Illusion is Reality

Chapter 94

-Don't know when-

Ford was immediately on edge when he walked into the kitchen for breakfast the next day, sure that there'd be some continuation of the awfulness from the night before. He paused when he saw Miz and Bill in the kitchen and only untensed a little when he saw Stan was there as well. -Only a little, because Stan looked a little tense himself as well, and Ford didn't know why.

(Stan was still a little tense, because when he'd come downstairs to get himself some breakfast before he got cranky old man on anyone's ass - knowing he was still in a halfway foul mood from the night before, and needed something to eat before he had to handle any more damn demon idiocy that morning - and the demons had joined him a little later…)

(...the first words outta the kid's mouth after Stan had asked the kid 'if there was anything else either of them wanted to say to him or ask him first,' continuing off their discussion from the night before, had been Bill informing him that he was going to help Miz not to talk to Ford at all from now on, or try to be human, because he wasn't going to let 'that Stanford' tell her what she should or shouldn't do, expecting her to follow it.)

(-That had woken Stan up completely. It had left Stan with a chill down his spine and he'd nearly dropped the bowl he'd been pulling out of the cabinet for cereal in shock. -And Stan had set that one straight real damn quick, because apparently the kid thought 'having a conversation with' someone and 'understanding' them fully when they did it? In insane-triangle-talk, meant somebody agreeing with the other person afterwards, for whoever 'won' that conversation they were having!)

(Frankly, he wasn't sure how the kid had kept a lid on that one for an entire night - though the kid had gotten his sister out of the bedroom pretty quickly after that. Because that had been the sort of shit that that younger Sixer had thought he could get Stan to pull for him, and Stan had said he would never do, that had gotten Sixer paralyzed in the throat for even suggesting that he'd ask for it, from Stan. And the demon-kid had wanted to kill Sixer for it instead, and only hadn't because of how he knew Miz and Stan would feel about the killing - he'd been pretty clear about that at the time, within the pages of that transcript of his that he'd handed over when Stan had asked for it. But Stan was the enforcer, not the asker. And the demon-kid had thought that Stan had said-)

(But maybe that was part of it. Stan had been clear as anything at the time, in that other dimension, about never doing that to either of them, never trying to pull that one off, to hell with anything else about it, and so far, he'd always been completely consistent with the kid. And the kid knew that. ...Which was maybe the only reason why he was still alive last night; they'd all been tired and angry and irritable as all get out, but the kid had actually taken that into account for once. Not because he'd noticed the discrepancy - which was how Stan realized how tired the kid had been at the time - but because the kid had felt he'd had options still, instead of feeling like he'd had his back up against the wall. He hadn't taken his sister and run, like he'd talked about maybe leaving before, and he hadn't decided that that had been a deal-breaker and a line that impinged on his own that he wouldn't put up with, and just gone off on them all. The kid had not done any of that shit, because he knew he could talk to Stan afterwards, because Stan had always brought up things that he'd dropped for the next morning the next morning, with no delay unless the kid asked for it, or if he did. Because the discussion wasn't really over yet, and because Stan was flexible about stuff - when the kid thought something was important, Stan didn't just shut him down for no reason, he tried to provide him with other options instead, better ones, ideas for things that they could all put up with and live with…)

(And really, that was the whole of it. The kid hadn't killed him, because the kid had felt like he'd had options left, still. Even if he hadn't been thinking it outright, that he would talk to Stan about it the next morning, it had become such a habit that the kid had felt it anyway. -Which was why Stan wasn't trying to 'hang' the kid with a bunch of too-strict rules in the first place! He wanted it to be damn near automatic that the kid would come to him, and say stuff to him, and look to him as somebody to talk to for working out a 'better' solution, if there was something going on that he didn't like, because 'didn't like' turned into 'cackling destructive demon' way too goddamn fast for him, and they all knew it. Stan didn't need Ford to tell him that one, and the kids sure as hell didn't, either. Hell, he'd gotten that one from the demon getting the jump on them in the pyramid, what he'd done then, and then chasing after the kids in the pyramid, and everything after.)

(...It had still left Stan feeling a little cold, at how close a call that really might've been last night, while he'd reiterated things with the demon-kid and his little sister down there in the kitchen that morning, and set the record straight. Because if the kid had been even a little more tired and less inclined to wait for their upcoming pick-up-the-talk-again in the morning…)

(Miz was still going to try to keep the chatter with Ford minimal - which Stan was okay with overall, for now, as long as she could actually hold her end up of that even with Ford sniping at her occasionally. They'd see about that, Stan figured, but she wasn't the kid, so Stan wasn't exactly holding his breath on that one. -But hey, at least the reasons behind it now were different, and maybe almost kind of on-point now, instead of just being completely wrong and all kinds of screwed-up.)

Stan let out a breath when he saw his brother, and gave him a long look, but otherwise didn't say much of anything, just gave Ford a soft grunt that could've been charitably called a 'g'dmornin', as he turned back to his newspaper and whatever he was reading in it. Ford noted the highly nutritious can of Pitt Cola and bowl of sugary cereal sitting in front of him, half-eaten, spoon still in the bowl. ...And his brother complained that he was the one with the sweet tooth between the two of them.

Ford watched the demons as he moved into the kitchen. Neither demon so much as glanced at him though; in fact, it looked like Miz was trying to ignore him.

Watching them warily, Ford continued on his trek to obtain breakfast (and coffee - yes Stan, he understood that coffee was not the only breakfast one needed to make it through the day, that one day on the boat had just been a fluke… or, ah, that other day when… actually, how many times had he…? … ... …hm).

He managed to grab himself a coffee mug from the cabinet without incident, fill it with coffee, and set it on the table at his place. He similarly managed to obtain both cereal bowl, spoon, milk, and cereal all four, similarly without incident, even as he needed to move past the demons to get to the fridge (for both the milk inside it and cereal boxes stop it) at one point.

Ford twitched a little when Miz moved away from the stove range to place a plate of omelettes on the table. He glanced down at the food suspiciously, noticing Miz's frown. But the man-eater didn't say anything, just went back to the cabinets to grab some more serving plates and utensils to begin setting the table for the kids. She still hadn't spoken to him, or glanced up at him.

Ford watched her as he ate his cereal and drank his coffee, just as intently as he would were he stuck in the brush with a Gremloblin roaming the woods nearby, and him without a working gun on him to use to scare it off or worse...

And when the kids came down for breakfast, Ford made it a point to warn them, "Don't touch the omelettes there, Miz made them." Which got another frown out of her, but Ford watched the dragon-demon close her eyes and take a few deep breaths before calming and going back to cleaning and putting the cooking supplies away.

"Okay!" Mabel enthused out brightly, who went for a cereal bowl herself, and some of the most sugary concoctions of the bunch (several - she liked to mix them together, most days). Dipper went for some instant oatmeal instead. (Ford assumed the hot water in the kettle was fine. Bill wouldn't have done anything to that himself; he was nursing a cup of his own tea, and Stan had likely watched him do it, if Stan hadn't been the one to set it to boil himself.)

Miz quietly mumbled, "I didn't claim them…" Ford almost rolled his eyes. That was hardly the only issue, there! She could have done quite literally anything to them, or claimed any of the ingredients prior!

He glanced over at Stan, who seemed to be pretending not to hear any of them at the moment, despite clearly having his hearing-aid in. His brother took another sip of his soda, and turned a page of the local newspaper. (Stan held it a little low, as usual, so that he could see them all at the same time as he was reading, if need be.)

Once Miz was sure Bill was eating some roasted vegetables she'd made, she sat down to begin serving herself, taking one of the omelettes from the large serving plate at the center of the table and settling down to eat. "This one is mine. The others aren't claimed yet," she said quietly.

"That gonna be enough for you, Miz?" Stan asked, folding up the paper and setting it down next to his place at the table. Miz finished chewing her mouthful and swallowed.

"No…" she responded almost hesitantly, before continuing with, "-I was gonna go catch a few animals later…" She seemed to hesitate again, "-Unless that's not a good idea?"

(...With the way she ate?) "Don't want to go fishing or gaming out the place," Stan noted, glancing down at his cereal and stirring his spoon in the bowl, as he grimaced down at it a bit. "Gnomes are pretty gamey, too," Stan said next (which got him a chiding "Stan!" from his brother that he mostly ignored, heh). Stan sat forward in his chair a little, shoved the plate with the remaining omelettes on it towards her casually, and then grabbed one of the sugary cereal boxes from over in front of Mabel. "There's a big warehouse store one town over. We can stock up there." He poured himself a bit more of the cereal into his bowl, mixing it into what was already there. "I'll hitch the small trailer up to my car; we can get an electric cooler to put the stuff in. Been meanin' to get one of those anyway for a while. Maybe two," Stan said reflectively. Not like they ever had enough space to hold his fish when he got serious going out there on the lake. And if he ever wanted to seriously go deer hunting with Manly Dan or the kid sometime, to help keep the grocery budget low? Or keep a big supply of ice pops for the Mystery Shack just a little bit longer?

Miz seemed to think about it before nodding and wiggling in her seat. "Okay…" She ate the other omelettes quietly after claiming them.

Ford frowned a bit at Stan.

"Is that wise?" Ford said. He hadn't expected Stan to be putting out any amount of money towards one of Bill's… guests. (Continuing to do so for Bill? Perhaps. But-)

Ford looked over to Miz, frowning, and noticed how uncomfortable Miz seemed... about the idea of Stan spending money on her? Hm. (Was that the actual source of her discomfort, or no? She'd made that wiggling motion before…)

"It's fine, Ford," Stan told him. "Like I said, been meanin' to get a couple of those for awhile."

"...And now we're up to 'a couple'?" Ford said, sitting back with a feeling of vague amusement. He'd heard that tone of voice from his brother before. If they weren't careful, Stan might decide that 'large electric coolers' were a smart investment opportunity, and…

Ford sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his fingers across them. Because his brother, sometimes...

Miz's next words made Ford's eyebrows raise again. "I… could help?" Miz suggested, sounding unsure.

"'Course you're gonna help," said Stan. "We'll be getting some ice and the meat on the same trip. You'll have to pick out what you'll actually eat," Stan told her. "Figure your big brother'll probably want to tag along, too." Ford watched Stan eye Bill oddly. "For moral support."

"Mm," said Bill. (Ford blinked. That was… usually a 'noncommittal yes' from him these days, wasn't it? Ford glanced over at Dipper, who glanced up from his oatmeal and nodded at him ever so slightly. ...So that was a yes. He hadn't misheard.)

Miz looked a little confused but nodded slowly. "Can I fly above your car? I can go invisible?"

Stan shrugged. "Hey, I ain't askin' you to get in the car when you don't want to." Wasn't like he'd forgotten what she'd told them before about that car crash stuff. "Figure you can either just sit on top, sit in the open trailer in back, fly with your brother above, or fly yourself. Just, y'know, try to stay in sight so I know what's what with you, yeah?" Miz looked relieved at that. She still looked like she had something on her mind.

"But, should I help with anything else?" she asked again.

"Kid should be able to help me load stuff up into the trailer. Don't worry about it," Stan told her, and to this, Miz wiggled in place again.

"I can help too...?" she trailed off, seeming more confused.

Stan eyed Miz for a moment. "There somethin' in particular you were thinking of helping with there, Miz?" Ford's brother asked her next - fishing for what, exactly, Ford did not know.

Miz wiggled again. "I can enchant the cooler to stay cool without needing ice?" she suggested. Before Stan could respond, Miz continued with, "I want to help out but I don't know what I can really do?" She alternated between fiddling with the hem of her shirt and looking up at Stan briefly before looking back at her lap.

Stan gave her a slight frown, and a thinking look. "Y'know, your big brother there can keep things staying cool with those scratched-in runes of his, without getting as hungry or as tired," Stan put out there. "You remember what you told the kid on the boat, about him helping out with the fish?" Miz nodded. "You don't have to do something big to help out. Havin' you along to pick out the meat you'll eat, so the kid will know he's gettin' it right, and to be with the kid, flyin' along or whatever, to be spending time with him there, is enough. That's two things right there. Yeah?"

Miz seemed to think about that for a little while before relaxing slightly. "Okay. Um…" She fidgeted a little, glancing over at Ford before looking back at Stan, "Can I cook for you guys too? Or should I just cook for brother?"

Dipper and Mabel both got up from the table at that point to head out, and the conversation paused for a moment as Stan not quite grilled them on where they were gonna go, what they were gonna do, and who-with: evidently, hang out with Pacifica Northwest at McGucket mansion. (Stan warned them that they were gonna get penalized for the whole 'time tape' thing still, and to enjoy their last day of freedom for awhile while it lasted, to a pair of twin groans from the niblings.)

Ford watched them head off, and wished that he could join them. If he went over now, though… well, Bill wasn't quite that stupid. Bill would know that he was likely going over there to talk to Fiddleford about that time tape, among several other things, and...

It was best if he stayed here, at least for today. He didn't want Bill connecting his own visits to the niblings' interactions with Fiddleford, and vice-versa. Best to leave some plausible deniability for later, for what that was worth. (Likely not much at all, but Fiddleford did have his own mystical barrier up around the mansion that would block Bill's Sight...)

So Ford stayed behind at the table, and refocused on the conversation as he got up to place his dishes in the sink, sending Stan a long look as he did so. (Because had Stan told the man-eater to cook for them all?) But Stan shook his head.

"Ford don't got nothin' he can use to check out the food as much as he'd want to, to make sure it's okay for him, or the kids, or anyone else," Stan explained, picking up his conversation with the dragon-lady again. (Ford frowned. That wasn't entirely true. He could scan it for poisons; scanning things for 'ownership' was what was tricky enough that…) "And the kid don't do meat, you know," Stan said. "Kinda narrows things down."

Ford let out a snort, because was Stan being serious, here?

Miz nodded. "I know. I just like cooking and…" She looked embarrassed again. "I like it when people enjoy my cooking…"

"Might be able to get Melody and Soos to eat it," Stan put out there, annd Ford nearly startled in place. He could hardly believe that Stan would put Soos at risk in such a way- "Maybe have 'em and Abuelita over for dinner sometime, make up for the last time the two of 'em were over helping cook stuff for us. -They're adults," Stan said before Ford could quite protest. "They can make their own decisions. ...After you get done 'warning them' about eating it and junk, or whatever." Stan shrugged off.

Ford let out a breath of annoyance. Well, at least Dipper and Mabel weren't here for this, thank goodness. "-Bill 'does' meat. He feeds on other beings!" Ford protested, feeling a bit sick as he said it. (It was one of those things that he really wished he hadn't known, because the process by which Bill did it was not for the faint of heart. Or mind. Or stomach...)

Stan looked over at him and blinked.

Miz turned away and took a few more deep breaths but didn't say anything to Ford otherwise. Stan made a note that she was apparently trying. He sent a look Bill's way.

Bill speared another piece of plant matter with a fork from his bowl, and used his other hand to start half-patting half-petting his little sister on top of her head.

"Kid? -Thanks," Stan noted as the kid started calming down his sister for him, then Stan added, "You wanna explain that one, though?" Stan put out there, looking back at Ford. "Along with the veggies and whatever else?"

"As a being of pure energy, I feed on energy," was what Bill said next. "But with a body," Bill looked down at himself and the food in front of him and grimaced slightly, "I need to eat physical things, too. Not just energy."

"And meat don't work because…" Stan said next.

"Oh, it'll 'work'," Bill said, twirling the captured cut-and-cooked vegetable around on his fork. "But I don't like eating previously-sentient or -sapient beings I haven't fully sanitized first," Bill told him. "Preferably with fire. -It's a process," Bill told him shortly. "No plants on this planet in this dimension are either of those two things. So I don't have to worry about accidentally ingesting any remnants or echoes of anyone's mental energies or souls, so long as I stick to eating native-plants here." And at that, Bill shoved what was on the end of his fork into his mouth, bit down on it, and chewed.

Miz spoke up quietly, "I make sure there's no souls in my food."

"So do I," Bill said, after swallowing, and he patted her on the head once more before lowering his hand. "But it's a good chunk of work and some energy-expenditure to do it, and it's much harder to do when I'm all anchored down like this," Bill made an abrupt gesture of disgust at his body. "And even harder to fix if I get it wrong and need to try and clean or shift things around in my energy form after the fact, if I screw something up. Inside this stupid human-ish body." Bill screwed up his face. "Because of this stupid anchor."

"Okay," said Stan. He sidestepped the anchor-talk and focused instead on the rest (not about to try and force the issue on maybe trying again to get the kid to explain that one when the kid didn't have to, especially since it'd just have the kid getting all belligerent and noncommunicative with him again; the kid really hadn't explained that one, yet, and Stan didn't see that changing today). "And fungi are out because why?" Stan said half-skeptically. (Ford shot him a look.)

Miz actually responded this time. "Because they're decomposers, they feed off other living AND dead things. Both other plants and animals."

"Same with bacteria," Bill pointed out. "And bacteria DON'T filter out and reject Soul- and Mindscape-matter the way that your Earth-based plants do. Your plants do get a LOT of bacteria ON and IN them, though! -Hence the cooking of vegetables until they are charred, and all bacteria is thoroughly dead and unable to hold on to any of those little fragments, to them, anymore," Bill added, spearing another 'charred' (thoroughly cooked) vegetable that Miz had prepared for him and showing it off a bit on the end of his fork. "Many fungi are also very close to the type of neural-patterned brain-networking you usually See in sentient species, in their 'shelf-roots'. Mycelia. And some fungi can set up and multiply in the body much easier than almost any other familia-related non-mobile species on this planet. So I'd rather not eat them, either. -Better safe than sorry!"

Miz actually shuddered. "Damn parasitic mushrooms, so creepy…"

"...Yeah," said Stan. "Think we're startin' to get into nightmare territory there, you two." (Miz looked a little embarrassed. "I always fully cook them! So they're dead," she mumbled.)

"You asked," Bill pointed out.

"Yeah, I did," said Stan. "And you two still don't know where to stop without somebody else tellin' you," Stan sighed out, pushing himself back away from the table, as a precursor to him standing up. Miz wilted slightly, frowning as she wondered what she did wrong this time. Parasitic mushrooms were native to Earth, they had those things here too...

Bill was a bit confused himself. To be more careful, he relegated 'fungi' to a list of 'needing clarification on' items, and didn't talk about it further. (For the moment...)

Miz finished the rest of her food before commenting, "I cook things hot enough to kill bacteria, without having to char them…" And she always cleaned her ingredients because she didn't like germs either.

"Depends on the bacteria and… other-things," Bill said, of that and of fungus.

"Bill, you have bacteria colonies living inside you," Ford pointed out rather pointedly.

Bill sent him a long look. "Yes, Sixer. I know," Bill said, sounding highly annoyed as he got up from the table, and picked up his used bowl and utensil and empty mug. "That doesn't mean that I feel overly inclined to go off ingesting any MORE of them into my stupid human-ish body's stupid digestive tract when I don't have to."

Ford leaned back against the counter, as Bill walked up to the sink and put his own dishes in… and then turned on the water and started to wash everything, one by one. (...Including his own dishes, Ford noted with a narrow-eyed gaze at Bill.)

Ford crossed his arms.

"You do realize that this whole conversation is academic, don't you?" Ford began, about to point out that-

"Not really," said Stan, getting up himself to add his own dishes to the stack. "Move a bit, yeah?" Stan asked Ford. (Ford grimaced, but moved over a bit more, to watch Stan open up a drawer and pull out a clean dish towel.) "Figure it might kinda be important to know if the kid's getting everything he needs to eat." Stan glanced over at Bill as he took a dish from Bill to dry. "So how much energy do you need to 'feed' on when you're tied down like that?" is what Stan asked Bill next.

