher...
"...Actually, one moment," Mr. Harman said, stopping Ford in place. (Ford tried not to wince, as he closed his eyes for a moment, then turned back to him.) "Might I ask another question of you?"
"...Yes," said Ford (as he started to wonder if this was some new torture of Bill's that he'd managed to concoct with the teacher yesterday, at school, at some point, behind every single one of their backs).
"Exactly how well can you see any of the students from up there, on that rooftop of yours, that you've selected, when they are all inside the school?" he was asked, and for some reason...
Ford blinked, as he looked at Mr. Harman, and realized that the teacher actually sounded concerned.
"Ah," said Ford, because actually... "Not very well, I'm afraid." He would be much better off surveillance-wise if he'd had even half of his usual dimension-travelling gear with him, "But I can make do." And he wasn't about to bring any of the specifics of that up in the moment, right now. That was the sort of conversation one saved for a much longer time, and the school day was about to start shortly-
"Oh, no," the teacher told him next. "That simply won't do." (Ford stared at him, because… what?) "Might I offer a suggestion?"
And it was at that point that Ford was officially lost in the conversation he was having here, with the man who'd been babbling almost incoherently after a mind-twisting from Bill only two days ago… who was now making him feel like the crazy one, here.
"I… what?" Ford said, having absolutely no idea where this was going.
And he wasn't any further enlightened when Mr. Harman simply smiled at him and said, "Follow me, please."
And turned away from him.
And started walking back towards the entrance of the school.
"Come along, Dr. Pines!" the man called back at him over his shoulder, in the same cadence he'd always used when he'd asked him to stay after class for a moment, and been about to show him-
Ford didn't realize his feet were moving and he was halfway across the school yard, until his feet were moving and he was halfway across the school yard.
And almost through the doors of the front entrance to the school, which Mr. Harman was holding open for him, still-smiling all the while.
...Though he did have a bit of an odd, excited gleam in his eye, which Ford noted as he passed him.
That was vaguely worrying, so perhaps he should continue following him, just to be certain that there wasn't going to be any trouble, and that the man was actually-
Ford had absolutely no idea what was going on.
"He has a doctorate in science? Really?" the main secretary at the front desk said, looking at him with some measure of… she actually seemed impressed. "How did you find him so quickly?"
"Oh, it just might be kismet, Doris," Mr. Harman seemed to… joke?... to the secretary, "You know how it is. Sometimes you just have to go looking in the oddest of places." (Ford felt himself color a bit at this.)
"Well, I do owe you one for last Thursday," the secretary (Doris?) sighed. "I'll handle the paperwork; are you sure about his credentials, though?"
"Absolutely," Mr. Harman said, slapping Ford on the back and startling him. Ford glanced over at him and frowned; he knew he was being set up for something, but what...
Ford glanced away, then back again, as the secretary rose from here desk and walked off into the back. ...Presumably for a few blank copies of the aforementioned paperwork?
"-You don't mind helping me out, do you?" Mr. Harman said almost conspiratorially. "This will allow you to keep a much closer eye on those 'demons' of yours during the school day today."
"Ah…" said Ford. He hadn't thought...
...Well, he supposed that coming up with some sort of excuse for him to ...be allowed to sit in on Mr. Harman's physics class, post-science fair?... would allow him to keep a closer eye on Bill… for just that one class, but-
"I… don't suppose…" Ford began, then startled again at another good-natured clap on the back and a "Good man! I knew I could count on you!" Ford blinked at him, and his confusion didn't lessen in any scope or respect, as Mr. Harman said next, in rather reverent tones, "Really, my wife is a genius. -If my son ends up with even half her brains… well. I will certainly be a happy man!"
"Alright, John," the secretary - Doris - said, as she returned with a thin folder with some papers in her hands. "I'll handle this. You go off now, and mum's the word. I didn't see you in here."
"Thanks, Doris," Mr. Harman grinned out at her, before telling Ford, "Now, just remember, page 372, and they aren't as scared of you as you are of-"
"Oh, you. Stop scaring him, or you'll scare him off. -Now go on, shoo!" Doris called out at the physics teacher, in something like a loud faux-whisper, who raised up both his hands in surrender and walked himself quickly backwards out of the door.
"Just listen to Doris; she knows everything!" was Mr. Harman's final, smiling, called-out remark to him.
...Ford was very, deeply confused.
He turned back to her, a question on his lips, and-
-had a folder of paperwork shoved at him, right into his chest.
"Here, here," he was told. "Open it up; yes," Ford placed it down on the counter in front of them, between them and did so, "And sign here," the pen thrust at him was used as such, "And here- good," she said. "And that's that. I'll fill the rest of it out for you, there's a good dear."
"Ah," said Ford, before adding, almost tentatively, "...Do you even know who I-"
"-You're the other Stanford, yes? You came in on Monday with the other Stanley Pines," Doris said, head down in the paperwork she'd retrieved back from him, by the simple expedient way of pulling it back towards her and turning in around 180 degrees in place. "Sat down in the hallway and waited for him outside as he handled things for the children."
Ford stared at her.
"It isn't every day that you hear about twin relatives from out of town coming in and scooping up their other twin relatives like a couple of seagulls, just, right out of the blue!" she told him quite brightly as she continued her work, and he colored. "-Ah!" she said next, lifting her head up abruptly, as the morning announcements came on. "You'd better get to class; it's in room 337. You might not have homeroom today, but you do have first period, and then lunchroom duty during third block. It's the advanced class, so-
"-I'm sorry," Ford interrupted her. "I have what?" Lunchroom duty?