And that left Ford absolutely expressionless and aghast, because Stan could not possibly mean to help Bill in-!

(Oh dear Axolotl. -His brother had absolutely no idea what he'd just said. No concept. None.)

Bill… seemed to hesitate for a second in place. He actually stopped moving at all for one long moment.

Then Bill continued with his dishwashing and said, "...I don't think I need ANY right now. I do have a reserve."

"That isn't all that weirdness-energy stuff I'm holding onto for ya?" Stan asked him. (And Ford eyed his brother, because that was a very highly-nonstandard way to put it, if he was understanding the situation between the two of them, with this 'anchor' of Bill's, correctly.)

"My reserve is incorporated into my form," Bill said neutrally.

"You'll tell me if it gets to be a problem?" Stan said. "Or looks like it's gonna be?"

"-Stan," Ford said warningly. "I don't think you realize what he has to do in order to-"

"-I can BUY IT in another dimension, you idiot," was what Bill ground out at him next. "And then eat it right there on the spot, after just a little more burning-it cleaning. As long as I don't have to carry the energy through a portal," was what Bill said almost-disparagingly next, "I WON'T have to worry about having to potentially clean out any hard resonances, that would end up taking me more energy to clean out of that stupid stuff then I'd be receiving back in. IT'S FINE."

Ford clenched his jaw. "That's just shifting the ethical problem to-"

"-I can get it sourced from WHOEVER I WANT, if you REALLY want to go THAT FAR and THAT FLAT!" Bill snarled out at him, slapping the dishcloth he was using down into the sink. "It's EASIER and CHEAPER if I get it from NON-SENTIENT NON-SAPIENT growing-things anyway in the FIRST PLACE!" Bill rounded on him, before looking over at Stan. "-It's fine!" Bill repeated, sounding thoroughly stressed.

Stan looked down at him. "I don't want you going off places alone," said Stan. Ford shot a glare his way, because that was not the issue-!

"Then you can come with me," Bill said tersely, turning back to the sink and grabbing up his dishcloth again. Ford barely suppressed the urge to throttle Bill at that; he wasn't about to let Bill use an excuse to portal-jump his brother off anyplace he wouldn't be able to get back from on his own.

"I hear ya, kid. We'll figure something out that'll work," Stan said, as he looked over at Ford. Ford let out a long slow breath, and forced himself to try and relax, as he realized that his brother wasn't simply saying 'yes' to Bill. His brother hadn't forgotten Ford's worries in either of the other two dimensions that they'd visited with Bill so far.

Miz seemed to be thinking about the amount she would need during their conversation, because she spoke up with, "It's… more difficult to do stuff in this dimensional set than in my own. I know back home I don't technically need to eat in the traditional sense, and only feel hungry when I want to be. So I'm burning through more energy here than I would back home. I need to eat here to replenish more quickly. I could technically not eat and just do nothing for a day to get my energy levels back up, but I like eating…" She pressed a few fingers to her headband. "And I can't feed on emotions while I'm here, so I need to get it from elsewhere." She took her dirty dishes over to the sink. "Though at least I can just feed on the atomic bonds between molecules for energy if I need to. It's much more efficient than being tied down into a human-ish body with its limited energy conversion…"

"Yes," Bill agreed, taking her dishes from her, and working on cleaning those next.

"So Miz don't need to feed on energy, just eat something she can get energy from, and you need food and, uh, water, and you'll need more energy… eventually," Stan reiterated, trying to summarize. "I got that right, kid?"

"Eventually, yes. And yes," was Bill's response.

Ford pulled in another breath. (At least Bill wasn't planning on doing that again anytime soon. Supposedly.)

"Should I call Melody and ask her to come over to watch Bill?" Ford asked of Stan next, sending a look Bill's way. This was another of those days that the Mystery Shack was closed for the day. "Since he's not actually going anywhere on this little trip of yours out-of-town."

Stan looked over at him, then down at the kid. "You didn't tell him."

"Not like the subject's come up," Bill said. "Or that you've been out of the room when I've been with him, long enough for it to come up as part of some 'taunting'," Bill said next.

"Not even in the woods?" Stan said, sounding surprised. "Either time?"

"Was running and laughing mostly, the first time," Bill said, handing over the last of Stan's now-clean dishes. "Second time with Miz, I was focused on Miz. So was he."

Ford saw Stan's frown, and, irritated, Ford asked, "What don't I know?!"

Bill smiled widely, and looked about to say something… but ended up not, while Stan (for his part) glanced over at him again. He looked almost apologetic. "Ford, the kid ain't stuck in town."

Ford stared at him. "Stanley, of course he's-" stuck in town. (Otherwise, the problem of where Bill would stay and potentially who-with or nearby - along with the problem of the rest of the townspeople potentially finding out about Bill being back - would be purely academic, if Bill could simply leave the surrounding environs and-) His brother was shaking his head at him. Why was he-?

"Ford, you almost ran him out past that 'weird barrier's edge that one time with the explosion and the monster," Stan told him, sighing. He finished drying the last bowl, set it down, and then tossed the dish towel over his shoulder. "You really didn't think the kid didn't check it out right then?"

But that wasn't- "He never said-" Ford began, then stared down and across his brother at Bill. "Bill, can you-" Ford swallowed hard, mind racing. "Can you get outside the barrier surrounding the town?"

"Yes," said Bill.

Ford stared. Because Bill wasn't lying. "But-"

"Ford," Stan said, sounding tired. "The kid can make portals to completely other dimensions. And back here again. Wherever, and whenever, he wants. Even if he was really 'stuck' here, he could just make one to someplace else in another dimension, make another one back here from there to somewhere else outside the town here, and just pop right back on through. Yeah?"

The worst part was, his brother was saying it all in 'you really didn't think of this?' tones.

"-But he acted like he couldn't get out before, during Weirdmageddon, when-!" Ford protested, then stopped when Bill said:

"I wasn't thinking clearly. I listened to you, when you told me it was your dumb idea all over again. The 'Falls 'natural law of weirdness magnetism', and all that," Bill waved off. "It wasn't that," Bill said simply, with an odd sort of calm to his tone. (And Stan watched the kid carefully, because he knew that that seemingly 'calm' wasn't actually calm at all.)

Miz sat back down and just listened to this. Hm. She really needed to figure out what that barrier keeping her from her own 3rd Dimension was all about. It didn't seem to exist HERE so it must be something unique to her own dimensional set, right? And hers wasn't limited to just the area around Gravity Falls, but the entire dimension as it were.

"It… it wasn't?" Ford said, feeling a little off-balance, and very much lost.

"No," said Bill. "Not LEAST of which because it's MY WEIRDNESS, understand?" Bill let out an annoyed click-chirp-chitter, then added, "Got all sidetracked when you started acting like you wanted to make it one of those… 'I'll never tell you ANYTHING, villain!' moments." Bill rolled his eyes (...at himself?), as he turned off the water to the sink, and rung out the dishcloth, to hang it up to dry. "So there goes critical thinking! Right out the window, along with the bathwater!" Bill said almost sing-song, with a particular edge to his tone, waving a hand around. "Because what Sixer wants-"

"-Bill," Stan said warningly, and Bill grimaced and stopped. "You're bumpin' up against the line," Stan told Bill (as Ford himself fought for breath in his anger. Because of Cipher's stupid games-) "Take a breath. Stick to the facts and numbers. Things, not people. And look out the window," Stan said next. "Don't look at Ford." (Ford stared at Stan, at the last.)

"-Fine," Bill said, still looking very annoyed... after taking a deep breath, and letting it out, and fixing his gaze (continually) out the window. (What…) "I should've known better even without the rest. A magnetism pull would be stronger in the center, weaker at the edges - NOT a stupid 'bubble' with a sharp boundary-edge; I should've been able to CRAWL UP the entire gradient-curve if it was THAT." Bill bared his teeth at no-one in particular. "And WHAT exactly in this-your-world, under or in or of a 'gravity' sort of field, EVER looks like a perfect sphere-"

"-except something that's man-made," Stan finished for him(!?).

"Yes," said Bill, his visage even from the side looking angry. "Stupid Time 'Police'. Set up a barrier. The jerks." Bill said in a sneer, then gave a slight (angry?) laugh, as he passed his hands… against the sides of his head on both sides of it. "Didn't even tune it to my energy waveforms properly! I walked right on through after…" Bill looked down at himself and grimaced.

Time Police Barrier? Miz tilted her head at that. There was no way she'd be held back by anything the Time Police in her own world tried on her. She was stronger than Time Baby now, even without a true body. But then again, she supposed they hadn't really tried to take her down with all their forces before...

"Wasn't thinking clearly," Bill muttered out again. "Probably shouldn't have had that much Time Punch at the party when I was the one hosting it, either. Then the Henchmaniacs couldn't get out when I told them they could go out there, on to Phase Two, and they started getting restless..." Ford stared at Bill, as Bill's face got an almost strained quality to it.

Ford shook his head at this. "But… but the natural weirdness of Gravity Falls-" Ford nearly stumbled over the thought that the weirdness wasn't natural, wasn't just 'leaking in' from the Nightmare Realm, the weirdness was Bill's(?!) "-must do something!" Ford blurted out. ...And then he realized exactly how he'd sounded, in saying that.

...But Bill didn't jeer at or mock him for it, and Stan didn't call him out on it. Bill just stretched a bit in place, and Stan didn't react negatively to what he'd just said in the least.

"It DOES do something," Bill told him, turning around back to face him. "It makes it ACTUALLY COMFORTABLE here," Bil informed him, "Like-" and then Bill blinked and cut himself off right there.

Ford frowned at him. So did Stanley, but it was his thinking frown again.

"...Like?" Stan prompted Bill, and Bill looked away, looking distinctly uncomfortable for some reason, though Ford couldn't imagine why-

"Like home," Bill said quietly, after a long moment. "It makes it feel more like home." Miz blinked at that response. Well, she tilted her head and Felt around. It did feel kinda like being surrounded by energy, pressing in… almost like a hug but not?

Ford stared, and Stan asked next, "What does it feel like too far out from the town? Away from all the weirdness junk?"

Bill looked over at Stan and frowned a little.

"...Colder," Bill said slowly, as if he wasn't entirely sure that the concept was the closest one to correct. He looked a bit uncomfortable as he explained, "It feels 'colder'." Then Bill seemed to shake the feeling off. "It's more comfortable here," Bill repeated, seeming to relax a bit in place as he said it.

Ford stared, because… that was very nearly the same sort of reaction that he seen in most cryptids he could actually converse with, when he mentioned what they thought of leaving the area. (They hadn't been able to describe the feeling itself, other than simply 'liking it better here', but the casual disregard for the idea of ever leaving to go someplace else? That was exactly the same as he'd seen with- EXACTLY the same-) And of the cryptids which he hadn't been able to talk to? -Trying to drive or direct them (at an amble or a run) past the edges of the most-strict fall-off in weirdness had had those cryptids reacting with clear discomfort, turning around and trying to get past him - or go 'straight-through' the source of the noises (that he was making) that were disturbing or alarming them enough to otherwise avoid said source of said noise - despite the agitation doubling-back to move towards those noises again would have otherwise caused them.)

"You need a weirdness-sweater, or something, for the trip?" Stan said to Bill next, and Ford (quite startled by Stan's recommendation) looked over at his brother, wondering...

Miz suddenly got a glint in her eye, to which Stan sighed and said, "No, Miz. Don't go making him an actual weirdness-sweater. Let the kid do it himself if he wants it." Miz pouted. "Awww…"

"Hey," Stan complained at her. "You want to try and explain to Mabel why she can't help you out with some kind of sweater-making thing? -Yeah, didn't think so," Stan said, at Miz's next look. (Ford couldn't help but give a sympathetic wince at the idea of the culmination of that particular scenario.) "Kid?" Stan asked again.

"...I'll be fine," Bill said slowly. But Ford noticed that the triangle demon, head tilted slightly, was looking at Stan a bit oddly now.

"You sure?" Stan said to that, to which Bill replied much more firmly: "Yes."

"Heh. Fine," said Stan, tossing the dishcloth to the side for the laundry. "Hey, why don't you and your sister talk 'seating accommodations' for the trip, how you're gonna handle that whole thing. Let me talk to Ford alone for a minute," Stan added.

Miz got up and pattered out of the kitchen, heading up the stairs, turning to check if Bill was following. (Bill was, though at his own, somewhat-slower and more easygoing, unrushed pace.)

Ford glanced over at his brother.

"So, I got half-ambushed by the kid and his sister last night," Stan told him. "Had to explain why you keep getting all pissy with Miz when she gets all talky on things you don't like."

Ford frowned at him. "Do I dare ask what you actually told them?" Ford said, taking off his glasses to rub a hand across his face, feeling tired. (Maybe he should just go back to bed... while his brother and the demons were out…)

"Mostly, just that you're only tryin' to tell Miz what she's doin' wrong because you think maybe she'll stop doin' it if you do, though you ain't holdin' your breath on that one," Stan told him. "And that they need to stop talking to the kids about all the 'back then' horribleness so much - though the demons still don't got a handle on any of that, so we'll see how it goes." Stan frowned, and leaned back against the counter. "Kid was surprised when I told them how pissed off I was gettin' at some of the junk that the dragon-lady keeps tryin' to pull. So, he didn't know, I guess. So I'm gonna need to talk through more 'mental attack' stuff with him, again," Stan said with a sigh, as Ford stared at him. "And I told 'em that I'd come down on his sister a lot harder, if she wanted to go with bein' told direct instead of lettin' her figure it out for herself - and she went with direct, so… yeah," which had Ford blinking multiple times at his brother. "Guess that's pretty much it," was what Stan ended on.

Ford opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. He rubbed his face with both hands before finally letting out a, "Right. And you think they're going to listen?"

"You do," Stan said. "Or you wouldn't keep talkin' to Miz." Ford hesitated in place, as Stan looked up at him. "You would've put her on that kill list with Bill by now, instead. You ain't tryin' to get her to 'strike out' with him, either."

Ford shifted in place slightly, feeling more than a little off-balance there.

"I'm not trying to-" Ford began, then paused.

"Kids told me you ain't so sure the kid's one of your 'demons' anymore," Stan said neutrally. "'From the outside' of someplace? Just a different 'type' maybe, but still different. -And I know you ain't actually sure about Miz, other than her 'demon' behavior," Stan said, and Ford looked away, grimacing.

"It hardly matters all that much, if I'm still not able to kill her properly and permanently, myself, if it comes to that," Ford said defensively, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Except you were sayin' before, that the point of needin' to kill Bill 'right'," and Stan made actual air-quotes at him, with his fingers, "Is to make sure that he won't come back. You don't know if you can't kill her or not, and you know that there's a way to 'stake' her down," Stan said. "But I don't see you going off and obsessing down in your lab over how to do that."

"You don't know that I haven't been thinking about it. Frequently." Ford felt more than a little pissed. Because it wasn't like he hadn't thought about- it just wasn't practical or feasible at this stage- and the horror of actually managing to do so, in that way-

"-Ford, do you want to come with us on this thing or not?" was what Stan asked him next, giving him a feeling of mental whiplash.

"No," Ford said tensely, literally tensing up at just the idea of being stuck in a car with Bill Cipher, for however long-

"What're you plannin' on doing while we're gone?" was what Stan asked him next, and Ford let out a breath and slowly began to relax in place a little bit, his arms loosening.

"Sleeping, most likely," Ford said, which got a skeptical eyebrow raise out of his brother. "Either the niblings swapped out the coffee on me again, or I actually do feel tired, Stan," Ford told his brother.

"You can sleep in the car," Stan told him, and Ford sent him a sharp look. "Pretty sure that the kid's gonna end up flyin' outside the thing along with the dragon-lady," Stan told him. "You can always walk out to the car with us, to 'see us off', and decide after you figure out the seating arrangement," Stan put out there.

Ford grimaced, as Stan straightened away from the counter next to him. Ford put his glasses on and asked of his brother sarcastically as he did so, "Why in the world would I want to do that?"

"To keep an eye on the kid when he's not interacting with people who are dumb as sticks, like the idiots in town," Stan told him, simply and straightforwardly, and Ford jerked his head up to look at him with a feeling of raw panic- "I'll be keepin' an eye on him too," his brother told him, as he walked out of the kitchen, "But still… y'know?"

Ford stared after his brother, as he disappeared around the corner, presumably to his bedroom, to change into some actual clothing.

And Ford had a feeling a bit like cold water had just been dumped on him when he realized… had Stan just tried to blackmail him into coming along?

Miz's Cooking Tangent!

A simple recipe using mostly veggies and no added salt! Of course, you don't have to cook it as much as BlueBill needs to! There's also an omelette version if you like eggs.

What you'll need:

-Veggies! I used Kale for this sample recipe. Wash and chop them up!

-Fruit Juice! I used Cranberry for this sample recipe because it's sour. Works best if you use something you enjoy.

-A nonstick skillet or wok, so you don't have to use oil (though some veggie oil is fine if you want to be sure it doesn't stick.)

-A rubber/wooden spatula (because you can't use metal with non-stick surfaces.)

-Three large eggs (if you want to make an omelette.)

Turn the heat up to medium, place the washed vegetables in the wok. You don't have to dry them since all the liquid's going to boil off anyway and the moisture helps with cooking. Once the wok heats up, gently stir and move the veggies around so they all cook evenly. Once the water has evaporated off, pour in a little fruit juice. Not too much, the point is to flavor the veggies. Pour in a little juice, listen to it sizzle and bubble as it boils. Continue stirring the veggies around as they cook in the juices. Turn the heat lower if you're afraid it might burn.

Once the veggies are cooked and you've added and evaporated off enough fruit juice to flavor, turn off the heat and serve. It's an easy way to make people eat veggies since they'll be flavored semi-sweet or sour now.

If you want to make the omelette version, simply follow the same steps, and then add eggs.

You can beat the eggs separately in a bowl and pour it into the cooking veggies (after they've been flavored with fruit juice) or you can be lazy and just crack 'em right in and stir quickly with your spatula, we're not trying to scramble them so once they're mixed up, leave it alone to cook for a bit.

Once you can slip your spatula underneath the egg mix and begin lifting it up and away from the wok, pour in a little more fruit juice around the egg mix, lifting it to let the juices slide under and cook into the egg. Once the liquid has boiled off, flip the omelette over to cook the other side, repeating the fruit juice thing when it's cooked enough you can lift the edges.

And there you go. A sweet veggie/egg omelette. I used Kale and cranberry juice in mine but I'd love to see what other people make.

End of Miz's Cooking Tangent!

After Stan called Fiddleford (both to check that the kids were actually with him - and that the Northwest girl was actually there with them, too - and to tell them more of the specifics on his plan for the day), they all went outside to the car. Stan took his time hooking up the small trailer to the tow hitch at the back of it (which looked more like an oversized cart than an actual trailer). Meanwhile, Miz shifted into her dragon form, smaller than her full size (for Ford's peace of mind), and was shivering as she applied a Perception Filter that blocked her from sight from anyone else except their group.

"Are you all right?" Bill asked her, as he walked back over from retrieving his lantern-hook rod. He turned it sideways-to-hover, and sat down on it side-saddle, then frowned as he got an even better up-close look at her. "You're shaking."

Miz nodded. "I'm fine. I'm just… thinking." Of how to reevaluate who she was as a person, how to interact with people, how to be a better person...