Doris sighed. "First period is from 9 to 11:30 in room 337 - it's advanced physics - and lunchroom duty runs from 12:20 until 12:55 - you just need to glare at the students if they try to start a food fight again," she told him in a rapid, informative tone. "Now. Even though this is technically a half-day shift, you - like him - will have to spend the whole day at school. It's very nice that you're helping John out today to let him take that sick day off with his family, but-"
"No, I meant-" Ford was very lost. "What am I-" 'doing?' he was about to say, when the words 'sick day' caught up with him.
"...'Sick day'?" Ford repeated slowly.
"Yes," said Doris. "It's a bit last-minute, but he hasn't taken one in years; said something about a three-day weekend being almost as good as a week, the silly thing. I have to tell you, we were scrambling to find a good replacement for him on such short notice," she rambled on, as Ford stared down at her in something like shock. "But here you are, and- Oh. That reminds me. I am technically supposed to ask you, silly me! - You are qualified to teach advanced twelfth-grade physics, what with a doctorate in the subject and all, aren't you?" she asked him, peering up at him quizzically over her glasses, as she adjusted them on the end of her nose.
Ford stared down at her in something like a growing horror.
"I-" Ford began.
"Where did you get your relevant doctoral degree by the way?" the woman asked him next, already looking back down at her paperwork again. "Place, degree, and year?"
"Backupsmore University, Advanced Theoretical Physics," Ford found himself responding before he could help it. "In 19-" Ford stopped. He stared at her a moment, realizing he couldn't say- because that was the future, here. "That is-" He managed to cut himself off before sounding too strangled (and suspicious, he supposed), shaking his head. "That's not- I'm not-" (and now he'd most certainly ruined it, blast it!) He waved his hands at her, "You don't understand, I've never taught-" oh, he couldn't talk about that "-a class full of students before-"
He jumped in place as Doris slapped down the folder in front of him again, fixing him in place with a steely look that (in his experience, both in his home dimension and elsewhere) he did not want to cross (because he liked to think he knew better; really, it was more of an issue of survival-).
"Young man," (Ford felt his cheeks burn at this, because she was, in fact, older than he was), "Do you have an advanced degree in a relevant field of study from an accredited institution, or don't you?"
"Yes," said Ford.
"Are you stupid?" the rather suddenly-fearsome woman asked rather, demanded of him next.
Ford opened his mouth and almost answered, 'Actually, it depends on who you ask, because there's a demon attending this school right now who thinks-' but at the look he received from her for even thinking it (was she partially-telepathic?), he closed his mouth again, then opened it again and said, "...No."
"Do you remember what it was like to attend high school?"
Ford winced and resisted the immediate and overwhelming urge to hide his hands under his elbows. "...Yes."
"Did you ever have a substitute teacher for any of your classes?" he was asked next, and Ford colored - not just at her tone, or at the raised eyebrow, but because several other ladies in the office had stopped their work and were looking over, staring at them now.
"...Yes." Most of them had really been quite awful, in fact, and he didn't quite manage to keep what he thought of that fact out of his tone.
"Good," said the woman who clearly held sway over her entire domain, in a way that he hadn't seen since the last dimension he'd been in with an active warlord in it. "Then you know we won't expect much of you." -And with that, she slapped a piece of paper into his chest. "Room 337. Follow the map. Class starts in seven-and-a-half minutes. Don't be late. You won't want to find out what happens if you are." She gave him a long (almost-threatening) look.
Ford stared at her in something a good bit less coherent than what he would call (if he was truly pressed to find a term for it) absolute shock.
"Go on now! Get to class!" she told him, making that abrupt shooing motion at him now, too. (Ford jerked back almost automatically at the motion, then thought it was probably best to continue on out of there, following said motion with haste.)
"Teacher's lounge is circled in green, lab coats are in the side closet, and the detention slips should be in the cookie tin at the back of the room. -Write your name on the board, and remember to have fun, dear!" was what followed him cheerily out of the office, and Ford kept right on marching, paper map clutched in one hand.
Axolotl preserve him, it was always the ones who were a head-and-a-half smaller than him. And why that particular hands-on-the-hips posture was always so effective in any species that he'd ever encountered, he feared that he would never know.
Upon entering the classroom, Ford looked around almost aimlessly, as he tried to decide what, exactly, to do about this turn of events - should he leave? but that would leave Bill in a classroom today with no teacher, and oh, that would be a disaster - and in his meanderings, he thought to check what the head secretary in the main office of the school had told him.
And Ford soon realized that everything was exactly where the secretary in the office had told him that it would be, and… it occurred to him to wonder if she knew these sorts of details about each and every classroom in the building.
...He mentally revised the woman's threat level from 'local minor warlord' up to 'regional, major power'.
Ford looked around the classroom, and down at his copy of the school map again. Which had his entire schedule written down the side of it, with short succinct explanations, times, and locations. Each room on his schedule was circled, and had a hallway-route helpfully drawn out as well between them.
It was all color-coded.
...He wasn't going to be leaving the building today, was he. She knew exactly where he was supposed to be at all times, and likely had a school full of informants. In the form of the other teachers. And janitors. And other school staff... And maybe even some of the students, because didn't they also have office helpers?
(Was… was this what high school was really like? For the adults?)
"NO. AND NO. AND NO. -ALSO, NO," Bill said angrily, fists clenched at his sides as Miz and the younger twins exchanged glances and moved off to their own seats, unblocking the doorway into the classroom.