"About what?" Stan asked her, as he opened up the driver's side door of the Stanleymobile. (He wondered if the car was too close to her…)

Miz sighed. "I'm an asshole," she 'said' to him despairingly.

Heh. "Well, yeah," said Stan, leaning against the driver's side door with a relaxed stance. "So am I." Ford let out a huff of breath and slapped him in the arm for his trouble, which had Stan grinning up a storm at him for the chastisement.

Miz floated into the air, hovering and wiggling like a ribbon caught in the wind. "I am supposed to try and not be as much of an asshole?" Miz asked, sounding unsure.

Stan sighed. Hadn't she been listening at all last night? (...Then again, the kid had misunderstood him on some of the 'talking to Ford' stuff, too.)

"-You're supposed to not go around mentally and physically attacking people," he told her. Not like that had changed. "You screw up at that? You learn why you screwed up, and you try not to make the same mistake again. Actually try, and actually learn. -Being 'an asshole' or not's got nothing to do with that; neither does bein' a saint," Stan added at the end for his brother's benefit, sending a loaded glance Ford's way. "It's just your basic, 'keep your damn claws to yourself' kinda junk, dragon-lady," he directed back up at her. "Unless you've got a really good reason not to, because somebody started a fight with you by trying to attack you first. That's all."

Miz nodded. "So, I should try to figure out what counts as an attack?" She frowned. "That's the part I have to really figure out." She tilted her head. "I need a list or something." And then she needed to avoid them, because talking about that sort of thing when people didn't like it was asshole behavior.

"Yeah, that's the part you really have to figure out," Stan repeated back to her, for clarity. "So does the kid, still," Stan told her, "Along with how to handle stopping stuff nonlethally without that stuff staying or becoming even more of a problem again later." Because that was the main reason the kid had for immediately jumping to 'kill it! kill it now!' in the first place. "Have the kid run through what he does know, that I've told him already, with you, if he hasn't already. Maybe on the way? Give you two something to talk about up there, for the trip?" Stan put out there. Miz nodded and flew up a little so she was near the car but nowhere close to touching it; above it and in front of it slightly. She stayed within view.

Bill floated up via his lantern-hook rod himself, to sit on it sidesaddle and in-line with her, floating next to her side.

They both looked down at Stan and the car and trailer-hitch, waiting.

Stan looked up at them (so did Ford), and then he looked down to look at his brother, who was standing right next to him.

Stan tilted his head at him slightly, with that smile on his face… that just kept getting wider...

Ford's shoulders came up, and he glared at his brother as he clenched his fists at his side.

(...and kept getting wider...)

"Fine!" Ford snapped out at him, feeling incredibly pissed off as he stomped around to the other side of the car and yanked on the car door handle.

...which didn't open, obviously, because Stan hadn't unlocked the damn passenger's side door for him yet. (Ford felt the nearly overwhelming urge to faceplant forehead-first into the car roof right in front of him, as he heard his brother chuckle and saw him ease his way down into the driver's seat of the car.)

...and Miz was trying to quickly muffle a giggle too… Which didn't make Ford feel any better. (...though it did have him glaring up at her as he waited for Stan to just-)

Stan reached over across the emergency brake and unlocked the passenger's side door first, before reaching out for the handle to grab and slam his own car door closed.

Ford pulled open the door, got in, sat down, and slammed his own door shut with a huff.

(He didn't exactly like how incredibly nervous he felt as he did all of these simple, straightforward things-)

"Seatbelt, Ford," his brother chided him, as he put on his own, and Ford nearly said something disparaging about how, with the number of crash-landings of actual spacecraft from orbit that he'd survived, he highly doubted that a simple car crash would be the way that he'd go-

...But those spacecraft had had miles-beyond far more safety features in them than his brother's 'hunk of junk' could ever dream of hoping to ever reach some fateful day, if Ford ever got his hands on it for any serious length of time, and so Ford simply yanked his seatbelt down and buckled it in place in one smooth motion, without comment.

"Seat belts are important." Miz said seriously from above. -Right, she claimed to have died in a car crash. Ford rolled his eyes but chose not to comment.

"She isn't going to try and crash this car from above, is she?" Ford muttered out at his brother, rather seriously. "Or set it on fire?"

"Eh, it's fine. I got a fire extinguisher in the back… maybe," was his brother's laissez-faire response (with accompanying shrug) to his very valid concerns.

Miz huffed before calling out calmly, "No I will not. Mabel would be quite distressed if her favorite grunkles didn't make it back home safely from their trip!"

...Somehow, Ford did not think that Mabel's potential future distress would faze the man-eater in the least. And it wasn't as if Bill could not simply 'roll them back' to a time before either of the niblings had ever met either of them, apparently, if he so desired. It wasn't as though Bill was required to 'kick them out of their bodies' before 'de-aging' them if he wanted to, was he?

Ford thought dourly on this and other demon-related thoughts, as Stan started the car, and they were all on their way.

"How long is this trip going to take?" Ford asked Stan, as they pulled out onto the highway.

"Really?" Stan said, glancing over at him. "You're really gonna pull the 'are we there yet' on me on this one?"

Ford let out a long and lengthy sigh, and half-slid, half-slumped down a bit in his seat.

Despite Ford's worries, the drive was uneventful. He even nodded off only a few minutes in to the rather smooth ride of the car (generally uncharacteristic of Stan's usual driving style, which was more racecar-esque on a good day) and the rumbling engine. The demons' overall chatter was unintelligible to the two humans below them at the highway speeds they were traveling at, having simply faded into and well under the background noise of the engine and wind when the drive first picked up.

Miz had shivered as they passed the edge of town. "This feels nothing like the barrier around my 3rd dimension. It's warm? No, that's not quite the right word…"

"Yes," Bill agreed, of 'warm' and 'cold' being not quite the right words to describe the sensation of 'home'. The barrier being in place made it a hard and artificially-quick shift, not a soft and natural transition gradient. Then Bill smiled and added, "The barrier is mine now. I didn't take it down; I re-tuned the stupid thing to bad-things-not-me and locked it," Bill said of the 'Time Police' barrier in-passing. (-which was now HIS! ALL HIS! HAHAHAHAHA!) "Why get rid of a perfectly useful working tool, when I can make it work for ME and ONLY ME?" the triangle demon said somewhat rhetorically. "-I added you to it awhile ago," Bill said. It hadn't taken but a few moments with his (currently invisible) bodysuit's wrist control and his private visual interface; he'd done it the first day, as soon as it had occurred to him that she might be staying awhile, and why he might want to do it.

Miz flew a little closer to nuzzle Bill. "Thanks." (Bill smiled, and reached out a hand to run across her scales lightly in-passing.) She also kept her Eye out for any danger on the roads. She wasn't going to crash Stan's car and she sure as fuck wasn't going to let some other thing crash into it. Other drivers were the most dangerous thing on the road.

After awhile, Stan took an exit ramp off of the highway, and followed the road for a bit. Eventually, he ended up passing more and more landmarks of 'actual civilization', until he reached a rather big warehouse-looking district, and slowed down further to pull into a very large parking lot soon after.

Miz floated down and shimmered back into her human form, shaking her arms and stretching as she got used to having a bipedal body again. Bill, for his part, slowly drifted further and further down, then slid off of his lantern-hook rod smoothly to a standing posture. (Then he leaned it against his shoulder, in the crook of his arm, as he pulled his 'eyepatch'-hat out of a pocket and 'foofed' it out, to lift and drop the rod straight back down into it. He re'folded' his hat back into its new eyepatch form and shoved it back into his pocket directly after, as if he'd done it a million times before.)

Ford shifted and stirred as the car came to a stop, and the engine turned off. He lifted his head slightly, looking a bit confused.

"...You did that on purpose," Ford said accusingly, though most of the bite was taken out of it, as he was still half-asleep as he said it. He slowly sat up and looked around, scratching a hand through his hair.

Stan smiled. He knew Ford was complaining about the drive being too smooth. "You said you wanted to sleep some more," Stan shrugged off with no small amusement, to which he got a petulant glower that he couldn't help but chuckle at. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead, c'mon," he told his brother, as he pulled the keys from the ignition and shoved the car door open. (Sure, maybe his brother was gonna screw up his sleep schedule by sleeping more during the day for this, but if he really had felt tired before, even with the caffeine...)

(Ford let out a sigh, long and deep, but he followed him.)

Miz was looking up at the warehouse while shuffling closer to her brother at the sight of the crowds. Stan noted she was now dressed in a pink hoodie with black pants, which wasn't what she was wearing before. Huh. ...Maybe she liked to change up her clothes?

"Come on." Stan called out as he strode forward into the building, pulling out his membership card to show the worker at the door. This place sold stuff in bulk but required a membership. Luckily, their cards were easy to forge and Stan didn't have to pay the monthly fee. Hah!

"Cos'bro?" Miz raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," said Stan. "You get a lot of frat boys here for the beer, and farm boys here for the meat. Otherwise, it ain't so bad. -Hey, get your own cart!" Stan yelled out at the ninety-year-old looking woman who tried to wrestle him for, yes, what looked like the very last one.

After a bit of a tug of war and a tussle, Stan managed to hip-check her off of the thing and ran off with it, wheels rattling and flying, yelling out "YES! IN YOUR FACE YOU LOUSY GRANDMA!" as he went - laughing up a storm at the win, as she cursed at him from the floor and waved an angry fist at his quickly vanishing-into-the-distance backside.

Stan then slowed down a bit, as Ford and the demons caught up to him. "Oh, yeah. And the tea-party grandmas," Stan said, picking up his conversation right where he'd left off, "'Cause the tea here comes in these, I dunno, some kinda wooden barrel-sized cylinder-bin things or something." Stan waved it off like he didn't care. "-Gotta play it smart, here," Stan told them all with a grin.

Ford looked at Stan with sheer exasperation, while Miz nodded, noting down Stan's behavior as apparently 'kinda, sorta, acceptable within a human setting'. "Can we get one of those tea canisters…" Miz seemed to realize something. "Is this where you got those industrial-sized sprinkle containers for Mabel?"

"Well, yeah," Stan said. "Uh. Kinda. -Had to take one of the metal barrels they usually use for vegetable oil and stuff it full of the stuff from a bunch of those smaller fertilizer-sized sprinkle bags instead," Stan told her. "'Cause they were outta the actual ones, but I'd promised her. -Managed to get one of the right labels for it, even." Apparently it had fallen off of one of the other containers that they'd sold; the guy had found it for him in the back-back room of the warehouse, waiting for the next shipment to arrive. Rodrigo had owed him a solid, and boy, had Stan collected.

Ford was rubbing his temples. Why had he thought that Stan would be able to teach the demons about 'normal' human behavior?! "Is that woman alright?" Ford asked, as he glanced back in the direction of the entrance, where they'd left the old woman who was last seen cursing up a storm behind them.

"Yeah, she's fine," said Stan. "Pretty sure she's about to try and ambush us from behind the cat litter pile over there. -Quick, dump a couple of those licorice bags in here! And one a' those triple-black coffee bags!" Stan said with an excited grin, pointing to two areas on the shelves ahead of them, at the end of the aisle they were just passing, with bags that Ford swore were at least as large as Mabel's pig was nowadays. "That'll scare her off!"

Bill and Miz moved quickly to comply, in their usual odd sort of unsynchronized unison, and, sure enough, when they moved past the enormous cat litter pile (a pyramid of gigantic bags boldly emblazoned with a claim of a '900-day supply' that Ford swore disappeared up into the rafters…)

...the same old woman jumped out at them, brandishing a cane at them this time as she grabbed the side of the cart, looked down to see what was in it- and hissed at them all. She let go and stumbled back - to be nearly mowed down by another freewheeling cart (to both Ford's horror and his dismay), and he ran off with them all away from the scene of the crime, to the tune of a "Hah! Thought I smelled the cat piss on her!" from his far-too-jubilant at the madness surrounding them brother.

Ford had a hand held over his mouth, as he tried not to feel (or at least tried to feel a little less of) the sheer mortification he was currently feeling with his brother just then. Could he get away with trying to pretend that he didn't know them? ...No, that wouldn't work, they had the same face. (And the last time that Ford had tried that on Stan, when they'd been on their boat adventure, Stan had nearly left him behind at the pier later, until he'd made Ford do something just as stupid incredibly loudly out in front of everyone and their dog who was within hearing distance at the dock, before leaving port. In order to show him that 'it doesn't matter, Ford; no one cares - so why should you? Just have fun with it!') And- was Miz applauding Stan's 'genius'? ...Yes; yes, she was. She was applauding Stan for this. Actually applauding him!

Stan let out a laugh of pure happiness and glee, and took a bow, and-

It suddenly occurred to Ford in a flash why the Axolotl, in its infinite wisdom and patience, might have actually 'saddled' Bill with his brother. And vice-versa.

...Unfortunately for him, Ford did not have the patience of the Axolotl. (A fact which he well knew.)

It was still a little more than disheartening to see, and- hell, call it what it was, Ford felt physically ill at watching this display. He'd never actually made the comparison before. But seeing his brother acting this way now, against this backdrop of people and madness and demons, with the last gasping vestiges of common-sense seemingly completely overridden by the pure and grasping greed surrounding them-

Ford turned on his heel and walked right back out of the store.

Somehow, Miz had managed to sweet talk a whole bundle of Cup Ramen AND a non-lactose milk carton out of the workers. They gave her a coupon code for 30% off her 'family's' purchase. She had gone back to Stan with an armful of noodles cups and a wide grin as she held up the coupon. "Was this good for a first try?" she asked.

"Heh," Stan said, taking the coupon from her and shoving it in a jacket pocket. "You're a natural, kid," he praised her, not least of which because she was. That was some Mabel-level stuff that he'd just seen going on, right there.

He saw Bill glancing over in the direction of the front entrance (and exit) again, and Stan said, "Stop worrying about it, kid."

"I'm not worried," Bill said, not looking worried. (Yeah, he looked annoyed, not worried, but that was what worried looked like on the kid.)

"Ford's fine," he told the demon-kid. "He does this sometimes. Had to take a breather once in awhile, even on the boat. -They don't got a book section here, or a music one. It was gonna happen eventually."

"He's embarrassed to be seen with us?" Miz asked. She could pick up on this somewhat, she knew a few people who would be embarrassed to be around her in public sometimes. And she HAD seen his mortified expression earlier, before he left.

Stan glanced over at her. "If he is," he told the demons as he pushed the cart down the next aisle, "I'll just make him go off and sing the first twelve verses of 'A Drunken Sailor-Wife' at the whole parking lot before we leave," just like he had at that one pier, when Ford had been getting all weird about his hands, and all the normal people around 'looking at them' like he just wasn't used to, just for being themselves. Stan wasn't too worried about it. Wasn't like Ford didn't get all excited himself and stop worrying about what he looked like to other people, when he got all riled up over stuff. It just had to be the right stuff. (Like the place he was plannin' on taking Ford next, for coming along on this supply run…)

Miz tilted her head, eyes flickering as she checked on Ford outside. "He's just hanging around the car. He's fine," she said for Bill's benefit.

Bill let out a huff of breath. "I'm NOT WORRIED about him," he repeated, looking away from all of them. Miz and Stan both gave him a deadpan and skeptical stare each, not fooled in the slightest. Miz took pity on Bill's pride and went off into the shelves to grab at a packet of ground beef. And a huge packet of chicken breasts. If her brother wanted to be weirdly Tsun-Tsun in his own way, she would leave him be.

"I'm worried about THEM," the kid said next, and that had Stan stopping the cart in place.

"Say that again," said Stan, and the kid let out another huff. "I'm worried about THEM. -Your brother and the frat boys," Bill said, and Stan still didn't get it. Ford had gone to college, what was so- "The ones who came here to get all that alcohol, to get drunk? And are getting drunk? And are going to try and 'tease' your brother about his hands, right before things get that-much-worse?" Bill prompted him, and it only took Stan a moment.

"Aren't I supposed to be 'looking out for him' as the last one on the list for your priority order for the agreement? How am I supposed to do that if-" Bill didn't quite finish saying, before Stan shoved the cart at him and raced off for the front of the store.

Bill let out a sigh and looked to Miz.

"ALWAYS getting into trouble," Bill told his little sister, of that Stanford, as he took over pushing the cart. "EVERY TIME."

Stan ran out to the front of the store, looking for a fight with a bunch of dumb frat boy punks-

-and lowered his knuckle-duster-laden fists for a moment, as he took in the scene.

Ford was, quite literally, leading the charge against an entire contingent of tea-party grandmas, with at least five truckloads of frat boys at his back.

They all looked unbelievably drunk.

(The grandmas on their 'special' tea, and the frat boys - and Ford - on… who-the-hell knew what kind of beer cut with moonshine. ...Seriously, Oregon sometimes.)

"RAAAWR!" A (smart?) glasses-wearing frat boy with his t-shirt tied around his head like a bandana (and those glasses slipping half-off his face) roared out at the line, as he staggered forward with a swaying gait, squinting at the row of shrieking grandmas. (Stan supposed it was meant to be a glare but he got the feeling the kid was actually just trying desperately to see straight.) Ford pointed forward and thundered out, "Focus, men! The goal is THERE!" (And THERE was apparently… the grandma-in-charge making faces at them and swinging somebody's textbook around above her head? ...Well, that was straight-up nerd-bait, if Stan had ever saw it. Good thing he'd made Ford leave his guns in the car, or there'd really be blood - those grandmas knew how to shoot straight back...)

...Yeah, Ford's side definitely was a lost cause. the grandmas were just toying with them. (They didn't even have the guns out.) Frat boys were never gonna survive this. Five-to-one wasn't anything like good enough odds for them to pull off a-

"-CHAAAARGE!" Ford yelled out, as the two sides gave up all pretenses and ran straight for each other, eager for battle.

"Ford, you idiot," Stan sighed out as the two sides clashed in the middle, transforming half the parking lot into sheer mayhem, because had his brother never learned to read the odds? He shook his head and turned around to head back inside the store. (He was gonna need supplies for this…)

Miz waved at Stan when he came back. "I said he's fine." She shrugged. The cart was filled with bags of vegetables, meat, bread, dried pasta, canned fruits...

"Yeah, no. He's goin' down," said Stan. "They're gonna surround him and cage him in 'time out' and everything. Or worse." He eyed the cart. "We're gonna need at least twelve more containers of this black-coffee stuff to extract him." Tossing handfuls of it at those tea-loving grandmas worked like a peach; better than sacred salt on those ghosts that thought they were vampires (the idiots).

Miz nodded and ran off to grab a few more containers. Bill turned to Stan and handed him some more slips of paper. "She got a few more coupons…" the demon informed Stan.

"Good," said Stan, already thinking a bit more strategically about his upcoming purchases...

"...I almost won?" Ford said, as he stared up at Stan from the backseat of the car, after successful coffee-and-'soda-bomb'-spray extraction from the 'grandma time out' corner.

"The Cos'bro cops thought you were a grandma," Stan said. He'd thought that he'd find Ford all tied up in the middle of the group of grandmas, with the Cos'bro cops still in the middle of negotiating for the hostages; maybe surrounded by a pack of jeering grandmas, caged in the 'time out' area for the frat boys instead, while the Cos'bro cops were still in the middle of rounding up the rest of the grandmas, at best. But instead, Stan had found Ford in the middle of the grandma one, surrounded by Cos'bro cops, and not even tied up or anything neither. "That ain't winning."

"But I successfully infiltrated their side and stole the textbook back!" Ford said, with a gleam in his eye, and Stan craned his head back at his brother (still cradling an icepack on his head) and really looked at him.