"Sit. Down." Ford said testily, glaring Bill down.
...Except that Bill wasn't cooperating with that. Bill wasn't 'glaring down' (or sitting down); he was glaring up right back at that Stanford instead.
"DON'T ORDER ME AROUND!" Bill declared angrily. He was NOT at all pleased with this new development. Because Sixer couldn't-! This was cheating! AND NOT THE GOOD KIND OF CHEATING, EITHER!
-And it shouldn't COUNT anyway! Sixer wasn't 'one of his teachers', he was his Zodiac, AND he was walking into things BIASED by things other people had told him, AND he couldn't GET AWAY WITH trying to 'dislike' or suspend or expel him anyway! -STANFORD PINES WAS NOT LOSING HIM HIS BET WITH STANLEY.
(Miz sat quietly at her desk. So… Ford was their teacher? How'd THIS get allowed by the school? Though, he DID look pretty cute in that labcoat~ She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands and sighed dreamily as she looked him up and down. Damn squirmy feelings and all.)
"Bill-" Ford began, in a firm, no-nonsense, 'I am not taking any of your dimension-conquering demonic bullshit or your mental mindgames, not from you, not right now; not today' tone of voice.
-AND THAT IDIOT WAS NOT GOING TO GET AWAY WITH TRYING TO ORDER HIM AROUND WHILE HE WAS WORKING TO KEEP THE BET, EITHER! -Bill was calling FOUL on this one, he wouldn't SIT for this! He WOULDN'T take this LYING DOWN, if that Stanford even so much as TRIED to- to- the (( )(# (&*# ! HOW D̸͙̪̮͓͉̦͙ͯ́͑̈͆̑͂͛͜ͅḀ̡̮̫̠̟̮̘̞̊̈́̎ͨR̴̷̠̯̦̼͕̖͙̥̄͂̏͒E͋̊͆̌̋̚͏̮̠̟̻ HE TRY TO GET AWAY WITH THIS! WITH H̴̟̖̽ͨ̒̽̓͒͞͠I̷̢͈͓̙̙̪̫͒ͬ͋Ṁ̈̋̓̂͛͏͔̹!
The rest of the class was glancing back and forth between Ford and Bill warily. Clearly, the new girl knew their substitute teacher. And wasn't happy at all to see him here.
One guy nudged Lee and asked, "What's up with them?" to which Lee just shrugged and said, "He's… uh… the brother of Bill's… guardian?" Sort of? Well, Lee didn't fully understand what the demon's relationship with the older thems was all about, but on paper in those forged documents that Stan had asked Miz to create, it did list him as all of their guardian.
Miz spoke up, "Uncle Ford and Bill have a very… contentious relationship. Complicated history. Some bad decisions on both ends… broke up their Deal a few weeks back," which had both the kids nearby and the twins staring at her. She could already feel the new rumors that were going to pop up at this.
...It was gonna be hilarious!
"They broke up?" One guy a few seats down muttered before shuddering. "But he's so old-" and that had Miz turning to address him. "Actually, brother is older than him."
"You have a brother, too?" another student asked her, "Where is he?" and Miz sighed.
But before Miz could open her mouth to explain, the bell rang, and-
Ford got an odd sort of smile, that grew as he stared down at Bill.
"Greetings, class!" Ford enthused out in ringing tones, turning towards the class somewhat, but not quite turning or looking away from Bill completely as he talked. "Your regular teacher is taking a sick day to be with his family today-" ("What?" went Bill. "That's not-!") "-so I am acting as your substitute teacher for today." ("NO!") "You may call me Dr. Pines-" ("I'll CALL you-") "-and today, we'll be picking right up where we left off in your textbooks on page 372." (Slight groans from a few in the class, as Bill squeezed his hands into fists at his sides and fumed as he said: "Stanford.") "But you won't be needing your textbooks for today-" ("Stanford.") "-in fact, you should put them all away, right now-" ("STANFORD.") "-and since Bill here is already standing up and being so very eager to help out with things as of late-" ("Not with YOU.") "-he will be my assistant for today-" ("LIKE HELL!") "-and for our first lesson-"
Ford turned towards Bill and pulled something ovular-shaped out from the back of his coat and held it up between two fingers.
And Bill moved his gaze between it, and him, and it, and him again, looking somewhat caught off-guard and startled, as Ford's smile turned into a grin, and he said, "-we'll be discussing the application of Newton's Three Laws today."
(The class was very confused at this point. Miz was simply curious as to what Ford was going to do. She took this chance to point at Bill and explain, "Bill is my brother. We decided that." The guy she was talking to looked even more confused as he said, "We didn't-")
("Not you," Miz scoffed, looking like she thought the idea of any of the kids here deciding anything for her was a ridiculous concept. "Bill and I decided that he's my brother. And that I am his sister," she said simply. "Being a brother or a sister is a state of being, it has nothing to do with sex or gender," she explained, picking up on the fact that people still didn't understand that Bill was a guy. It wasn't that difficult to understand, was it? From the looks on people's faces, it WAS. Miz was almost annoyed. "Bill is a guy. He decided he's a guy," she said simply. "And I'm currently a girl. But I can change my mind later," she said simply.)
(The guy stared at her and then his eyes drifted down to her chest. "So… you can be a guy?" He asked. Miz rolled her eyes. "It's not that difficult of a concept." She turned back towards the front of the class, where Bill was still looking completely flabbergasted at what Ford was doing.)
Bill was looking over the junky-looking piece of tech that Sixer was holding in his hand, scanning it with his suit and quickly trying to determine exactly what that Stanford thought that stupid thing was SUPPOSED to be able to do for him that would mean anything at all in this-
And then Bill got it.
The rest of the class saw the new girl go expressionless, and her eyes go quite wide.
"-YOU," Bill began, as Stanford Pines got a truly maniacal grin and with a lightning-fast motion, flicked what he was holding straight down onto the floor of the classroom-
-where it seemed to slap against the floor and stick there, as a ring of light around the edges of it flashed purple, twice, then shifted to a bright green color...
And literally everything (and everyone) in the classroom started slowly floating upwards.
(-Except Ford, who was holding onto the side of the ubiquitous sort of black-countered floor-mounted table - with sink and gas line for chemical use as well - that one always found in a properly stocked science teaching class at the front of the room, next to him.)
Miz rolled her eyes even as she floated upwards. "Right, just anti-gravity everything. And Lee gets mad at ME for blowing my cover?" then she got distracted by her hair waving around as she shook her head and sputtered, brushing it out of her face.
"Lesson one," Ford began, as he hung onto the side of the table, watching Bill with a (terrible) gleam in his eye. "For every action, there is an equal and…"
"-I'll 'opposite reaction' YOU!" Bill yelled out irately, making a gesture and bringing his suit into full-on display. And as every last seam of his suit lit up blue, and Bill stopped floating upwards (he seemed to be now controlling his motion in some way, floating in place and reorienting himself for a rush forwards at the man in front of him) and yelled out, "YOU OVERBLOWN-"
-the light on the device attached to the floor suddenly flickered purple again for a moment.
-And Bill suddenly slammed sideways into the front wall of the classroom, letting out an odd and completely-startled burring click-chirp-squeak.
"Now, no cheating, Bill!" Ford called out, his smile morphing into a grin for a moment. (He'd specially designed slight shifts in the gravity field to occur at random split-second moments, and with the sort of suit Bill was wearing and the way he probably had the whole thing tuned to work with and against the rest of the environment around him…)
"rrRRRAAAAAAHHHH!" Bill yelled out, as he careened off of the front blackboard, barely got himself oriented before he bounced off of it and up into the ceiling, and then started drifting slightly more slowly back down towards the floor again, after hitting and bouncing off of that.
"Newton's first law," Ford said quite properly next, "Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion-"
"-I'LL EXTERNAL FORCE Y̡͍͖̞̩̩ͥͫͨ̚O̷̷̮͈̠̼̱͖͔̲͒̀̾ͮ̎͊̏͠Ŭ̫̰͇̗̉͒ͫ̕͘͝!" Bill yelled out next, and he seemed to twist around, half-contorting himself in place-
-and a mass of black pointed-somethings seemed to shoot out from his back, out from under his shirt, into long joined-together half-tentacle half-spider-leg-like feelers, that slammed into the ceiling, the side wall, and the floor, anchoring him in place. All four of them.
"Ah, brother?" Miz called out, holding an arm around her chest, "Maybe you should calm down and…" She trailed off. "Well, class and stuff? I don't think getting mad at the substitute teacher is a good thing?" She looked around. This actually seemed like it might be pretty fun, if that Stanford wasn't being so smug about it.
Everyone was staring. "Dear god they really ARE aliens!" someone whispered while Lee was too busy trying to figure out how not to bounce himself off of any of the floating desk-chairs or any other the other people, to worry about his reputation or anything else. (All he could do was ask himself why, why was the older Stan the only sane one of them all?!) Sixer, meanwhile, was delightedly jotting down notes, uncaring as to whatever embarrassment this might possibly cause him in the future. And, after a moment of reflection, Sixer began eyeing the device that was stuck to the floor down in front of him with the utmost of interest...
"HE'S-" Bill snarled. Miz sighed. "He's our substitute teacher. It happens." She sent a small glare at Ford. "No one's going to get hurt when gravity comes back on, right?" she asked.
"Of course not," Ford began (still keeping an eye of Bill), "I-"
"HE IS NOT OUR SUBSTITUTE TEACHER, HE IS GOING DOWN!"
"Brother!" Miz said sternly. "Class has started!"
But it was too late. Bill had already launched himself head-first (and arms-first) forward towards Ford using his additional synthetic 'arms', and-
Ford shoved off of the table and kicked as he went, neatly dodging Bill-
"...I can't believe you picked a fight." Miz sighed.
"He is NOT our substitute teacher," Bill said tersely, arms-crossed. "Stanley AGREED."
Lee was walking along behind them with a dazed look. His mind was still caught in a recollection of what had happened during that period… they'd actually been floating... (If they could just set that same thing up someplace else, he bet people would pay to be able to play around in that for even a couple minutes or so. Like those bouncy houses! Or ball-pits! Except this thing could be for adults, and-)
The vice-principal was making his rounds through the hallway, and slowly coming around the corner towards the science classroom with that new substitute teacher who was filling in for John Harman's advanced class, that day. He should probably just quickly poke his head in...
He sped up a bit as he heard (muffled, but) loud and angry yelling echoing down the corridor.
He was almost to the classroom door (it had been coming from the science classroom he'd planned on visiting anyway), and he had just opened it when-
-he wasn't entirely certain what had happened next, but he thought something flew out over his head as he reflexively ducked, and he heard a horrendous slamming noise into the lockers behind him.