"...You're not even a little bit drunk, are you," Stan said in descending tones, and Ford laughed.

Stan sighed. -His brother, really.

"How the hell did you manage that, anyway? They wouldn't think you were one of them unless you knew about everything from green oolong to black orange delight. Thought you didn't like tea," Stan asked him, as he slowly pulled the fully-loaded up vehicle out of the parking lot, with two 'invisible' demons hovering above him (and two brand-spanking new electric coolers in the back trailer, that the frat boys had helped load up for them for all the trouble of getting the one guy's $250 textbook back - never leave your truck unlocked around here, guy, geeze, hadn't his buddies warned him about those grandmas?) - and to this, Stan got a quiet, "...I used to."

Stan stopped at the traffic light, and looked back at him again. (His brother had used to like tea? When?)

Then Stan let out a sigh and turned away from him again, back to watching the light.

"...Ya still shouldn't have done it," Stan told him after a long moment. "Taking on an entire bakers-dozen contingent of tea-party grandmas out there. With a senior doily-maker as the thirteenth one, overseeing them." What, was Ford trying to get himself killed?

"Well, it was for a good cause." Ford said, like that explained everything (because it did), as he pulled the ice away from his head to press his fingers against the bump, wincing a little. Miz had offered to heal him, which he had shot down immediately (not trusting her an inch with the least little bit of his body, in part or in whole). Miz had huffed but hadn't pressed the issue. Bill had just looked on, made a single short 'tsk' sound at him upon seeing him, looked over at Stan... and hadn't said one single solitary word about any of it.

"Kid's pissed off at you, y'know," Stan said in conversational tones to his brother. Ford made a scoffing sound at him. "Seriously; kid was worried about you. Brought up the agreement-"

"-He wasn't worried about me," Ford cut in caustically. "He was worried about not 'keeping' you."

Stan glanced back at him in the rear view mirror as he drove. Ford was avoiding his gaze, head turned away a bit from him, towards the backseat cushions instead. Ford was looking out the back window to avoid Stan's eyes. (He could just about see the end of the dragon's tail…)

"Same difference, ain't it," Stan said, looking back to the road, and all the traffic on it.

"No," said Ford quietly.

Stan shrugged. "Same result, then," he responded easily.

"No, it isn't," Ford said. Stan glanced back at him, and waited, until Ford took in a breath and said quietly next, "If I had this 'agreement' of yours with him, and he was actually following it, he would have been right out there beside me."

Stan frowned slightly at this.

"No, he wouldn't," Stan said. "If it had been me out there, the kid wouldn't have had to do a thing," Stan told him. "My job is to keep the fight offa the kid; my fights aren't the kid's fights, and that wasn't the kid's fight. -That would've been my fight alone out there, goin' solo," Stan told him. "If anything," Stan said, "The kid should've been out there, outside, along with you this time," Stan told him, frowning. "Only reason he wasn't, was because Miz was here, and he was tryin' to keep her away from it, from going overboard. If he hadn't, somebody might've gotten torched," he told Ford, who was looking over at him now. "Too much chaos and collateral damage, not enough control; he don't know how she fights, and he wouldn't be able to guarantee you wouldn't get hurt worse with them bein' there than not." (Stan had a feeling that she might be a lot more destructive than the kid was, more of the time, what with being that much less than the kid was about the control. At least the kid knew how to avoid collateral damage when he wanted to. ...And Ford was frowning at him now.)

"You're saying that if Miz wasn't here…" Ford said slowly.

"Then because of the agreement I've got going with him, the kid would've been right out there with you, and he would've either dragged your dumb ass right back outta that mess, or waded right in alongside you. And you probably wouldn't have a single scratch on you right now," Stan confirmed grimly, to dead silence from the backseat.

And there was silence in the car for a while after, too, except for the sound of the engine and the road they were driving on. Every now and then they would hear faint humming from Miz outside as she continued singing to entertain herself.

Until…

"-Take me out of the priority order," was what Ford said next.

"Hell no," said Stan. "Why the hell would I do-"

"-You don't know what it's like," Ford said next, and Stan damn near slammed on the brakes as a chill ran down his spine.

And then Stan nearly let his foot come off the gas, to coast them to a stop at the side of the road, as something else occurred to him beyond that, and his stomach dropped next.

Stan didn't do either of those things, though. He kept on driving.

(Bein' a getaway driver that many times, you got used to riding out certain things.)

"Do I gotta ask?" Stan said to his brother, hands and fingers tightening around the wheel. "-Do you want me to ask?!" he repeated when his brother said nothing, shoulders tense.

"...I didn't-" Ford began, then managed to get out a half-strangled "...know that-"

Stan glanced into the rearview mirror again, and Ford was grimacing - and not from the bruises and all the bumps, either.

"No," Ford said finally, looking away from him, refusing to meet his eyes. "Don't ask."

...Stan turned his gaze back to the roadway he could see out in front of him, through the windshield.

"I'm not contradicting myself to the kid on you," he told his brother staunchly. "You're my brother, you're my family, and you're on the priority list."

"...Fine," Ford said quietly, so quietly that Stan almost didn't even hear him.

Stan drove.

Ford blinked his eyes open slowly. He struggled upright in the backseat, back against the side door, and he looked a bit confused as he realized that Stan had pulled up to a stop someplace that wasn't home.

"This one's a little less crazy," Stan told him. "Was planning on stopping off here on the way back before…" he waved off the whole parking lot feud. "I figure still coming here when you can't barely stay upright long enough to walk around and really appreciate the place, is a good enough penalty for you walkin' out on us back at the last place. ...Probably couldn't get away with tryin' to make you sing over that whole ruckus," Stan muttered out at the last. (The place had still been half a zoo by the time they'd finally gotten out of there, after all that.)

Ford looked at his brother, as Stan got out of the car and slammed the door closed behind him.

(And he debated staying inside the car. He wasn't entirely sure he liked the look of this warehouse...)

He startled slightly as Stan slapped his hand against the roof of the car twice.

"C'mon, Ford, there are books. You like books, don'tcha?" was what Stan said to him next.

Ford debated this, as he winced his way further upright. (Really, if Stan had just given him a proper briefing before the last warehouse, he would've known he'd have to be more strategic about the textbook-retrieval right from the start...)

And, after a long moment of struggle (damn his unyielding curiosity!), Ford exited the car.

"I want to live here forever," Ford stated, as he stood in the center of what was veritably a cathedral of books, in the middle of a warehouse that in no way resembled a warehouse on the inside, and looked up. (And saw that they even had small vents intricately interwoven into the- dear lord, of course they had the place fully climate- and temperature-controlled. Such a detail would not have gone overlooked, in such a place as this.)

"Big mood." Miz was staring up at the stacks with a thrilled expression. She was planning to Scan ALL of these! Om Nom that delicious knowledge! Tastier than emotions any day!

"You know this existed back when you were first farming out the building of that house of yours thirty miles west of here, right?" was Bill's drawled out and laconic contribution to the discussion.

"I hate you and everything you stand for," was Ford's almost-automatic reply, to which Bill just rolled his eyes, threw his hands up, and walked away.

"Uh, Ford…" Stan began, not really sure how to take that one. The kid had been being a little punk there about things, sure… but that had been a little… knee-jerk there from Ford, a little too much more than Stan had expected, and Ford...

"There are so many books…!" was what Ford blurted out next, and Stan was starting to get worried, 'cause how was he supposed to know if Ford's reaction here was from a book-overload, or from a concussion, if he started to outright drool or somethin' instead? To add to his worry, Miz was attempting to climb a stack, reaching for a book about the history of agriculture.

"-Rolling ladders, over there!" Stan barked out at her, pointing at the nearest ladder, three aisles down. Miz looked back at him before running off to get a ladder instead.

Stan got in front of his brother and snapped his fingers in front of his face a few times.

"I…" Ford trailed off, blinked, winced away from him at the third snap, and managed to capture his hand at the fourth. Then he blinked and seemed to get his bearings… kinda. "Stan, how did you even find this place?" Ford asked him. (Because there had been no road markings, no identifiable features, not even a sign. Even the parking lot had looked… But then, if the clientele were anything like him, they'd drive an old jalopy just to use the money-savings on more books, Ford gathered.)

"Couldn't find half the stuff I needed in the town library," Stan told him, straightening back up. "Your textbooks have got entire textbooks for references; you know that?" Stan complained at him.

Ford frowned over at him slightly in confusion (and yeah, Stan was blaming the probably-maybe-almost-a-concussion on that one), as Miz headed back over, having captured one of the ladders (after a polite back-and-forth of, 'oh you' - 'no you', from somebody else who had actually gotten there first).

"I thought you hated ladders?" Miz asked quietly. That made Stan blink. What did him hating ladders have to do with her not wanting to use one? (Miz had been trying to be considerate, not using a ladder because she'd thought he didn't like even seeing them.) Geez, this kid.

I use 'em when I need to," Stan told her. "Wouldn't be able to do work on the roof, otherwise. Or set off fireworks with the kids." He had that ladder right in the middle of the gift shop, up to the hatch, didn't he? How did she think he'd got up there, to put up the sign? Had she thought he'd actually paid somebody else to do it for him? -That kinda stuff cost money! Then Stan considered that maybe she thought he'd climbed the side of the Shack for it… which… seriously, that was even more dangerous. He couldn't float like the demons could...

"I want this place," Ford said next, in something of a daze, as he swayed a bit and turned in place, taking it all in. "This place is mine."

"Yeah, yeah," said Stan, getting a hand at Ford's back and gently steering him back towards the door. He figured it was probably a bad sign, if his brother was startin' to sound a little like the kid...

Miz tilted her head, as she trotted along beside them. "I could ask about who owns this place?" Could probably buy it off them, they still accept gold right?

"I know who owns the place," Stan told her. "Ain't no big mystery."

They met Bill at the front door.

And the kid took one look at Ford and said to Stan, "Better get him out in the next thirty seconds, or he'll get away from you. Sixty-three to the car next and locked in tight. I'll handle the seatbelt."

...Well, the kid was right about the thirty seconds. Ford seemed to wake up a bit at realizing he'd just been tricked into getting dragged out of this huge nerdy book nirvana, but the sunlight temporarily blinded him to send him blinking long enough that Stan actually got him the six more steps over that he needed to get him from the door to the car. (Yeah, of course he'd used his totally legally-obtained handicapped hang-tag thing in his car for that - and hey, his brother sure needed it right now, okay?)

"One minute!" Miz called out, "I'll be right back!" And she rushed back inside before the door closed behind her.

Stan turned to Bill. "Kid, go get your sister, yeah?"

Bill sighed as Stanley manhandled that Stanford back into the car. He didn't even bother trying to help with the seatbelt after what Stanley had just said; Stanley wasn't listening to him again. So he just turned around and walked back inside, and it didn't take him long to find Miz, standing on a ladder, with her head tilted up as her eyes Flickered near-constantly.

"How long do you need?" Bill asked her, trying to confirm whether 'one minute!' was actually one minute. Because if it was... "Is distance a problem?"

Miz mumbled various info for a few seconds before she blinked and smiled down at him. "It's easier to See when I'm closer. Less effort. I should be done in a minute." She turned back up and Flickered some more.

Bill sighed and leaned up against the ladder. They were definitely going to miss the deadline then, but this WAS what Stanley had asked for. And he suspected the time it would take him to convince Miz to leave would take longer than this 'minute' of hers would. So he waited.

Miz didn't take long - really only about a minute - before climbing back down and shaking her head. "If Ford asks, I can recreate any of these books for him," she informed him.

"Don't ask, don't tell," said Bill, straightening up and walking towards the exit with her. "He'll be asking you - or me - to do that with every book that's ever existed for him, forever, if you do that."

"You know I made a huge library maze back home? It's filled with a bunch of the knowledge I've accumulated over the years." Miz grinned, skipping merrily.

"Don't tell my Stanford that, either," Bill informed her dryly. "He'd want to go there, too."

Miz giggled. "It's a 'challenge'. The place is filled with traps. I got a TV show made of people attempting to find stuff in there. Makes good revenue and entertains people."

Bill looked over at her. "You realize that he'd want to go, just to try and break the place, to steal every last book to 'set them free' for everyone who couldn't last long enough to really compete and find what they wanted," Bill told her.

Miz shrugged. "Well, I've put up a Curse that teleports people out before they get killed, but they're not allowed to compete a second time." Which didn't prevent injuries, just outright deaths. She was still tweaking the settings on that particular Curse to heal the participants of any wounds as well.

"Getting kicked out of libraries and banned from the premises before he's done looking for things is also a 'pet peeve' of his," Bill added, as he held the door back to the outside open for her.

Miz rolled her eyes. "I'm tempted to build a library here, or donate 'books' to the Gravity Falls library, would that be considered a practical thing to do?" Would that be considered 'good'?

"Ask Stanley?" Bill said as they both walked out, then glanced over at the car and added, "Maybe after he gets that Stanford to release him from that headlock he's got him in."

"Oops," said Miz - the cause for the sixty-three-seconds-later deadline having been made impossible to meet. Bill sighed out (in annoyance), and the two demons went over to give Stan some back-up assistance.

Ford was growling out, "I will not be shown that many books, only to have you take them all away! You cannot do that to me!"

"Oh yes I can!" Stan said, trying an elbow to the gut next. "-And you can get them back later!" Stan told him quickly next, once he'd found out that that hadn't worked, either. At the tightening pressure, Stan yelped out, "We'll come back later! Ford! The, uh, the place is closed!" Stan cried out, lying his ass off.

"Oh," Ford said, letting go of him. "Why didn't you just say so?"

"...Didn't want to cause a scene," Stan muttered at his lunatic brother, as he rubbed at his neck. Because the place was actually open 24-7. Good thing they didn't have any signs on the outside doors... "Now get in the damn car."

"But we are coming back here later," Ford said next.

"Yeah," Stan said, only to have his brother lifting him by his shirt lapels and setting him back on his feet again, to then find himself nose-to-nose with him, said brother demanding, "Tomorrow."

Stan stared into his brother's angry face, and it occurred to him, finally, that his oh-(not)-so-(very)-saintly brother had gone toe-to-toe with thirteen grandmas on that last parking lot and only come out of it with a couple of aches and pains and a single bump on the noggin where somebody had gotten him in the back of the head where he couldn't see them - no black eyes, no cuts or bruises, no broken bones, or anything else of the sort that he could see, now that Stan was staring at him from only inches away, perfectly upright and mad and angrily-aggressively healthy. And he'd gotten that book back at the end.

"Yup," said Stan. "Tomorrow. Definitely gonna do that. Uh huh." (...And he was totally gonna die tomorrow, when his brother actually asked someone about the visiting hours and days, the next time that they were here.)

Ford let go of him, and got into the Stanleymobile on his own, retrieving the ice compress from the car floor along the way.

'Yup. That had totally been a great idea, there; good job, Stanley,' Stan thought to himself, as he got himself back into the Stanleymobile, and Ford got in behind him. The demons got themselves airborne, Stan pulled his car out of the parking lot, trailer pulled about smoothly around behind him...

...and then Stan realized something partway through the drive back - he had blackmail material here. Because Ford hadn't been looking at the scenery on the way there. And his brother had fallen asleep not two minutes into the drive on the way back home from there.

Ford had no idea where the place was. And it was totally his brother's own fault.

Stan grinned.

And from outside the car, Miz blinked at the maniacal laughter suddenly emanating from within it. She turned her head towards Bill and blinked. "Is that usual behavior?" she asked.

"Sometimes!" Bill told her with a grin, then leaned in a little as he confided in her: "They really should do it more often."

Miz seemed to be settling down, less unsure now as she helped Stan unload the car (along with Bill and Soos, who had heard about the 'electric coolers' from a text from Mabel, and had come over to help resituate them somewhere both useful and easy for them to get to). Stan noted that she seemed relieved to be doing something to 'help'. He debated confronting her about what the heck her problem was, but decided not to press it for the moment. Miz had been on good behavior today, hadn't snapped at Ford like she usually did, and seemed to have actually talked with the kid about what things were and weren't okay to talk about.

Stan sighed. At least she was trying, now that she knew. He kinda wished Miz would have wised up on her own, but he was starting to get the idea that she couldn't pick up on this sort of thing on her own - some things she got, but other stuff went right over her head. ...Just like with the kid.

Stan watched idly as Miz pulled a large book out from seemingly nowhere and placed it on the hood of the car before darting away. He sighed. The heck was she doing? "Miz," he said, picking up the book and leaving Ford in the backseat of the car still for a moment. "You forgot your book!" He sighed as she stopped at the door to look back at him, and then disappeared inside the house even faster. ...Great. The heck was that all about?

Stan sighed, looking down at the book. Some nerdy-looking thing about light…? Figured. Buncha nerds. He shoved it under an arm, and knocked on the rear passenger's side door window.

...Ford slowly sat up.

"...I don't think that coffee this morning was the not-decaf," Ford complained, as he managed to drag himself up out of the motor vehicle. "I think that coffee was the decaf."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Stan told his brother, slapping him on the shoulder. Ford glanced at him, and then his eyesight caught on the book Stan was holding under his arm.

"That's…" Ford reached for it, and managed to grab and yank it loose before Stan could tell him that- "I was looking at this one earlier…" That had Stan stiffening in place. Stan glanced down at the nerd book Ford was holding, and then let out a sigh, slumping his shoulders and rubbing at his eyes under his glasses. This was like the gold necklace all over again.

"You takin' gifts from demons now?" was what Stan said to his brother, and that had Ford stiffening in place. "Miz left it. Give it here."

Ford looked incredibly reluctant, but then he got a determined look to his face after a moment, and he did slap the book back into Stan's chest for him to take.

"We are going back tomorrow to return what she stole, though," Ford said, as Stan took the book from him, and they both headed for the house. Stan sighed.

"Sure, Ford. Can't have her stealin' stuff for no good reason." He wasn't gonna get in an argument with his brother on this right now, and he hadn't seen where she'd gotten it from. She could create stuff, sure; but she'd also been in that warehouse at the end there long enough that she could've just grabbed it instead, and Stan didn't know which she'd gone with. And the place wasn't a lending library...

Though Stan was hoping Miz didn't steal it. Stan had told the demons that stealing hadn't been worth the heat in the other dimension. And it wouldn't have been worth the heat from that place, either. She should know that, and she should know that what he'd said applied to both pick-pocketing and general stealing…

...but if she'd looked him up, she'd have seen him stealing a lot of stuff in this dimension lots of times before. And she didn't always get things unless they were completely explained out to her, just like the kid. ...Whatever. If she had stolen it, they could just sneakily shove it back onto a shelf the next time they were there.

The two older Pines walked inside to see that the younger set of twins had returned. Miz was sitting among a pile of books, showing them off to Dipper. "This one's a complete history, as far as the author knew, on the discovery and study of the tomb of Pharaoh Hsekiu…" Dipper looked torn between really wanting that book, and looking at all the other books around her. As they all stared, Miz wiggled her fingers, causing her high tech body suit to light up and some lint and dust along the ground swirled together to form another book. "This one's a biography of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father who most embodied the hip-hop lifestyle…"

Dipper made a face at that. "I'm not sure hip hop was a thing back then…"

"Shows how much you know! Hah!" Miz teased cheerfully. Dipper rolled his eyes.

"Should you even be using your suit for things like this?" Dipper gestured to the books.

Miz shrugged. "I've been storing up a bunch of energy throughout the day, absorbing the ambient energy in the air after some filtering, and using a template makes it much easier." She paused before adding, "And it cleans out all the lint, dirt l, and grime around here by turning it into something useful," which was a big part of why she was doing it. This place was filthy!