He heard a loud thud next, as he spun in place to stare down at…
He was greeted with the sight of an adult in a tan trench coat, wearing a white lab coat on top of it, sprawled out across the hallway floor over by the lockers, across the hall from him. He was looking slightly shaken, though he raised a hand to his head, then seemed to shake it all off quickly.
"HA!" the vice-principal heard come out of the classroom behind him, as he moved forward to check on the… substitute teacher? "YOU WANT SCIENCE! -NEWTON WAS A HACK, AND IT WASN'T AN APPLE, IT WAS A KUMQUAT! I-"
Then the voice cut off, and there was a cursing noise at the same time as the sound of something brittle-sounding breaking and-
"Are you all right?" the shaken vice-principal asked, as he helped the man stand up and-
"I'm fine, I-" The man looked startled, and just about leaped forward and away from him back towards the classroom door, wrenching it open almost immediately at the sound of a horrendous loud crash that came from the room.
A softer voice called out, "I doubt people cared enough to have that taught in schools." There was a pause and then, "Did I catch everyone? Are you all alright?"
Ford was greeted to the sight of Bill Cipher, lying sprawled along his side across the floor, sans all of the little small hovering robotic 'extensions' that he'd been using as anchor-points for himself earlier, and Miz, being held up by something like half of those extensions, in a swing-like… swing, that extended three lines down from the ceiling to support her.
Both of those things were rather expected by him. What was unexpected was that the other half of Bill's robots were shoved up against each and every one of the desk-chairs in the room, having shoved them all over and away from the center of the room, to be piled up head-high against the side and back edges of the classroom.
And the rest of the class of students being held in place in the air by a faint blue glow that was fading as they were all being gently lowered to the ground.
The 'anti'gravity-control device that he'd mounted to the classroom floor was dead, dead, and more-dead - three times over. A spear of three of Bill's little robots were thrust through it from the top, and two shorter spears had pierced the sides of it to, having intersected it at two other odd angles entirely.
...And Sixer was sitting on the floor nearby it, with a screwdriver in his hand. "You didn't have to break it…" he whined out at Bill.
Ford didn't have time to react. Bill was on his feet - and had dragged Sixer up off of his feet, within the space of half a second, and he looked ABSOLUTELY ENRAGED.
"THIS IS A CLASSROOM!" Bill Cipher yelled out at the teenager, straight into his face (as the rest of his robotic extensions dropped down and slid across the floor back to him in an almost-reflexive recall to his person). "YOU DO NOT MESS WITH ANYTHING THAT YOU DO NOT ALREADY UNDERSTAND WITHOUT SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING TELLING YOU THAT IT IS OKAY! YOU-"
Ford was not too happy himself with his alternate-self himself, having realized what had just happened (the younger Ford had just tried to open up an unknown piece of technology without- he'd just- was he insane?!). But he still strode forward and was about to intervene, when...
"-What is going on here?!" the vice-principal yelled out, as he finally entered the classroom himself.
Miz raised her hand, "Ford tried to mess with the device Dr. Pines brought in to show the class for our lesson."
The vice-principal looked around the room, at all the students standing, at the desk-chairs shoved up in a mess all around, at the teacher who'd been literally thrown out of the classroom, and at the two students in front, one of whom looked about fit and ready to strangle the other.
"Bill," Ford said lowly. "You need to put him down. Stanley-"
Ford flinched as Bill opened his fisted hands and literally let go of him, and Sixer fell straight down to the floor, feet then buttocks and elbows hitting in rapid succession as he fell backwards, unable to get his legs properly under himself in time.
The vice-principal watched this, and then cleared his throat.
"Dr. Pines," he said slowly. "In case you are unaware, the normal way to handle this sort of behavior is to hand out a detention slip-"
"-He can't do THAT!" Bill all but sneered out. "He's NOT a TEACHER!"
Miz sighed. "He's a sub. It happens," she repeated.
"He's NOT a teacher, SUBSTITUTE or OTHERWISE," Bill said again next, crossing his arms.
The vice-principal looked at Bill. He looked at Ford.
And then he said to Ford, with a slight frown, "...You're not a teacher?"
Ford tensed in place.
"Ah…" Ford began. "Well…?"
...Lee snapped back into the present when some kids yelped and slammed themselves up against the walls to get out of their way, as his group (with Bill and Miz in the lead) walked by them down the hallway. Frankly, he was just amazed that none of them were suspended, or in any trouble at all.
...It probably had something to do with the older-him showing up to school and doing, well, whatever that old guy did, that always seemed to fix things. Lee kinda wished he knew what had happened in that office...
"Are you kidding me," Stanley said blandly, as he looked down at both Bill and Ford, who were sitting in chairs in the main office, with two full empty chairs between them, looking about as petulant as he'd ever seen either one of them (not that either of them would admit that was what they were doing), and making a point to look away from each other at all times as they sat where they sat.
Miz (who was standing by both Lee and Sixer) raised a hand. "I told brother to stop."
"Uh huh." Stan nodded at her and turned to her to give her a pat on the head. "Thanks for trying." He glanced over at the vice-principal and then said, "You go off with the twins here to lunch, now. I'll talk to these-"
"-NO. 'Ford needs a penalty RIGHT NOW," Bill said. "He was STUPID and RECKLESS and he-"
"I will talk with him about what he did wrong later, after school," Stan cut him off, and Bill quieted. (For the moment.) "You three; out."
Once they were gone, he turned towards Ford. "Ford, what in the hell-"
"-I was drafted," Ford told him, sounding annoyed. "I didn't even say yes to-"
"Yes, you did," was the two cents from the head secretary in the office, "And I have the paperwork and witnesses to prove it!" she added brightly.
Stan (and the vice-principal both) turned around to look at her for a moment. The vice-principal and Stan exchanged a look, and then the vice-principal sighed, turned, and headed back for his office after that. (Yeah. It was times like this that Stan was glad that he looked a good ten years older than his brother.)
Stan turned back to Ford and raised his eyebrows at him.
Ford hunched his shoulders at him (like some kind of teenager expecting to get told off by… who knew who, geez) and then muttered something under his breath that Stan's hearing-aid didn't quite catch.
"Right," Stan said. Wasn't gonna touch that one. Nope, Nosirree. He turned to the kid instead, and attacked the first problem head-on: "Kid, Ford's not your teacher; he's just a teacher here. He don't count."
"Fine!" the demon-kid snapped out, though he still didn't look all that happy with him. Or anything. "Good! -Because he ISN'T!"
Stan waited a beat, until the kid had settled down a little bit again. "You wanna tell me what went wrong?" Stan asked the kid next, once he had. And to that, Stan got back a...
"What, besides that 'Ford being a completely arrogant fool?" the kid sneered out. (Stan gritted his teeth, but managed to hold it in...) "-Sixer didn't put enough safety protocols in his equipment, AS USUAL," the kid said, rolling his eyes at him.
"I took precautions!" Ford protested. "There were safety protocols in place, to-!"
"-Not anything that was good enough to fail PROPERLY when you had a stupid HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENT going at it every worst-wrong-way with a screwdriver," Bill informed Stanley. "I broke it PROPERLY before that 'Ford managed to turn himself and the whole classroom around him into PASTE along WITH him. -YOU'RE WELCOME."
"It wouldn't have been a problem if I'd still been in the classroom and able to watch over things properly, Bill," Ford said testily, in pointed tones.
"SEE!" the kid said, gesturing at Ford with both hands. "He ADMITS it!"
Ford clenched his jaw, and gave the kid a look like he wanted to drop-kick him across the room.
Stanley decided to side-step the next problem by simply saying, "Ford, what-all do you have left to do for today, filling in for Mr. Harman?"
"I have a free period, then third-block lunch, then nothing… except I am apparently not supposed to leave the premises until after the final bell rings, at the end of the school day," Ford added slowly, and for some reason he was looking over at the head secretary when he said it.
Well, at least his brother didn't have any more classes to 'teach' today. Stan sighed.
"Okay," said Stan. "Here's what we're gonna do. -Kid, you do your thing. Ford, you-"
"Someone needs to watch Bill today, Stanley," his brother told him and Stan stared down at him.
Then Stan rubbed a hand across his face.
"...Thought you were just talkin' about after-school Ford," Stan told him, dropping the hand and already feeling tired of all this. "Not watching the kid all damn day."
But at the adamant look his brother was giving him...
"Fine," said Stan. "Ford, third-block lunch is what the kid's got, so you're just gonna follow him around all damn day, for the rest of the day. Got it? -And I mean follow him," Stan warned. "No getting up in his business during class or anything else. The real teachers can handle it. -You sit in the back of the classroom, and you stay quiet. Understand? It'll be like parent-teacher day, or something."
Ford looked incredibly disgruntled at this. "I don't-"
"You want to watch him today? You get to watch him today. Period." Stan glared down at him.
"I've been following the bet," Bill muttered.
"I know ya have, kid," Stan told him. "I don't think he was tryin' to mess that up for ya' though. Don't even think it occurred to him," he said, as Ford looked up at him all confused. Stan turned towards the kid. "He does anything other than just sit in the back of the class? You tell me; I'll take it into account, all right? We all know he shouldn't be here," Stan noted, more for Ford's benefit than the kid's, "So if he goes doin' something that would be losing you the bet you've got with me, then that ain't on you; that's on him. You'll win by default," he told the kid, "Unless you're the one goading him into doing whatever screws things up for you, instead. Science class today is a wash. Understand?"
He got a terse and touchy-looking nod from the kid.
...And he also got a frowning glance between them by Ford as he talked, and then a flash of both understanding and horror from his brother, before Ford managed to get his poker face back on again. (…Yeah, Ford. You thought the kid went freaking ballistic on your ass there for no damn reason? Think again.) Good thing the kid had been looking the opposite direction away from him when Ford had had his little 'revelation' there.
"Alright you two. Get," Stan said, tossing a thumb at the doorway.
The kid got up immediately and strode out. Ford, on the other hand, lagged behind.
"Stan…" Ford said slowly.
"I'll have a talk with the vice-principal," Stan told him, "Just in case, to wrap stuff up. You, don't do anything stupid with the kid," he told his brother. "I mean it. Stay outta trouble."
Ford looked down for a moment, then over at the vice-principal's office.
"I really was only trying to make the lesson interesting, for once," Ford said to him, looking away.
And at that, Stan couldn't help but clap his brother on the shoulder, smile a little, and say, "Yeah, Ford. I know. Kids probably appreciated it, too. Including the kid."
He didn't miss the startled look his brother gave him as he turned and walked away from him.
(He did miss the slight, confused but pleased smile that Ford got a few moments later, looking after his brother. But the ladies in the office sure didn't.)
"...I'm almost glad they're leaving next week…" Lee groaned, glancing back behind him at the older Stanford who was still following them, a few paces behind them and away.