Stan raised his eyebrows at this, then looked over at Bill, who was standing off to the side, leaning up against the wall. The kid had his arms crossed, and he looked annoyed. Kid wasn't looking at any of them; not even his sister.

"Kid?" Stan asked. "What's wrong."

"Tch," said the kid.

"He's being perfectly selfish and unhelpful, is what is wrong," Ford said, sending along look at the kid. "Knowledge should be shared."

"-I'm NOT your personal library!" Bill snapped out, pulling his arms in more tightly around his chest, and… Stan saw his brother straighten up suddenly, looking absolutely shocked. Like something had just occurred to him-

Bill quite literally bristled in place.

"Somebody explain to me what is going on. Kid? Ford?" But Ford was staring holes in the kid, and the kid was hunching his shoulders; he looked like he wanted to go upstairs, but...

Stan glanced down at Miz, who was sitting on the floor of the living room. ...Kid wasn't gonna leave his little sister behind. Which meant, the kid probably felt...

"Kid, I can watch your little sister for-"

"-No," the kid said, turning his head away from him even further. Kid was fuming about this, and downright fidgeting and twitching in place.

And Stan startled slightly when Ford suddenly strode forward to come to a stop, standing right in front of Bill.

"Ford…" Stan began, starting to walk over quickly.

"-I don't want anything you can give me," Ford told the demon, straight to his face, and the demon stilled. "I don't trust you, I don't trust anything that you might give me," Ford continued, hands on his hips as he stared Bill down, "And if you tried to hand me a book, I wouldn't trust the contents of it one bit. -You hear me, Bill?"

Stan clenched his jaw and nearly let out a curse as he came to a stop next to his brother's shoulder, because his brother had just- and-

Bill let out a laugh.

...It sounded a little hysterical.

The kid was smiling, but...

"Of course, of course you wouldn't!" the kid chortled out, but his body was twisted away from Ford slightly and the smile the kid had going was… off. Kind of… wrong somehow. "Of course you wouldn't, you don't like ANYTHING if it comes from me, if I try to give it to you!"

To this, Ford just nodded once, turned on his heel, and walked away, headed in the direction of his bedroom. (Son of a…)

Stan took a step forward, patting the kid on the head once in passing (the kid was shivering a bit), and as he handed the book Miz had left at the car over to the kid, he told the kid, "Stay here."

Stan walked off after Ford.

"-The hell was that?" Stan demanded out of Ford, after he slammed his way into his brother's bedroom.

"Aren't you supposed to ask permission…?" Ford said blandly, as he sat down on his bed, and began to take his boots off.

Stan glared at him. "You tellin' me that-"

"No," Ford sighed, looking away with a grimace. "You know you have 'blanket permission' to-"

"-Damnit, Ford!" Stan shoved the door shut, and stomped his way over, to stand in front of him and glower down at him. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

"Stan, I am tired-" Ford began, and his head was aching besides...

"-You just lied to the kid's face, Ford," Stan ground out at him under his breath. "What the hell would've happened if he'd realized you didn't mean it?!"

Ford looked up at his brother.

"I know you'd say yes to books," Stan said firmly.

"Not like that," Ford said quietly. "Not from him."

That just pissed Stan off even more. "Don't lie to me, Ford." Ford looked away from him. "You tell me why you lied to the kid. Right now. So I can do damage control when-"

"-You don't know why he reacted the way that he did to you saying you wanted him, do you," Ford said quietly, and Stan stopped talking. "You haven't really figured it out yet."

Stan frowned down at him. "'Course I do. He wants-"

"-to be wanted, yes Stan," and when Ford looked up at him, he did look tired. And his fingers were curled into the bedsheets now. "But you really don't get it, do you. What Bill thinks he heard. You don't understand the difference."

"What difference?" Stan snapped out at him. He wasn't stupid. The kid-

"He wants to be wanted for him, not wanted for what he can do," Ford said. "It took me awhile, but I think-" with the way Bill seemed to define himself-

"-I know that, Ford, I'm not an idiot," Stan ground out at him. "Why do you think I ain't askin' him for a bunch of stuff."

And at those words, Ford couldn't quite look at his brother just then. The 'popular' one. The one who everybody had wanted to be around, because he had 'personality'; because he wasn't a freak. ...The one who thought he could do something to be part of a loving family again, that he'd had options open to him; that it was something he could get, if only he did the right things, earned enough money, got enough respect...

(Ford had learned better over the years, that that wasn't really how things worked. Not for everyone. You couldn't just try harder and have whatever you wanted all work out for you, somehow. The world just didn't work that way; no world did. He couldn't even get a girl to talk to him willingly and like it, to like him-)

(Not to mention the very large problem that, the only reason that Stan had said what he had said to Bill, was seemingly because Stan had thought that it would make Bill less likely to hurt the niblings. He'd told Bill that he wanted him, but what Stan really wanted was for Bill to not do something for him: to not mess with his family. He'd wanted something that Bill could do - to refrain from open violence - not Bill himself. That much was clear from his earlier discussions with Stan. -Stan had lied to Bill, blatantly and horribly. And when Bill realized that Stan had lied to him about this - and he would eventually...)

It was far easier for Ford to move on to the greater issue at hand, than to attempt to address the complex issue of separating one's self from one's ability with his brother. So he did.

"Stanley, he never even offered me the possibility of copies of other books from this dimension," Ford said, "Let alone other dimensions. He could have shown them to me in the Mindscape; I would have retained the information upon waking. But he didn't. Not once. Not ever."

"So?" Stan asked him. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Stan, his whole 'deal' is that he knows things," Ford reminded him tiredly. "There was a time," Ford told him quietly, "When, if Bill had handed me an instruction book," Ford couldn't quite help but wince at his previous naivete, "Perhaps 'Turning A Crashed Spaceship Into An Interdimensional Portal for Smart-Alecks and Dummies'? -That I would have read it cover-to-cover, and blindly followed every last step." He looked up at his brother and asked, simply, "Why didn't Bill do that?"

Stan looked down at him.

"I don't doubt he must have thought of it at some point," Ford said slowly. "And it would have worked. I would have done exactly as he'd intended, maybe even without needing to call Fiddleford up to Gravity Falls to help me," he told his brother. "So why didn't he just ask me if I might want something like that? Why didn't he offer it to me?" Ford smiled sadly up at his brother. "Because he didn't trust me? ...You said it yourself, Stan," Ford said, looking away from his brother again. "You think that Bill wants something from us all. So what does he want from us," Ford ended bitterly.

"He won't do absolutely anything to get it," Stan said. Probably tied back to what the kid was thinking he needed to do to get his dead brother back somehow; kid had been secretive as hell about him, that 'Liam' of his. For some reason, it also had the kid getting all roundabout in his methods of getting them to do what he wanted - instead of outright asking or telling them to do it - for nearly every damn thing that he did. Stan would bet his last dollar on that. (And as far as Stan was concerned, getting the kid to actually tell him what he wanted sometimes was a hell of a lot of progress and a half right there, already.)

"No," Ford agreed. "But if there are things that he won't do, then what are they, exactly, and why not?"

And it was clear to see, when Ford looked up at him again, that Stan didn't have the answer to that one. (Not yet.)

"It was making him agitated," Ford said. "The idea of just handing us things." Ford smiled up at him again, grimly. "I told you I was going to try to do what I normally wouldn't do sometimes, from now on, didn't I? And what I said to him did seem to calm him down somewhat. Yes?"

Stan stared at him.

And then Stan let out a huff. "Heh. Guess so." Then Stan frowned. "Miz seems to like givin' us stuff though," Stan added a bit more soberly. "Look, if… there's something going on with the kid and the whole giving us stuff thing, I'll figure it out. Maybe ask Miz why she has no trouble with doin' it, to start with, while the kid's hanging around within earshot. See if that gets the kid talking."

"If you think that wise," Ford told him with a grimace. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I could use some additional sleep, Stan. -Uninterrupted, preferably." He'd been in an out-and-out fight earlier that morning, and he'd suffered a head injury. Contrary to what his brother might think, he did try to take what downtime he could to recover, after any harrowing experience he had, when he could, and his head was beginning to pound. "And you should get back to the niblings." Capable as they were, Ford could hardly expect Dipper and Mabel to handle Bill Cipher in physical form on their own for more than a few minutes without issue. And while Bill seemed to be following Stan's entirely made-up rules of bedrooms being 'safe zones' so far, ones that Bill would not even enter without permission, in fact… that clearly didn't extend to the shared common rooms downstairs, such as the kitchen, living room, or dining areas. (And how long would that particular 'game' of Bill's last, anyway? Another week? A day at most? Until the first time that the niblings dared slam the door in his face? Certainly not so long as Stan thought-)

"Yeah, fine," Stan grumbled out. "Just, hell, maybe give me a little warning next time? Maybe some kinda signal, when you're plannin' to go crashing across lanes?" Because for a second there, he'd thought his brother had walked over to the kid to go off and punch him in the face. And then with the lying to the kid's face...

Ford couldn't help but let out a small smile as Stan headed for the door. "I will endeavor to do my best to come up with something that Bill Cipher will not be able to decipher," he told him.

"Yeah, good luck with that," Stan snorted out.

Stan closed the door behind him, and Ford turned in place, pulling his legs up, to lie down flat on his bed, despite the aching pressure it put on the back of his head.

He started up at the ceiling for a few minutes.

And, eventually, he closed his eyes.

Stan returned to the living room and stared at the towers of books that now inhabited it. "...MIZ!" Stan ground out. (To which he heard a "Here!" So at least she was still in the room someplace, here.) "The heck?!" What was she tryin' to do, here? "I can't get to the TV!" he complained. That was only maybe half of the problem here, though.

He heard a shuffling sound from inside the stacks and a muffled voice call back, "Should I donate these to the Gravity Falls public library?"

Stan pulled in a breath and opened his mouth to say-

-but then he stopped and frowned. His first instinct was to tell her to get it all outta the Shack right now, but… hell, he was smarter than that. She had done this for a reason, and her brother over there hadn't stopped her for another reason, he bet. (Which meant…)

"...Donate them to the library?" Stan called back. He was starting to get a picture of what was going on here, now. Crazy dragon-lady. Going at things sideways, trying to get her way all 'sneaky' all over again. She was even more sideways than her brother about all this junk. Seriously. "What the heck are all these things, anyway - yeah, books, I know - but what are they and where the hell did you get them from?" And he didn't just mean 'how did you make them,' wasn't like he hadn't seen that one, too, when they'd walked in earlier. His frown deepened as there were some more shuffling sounds and a thump, and then Mabel's voice squealed out, "There's a book about advanced knitting patterns!"

Stan's eyes narrowed. ...Oh, he knew what he was doing here, now.

"I scanned and copy-pasted the books I thought were interesting!" Miz shuffled around inside the stacks.

"...From the book warehouse we just visited?" Stan asked slowly to confirm, trying to locate where they all were from their voices, as he edged his way into the room just slightly. (He saw the kid still standing right where he had been before, up against the wall, looking edgy still, and almost frowning at the whole mess in front of him that his sister had made.)

"...yes?" Miz called out next, almost tentatively. "Though a few are from other books I've Seen over the years, that aren't already in the Gravity Falls library…"

Bill twitched and looked annoyed at... his sister's antics. Uh huh.

...Seen over the years. Right. All several hundred billion of 'em and counting. "-Kid, I want this stuff shoved off to the sides, without somebody getting buried. Anybody. You think you can do that for me?" Stan asked, knowing about what had happened in that classroom before, and Bill made a back-and-forth sweeping gesture with both hands.

...Well, that was a mess. Kinda. Piles were still everywhere and a half, but at least he could walk through the living room to any doorway now. And see the TV and his chair. And the kids and the dragon-lady, sitting on the floor, unharmed by any of the shoved-around books...

Stan shuffled into the center of the room, looking around at it all. Mess was still a mess, but the books didn't look damaged, at least. Some of the stacks still looked about ready to fall over, but… He bent over and picked one of the books up off the top of the nearest low stack, straightened, and started paging through it almost absently. He strolled over to his armchair and leaned up against it. "So, you want to donate these to the library, huh?" Stan asked, still paging through the book he was holding. And when he saw… (Hm. That wasn't…)

"Yeah, would that be alright?" Miz asked as she looked around at the stacks.

"Aren't ya not allowed to give away stuff for free, though?" Stan asked, glancing up to side-eye her over the book.

Miz hummed as she thought about how to explain it. "I can give stuff if it's because I want to give stuff because I want other people to do something, like learning, and not because someone else wants or needs something from me. Knowledge is different from other things I can give away." Miz told him, "Knowledge is part of my Pillar. I like teaching people. And I can get away with giving knowledge without demanding anything back, so long as I'm feeling okay. Balanced." Miz frowned. "It's a little hard to explain."

"You wanted to be a teacher, right?" Mabel was flipping through the knitting book, which apparently she'd grabbed earlier before the kid's book-'fling'. Stan glanced over at the kids.

"So you can give away books for free?" Stan asked almost leadingly.

Miz tilted her head to the side and thought about how to put it. "I'm not giving them to anyone in particular. I'm simply dropping them off. And I can teach people stuff for free under certain circumstances. Like inspiration inside their dreams."

Stan frowned immediately, almost a glower. "...Inspiring 'em?"

Miz immediately waved her hands. "W-well I'm nowhere near brother's level in that sense." Stan sent the kid a look next when said demon-kid let out a "HA! -You're still young, you have time! I'll teach you!" to Stan's disapproving glare.

Miz fidgeted in place. "I don't want to make people end up obsessed in such a bad way. I just give them the help they need to get past their mental blocks. I… I like helping people achieve what they can, support them to be able to do more and grow and-" she stopped as Bill walked over to pat-pet her on the head. And Bill was looking a bit more relaxed than before as he said, "You're a Muse, too. It's what you do."

Stan frowned at the kid. "What exactly does that..." mean. He stopped himself. Bill had mentioned that once before, after Miz had wanted to give college pamphlets to some girl at the high school in that other dimension. Something about wanting to help people live up to their potential, or whatever. -Nope. No. And nope. He wasn't letting himself get sidetracked here.

So Stan stopped himself right there, and went for the thing he needed to say instead, before he started really getting this whole thing back on track again. "Yeah. Sure. That thing. 'Helping' people. -Like that one teacher you talked to at school, where you didn't realize you'd 'inspired' then too much until you saw what happened with that science teacher?" he said almost darkly and leadingly, then (at Miz's wince) followed it up with, "How do you know you haven't inspired anybody else and their dog into a really bad place before this?" to really drive the point home. (Because the kid had sure messed that one up a lot of times himself, if what Stan had got outta Ford was what he'd thought it was, along with the kid himself.)

(The kids were glancing between them now.)

"I guess I wouldn't know unless I go and check on the people I've worked with… but they seemed fine, they weren't neglecting their personal lives to go around pursuing their interests..." she thought about it. "Maybe it's just a human thing?"

Stan couldn't really say anything more than a flat, "Uh huh..." while keeping a level stare on Miz as she got more and more guilty-looking, as the seconds ticked by...

Finally, she puffed out her cheeks with a petulant, "It's not like I knew that was going to be a problem I had to look out for!"

"Well, now ya know," Stan told her evenly.

Miz pouted. "Well just giving books to people shouldn't cause such a problem, right?" (Stan eyed her over that one.) She looked away, over to the stacks around her. She pulled one out to place at Stan's feet, one that looked really familiar after finding it outside at the car and carting it around for a minute. "This one's for Ford, he wanted it. But if he doesn't want it, you can just donate it with the others that Mabel or Dipper don't want to keep. Or Soos. I should ask if he wants any…"

...Oh, he had her now. "You can give stuff to Soos and the kids?" Stan asked.

Miz shrugged. "I like Soos and Mabel. Besides, I want to chat with Soos about the newest season of That Hero University…" Stan rolled his eyes. Right. That anime thing.

Time for the kicker. "Well, I ain't so sure about all this stuff, yet," Stan told her, looking around at it all. "Don't even know what-all it is." He let the 'for Ford' one sit for now; she should've known his brother wouldn't take it from her from how he'd reacted to the kid just then, but Stan wasn't gonna get into that right now. He looked down at the book he was holding. "-And hey, you can give stuff to, what, everybody but me?" He looked over at her and said almost jokingly next: "Really feelin' the love here, Miz."

Miz thought about it before shrugging. "Any book you want, you can get yourself. And you're not too into reading."

"Hey, I read," Stan objected. He just hadn't had a lot of time for it, lately. Not 'for fun', or whatever. Not before he'd, well… Whatever. Anyway. "What if I want all of 'em?" Stan told her, weighing the book in his hand.

"All books in general, or just the ones here?" Miz asked for clarification.

Stan raised his eyebrows at her. "'Just' the ones in here, that you made here, and all."

"Well they're not mine, and I don't need the physical copies, so if you did want them, you'd just be taking the things I'm discarding." Miz had a wry smile on, having messed around with her parameters for ages to find all sorts of loopholes for being able to give free stuff to people. And in her opinion? This was one of the best ones!

Stan's eyes glinted. Gotcha.

"Good," Stan said, and he slapped the book he was holding shut one-handed, and turned to the niblings and demon-kids both. "I'm claiming all of these books. All of these books are mine," he intoned out, and he watched the kid straighten up ever so slightly, eyes going a little sharp.

And then, after no protest from Miz or the demon-kid, and while the kids were still blinking up at him in something like shock, Stan put on his grumpy face and said, "You two, you're gettin' your penalty now."

And then he put on his Mr. Mystery grin. The money-making one.

"-Wait," Dipper said, way way too late, as he started to realize how wrong things were about to go now, but Stan just steamrolled right over him as he looked around the room.

"All of this? We're puttin' it up on c-Pay. Every. Last. One." Stan intoned out, as he looked down at the niblings - Dipper's growing look of horror, and Mabel's beginnings of confusion. "-And no, Miz, you ain't doing this thing again," he told her next. "You put your brother in a bad place, here, and we don't got space for any of this junk," he said next, gesturing around at the piles. "And neither does the library. -Those town yokels would just take all this stuff, and trash what they've already got, throwin' stuff out of the shelves and out into the town square to burn 'em all, to make room for it. We ain't doin' that." Stan normally wouldn't have bothered with adding that extra info at the end right there, but he'd been in town long enough to know this stuff, and he knew Miz needed explanations for things to go along with stuff.

Miz blinked slowly, processing this. "...okay?" she twitched a little. "They would just burn old books? What the heck?"

"Town ordinance," Stan said. "They treat it like flag burning, or something."

"Isn't it illegal to deface the American flag?" Miz looked even more confused now.

Stan eyed her, but Dipper spoke up for him. "That's protected free speech, and the only way to get rid of old flags. You're supposed to burn them, not throw them away in the trash…"

"-Because throwing them away like garbage to go to a landfill is supposed to be worse!" Mabel ended for him brightly, to Dipper's slight embarrassment. Miz seemed to accept that and nodded to show she understood.

"Why do we have to sell them all, though?" Dipper said, starting to get angry. "How is this supposed to be-" fair?! he wanted to demand out of his Grunkle Stan, because this was just- just-!

But Grunkle Stan just tossed the book he was holding onto one of the piles, and frowned down at them both.

"You two," Stan said, "Went jumping into another dimension, tryin' to jump back in time to try and get rid of this one," he said, tossing a thumb Bill's way. "If he was dead - or never here, whatever - then Miz wouldn't be here to be makin' up all'a these books for you to maybe be able to read. -No kid, no Miz, no books. You wanted no Bill so bad? You get to see what it'd be like if he wasn't here," Stan groused out, turning away from them, "At least a little bit."