When they (finally!) got to gym class (the last class of the day), Lee trudged into the changing room (ignoring the commotion from the older Stanford not being allowed to follow Bill into the girl's changing room - not from him actually trying to go in, but from him arguing with Bill that he shouldn't) and wished he had one of those 'blessed' violins that kept people away from him like Ben did, when the guys in the changing room wanted to ask him about Miz.
"Fess up dude, are you banging her?"
Lee groaned. "No. Her overprotective sibling would probably rip someone's dick off if they tried." That finally got the guys to back off, wincing at the thought. Lee wasn't looking forward to gym. Bill was going to give him a threat-filled workout again, he just knew it.
Lee could hear the horrified groans of everyone in class when their teacher announced that they were going to play Tag today. Lee glanced over at where Miz was explaining how Tag worked. Bill rolled his eyes and huffed out, "I know how this game works!" It was like when he had chased the kids through his Fearamid - only then he had been 'catching', instead of just 'tagging'.
Miz shrugged. She didn't really like Tag but it was an okay game. She simply had to stay away from people… and make sure her protective enchantments would keep her safe without hurting the people around her. Easy.
The PE teacher looked around. "Who wants to be It?" she asked.
Bill had the widest smile on his face as he exclaimed loudly, "I DO!" which caused everyone in class to flinch in unison and then stare at Bill in horror.
Time seemed to slow for the rest of the students as the teacher nodded and brought her whistle up to her lips to blow and signal the start of the Game, as well as the end of their lives.
As a collective unit, all the students in class had a singular thought in mind, 'HIDE BEHIND MIZ!', since they thought (assumed) that perhaps they would be safe there.
They were wrong.
-Not just about using Miz as a shield, but because none of them were able to get to her before Bill had already tagged his first victim - that being Ben, who saw Bill racing straight towards him with a manic grin on his face, and ducked behind his violin like it was his lifeline.
Ben shuddered as Bill went straight past the barrier his violin created to protect him from everyone else, and he squinted his eyes shut, sure that he would be dead now that his one hope of survival had proven that it was no safe harbor against BILL...
"TAG! YOU'RE IT!" Bill poked the tip of Ben's nose lightly and then ran off, laughing maniacally as he went all the way. Ben blinked his eyes open and reached a hand up to pat the spot.
He… he wasn't dead?!
Ben's knees buckled and he would have collapsed then and there if Miz hadn't called out, "Ben~! You're supposed to tag someone now." And he looked up to see Bill grinning as he ran and ducked and swerved around all the other kids, while Miz bounced lightly on her feet (and other places) as she verbally continued to encourage him to start playing.
Ben slowly straightened up and heaved a sigh of relief, before turning to try and chase down the nearest kid. Everyone else relaxed, very much glad that Bill wasn't It anymore.
It was a pretty quiet gym class after that. Everyone made sure to not tag Bill or his sister, just so there would be no danger. Still, Bill ran around between the kids, grinning like a lunatic and keeping them all on their toes (they remembered the last few gym classes, they were more than a little afraid of him), so no one got to relax for even a moment. Also, many boys (and even a few girls) tripped while running as they got distracted by Miz jogging along in front of them.
Lee was panting as they left the gymnasium to go get showered and changed. He wasn't as bad off as he'd been during the dodgeball practice, but he sniffed at his arm and then coughed. -Man, he stunk.
Sixer hadn't run so much as walked briskly around the gym, and therefore wasn't as bad off as his brother. Sixer changed quickly, wiping himself down with some wet paper towels just to clean himself off, without having to strip down fully and enter the showers. He didn't like showering with the other boys if he could avoid it.
Sixer watched as Lee stripped his shirt off and trudge off to the showers himself, though. And as he did so, the six-fingered teenager couldn't help but compare their physiques. They were twins, but Lee was bulkier, more muscular. Not a scrawny little twig like he was...
Sixer shook his head. It meant nothing; he was the smart one and all Lee had was his fists. That… that's just how it was. It was fine... Though, Sixer had seen what the older him had done to those cops… He looked down at his scrawny arms. So… he was (eventually) going to grow up to be a badass. Right? (Maybe he should ask Miz about it…)
He quickly finished up in the changing room, not wanting to stay there any longer than necessary, since more often than not after a certain point, the other boys started playing around like children, slapping each other with towels and other such nonsense. Rowdy, uncouth… Sixer didn't like them. To be honest, he didn't like most of the other kids at school. -He couldn't hold a decent conversation with any of them! Not really.
Sixer spotted Miz, Bill, and the older Stanford already waiting for him outside of the locker rooms, out in the hallway, and he felt himself smile. The kids at school were beneath him not worth his time, but the demons made everything better. They were interesting in a way that no-one else here was. And the things that they knew-!
Miz spotted him and waved. Sixer smiled. Also, it was… really nice to be around people who had no problem with his genetic abnormality his hands. (Said hands twitched.) Also, Miz's hands were really soft and warm. He liked holding hands - well, when Miz held his hands at least. Sixer had never initiated a handhold… He glanced over at Miz's hands, which were down at her sides as she chatted with some girls. He shuffled a little closer to her, trying not to look like he was looking at her hands.
They were small, with dainty, slender fingers and pointed nails. Almost like claws. Sixer had noticed them before but despite how sharp they seemed, Miz had never hurt him with them. He wondered if they were really claws, showing through from her non-human side. Miz wasn't paying attention to him, chatting with a group of girls, whose names Sixer had never really bothered to learn. "-ell they're real, but not in the sense that they grew naturally from a progression of age and genetics, except they kinda did? It's more like I asked brother to rewrite my genetic code in order to create the desired appearance…"
Sixer's hand inched towards hers, they were right next to each other...
"HEY!" Bill's voice made Sixer jump. The teenager quickly looked up at the older demon. Bill was stomping over, narrowing his eyes at him. (Bill had caught on to his body language; 'Ford was doing something he thought that he shouldn't do. SUSPICIOUS. And after the LAST two times now-)
Miz glanced over, blinked and tilted her head. She seemed to be in thought before she sighed and slumped a little in place. "It's fine. I'm not mad anymore. A little annoyed, but-" She reached out and took Sixer's hand casually. "-not mad. It's alright."
Bill glared at 'Ford for a few more seconds, then slowly relaxed somewhat. He didn't move any further away from them, though; he just turned and leaned up against the nearest wall, watching everything and everyone around him somewhat disinterestedly. (Ford eyed Bill, but said nothing at all about this.)
Sixer flushed as he looked down at their hands. She really didn't mind holding his hand… well, actually, why would she have an issue? She wasn't even human, she was a dragon, a triangle demon. Who was also an alien? -Well, either way, it made sense that Miz didn't care, or find his extra fingers gross… and… and… hadn't Miz said that people she met thought her triangle form was gross? Well, it hadn't seemed gross to him… Ah. (Sixer gently squeezed her hand. He could understand a bit.)
The girls blinked at them. "So… are you two a couple?" one asked. Miz shrugged. "Just friends, I don't know him well enough for anything more; also, he's too young," she said simply. Sixer colored a bit and looked down at his feet, a little embarrassed now that he was being watched and judged and labeled. But Miz didn't let go, and neither did he.
That was about when Lee came out from the changing room, dripping wet. Miz glanced over and raised her free hand to poke his nose again. "Boop, dry," she chirped. Lee shivered. "Do you have to use magic on me all the time?" he mumbled. Miz raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure you wouldn't enjoy dripping water for the next hour?"
Lee grumbled but couldn't really refute that. ...But Ford could. He spoke up and said, in descending tones, "Don't cast magic on other people without their permission."
Miz blinked. "Ah… I can see how that would be wrong. So I'll ask Lee next time. But what if I need to magic someone to save their life and I don't have time to get permission?"
Ford glowered at her. "I'm here, and I'm perfectly capable of saving other people without it. Don't cast magic on other people without their permission," he repeated.
"And what if I ask for permission to save their life with magic, and they say 'no'?"
"-Sis," Bill cut in. "I'm here, that Stanford is here. Stanley doesn't want me casting in school. We both have science to lean on. No-one should be dying here. This is not the time for this question! Wait for Stanley to be here with us," he told her.
Miz frowned. "I'm just asking because I've had to do that in the past, and I'm wondering if it was right or wrong to do so. And in the future, if I'm not with you two and this situation pops up, what should I do?"
Ford looked about ready to pitch a fit at what he thought was her crude attempt to weasel her way out of not doing whatever she wanted to people, whenever she wanted it.
Bill, on the other hand, simply said. "This is a question for Stanley later. The school teachers here don't teach this. This isn't their specialty!"
Miz nodded. "Okay. And I should just avoid magic on people until then, unless I have permission." The other kids milling around looked very lost at this conversation.
"Yes," Bill said, before Ford could say anything. "Stanley told you this on the boat. And told me after their fight and the snow-ing! Yes?"
"Yes." Miz nodded. She looked a little upset at herself. "I just forget, I'm too used to doing what I want."
"Then when you forget I will remind you, before Stanley has to," Bill told her.
Ford stared at Bill at all this. But Bill didn't even look at him, as they all started walking away.
Miz waved goodbye to the girls she'd been talking to and grabbed Lee's hand in her free hand to begin dragging the boys away, down the hallway. Lee rolled his eyes. "Why'd you always gotta hold our hands?" he complained.
Miz grinned, "It's much easier to drag you around this way~"
"Well, school's out so you don't need to drag me to class…" Lee mumbled. "And aren't you supposed to be terrorizing the beach right now?" He pointed out. Miz laughed. "Who says I'm not?"
Lee and Sixer stared at her in confusion. Miz giggled while Bill let out a "HA!" of laughter.
"I'm good at multitasking." Miz said cheerfully.
"She is here, and she isn't," Bill said. "But she is here, and the 'her' that isn't-here is most definitely an 'isn't'!" Bill enthused out, confusing the twins quite a bit, even though they themselves knew the plan.
-It had been Stan's idea. Since it would be suspicious if a 'monster' showed up and one of the new kids just so happened to not be anywhere during the whole incident. Bill had agreed, and asked (read: demanded) that Miz use a solid light projection that she was only indirectly controlling, instead of a second vessel she'd have to split herself to be inside, or anything else. Miz had agreed and created a projection that would have pre-programed actions and behavior (while still allowing Miz to remotely control it if she wanted to). The various types of touch (including pain) were not passed along to Miz herself, if somehow 'felt' by the projection. It would also 'turn into mist' when certain pre-conditions in the environment were satisfied. This was the safest bet, since Miz wouldn't actually get touched, grabbed, or otherwise (truly) captured during this whole scam, and the projection would vanish and be unable to harm anyone or be harmed itself, if anything went wrong at all.
Lee sighed. Well, everything should be in place for their plan. Frankly, he was a little nervous. The older version of him had called it a scam, and yeah, it kind of was, but... It made him wonder about what exactly his older self's job was...
Hand in hand with Miz, they all set off to the beach.