"That's not fair!" Mabel rang out, sounding aggressively-defensive. (She knew how badly Dip-Dop wanted all of these books!). "It was my-"

"-Stop," Stan thundered out, and Mabel stopped, shocked. "Don't go coverin' up for somebody else," Stan said slowly, as he tried not to sweat. Because whether or not Mabel was covering for Dipper, if she made it completely clear that she was going to try and do this again-

"-It's Glasses or Sixer's influence. Or both. I know that," Stan heard from the kid, and Stan turned towards the kid slowly, almost in shock. And then the kid said next, in neutral tones, hand still held on top of his sister's head, "Pine Tree and Shooting Star are part of the agreement, but they are young. They will make mistakes. And I didn't have to fight them on this, this time." Because I took precautions weighed heavily in the silence there, but Stan pulled in a breath (that was slightly shaky, despite everything). Because… "They didn't quite violate the mutual non-aggression agreement," Bill said next, which had the twins flinching as they finally, finally realized… "'Going back in time' wouldn't be enough to be considered an attack. I don't always go after people for 'intent' before they actually try and pull off their latest idiocy." But the demon-kid didn't exactly look happy as he said, "And I know you don't want me to."

Yeah, that one was heard loud and clear. Stan should've stopped them before they'd pulled this shit, behind his back and on his watch. He was the agreement-holder. He was the enforcer.

...And the kid was giving him a hell of a lot of leeway here. The kids had straight-up said why they'd wanted to go back and try and 'fix' things between him and Ford when they'd all been in that other dimension, right in front of the kid. And the niblings hadn't stopped to think twice about the other consequences of that before doing it, in the face of...

...well. They had probably thought they were gonna be able to pull it all off. (Stan knew better. He planned stuff out for when things didn't work out for him, too.)

(And apparently, so did the kid. Setttin' stuff up like that, to 'bounce' people tryin' to mess with the timeline or whatever, any more than anybody already had…)

Stan had been expecting a fight outta the kid on this one, or at least some kinda angry argument or four, and a hell of a lot earlier than this, to boot. He should've known better, thinking that maybe the kid hadn't quite thought that… or been too distracted to... and Stan had thought it was maybe safe to try and bring it up now, because when it had come up the last time before this…

He'd been wondering why the kid hadn't gone off on them all in that other dimension, but now? Now he was starting to get it, he thought. (After two good nights of sleep, and bein' home and having a chance to breathe, and everything….)

-Because if the kid had protested then, gone all demon-y on them then, while they'd all been stuck in that other dimension, with no portal in sight that they could use to get them all home again… It wasn't just that the kids had nearly killed themselves doing it that the kid hadn't kicked up a fuss and come down on them then, Stan realized, or because what the niblings had done had been a completely-failed attempt with no chance of success from the kid's point of view. No. It was probably because the kid had known that Ford would've been twelve times more tense if he'd acted out that way, as a start. Stan was pretty sure his brother had thought they'd been all straight-up trapped over there, and never getting back home again ever, and if the kid had pulled anything even as, hell, mild as what he was pulling right here and now, over there then? That probably would've gotten him shot. By Ford. Maybe even outta reflex. And then-

Stan had been expecting at least an argument outta the kid on this one, at some point, but he wasn't getting one from him, even now. Instead, he was getting his own (defensive) reasoning tossed out at him, right from the start - and that would've been the argument Stan would've gone with, tossing things back at the kid, to a T.

Stan shook his head. And he said, "Yeah, I know, kid. These two are gettin' babysitted or watched for at least the next week or so, from here on out. I figured letting these two hit the mansion this morning would get that time-tape thing outta the way and away from Ford, and let 'em tell Old Man McGucket how really not workable that garbage-idea of his was. Puttin' the kids in your way back then like that." Hell, Stan wasn't above putting the blame on somebody else. And hell, he wasn't even sure if it wasn't all that true. He was pretty sure that McGucket was one of the only people, if not the only person, who could've made some time-travel doohicky actually work, besides Ford. And Ford had better sense. Which meant Old Man McGucket had been enabling the kids to pull this shit. ...Which meant he'd known exactly what he was doing when he'd done it.

"...Grunkle Stan," Mabel said slowly, looking between them all. She was clutching that knitting book to her chest now like it was some kinda stuffed animal, or her pet pig.

"Kid's goin' easy on you here, and you two know it; he ain't even kicking up a fuss," Stan said. "But I'm the agreement-holder here, and I sure as hell ain't gonna let this one slide. -You two are not pulling this junk on anybody ever again," Stan intoned out roughly. "Losing all this is penalty number one," he said, gesturing around at the mess of books. "Penalty two is you two getting babysat, maybe for the rest of the summer," Stan told them. "-You ain't leaving the Shack at all for the next week," he informed them gruffly, "And you ain't going unsupervised by me, Soos, or Melody for the next two weeks, minimum," he said. "And the kid's in the 'supervision' rotation starting week two," once he was sure that the kid actually knew what 'babysitting' really meant for these two.

Dipper looked downright horrified by this turn of events. Mabel was starting to look more and more worried.

The kid eyed him at that. (Well, the kid was taking Mabel out to the spaceship for those science lessons sometimes. Stan wasn't gonna let the kid do that, take her off all alone anyplace, when he might still be fuming internally about all of this shit; Stan knew better. Kid had a temper, and his limits. Stan wasn't gonna test them - not that far, not by a longshot - and he sure wasn't gonna let the kid test them himself, either. Not anytime soon. Not if he could help it.)

"Far as I'm concerned," Stan continued, "You two can spend the whole time around Ford," he said next, to see Mabel start to relax, and Dipper start to look suspicious, "But me or Soos or Melody are still gonna have to be in there with you." He wasn't so sure he could trust the three of them together on their own, kinda. Ford could help them get around whatever real easy, Stan bet. And the kid wouldn't think Ford was 'babysitting' material, being farther down the priority list than the twins right now. (Yeah, Stan already saw that one coming a mile away…)

"...I think house arrest is a bit much," Miz spoke up. "How about, they can't leave the Shack unless you or another supervisor is with them?" Everyone turned to stare at her. Miz fidgeted in place. "Back when I was a triangle, the Circles placed guards around my house so I wouldn't be able to run off and see my brother, or my family. I had to sneak out…"

"They can still see people," Stan told her. "I ain't keeping anybody from coming here to see them if they want to," though the kid being here should probably cut down on some of that, "And I ain't keeping them from using the internet, or their phones, either," Stan told her. "And they're only getting grounded grounded for the first week, hard. -Hell, I got grounded for a whole summer for borrowing something outta my old man's pawnshop once," and lying about it, "And what these two just tried to pull... -They ain't getting off of any of this scot-free," Stan told her. "And, y'know, maybe if they're spending a bit more time around Ford," Stan told her and the kids next, "They'll get some kinda idea of exactly how stupid an idea it was to try and go back and 'fix' things themselves without even talkin' to any of us first, to see how we felt about it," which still really got his goat, even more now, "And, y'know, maybe appreciate the Ford that they got, right here and right now." He looked over at them. "Because they just about killed him with this little stunt they just pulled. -He wouldn't have been the same him that you two know and love if you did that," Stan told them. And hell, neither would he. "It ain't just Bill you were going off and about to try and get rid of there, either, or even yourselves. You woulda been getting rid of Ford, too." And me.

And that finally got the twins looking appropriately horrified. Yeah, they better. Stan let this sink in a bit for the two of them.

"No," Dipper said, feeling terrified and sick suddenly at the thought that, when he'd been using the time-tape to try and win that prize for Wendy, that he might've been killing his sister, Wendy, everybody that he'd rolled back time on when he'd- over and over again- and-! No. "No! That's not how it-"

"-Even with that much of a gap in the time-jump, if they'd done it in this dimension instead, you would have been different, but also the same," the kid said slowly, "Still my Zodiac," the kid added, still watching Dipper. "The 'morality' of time-travel is… ha… a bit advanced." He glanced up at Stan. "You, and they, shouldn't worry about that."

And Stan hesitated. Because he knew that tone of voice outta the kid by now.

"...What should we be worried about," Stan said slowly next.

And the kid smiled.

"Don't worry," the kid said casually, eyes glinting. "I fixed it."

Stan tensed. "Fixed what," he ground out. Was this the thing the kid been taunting Ford about 'losing him' over, and junk, finally rearing its ugly head?

The kid looked down at his fingers, under the fingernails of his one hand. "Well," the kid began, "Pine Tree and Shooting Star did 'force' the Axolotl to create a dimension, just for them." He looked up at Stan. "Do you know what happens when the Axolotl has to do that?"

"...What happens," Dipper said slowly, looking about as tense as Stan felt just then, and Mabel didn't look any better.

Bill's smile widened slightly.

"...Have you ever wondered why there aren't any other demon summonings that work in this dimension?" Bill said, then added, almost as if savoring the word, "...Anymore?"

It took Stan a moment.

"-Kid," Stan began, feeling alarmed as all get out at what might happen to those other younger them's next - let alone anybody else over there - but he stopped when the kid's smile thinned out, and the kid shook his head at him slightly.

"I handled it on the way out," Bill Cipher told all of his Zodiac present.

"Handled what," Dipper said flatly, looking more and more tense as he wrapped his arms around his sides, and his sister clutched the book she was holding even tighter to her chest.

And the demon-kid looked down at Dipper and blinked.

"Securing your ownership," the demon said, "And locking out any other demons in existence from being able to travel to that dimension anymore, among other things." He glanced up at Stan again. "No others jumped in before I did so. It's 'clean' and 'pristine' as can be!"

"That other dimension is yours now," Miz piped up, sitting down and regarding the twins calmly. Hm, the way the Ax here did things was very different from home. Back home, if Ax made a new dimension, he needed both her and Time Baby to help out too. And no one really claimed it, but they could 'claim' it, by telling the other two they wanted that dimension and the other two agreeing to it.

"...Kid," Stan said slowly. "I'm gonna need a little more explanation than that. Like a little bit of how. And why."

"Was that really necessary?" Dipper said, starting to sound a little freaked out. "I- I mean- the ownership thing?!" ...Yeah, he'd caught on to the demon problem pretty quick there, huh.

And the kid… actually explained. (Hell. If this was what things were gonna be like from now on, with the kid being 'his' and everything else… Damn.)

"The stupid lizard is lazy," the demon-kid told them all. "It doesn't spin up dimensions unless and until it has to. -So when it 'has to'," he continued, with no small exasperation, "The first 'people' - or demons - to visit? Own the dimension. At least until they leave it," the demon-kid told them. "Unless they claim it before they leave and secure ownership! But most beings don't know how to secure ownership," the demon-kid told them next, "And ownership can be lost just as easily between demons, too! -And that isn't even getting into buying or selling them, or what you can do with them-" the demon-kid said, starting to look excited as he began to warm up to the topic.

-And Stan figured he'd better stop him there. "So, what. You took the dimension from the kids to do that?" Stan asked him. (That didn't make sense. The kid was careful with his words, and hadn't the kid said…?)

The demon-kid smiled widely. "No," the kid said. "I didn't have to do that."

"Why not," Dipper said almost angrily, starting to glare. Because if he and his sister had just handed another entire dimension over to Bill Cipher, one with a bunch of human people they knew in it- Great-Uncle Ford had talked about what happened when-!

But Dipper went back to feeling shocked all over again as Bill turned to him and said, "Because you're mine." Then he turned to Grunkle Stan next and said, "I secured ownership for them. Because they're mine, I can do that for them. It isn't held in my name; it's in theirs. -Other demons can tell," Bill told Grunkle Stan next. "I didn't lock out Sight, or try and shield the dimension from notice. -I couldn't do that from the start, since they did it when I wasn't Looking, aware, or prepared for it," Bill told him, looking annoyed now, "And doing that after the fact would draw all kinds of notice." And the way Bill was talking, it sounded like that was something… he didn't want?

It became a little more clear why when Grunkle Stan said a little more grumpily next, almost leadingly, "So your demon-friends can't tell that you're still alive and kicking from looking at stuff in the right place."

Bill grimaced a little at that. "That's… not entirely accurate," Bill said. "If they knew to look, they could find someone else with a similar - but not NEARLY as good-at-it - Sight," wow, you dumb dorito, touchy about it much? "-But new dimensions popping up? That gets noticed by everyone who is anyone QUICKLY," Bill told him. "I locked out other inbound portal-connections on our way in, so that nothing will work that I don't allow or control though, being and demon alike!" Bill grinned.

Miz couldn't help but comment, "It doesn't work that way in my dimensional set. I'm not sure if this way or my way is better." She thought about it. "But in my dimensional set, I just tell Time Baby or Ax if I wanted to claim a dimension or planet as my own, and they agree or disagree. Ax is fine with letting me do what I want, but I have to convince Time Baby or exchange a favor for it."

Stan frowned at this, and the twins looked alarmed, but the kid cut in with, "Demons in your dimension are different than here, I believe, from what you've told me. -The ones HERE will jump in on ANYTHING new, just like THAT!" Bill snapped his fingers at head-height, "As soon as they can! And start wrecking the place just as quickly," Bill said next without judgment, as he lowered his hand.

Like he was talking about the weather. Like that wasn't a problem.

Stan stared at him, thinking-

"...Wait," Mabel said. "If it's our dimension-" She paused for a moment, then brightened. "Could we make it so that there are bouncy castles for everyone?"

"-Mabel!" Dipper hissed out. Because that was almost as bad as the 'death!' at the end of Globnar, getting way too carried away about something really horribly serious!

But Bill just eyed her and said, "Only if you know how to do that. DO YOU know how to do that?" the dream demon said almost cheerfully. (And Dipper had to let out a breath of relief as Mabel groaned at this - because no. No, she didn't know how to 'manage' a dimension, or whatever-it-was that demons usually did to them when they 'owned' them. But the way Great-Uncle Ford had talked about it, it was like they almost became that dimension's demi-god or something, and Bill had better not teach her how to-)

"There was a bouncy house dimension that I've been to. I can show you how it works." Miz said helpfully.

Dipper stared at her in horror and mentally sighed in relief when Stan told Miz, "No." (And felt slightly horrified all over again when Bill added, "-Not anytime soon!" with a grin, and that got a "Boo!" out of Mabel, and all Stan did to any of this was to roll his eyes at the demon.)

"-Anything else I gotta worry about over there, besides the kids owning a dimension now, that other demons and nobody else can get into but us?" Stan asked, trying to get things back on track again. The kid paused for a moment, then shook his head 'no'. (...Yeah, 'cause that pause there wasn't suspicious at all.) "Good. -Dipper, Mabel, you two are getting both your penalties starting right now," Stan told them both, and they startled in place. "Dipper, get your laptop. You're on cataloguing and listing duty for these things, no reading them. You don't even get to open them unless I say so, and I don't say so," Stan told him with a glare, which had Dipper looking angry, but not belligerent enough that Stan was gonna get ignored on this one. "Mabel, you're on wrapping and post-it note duty," Stan commanded out next. "Gonna get these wrapped up in dull, brown paper wrapping and twine-string - nothing fancy," Stan said, to Mabel's pout. "You don't get to sticker these things or glitter them up or anything, or read any of them, either," Stan noted, eyeing that knitting book that she was still holding.

Mabel let out an almost anguished cry at that. "No fair!"

"It's a penalty," Stan said, "It ain't supposed to be 'fair'. Like I told the kid, it's supposed to teach you not to do stupid stuff anymore, like what you two just got done doing!" Stan told them both, really getting freaking tired of having to say this. "-You two almost ended up killing yourselves over there, maybe starving to death in the streets, y'know! This isn't supposed to be fun. -You're making me some money, here," Stan said next, with a Mr. Mystery grin, to soften the blow somewhat by making it more-expected 'grunkly' behavior out of him, in their eyes. "So get to work! -Mabel, grab some big boxes from the back storeroom while you're at it, sweetie," Stan barked out next, almost absently, as he turned to survey the piles.

Mabel turned to Miz with an almost desperate expression.

"And Miz ain't making you lot any more books," Stan said next, glancing back at them. "You want 'em? Talk to Bill, first. He gets to decide." That oughta teach 'em, thinking that getting stuff from the other demon was really all that different from getting them from the kid himself. (Because it wasn't. Miz was only doin' this stuff because the kid was here, and she was just hanging around.)

Stan eyed Miz. "I ain't so sure about all of this stuff, here, as-is," he said next, as Dipper got up, hunched shoulders, to go off and grab his laptop from upstairs.

Mabel sadly put down the knitting book and got up to go get the post-it notes and boring wrapping supplies. Miz looked at the books and then up at Stan. "This too, is a learning experience," Miz concluded.

Stan snorted. "Yeah, it is." Stan glanced between them. "You really didn't notice how out-of-torque your brother was gettin' over there at you doin' this stuff?" he asked her, then shook his head. "Y'know what, hold that thought. You two can talk that one out later between you. -Right now, what I gotta know is, is there anything about these books that might make 'em sell for less than they should?" he asked her. (Not that he didn't know at least part of the answer to that one, since he knew how most nerds responded to library books that looked like they'd been…)

"I made some corrections for the inaccurate information."

(...yeah, he'd thought so. Those penciled-in comments had sure sounded kinda familiar. Ish. Kinda like the dragon-lady when she talked.) ...Well, that wasn't gonna fly.

"Kid, think I'm gonna have you remove that stuff," Stan floated the idea first, before asking it. Because Stan knew that leaving any weird markings or comments or highlighting or whatever in there was gonna lower the value, and he didn't know what-all Miz might've put in there that might be a problem. ...He also knew that the demon-kid liked writing in other people's books himself. Like Ford's journal. So maybe this would be a bit of 'practice' pre-penalty for not doing that anym-

"-I can remove them easily," Miz agreed. She didn't seem happy to have the books contain the wrong information though.

Stan sighed. Wrong 'kid', there, dragon-lady. "You put 'em in, the kid can take 'em out," Stan clarified to her. "You're supposed to be conserving your energy, remember?" Stan said. "And I don't want to risk ya unbalancing yourself here, taking knowledge away from these things.. Besides, the kid knows what stuff this dimension does and doesn't have." Books she's seen places. He'd caught how not exact she'd been on that one, there. He wasn't about to let that one slide, when it could be a problem. 'Portals for Dummies' books, and all that. "You've gotten confused on stuff before. -Kid? You think you can do that? Clean up the ones that're here, and rewrite the ones that people can't already get from a library or bookstore here someplace else right now?" Stan asked, not quite making it a challenge, to see how the kid took it (now that the kid wasn't giving him 'unlimited' help, now that they were all back home, here). The kid hesitated, glancing over at his little sister, but then nodded at him. Huh.

"Okay…" Miz sighed.

"Hey, at least somebody's gonna end up buying and reading them, instead of them just getting stuck on some shelf forever gatherin' dust," Stan told her. No way any nerd wouldn't read some book that they'd bought off of that website, not for the prices he'd be offering. (He knew better than to let 'em rack up as bids. He was just gonna post 'em as list price plus shipping, as much as it truly pained him not to do an even steeper markup of the prices. ...Eh, most of them didn't look all that old, anyway. And Stan knew none of them would probably sell online if he didn't do that. Online wasn't the Mystery Shack gift shop; another cheaper copy of a book online was just one simple click on a search page away...)

"I'll have the kids box up the books first, to carry 'em out there to the picnic tables," Stan told the two demons. (Because as far as Stan was concerned, the Shack included the house itself, sure, but also the parking lot, the picnic tables, and the whole area out to the treeline, really.) "Kid, you maybe wanna take your little sister out there now, and explain to her why you don't think it's such a good idea to just go around giving people books around here?" Stan said to him next. Because he knew the kid had a reason for it. (Whether or not it was whatever Ford was gonna come up with for that one, Stan wasn't about to lay any bets on right now, though, one way or the other.)

Bill nodded and took Miz out of the room, already starting his explanation about how people reacted to things they were given, versus how they thought about and 'felt about' and valued and 'better understood' the things they achieved on their own...

...which quickly escalated to the twins maybe being able to bike or Mystery-Shack-tourcart-ride their way over to that warehouse full of books themselves (later, post-house-arrest) - a little too damn quickly, in Stan's opinion, because the demon-kids got there before they'd even made it out of the house and out onto the back porch...

Stan let out a deep sigh as the door slammed shut and ran a hand across his face, already feeling tired as all get-out. Was he already gettin' undermined here by the demon-pair?

...Well, maybe not yet. The kid hadn't looked like he'd wanted his sister to be giving them any of those books. And if the kid thought the promise of them getting to read the stuff eventually, once they were no longer under 'house arrest', was gonna keep his dragon-lady sister from sneaking the two of them books under the table and really undermining him (hell, either of them?) there, then…

Stan looked over and around at all the multitudinous stacks of books Miz had made in the living room again (...and how the heck had she done that, exactly? there wasn't that much dust and junk around in here, was there?), before he bent down and picked up the book that Miz had told him was supposed to be 'for Ford' lying at his feet. It was the one book that maybe he couldn't go off just 'claiming' for himself, here. ...Welp. This one he was definitely gonna have to look through himself…

...especially since there were probably a bunch of 'corrections' in there in pencil like the other one he'd picked up at-random before. Stan looked over the cover of it. ...Some kinda scientific study on light being both a wave and a particle, huh? Why would Ford get all excited about that? Wasn't that just one of those 'basic physics' things of his…?

Miz was singing again. Stan watched her sing and dance in the backyard (just outside the boundaries of the unicorn barrier) while he sat on the couch out on the back porch, watching the kids and the demon-kid as they worked, and skimming through the light-particle-whatever book himself - y'know, the one that she'd been trying to give Ford. (He didn't really get what the big deal over this book was about. Because yeah, Ford had seemed all interested about it for some reason, but the book didn't seem all that interesting to him, and Miz hadn't marked up any of the pages yet anyplace that he'd seen. Maybe it was just another one of those nerdbot things all over again, but Stan really didn't get it, why Ford might think...)

Stan looked up from the book again for a bit to pay a little more attention to what was going on out in the yard, taking a break from the book. He couldn't understand the words to this particular song, though; it seemed to be in another language again, one he didn't know. There was a glowing orb rotating around Miz that was releasing the music, and Mabel was bopping in place along to it as she wrapped up the books that Bill had 'cleaned' and Dipper had already catalogued in his laptop nearby.

And maybe the music was making things a little better for her, but Mabel tried not to sigh as she looked over at her brother. Poor Dip-Dop was just the biggest grumpy-cat face that she ever did see right now, because Grunkle Stan had caught him every time he tried to sneak a peek at a book beyond the cover page where the 'publishing year' was written, so many times that Dip-Dop had finally just given up and stopped trying. Mabel felt kind of sorry for her brother, here. She'd only found one book that had looked interesting, but Dipper had looked like he'd wanted every single one.

But yeah, looking on the bright side over here! -The music made things a little better and less-boring. It was a nice folky-song type of melody. Miz even had a little fiddle she was playing on for this one. And Bill was sitting at one of the picnic tables, watching his sister 'play' with (well, more nearby than with) Mabel, as she worked. (Grunkle Stan, for his part, was sitting out on the back porch, holding some other book and nursing a Pitt Cola, Mr. Mystery-overseeing this whole big old mess - boxes of books waiting for cleanup by Bill, cataloguing over by Dipper, and carting back into the house over by Mabel herself at the very end of the work line!)

Stan heard the door go, and he wasn't too surprised to see Ford sit down beside him on the couch on the back porch, or the frowning he was doing as he looked over everything. (Not like his brother had gotten more than another two or three hours of sleep there; of course he'd still be in a pretty bad mood over everything, considering.)

Ford sighed as he sat down, his head still throbbing a bit, and he asked his brother, "Stan, what, exactly, do you have them all working on here?" Well, except for the man-eater, who seemed to be prancing about wholly-unhelpfully. And where had all these books come from?

"Figured out the penalty for the kids bouncing themselves into another dimension without us," Stan told him. He paused to take a sip of his soda before saying, "Miz made up a bunch more books while we were talking, 'for the kids', but they're not gonna get to keep or read any of 'em. We're sellin' them instead." Ford stared at Stan incredulously at this, as his brother took another sip of his soda before adding, "And I'm grounding them to the Shack for a week; they're getting supervised by me or Melody or Soos for the rest of the summer. Gonna pull the kid into it on week two, once I'm sure that he actually knows what 'babysitting' means-"

"-Stan," Ford interrupted. "Why are you getting rid of-" no, scratch that. Ford grimaced. "Never mind. I can think of several reasons why no-one in their right mind would want to accept books from a Bill Cipher," he must have hit his head harder than he'd thought, "But what are you having Bill do to those books?" Ford asked of his brother next.

"Cleanin' them up," Stan told him. "Miz wrote a bunch of stuff in some of them when she made 'em up, so…" he took another sip of his soda, "I'm havin' the kid clean 'em all up."

Ford debated whether or not he should argue with his brother about the rather dubious merits of having Bill Cipher lay hands on a bunch of books, to supposedly clean them up after... He mentally shook his head instead, and sat back on the couch, tilting his head back and closing his eyes.

He heard his brother shuffle around, doing something beside him, and after a few moments (and a 'clap-thud' of a sort he recognized), he slowly slitted open his eyes to the sight of his brother holding out an unopened can of soda in front of his face.

Ford sighed and reached out, to take it from him.

"Yours," Stan said, with something of a laugh in his tone, and Ford snorted.

"I dare you to try and take it from me," Ford said almost lazily, as he popped the tab and took a swig of it. (It was almost cold. ...Hm. He really should replace that small under-couch cooler with something far more efficient… those larger ones Stan had gotten were far too large to fit out here for that purpose.) His words got him a soft laugh out of his brother, but Ford felt the smile slowly drop off of his face next. "We should take the niblings with us, the next time we visit that warehouse," he told him.

"Not this week," Stan said, taking another swig of his drink. "This week, they're staying right here where I can keep an eye on 'em."

Ford sighed and risked a glance over at his brother. Stan truly looked serious.

"You think grounding them is really going to be effective," Ford asked him next.

"Worked on us 'round that age," Stan said, almost upending his can to get the last of the soda out of it. He sighed and lowered his can. "They're too used to running around here, getting caught up in all sorts'a dangerous messes."

"They're safer away from the house and the demons," Ford told him in all seriousness, but that got him a snort out of his brother.

"Yeah, sure," Stan said, tapping a finger against his soda can, before tossing it off into a nearby trash can. "Because if they were nearby the house when they'd tried to pull that mess, the kid definitely wouldn't have been able to stop that."

Ford looked away at the long stare Stan was giving him now. ...Yes, Stan, I knew about that. Somewhat. But though the niblings had discussed time travel as a potential 'solution' against Bill once in-passing, Ford hadn't actually thought that they'd be able to get their hands on that 'broken into a million pieces' time tape that they'd read of, that must have been several entire states farther away. Nor would he have thought that Fiddleford would have been able to fix such a thing so quickly once he'd (Ford had presumed eventually) gotten his hands on every last piece of it - except he must have, because the scant number of days that had passed between those two events had only been…

Ford let out a tired sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. ...In retrospect, he supposed he should have known better. He should have discussed the niblings idea with them fully, before they'd ever thought to...

Truly, he'd thought they might try to go back to just before Weirdmageddon itself, never so far back as to his and Stan's own pasts, to try and… Truly, he still didn't understand what, exactly, they must have been thinking. They should have come to him, first...

Ford glanced up as the music stopped, then changed key and tempo, and he frowned.

"Why must she always select the most horrible...?" the scientist muttered, because truly, the lyrics to this one were quite unpleasant - even more so when one knew they were being sung by a 'Bill Cipher'.

Stan glanced over at him. "What's this one about?"

Before Ford could do more than open his mouth to prepare to respond, Miz called out, "It's about perseverance and finding what little joy we can in an unfair world."

Ford frowned. "No, it's about singing and dancing as the world burns down around you," Ford corrected her, "All while ignoring the crying prayers of limited 'temporal' beings like humans, who just want to survive." Which was, frankly, typical of Bill himself. The only thing missing from the lyrics was a reference to insane bouts of laughter while they were doing it.

Miz rolled her eyes. "It's poetic! A metaphor! You don't have to take it literally. It's about how, even when the world is going to shit, you can still find some way to be happy despite it. Find a reason to continue going on instead of just despairing and..." He wasn't hearing the real message of the song at all! (Mabel pouted; she'd liked the sound of the song.)

Bill threw in his own two cents, "Don't be such a stick-in-the-mud, Sixer. This song is great!" and Miz frowned as Ford seemed to be gearing up to find some way to turn that throwaway chiding statement into a full-blown argument, just because.

Before things could escalate any further though, Stan interjected, "As long as you're having fun and no one's getting hurt, it's fine. -Hey, do me a favor and cut my brother some slack, yeah? He's probably got a hell of a headache going on. Anything with a loud beat is probably just gonna make it worse, and he's already in a 'grunkly' mood 'cause he just got done waking up." (Ford rolled his eyes at this.)

"Grunkle Ford? Are you okay?" Mabel called out, wondering what was wrong and why.

"I'm fine," Ford called out to her, trying not to wince. "I just… had an unavoidable altercation in the parking lot of the first location that Stan stopped at for errands this morning."

("Oh, is that what we're calling it now?" Stan teased him with a knowing look, and Ford blithely ignored him for his trouble.)

Miz sighed and backed down, accepting this angle from Stan. "I like the tune. Folk music is nice. Though most human folk songs and childrens' songs tend to contain dark subject matter. I could find a softer instrumental song instead?"

"Yes, please!" Mabel spoke up. She was all for her other favorite Grunkle feeling better post-haste. Then she thought of something else, about the other thing else Miz had mentioned. "Ooh. Dark stuff. Like how Ring Around the Rosie is about the black plague?"

Miz nodded. "And Rock a Bye Baby is about an infant falling off a tree." She paused. "But that's kind of wrong, there's a full version of the song where the mother catches them." Miz got a far off look in her eyes. "That would be nice… why don't more people sing the version where the baby gets saved?"

Stan saw Ford looking ready to go be a jerk again, and he jumped in smoothly with, "Right, well, we've already talked about how just because something is 'human' doesn't make it right. So, lay off on that, 'kay?" Stan said easily to both Ford and Miz before the situation escalated any further, again.

(Meanwhile, Ford was frowning at the thought of what some of the other nursery rhymes he remembered might actually mean, now that the subject had come up. Despite the historical example that Mabel had just given, this topic was not something which he had ever researched in any sort of depth…)

Miz huffed. "It's not like I wrote these songs anyway, they were made by humans. I am simply enjoying them," she said to them, referring to the folk song she had been singing that had started this latest not-quite confrontation between herself and Ford. "And most songs are metaphorical anyway. It's not like I'm dropping some Emo songs on you guys right now."

Mabel let out a snort of laughter. "Robbie likes those songs."

Miz giggled. "Yeah, I wonder if I could show him a few that I know, he might enjoy them." She got the weirdest feeling he'd like Evanescence or Linkin Park...

Stan grunted out, "Ask him first," as he reopened his book where he'd been holding his place with his thumb, and flipped another page in said book. He really was just skimming through the thing, mostly. A lot of it was going over his head; not like that was new - he didn't get half the references, for one thing. It sounded like a nerdy-book, though, and his brother did usually seem to really like the ones that seemed to read kind of like this one was to him. ...Too bad the demon had made it. Maybe he could find a different one online?

Stan flipped through the pages pretty quickly after that, confirming that there didn't seem to be any markings inside the thing, in either pencil or pen. He sighed, and got himself up, to trudge across the porch and down onto the grass, making his way over to casually toss the book into the last box of books that the kid was going through and 'cleaning' before handing them off to Dipper for cataloguing, in the ever-decreasing pile. He glanced over Dipper's shoulder at the screen of his laptop, to look at the list he'd been making.

Huh. Most of the stuff Miz had made seemed to be biographies, science stuff, history books, or instructional manuals. ...Yup, that was all definitely 'learning stuff'; no fiction in there.

Stan glanced over at the kid as he finished up the last book - the one he'd just added to the box - and tossed it into Dipper's box for him to work on. And Stan caught the look the kid was giving him, as he walked away from the table and over to his sister. ...Yeah, Stan had read some of Miz's handwritten notes in one of the other books earlier, 'correcting' some information that she'd thought was inaccurate. And yeah, he knew. None of the corrections had been anything outrageous; she'd marked out things like the year in which some event had happened, or the actual number of people involved in something or another that had happened, and in one instance (in the history book Stan had been glancing through before he'd given the kids their penalty), she'd circled a whole paragraph and written, 'This is all sensational propaganda and they left out half the story'. Maybe it would've been fine to leave it all in, but Stan wasn't taking any chances, and he couldn't sell them for full price with that stuff in 'em, anyway. So yeah, of course he'd had the kid fix the books to get rid of them.

...And the kid had done it for him without a complaint. He hadn't asked anything for it, either. No negotiation. Stan hadn't done anything much differently with how he'd asked the kid this time, from before when the kid was being 'helpful' and all in that other dimension, but he still got the feeling that something was different this time. ...Stan just wasn't sure what was all that different yet.

The corrections had been written pretty lightly in pencil, too. Stan figure that if he'd wanted to, he probably could've easily erased them all himself. Stan wondered if Miz had made them like that on purpose, for if Stan decided they weren't appropriate, then snorted at the idea that she would've done something like that by accident.

Stan looked over all of the books, most of which were almost completely handled by now, and sighed. None of them had seemed to stand out; he'd told Dipper to let him know if any of them did. There were no rare books in the set; no first printings of anything older than 30 years ago. They all seemed... normal, mostly. They were all just books in English for a bunch of nerdy people to read. Stan doubted it wouldn't be a problem to sell them, once the kids finished up their parts of things and Dipper got them all posted online.

Stan glanced over at the science nerd book that Miz had tried to 'drop off' for Ford, still waiting in Dipper's pile for cataloguing. ...Hell, if Stan thought about it, Miz was likely trying to do the gifts-as-apologizing thing again, since she didn't know how to apologize right, to stop feeling sorry with just words.

So Stan was going to have to tell her to stop. (And give her back the gold necklace and other stuff too, while he was at it.) Stan could see why she was trying to do it, but Ford would never accept it from her. It was one of those 'principle' things; if Ford wouldn't take it from the kid, and Miz kept on saying she was, or was trying to be like, Bill Cipher, then...

Well, whatever. Stan didn't want to keep the books; they didn't have room at the Shack for them, anyway. Ford probably could've stuffed them all down in his lab, but Stan knew his brother wouldn't trust them, and he wasn't going to do that, anyway. He kept the big space down there practically empty, for some reason or another; Stan didn't know why.

Miz materialized a small piano out of some dead plant matter along the ground and changed her fiddle into a guitar. "Wanna duet with me?" she asked Bill. He smiled at her - halfway between his wide grin and his smaller smiles - and patted her head. "Yes!" he told her. Miz waved a hand to make the music sheets appear and handed them to Bill.

Stan raised an eyebrow at the display. "Should you really be usin' your powers all that much, dragon-lady?" He was starting to wonder why the kid wasn't saying 'no' to her on any of this stuff, when the kid had been worried about it before.

"I'm fine. I need to practice them to get used to having the effects happen more efficiently with less energy loss anyway." Miz waved him off. "Also, I've modified my vessel to be capable of absorbing UV rays." She wanted to explore her Doors after all, so she'd need to figure out how to regulate her energy better, and practice helped.

"She is being more efficient about it," Bill chimed in, as he looked over the sheet music. "Practice makes perfectly-imperfect! She is getting better at being more-worse," the kid told them next. ("More worse…" Ford muttered out almost darkly.) And the kid (not hearing him outright) then almost casually waved a hand at the ground (making a nearly inaudible clicking noise under his breath that only his sister heard) and seemed to… pull up some roots that were already there to make a bench to sit down on? Or did he grow them himself? ...Actually, now that Stan looked closer, the piano seemed to be… a living plant, too? Like, wood shaped into a piano-shape, with thick vine 'wires' peeking over the edge?

It left Stan wondering what the insides looked like; pianos had metal wires inside them, Stan knew that much. He glanced over at Ford, who was frowning at this, but also looked surprised for some reason.

"Somethin' wrong?" Stan asked his brother quietly. But Ford just glanced over at him, grimaced, and shook his head slightly, before taking another sip of his soda while watching the demons over the rim of it. (Nothing more than the usual problem of either Bill doing anything musical in his presence. Ford generally found it grating at this point. And his burgeoning headache wasn't doing him any favors.)

"So, uh…" Stan searched for something else to say. "You think we're gonna need to water that thing at some point?" he wondered out loud to his brother, under his breath. It got him a snort from Ford, and an, "Only if they don't immediately destroy it when they're done with it."

"Hm," said Stan, eyeing the whole setup, as he watched the kid sit down on the new 'bench'. (Well, there went Dipper's 'the dumb dorito's not using much magic casually for anything' theory.) "Think if I ask the demon-kids to keep it around, it'd make a good attraction for the Shack? Soos could call it the, uh, Tree-piano? -Treeano! Yeah?" Stan asked his brother next. Miz had grown the thing in a spot that could very well have a fence set up, and "I- uh, Soos, could have tourists pay to play the thing!" Stan enthused out next, before getting a good look at his brother's face. "...What?" Because Ford was looking amused at him here, over a demon-y thing no less.

Ford paused for a moment, and then he said, with great suppressed amusement, "Well, if you're willing to put up with the racket from random tourists pounding on it whenever they like, when they don't know how to play it…" Ford teased, and Stan grimaced. "...Or the local teenagers. Late at night. When you're trying to fall asleep at 8pm." Stan glanced over at him, giving Ford an old-man glare over his teasing, but it didn't seem enough to bring his own brother's amused look down in the slightest.

"Well, I can set up a fence, have Dipper put up some keep away signs," Stan grumbled. Then he blinked and grinned. "Hey, if I put up a fence that's high enough, I can charge 'em just to see it!" Stan thought up next. "Make it not part of the regular tour - somethin' extra instead. Thing's gonna need more maintenance if I gotta keep the thing watered," he justified to himself (but mostly his brother).

Ford rubbed a hand across his face at his brother's money-grubbing ways. He looked away from him momentarily as he wracked his brain for some other potential excuse, one he might be able to use to somehow dissuade his brother from this course of action, and...

Aha. "A fence isn't going to keep the gnomes out," Ford tried next. "They'll just climb over it. And they're nocturnal." Very nocturnal. ...Some days. Not that Stan needed to know all the details of that.

"Could get Gompers to guard it," Stan muttered.

"The goat?" Ford said, feeling a bit confused, but Stan just grimaced and waved him off, so Ford sat back and let it lie, though he couldn't help but continue to give his brother a questioning look at the odd 'apropos of nothing' comment.

Miz called out across the lawn, "It locks down closed at night, like a crocus. Only opens up when there's sunlight."

Ford twitched. The man-eater had heard their conversation? It appeared her hearing was better than he thought. Then again, she had said she'd made her vessel genetically a dragon, and if she really hadn't been lying about that, then...

Bill twitched too where he was sitting on his newly-grown and very-green 'bench', having been just about ready to put his hands to the keys… up until he'd heard that.

"...You didn't add a lot of Venus Flytrap to the mix, did you?" Bill said almost suspiciously, his fingers twitching forward, then away from the keys again as he leaned in ever-so-slightly, to squint his eyes a little and peer a bit more closely at the leaf patterns coming off of the sides of the piano-plant (and also his suit's scanner-readouts)...

"Course not. That would be too dangerous. And not funny." Miz huffed. Playing around with genetics was like, her jam. She knew what to add or not to add, how to make it all work together and how to avoid adding things she didn't want!

"...Could be funny sometimes," Bill muttered, as he straightened up in place again. If it was someone she didn't like. Or another demon with harder skin and a real sense of humor to go with their age. (It wasn't like Bill himself wasn't known for his demon humor. It just… worked a lot better when one was generally invulnerable to physical harm. And he wasn't quite that right now. Yes, he had his suit on, which he'd made for this very exact sort of reason! But that was still just-and-only a very sturdy but paper-thin wrapping around his currently very-chewy and watered-down meaty and anchored-down-to center of his current stupid human-ish body, right at this very specific moment in time.)

"I used to be worried that normal pianos would close on my fingers, I don't wanna make one where that would actually happen." Miz told her brother (and everyone else, as part of that 'explain how this would negatively affect her as well' thing to ease Ford's worries). Stan noticed.

"Mm," said Bill. He hadn't thought she'd intentionally hurt him - that thought hadn't crossed his Mind at all one bit. What he'd been more worried about was something he himself would've termed as 'carelessness'.

Bill took a moment, and then reached forward and placed his hands on the keys, both slowly and gently. And then he blinked. And then he ran his fingers across the keys - lightly, not playing, just literally sliding them across the surface of the keys like he was feeling them via touch. And then Bill grinned.

"Feels WEIRD," Bill enthused out, still grinning. He kicked his feet in front of him a bit in his glee.

Miz glanced over at Bill as he 'played about' with the keys and pedals and his sheet music a bit more - settling in where he was sitting, it seemed - and waited patiently for him until he was ready to give her an 'ok' nod to show he was ready to start.

"Ford, you gonna be okay with this?" Stan muttered to his brother under his breath. Because he knew how Ford got at Bill playing usually. The last time that Bill had needed to- yeah, actually needed to...

"If I'm not fine, I can tell them to stop," Ford said quietly. "Correct?"

"...Yeah," Stan said slowly. "And you should if you need to." That was… not something his brother was usually able to do, though. (Or even really thought of? So… did that mean this was… progress?)

(Then Stan grimaced internally. The kid would think it was progress at this point, too. Stan wanted his brother to speak up more, but Ford actually speaking out sometimes seemed like… well, lately, it seemed like something the kid had wanted him to do, too. To be 'less flat'. ...Stan sure as hell wasn't gonna tell his brother that one, though.)

"Hey, Miz," Stan called out. "Hate to ask this, but, uh…" Stan wasn't too sure how to put it. "You think you could make this thing wordless, when you sing, or whatever?" Stan tried, not really sure how to put what he was asking. Because Mabel liked the music, and it was helping keep her going with the book packaging, and so far, Ford had only been objecting to the words in the songs she'd been singing, not the actual music. So if the dragon-lady could manage that, then… (yeah, okay, Ford would still have one thing he didn't like, which was the fact that the kid himself would be playing, but it might only be that one thing at least, and Ford hadn't said 'no' immediately to that, so...)

"Yeah that's fine." Miz agreed easily. (That got both of them a look from Ford, but he didn't object.) "Three, two, one-" and…

The demons began to play together.

Bill started playing at Miz's cue, and after a few beats, Miz started singing.

...That is, Miz hummed along to the song, but didn't actually sing the words aloud. She'd picked up on what Stan had been trying to do there, but in truth, she'd already been planning on doing so herself. Knowing Ford, he'd continue to find issue with any lyrics she sang, no matter what it was. And so, because of this…

Miz was secretly glad that some of the songs from her first life didn't seem to exist here - less chance of people knowing the meaning behind them when she didn't actually reveal the lyrics - and the one she had just given Bill the sheet music to earlier was one of them.

Mabel looked up for a moment, genuinely surprised that Bill was playing the piano so gently. She'd thought he would be more forceful about it. (She'd heard him with that electric piano - which he'd enthusiastically hated, but 'made do with' - before, when Stan had told her to leave him to it, off in the farthest part of the museum, away from the Shack, a couple weeks ago, and… he'd been loud. And he'd made it sound discordant, and angry, but after awhile he'd made it sing...)

(But it had all been forceful and LOUD.)

Ford twitched a little at Bill's playing at and on the piano, but when Bill didn't taunt Ford or even look over at him… (or start to sing himself…) and Ford realized that this wasn't an attack on him of some sort… Ford slowly began to untense his muscles, neck, legs, shoulders and chest...

(Stan was watching, and Stan noticed this. He noticed how his brother began to relax at his side. He noticed how his head tilted back slightly, and his eyes slowly closed. He watched, and he paid attention to how his brother was listening to it. And he noticed how the look on his brother's face now... wasn't all that different from how he'd looked then, when the kid had been all sponge-edged talk with that magic act in the background, a smooth and easy prattle…)

(...so the kid must've done this for him before, at least a couple times, too. Damn him. What had he done to his brother, before and since then-)

The song was soft, somewhat sad and Miz was singing wordlessly to a tune that went along with the music. Mabel and Dipper went back to their work.

Stan watched his brother for awhile longer, and once he was sure that Ford wasn't gonna have any problems with it (one way or the other, now or afterwards), Stan let himself relax a bit, too. He settled in beside his brother, sipping his soda and letting himself enjoy the soft music the demon kids were making. And… it wasn't bad, it was almost… nice.

And that was how they spent the rest of their afternoon. The demons would pause after each song while Miz chose a new one, still gentle and easy on Ford's headache to listen to, as the kids finished up the work that was part of their 'penalty number one'. Ford went from being untensed to being relaxed over time. He chatted lightly and lazily with Stan as he became more and more drowsy under the sound of the relaxing music, the just-right amount of shade of the porch over them under the summer sun, the gentle warm breeze blowing through the trees, his brother at his side just as relaxed and happy as he was, and the soft sounds of the niblings talking and working in the background… all was calm, all was well, he was safe here…

When Dipper and Mabel finally announced that they were done (with a cheer from Mabel and a verbalized 'whew! ...ugh' from Dipper), Miz cheered as well before putting down her instrument (which had changed between a guitar, violin, and even a guzheng at one point, and was again a violin now) onto the picnic table. Then, Miz all but face planted onto the picnic table next to where Mabel was sitting on the bench, and let out a deep sigh (as Bill walked over to flip himself up onto the table, to lay flat on his back across the top of it himself). The teenager patted Miz's shoulder.

"You okay?" Mabel asked. Miz mumbled unintelligently before turning slightly and whispering so that Stan wouldn't hear, "So is this better or worse than a penalty where you have to clean the Mystery Shack bathrooms?"

Mabel blinked and stared at Miz. "Did you… plan this?" Mabel asked her.

"Not really, Stan was still trying to figure out a good penalty for you two. And, well, taking away something you want is a pretty usual type of punishment, right?" Miz shrugged. "I actually just wanted to practice with my powers and knowledge was something I have more leeway in messing with, and well, when you and Dipper started showing an interest…" Miz shrugged.

Mabel let out a bit of a sigh that puffed up her cheeks, then pouted. "I think having the books right in front of us and then having them taken away again is worse."

Miz raised an eyebrow. "You two haven't found the loopholes?" She thought it was pretty obvious. At Mabel's confused look, Miz sighed. There were a whole bunch of ways for the twins to get around this penalty, like they knew the titles, they could buy the books themselves, or ask Miz what was in them, or ask their parents to buy them from Stan's c-Pay. Dipper was the one putting them up so he could easily send them links…

"If you two really wanted to get around this, and get the books you wanted, there are many ways you could, if you only think about it." Miz told her. She was tempted to just tell them all the ways, but brother had said that giving people all the answers all the time was going to make them less likely to think for themselves. And Miz thought that was pretty accurate, so she'd simply put the idea out there and let the kids figure it out themselves.

"Do you want hints?" Bill asked them, thinking along the same lines as his sister (except they were his Zodiac, and he was feeling a bit pleasantly vibrating-buzzed from all the music-making still, so… a bit more open at the moment to being more straightforward with them than he usually was these days). They knew what all the books were, they had the entire catalogue of them now, and the prices. "All of these are still in print, aaaaaand…" They could decide what they wanted, first-second-third, instead of being purely overwhelmed as they had been before, and…

Bill slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone where he was bodily lying across the top of the picnic table, head at the edge nearest Pine Tree. He tapped a few keys, and then turned the phone towards him, with one of the books Pine Tree had shown the most interest towards listed on the screen. "...they are FAR less expensive as eBooks, even at full price," Bill informed them, then frowned slightly as he pulled the phone away and back towards him again.

"...Most of them," Bill corrected, "Most of them are eBooks," he told them, after checking something else. (So his knowledge of everything-and-anything in this dimension was just a few months outdated right now, fine - so sue him! He'd Look at it all again eventually when it suited him! He could make up that 'lost' time EASILY! In a flash and a quick-flickering! Whenever! he! wanted! -So there!)

"Miz scanned these books from a warehouse only 30 miles away from here, as well," Bill informed them next, letting his hand drop down, to let the phone lie on his chest, 'captured' in place between his chest and his hand. "That Stanford will insist on traveling there multiple times…" he informed them both, and let the leading 'So…' remain nonverbal, raising his eyebrows at them to communicate it that way, instead.

Pine Tree just frowned at him, though, and said, "I can't get eBooks. I don't have a phone."

"Dip-Dop, you can run phone apps on your computer," Mabel told him, from a happy point of authority on the matter. Because she had a few friends at school that she knew who did just that! They had messenger apps, and writing apps, and drawing apps-!

Dipper frowned at her, because he didn't think that was right, because… "But the operating system is different…"

"Don't be silly, Dip-Dop!" Mabel began, 'boop'ing him on the nose with a sweater-covered arm. "They-"

"Alright kids, I'm gonna be starting dinner. Head inside and wash up," Stan called out to the kids, both demon- and human- alike, as he heaved himself to his feet, before making his way back inside. Ford jolted in place at his brother's raised voice and the soft hand clapped to his shoulder, having dozed off because of the soft, soothing music. The scientist tried to pretend he hadn't been half-asleep as he quickly sat up.

Miz let out a happy "FOOD!" and rushed at the Shack, smacking against the side of the barrier with an "Oof!" as she tumbled back. (Bill sat up straight immediately, looking a bit shocked and alarmed as she did so.) "Right, I need to put these back on…" she muttered as she made a quick U-turn and went to grab her cuffs back up from the table, where she'd taken them off and left them earlier.

Dipper let out a snort of laughter before he could stop himself. Especially since Miz was rubbing at her nose with a disgruntled look. Miz sent Dipper a pout and Bill narrowed his eyes at him.

"It's NOT FUNNY, Pine Tree. That barrier is-" but Bill cut himself off before the usual 'annoying' remark that he made, and it left both Dipper and Mabel wondering… had that really been what the dream demon had been about to say?

"At least it doesn't hurt unless I hit it too hard." Miz shrugged, clicking on the wooden clasps and making her way inside the Shack.

Bill made a surrussing-sharp clattering set of rapid clicks out loud, as he kicked his legs up into the air and then around for momentum, and spun his way over and around and down onto his feet, on the ground - with no chirps or short-whistles at all - and Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look. Bill looked a bit sharper, all angles, for a moment, and none-too-happy about something that was going on.

"You're not going to take down the barrier," Dipper said, and he tried to make it a statement, instead of a challenge.

"Of course not!" Bill practically spat out at him, "It's more useful in-place than it isn't!" he elaborated to them briefly, as he grabbed up the last box of books and stomped his way forward across the lawn, somehow still leaving the two of them behind in the dust.

"Bill, wait!" Mabel said next, hurrying to catch up with him. She reached out to tug at his sleeve a bit, and… he moved his arm away from her before she could do so, despite the box he was carrying. She blinked, but let that go (with not even a frown, Bill just got a little touchy sometimes). Instead, she opted to jump forward a bit more quickly, getting around in front of him, almost.

-Not completely in his way, she stayed a little to his right - because she wasn't trying to stop him from moving forward. She knew now - from multiple trips through the woods to the spaceship - that he would do that if she got in front of him that much, whether he wanted to or not. For some reason, it came across as aggressive to him.

Dipper let out a breath when Bill stopped in place, even if Mabel bit her lip a little when Bill did it. What Dipper wasn't expecting his sister to ask the demon next though, was, "Why are you so mad right now?"

"I'm not MAD-" Bill began harshly, but then stopped. And blinked. And frowned (even more, because he was already frowning a bit). And then he said, "I'm not-" Except he let out a huff and stopped talking again.

Dipper stared. Bill was… well, yeah, of course he was mad right now, anybody could see that. But... Mabel could just stand right there in front of him and tell him that? And not have him arguing about it with her - without getting even angrier with her about it?!

"I think you are, big brother," Miz stood just in front of the doorway, looking back at them with a frown. "Why? It didn't really hurt, just surprised me a bit."

And Bill looked a bit uncomfortable, chittering to himself under his breath again and looking like he didn't know what to say. (He just wanted to walk forward, up onto the porch, and put the stupid box down, and go inside the stupid house! Feelings were stupid! AND HE WAS ALWAYS MAD! ...But he also knew that that wasn't what Shooting Star had meant there; what she'd actually meant had been something to do with his (stupid) human-ish body-behavior there, not his usual common-state-of-everything, and that wasn't really… it wasn't...

Miz thought about it. "It's okay with me," she said carefully. "It's… not the best situation, but it's not that bad. Like wearing pants that are just a little tight, uncomfortable but not to the point of pain." Or holding her breath and only being able to breathe shallowly once every few hours. But she didn't say that part aloud.

"It's not- it's- mmmn." Bill shifted from side to side slightly, not quite a fluid bobbing motion with his torso, but almost. "Iiiiiii… don't like it when you almost damage yourself," Bill finally muttered out, not looking at any of them as he hunched his shoulders slightly, and the grip he had on the box tightened just a little bit more. "It's NOT 'okay' with ME." he added, even more quietly, still refusing to look at any of them, his head ducked away from them slightly to the side. Because to him, it wasn't the bracelets that were the problem.

Miz smiled softly as a warm feeling swelled up in her chest. "I'll be more careful," she told him. Then she grinned and teased. "You're not mad, you're worried in a 'I care about you and don't want you to hurt' kind of way."

She saw the way Bill twitched and then straightened in place and leaned back slightly, chin up, as he not quite blurted out, "Well, YES!" - acting as if he was trying to act like he thought that of course there was nothing wrong with him saying so out loud and in front of anyone else at all - and the twins stared wide-eyed at Bill as he actually stood there and admitted it, right in front of them all.

"That's fine. I don't want you to get hurt either." Miz took a few steps away from the door and made her way back to Bill's side. "Because I care about you too." She told him firmly before opening her arms for a hug, waiting to see if Bill would want to embrace her. He did last night, but that had been when he was overcome with fear that someone might kill her, she knew Bill wasn't too good with physical affection yet, so she would let him choose to hug her back.

Bill still looked a little… (embarrassed?! his cheeks were actually turning slightly pink, Dipper couldn't believe his eyes) but he did stare at Miz for a moment, and then he said to her without expression…

"Box."

...as he lifted it up ever so slightly, because he was still holding the big box of wrapped books in his arms.

Dipper coughed, stifling another laugh (a little more effectively this time), while Mabel stared at this whole display, wide-eyed still.

Miz nodded at him. "Yes." She knew that. But that wasn't going to stop her from wanting a hug.

He stood there. She stood there with her arms outstretched towards him. And…

The twins stood there, staring at this display for a long moment, until Bill said, "...I'm going to go put the box down now!" and headed off for the door with a bit of a straight-backed looking-straight-in-front-of-him walk, vanishing inside the Shack.

Mabel and Dipper stared after him, then looked over at Miz… who had lowered her arms a little bit now, but she'd turned towards the Shack and... looked like she was going to… wait for Bill to come back and hug her?

It wasn't even another half-minute before Stan poked his head out of the Shack with an, "Okay, what's the holdup her..." Stan trailed off as he spotted the three of them just standing around, and Stan looked around at them all in confusion from the porch.

"Stan? What's going-" Ford said, having noticed the absence of the niblings and demons both when he saw Stan head back out for the back porch, and following out to see what was going on out in the backyard himself.

-and he startled forward and somewhat out of the doorway as Bill came right up behind him, right before Bill then began to snake around him and through the doorway, around and past him.

Headed straight for Miz.

Who Bill then wrapped his arms around in a hug.

...and seemed to whisper something to her as he did it, but neither of the twins quite caught what he said to her, right in her ear.

("I don't like it when you do things like that to yourself. You have too many 'accidents'. -I'm NOT stupid. 'Didn't really hurt' means it still hurt you some. -I don't want you damaging yourself. It makes me want to BREAK things that I definitely shouldn't be breaking right now.")

Mabel clutched her hands together under her chin, going all starry-eyed over this. Dipper was frowning.

And Miz whispered back, ("I'm still not used to having someone care so much when I get hurt even a little. My friends worry, but that's mainly for the serious injuries…") as she pressed herself close to her brother. She felt his hold on her tighten the ever so-slightest-little-bit before relaxing again, almost as if he was afraid he might hurt her if he hugged her too tightly.

This too, was something Miz would have to learn, that even if it wasn't a lot of hurting, it would still make someone who cared about her unhappy if she was hurt. Miz hadn't thought about it this way before. Her friends all knew she was immortal after all, they assumed she'd be fine so long as she wasn't outright destroyed or bleeding out in front of them...

Ford both looked and felt uncomfortable at seeing this display in front of him by these two (demons); Stan was mostly used to seeing this sort of thing from them by now.

"Dipper, Mabel, inside; now," Stan called out, as he turned around and walked himself back inside.

They did so, and as they passed Ford… their great-uncle seemed to startle 'awake', and he turned his stare away from the demons to stride back inside after the rest of his family, at a not-quite-hurried pace of his own.

Miz and Bill finally broke their hug and Miz smiled up at him. "So what would you like for dinner?" she asked as she gently took his hand to walk back inside the Shack properly (and Bill followed along at her side, letting her lead him along).

Bill shrugged, not really caring too much either way, but at the look Miz was giving him, he mentally sighed and thought about it, and told her, "The roasted pepper-rubbed broccoli wasn't bad."

Miz giggled as she lightly swung their interlocked hands back and forth. "I can do you one better, Stan and I bought some jalapeno peppers. I've never tried cooking with them before, and it's gonna be too spicy for me, but you might enjoy them. I'll just use a little bit for now, in case you don't, but if you like them, I'm gonna experiment with some recipes."

Bill hummed in thought as he smiled down at his little sister, before raising his free hand up to pet her on the head a bit as they walked into the kitchen, hand in hand.

"I think I would like that." Bill grinned at her. "-Let's find out!"